Russia

Have I been completely missing something or has everyone lost their minds regarding this whole Zimbabwe sanctions situation?

Russia and China resisted putting on sanctions on Mugabe and now Britain and the US have been openly questioning Russia’s fitness to belong to the G8. Normally level-headed commentators have been feverishly proclaiming their disappointment in Russian collusion with dictators.

My first thought, however, was that the situation today in Zimbabwe is reminiscent of 1993/1996 Russia — violence to the opposition (Yeltsin’s bombing of the White House); massive voting fraud (1996 election); hyperinflation — or any number of contemporary Central Asian states. None of these have had sanctions imposed on them.

In the following rant, which reflects solely the ill-considered opinions of its author, allow me to introduce some reality into this moralistic, anthropomorphic hysteria:

1. The UN security council is a forum for international law and diplomacy, not a morality police. It is not the business of the members to tell other countries what political system they ought to choose.

2. Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe has indulged in political abuses but it has not killed, tortured or imprisoned any more people than has China, Morocco, Congo, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Nepal or [insert authoritarian developing country here].

3. The UN Security Council is not designed to impose sanctions on states that rig elections. The vast majority of countries in the world rig their elections; others, like practically every Gulf and Central Asian state, don’t even bother to hold elections. Many more others suffer from hyperinflation, violent repression of the opposition and economic collapse.

4. Sanctions almost never work anyway.

5. Countries aren’t people. They aren’t good or bad, and they don’t have feelings or morals. They are entities with interests. Condemning Russia for the Zimbabwe sanctions on grounds of morality is childish and dangerous.

OK, rant over.

PS. A very interesting part of the whole incident has been the role played by the Russian media. There has been a lot of very robust criticism of the government in the newspapers.  That will be the subject of the next post.

Goodnight!

There seems to be new trouble brewing in the Baltics.

Fresh on the heels of outlawing Soviet symbolism in what the BBC Russian affairs analyst Steven Eke called “the toughest bans on symbols from the Soviet past adopted in any of the 15 countries that emerged from the USSR”, Lithuania is now apparently in talks with the USA about the possible deployment of the controversial ABM missile shield should an increasingly lukewarm Poland drop out.

Moscow is livid. According to the Financial Times,

“A senior Russian lawmaker warned on Wednesday that discussions between the US and Lithuania over co-operating on Washington’s missile defence system “could not but provoke anxiety” in Moscow….

…Konstantin Kosachev, head of the international committee of Russia’s lower house of parliament, [said:]

“It seems that, through such little steps, people are trying to cross the ‘red line’ beyond which problems begin for the security of our country”.

Crossing the red line! Yikes!

However, it was entirely natural that Lithuania should have come to America’s aid.

After all, Valdas Adamkus, the Lithianian President currently considering stationing US missile interceptors and radar on his territory, had worked for 30 years at the US Environmental Protection Agency (where he was responsible for amongst other things, hazardous waste) in a past life as a Republican American citizen!

There is even an EPA award named after him: the “Valdas V. Adamkus Sustained Commitment to the Environment Honor Award”.

Being accused of excessive seriousness is not something Russians expect or covet. We pride ourselves on a sense of irreverent humour, irony and ability to exist in often self-destructive fantasy worlds. In fact, part of what saved the country’s ’soul’ during Communism was the widespread popular subversion of that ideology’s central tenants of seriousness and hard work into a drink fuelled daily theatre of the absurd. From Oblomov to the surrealist poetry of Daniil Kharms to the magical-realist vignettes of everyday Soviet life in the 1970s and 80s by Tokareva, to the current writings of Nina Khrushcheva or editions of the Exile, learning about Russian culture is a lesson in playful, often exasperating, dissent.

So what is noted social theorist and activist Boris Kagalitsky talking about in today’s Op-Ed in the Moscow Times when he cries that “Russians Take Themselves Too Seriously”?

Kagarlitsky is worried that Russians are losing their sense of anti-establishment sarcasm amidst a new wave of nationalism directed at the neighbouring states. He notes that Ukrainians, who have better retained the pinch of salt cynicism regarding their leaders, are less susceptible to anti-Russian propaganda than Russians are to Kremlin-fomented anti-Ukrainianism, and urges us to get back to our anarchical ways.

A welcome reality check!

There has never been any love lost between John McCain and the Evil Empire.

As far back as 2006, he had promised to be “very harsh” on Russia. By May 2008, he was still vowing to push through an even earlier 2005 determination (in a bill co-sponsored with Joe Lieberman) to kick Russia out of the G8, declaring that the club “should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia” and that “rather than tolerate Russia’s nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization’s doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom”. The statement was universally criticised, and even a senior US official called the proposal “just a dumb thing”.

Indeed, McCain, alone among the presidential candidates and isolated even in neoconservative circles (Cf Fareed Zakaria’s criticisms above), had practically included the country in a new axis of evil, his bellicosity eliciting much nervousness on both sides of the Atlantic, and even among conservatives.

Yet could talk of a new cold war should McCain be elected president still be premature?

Today, the New York Times reported that John McCain had

“distanced himself from the Bush administration on Tuesday by vowing to work more closely with Russia on nuclear disarmament and to move toward the elimination of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe….

…Mr. McCain told a small crowd at the University of Denver that he would pursue a new arms control agreement with the Russians and that he supported a legally binding accord between the two nations to replace verification requirements in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or Start, which expires in 2009.

The Bush administration has refused to accept such binding limits on nuclear weapons, which its critics say has created paranoia in Moscow. Mr. McCain’s proposal to eliminate tactical nuclear weapons in Europe sets him apart from President Bush as well.

‘Russia and the United States are no longer mortal enemies,’ Mr. McCain said.”

