Russia: Other Points of View

IT'S TIME TO INVITE RUSSIA TO JOIN NATO

REPRINTS

 Der Spigel, March 8, 2010

Trans-Atlantic security needs have changed fundamentally in the last two decades. The East-West confrontation has ended, and Moscow now shares many interests with NATO. It is time for the alliance to open its doors to Russia, say German defense experts Volker Rühe, Klaus Naumann, Frank Elbe and Ulrich Weisser.

Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has noted with concern that many of today's politicians have too little knowledge of history. He could well have added that those same politicians are also frighteningly deficient when it comes to understanding strategic and security issues. In Germany, there is no significant discussion about the future of NATO, its self-image, its strategy for the future and the question of how Russia can be included. Berlin is not showing any opinion leadership, nor is it spurring international debate. This has been a disappointment for other members of the alliance, who are asking themselves whether the Germans are afraid of the debate or are simply no longer capable of contributing to it in a forward-looking way.

Europe's security, though, remains a constant task, and new challenges require different responses than in the past. The Euro-Atlantic region needs peace and stability at home, but it also needs protection against external threats. Ultimately, the emergence of a multi-polar world requires finding a way to offset the political, economic and strategic dynamics of the large Asian powers.

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RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

The Sobchak influence. Medvedev and Putin are disciples and admirers of Anatoliy Sobchak and both commemorated the tenth anniversary of his death on Saturday.  Medvedev, who knew him as one of his students and later worked with him in St Petersburg, gave praise to “the man who first brought legitimacy to Soviet politics”. In an interview for a program on his life and work, Putin paid very high tribute to him. He described how he began working for him when he was Mayor of St Petersburg, how he quit the KGB in the August 1991 coup attempt (“I wrote a letter of resignation in the first hours after the coup began… The point is that I had made my choice and I could not change it. It was my duty to be there, defending our shared ideals and the concept of national development which Mr Sobchak and I had put into words and implemented together.”) and how much he learned from him in work habits and morality: “The time when I worked with Mr Sobchak was the most valuable part of my education. It was in that period that my basic principles of work and communication took shape. The fundamentals of my personal principles and behaviour probably began to develop much earlier, at home and later at the university, where I studied and he taught. However, my work with him had tremendous practical significance for me”. So we have both the present and previous Presidents telling us that they regard Sobchak as their mentor and example and regard their times working under him as formative. Perhaps, the Kommentariat should pay more attention to this relationship and less to the lazy assumption that all we need to know is that Putin was a KGB officer and Medvedev is his sock puppet.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Putin’s view. Occasionally we get a succinct indication of Putin’s thinking. Here’s one from a meeting with the State Council on Friday: “We must not allow our political culture to follow a Ukrainian scenario, and we must also prevent it from sliding into totalitarianism and despotism. Unfortunately, we know examples of this within the post-Soviet space”. A not unreasonable via media.

NATO. Relations proceed as NATO continues its self-educational process of realising Russia is more important than it used to think it was.

Prediction. A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that, by 2050, Russia’s economy will be the sixth-largest in the world and larger than any in Europe. There are too many future unknowns to put much stock in these kinds of predictions but it is interesting (amusing?) to juxtapose this with the commonplace predictions that Russia will collapse, sink into permanent poverty or that Russians will disappear from the earth.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

By Patrick Armstrong

Reality bites. NATO, having enjoyed a decade of expanding and ignoring Russia’s concerns, now finds itself, in the person of its Secretary-General, asking Moscow for help. Rasmussen was in Moscow looking for weapons and training to support NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan. Too bad the people in NATO didn’t listen harder in 2000 and early 2001, when Putin and Ivanov were warning about the common enemy. While Moscow certainly has no desire to see a jihadist-controlled Afghanistan, it has no reason to trust NATO which has failed to keep any of its promises to it. What can NATO offer Moscow in return? Will it make a binding declaration that there will be no more expansion? Can it, filled as it now is with new members who regard it as nothing but an anti-Russia organisation? It’s not surprising that Rasmussen left without any commitments.  Just asking is not going to do the trick: NATO must acknowledge the mistrust it has built up.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Russia and Europe. Readers will know that since the Ossetia war I have been predicting a change in European attitudes towards Russia. My argument is that many there have realised what a bill of goods they were sold about Saakashvili, Georgia and Russia (to say nothing about the gas supply problem) and will therefore be re-considering their ideas about Russia’s alleged hostility. Some more indications: Medvedev seems to have had a fruitful visit to France and I would expect similar results when he visits Italy today. Furthermore, it appears that his ideas on a new security treaty (Russ, Eng) are at least being listened to rather than dismissed as they first were. And, interestingly enough, Berlusconi just visited Belarus signalling the end of the shunning of “Europe’s last dictator”.

NATO expansion. Russians have been saying NATO promised not to expand. Are they right? Apparently.

Iran. Russia’s representative on the IAEA voted with Western countries to criticise Tehran for its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad was not best pleased. So, Bushehr delayed, no SS-300s and now this.

