Personally, I find Ms. Shevtsova's writings on Russia causing dizziness and even mild nausea. While she doesn't openly advocate an invasion of Russia, she calls the "West" to become "tough" with Russia to help to bring about a regime change. In other places, she proposes an absurd notion that Russia should be somehow fused with the "West". She is a liberal, but her link to liberalism is tenuous -- she is ready to abandon her liberal principles if the liberal METHODS (diplomacy, negotiations, exchange and slow progress) wouldn't work. "Let's talk about what could undermine the Russian system" she writes on page 334.
In her view Russia must reject the current system and must adopt liberal democracy. She doesn't really give convincing reasons why. She doesn't give strong arguments why the Russians should prefer liberal democracy or even abandon mild authoritarian regime. In Shevtsova's world, liberalism and democracy are self-legitimizing. She is not the first "progressive" in Russia - Lenin and Trotsky a century ago were convinced that the "proletarian dictatorship" was necessary if Russia to advance. For them, it was more progressive and modern than the Czarism. The hell is always paved with best intentions. If the Russians could use MORE of something - it is skepticism.
She works in Moscow's office of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foreign-policy think-tank based in Washington, D.C. Like a member of any important American foundation, she participates in setting up an agenda for the American foreign policy. Creating bridges, making connections, understanding what makes Russia "tick" is important for the US. Presumably, it is what the Carnegie Center is trying to do. And yet, in the book there are no traces of a desirability of improving relations, or simply reaching modus vivendi.
Shevtsova advocates a risible notion that by sanctioning, isolating Russia and weakening her institutions the "West" could create and enhance freedom. But freedom is a tricky thing - it cannot be created by export or by destroying an existing regime or even removing tyranny. As we see the world moving from the Fukuyamian "end of history" back into an epoch of conflict animated by nationalist, religious, fundamentalist and soon, perhaps, Malthusian forces, it is not the neo-liberals whose advice Russia should listen (or American neoconservatives who gave their liberalism a fundamentalist pitch). It is Thomas Hobbes who predicted in 1651 that conflict, upheaval and "state of nature" will follow if strong government is lacking.
Shvetivsa creates a "Straw Man" (Putin ostensibly wants to re-create an imperialist superpower, a new Soviet Union). Then, she destroys it (Russia under Putin doesn't possess what it takes to be a superpower). I think everybody realizes that it's an absurd notion -- Russia cannot be a superpower like America, but Russia is a regional Great Power (like many other regional powers: Japan, India, Brazil, China).
In Shevsova's opinion, Russia must not peruse the Great Power Politics ("Derzhavnichesto", she uses this out-dates imperial term) because the liberal democracy is incompatible with the Great Power Politics. That is very doubtful. In the end she claims Russia could become a "challenge to liberal civilization". Whatever. The Russians should think about the national interests, not phantoms like "liberal civilization". If it serves human needs, it's good enough.
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