Posts Tagged ‘politico’
Why Russia No Longer Fears the West
The West is blinking in disbelief – Vladimir Putin just invaded Ukraine. German diplomats, French Eurocrats and American pundits are all stunned. Why has Russia chosen to gamble its trillion-dollar ties with the West?
Western leaders are stunned because they haven’t realized Russia’s owners no longer respect Europeans the way they once did after the Cold War. Russia thinks the West is no longer a crusading alliance. Russia thinks the West is now all about the money.
Putin’s henchmen know this personally. Russia’s rulers have been buying up Europe for years. They have mansions and luxury flats from London’s West End to France’s Cote d’Azure. Their children are safe at British boarding and Swiss finishing schools. And their money is squirrelled away in Austrian banks and British tax havens.
Putin’s inner circle no longer fear the European establishment. They once imagined them all in MI6. Now they know better. They have seen firsthand how obsequious Western aristocrats and corporate tycoons suddenly turn when their billions come into play. They now view them as hypocrites—the same European elites who help them hide their fortunes.
Once Russia’s powerful listened when European embassies issued statements denouncing the baroque corruption of Russian state companies. But no more. Because they know full well it is European bankers, businessmen and lawyers who do the dirty work for them placing the proceeds of corruption in hideouts from the Dutch Antilles to the British Virgin Islands.
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McCain: Canceling Putin meeting not enough
Sen. John McCain said Sunday it’s “fine” that President Barack Obama canceled a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but Obama’s actions and statements show he does not understand how to deal with Putin.
“The president comparing him to a kid in the back of the classroom, I think, is very indicative of the president’s lack of appreciation of who Vladimir Putin is,” the Arizona Republican said on “Fox News Sunday,” referring to a comment Obama made in a press conference on Friday. “He’s an old KGB colonel that has no illusions about our relationship, does not care about a relationship with the United States, continues to oppress his people, continues to oppress the media and continues to act in an autocratic and unhelpful fashion.”
Canceling the meeting, which the president did last week after Russia granted asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, was “symbolic,” McCain said, but the U.S. needs to expand the Magnitsky Act and enforce human rights, get Georgia into NATO and expand missile defense systems in Europe.
“We also need very badly to understand that Mr. Putin does not have the United States-Russia relationships in any priority and treat him in a realistic fashion,” the senator said. “hat’s the way to treat Mr. Putin, not just canceling a meeting.” займ онлайн на карту без отказа срочный займ https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php микрозаймы онлайн
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‘Magnitsky List’: Powerful, if not perfect
The State Department’s “Magnitsky list” – sanctioned last Friday by the Obama administration, officially branding 18 Russian government officials as gross humans rights violators – was rightly criticized as inadequate and weak by the congressional authors of the original law authorizing the creation of the list.
Congressional champions of the Magnitsky Act pointed out that State seems to be purposely misreading the law, minimizing the act’s original power to punish those who have committed egregious human rights violations by applying the criteria only to those criminals who might be dumb enough to maintain financial assets in the United States.
The Magnitsky law was born out of Senator Ben Cardin’s (D-Md.) frustration with Secretary Hillary Clinton’s dismissal of his recommendation that State blacklist 60 Russian government officials connected to the death of Russian whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky. Clinton’s State Department was truculently opposed not just to the Magnitsky act, but to naming and shaming even the most obvious of those who now reside on the Magnitsky list.
Although the critics are right to condemn the list as inadequate, the unveiling of the list underscores a more important point. Under John Kerry’s leadership, the State Department is sending a strong message that the era of appeasing kleptocratic dictators is over.
This particular law is limited to Russia, but efforts are afoot to expand its reach. Now every letter Congress writes to State – previously batted back with polite but meaningless form letters – has the potential to grow into a new round of Magnitsky-style laws sanctioning corrupt officials in governments around the world. It will have the most impact when human rights activists leverage the “Magnitsky magnifying effect” to name, shame and seize the assets of autocrats previously unknown to the public. Public opinion is a powerful tool: it can and should be leveraged to fight corruption.
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Bill sustains fight against human-rights abuses
In 2008, a young Russian attorney chose to do something courageous. That man, Sergei Magnitsky, took the daring — and in his country, unprecedented — step of publicly exposing a vast web of corruption and tax fraud presided over by some of Russia’s most senior officials. Those authorities, stung by his insolence, quickly arranged for Magnitsky to be tossed in jail on trumped-up charges. Over the course of a year, he was beaten, tortured and denied medical treatment; he ultimately died on Nov. 16, 2009.
Magnitsky could then have become just another statistic, another smothered voice for freedom, another example of the corrupt prevailing over the crusading.
Fortunately, that did not happen. Magnitsky’s story found a voice through a diverse coalition of human-rights activists, business leaders, academics, think tank scholars and journalists — a coalition that helped inspire us to draft bipartisan Senate legislation that would hold accountable officials from all over the world who disregard basic human rights, who fail to uphold the rule of law and who unjustly jail, abuse and murder whistle-blowers like Magnitsky.
Indeed, despite our differences on other issues, we both agree on the need for this so-called Magnitsky bill.
The United States has long been a global leader in the fight against corruption and human-rights abuses, and there is broad, bipartisan support in Congress for continuing to honor that important tradition. However, even as the House and Senate have begun to advance versions of this legislation as part of a comprehensive legislative package to grant normal trade relations to Russia (and in so doing, repeal Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik sanctions), a key difference has emerged between the two bills: While our Senate bill would hold these types of officials accountable no matter where they might prey, the House’s version would deal only with Russian authorities.
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Russia offers economic opportunity
U.S. exports to Russia total more than $9 billion per year. Repealing Jackson-Vanik and establishing PNTR could double that number in just five years, according to one recent study. That could mean thousands of new jobs across every sector of our economy. With the Russian economy’s impressive growth — it’s expected to outgrow Germany’s by 2029 — the long-run gains would be even greater.
Make no mistake, Russia is not without its problems — and they are stark in the foreign policy arena. Its support for the regimes in Syria and Iran remains an obstacle.
The death of anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky also highlights troubling human rights problems. A bill known as the Magnitsky Act, sponsored by our colleagues Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and McCain , aims to address these human rights issues by sanctioning those responsible for Magnitsky’s death. It’s a crucial part of the debate surrounding our relationship with Russia — and should be approved together with PNTR.
It is important to understand that this debate is not a choice between improving conditions in Russia and increasing U.S. exports. These are not opposing goals — indeed, they support each other.
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Senate must send signal to Russia
McFaul faces many challenges — and Russian leaders will likely make the job more difficult. Russian officials have recently declared that they may soon aim mid-range missiles at Europe, threatened to close a critical supply line into Afghanistan and blocked U.N. Security Council sanctions of a murderous regime in Syria. These facts only serve to increase the urgency in getting him to Moscow.
Second, once McFaul is confirmed, the Senate can give him new soft power tools that can underscore U.S. support for the Russian people and their calls for freedom and democracy.
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