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.
]]>Almost 80 years ago, ideological true believers from all over the world flocked to Spain to fight in a civil war, serving in the famed International Brigades on the Republican side. These days, echoes of Spain can be found in Ukraine, where foreign ideologues now can be found battling separatists backed by [...]]]>
Almost 80 years ago, ideological true believers from all over the world flocked to Spain to fight in a civil war, serving in the famed International Brigades on the Republican side. These days, echoes of Spain can be found in Ukraine, where foreign ideologues now can be found battling separatists backed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
So far, the scale of foreigners going to Ukraine to fight is far smaller than was the case during the Spanish Civil War. For example, of the roughly 250 volunteers in the Azov Battalion, an irregular unit fighting for the Ukrainian government, 12 are foreign and 24 reinforcements from abroad are expected to arrive soon.
“We are not mercenaries, we are volunteers who receive no pay at all and fight for a righteous cause,” said Gaston Besson, a former French paratrooper who helps oversee the battalion’s foreign cohort. “We are anti-communist, but the spirit is the same as that of the International Brigades that fought [against Fascism] in Spain in the thirties.”
In June, Besson posted an appeal for foreign volunteers to join the Azov Battalion on his Facebook page. “You will find nothing but trouble, war, adventure, and perhaps death or serious injury, but you will definitely have great memories and make life-long friends,” he wrote.
“Every day I receive dozens of requests to join us by e-mail, especially from countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden,” added Besson, who has lots of combat experience from conflicts all over the world. “I reject 75 percent of them. We do not want trigger-happy fanatics, drug addicts, or alcoholics. The volunteers must pay for their own ticket and then begin training in Kyiv before being sent to the front lines.”
The battalion, which was formed in April, had its baptism of fire on June 13, when the unit participated in an operation to retake the pro-Russian controlled city of Mariupol, situated on the north coast of the Sea of Azov, in southeastern Ukraine.
Many of the Azov Battalion members describe themselves as ultra-right Ukrainian nationalists. They proudly wear symbols and use slogans associated with neo-Nazis, such as black t-shirts with the Celtic cross. Football ultras have also joined the ranks of the battalion, which was founded by the National Social Assembly, a confederation of ultra-nationalist organizations, as well as Ukrainian groups that oppose alignment with the European Union and NATO. This far-right ideology is what continues to draw like-minded activists from Sweden, Italy, France, Italy, Canada and even Russia.
For an Italian citizen in the Azov Battalion, 53-year-old Francesco F., the fight in Ukraine has given him a sense of purpose. “On the Maidan barricades I was like ET, finding ‘home’ on the side of Ukrainian nationalists”, said Francesco, who during the 1970s and 80s was affiliated with the National Vanguard ultra-right movement in Italy. “After the annexation of the Crimea and the explosion of the Eastern part of the country, I could not abandon them [Ukrainians] to face the Russian threat alone. That’s why I chose to enlist and fight.”
At their camp at Berdyansk, a city on the Azov Sea roughly 80 miles southwest of Donetsk, members of the battalion lined up one day recently, all wearing balaclavas to cover their faces for fear of repercussions should they be identified. At the order of their commander, they ran to a battered van that was to take them to a firing range.
On their way to shooting practice and maneuvers, fighters paid homage to their Italian comrade Francesco F. by singing a hymn honoring Mussolini. Francesco, whom everybody calls “Don,” or “uncle,” fights under the nom de guerre Stan.
Francesco was sitting next to Severin, a 20 year-old Swedish volunteer who has a tattoo on his bodybuilder-like biceps with the inscription “son of Odin.” A pounding nationalist rock song called “Death to the Enemy” played from a mobile phone, and battalion members took turns insulting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s manhood.
At the firing range, a Swedish instructor offered training on urban warfare. The man, who did not want to be identified, was dressed in black, shaved, lean, and muscular. “I came to train you in the most difficult tactics, urban warfare.” He harangued the battalion with the attitude of an officer. “I will show you how to break into a building, take it and, if you are lucky, get out of it alive.”
