Imperial Gamble Quotes

“when Yushchenko arrived in Washington, he was greeted with the pomp and circumstance reserved for popular kings or democratic pin-ups, such as Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, or Pope John Paul II—he was invited to address a joint meeting of Congress, where he spoke boldly about helping Bush and the United States promote democracy and freedom in neighboring Belarus and Castro's Cuba. “Yushchenko! Yushchenko!” members of Congress roared, ten times rising to their feet in rapturous applause for this newly elected symbol of democracy on the rise in eastern Europe. Yushchenko”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“It should be willing to negotiate with Russia on issues of common concern—such as Iran's nuclear development, Syria's civil war and other Mideast turmoil, global terrorism, and international trade. Occasionally there are overlapping interests. We should stop personalizing East-West differences, laying all problems on Putin's shoulders, as though, if he were replaced, all of our difficulties with Russia would disappear. At the same time, we should encourage Ukraine and Russia to”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“In the meantime, until an acceptable solution to the Ukraine crisis can be found, it would seem to be unwise for the West, led by the United States, to drop its economic sanctions against Russia, unless dropping them would advance an acceptable solution. The United States, for its part, should adopt a clearer, more discriminating, and realistic policy toward Russia than it is currently pursuing.”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“even on a box of chocolates. A macho close-up of Putin wearing dark glasses is featured above an audacious sales pitch: “You need balls to be a King, when all around are mere pawns.” A pro-Putin youth organization,”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“clearly had a more limited objective. Putin wanted to protect Russia from “NATO expansion.” In fact, Kissinger believed, the West was as responsible as Russia for the Ukraine crisis, a position radically at odds with the conventional wisdom in Washington.”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“Ukraine's “special significance for Russia.” By trying to lasso Ukraine to the West, economically, diplomatically and politically, Kissinger said, the West ignored Russian concerns. Putin”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“He and others like him have been determined from the beginning to restore Russia as a world power, as a force to be reckoned with.” One conclusion, in Gates's view, was that Putin believes he has a special responsibility to protect all Russians living in neighboring countries, even if”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“example, consider the opinions of Robert Gates, who served as director of the CIA before becoming secretary of defense for both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. During the cold war, he was a hard-liner; now he is in Gorbachev's corner on the 1991 controversy. “They [the Russians] believed they had a commitment that we wouldn't try and move NATO to the East,” Gates told the Council on Foreign Relations. And”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“I'm Orthodox, and Orthodoxy began in Crimea,” he said, referring to the conversion and baptism of the Kievan prince Vladimir the Great in 988. “Orthodox people must be reunited.” He meant the Slavic, Orthodox union of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. “This is all Russia—greater Russia, minor Russia, and white Russia.”16 These strong sentiments upholding Slavic unity help explain why so many Russians have difficulty in viewing Ukraine as a separate, independent nation.”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“demonstrations in Moscow prior to Putin's return to the presidency in 2012 unnerved Putin, in Obama's view, to the point where he believed “he was losing control.” Putin quickly infused his administration with an “anti-American and anti-Western,…proto-Russian nationalist, almost czarist” attitude, which improved his political position at home but complicated his foreign policy, especially his dealings with the United States. It also put Moscow on edge, Putin insiders looking anxiously over their shoulders, concocting Western conspiracies, imagining NATO threats.”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“—On February 23, one day after the Winter Olympics ended, Putin unveiled his surprise, but in a way so oblique and startling that not everyone could quickly recognize its importance. Crimea was about to change ownership. Eastern Ukraine was about to descend into civil war. The Rada, in Kiev, seemed”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“Because historians in Putin's Russia no longer adhered to the standards of objective scholarship, instead producing works consistent with the party line—as during the Soviet era—the new study would likely produce a narrative “proving” that Novorossiya was linked historically to the “new Russia” and therefore belonged to the “new Russia.” U.S. think tank experts had recently left meetings in Moscow disappointed by the”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“independent country. “I would like to remind you,” Putin said in a nationally televised call-in broadcast, “that what was called Novorossiya (New Russia), back in the tsarist days, Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Nikolayev, and Odessa were not part of Ukraine back then. The territories were given to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet government.” When Lenin and Stalin created the Soviet Union in 1922, Ukraine was made a Soviet republic, and these cities were made part of it. “Why?” Putin asked rhetorically. “Who knows?” he responded with casual indifference, as though he were saying that Lenin's decisions in 1922 had no relevance now.”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“What looks like audacity and forcefulness is more often merely the byproducts of improvisation, knee-jerk reactions unrestrained by due government process.”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“inevitable: Tymoshenko was booted out of her job as prime minister, and a Yanukovych ally, Mykola Azarov, replaced her. And Yanukovych put a smile on Putin's face by quickly recalibrating Ukraine's policy toward Russia. In April 2010, after a bitter parliamentary debate, Ukraine extended Russia's lease on the naval base at Sevastopol, set to expire in 2017, until 2042. Putin responded in a totally predictable way: He reduced the price of Russian natural gas to Ukraine. Two months later,”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“he had betrayed the ideals of the Orange Revolution. Poroshenko kept his cool, dropping pellets of poison into the dialogue whenever it suited his purposes but otherwise standing on the sidelines, biding his time while trying to appear statesmanlike. As Yushchenko opened the second year of his presidency, he found himself in serious trouble. He had his chance to fight corruption and launch a major program of economic and political reform; after the Orange Revolution, he had even had his chance to rise above politics and become a Ukrainian Mandela. But, in almost every respect, he fell short. Moreover, hovering like”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“2003, the Georgian had stormed to power—“people power,” he called it—and it had sent a chill down Putin's spine. Rising tension already existed between Russia and Georgia over control of two so-called breakaway provinces in Georgia—South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In 2008 a suspicious Putin would send the Russian army into both provinces, declaring them to be independent. Actually, they ended up becoming Russian satellites, frozen in place and position by Russian arms. Putin also sent the Russian army into Georgia, only to pull back. The United States objected, but essentially did nothing. A pattern of Putinesque aggression was being established: Whenever Putin felt the”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“Revolution in nearby Georgia, his team came up with the color and the slogan for what they called the 2004 Orange Revolution. Everything was in orange—their banners, scarves, hats, and handouts. Yushchenko's campaign functioned like a Swiss watch, and he consistently led Yanukovych in the polls. He seemed the likely winner. Desperate, Yanukovych asked Putin for advice. The Russian president's PR people offered a few suggestions. First, favor close relations with Russia, not with the West. Second, make Russian the second official language of the country. And third, run as a proud Ukrainian nationalist, not as an American puppet. One poster quickly showed up on billboards: the faces of Yushchenko”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“For Yeltsin, Ukraine was always the key to Russian success, the country most likely to bolster Russia's future as a great power. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, wrote: “It cannot be stressed strongly enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”11 If Yeltsin's relations with Kravchuk”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“There is every reason to believe that Putin, like the tsars, is a loyal adherent of the “Third Rome” concept. The doctrine held that Moscow was the third and final home for Christianity. “Two Romes have fallen,” Ivan III proclaimed, “but the Third [that is, Moscow] stands, and a Fourth shall not be.”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War

“The twenty-first century, he wrote, far from it becoming an oasis of democratic values, would more likely resemble the struggles, wars, and conflicts of the nineteenth century.”
― Marvin Kalb, Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War