RUSSIA 🇷🇺 Thread: Wikileaks=FSB front, UKRAINE?, SNOWED LIED; NATO Aggression; Trump = Putins B!tch
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Does Russia think it should follow any rules at all? And if not, what should we do about it?
Does Russia think it should follow any rules at all? And if not, what should we do about it?
27 OCTOBER 2016 • 1:35PM
Vladimir Putin has embarrassed the West by flagrantly flouting its norms CREDIT: ALEXEI DRUZHININ/AP
Back in 1902, future mass murderer Vladimir Ilyich Lenin published his pamphlet "What Is To Be Done?" (Что делать?) about the selfish reluctance of the working classes to rise up against capitalism. Now 114 years later, some Western governments ponder what needs to be done about Russia itself.
Not, mind you, the British government: run a search for policies on "Russia" on the gov.uk website and you get the following robust response:
Hmm.
This is perhaps just a bit too insouciant, given that Russia appears to have policies "containing" us, not least its big new Satanic intercontinental ballistic missile said to be capable of wiping us all out.
There is also its busy agenda for becoming the new global power broker in the Middle East in part by flattening much of Aleppo and anyone who happens to live there. Not to ignore its soaring influence on YouTube, where Russia’s RT network is now leaving Western TV news outlets scrambling to keep up.
Not so long ago, it was all very different. In the early years after the Cold War ended and Russia claimed its independence, London and Moscow made a genuine effort both to cooperate across the board and to bring a new tone to that cooperation. I helped draft the new treaty signed in 1992 by Prime Minister John Major and Russia’s President Yeltsin proclaiming bilateral peace and friendship:
The Parties shall develop their relations in good faith. They declare their commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes, to an open society, to democratic principles and respect for human rights and the rule of law…
Russian and Western diplomats sat together around the world, closely coordinating positions on the Balkan imbroglio and other policy hotspots. Everyone listened to everyone else and tried to hammer out good joint positions. Things were, for most practical purposes, normal.
British and Russian UN officials in fiery confrontation over SyriaPlay!01:05
Experts, insiders and historians can argue for years to come about why it changed and where exactly it all went so wrong. NATO’s intervention in Serbia and Kosovo is one good place to start. Suffice for now to say that it’s all a complete mess in policy terms.
No less impressive than the eerie sense of collective Western befuddlement at the firework display of Russian diplomatic and military moves in so many different places is the jeering, confidently contemptuous tone of Russian officials, from the very top downwards.
The Russian Embassy Twitter feed in London is a marvel of the genre. The European Union as puny gay-loving pigs cowering before a cheery bemuscled Russian bear. The scrawny West wittering as that bear storms in to sort out Muslim terrorists holding the planet hostage: “What? How dare he?”
President Obama strolls to the exit leaving behind a wretched foreign policy legacy. Washington’s incoherent policy response to Russia over the past eight years can be traced right back to Obama’s 2009 speech in Moscow and its spectacularly wrong analysis of Russia’s official psychology under Putin:
In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over.
Classic Obama. He aimed in an impossibly haughty world-weary way to explain to the planet in general and Moscow in particular that after all that brutish Bush stuff the time has come for everyone to be nice and "get along". What he failed to grasp is that that message might come across as weakness. Or, worse, retreat.
And that rather than accepting Obama’s post-modern framing of the issues, Vladimir Putin might instead push to exploit that weakness/retreat to create completely new ways of doing things. Hence Ukraine/Crimea and Syria, where Russia has flung down a challenge. Here are some new rules we’ve invented and imposed – what are you going to do about them?
Russia flotilla enters Mediterranean after withdrawing refuel request with SpainPlay!00:47
There has been a concerted Western response on Ukraine and Crimea in the form of tough economic sanctions. These have raised to dizzy levels running from billions into trillions of dollarsthe long-term opportunity cost to Russia of its policies. But Russia does not seem to care. If anything it seems emboldened. Therefore what?
No-one seems to know, or want to say. Other than Angela Merkel, there are now few people in Western political leadership circles who know anything at all about Soviet communism and the KGB’s uniquely cynical, cunning mindset. It’s set to get worse. Donald Trump’s plan is to give Vladimir Putin a blank cheque.
Hillary Clinton made a complete fool of herself with the US/Russia Re-Set Button in 2009, and is ill-placed to tackle the Obama foreign policy disarray that she herself spent four years creating.
Thus we have noisy gestures such as the intense international pressure this week on Spain not to refuel Russian warships heading to Syria to help President Assad win a Pyrrhic military victory. Yet in 2018 Russia will blithely host the World Cup. Russia’s international cultural and other activities proceed as if nothing’s amiss. Russia’s ambassador in London pokes open jibes at the British Foreign Secretary and wonders whether the UK has a coherent or indeed any Syria policy.
The basic difficulty in all this is not so much about "policy". What psychological if not philosophical basis now exists for engaging with Russia to try to find sensible pragmatic solutions over Syria or Ukraine or arms control or European security or energy policy or anything else?
You can do serious deals only if you have some sense of what the other side wants, and the other side’s underlying assumptions about the way things work. Does Russia in principle accept any limits or rules or norms any longer, not least the long list of limits and rules and norms agreed in that 1992 UK/Russia treaty? And if so, what are they?