Mikael Skillt is perhaps the most well-known foreign fighter of the battalion. This Swedish sniper, with seven years’ experience in the Swedish Army and the Swedish National Guard, was a member of the neo-Nazi Svenskarnas party in Sweden. He is one of the few fighters who agreed to speak without covering his face; he supposedly has a 5,000 euro (80,000 gryvna) bounty put on his head by pro-Russian elements. This amount in Ukraine is worth over the average yearly wage.
“They can come get me if they want. I fight against the idiots who believe in what Putin says,” he declared. “At Mariupol, a sniper tried to shoot me from a window. After locating him, I waited until he was a little uncovered and then pulled the trigger. He just had no hope,” Skillt said.
Dressed in his camouflage combat fatigues, Skillt explained what drove him to enlist in the Azov Battalion, “I saw on TV snipers killing civilians and nationalists on Maidan Square, so I decided to join in.” He confessed that he gets a rush out of combat, “There is something special when your heart is beating like mad and you see all these bullets flying around and bouncing on the ground near you.”
Muran, a young Russian who also fights with the Azov Battalion, said he came to Ukraine because he wanted to help bring down Putin’s government. He does not know if he will be able to go back to Russia, as he is now considered a traitor. “I would rather blow myself up with a grenade than be captured alive,” said the masked 24 year old from the Ural Mountains.
– Fausto Biloslavo is a freelance journalist who works in Ukraine. Laura Lesevre served as a translator in gathering information for this report. This article was first published by EurasiaNet and was reprinted here with permission. Copyright EurasiaNet.
Photo: The Azov Battalion, a volunteer paramilitary unit, consists primarily of far-right activists, including around a dozen foreign volunteer fighters from countries such as Sweden, France, Finland, Italy and Russia. Credit: Fausto Biloslavo/TRANSTERRA Media
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
Less than a month from now, September 4-5, the 28 NATO allies will hold a summit in Wales. It was originally figured to be a “ho-hum” meeting, focusing on the end of the Alliance’s decade-long military campaign in Afghanistan and plans for “adapting” NATO for an uncertain future [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
Less than a month from now, September 4-5, the 28 NATO allies will hold a summit in Wales. It was originally figured to be a “ho-hum” meeting, focusing on the end of the Alliance’s decade-long military campaign in Afghanistan and plans for “adapting” NATO for an uncertain future of potential engagements “outside of area” — to use the technical term for any place beyond Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, aided and abetted by a lengthy period of instability, incompetence, and corruption by various Ukrainian governments, has changed the agenda. Now the allies need to come up with a plan for dealing not just with Putin’s peremptory seizure of Crimea but also with continuing military clashes between Russian-speakers in southeast Ukraine, who wish to be united with Mother Russia, and forces of the Ukrainian central government in Kiev. There is even speculation in various parts of the West that, in order to save loyalists from defeat by Ukraine, Putin will intervene directly with military force. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
The Ukrainian crisis was sidelined in media focus everywhere but in Central Europe until the accidental — other than an act of sheer insanity, that’s what it was — shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on July 17, which took 298 lives. Almost certainly, however, the weapon used was a high-altitude anti-aircraft system supplied to Russian rebels in Ukraine by authorities in Moscow. At that point, it became impossible for Western leaders, especially in Washington, to hope that the Ukraine crisis could be easily de-escalated. That includes diplomacy to see whether it could be possible, in time, to return to the vision that President George H.W. Bush had of trying to create a “Europe whole and fee,” which he believed (correctly) had to include Russia in some way acceptable to all.
Throughout this rolling crisis, the question for the West, especially the United States (as “leader of the West”), and for NATO has been, in the Russian phrase popularized by Lenin, Shto Delat’? (Что делать?) –“What is to be done?”
This has not been an easy question to answer, for a number of reasons.
Countering Russia
In the first place, there has been a general willingness by Western governments, except those closest to Ukraine and Russia, to separate “Crimea” from the rest of “Ukraine.” The former was for two centuries part of Russia, with a population that is almost entirely Russian (Stalin having expelled the native Crimean Tatars in 1944), until given as a birthday present to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev (himself a Ukrainian) in 1954. But so what? It was still part of the Soviet Union.
