by Robert E. Hunter
This Thursday and Friday, NATO’s 28 leaders will meet in Wales. This summit will be the most important since the early days after the end of the Cold War. Whether or not it is a success—a verdict that may not be immediately apparent—will determine whether the alliance will [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
This Thursday and Friday, NATO’s 28 leaders will meet in Wales. This summit will be the most important since the early days after the end of the Cold War. Whether or not it is a success—a verdict that may not be immediately apparent—will determine whether the alliance will continue to be relevant to its members’ security needs in the 21st century, not just in Europe but elsewhere, or lose at least a good part of its purpose.
President Barack Obama is probably wishing that this summit meeting had not been put on his schedule. There was no particular reason for it, other than to acknowledge that NATO’s formal role in Afghanistan is coming to an end, to do some “down in the weeds” planning for future military capabilities, and to recite again the mantra that all the allies should spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, to which all will pledge fealty, but which most will then ignore.
Then came Vladimir Putin and Ukraine. As a result, the alliance and especially the US president will have to make decisions this week about opposing the Russian president. The accident of the summit’s timing is forcing their hands. Rather than having some time to consider options and to assess whatever gambit Putin tries next—plus possibilities that diplomacy could have a chance—NATO has to take its stand now. Worse, the European Union has decided to put off for a week its own possible actions, centered on sanctions. It is no accident that this carries past the NATO summit and puts even more political pressure on Obama and his colleagues.
The world will be watching, and not just the Western response to Putin; it will also be judging the ability of the US president, acknowledged as the “leader of the alliance,” to unite the allies in catching Putin’s attention and, Obama must fervently hope, make him shift course. Uncertainty about whether Obama can do it has been reinforced by his two-front “war,” Ukraine and the Islamic State—the first for a US president since Ike had to deal with Hungary and Suez at the same time in 1956. And by saying he does not yet have a strategy for Syria, the US president has further upped the ante for his leadership in Cardiff. At least his Secretaries of State and Defense, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, will be meeting with NATO counterparts to discuss the mess in the Middle East, where European allies have as much long-term interest as the United States.
What will be decided this week by the NATO allies has no doubt already been worked out; with a summit, where consensus has to be reached among 28 countries, decisions can’t be left to the last moment. They will include reassurances to NATO allies in Central Europe who worry that they could be next on the Putin hit list, although this is most unlikely; the Russian president may be greedy and ambitious, but he is not stupid. This reassurance will include some practical military support, especially to the Baltic NATO members, plus something even more important: Obama’s pre-summit visit to Tallinn, Estonia.
NATO will also likely decide to base more military equipment and capabilities in Central European allied states, and the US will agree to rotate battalion, or even brigade-sized forces through European bases—reminiscent of the Cold War’s REFORGER exercises (Return of Forces to Germany) that were more political than military statements. There will be other military-related steps, some substantive, some symbolic, including direct help for Ukraine’s armed forces and the likely creation of a “Spearhead Force” of a few thousand soldiers who can react rapidly—but to do what? These will be designed to catch Putin’s attention, draw a line in the sand (which he must surely already recognize), and bolster confidence. The last-named is especially important given the radical reduction in US attention to Europe in recent years. Indeed, in his major Brandenburg Gate speech in June 2013, Obama only mentioned NATO once in passing. This lacuna could not have been lost on Putin.
The only thing that can make Putin sit up and take notice is economic sanctions (Obama and everyone else have ruled out military intervention against Russian troops). At the Wales summit and the EU Council follow-on, sanctions will be increased—somewhat. But sanctions always take a while to have an impact; they are less effective against serious economies and serious opponents, and there is still no consensus in Europe on doing real things that will have real consequences.
So far left out in this whistling in the wind is the political context and knowledge of what Mr. Putin is really trying to achieve. Motive number-one is obviously “Russia is back, you can’t ignore us,” and he has carefully chosen the ground on which to make that statement. He is working against the domestic political background of popular Russian resentment about being taken advantage of by the West for the last decade and a half—when the US and its allies stopped being serious about giving Russia a role and respecting its legitimate interests and concerns in George H.W. Bush’s “Europe whole and free.” Putin is also clearly issuing a warning to other states-in-limbo from the former Soviet Union, in addition to Ukraine, from Belarus and Moldova around to Transcaucasia and Central Asia. But how far will he push in Ukraine as part of throwing his arms around Russians outside the homeland? This is not at all clear and has been complicated by his recent good-cop, bad-cop tactics.