Diffusing nuclear tensions with Russia, ratcheted up in recent years by the Bush administration’s unilateral disengagement from previous arms control treaties as well as by Putin’s revival of Russia’s strategic forces, is clearly a step in the right direction for McCain.

However, such a small concession is unlikely to quell fears of an ideologically driven approach to Russia from a potential McCain presidency.

Certainly, he is consistently viewed with fear and suspicion even among the most liberal Russian opinion-makers. The Russian wikipedia entry for McCain has an entire section devoted to the mean things he has said about Russia; pundits on the liberal radio station Ekho Mosvky have also said that McCain’s eleciton to the presidency would not bode well for Russia. In media outlets closer to the government, such sentiments are even more widespread. For example, in March, Izvestia (a national broadsheet owned since 2005 by state oil company Gazprom) reported that McCain considers Russia to be an enemy, quoting him as saying that when he looked into Putin’s eyes, he saw the letters K, G and B.
Moreover, McCain’s desire to distance himself from Bush on Russia would be a mixed blessing: although he opposed tying America’s hands in terms of nuclear weapons, Bush was generally cooperative and open to dealing with Russia, having famously peered into Vladimir “Putti-put” Putin’s soul. A reversal of that part of Bush’s Russia policy would hardly constitute a thaw.

WHAT THE RUSSIAN PRESS IS SAYING ABOUT MCCAIN’S OVERTURE: 2 VIEWS

Kommersant Daily (Liberal, independent):

“Hillary Clinton and John McCain Argue Over Russia” (May 29, 2008).

The article notes McCain’s “radical” steps towards nuclear negotiations with Russia, and then mentions Hillary Clinton’s responce. Clinton poured scepticism on McCain’s proposals, saying that any overtures to Russia would be undermined by his recent and continued attempts to throw the country out of the G8. No editorial comment.

Izvestia (Centrist, Gazprom controlled):

“McCain is Ready to Negotiate With Russia”.

Izvestia writes that McCain’s recent overture was a great surprise, noting dryly that “up to now, he had given people little cause to suspect him of Russophilia”. It goes on to list a history of McCain’s criticisms of Russia, and delivers this stinging reminder: Mr McCain should remember that it was a Soviet rocket that downed his plane over Vietnam. Ouch!!

The article then states that like all candidates, even the “Hawk” McCain becomes more pragmatic as elections near, and delivers a note of rebuke to Obama for saying that his grandfather liberated Auschwitz, when it was the Red Army that did it. (Obama has since clarified that his grandad was in fact in Buchenwald).

In his first speech as Russia’s new president, Dimitri Medvedev pledged to use his tenure in office to protect and expand economic and civil freedom in the country. But amid the pomp and circumstance surrounding his May 7, 2008, inauguration in the Kremlin’s opulent Saint Andrew’s Hall, observers are raising questions about whether Medvedev’s new administration will actually lead Russia on a parallel course to that of his predecessor, Vladimir Putin.

These questions were made all the more prescient after Medvedev fulfilled expectations and nominated Putin for the Prime Minister’s post within hours of the swearing-in ceremony, allowing Putin to retain influence through certain executive powers granted to the Prime Minister in Russia’s system. The world will be focused on the policy course that Medvedev steers Russia in, particularly since the cast of other international leaders will be changing over the coming year. As of January 2009, those changes will include U.S. President George W. Bush, who today voiced enthusiasm for working with Medvedev in his remaining time in office.

After President Bush’s departure however, his successor will have to work with Medvedev on the future relationship between the United States and Russia. Read this Council on Foreign Relations article to learn more about where Senators Clinton, Obama, and McCain stand on U.S. diplomacy with Russia.

The election of Dmitry Medvedev as the new president of Russia on March 2nd has been met with mixed reviews from leaders around the world. While many congratulated Medvedev on his victory and voiced hopes for a positive international working relationship with him, these salutations were matched by concerns over how the Russian elections were conducted. The German government called into question whether the election processes neglected democratic principals, but said that Chancellor Angela Merkel still looked forward to meeting with the new leader on her scheduled March 8th visit to Moscow, and that the election reflected the German people’s desire for “continuity and stability.”

According to the U.K.’s Guardian, France echoed Germany’s concerns over Russia’s democratic process, but the outcome was greeted with a phone call from President Nicholas Sarkozy to Medvedev the day after his election inviting him to France, and the new Russian president pledged to maintain a relationship of “confidence and openness” between the two countries. In part, France’s acceptance came in line with the United Kingdom and the European Union. Britain’s relationship with Russia was strained under Putin, but the U.K. government expressed its hopes for a more cooperative interaction.

Reactions from former Soviet sphere of influence were as mixed as their European counterparts. The Czech foreign minister aired “regret” that the Russian elections had not been as open as preferred, and the opposition party claimed that the election threatened the future of Russian democracy altogether. Meanwhile, a group of election observers from Belarus said that the process was compliant to Russia’s constitution and laws.

In the United States, the 2008 presidential candidates reacted to the Russian election results with their own doubts. According to this article by Kommersant, one of Russia’s daily online newspapers, New York Senator Hillary Clinton said that the election marked a “retreat” from democracy, while Illinois Senator Barack Obama named the lack of free media and the repression of opposition political parties as reasons for his disappointment over Medvedev’s victory. Arizona Senator John McCain voiced the harshest criticism however, stating in a press conference that the Russian elections were “clearly rigged.”

Finally, an editorial in the Financial Times recommends that the West be open to a Medvedev presidency in the hope of improving relations with Russia. An interactive slideshow documents one journalist’s travels on the Trans-Siberian Railroad to uncover why Vladimir Putin has garnered so much support for himself and his political allies.