Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Putin's progress - Clifford D. May



by Clifford D. May


I've not convinced that Putin is quite so hard to read. Part czar, part commissar, he is a ‎committed autocrat, not an aspiring democrat. His ambition is to restore Russia's status as a great ‎power -- by any means necessary. That resonates with many of his countrymen -- as he well ‎knows.‎

Last week, two Russian long-range bombers skirted the southwest coast of England. British ‎Typhoon warplanes scrambled from their base to "escort" the bombers away. Prime Minister ‎David Cameron accused Moscow of "trying to make some sort a point." ‎

Yes, probably so. Among other things, Vladimir Putin is reportedly angry over British Foreign ‎Secretary Michael Fallon's warning that Russia now represents a "real and present danger." The ‎Russian president, he fears, might do to one of NATO's Baltic members -- Estonia, Latvia, ‎Lithuania -- what he has done to Ukraine. ‎

Coincidentally, a committee of the House of Lords last week issued a report: "The EU and Russia: ‎before and beyond the crisis in Ukraine." The committee's chairman, Lord Christopher ‎Tugendhat, summed up: "The EU, and by implication the U.K., was guilty of sleepwalking into ‎this crisis." ‎

He added: "The Committee is also concerned that the U.K.'s expertise within the Foreign Office ‎‎[translation: its Putinology] has diminished significantly. The lack of robust analytical capacity, in ‎both the U.K. and the EU, effectively led to a catastrophic misreading of the mood in the runup ‎to the crisis."‎

I've not convinced that Putin is quite so hard to read. Part czar, part commissar, he is a ‎committed autocrat, not an aspiring democrat. His ambition is to restore Russia's status as a great ‎power -- by any means necessary. That resonates with many of his countrymen -- as he well ‎knows.‎

His most immediate goal appears to be re-establishing Russia's Eurasian sphere of influence. He ‎might have accomplished that without invasions, violence and the seizure of territory, just by ‎making Ukraine, Georgia and other formerly Soviet territories increasingly dependent on the ‎Kremlin. But, Putin, like Tina Turner, never does "nice and easy" when he can do "nice and ‎rough" instead. ‎

He views conflicts as binary: One side wins, the other loses -- there are no "win-wins." Nor are ‎there "resets" based on both sides making compromises. Diplomacy is not the path to conflict ‎resolution; it is war by other means. He respects strength and finds weakness repugnant -- and ‎provocative. "The weak," he has observed, "get beaten." ‎

Dr. Fraser Cameron, director of the Brussels-based EU-Russia Center, asked in a column last week: ‎‎"Is Russia ready to play by the international rule book, especially the sanctity of borders in post-‎war Europe?" Could the answer be more obvious? Cameron added: "Russia will also have to ‎accept ... that every state has the right to decide its own destiny including membership of the ‎EU." ‎

I think Putin would reply: "Who is going to make Russia accept that?" About 40,000 of his ‎supporters said something very akin to that when they rallied last Saturday in Moscow. Among ‎them, the AP reported, were "ultranationalist bikers, pensioners, war veterans, members of ‎student organizations and activists from other pro-Kremlin groups. Many waved Russian flags, ‎others bore banners that said 'Die, America!' or 'U$A, Stop the War!'" The war they have in ‎mind is Ukraine's failing struggle to retain its independence, to not become a Russian colony.‎

As Lenin might ask: What is to be done? In this instance, we should look to the root causes ‎among which, I'd argue, is the breakdown of the liberal, rules-based international order. At the ‎conclusion of World War II, there were two great powers: The United States and the Soviet ‎Union. Their competition was not without pain and peril but there were constraints. Because ‎neither side sought martyrdom, the possibility of mutually assured destruction served as a ‎deterrent.‎

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. accepted the burden of global leadership. Soon, ‎however, there were voices on both the left and the right arguing for America to relinquish that ‎responsibility. President Obama has made that his policy. Since he's been in office, he has been ‎‎"leading from behind," deferring to the "international community." ‎

The problem is that no such community exists. The U.N. Security Council includes Russia and ‎China, nations with interests and values quite different from those of the multicultural, morally ‎relativist, demilitarizing West. Tyrants and despots dominate the U.N. General Assembly.‎

We now know for certain that the end of the Cold War did not mean the end of history. We also ‎know that Putin intends to make history in Eurasia and also in the Middle East where he is ‎helping defend Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and enabling the rulers of the Islamic Republic of ‎Iran who have their own regional and global ambitions.‎

‎"Revisionist great powers are never satisfied," writes the Brooking Institution's Robert Kagan, a ‎former speechwriter for George Shultz, secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan. "Their sphere ‎of influence is never quite large enough to satisfy their pride or their expanding need for ‎security."‎

He adds: "If the United States wants to maintain a benevolent world order, it must not permit ‎spheres of influence to serve as a pretext for aggression. The United States needs to make clear ‎now -- before things get out of hand -- that this is not a world order that it will accept."‎

To achieve that, however, requires more than speeches declaring some particular act of aggression ‎‎-- e.g., by Russia, Syria, Iran, North Korea -- "unacceptable" and then, in time, accepting it as ‎though it had been inevitable all along. The stronger America's military and economic power, and ‎the more credible America's willingness to deploy that power, the less frequently that power will ‎need to be deployed. ‎

Until that paradox is understood and incorporated into policy, expect to see Putin testing ‎Western limits on the air and on the ground, Iran's theocrats spinning more centrifuges, North ‎Korea launching more missiles, and jihadis posting acts of flamboyant barbarism on YouTube. ‎



Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a ‎columnist for The


Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=11707

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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