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By Donald Sassano
In Homeland Security Contributor

Not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a splashy new clash-conscious text by Harvard’s Samuel Huntington mocked realism’s all-encompassing statist paradigm. Realists’ laser-like focus on the state as central actor, argued Huntington, could no longer fully account for heightened global instability, including what realists believed to be an emerging security competition between Russia and Ukraine. Instead, Huntington turned to examine the “civilizational fault lines” that often divide states, including Orthodox eastern Ukraine and its Uniate west. Absent communism and bi-polarity, Huntington argued that “identity” conflicts would become more prevalent, yet would likely be misidentified by realist and liberal camps alike.

By William Tucker

International media is reporting that Vladimir Putin has won the Russian presidential election. Despite the numerous anti-Putin protests there wasn’t any doubt about the outcome of the race. The media had been covering the many protests in Russia, particularly in Moscow, from the perspective that these demonstrations would undermine Putin’s power base. Such a grandiose belief is pure nonsense.