Author Archives: DemDigest

Cubama: what President Obama should say about Cuba

     

  Cuba has released four dissidents and put them on a plane to the U.S. just days before President Barack Obama’s historic trip to the island as part of the rapprochement with President… Read more »

Renewed confrontation in Georgia?

     

  European Union membership “is a historical choice” for Georgia, according to Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze (above). “We are not a country which just decides to join blocs,” he told… Read more »

Vietnam’s ‘Lady Gaga’ joins dissident gatecrashers running for parliament

     

  Vietnam’s constitution pays lip service to democratic principles, but the country of 93m people is a repressive one-party state. In it, ordinary folk have little say over who their… Read more »

The Obama Doctrine: from ‘democratic messianism’ to ‘passive progressivism’?

     

  Experience has taught President Barack Obama to temper his idealism with a pragmatic, realist approach to foreign policy, leading him to reject liberal Democratic interventionism. Yet he remains a democratic… Read more »

Growing resistance to China’s political controls

     

The rise of ‘abusively racist clown’ Donald Trump proves democracy doesn’t work, according to China’s ruling Communist Party, citing his success as latest example of how allowing the masses a say in choosing… Read more »

Russia – a ‘hollow superpower’

     

Vladimir Putin was losing legitimacy even before the economy shriveled [but] with action in Ukraine and Syria, he has made it appear that Russia is the equal—and rival—of America, The… Read more »

Shaping the West’s stance toward Global Illiberalism

     

Today it looks as if the days of the [pro-Kremlin] Russlandverstehers’ unchallenged dominion in explaining Russia to Germany are over, at least on the expert level and in public opinion, analyst… Read more »

Putin’s Crimea – no vacation

     

  Human rights and freedom of expression in Crimea today are more tightly restricted than in Russia, where the Kremlin cannot exert the same level of control. For Russian President… Read more »