In the process, Putin clearly violated agreements signed by Russia, notably the 1975 Helsinki Final Act (signed by Russia’s legal predecessor, the Soviet Union) and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine relinquished nuclear weapons left on its territory when the Soviet Union collapsed, in exchange for security guarantees by the US, UK, and Russia. Nevertheless, it was convenient for most Western governments to view the seizure of Crimea as a “one-off” or “correction” of boundaries that should never have put Russians in Ukraine.
What has caught universal attention among Western governments is the campaign by Russian nationalists to dominate southeast Ukraine and, presumably, to detach it, probably with the objective of joining Russia. The Budapest Memorandum does commit the US and UK to refer any violation to the United Nations Security Council, but that is a standard weak-kneed diplomatic formulation. Something more had to be done, if only to keep from setting a precedent that borders in Europe can be changed by force and, in the process, giving aid and comfort to other states — not just those with significant Russian populations — to seek extra-legal territorial redress.
But the “something” to be done by the West cannot, by common agreement, include direct military action. Most importantly, in the local region itself, Russian military forces would have a clear advantage over anything that NATO or any member thereof could bring to bear. And what is happening in Ukraine would not justify the invocation of the US trump card, escalation to nuclear confrontation. Among other things, such an escalation of threats would not be credible to Moscow.
What the West has done is begin the process of providing Ukraine with some limited military support, while relying on the government in Kiev to begin, under its newly elected government, to take steps to recognize that the Russian-speaking minority should have some form of autonomy or role in a federal system. Under US leadership, NATO has also begun beefing up the symbols of military reassurance to other countries in Central Europe, those like the three Baltic states that are formal members of NATO and are thus subject to its political-security guarantees in the case of their being subjected to external aggression.
The phrase “symbols of military reassurance” is used advisedly, because whatever is done to show that the NATO guarantees are real would not in fact be sufficient to prevent Russian military action, if Putin were either stupid or reckless enough to take such action. (And if Putin were either so stupid or reckless, the world of European security and even much more would be changed fundamentally, leading to another “long, twilight struggle,” to quote President John F. Kennedy on the Cold War.).
These can be called prophylactic measures, and they will be buttressed and emphasized at the NATO summit in Wales. The Alliance can do no less, and many things are already being done, including training, exercises, supply of equipment, and the prospective periodic moving of US forces back to Europe for brief periods (given that only the United States, within the Alliance, has any capacity to deal effectively with Russia. In order to guarantee this US role, after all, was the reason that the NATO allies sent troops to far-off Afghanistan).
These are negative steps, in the sense that they are designed to show Putin that by taking further military actions — possibly even within Ukraine, though it has no formal NATO commitment — would be a major raising of the stakes and that there would be “consequences” that would not be to Putin’s liking. Unless he is willing to have Russia become a pariah in the West for the foreseeable future, he will take this general notion of “consequences” most seriously. This is, after all, not 1923, when Lenin could accept the economic and political isolation of the Soviet Union from the outside world. Even though Russia is not yet a major player in the global economy, it is already tightly and, one is tempted to say, irrevocably tied to it.
Sanctions
This proposition has led the US, and now its European allies (including, formally, the European Union) to impose what are called “targeted” economic sanctions against Russia. This was not easy to achieve, especially because of uncertainties on the part of some European countries that are not directly affected — so they believe — by Putin’s actions. There is a clear division across the continent between what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once called “old” and “new” Europe, its western and its eastern parts. The exception has been Britain, which has chosen to emphasize its special relationship with Washington, a decision not disconnected with the continuing debate about British membership in the EU. There is also the heavy dependence of much of Western Europe on Russian hydrocarbons, reflecting two decades of foolishness in not diversifying sources of supply, and which will now take many years to do.