Unless Putin is content to see his country isolated for the foreseeable future—however much European states and businesses undercut sanctions—he should, in time, be amenable to a deal. That could include federalism or semi-autonomy for different parts of Ukraine. If Kiev were able to retain at least nominal sovereignty and some important aspects thereof, that might work. It would need to include a return to one of the original principles of “Europe whole and free”—that Ukraine would not be brought into NATO, at least not before Russia’s future role is also decided, to mutual satisfaction.
Unfortunately, at its 2008 summit, NATO threw a sop to US President George W. Bush by declaring that “[Ukraine and Georgia] will become members of NATO.” Meant as a throwaway line, it was taken most seriously in Moscow. Hence the Russian-Georgia conflict, which showed the NATO statement to be meaningless. This past week, the NATO Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, repeated this decision, thus making matters worse if the Alliance is even thinking about a plausible and mutually acceptable deal over the long-term future of European security, with Ukraine and Russia included.
This is the problem with a summit, untimely scheduled, that has to show Western toughness: it is hard for the US president and his partners to start exploring with the Russians some means of using the current crisis as the basis for a long-term deal over European security that should have been on the agenda for the last two decades. Whether Obama can introduce this possibility without being called a wimp won’t be easy. But that is the direction in which, in addition to “standing firm,” he needs to take the alliance, beginning with his public statements in Wales. If Putin then shows that he isn’t interested, he will have to take responsibility for a new age of East-West confrontation which, like the last time, Russia will eventually lose.
]]>by Derek Davison
When flight MH17 was hit with a missile over eastern Ukraine on July 17, US officials immediately blamed pro-Russian separatists for bringing the plane down. Secretary of State John Kerry said the evidence “obviously points a very clear finger at the separatists,” using “a system that was [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
When flight MH17 was hit with a missile over eastern Ukraine on July 17, US officials immediately blamed pro-Russian separatists for bringing the plane down. Secretary of State John Kerry said the evidence “obviously points a very clear finger at the separatists,” using “a system that was transferred from Russia.” The preliminary evidence — including photographs allegedly showing a Buk system in the area where the aircraft was shot down, satellite imagery supposedly showing a missile plume that trailed back to separatist-controlled territory, and intercepts of separatists purportedly discussing the shooting — supported Kerry’s assertion, but was at best circumstantial (Kerry himself called it “extraordinary circumstantial evidence”), and in the case of the missile plume, has not been made public.
Doubts have been raised about the veracity of the initial MH17 story, particularly by independent journalist Robert Parry, who claims that a reliable (though anonymous) source told him that US satellite imagery actually suggests the flight was shot down by a Buk battery under the control of Ukrainian forces. Parry’s reporting initially suggested that the battery fired on MH17 accidentally, or due to carelessness on the part of its crew, but he has since reported (based on additional anonymous sourcing) that the attack may have been a deliberate attempt to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was returning from the World Cup in Brazil that day and whose plane may have resembled MH17 in both physical appearance and flight path.
Obviously Parry’s story suffers from its reliance on anonymous sources and the lack of any publicly available evidence supporting it. However, it remains a plausible alternative to the Western narrative about MH17, in large part due to the failure of the US government to bolster the initial circumstantial evidence it raised against the separatists with anything more substantive (it claims doing so would compromise its intelligence-gathering capabilities). Parry is certainly not the only journalist to notice this failure, as shown by a heated July 25 exchange between AP reporter Matt Lee and State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. As Gawker’s Matthew Phelan points out, the evidence that has been made public so far is hardly impressive considering the massive US intelligence apparatus that is supposed to be investigating what really happened to MH17. Yet for the most part, American mainstream news outlets have hardly challenged the US’ official MH17 story.
Others have publicly raised questions. A group of former intelligence and foreign service officials called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) released a public memo on July 29 to President Obama via Parry’s website. The authors argued that “the charges against Russia should be rooted in solid, far more convincing evidence” and asked that “if you [Obama] indeed have more conclusive evidence, you will find a way to make it public without further delay.” VIPS has also critiqued Colin Powell’s February 2003 speech to the UN Security Council making the case for the Iraq War, the Obama administration’s unwillingness to investigate and prosecute those behind the Bush-era torture program, and last year’s plans to launch cruise missile strikes against Syria. Granted, some of this group’s claims have been seriously challenged.
