50 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An entertaining read, but take it with a grain of salt, August 26, 2008
I read this book because I would like to add a Russian component to the masters thesis I am working on, and thought it would give me good background. Alas, while the book was an entertaining read, it is practically useless academically. Mr Lucas' prose drips with outrage and disdain toward Russia's leaders--and I sometimes got the feeling that his attitude extends toward all Russian people. Although I don't have a deep background in this field, it was pretty obvious that Mr Lucas glosses over very complicated events in order to substantiate his own rather simplistic argument. The book quotes very few sources and mostly regurgitates events that have already been widely reported on. The author's lack of nuance is the most troubling--everything boils down to Putin/Russia = power/control/corruption/bad--which left me with very little I could use in a serious paper. By the end of the book, I had the impression that I had read a polemic summary of everything bad the mainstream Western media has had to say about Russia over the past couple of years, which might explain why it appears to have gotten so many good reviews from major news outlets.
Mr Lucas may be right, and he certainly has a valid opinion on Russia's politics and the direction the country is going. However, I hope that anyone who would like to read this book understands what it is--the strongly written personal opinion of a journalist who has been covering Russia for a few years. It is certainly not an objective or meticulous study of any aspect of contemporary Russia.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good history, wrong prognosis, October 17, 2008
That this book was hastened to press is evident from the numerous typos that occasionally blunder over into silly factual errors (Henry Truman, Kirgistan). The prose is also, while engaging, at times under-edited. Yet one wants to overlook these shortcomings, as Edward Lucas is an important and influential observer of things Russian, having served for several years as the Economist magazine's bureau chief in Moscow.
Drawing on this experience, Lucas recounts a decade of Russian domestic and foreign policy crises, arguing that Russia is a dangerous foe, bullying its neighbors, cornering natural resource markets, crushing internal dissent and defrauding foreign investors. "Repression at home is matched by aggression abroad," Lucas writes. "Russia is reverting to behavior last seen during the Soviet era," yet now it is not "the Kremlin's tanks thundering into Afghanistan that signal[s] the West's weakness; now it is Kremlin banks thundering through the city of London."
Yet, Lucas notes that, while Russia's "tactics are increasingly clear and effective... the goal is still puzzling." Imputing intent from actions, he concludes that Russia "...wants to be respected, trusted, and liked, but will not act in a way that gains respect, nurtures trust, or wins affection. It settles for being noticed - even when that comes as a result of behavior that alienates and intimidates other countries. It compensates for real weakness by showing pretend strength." In short, we should be worried about Russia because it is reasserting itself in the world, and it is doing so with methods that scorn (or undermine) the cherished values of Western Liberal Societies: free trade, primacy of individual liberties, the rule of law.
Fair enough. The facts of the Putinera events are presented well. And his argument is logical. Yet flawed. For none of these things are certainties: that a richer, more emboldened Russia will threaten international stability, that Russia will become more authoritarian over time, rather than less, that Russian civil or commercial interests will continue to quietly acquiesce in the erosion of civil liberties, that Russian actions over the past decade are part of a coordinated Eastern Front in a New Cold War.
This latter is the weakest leg of Lucas' argument. Many Russian actions internally and externally over this period have been reprehensible. But to assert that those actions belie an orchestrated intent is to give Russian policymakers more credit than is their due.
In fact, events seem to show nothing so much as that Russia is blundering about blindly in its foreign policy. There is no wizard behind the Kremlin curtain, shaping a cohesive international plan. Indeed, The New Cold War is a ruthless cataloguing of Russia's nearly unbroken string of foreign policy failures since 2000: Chechnya, Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia... Lucas repeatedly shows how Russia has overplayed its hand in its attempts to influence and cajole its neighbors, in the end assenting to an outcome it initially insisted was untenable (e.g. the current missile defense debate). Russia, Lucas writes, "is too weak to have a truly effective independent foreign policy, but it is too disgruntled and neurotic to have a sensible and constructive one."
So which is it? Should Russian foreign policy make us tremble with fear or with laughter? Maybe both. Lucas' treatment of domestic issues suffers from the same disconnect. Recounting the decline of pluralism and a free press, and the rise of corruption and statism in business,
Lucas forecasts gloom and doom while at the same time pointing out the massive inefficiencies of state-run enterprises. It is not clear: are the behemoths taking over the economy or teetering on the brink of collapse? And if one believes (as Lucas seems to) that modern commerce needs a free and open society to survive, how can one not have confidence in the power of the market to eventually overrun any government gates that hem it in?