Sanctions, however, are tools that almost never work in the short-term and usually only against weak economies. Indeed, hoped-for political pressures on Russia (Putin) to change course will, if at all, be some time in coming and will depend on a passing of the current popularity among most Russians of what Putin is doing. This is a product, in major part, both of the retained sense of Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War and also in being taken advantage of by many Western countries, and especially by the United States — actions that Washington chooses to “misremember” — since about the second half of the Clinton administration through the onset of the current Ukraine crisis.
Putin is also now trying to show that sanctions are a double-edged sword, by beginning to impose restrictions on the import of Western agricultural products. Ironically, if implemented, these could hit the EU countries (about $15 billion in exports a year) much harder than the US (about $1 billion), which pressed for these actions.
Of course, this is also a “triple-edged sword” if one can imagine such a thing, in that restrictions on Western imports will have an impact on Russian consumers and thus, presumably, over time on their support for Putin.
Sizing Up Russia
This crisis very likely has a long way to go before it is over, even if Ukrainian forces do prevail over the Russian separatists and Putin decides not to intervene militarily.
In the process, a number of other factors need to be considered as the US and its allies and partners decide what to do next.
First, Russia is a big country. The importance of that simple statement is that it is contiguous to virtually all of the territories in the Northeastern “quadrisphere,” from Europe through the Middle East and South Asia, to the Far East, and even the Artic. It is not possible to separate out the different areas of interaction — where the US is more universally engaged than any West European countries — from one another.
Thus Putin is already seeking to exploit the penchant of many people in Washington to see China as a looming threat by trying to work more closely with Beijing. Not being fools, the Chinese will exact high prices for responding, and have already been doing so; they have an interest in at least exploring the possibility.
The US also had a continuing interest in retaining Russian support in Afghanistan as NATO’s presence there winds down and, more importantly, in containing Iran. Moscow does share an interest in keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but it has never taken this problem as seriously as do the United States and Israel. While Iran would be foolish to back-off on current negotiations with the so-called P5+1 because of the US-Russian mini-confrontation, Russia is already beginning to leave the fold when it comes to the broader interest of both Israel and Persian Gulf Arab states to keep Iran from rejoining the international community. Perhaps strategists in the Obama administration have weighed the trade-offs; perhaps not.
A final point that the West and especially the United States need to bear in mind is that a confrontation, the stigmatizing of a country as the “enemy,” is easy to get going but even more difficult to stop, without the abject surrender of the offending party. Of course, Putin also had to bear this problem in mind. Already, the psychological apparatus of the old Cold War is being trundled out in Washington and in much of the think-tank and media communities. This is coupled with the traditional US problem of having difficulty in talking the game of realpolitik, as opposed to occasionally practicing it. As a culture, Americans have difficulty in foreign affairs in dealing with uncertainties. While exaggerated, the notion of dividing the world into “friends” versus “foes” — reflected in President George W. Bush’s remark about the invasion of Iraq: “you are either with us or against us” — is buried deeply within American culture.
At the end of the day, it is Putin who, through his actions, undertaken for whatever motive, most has the tiger by the tail. If there is a final accounting of winners and losers from this crisis, he will be included in the latter category. But that can be a long and difficult time for us all. The first requirement is for us to see the global picture of relations with Russia in its entirety, and to do nothing further without thinking carefully about the potential consequences.
This should be Task Number One between now and the NATO summit, with its requirement that “something” be seen to be done, expectations both by Central European states and the media, including a demonstration of what everyone in the West wants: US leadership. Getting that right in the next few weeks is a tall order.
]]>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
They say “everybody’s a critic,” and they’re right. Who wouldn’t want to be a critic? Not only is criticism important, but being a critic can be fun and easy. The Greek historian Plutarch once wrote, “It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man’s [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
They say “everybody’s a critic,” and they’re right. Who wouldn’t want to be a critic? Not only is criticism important, but being a critic can be fun and easy. The Greek historian Plutarch once wrote, “It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man’s oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome,” and he was also right. As long as you don’t have to come up with an alternative, being a critic is awesome.
Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham carefully consider the many problems with US foreign policy.
