Both Presidents are post-socialist authoritarians, and Putin is also a centralizer, which is understandable given the weak institutions and the fissiparous multi-ethnic nature of the vast Russian Federation, but not especially desirable.

The strategic implications of admitting Georgia to NATO boggle the mind. How receptive is Turkey going to be to the Sixth Fleet transiting the straits to defend Orthodox Georgia? Hardly more so than she was to allowing a US invasion of northern Iraq from Inçirlik, I would think. How then would NATO defend its new member? A nuclear umbrella over Tbilisi?

Even the allure of a non-Russian pipeline from Kazakhstan seems not worth that risk.

I appreciate Georgian polyphonic choral singing, their impossibly consonantal language, and if I experienced it, I suspect I would also appreciate their food, wine and hospitality. However, if food, wine, music and language ruled geopolitics, there’d still be an Italian Empire.

The anti-Putin hysteria in this country is such that I try to offer balancing arguments to keep things in perspective, because the consequences of galloping Russophobia are far worse for us and the Russians. In many respects, they are very much alike (both play to the crowds nostalgic for the Soviet past and the “good old days” of Comrade Stalin while simultaneously deploying symbolism of their countries’ medieval and Orthodox heritages), and I have previously condemned Putin for his stupid, destructive treatment of Georgians living in Russia during the spat with Saakashvili last year. I have never made any attempt to deny the authoritarian “neo-KGB” state that Putin is building; I have taken issue with one-sided portrayals of Ukrainian and Georgian “democracy” standing up heroically to Muscovite tyrants. I have questioned the obsession of some in the media with the internal affairs of Russia, since I don’t think it is our concern and I see it as a not-so-subtle attempt to wage a PR war against Russia as a way of preparing the public for increasingly confrontational policies. We have seen it before.

Russia has an illiberal nationalist regime with many of the institutional and procedural elements of democracy, just like Ukraine and Georgia. The difference is that Westerners ignore the illiberal, nationalist elements in the latter two countries and ignore the democratic elements in the former because it suits prejudices about the kinds of people who are “pro-American.” Ukrainian and Georgian pro-Americanism, such as it is, is largely tactical and does not represent some fundamental change in the political culture of either country. I see a thoroughgoing bias against Russia designed to feed the worst tendencies in our foreign policy establishment, and it is redolent of a kind of anti-Orthodox neo-Orientalism that we last saw deployed against the Serbs. Nonetheless, I agree that Putin and Saakashvili do tend to mirror each other in the way that they rule. Saakashvili can do less because his government is much less powerful, but he is not the reforming pro-Western hero that some want to make him out to be. (Incidentally, McCain’s love of Georgian authoritarians goes back to Shevardnadze’s days, and is clearly aimed at using Georgia as a cat’s paw against Russia, which I think is very bad for Georgia and Russia and for us.)

My concern about Russia policy is that this anti-Putin hysteria will contribute to bad policy choices based out of a kind of reflexive hostility to anything Russian. Promoting Georgian membership in NATO, which Saakashvili is keen on doing and some in Washington are keen on encouraging, is just the sort of provocative, stupid policy towards Russia that needs to be fought, so glowing and positive appraisals of Saakashvili (which also happen to be false) are actually much more dangerous than attempts to try to understand Moscow’s perspective on U.S.-Russian relations.

Is it your contrarian streak or do you see a difference? My impression (and it’s only that) is that they are both nationalists who value a strong centralized state in the face of a society disintegrated by too many years of Bolshevism.

Am I missing something?

I regularly read four magazines, to which I subscribe–Chronicles, American Conservative, The Spectator and The Economist. I check Antiwar for news updates, plus Google News, BBC, the Telegraph, NYT, the Post and WSJ. I occasionally will pick up a copy of Foreign Policy, and sometimes I will read Foreign Affairs online. RealClearPolitics is a good clearinghouse for political commentary. Otherwise, I track things down by search engines based on topics. I also follow some areas more closely than others. The Caucasus is a region I am very interested in, so I make a point of following what goes on there. If you were to press me about the latest developments in, say, Cameroon, I would probably be stumped.

Mocking Ledeen would be fun, but it might be all together too easy.