The mind yearns for simple, logical explanations. But it is not always good to give the mind what it wants. Sometimes it is best to accept complexity and not try to explain irrational behavior with logical arguments. Recommendation: Read this book for its superb account of the Putin era, but overlook its typographical and theoretical errors. (Reviewed in
Russian Life)
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Putin as Lord Voledemort and the Russians his army of Death Eters, November 26, 2010
This exaggerated and paranoid book fuses genuine strategic concerns with Russophobe ideas worthy of the rightwing xenophobic rags. Shockingly to me, Lucas is also editor of the Economist. According to this book, the Russians are out there to manipulate, corrupt and subjugate the freedom-loving Europeans, and the Russkies are doing "pincer movement on Europe" using pipelines and their financial resources of their fascist petro-state. The lesson: "we" are not safe; we must unite in the face of this new threat and rollback the Russian political and economic aggression. Any financial deals with Russia must be scrutinized, Russian companies should be de-listed, and Russia must be expelled from G8 club and other International organizations. (On page 212, Lucas claims that allowing membership of Russia in the European organizations was a "disastrous mistake"). "We" want Russia out of Europe (he used "we" and "us" a lot).
On the personal level, as a native of Russia, I feel offended to read this kind of russophobic views, where pure allegations (Lucas represents too many unknowns as "knowns") are represented as facts. Read that the Russians represent danger, allegations that the Russians are out there to dominate Europe. It rings to me a kind of old anti-Semitic idea, which still lingers in Europe, about the foreign plutocrats which is out there to take advantage of the ostensibly honest and hard-working Europeans. Only the Jews in this schema are replaced with the Russians. It is offensive to read that they are portrayed like brainless idiots or like children - they need Vladimir Putin because they want to have someone in charge. It is offensive to read that the Russians represent values which are alien to "us".
The real purpose of the book is to undermine a delicate modus vivendi with the Russian state. I'm not sure for what purpose, his agenda is hidden. I'm not sure if escalation with Russia serves the US interests (Obama's tactical "reset" is as good proof as any). The hitch is that the Anglo-American elites (presumably the "we" in Lucas' book) well aware that they need to maintain some kind of modus vivendi with Russia, but they really don't want to, at least reluctant. It's just goes against the grain. On the surface, this is because Putin is ex-KGB, not democratic, not "one of us", but the reality is much more complicated: it is realties of the "Grand Strategy" married to the complicated mix of history and racial stereotypes. As far as members of the US establishment are concerned, the fall of communism and the end of Soviet Union didn't changed their hostility to Russia as a state.
The situation would change only, as Anatol Lieven had perceptively once noted, if Russia adopted a position of complete subservience to American wishes not only in the World as a whole, but in its own region. I would agree with Lieven that this is no Russian state will ever accept. This is the core of the issue. That is of course unless Russia is militarily defeated by the NATO, which would be a pyrrhic victory in my view.
It is rather curious to see how swiftly the book was translated into all Eastern European languages and how the speaking tours have been organized to promote his anti-Russian ideas in Europe and North America. A curious fact is that in the Russian translation of the book is subtitled "Kremlin and the threat to the West" while in English the "Kremlin" is substituted to "Putin's Russia". He is well aware that Putin is very popular in Russia and "Putin's threat" won't sell there.
As Alex Zaitchik had noted in eXile, Lucas' deep personal and professional ties are to the Balts (Estonia) and to Poland. It helps explain why he is so upset with projects like the Baltic Sea Russo-German pipeline that will deliver Russian gas directly to Germany by 2011. When completed, Poland will lose up to $1 billion a year in transit fees; Russia is also building a large terminal next to the Estonia's border, which means that the Estonian companies will be losing millions. But despite these nations' temper tantrums, there is no excuse for peddling conspiracy theories. Lucas is a salesman of an anti-Russian world-view, which unfortunately for Russia has its powerful lobby in Anglo-America and its client states in Eastern Europe. What the Russians can do is to quietly build up the economy, respond calmly to allegations and turn to the BRIC countries and Germany for trade and political support, while maintaining a friendly façade with the rest of the West. And read Tolstoy and Clausewitz instead.
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