Robert Amsterstam (Mikhail Khodokovsky's lawyer) points to a recent column in the Los Angeles Times spelling out specific steps the West can immediately take to resist the rise of the neo-Soviet Union. This is one key part of fighting the good fight. The other key part is to identify the russophile propagandists, and the just-plain-idiots, who argued for the past few years that we should tolerate the Putin regime as a "necessary transitional figure." These people led us astray and must now be called to account, not only to deter them from future misconduct but to make us less susceptible to their siren song. The Times article comes from a fellow at the Council on Foreign relations and Amesterdam excerpts it as follows (see the following post for a continuation of this discussion):

There are a lot of ways to make a man's death look like an accident, suicide or a street crime. That wasn't the intent of whoever murdered former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. By using such an exotic murder weapon — a radioactive isotope known as polonium-210 — his killers sent a message: Don't mess with the powers that be in Russia.

The identity of his murderers is likely to remain unknown, but in all probability Litvinenko was poisoned because of his campaign against Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and the KGB's successor, the FSB. He is only the latest to pay with his life for offending Russia's ruling clique. The list of prominent people murdered in the last few years includes crusading journalists such as Anna Politkovskaya (whose death Litvinenko was investigating), politicians, executives and government officials. Others, such as Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, have narrowly survived assassination attempts or have been exiled or silenced with threats of violence or legal charges.

Alleged tax evasion has been a favorite tool of intimidation. Wielding such dubious accusations, the Kremlin was able to consign Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to a Siberian prison camp and to expropriate his giant oil company, Yukos. Whatever the state of his taxes, Khodorkovsky's real sin was to bankroll opposition to Putin. ...

Western governments can also signal to Western companies and financial markets that investing in Russia is not a good idea. Russia's oil and gas industry, its major exporter, remains dependent on expertise and capital from abroad; a slowdown of such investment would be costly for Moscow. Russia is financially dependent on the West in another sense: Putin's cronies (and probably Putin himself) are thought to stash their ill-gotten gains in havens such as Switzerland. If the U.S. Treasury Department and foreign financial watchdogs were to launch investigations and start tossing around phrases such as "money laundering" and "asset freezes," Kremlin insiders would feel the heat.

This is something that could be done behind the scenes. At the same time, public pressure could be applied to deny Putin the international legitimacy he so obviously craves. President Bush could stop holding summit conferences with him and stop including him in high-profile meetings such as the G-7.

Above all, what's needed is a change of mind-set in Washington. We need to stop thinking of how to cozy up to Putin and start thinking of how to frustrate his illiberal imperial designs.