No, It's Not 1937: Getting Our Words About Russia Right

Now, [Masha] Gessen is a Russian living in the United States. That she could title her essay “Putin’s forever wars” and publish it with a straight face in a country that has been constantly at war—in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and, yes, also in Syria—for well over a decade and, to the great frustration of many foreign policy commentators in the United States itself, still with no end in sight, says something about her sense of proportion, or perhaps political bias.  Though she has lampooned Putin’s reading of history, her own is open to serious question.