Cuba/Georgia

Also: there are quite a few people on TV and in the editorial pages condemning Russia's actions in the "soft power" sense in Eastern Europe-- destabilizing governments, intimidating sovereign countries, using economic warfare, manipulating countries through espionage, etc. And they're right to do so. If we believe that self-determination is a foundational principle of righteous government, then this kind of manipulation has to be strongly condemned.

The problem is that many of the people who are attacking Russia for these things are ardent supporters of our Cuba policies, a policy that in the last 50 years has produced unending destabilization, economic warfare (producing deep hardship), espionage, undermining of civil institutions, attempted assassination, invasion by proxy, and just about every imaginable assault on a country short of actual bombing or invasion. Seems a tad hypocritical, don't you think? I mean the Monroe doctrine is a baldly stated policy of American soft imperium. That kind of paternalism, bordering on authoritarianism, is exactly the kind of influence that the Russians desire and that American pundits are so loudly deriding.