When it comes to President Obama’s foreign policy, no two people have availed themselves of the ease and joy of being critics more than Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Luckily, the American news media is always ready to offer them optimal TV time to expound on their nuanced view that Things Are Really Bad Right Now, Because Barack Obama. They’re a formidable pair; the venerable senators’ foreign policy critiques are so often in agreement that when even a sliver of daylight appears between the two, it’s literally national news.
For the critic, then, the only hard and fast rule is to avoid talking about what you would do at all costs. However, when Senator Graham shared his critical thoughts about Obama’s foreign policy record July 20 on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he let his guard down a little, and we got a glimpse of what a Lindsey Graham foreign policy agenda might look like:
DAVID GREGORY:
Well, Senator, there’s a lot to unpack there, specifically with regards to Russia. This crisis over the downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight. What did Secretary Kerry not say? What is the administration not yet prepared to do that you think must be done?
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM:
One, he didn’t call Putin the thug that he is. He didn’t call for arming the Ukraine so they can defend themselves against rebel separatists supported by Russia. All of the enemies of our nation are being well supplied. Russia and Iran are helping Syria. 160,000 Syrians have been slaughtered, John Kerry, by Russian-supplied weapons to Assad.
While “arming the Ukraine” to help it defeat an enemy it’s already soundly defeating on the battlefield might seem a bit redundant (also, it’s not “the” Ukraine, but I digress), it’s really the first part of the Graham Agenda that could break new ground in international diplomacy. It’s impossible to know for sure without reviewing all the relevant literature, but it seems safe to say that Senator Graham’s “Call Other Leaders Names if You Don’t Like Them” tactic is a real innovation in the field.
Imagine the implications of the Graham Plan on the world stage. If President Obama were to call Vladimir Putin a “thug,” for example, he would decisively “pwn” the Russian leader and thus fundamentally shift the balance of power throughout Eurasia. Similar “pwns” of other key US adversaries, if deployed strategically, could have comparable effects.
While Senator Graham is understandably reluctant to reveal the rest of his foreign policy playbook, given how much it could benefit President Obama and damage Republican chances of a big victory this fall, we have exclusively obtained a few of his other key insights from a reliable source, though we are unable to confirm the authenticity. Still, it’s no exaggeration to say that this is world-changing stuff:
- Russian Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev: “Thug Junior”
- Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi/Caliph Ibrahim: “Jerk-Faced Jerk”
- Chinese President Xi Jinping: “Putzy McPutzerson”
- Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: “Captain Doody-Head”
- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: “Polly Prissypants”
- Hamas leader Khaled Mashal: “Mr. I.P. Freely”
- Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar: “Amanda Hugnkiss”
- Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri: “President Lamewad”
- Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro: “El Matón”
- Former Cuban President Fidel Castro: “Barack Obama”
Hopefully someone will be able to make good use of this information. The future security of the United States — indeed, of the entire world — could hang in the balance.
Photo: Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaks with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) during a break in testimony at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 7, 2013. Credit: US Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley/DOD
]]>by Derek Davison
Ukrainians took to the polls May 25 to elect a new president, the chocolate magnate and former foreign minister, Petro Poroshenko. But the election was marred by violence involving pro-Russian separatists in the country’s beleaguered eastern Donbas region, even as Russia itself appeared ready to reduce tensions.
With [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
Ukrainians took to the polls May 25 to elect a new president, the chocolate magnate and former foreign minister, Petro Poroshenko. But the election was marred by violence involving pro-Russian separatists in the country’s beleaguered eastern Donbas region, even as Russia itself appeared ready to reduce tensions.
With a reported 55% voter turnout, Poroshenko was the overwhelming victor, taking 54% of the vote, compared to the 13% received by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Turnout was depressed especially in the eastern part of the country where pro-Russia militias and their supporters boycotted the vote and the continued unrest forced the closure of as much as 75% of the region’s polling places. The results were a blow to far-right parties Svoboda and Right Sector, the candidates of which each received only around 1% of the vote a piece. But another far-right candidate, Oleh Lyashko, finished in third place with just over 8% of the vote.
