| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
"THE STATUE OF LIBERTY as a symbol for America was replaced with Guantanamo" - this is how Zbigniew Brzezinski described his country in a recent interview with the Der Spiegel magazine. The former U.S. presidential national security advisor, now a respectable political expert and foreign policy consultant for the B. Obama administration, made such a grim assessment of the eight-year performance by George W. Bush, the 43rd U.S. president.
Which of this is reality and which is rhetoric is a question that has yet to be answered. Wide-ranging, harsh criticism along many lines should be expected to continue. Positive shifts should be expected to become somewhat more pronounced. The "pro" and "con" arguments will take final shape. Without laying claim to an exhaustive analysis, I would like to offer some personal judgments on this score in so far as concerns Russia and Russian-U.S. relations in the foreseeable future.
George W. Bush's two presidential terms coincided with a period of development that was very special to us. Without repeating some well-known truisms, I would like to reiterate that it was a period of stabilization, a period of political, economic and intellectual "straightening out," or "concentration" according to Gorchakov, which our country went through after the critical period of the turmoil and upheavals of the 1990s. We returned into the world's top 10 economies, acquiring quite an impressive, international political weight, although not regaining our former weight, and finally, proceeding with our creative internal reform.
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