Does Russia think it should follow any rules at all? And if not, what should we do about it?
27 OCTOBER 2016 • 1:35PM
Vladimir Putin has embarrassed the West by flagrantly flouting its norms CREDIT: ALEXEI DRUZHININ/AP
Back in 1902, future mass murderer Vladimir Ilyich Lenin published his pamphlet "What Is To Be Done?" (Что делать?) about the selfish reluctance of the working classes to rise up against capitalism. Now 114 years later, some Western governments ponder what needs to be done about Russia itself.
Not, mind you, the British government: run a search for policies on "Russia" on the gov.uk website and you get the following robust response:
Hmm.
This is perhaps just a bit too insouciant, given that Russia appears to have policies "containing" us, not least its big new Satanic intercontinental ballistic missile said to be capable of wiping us all out.
There is also its busy agenda for becoming the new global power broker in the Middle East in part by flattening much of Aleppo and anyone who happens to live there. Not to ignore its soaring influence on YouTube, where Russia’s RT network is now leaving Western TV news outlets scrambling to keep up.
Not so long ago, it was all very different. In the early years after the Cold War ended and Russia claimed its independence, London and Moscow made a genuine effort both to cooperate across the board and to bring a new tone to that cooperation. I helped draft the new treaty signed in 1992 by Prime Minister John Major and Russia’s President Yeltsin proclaiming bilateral peace and friendship:
The Parties shall develop their relations in good faith. They declare their commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes, to an open society, to democratic principles and respect for human rights and the rule of law…
Russian and Western diplomats sat together around the world, closely coordinating positions on the Balkan imbroglio and other policy hotspots. Everyone listened to everyone else and tried to hammer out good joint positions. Things were, for most practical purposes, normal.
British and Russian UN officials in fiery confrontation over SyriaPlay!01:05
Experts, insiders and historians can argue for years to come about why it changed and where exactly it all went so wrong. NATO’s intervention in Serbia and Kosovo is one good place to start. Suffice for now to say that it’s all a complete mess in policy terms.
No less impressive than the eerie sense of collective Western befuddlement at the firework display of Russian diplomatic and military moves in so many different places is the jeering, confidently contemptuous tone of Russian officials, from the very top downwards.
The Russian Embassy Twitter feed in London is a marvel of the genre. The European Union as puny gay-loving pigs cowering before a cheery bemuscled Russian bear. The scrawny West wittering as that bear storms in to sort out Muslim terrorists holding the planet hostage: “What? How dare he?”
President Obama strolls to the exit leaving behind a wretched foreign policy legacy. Washington’s incoherent policy response to Russia over the past eight years can be traced right back to Obama’s 2009 speech in Moscow and its spectacularly wrong analysis of Russia’s official psychology under Putin:
In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over.
Classic Obama. He aimed in an impossibly haughty world-weary way to explain to the planet in general and Moscow in particular that after all that brutish Bush stuff the time has come for everyone to be nice and "get along". What he failed to grasp is that that message might come across as weakness. Or, worse, retreat.
And that rather than accepting Obama’s post-modern framing of the issues, Vladimir Putin might instead push to exploit that weakness/retreat to create completely new ways of doing things. Hence Ukraine/Crimea and Syria, where Russia has flung down a challenge. Here are some new rules we’ve invented and imposed – what are you going to do about them?
Russia flotilla enters Mediterranean after withdrawing refuel request with SpainPlay!00:47
There has been a concerted Western response on Ukraine and Crimea in the form of tough economic sanctions. These have raised to dizzy levels running from billions into trillions of dollarsthe long-term opportunity cost to Russia of its policies. But Russia does not seem to care. If anything it seems emboldened. Therefore what?
No-one seems to know, or want to say. Other than Angela Merkel, there are now few people in Western political leadership circles who know anything at all about Soviet communism and the KGB’s uniquely cynical, cunning mindset. It’s set to get worse. Donald Trump’s plan is to give Vladimir Putin a blank cheque.
Hillary Clinton made a complete fool of herself with the US/Russia Re-Set Button in 2009, and is ill-placed to tackle the Obama foreign policy disarray that she herself spent four years creating.
Thus we have noisy gestures such as the intense international pressure this week on Spain not to refuel Russian warships heading to Syria to help President Assad win a Pyrrhic military victory. Yet in 2018 Russia will blithely host the World Cup. Russia’s international cultural and other activities proceed as if nothing’s amiss. Russia’s ambassador in London pokes open jibes at the British Foreign Secretary and wonders whether the UK has a coherent or indeed any Syria policy.
The basic difficulty in all this is not so much about "policy". What psychological if not philosophical basis now exists for engaging with Russia to try to find sensible pragmatic solutions over Syria or Ukraine or arms control or European security or energy policy or anything else?
You can do serious deals only if you have some sense of what the other side wants, and the other side’s underlying assumptions about the way things work. Does Russia in principle accept any limits or rules or norms any longer, not least the long list of limits and rules and norms agreed in that 1992 UK/Russia treaty? And if so, what are they?
