Posts Tagged ‘kissinger’
Obama’s Open Microphone
The remarks of President Obama to Dmitry Medvedev over an open microphone, in which he promised that in a second term, he will have flexibility on the issue of global missile defense, shows that when it comes to U.S.–Russian relations, Obama is a stunningly slow learner.
The relations between a U.S. president and a Russian leader often follow a depressing pattern. The American leader charms (or thinks he charms) his Russian counterpart. The Russian leader begins to engage in criminal behavior, which gets steadily worse. Finally, something big happens — the invasion of Afghanistan, the nuclear poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London, the invasion of Georgia — and the realization dawns that the Russian is neither a Christian nor a friend and he has to be approached with realism.
Since taking office in 2008, Obama has had ample reason to reconsider the wisdom of relying on Russian goodwill, including Russia’s fixed elections and official involvement in the murder of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. But he persists in seeing the Putin regime as a “partner” and the real threat as coming from the political opposition in the U.S.
Obama hinted in his now-public conversation with Medvedev that he is ready to meet Russian concerns. In fact, he needs to be prevented from doing so because the steps the Russians are demanding will not lead to a real improvement in relations and are inimical to the security interests of the U.S.
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Kasparov, Nemtsov call McFaul’s Bluff
On Tuesday, I wrote about U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul’s objection to tying America’s economic interaction with Russia to the promotion of human rights. McFaul was in Washington for a conference and also to push for repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a piece of Cold War-era legislation that sanctioned Moscow’s trade status for restricting Jewish emigration. Now that Russia is joining the World Trade Organization, Jackson-Vanik disadvantages American businesses, and so it’s time to repeal it.
But I argued that McFaul’s emphasis on repealing Jackson-Vanik was a dodge, since its repeal is uncontroversial. The real issue is whether it should be replaced by legislation that would hold Vladimir Putin’s administration accountable for its atrocious human rights record. Were McFaul not representing the Obama administration, I added, he might very well support such action–McFaul is the author of several books on promoting democracy in the post-Soviet space. Today, Garry Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov, two outspoken Russian opposition figures, take to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to make those points, and a few others.
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Don’t Hand Russia the Moral Victory of Abolition of Jackson-Vanik: Graduate, and Pass Magnitsky Bill
The year was 1975, writes Alex Goldfarb (in a book excerpted in snob.ru to come out soon which I’m translating).
Six Russian Jewish men sat at a kitchen table in Moscow in January. The scene was reminiscent of a famous panting by Russian artist Ilya Repin, said Masha Slepak, an activist and wife of prominent Soviet refusenik leader Vladimir Slepak. Except it was the opposite of Repin’s scene — no one was laughing or triumphant. The writers — all scientists who had been denied permission to leave the Soviet Union — were dejected, and feeling betrayed. They were writing to President Gerald Ford, and they were protesting his waiver in 1975 of the 1974 Jackon-Vanik Amendment, which had been passed due to the efforts of Sen. Henry Jackson, over the objections of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
The Jewish refusenik movement leader and human rights leaders such as Andrei Sakharov had applauded the Jackson-Vanik Amendment when it was passed in 1974; now it was in jeopardy. Alex Goldfarb, who served for a time as the Soviet dissident movement’s press officer, writes in his memoirs of how depressed the Jewish activists felt after Ford’s decision. A successful lever had been established after great debate; it was going to work — and now the political capital was in danger of being squandered.
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