the headless horseman of the Near Abroad

Ever noticed how NY Timesmen are suckers for strained metaphors?

In these long winter nights, a headless horseman is roaming Russia's “near abroad,” threatening independent countries and raising fears of a renewed cold war.

This specter is Vladimir Putin. Let's hope he finds his head soon.

That's from Nicholas Kristof's Wednesday op-ed, which, once you get past the singularly uninspiring lede, is actually quite good. (Registration required; I can't get the Times link generator to work today. Fixed.)

In traveling around Eastern Europe lately, I kept hearing from people who told me what a menace Mr. Putin was becoming, and they're right. There are plenty of examples of Mr. Putin's bullying neighboring countries, from Georgia and Estonia to this lovely little Baltic nation, Latvia, but the most egregious example was Mr. Putin's recent plotting to install a pro-Russian stooge in Ukraine. […]

The bottom line is that the West has been suckered by Mr. Putin. He is not a sober version of Boris Yeltsin. Rather, he's a Russified Pinochet or Franco. And he is not guiding Russia toward free-market democracy, but into fascism.

Fascist is a strong word indeed. In this case I would prefer authoritarian, simply because we do not know Putin's ultimate intent. But perhaps that is a distinction without a difference.

Nonetheless, motives do matter. Seven decades of communism left Russian society in tatters: the Marxist obsession with restarting history at Year Zero meant the destruction, or at least extreme suppression, of all traditional institutions. When the Soviet system crumbled there was precious little to take its place. Gorbachev was reduced to a figurehead; Yeltsin became a surly drunk and enabler of kleptocrats. Putin did not have much to work with.

That, of course, does not excuse the Russian president's current excesses. But if—in the end—he is more concerned with the welfare of his people than in power for its own sake, this story may not end so badly.

And astonishingly enough, Kristof agrees.

Still, a fascist Russia is a much better thing than a Communist Russia. Communism was a failed economic system, while Franco's Spain, General Pinochet's Chile and the others generated solid economic growth, a middle class and international contacts - ultimately laying the groundwork for democracy. Eventually we'll see pro-democracy demonstrations in Moscow like those in Kiev.

We need to engage Russia and encourage economic development to nurture that political evolution - and reduce the risk that Russia, embittered and humiliated, will spiral into the kind of conspiratorial xenophobia found in parts of the Arab world. And, frankly, we need to engage Russia for our own purposes - such as fighting nuclear proliferation. But we also must stay on the right side of history.

As Ross Douthat points out, such sentiments would have been heresy in the Times not so long ago. Kristof remains in some regards the clueless liberal—he continues to regard American religiosity as an anthropological aberration, for instance—but there may be hope for him yet.

Which is more than can be said for a certain insufferable blowhard with the initials Thomas Friedman.