At the same time that Poroshenko was celebrating his victory, violence in the Donbas city of Donetsk moved the country closer to civil war. A group of pro-Russian separatists from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic reportedly took control of part of the city’s airport, prompting an assault by Ukrainian security forces that reclaimed the airport and may have killed as many as 35 separatists and 40 people overall. This was the most violent clash in the crisis since May 2, when more than 40 people were killed in Odessa after a pro-Ukrainian mob forced a crowd of pro-Russian protesters into a government building and set it on fire. Today separatists also reportedly shot down a Ukrainian military helicopter near the city of Slovyansk, killing 14 people, including a high-ranking general in the Ukrainian National Guard.
Poroshenko’s immediate concern is bringing an end to the violence in Donbas and trying to restore some unity to the country, but it’s unclear how he will accomplish those aims. He insists that his first trip as president will be to the Donbas region and that his government will offer amnesty to separatists who agree to stop fighting, but he has also vowed to give “no quarter” to those who do not. Poroshenko must also find a way to achieve closer ties to the European Union, which is his stated preference, while repairing Kiev’s fractured ties to Moscow — essential if Ukraine is to have any kind of national security. This process may already be happening; on Wednesday Ukraine’s Naftogaz natural gas company reportedly reached an EU-brokered deal with the Russian gas firm Gazprom to settle a substantial portion of Ukraine’s $3.5 billion debt to the Russian company. Poroshenko has promised to begin a dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin as soon as possible.
Recent Russian rhetoric suggests that Poroshenko will find a willing partner in that dialogue. Late last week, Putin said his government would “respect” the outcome of Ukraine’s presidential vote. Prior to a May 11 secession referendum in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, Putin had urged separatists to postpone the vote (they ignored his request). Most significantly, Putin has said he is ordering Russian troops on the Ukrainian border to withdraw, and while this is not the first time he has claimed to have ordered such a withdrawal, this time there are apparently some signs of movement. There is substantial reason to believe that, despite Poroshenko’s clear preference for closer Ukrainian ties to Europe, he and Putin will be able to work with one another. Ongoing tensions in eastern Ukraine are going to complicate that process, however, as Russian officials have called on Kiev to cease its military operations against separatists.
Now that the election is over, Ukraine has the opportunity to quell the unrest it has been plagued by since the Euromaidan protests ousted the elected Yanukovych and installed a caretaker government in Kiev with dubious legitimacy and almost non-existent support in eastern Ukrainian. But is Poroshenko the right person for that job? He has been a fixture in Ukrainian politics since he was first elected to parliament in 1998, serving in the cabinets of former presidents (and bitter rivals) Viktor Yushchenko and Yanukovych. He is believed to have helped fund the Euromaidan movement, but was not active in the protests. He has advocated closer ties with the EU but has considerable business interests in Russia via his Roshen Confectionary Corporation. He has no political ties to radical right-wing elements in Ukrainian politics that could alienate him from the pro-Russia east. On paper, then, Poroshenko has the credentials of someone who can appeal to all sides of the current conflict, particularly if he is prepared to offer eastern Ukrainians the kind of regional autonomy and Russian-language rights that he talked about during the campaign.
In reality, however, Poroshenko faces considerable, possibly insurmountable, challenges, and it’s not yet clear how he plans to tackle them. Despite the immediate urgency of the situation, he must be willing to proceed slowly in terms of bringing the breakaway Donbas region back under control. Moving rapidly to end the crisis means more military force, which will not improve Kiev’s image in the east and may cause Russia to re-engage in the crisis. Poroshenko must also work with Putin to start normalizing Ukrainian-Russian relations; Ukraine’s national security depends on repairing those ties, and its already weak economy depends on reaching a favorable deal with Gazprom to retire Ukraine’s massive debt and keep gas prices at a reasonable level. Poroshenko should also take steps to improve that weak economy, to combat corruption, and make the reforms that will distinguish his government from the Yushchenko and Yanukovych administrations. If, as seems likely, Poroshenko pursues a course of neoliberal IMF-driven austerity — the same broadly neoliberal agenda that his failed predecessors followed — then he may quickly find himself on the wrong side of Ukrainian public opinion.