In any case, if VIPS demand for more conclusive evidence seemed premature early on, their demands seem considerably more reasonable now that Russia’s supposed culpability in MH17′s downing has been used to justify additional US and EU sanctions. Yet there has still been no effort by the Obama administration to release more substantive evidence to support allegations of the separatists’ culpability. Gawker spoke to members of VIPS, who argued that given all the assets that must have been sent to eastern Ukraine in the midst of the ongoing fighting, the US government probably has substantial evidence showing what really happened to MH17. They also said that the seriousness of the deteriorating US-Russia relationship warranted releasing that evidence even if doing so would compromise intelligence-gathering operations. “We’re talking about the possibility of an armed confrontation with Russia. I mean, you couldn’t think of higher stakes,” retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern told Gawker.
Barring a massive escalation by Russia, the separatist war in Ukraine is nearing its end. Ukrainian forces have reached one of the two remaining rebel strongholds, Luhansk, where “street fighting” is said to be ongoing between the army and the remaining separatist resistance. The other stronghold, Donetsk, has been taking heavy shelling from Ukrainian forces and is unlikely to hold out much longer. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is due to meet with Putin in Minsk next Tuesday, in an effort to reach an agreement that would end the fighting.
At this critical juncture, one hopes that Western media will keep a watchful eye on events in eastern Ukraine as they unfold. Poroshenko, and his supporters in Europe and America, must be held accountable for the treatment of defeated rebels and the Donetsk and Luhansk civilians who have been essentially caught in the crossfire over the past several months. He must also be held accountable for the actions of neo-Nazi militias like the Azov Battalion, which continues to serve openly on the front lines of the Ukrainian advance despite its extremism and the potential threat it poses to post-war reconciliation. When civilians are targeted, as in the August 18 shelling of a refugee convoy fleeing Luhansk, the true story about such incidents must be told. The failure of leading news media outlets to get more answers from Washington about what really happened to MH17 does not bode well for future coverage of this conflict.
Photo: A memorial at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport for the victims of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, which was reportedly show down while flying over Ukraine on 17 July 2014, killing all 298 people on board.
]]>Ukraine’s next crisis will be a devastatingly economic one, as violent conflict destroys critical infrastructure in the east and brings key industry to a halt, furthering weakening the energy sector by crippling coal-based electricity production.
The Ukrainian military’s showdown with separatists in the industrial east has forced coal mines to severely cut [...]]]>
Ukraine’s next crisis will be a devastatingly economic one, as violent conflict destroys critical infrastructure in the east and brings key industry to a halt, furthering weakening the energy sector by crippling coal-based electricity production.
The Ukrainian military’s showdown with separatists in the industrial east has forced coal mines to severely cut production or close down entirely. This has led to an electricity crisis that can only be staunched by cutting domestic production along with exports to Europe, Crimea, and Belarus — or worse, getting more imports from Russia.
In the coal centers of Ukraine’s industrial east—Luhansk and Donetsk—fighting has forced the full closure of an estimated 50 percent of coal mines, while overall coal production has fallen 22 percent over the same period last year.
Key industry sources say they will potentially run out of coal in less than three weeks.
For Ukraine, the second largest producer of coal in Europe, this will have a devastating impact on the energy sector, which is in a state of emergency, unable to get coal to thermal power plants that provide some 40 percent of the entire country’s electricity.
In the wider energy picture, the halt of coal production sets Ukraine back a decade. The plan was to rely more on coal in order to reduce dependence on Russian natural gas.
But the new reality has insiders wondering how Ukraine will produce more of its own natural gas, after the implementation earlier this month of an amended tax code that targets private gas producers with a tax so high that they will significantly reduce production through the end of the year and beyond that is anyone’s guess. (Full disclosure: my firm, Pelicourt LLC, is the majority shareholder of Ukraine’s third-largest gas producer, Cub Energy, and I have advised the U.S. and Canadian governments on the potential harm the new tax will cause.)
Economically, the conflict in the east is a disaster for Ukraine, which has traditionally been a net exporter of thermal coal for power generation. Now it will have to increase imports of fuel to make up for the loss. But even then, the destruction of supply routes makes this challenging.
