Free Republic

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a new target in the revived cold war with Washington — the U.S. dollar. The website Russia Today* reported Tuesday that Mr. Putin has drafted a bill to block the use of both the American greenback and the euro in trade between the bloc of countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, including Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The measure “would help expand the use of national currencies in foreign trade payments and financial services and thus create preconditions for greater liquidity of domestic currency markets,” the Kremlin said in a...

The news is too much with us late and soon, and watching and listening we lay waste our powers. Flashing endlessly by, the unceasing flow of BREAKING NEWS seduces and betrays, mainly by pretending to be new. Even though, as the Preacher said, what has been will be. The particulars of the story may change, but not the human condition. The names may be new, but the stories remain remarkably the same, just as weapons change but war remains the bloody same. Yet here and there in the familiar murk of the news there comes a sudden shaft of...

All is easy to attribute to Vladimir Putin’s appetite for empire, but for a long time now the West has pursued economic policies toward Russia that ill serve its objectives. Since the Berlin Wall came down, the United States and its European allies have acted as if Russia’s transition to a non-threatening democracy could be hastened through economic engagement. After World War II, deepening trade helped end centuries of enmity among western European states. Russia provides 30 percent of Europe’s natural gas—half flows through Ukraine—and it is a major supplier of crude oil and other resource based products to the...