WORKING WITH RUSSIA TO PREVENT EURASIAN COLLAPSE

REPRINTS

by Andrey Tsygankov

RFERL, Oct 29, 2009 

The Eurasian region continues to disintegrate, and neither Russia nor the West has been able to arrest the destabilizing dynamics.

Evidence of rising instability throughout the region include the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war, renewed terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus, the persistent failure of Western forces to stabilize Afghanistan, the inability of Central Asian rulers to reign in local clans and drug lords, and the paralysis of legitimately elected bodies of power in Ukraine and Moldova.

Violence is gradually spreading, waiting for an opportunity to erupt into a large-scale conflict. Transregional transportation routes may soon be choked due to Russia's conflicts with Ukraine, Georgia, and Turkmenistan.

The West's attempts to secure and stabilize Eurasia after the end of the Cold War must be recognized as a failure. In the mid-1990s, U.S. geostrategists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski recommended that the United States pursue a policy of replacing Russia as the referee and protector of the newly established non-Russian states in the region. After initial hesitation, the United States and other Western states followed this advice.

Yet Eurasia has not become stable or peaceful and continues to disintegrate. The bureaucrats in Washington and Brussels have failed to understand that they lack the resources, the will, and the experience to stabilize the complex region. Today -- after the Iraq war and the global financial crisis -- the United States is beginning to recognize its overextension, but it is not at all clear if Washington and Brussels are prepared to act differently in Eurasia.

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MISSING FROM THE GEORGIA REPORT

REPRINTS

New York Times, Op-ed contributor

October 3, 2009

By Jorg Himmelreich 

BERLIN — The Russian-Georgian “five-day war” in August 2008 did not end the political conflict: It has all the potential to explode into a new armed confrontation any day.

This week, a much-anticipated report by an independent European Union fact-finding commission, of which I was a member, into the origins and causes of this conflict confirmed the common view that the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, bears responsibility for the outbreak of the war and that Russia is equally responsible by escalating the political pressures that led to the hostilities.

But the report has a major flaw. It fails to thoroughly analyze the decisive role that the United States played before, during and after the conflict. Only a detailed assessment of President George W. Bush’s Georgia policy and its failures can fully explain the outbreak of the war and help the E.U. and President Obama shape new policies toward Russia and Georgia.

EU REPORT ON THE CONFLICT IN GEORGIA

REPORTS

Russia: Other Points of View (ROVP) has followed the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia since its first hours. The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal maintained a facade obscuring the truth about which country invaded.  Apparently to get to the truth of the situation, the Europeans made a first-ever decision to do a thorough investigation of events of the invasion and the culmination of the 'five-day' war.  The long-awaited EU Report was finally released on September 30, after having been held up since July, most likely since its analysis didn't reflect major stockholders' interests.  In any case, the full EU Report can be studied here Download EU Report on Conflict in Georgia

Additional articles:

- War report wounds isolated Georgian leader

- Georgia/Russia: how our political discourse works

- What do you do when your ally is the aggressor?

- Russia and Georgia both hail report on war

MISSILE DEFENSE IN EUROPE

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Comment on "Missile Defence in Europe - Pie in the Sky," The Economist, September 19-25, 2009

A recent Economist editorial "Missile Defence in Europe - Pie in the Sky" from September 19-25 argued the following:

"Although Poles may bemoan the timing, America's calendar may be shaped by the forthcoming UN General Assembly. Russia and China have been reluctant to agree to further sanctions or other pressure on Iran. Mr Obama may hope that by demonstrating a willingness to engage Russia in Europe he might have a better chance of co-operation in the Middle East. "But the big task for America now is to reassure the Poles and other twitchy ex-communist countries such as the Baltic states, that it remains committed to their defence. It stresses that plenty of high-level structures exist to discuss these worries and that NATO is actively rethinking its plans for defence in the east. The question is what will really be on offer in these discussions. The east European countries, squeezed between an increasingly close Russian-German friendship, look anxiously towards America to safeguard their interests. But is America looking at them?"

Gordon Hahn's rebuttal:

The fact is that the Obama Administration has looked out for Polish and Czech interests in refashioning its missile defense plans.  At the same time it is taking Russia's interests into account. 

RUSSIA, POLAND, and “HISTORY”

ROPV CONTRIBUTORS

by Rodric Braithwaite

(A revised version of the original "Russia, Poland and the History Wars", which appeared on www.opendemocracy.net and other sites)

A senior Russian official once asked me why Poland needed to join NATO: after all, Russia wasn’t about to invade the place. I agreed that he was probably right. But the Poles didn’t know that: three partitions in the eighteenth century; two risings in the nineteenth century and two in the twentieth; the carve-up in 1939; and more. “Why do you bring up all that old stuff?” my friend responded.

History is an essential part of a nation’s self-image. It is rewritten by every generation. Even the settled democracies can find it hard to come to terms with their past. The British have barely brought their relationship with Ireland into an objective historical focus. The Irish, with good reason, find it even harder.

History is politics in all countries. But in countries which have been through the traumas suffered by Russia and Eastern Europe in the past century, it is unrealistic to hope that they will soon be able to write what the rest of us would regard as “objective” history.