E.J. Dionne is pleased that the administration has given Putin a pretext to use anti-American sentiment to his advantage:

It was gratifying to hear a despotic leader blame the United States for the rise of a democratic protest movement against his regime.

It’s not clear why Dionne finds this gratifying. While the U.S. government may have nothing to do with the current protests in Russia, the charge sounds plausible enough because of the past support that the U.S. has shown for “revolutionary” movements in a few former Soviet republics. Russians can remember that those movements were defined to a large degree by their hostility towards Russia, so it might give them pause if they think that something similar is happening in their own country. It is possible that Clinton has undermined the protesters by making these remarks, which is presumably the opposite of what she intended. As Paul Saunders said, Putin’s blaming the U.S. for these protests was a predictable response that the administration should have seen coming. In a country where a large part of the population distrusts the U.S. government, the regime is helped when it can deflect attention from its own failings and abuses and redirect popular attention to U.S. actions. As Saunders wrote:

The secretary invited Russia’s prime minister to respond as he did and provided a tailor-made opportunity for Putin and other Russian officials to attempt to divert attention from Russia’s very real problems to the United States, which many in the country already view skeptically.

One of the recurring problems with what Dionne calls “democratic realism” is that it is usually wildly unrealistic about the strength and nature of the local political opposition to a given authoritarian regime. If there are liberals in the opposition, their significance is usually exaggerated, and they are taken to be much more representative of the country than they are. If there are illiberal populists, nationalists, or religious fundamentalists with a much larger following within the local opposition, their influence is usually downplayed or ignored entirely. “Democratic realism” supports democratization everywhere, whether or not democratization will bring to power movements that are more antagonistic to U.S. and allied interests, but it consistently fails to acknowledge fully the dangers inherent in rapid democratization in countries with little or no experience with this form of government.