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 New Skin, Old Wine

 By Sergei Roy

Sergei Roy's Comment:

Obama's victory over that Cold War relic, Senator McCain, has been welcomed, and even enthusiastically celebrated, by the "entire progressive mankind," as we would have said in the good old Soviet times. The day a black-skinned person won the election was even declared a national holiday in some African state. The festive scenes in European countries on this occasion were enough to make you believe that the world was right on the threshold of a Golden Age, all because an Afro-American called Barack Obama won the highest office in the US.

 As we Russians know perhaps better than most, the euphoria of the night before is inevitably followed by the morning after, and now is the time for a sober assessment of what Obama can, and will, do in the grey hours of the morning.

It is a platitude of political science that politicians' election campaign rhetoric and post-election actions bear little relation to each other. On that premise, Obama's fiery rhetoric promising Change! and then more Change! will little by little peter out.

An indication of that we have already witnessed in his acceptance of the Republican administration's bailout plans for the US financial system. In simple, even crude terms, that plan means curing the current crisis, which eventually stems from printing lots of US paper money, by issuing more paper money, also without collateral. If that's change, it's a funny kind of change. And we here in Russia need not think it will not affect us. It will, and it does concern us, along with the rest of the world.  

Then, US-Russia relations are one area where little change from the pre-Obama policies and practices is likely. In fact, Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama were singing in unison on that theme during the entire election campaign - with one notable exception: McCain insisted on kicking Russia out of the G8 (that would have been change!) while Obama reasonably opted for no change in this area.

For the rest, Obama's and Mccain's statements on Russia were pretty much interchangeable. Consider, for instance, what the two were saying on the March 2008 presidential elections in Russia. Obama came up with denunciations of Russia "backsliding on democracy" which any moss-brained Republican would be proud of (on this, see my article "A Bad Case of Humbugama" at www.guardian-psj.ru under Editor's column).

Consider next, and most importantly, Obama choosing Joseph Biden for his running mate. On Aug 27, 2008 at the Democratic Convention in Denver Sen. Biden presented his plan for the new administration's "real war," the war against Russia and China. For Biden, the greatest mistake of the Bush administration was its failure "to face the biggest forces shaping this century. The emergence of Russia, China and India's great powers". Now, what was the "consequence of this neglect"? "Russia challenging... Georgia's freedom. The Obama-Biden administration will repair those criminal mistakes... Barack and I will end that neglect. We will hold Russia accountable."

Note that, though he is speaking of a war against Russia and China, Biden's "real war" is with Russia only: Russia alone will be held "accountable" - for kicking into line a US puppet that went clinically bonkers and launched a bombardment of a sleeping city that killed hundreds of innocent civilians. Obama, too, promised his followers to contain "Russia's aggressiveness," in true Biden spirit - using the very words that State Secretary Rice is mouthing. Change? Don't make me laugh...

The Good Book says, No one puts new wine into old wineskins (Luke 5:37). Alas, ours is a different case: the skin may be new, but the wine is old - and sour.