Photo Credit: Mstyslav Chernov
]]>“Speak loudly and carry a small stick.” That pretty much sums up the advice provided by a steady stream of withering critics of President Obama’s foreign policy.
Spurred by off-the-cuff remarks the president made at a news conference in the Philippines last April, the elite blogosphere lit up across the spectrum [...]]]>
“Speak loudly and carry a small stick.” That pretty much sums up the advice provided by a steady stream of withering critics of President Obama’s foreign policy.
Spurred by off-the-cuff remarks the president made at a news conference in the Philippines last April, the elite blogosphere lit up across the spectrum with attacks on Obama’s “small ball” diplomacy. Apparently his detractors think that ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while avoiding costly new military entanglements, preventing terrorist attacks on American soil, ratifying a strategic arms limitation treaty with Russia, removing chemical weapons from Syria, freezing Iran’s nuclear program, closing secret detention facilities, and mounting a humanitarian response to Haiti’s massive earthquake don’t count for much.
Amid all the puffery, what few seem to recognize is how closely Obama’s foreign policy hews to what Stephen Walt describes as the realist philosophy. The president has refrained not only from “naïve idealism” but also from “threat-mongering and the misguided military engagements that flow from both tendencies.” An approach that “relies on the United States deploying every possible economic and institutional lever before resorting to armed force,” as the Washington Post characterized the Obama doctrine, is a sign of wisdom, not of weakness.
In defending his steady, pragmatic approach to the complex challenges around the world, Obama lashed out against those who have failed to learn the lessons of the Iraq war. “Frankly,” he said, “most of the foreign policy commentators that have questioned our policies would go headlong into a bunch of military adventures that the American people had no interest in participating in and would not advance our core security interests.”
No Boots on Ground
Neither the American public, Congress, nor most of Obama’s hawkish critics actually have the stomach for “boots on the ground,” be it in Syria, Ukraine, or anywhere else that red lines have been crossed, rights trampled, and lives destroyed. After over a decade of war that left the U.S. economy in tatters, such an approach would not be politically sustainable. Recent polling data shows that nearly half of Americans want the United States to reduce its role in global affairs, and a majority say that Washington should “mind its own business” internationally.
True, the “alternatives” proposed by right-wing critics of Obama’s foreign policy often fall short of outright intervention overseas. They recommend arming opposition forces, conducting provocative military exercises, pre-positioning military equipment, ratcheting up sanctions, and taking firm rhetorical stances. But while they caution against drawing “red lines,” their prescriptions amount to throwing a few Molotov cocktails and then retreating to the safety of their armchairs.
Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) call for supplying the Ukrainians with anti-armor and anti-aircraft systems, shifting military assets eastward, and urgently expanding NATO. Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asserts that “radios, body armor, night-vision goggles and such could well alter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculus.” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer would have us respond to Russia by creating “the possibility of a bloody and prolonged Ukrainian resistance to infiltration or invasion.”
What President Obama understands is that sending weapons to ill-equipped and poorly trained forces is highly unlikely to deter far more capable adversaries or to change the eventual outcome. On the other hand, it is quite likely to prolong the suffering of civilians, increase the risk of weapons ending up in the wrong hands, and draw us ever closer to direct military confrontation. And once we intervene, we have a responsibility to think about not just “the day after,” but the months and years and decades after.
The Lessons of Libya
This, in fact, is precisely the lesson we learned in Libya, where factional fighting has intensified over the last weeks. As the Washington Post editorialized, “The Obama administration and its NATO allies bear responsibility for this mess because, having intervened to help rebels overthrow Gaddafi, they then swiftly exited without making a serious effort to help Libyans establish security and build a new political order.” Post-conflict recovery requires significant commitments that often include boots on the ground. For instance, nearly 15 years after the end of the conflict, NATO retains 5,000 troops to keep the peace in Kosovo.