Not only have coal supply routes been destroyed in the conflict, but other critical infrastructure has taken a hit as well, threatening other industries.
Across the board, Ukraine’s industrial heartland is reeling from cut-off supply and shipping chains that threaten to destroy as much as 5 percent of Ukraine’s gross domestic product in the second half of this year.
In the meantime, observers can be forgiven their confusion over various measures Kiev has taken since the intensification of the conflict. Indeed, the signals coming out of Kiev have been mixed, at best.
While parliament has passed a bill allowing for sanctions against Russia, the state-run Naftogaz leadership has been quick to point out that we probably shouldn’t expect sanctions against Russian gas giant Gazprom, and the new bill doesn’t implement sanctions of any kind—it simply makes it legal to slap sanctions on Russian individuals should Kiev decide to do so. Another paper tiger.
Parliament has also adopted a bill approving the joint-venture lease of Ukraine’s gas-transit facilities with Western firms.
At the same time, however, Kiev passed a new amendment to the tax code that doubles taxes for private gas producers and promises to keep Western investors as far away from Ukraine as they can get.
Each move is designed to negate the other. The economy is being destroyed, yet Kiev is itself destroying any chance of bringing in Western investment to prop it up. Western firms are invited to invest in Ukraine, while at the same time Ukraine makes a mockery of transparency and ensures that the investment climate is suddenly even less attractive than it was two weeks ago. Lip service is paid to developing more resources to build energy independence, but a new tax doubles costs for private producers who will stop producing and pick up stakes.
It’s hard not to conclude that Energy Minister Yuriy Prodan is working hard to discourage new investment in the energy sector.
This article was first published by Oil Price and was reprinted here with permission. Copyright Oil Price.
]]>by Mark N. Katz
Just a few months ago, everything seemed to be going well for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. After the initial setback of Moscow’s ally, President Viktor Yanukovich, fleeing Kiev and being replaced by a pro-Western government, Putin seized control of Crimea in a surprise move that succeeded very [...]]]>
by Mark N. Katz
Just a few months ago, everything seemed to be going well for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. After the initial setback of Moscow’s ally, President Viktor Yanukovich, fleeing Kiev and being replaced by a pro-Western government, Putin seized control of Crimea in a surprise move that succeeded very quickly and almost bloodlessly. Small numbers of pro-Russian separatists then took over several cities in eastern Ukraine where there are large Russian populations. The new Ukrainian government was powerless to prevent this, and its American and European allies appeared either unwilling or unable to help. Indeed, Germany, France, and Italy in particular seemed more concerned about retaining their lucrative trade relations with Russia than with preserving the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Nor did there appear to be any significant barrier to Putin seizing all of eastern and southern Ukraine. The image of a “rising Russia” stood in stark contrast to that of a weak, ineffectual, and divided West.
Now the situation seems quite different. Ukrainian forces have managed to retake much of eastern Ukraine from the pro-Russian separatists. Western public opinion has become increasingly critical of Russia in the wake of flight MH17 being shot down over territory held by the separatists, and over their truly boorish behavior in allowing Western access to the crash site and recovering the bodies. The United States and the European Union have now gone beyond the largely cosmetic sanctions they first imposed after the Russian takeover of Crimea; this week they announced broader sanctions affecting weapons sales, technology transfer, and Russian access to Western capital markets. Many Western corporations have already announced plans to limit further investment in Russia, or even to pull out of the Russian market. More tellingly, Russians themselves are moving massive amounts of money out of Russia to safer havens.
Some have criticized the European Union for only imposing sanctions that do not hurt its own economic interests. The EU has, for example, placed sanctions on the Russian oil industry, but not the gas industry, which it is more dependent on. Nor does the ban on future EU weapons sales to Russia affect current contracts, including the sale of two aircraft carriers that France has been building for Moscow. Still, these sanctions are much stronger than what appeared likely just a few months ago. And both European and American leaders have declared that they could ratchet up sanctions if Putin does not change course on Ukraine.
