Tag: Eternity

Russian President Vladimir Putin, over the last 18 years, has maintained strong political, military and economic relations – sometimes welcome, sometimes not – with these countries and their leaders in an attempt to keep them on Russia’s side. Russia’s intervention in Syria’s civil war and its growing alliances with Iran and Turkey makes maintaining influence over the South Caucasus states even more enticing for Putin. In extending the rule of Sargsyan, Armenia followed the Putinist model of government. The grand bargain of this model is the promise of political stability in exchange for closed-door politics. Armenia and Russia are still close allies and likely will remain allies no matter who succeeds Sargsyan. As in Armenia, Russia did not export the Putinist model to these places so much as these leaders eagerly adopted it. Nor will Russia’s. Sargsyan could build a similar model of influence over Armenian affairs and continue his own “politics of eternity.” Sargsyan’s forced resignation was a blow to the Putinist model of leadership. It is simply a loud and important statement by fiercely independent Armenians. This article was originally published on The Conversation.

This is a special time for baseball fans. Major league baseball is ready to begin another season, with spring training officially opening this week. With some exceptions, fans in most cities can at least dream of watching their team play in the postseason and maybe even compete for the World Series championship. Once that victory is secured, Democrats dream of finding the perfect candidate to win back the presidency in 2020. Unfortunately, hope is not a strategy in baseball or politics. When Barack Obama upended conventional campaign wisdom by defeating Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination and then went on to beat two respected Republican opponents in the 2008 and 2012 general elections, a similar wave of out-with-the-old and in-with-the-new sentiment took over the Democratic Party. In 2016, this fascination with data analytics led Hillary Clinton to choose Robby Mook as her campaign manager, putting the data guy squarely in charge. But her campaign ignored the equally important role played by David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign manager, who brought his accumulated wisdom from a lifetime spent in political campaigns to the daily strategy sessions of the Obama campaign. Instead of choosing one strategy at the expense of the other, Democratic candidates should find managers that have the ability to do what the two World Series managers, Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers and AJ Hinch of the Houston Astros, did in managing their teams. However, the best way to handicap the next presidential election might be to look beyond the potential candidates’ policies and personalities and check out their choice of campaign managers and their strategies.