Libya has been a cautionary lesson for the Obama administration: political order is rarely established on the battlefield. Leaving military action, direct or indirect, as a last resort is not an indication of indecisiveness or lack of resolve. It’s an acknowledgement that the use of force has a poor record of creating lasting stability at an acceptable cost. And it’s a refusal to take on long-term financial commitments without informed public consent.
Owning the Legacy
Ultimately, however, Obama’s foreign policy legacy will not be secured unless he addresses head-on the belief that we have the right, the responsibility, and the power to achieve our objectives by threats, intimidation, and coercion. Many of the greatest challenges to our own national, economic, and human security — climate change, pandemic disease, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the desperation of over a billion people living in extreme poverty — transcend borders and defy military solutions.
It’s time to give up on the notion that we can or should control the world. Instead we should focus on building a more effective and constructive model for engaging with it. Given a better articulation and the development of new diplomatic tools, this could be the enduring value of the Obama doctrine.
*Diana Ohlbaum is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior professional staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
This article was first published by Foreign Policy in Focus and was reprinted here with permission.
]]>by Mark N. Katz
U.S.-Russian relations have sharply deteriorated, to put it mildly, over Ukraine in recent months. There has been widespread talk about the re-emergence of a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow. Indeed, some have even argued that Moscow does not want to see American sanctions on Iran lifted because [...]]]>
by Mark N. Katz
U.S.-Russian relations have sharply deteriorated, to put it mildly, over Ukraine in recent months. There has been widespread talk about the re-emergence of a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow. Indeed, some have even argued that Moscow does not want to see American sanctions on Iran lifted because this would allow Iran to compete with Russia in exporting petroleum to the West and elsewhere. Yet Russia appears willing to cooperate with the U.S. on several issues, including the Iranian nuclear file. What could explain Moscow’s reasoning? At least four possible explanations stand out.
1) The government of President Vladimir Putin is willing to compartmentalize foreign policy issues. Dramatic disagreement with the U.S. on some issues does not preclude Moscow from cooperating with Washington on others where common interests are involved. Both the U.S. and Russia — as well as many other states — want to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, so it makes sense for Moscow to continue working with Washington in pursuit of this aim.
2.) Moscow is working toward a settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue in part to both limit and ameliorate international opposition toward Russian policy vis-à-vis Ukraine. There are quite a few governments that are far more concerned about the prospect of a nuclear Iran than about what Russia does in Ukraine. These include Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps even some West European members of NATO. Moscow’s continued serious efforts toward a settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue may provide these states with a convenient rationale to avoid joining U.S.-led efforts to criticize Putin over Ukraine.
3) Moscow’s actual ability to scuttle a nuclear agreement with Iran might be limited. Washington and Tehran, of course, have never lacked reasons for disagreeing with each other in the past. But if a final agreement between the U.S. and Iran over its nuclear program is indeed attainable, neither of these states is going to back away from it at Moscow’s behest. Indeed, any Russian effort to prevent a nuclear accord reached by Iran on the one hand and America and its European partners on the other could backfire and result in Moscow looking weak and ineffective — exactly what Putin wants to avoid.
4.) Finally, Russia could make substantial profits following a final nuclear deal with Iran. While it is true that a final agreement and the reduction (if not elimination) of U.S. and international sanctions against Tehran would mean increased competition from Iran for Russia in exporting petroleum, reduced UN sanctions on Iran would allow Russian firms to invest more in the Iranian petroleum sector. Indeed, just like the Shi’a majority government that the U.S. helped bring to power in Baghdad, Tehran may actually see doing business with Russian petroleum firms as advantageous. A wealthier Iran would also be able to purchase far more nuclear reactors, weapons, and other goods from Russia than it can pay for now.
Of course, these explanations are not mutually exclusive. Moscow may continue to work toward a resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue for any or all of the reasons listed above. Moscow’s unwillingness to cooperate with Washington on Ukraine, then, does not mean that Russia will stop cooperating with America on Iran.
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Photo: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (center) share a laugh at the signing ceremony of the interim nuclear deal reached with Iran on Nov. 24, 2013 in Geneva, Switzerland.