Will he? Moscow, predictably, has reacted to these new sanctions “with defiance,” as numerous press reports have indicated. These measures cannot force Putin to withdraw from Crimea or end Moscow’s support for the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. However, Western sanctions, combined with the Ukrainian government’s success in retaking some territory in the east, have worked to increase the costs Putin must pay for his Ukraine policy. If the Russian leader previously calculated that he could seize Crimea and eastern Ukraine cheaply and easily and that the West would be unable to impose meaningful costs on him because it “needs Russia” more than vice versa, he now has cause to revise his thinking.
In other words, the broader Western sanctions as well as the more effective Ukrainian opposition to Putin’s policies have served to raise questions about whether the benefits of his efforts to take territory from Kiev are worth the increasing costs of doing so. Putin may accept these costs, but his supporters, who have up to now benefited from doing business with the West, might not agree. If they don’t, the Russian president could find himself in serious trouble.
Western sanctions cannot force Putin to change course in Ukraine, but by raising the costs of his aggressive policies, they can undermine support from the powerful Russian economic actors that he has previously relied on. If he is not careful, the glorious victory he has envisioned in Ukraine will turn into a trap of his own making.
Photo: A memorial for the victims of Flight MH17 at the Amsterdam International Airport (Schiphol), July 21, 2014. Credit: Pejman Akbarzadeh/Persian Dutch Network
]]>by Derek Davison
As Ukraine’s internal stability continues to deteriorate, the United States and European Union have imposed additional sanctions against Russian leaders, punishing them for what increasingly appears to be Kiev’s failures. In the face of US and, especially, European hostility, Russia has accelerated plans to shift its attention, [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
As Ukraine’s internal stability continues to deteriorate, the United States and European Union have imposed additional sanctions against Russian leaders, punishing them for what increasingly appears to be Kiev’s failures. In the face of US and, especially, European hostility, Russia has accelerated plans to shift its attention, and its business interests, elsewhere.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared on Wednesday that his military was “pulling back” from Russia’s border with Ukraine, though “NATO officials” claimed that there was “no immediate sign that Russian forces had pulled back.” In his statement announcing the pullback, Putin called for the Ukrainian government to cease military activity in Ukraine’s separatist southeast. Violent clashes in recent days between pro-Russian paramilitaries and Ukrainian troops near the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk have killed and wounded dozens of troops and pro-Russian fighters, and an untold numbers of civilians who may be caught in the crossfire. The deadliest fighting took place in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa, where a confrontation between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian groups on May 2 killed “more than 40” people, including “dozens” of Russian sympathizers who were killed when a government building, in which they had barricaded themselves, caught fire.
While Moscow and Kiev blame each other for the violence, particularly the catastrophe in Odessa, the inability of Kiev’s governing coalition to bring any kind of stability to the country looms large. The interim government has seemingly been purged of anyone who could successfully reach out to separatists in the east and south, while the ultra-nationalist, and openly hostile to Russians, Svoboda Party is a key participant in the cabinet. Yet the US and EU have apparently elected to blame Moscow for the violence. On April 29, the two western powers imposed a new round of targeted sanctions against prominent Russians, including General Valery Gerasimov, head of the Russian General Staff (the equivalent of America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff), and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak. Still more sanctions are reportedly being developed, in the event that Russia “dramatically ramped up aggression against Ukraine.”
In the face of these punitive economic measures, Russia has, quietly, been expanding its economic and military activity into Asia, conducting its own “Asian pivot” along the lines of US President Barack Obama’s promised, though unfulfilled, plan to refocus American foreign policy attention away from Europe and the Middle East and on to the Asia-Pacific region. In April, it was reported that the Russian natural gas firm Gazprom was “close” to reaching a long-term deal to supply natural gas to China (via a pipeline that would be built as part of the deal). Russian and Chinese officials have been negotiating such an agreement for over a decade, with Russia reluctant to reduce its prices in order to compete with the gas that China has been buying from former Soviet Republic Turkmenistan. However, tensions over Ukraine and the possibility of Europe looking elsewhere — to America, to Qatar, or even to Iran — for its energy needs, and the potential collapse of Russia’s under-construction Black Sea South Stream pipeline, may have spurred Gazprom to make concessions, possibly reducing its prices in exchange for considerable up-front payment by China (though the Ukraine crisis has likely weakened Gazprom’s negotiating leverage).
