At Large

On April 30, Ron Asmus passed away following a long struggle with cancer. Asmus, the head of the German Marshall Fund of the United States's Brussels Office, served as deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs from 1997-2000, and played a major role in expanding NATO to the former communist countries of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. He was also a veteran of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, having worked here as an analyst.

I didn't know Ron particularly well, but in all of my dealings with him he was nothing short of gracious. His passing will not only be mourned by his family, friends and colleagues, but also by so many people across the continent of Europe, to which he had devoted his career to making "whole, free and at peace."

In recent years, Ron had become one of the most persistent advocates for the integration of Georgia into the EU and NATO. In the aftermath of the 2008 Russian-Georgia War, when so many commentators were blaming the victim, Ron consistently framed the conflict in terms of the bigger picture: that it was Georgian independence, and its Westward orientation, which angered Moscow and set the groundwork for war.

As Robert Kagan writes, "In short, Ron spent his life fighting for the freedom of others, and he continued to fight at a time when it became less fashionable in some circles. No one who had suffered under oppression ever had to wonder which side Ron was on, which is why so many turned to him for help when they were in need."

You can read my interview with Ron about his book, "A Little War That Shook The World: Georgia, Russia and the Future of the West," here, and my review of it for "Commentary" here.

Of all the countries in the world that one would expect to be a target of terrorist attacks, Belarus surely ranks near the bottom of the list. Unlike its neighbor, Russia, where a January bomb that killed 35 people at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport was just the latest in a string of attacks related to the ongoing conflict in Chechnya, Belarus is not fighting an Islamic insurgency -- or, in fact, any type of insurgency. It’s an ethnically and religiously homogenous nation mostly composed of Orthodox Christian Slavs, kept in the tight grip of its authoritarian leader, Alyaksandr Lukashenka. There aren't violent sectarian rifts of the sort that brought decades of terrorism to Northern Ireland or ethnic cleansing to the Balkans. And Belarus is not participating in any foreign military operations of the kind that might inspire overseas terrorist organizations to strike.

So, when an explosion hit Kastrychnitskaya (October Square) subway station in Minsk last Monday, killing 13 and injuring over 200, many Belarusians were shocked. “Who would do that and why?” Iryna Vidanava, editor of the independent multimedia youth magazine "34," asked me. "It's obvious [Belarus] is not a country where we would have any problems with terrorism or explosions or terrorist groups." Granted, this isn’t the first time there has been a bombing in Belarus: There was one in 2005, in the eastern city of Vitebsk, and another in 2008 in Minsk, both of which injured dozens and which the authorities blamed on "hooligans." Yet the sheer randomness of these crimes and their inexplicable place in Belarus's political culture has created more questions than answers -- the most uncomfortable being, who benefits?

Read the rest at "The New Republic."