Authoritarianism doesn’t always come with bells, whistles and goose-steps. More typically, it develops in a series of interlocking steps – a state of emergency (“war on terror”) here, a couple of indefinite detentions and Presidential hit orders there, their eventual legal codification – that while on their own seem justifiable and even innocuous, when taken […]
Archives for January 2011
Visualizing The Kremlin Clans
This Post about Politics,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin, Kevin Rothrock for Da Russophile on January 19, 2011 .10 Comments
Can you tell your siloviki from your civiliki? MVD, FSB or GRU? The breeds of dog underneath those Churchillian carpets? If not, maybe this will help. In August 2010, I translated the introduction to political pundit Vladimir Pribylovsky’s recent book ВЛАСТЬ-2010: 60 биографий (Power in 2010: 60 biographies). The resulting Phantom Tandem, Real Triumvirate and the Kremlin Clan […]
Top 10 Most Powerful Countries In 2011
This Featured Post about Geopolitics,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for AK's Blog on January 16, 2011 .666 Comments
The Chinese have an interesting concept that quantifies Great Power status, called Comprehensive National Power (CNP). This index is produced by processing the economic, military and cultural factors that make countries powerful: GDP, technological development, number of tanks and ICBM’s, as well as “softer” factors such as influence on global media and international institutions. Since I’m […]
New Year Special, Part 2: 2011 Predictions
This Post about Politics,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for AK's Blog on January 3, 2011 .9 Comments
Carrying on from yesterday’s 2010 in Review, I’ll now lay out my predictions for this year and see how well last year’s stacked up to reality. (1) Last year, I wrote: “World economy continues an anemic recovery, though there are significant risks to the downside.” Today I’d repeat this, but add that the risks have […]
New Year Special, Part 1: 2010 in Review
This Post about Politics,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for AK's Blog on January 3, 2011 .25 Comments
Happy new year to all Sublime Oblivion readers! This blog wouldn’t be what it is without you. In fact, I’d have probably abandoned it after a month or two after a couple of posts as I did with my first blog in 2006. So please keep on reading and commenting. BTW, the image above is […]