Economic ties between Russia and China are increasing in general. China has not joined Western sanctions against Russia, and its banks are expanding their business in Russia even as American banks are scaling back. There is a strong likelihood that a Chinese government firm, the China Railway Construction Corporation, will be involved in constructing a car and rail bridge to connect mainland Russia directly to newly-annexed Crimea, and Chinese investors are backing a multi-billion dollar natural gas exploration effort on Russia’s northern Yamal Peninsula.
Russia is also in talks with India to build a $30 billion oil pipeline that would connect the two countries through the Chinese province of Xinjiang, which would expand Russia’s energy footprint into South Asia. While the pipeline project could be thwarted by Chinese-Indian tensions or escalating unrest among Xinjiang’s Uyghur population, it still reflects a major commitment by Russia to seek out new Asian markets for its energy supplies. Russia is also expanding its reach into North Africa, boosting its energy exploration and arms sales in Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, and elsewhere on the continent. Given that competition with China over emerging African markets and resources is a key driver behind America’s Asian pivot, Russian moves here can be seen in a similar light.
It should be noted that these moves do not represent a change in Russian policy, but an acceleration of its already apparent commitment to expanding its economic and energy presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Russia completed a massive expansion of its East Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline last year, and analysts have predicted that this expansion will make Russia “a major infrastructure player” for crude oil in the Asia-Pacific region and, not coincidentally, will give Moscow “more leverage over Europe.”
Russia’s increased economic interest in Asia seems to be, according to the US, accompanied with an increase in Russian military activity in the Pacific, with long-range Russian flights skirting close to Guam and even California, but these activities pose no greater threat to the US than similar American military activities pose to Russia. However, Russia’s economic moves in Asia and elsewhere will, over time, greatly reduce the impact of US and EU sanctions, and call into question the logic behind further punitive measures, particularly at a time when Western efforts could be much better spent encouraging the new government in Kiev to cut ties to far-right groups and take steps to deescalate, rather than provoke, tensions with its separatist south and east.
]]>by Mark N. Katz
How will the crisis in Ukraine turn out? Nobody knows for sure, but a role-playing game that I ran in my undergraduate government and politics of Russia course at George Mason University yesterday offers some insights.
My 79 students (most of whom were present) were divided into thirteen [...]]]>
by Mark N. Katz
How will the crisis in Ukraine turn out? Nobody knows for sure, but a role-playing game that I ran in my undergraduate government and politics of Russia course at George Mason University yesterday offers some insights.
My 79 students (most of whom were present) were divided into thirteen teams of varying size: the United States, Russia, the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainian separatists, Poland, the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Germany, Britain, France, Belarus, and China. Our starting point was the present situation in Ukraine, recapped as: following Russia’s successful annexation of Crimea, pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine are seizing government buildings in other eastern Ukrainian cities and calling for Russia to intervene on their behalf. The Ukrainian government in Kiev is meanwhile trying to seize back what the separatists have taken, but is encountering difficulties.
After each team stated its initial position on the situation, they were freed to fashion their policies and make deals with other teams.
The Ukrainian government team decided to press ahead with its efforts to take back territory in the eastern part of the country from the separatists as well as to seek commitments from Western governments to help Kiev. The American team in particular talked about increasing sanctions, but the German team wasn’t sure about taking this step. The French team offered to sell weapons, but no Western team was willing to send their own troops to Ukraine.
In the meantime, the Ukrainian separatist team continued to seize buildings (one student had even brought signs with Russian flags to slap on various pieces of furniture in the classroom) while urging the Russian team to intervene on their behalf. The U.S. team attempted to dissuade the Russian team from taking this step. After some delay, though, the Russian team decided to intervene in eastern Ukraine in order to protect Russian citizens there. Tension in the room suddenly increased.
The Ukrainian government team desperately sought Western support. It even seemed to think that this would be forthcoming, but it turned out that there had been an unfortunate misunderstanding on its part. The German team, though, did agree to impose much harsher economic sanctions. The United States and other NATO countries reiterated their commitment to NATO members in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.
One surprise development was that the Belarusian team asked for U.S. and NATO help in case Russia turned on it. The American team, though, turned down their request since Belarus is not a member of NATO.
The Russian team responded to the increased Western sanctions by turning to the Chinese team. The latter agreed to buy more Russian oil and gas — though at a discount. Otherwise, the Chinese team kept out of the situation.
