russia

Although the Sochi Games were by many measures a success, any global afterglow quickly dimmed a few weeks later when Russia annexed more Black Sea property: the Crimea in neighboring Ukraine.

The BBC World Service is being financially outgunned by Russian and Chinese state-owned news channels, its former director Peter Horrocks has warned, amid high-level concerns that Britain and the US are losing a global “information war” with the Kremlin.

The plunging price of oil is a geopolitical game-changer.(...)For now, though, there are potential foreign policy benefits to the United States, presuming deft diplomacy and an effective Congress will take advantage of the situation.

The Cuba announcement is the latest example of “soft power,’’ much ridiculed in an age of terrorism, religious extremism and regional warfare. It’s a policy that taps nonmilitary advantages such as technology, financial power and open institutions to push American ideals. 

The idea of Russian “soft power” became fashionable, but it was very different to European “soft power”. So-called Russian soft power was just “softer power”, including any means of coercion not involving tanks. It was, in the English phrase, “softly-softly” power, or “covert power”, the type of behind-the-scenes influence encapsulated in the Russian phrase kuluarna polityka – politics in corridors, not just away from public influence, but without formal record.

Putin’s propaganda machine is fighting a desperate PR battle—at home and abroad—for control of the narrative of its war against Ukraine.  Setbacks make the battle for German public opinion even more crucial, a battle that is now being conducted on the front pages of the German press. 

December 15, 2014

Russian President Vladimir Putin has nearly completed his purge of independent news media in Russia.  “This is not just a war of information,” says one keen analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.  “It is a war on information.”

How do we deal with American supporters of terrorist groups like ISIS? Europe may have some surprising lessons with its kinder, gentler approach to homegrown jihadists.

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