"I view Putin as sort of a Russian Teddy Roosevelt, for extreme loyalty to his home country and for extracurricular badassery. "

I tend to agree - he certainly seems to have his own country's interests at heart, trying to stengthen the country to stabilize the region (just like the US uses the unspoken threat of force to stabilize...and the spoken threat of force when necessary)

You can't fault the man, and he is a *Leader*...in every way the Obama is a non-Leader.

" I believe you were supportive of early arming of less radical elements of the uprising.
"

You are incorrect. I support Russia's policy and oppose the terrorist opposition in all its forms.

I'm too lazy to dig through old posts to disprove you.

er, no, I was mis-remembering your old posts. My apologies.

I don't think Putin is as dangerous as sky-is-falling neo-cons think he is. The guy just wants what is best for Russia, and conquest/imperialism is not best for Russia, so we have nothing to fear from Putin. Hell, if I were US president, I would reach out to Putin and try to warm relations.

The Cold War is over. The Russians aren't the bad guys anymore. Let's stop pretending that they are. Besides, Putin is pretty benevolent and rational as far as dictators are concerned. The United States should parley with Putin in the interest of mutual gain.

krellin is right. I can't fault the man for being a leader and calling out our empty suit president for behaving like the geopolitical brat that he is. Obama is the Justin Bieber of world leaders.

It'd be better if he kept his damn shirt on though.

"most functional polities on the continent" (Rwanda)

Seriously? One that executes dissidents? Alright. I didn't realize you were *also* a Kagame apologist on top of everything else.

Thucy - you're so cute when you get outraged!

Uh...Kagame abolished the death penalty.

I notice you didn't mention anything about Rwanda's progress in state-building, which is what SSA needs more than anything else.

At what cost? It has done nothing to heal the ethnic division of Rwanda.

Funny you should mention state building - he is arguably one of the main individuals behind the undermining of the state of the DRC. The havoc is personally responsible for wreaking there is hard to fathom.

And I was referring to Karegeya's assassination and all of these as well:

http://www.humanosphere.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/RwandaMurderTrail.jpg

Isn't democracy a critical component of socialism? Isn't autocracy anathema to socialism? Are you still even a socialist or are you just a leftist oligarchist?

Rwanda implemented a reconciliation process in which the genocidaires were allowed to go free and live among the family members of those they killed. If you want to criticize that process, then please tell me what else should have happened. And considering you're slamming Rwanda for supposedly being too repressive, how is that repressive?

Rwanda is one of the few countries in the developing world where they actually enforce littering laws. Think about it - littering laws. There is no garbage on the streets of Kigali. That's a remarkable indication of their capacity as a state.

Karegeya openly called for a putsch in Rwanda, had links to the FDLR and was suspected of masterminding attacks on Kigali civilians. Is that ordinary dissidence to you?

Anyway you said executions. These are murders in which the suspects are unknown.

"he is arguably one of the main individuals behind the undermining of the state of the DRC"

That's a bit one-sided. The DRC has used anti-Rwandan proxy forces in Kivu to attack Rwanda across the border, and they have operated with impunity in Kivu since Joseph Kabila came to power during the 2nd Congo war. If the DRC wanted to strengthen the state they would not outsource security to these groups.

"Isn't democracy a critical component of socialism? Isn't autocracy anathema to socialism?"

You a state before you can have any of that. Statelessness leads to disaster. You can't impose Swedish human rights standards on impoverished countries with a complicated ethnic demography, a limited tax base, and no history of centralized authority. That does nothing but weaken the state and thereby weakens the ability of the law to protect rights.

*need a state

No history of centralized authority? Oh how we forget. Often the problem is precisely the history of autocratic brutal authority. A state built by a uni-ethnic, corrupt egomaniac is no state worth protecting, nor is it at all clear that it could ever easily be democratized later.

You're right that human rights aren't going to happen overnight but the way to get there is not by installing a strongman. That's Cold War thinking and you of all people should know where that got most of the world.

"Anyway you said executions. These are murders in which the suspects are unknown."

Also this is a joke. Kagame basically admitted to being unrepentant about ordering his death. Don't give me such low-hanging fruit.

Regarding the DRC, don't fool yourself. Whatever happened 12 years ago, it's clear who the belligerent is today, and it's clear who is the source of so much of the unrest and strife.

We should not be shocked that a man like Kagame, who suppresses all opposition, has run amok.

Your brand of thinking led to collapse and disaster in many parts of the world, Africa especially. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Sudan, etc all spiralled out of control in the 90s, during the heyday of sanctimonious human rights meddling and humanitarian intervention. This was the highest period of state failure ever.

So please tell me how that made the world a better place

Your partisanship when determining who is to blame and who isn't is precisely what leads to policy failures when intervention does come. It led to failure in Cote d'Ivoire and led to spectacular failure in Somalia. Your notion of peacekeeping seems to be a ruse to pick winners and losers, when the whole point of peacekeeping is neutrality.

I don't think the point of peacekeeping is neutrality so much as protecting innocent people.

Also your claims of causation about those other conflicts are dubious at best, not that there are no lessons to be learned.

And how best are 'innocent people' protected? By taking sides in complicated civil conflicts where both or all sides have engaged in violence?

It's also hard to imagine how peacekeepers get into a country to begin with if they are seen as partisan to one side. In order to work, the peacekeepers have to have the support of all belligerent parties.

"Also your claims of causation about those other conflicts are dubious at best"

Well, the UN mission in Somalia fell completely apart after the US made it their mission to single out Aideed. The attack on the conciliatory meeting of Habar-Gedir elders in July 1993 by UNOSOM led to a full on uprising, which famously resulted in the Black Sea massacre of October (over 400 Somalis killed, but people only talk about the 18 US soldiers), and subsequent withdrawal of UNOSOM.