Posts Tagged ‘daniel vajdic’
Am I wrong on Obama’s Russia policy?
Over at Forbes, Mark Adomanis offers a critique of my recent NRO article “Why the GOP Candidates Should Talk about Russia.” He says he’s “genuinely unsure” what my “actual criticism is.” Allow me to clarify.
As much as I’d like to lay claim to a uniquely sophisticated argument that only an expert Russia watcher could possibly understand, it’s actually pretty straightforward: The Obama administration exaggerates the accomplishments of its Russia policy to offset a shortage of foreign-policy achievements in other areas. (I state this verbatim on several occasions in the article.) Basically, the piece was intended to highlight the disparity between the administration’s rhetoric and the reality of our relationship with, not Russia necessarily, but the current occupants of the Kremlin.
Adomanis seems to take issue with that. In response to my mention of the qualified nature of Moscow’s support for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, he explains that Russia doesn’t want to end up with a permanent NATO presence in Central Asia, which the Kremlin sees as part of its “sphere of influence.” Russia will offer “sufficient assistance to ensure the Taliban cannot win,” he says, but won’t help us transform Afghanistan into an “American satrapy,” especially after the U.S. “fomented ‘colored revolutions’ all throughout the post-Soviet space.”
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What Obama needs to do about Russia
At least as far as foreign policy went, Russia received an unexpected amount of attention in this year’s U.S. presidential election campaign. Whether it was the Romney team’s dismissing the so-called reset, its claim that Russia is America’s “number one geopolitical foe,” or President Obama’s infamous open mic moment, in which he promised his Russian counterpart “flexibility” on missile defense if reelected, ties with Moscow kept cropping up.
It is, of course, true that the Cold War world no longer exists, and that Russia occupies a far less significant space in American foreign policy. And the U.S.-Russia relationship simply is not as overtly antagonistic as it was in the Soviet era. But it is also clear that Russia continues to pose serious challenges for the United States.
With this in mind, here are some suggestions for President Obama for how he should approach Russia in his second term.
Forget the reset. The election is over. It’s time to face reality. And the reality is that Russia has rapidly regressed from soft authoritarianism into a less qualified dictatorship that shields brutal regimes around the world with ever greater brazenness. What’s more, the Russian leadership has all but acknowledged that the reset is over. And if you don’t trust the Kremlin’s words, then consider its actions. Putin blamed opposition protests on “signals” that Hillary Clinton had supposedly sent to incite revolts against his regime. In September, the Foreign Ministry announced the expulsion of USAID from Russia and rejected the State Department’s request for a six-month extension to wind down grants. And, last month, Moscow decided that it will not negotiate a follow-on Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction pact with the U.S. These are trends that even the reset’s most ardent supporters cannot ignore.
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Russia, human rights, and the WTO
Recently, my colleague Daniel Hanson outlined the mounting problems of the WTO system. He uses Russia’s 18-year accession negotiations as a case in point. I can’t speak to the WTO’s broader defects but I can echo his frustration with Russia’s prolonged exclusion from an organization that supervises global trade liberalization. Russia was finally inducted into the WTO on Friday.
Over the last 18 years, Russia’s WTO membership bid has faced two hurdles from U.S. opponents: trade issues (high tariffs, subsidies, intellectual property rights, etc.) and human rights. The former was largely settled by 2006 when the Bush administration signed a bilateral agreement on Russia’s entry into the WTO. But the issue of human rights continues to pose an impediment to U.S.-Russia trade relations. Even though Russia is now formally a member of the WTO, the United States will have to exempt Russia from WTO rules and regulations (and Moscow will respond in kind) if it doesn’t grant Russia permanent normal trade relations status. This requires repealing antiquated Cold War-era congressional legislation—known as the Jackson-Vanik amendment—that makes trade contingent on emigration rights for Soviet Jews. In short, unlike their counterparts throughout the WTO, U.S. businesses won’t benefit from Russia’s long overdue accession to the organization unless Congress takes swift action to graduate Russia from Jackson-Vanik.
But some argue that Jackson-Vanik should be used to highlight Russia’s poor human rights record, which in itself should preclude Russia from reaping the benefits of WTO membership. There are a few problems with this approach. First, misapplying legislation on Jewish emigration adopted 37 years ago against a country that no longer exists dilutes very justifiable concerns about human rights in Russia. Second, neither Russia’s exclusion from the WTO nor Congress’s refusal to excuse it from Jackson-Vanik have persuaded the Kremlin to improve Russia’s human rights record. If anyone has evidence that suggests otherwise I’d love to see it. Finally, as Daniel notes, countries with human rights records far worse than that of Russia have been admitted to the WTO in recent years—China being the most obvious example.
Trade liberalization and human rights promotion aren’t mutually exclusive. They’re objectives that can and should be pursued simultaneously. To achieve this with respect to Russia, Congress should replace Jackson-Vanik with the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act (opposed by the Obama administration), which would punish Russian officials suspected of being involved in the torture and murky prison death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. This would send a much clearer signal about the U.S. commitment to human rights in Russia. However, it wouldn’t do so at the expense of preventing discrimination against U.S. businesses and subjecting Russia to the rules, regulations, and norms of the WTO. займ на карту онлайн payday loan https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php zp-pdl.com микрозаймы онлайн
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