Posts Tagged ‘national review online’
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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Time for the Magnitsky Act
When it comes to Ukraine, the United States and European Union are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Russian troops are hunkering down in the recently occupied Crimean peninsula, showing no signs of retreat. The West, wary of involvement — especially military involvement — in yet another international conflict, has confined its rhetoric to talk of “costs” and economic sanctions.
One weapon in the United States’ economic arsenal is the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which allows the administration to sanction individual Russians. In particular, the law was aimed at those who were responsible for the detention, abuse, and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant and auditor. Magnitsky was tortured and murdered after accusing Russian officials of corruption and theft of taxpayer funds. Under the act, the Obama administration could target individuals by freezing their assets held in the United States and denying them visas.
This individualized pressure could be coupled with sanctions against the entirety of Russia, further pressuring Russian leaders to remove troops from Crimea.
The Obama administration opposed its passage in 2012, when it was approved with bipartisan supermajorities in both houses of Congress. Now, however, the law is one of the few weapons the American government is potentially willing to use against Russia.
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What’s Going on at Interpol?
Despite some dubious alumni, Interpol is, in theory, a good thing, but in practice it appears to be being abused by at least one of its members (clue: a very large country, name beginning with an “r” and run by a former secret policeman), and, oh yes, by the Soviet nostalgics over in Minsk too. Writing in European Voice, Edward Lucas notes:
[Western countries] should help Bill Browder, a London-based financier who is Magnitsky’s former client and champion [Sergei Magnitsky was an accountant who died in Moscow in circumstances that were murky and all too clear]. He risks arrest when he leaves the UK because Russia is shamelessly abusing the Interpol system, claiming that Browder is a wanted fraudster. EU countries should all say that they regard this as political persecution and have no intention of acting on it. That would give Browder safe passage.
Then there’s this, from Russian-untouchables.com:
When Petr Silaev, a Russian journalist, got political asylum in Finland in April 2012 after escaping a crackdown in his home country, he felt safe and began a new life. But in August the same year, he found himself handcuffed and shoved face-down on the floor of a police car on a seven-hour trip from Granada, Spain, where he went on holiday, to a detention centre in Madrid, where he risked extradition.
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Putin in the Times
President Putin’s “plea for caution” to the U.S. in the New York Times raises two questions – one a matter of fact, the other a question of sincerity.
The factual question concerns the attack itself. Putin acknowledges that someone used poison gas in Syria but argues that “there is every reason to believe” it was the rebels. He offers no support for this key assertion.
The Russians are capable of amassing evidence. They have already done so in the case of the possible chemical-weapons attack March 19 in Khan al-Assal in which 26 persons were killed. Their 100-page report was presented to the United Nations with its principal conclusions released on the eve of the G-20 St. Petersburg summit. Why then, despite having excellent sources in the Syrian government, are they unable to provide any evidence to support their arguments in the case of Ghouta where the death toll was 1,429?
The other question raised by Putin’s op-ed is that of sincerity. Putin discourses at length about the importance of the United Nations, where Russia has a veto, and of international law. But is it reasonable to trust the stated defense of international law by a country which is itself completely lawless?
In December, 2012, the U.S. passed the Magnitsky Act which provided for a travel ban and the confiscation of assets of Russians implicated in the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who exposed a massive tax-cheating scheme run by high-ranking Russian officials. Were Russia a law-based state, its leadership would have been grateful to the U.S. for this added assistance in bringing criminals to justice. Instead, the leadership defended the criminals and retaliated against the U.S. legislation by banning the adoption by American families of Russian children.
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‘Obama has sided with Putin Against Congress’
How can Medvedev transmit that Obama will be “more flexible” after the election when the president is already doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding with Congress? Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl on the “Magnitsky bill” — a piece of legislation, authored by Democrats, that aims to restore human rights to the center of U.S.-Russian relations.
This sanction strikes at the heart of the web of corruption around Putin. Moscow’s bureaucratic mafiosi rely heavily on foreign bank accounts; they vacation in France, send their children to U.S. colleges and take refuge in London when they fall from Putin’s favor. The fear and loathing provoked in Moscow by the bill is encapsulated by item No. 3 on Putin’s new priority list: “Work actively on preventing unilateral extraterritorial sanctions by the U.S. against Russian legal entities and individuals.”
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The Limits of Cheeseburger Diplomacy
President Obama’s “hot mike” comments to Dmitry Medvedev represented a classic Kinsley gaffe. Unaware he was being recorded, Obama assured the Russian leader that he would “have more flexibility” on missile defense after his reelection. Medvedev, in turn, promised to “transmit this information to Vladimir,” a reference to the once and future President Putin.
If anyone was still wondering why Republicans remain skeptical of Obama’s commitment to missile defense, now they understand. Yet the significance of the hot-mike incident goes beyond that one issue. In a broader sense, the president has indicated that he is doubling down on his “reset” policy toward Moscow, despite a mountain of evidence that the policy has largely failed.
The most recent evidence of its failure was Russia’s March 4 presidential election, which restored Putin to the top job — his former job — in the Kremlin. That election was sullied by “procedural irregularities,” not to mention a political and media environment that forestalled genuine democratic competition. The same could be said of Russia’s December 4 parliamentary elections, in which the government’s mischief was even worse. As the New York Times reported, OECD election observers said they “had observed blatant fraud, including the brazen stuffing of ballot boxes” — which makes it all the more remarkable that Putin’s United Russia Party suffered such major losses.
In short, the country is sliding deeper into lawless autocracy. Meanwhile, Moscow continues to resist imposing tougher sanctions on Iran and Syria, and it continues to supply Damascus with all sorts of weaponry that is being used to massacre innocent civilians. When Russia and China vetoed a recent U.N. resolution on Syria, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called their actions “despicable.”
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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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Time to Abandon ‘Reset’? : Obama’s hope that Russia would change under Medvedev has not worked out
When pressed to name the foreign-policy successes achieved under President Obama’s watch, administration officials routinely cite the president’s “reset” of relations with Russia as one of the most important. With Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin’s announcement on September 24 that he will run next year for the Russian presidency, this may soon change.
Putin’s announcement should not have come as a shock to anyone. Skeptics of the Obama administration’s efforts to “reset” relations have seen this coming since the policy was announced to much fanfare in March 2009.
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