Watching President Vladimir Putin field the questions of high school students in Texas, that early assessments of Putin’s chances for a long political life and autonomous political action were extremely negative seems almost implausible. In two years, Putin moved from being a puppet of President Boris Yeltsin’s family to being the dominant fixture on the Russian political scene. This profound change in the universal assessment of the Russian president raises the need to reflect on the roots of his improbable success, the durability of his governing coalition in the face of new challenges, and the capacity of the United States to achieve its foreign policy goals in relation to Russia. […]
Memo #:
242
Series:
1
PDF:
PDF URL:
http://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/ponars/pm_0242.pdf