The Russian team then announced that Moscow had no intention of intervening any further afield than eastern Ukraine. The U.S. team in particular was relieved to hear this. The American and Western European teams indicated that they could live with this situation. The Polish and Baltic teams were disgusted, but could do nothing.
A spokesperson for the Ukrainian government team denounced NATO for its unwillingness to protect it against Russia, and declared that the Ukrainians would continue to fight. With only a little time left in the class period, I ended the game so that we could discuss what had transpired.
There seemed to be general agreement that if indeed Russia intervenes in eastern Ukraine, but declares that it will not go any further, the West will respond with tacit acceptance. NATO would not be willing to get involved in Ukraine. The West, though, would impose stronger economic sanctions on Russia, though some countries would do this quite reluctantly. If the Ukrainian government does decide to fight on, it will do so largely on its own. However, while the West may not do much for Ukraine, it will no longer regard Russia as a normal state, but as a threat. The big unanswered question is whether Russia would in fact honor any pledge not to intervene beyond eastern Ukraine — especially since it is unclear where eastern Ukraine ends and the rest of Ukraine begins.
Was the outcome of this role-playing game realistic? We may well find out soon.
A pro-Russian protestor yells at Ukrainian riot police outside the regional administration building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on March 22, 2014. Credit: Zack Baddorf/IPS.
]]>by Henry Precht
Imagine, if you can, the recent scene in the White House situation room in which senior [appointed] officials are debating how to respond to Russia’s take-over of Crimea.
The experts on the media and Congress will speak up first for they will provide the most important bit of context [...]]]>
by Henry Precht
Imagine, if you can, the recent scene in the White House situation room in which senior [appointed] officials are debating how to respond to Russia’s take-over of Crimea.
The experts on the media and Congress will speak up first for they will provide the most important bit of context in which the president’s decision must be taken. Then some knowledgeable folk will talk about the attitudes of US allies in Europe and around the globe. How far are the Europeans — who have big investments with Russia and depend heavily on Russian deliveries of oil and natural gas — willing to go? The Pentagon and CIA will weigh in with their list of moves, short of firing a shot: US forces and spies can demonstrate resolve, project superior strength and warn Moscow of possible dangers ahead. Finally, someone who can pass as a Russian expert will offer a judgment on how that country might respond to elements of the toxic stew under contemplation.
At the end of the conference table will sit the president who must make the final decision. How will the ex-social worker, ex-professor, anti-war liberal decide? He will, almost certainly, have heard before the meeting from private pollsters and special friends who will offer sage advice. He might not decide at all. A naturally cautious man, he may delay, retire for deep, uninterrupted (except for telephone conversations with key friends, e.g., German’s Merkel) thought and then pronounce.
Thus, in all likelihood it was that the elite around President Vladimir Putin (but not the man himself) were sanctioned by Washington — denied visas, assets here frozen. Later the list is expanded for a few other names, a bank and Russia’s membership in the Group of Eight suspended. Worse to come is muttered.
Thus, one more country is subjected to Washington’s favored form of torture — the sanction, so far in this case, the mildest of versions. Five things we can say about this tool of diplomacy:
The Crimea crisis is still hot. Big Thinkers in the administration and in Europe are still trying to devise ways to push Russia into retreat. Russians sinned; they shall be dammed until they repent. Tough love, Washington says, to preserve world order. At some point, maybe after talking to wise parents or spouses without talking points, the big thinking bureaucrats just might reflect and drift towards a different perception:
Maybe, the West isn’t just dealing with President Putin. Maybe he’s closer to reality than we are in speaking of Russian history, sensitivity and nationalism. A sense of betrayal at NATO expansion. Maybe we are dealing with a nation, not a clique.
Another thought intrudes on established, establishment Western truths: Maybe Russia is more important as a partner — even a difficult, tricky one — than as a target of outrage. We are as dependent on Russian cooperation on Iran, Syria and the Middle East as Europe is on the economic linkages. European economies are sickly; they don’t need an infection of troublesome Russian viruses. The US doesn’t need the grave risks from persisting Middle East tensions.
At that point, Big Thinkers will start the search for face-saving measures. That, after all, is the only way to help Ukraine, which must reside between East and West and depend on both. A new regime in Kiev could salve sores and enable the West to shelve sanctions.
]]>