Posts Tagged ‘reset’
Diplomat Downplays U.S. Ban
U.S. visa restrictions on Russian officials linked to the death of investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky will not affect cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan, a senior diplomat said.
“Speaking about the information in the U.S. media about an asymmetrical response, a cutback in cooperation over Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, then there is nothing more far from reality than such speculations,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Tuesday.
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Russia says U.S. visa move won’t affect cooperation
U.S. visa restrictions on Russian officials linked to the death of investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky will not affect cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan, a senior Russian official said on Tuesday.
“Speaking about the information in the U.S. media about an asymmetrical response, a cutback in cooperation over Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, then there is nothing more far from reality than such speculations,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
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The Reset: Down–but not Out
During Wall Street’s latest gyrations, Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the United States a parasite on the global economy. In response to the U.S. Senate’s recent unanimous resolution condemning Russia’s continued post-war military presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, President Dmitry Medvedev possibly called U.S. senators senile—or maybe it was just senior citizens. Either way, you get the point. And in the most recent spat over U.S. plans for ballistic missile defense in Europe, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s Ambassador to NATO, labeled U.S. Republican Senators Jon Kyl and Mark Kirk “monsters of the Cold War.”
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U.S. and Russia: Where’s the Reset?
When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, U.S.-Russian relations were strained and delicate. Arms control agreements had all but disintegrated and acrimonious conflict had largely displaced cooperation. Indeed several observers, including Mikhail Gorbachev, even went so far as to proclaim the emergence of a new Cold War.
Although this assessment may have been an overstatement, tensions between the two former superpowers were certainly running high, particularly during George W. Bush’s presidency. During Bush’s first term, for instance, the United States consistently worked to expand NATO to Russia’s borders, completely disregarding George H.W. Bush’s promise to Gorbachev that NATO would refrain from expanding eastward beyond a reunited Germany. With the U.S. decision to withdraw unilaterally from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in June 2002, cooperation further deteriorated. The ABM treaty was commonly regarded as the foundation of Russia’s nuclear security. As both Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev have stated, the Kremlin felt “deceived and betrayed.”
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FEULNER: A malfunctioning ‘reset’
It has been two years now since President Obama heralded a new era in U.S.-Russian relations – a “reset,” as he put it. His plan was to “cooperate more effectively in areas of common interest.” He and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev were “committed to leaving behind the suspicion and the rivalry of the past.”
Fast-forward to the present. Have things improved? Considering that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently called the United States a “parasite” on the global economy, and the State Department has put 64 Russian officials on a visa blacklist, it’s fair to say: not much.
The latest round of trouble springs from the case of the late Sergei Magnitsky, whose name is probably unfamiliar to many Americans. A lawyer for one of the largest Western hedge funds in Russia, Magnitsky in 2008 accused Russian officials of swindling $230 million in tax rebates. Even in post-Cold War Russia, it was a bold move.
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The Sergei Magnitsky Case: An Admission of Guilt
On July 5 the Russian Human Rights Council published its report on the now infamous—and mysterious—death of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. An attorney for the Moscow-based American law firm Firestone Duncan, he represented Hermitage Capital, which was at the time the largest Western hedge fund in Russia.
Magnitsky died while in custody awaiting trial for a fabricated tax evasion charge. He was jailed after he accused Russian officials of fraudulently obtaining $230 million in tax rebates from the Russian Treasury using a sophisticated swindle. These were the same officials who prosecuted Hermitage and barred its owner, Bill Browder, from returning to Russia for reasons the state refused to reveal.
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The Top 10 Reasons You Should Support S. 1039
Khodorkovsky & Lebedev Communications Center
When people think of President Barack Obama’s “reset” policy with Russia, the first things that come to mind are the deferral of the missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, a new nuclear arms reductions treaty, or maybe even the friendly hamburger summit with his contemporary President Dmitry Medvedev.
While there are no shortage of arguments disputing the advantages and failures of the reset strategy, when it comes to human rights, the most impactful policy proposal comes not from the White House or State Department, bur rather an item of legislation conceived last year by Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-Md). The draft law aims to become a model for the way governments can emphasize values and combat human rights abuses through the creation of specific disincentives targeted at those responsible. How does it work? Instead of punishing citizens who also suffer under these officials, the law would focus on visa restrictions of certain officials, and halt their use of Western financial institutions to launder ill-gotten funds.
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Reset Regret: Moral Leadership Needed to Fix U.S.–Russian Relations
The discussion about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law has careened through at least three phases in U.S. relations with Russia, each one resulting in sometimes jarring shifts in Washington’s approach to Moscow.
In order to reaffirm America’s interests, when dealing with Russia, the U.S. should concentrate on the values of freedom and justice. The Administration needs to stop its policy of “pleasing Moscow” and instead add pressure on Russia to start a “reset” of its own policies that currently disregard human rights, democracy, and good governance. The U.S. should deny visas to corrupt Russian businessmen, examine their banking practices and acquisitions, and target Russian police and prosecutors who fabricate evidence, and judges who rubber stamp convictions, which is what the bipartisan S. 1039 “Justice for Sergey Magnitsky” bill aims to do.
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Trade and consequences
Washington Post
The next stage of President Obama’s “reset” with Russia will include trade favors, if the administration has its way. The president has promised the regime of Vladimir Putin that he will support Russia’s long-delayed accession to the World Trade Organization this year. For that to happen, Georgia, a U.S. ally subjected to a Russian invasion in 2008, must still sign off. Also, Congress must grant Russia fully normalized trade relations to avoid a conflict under WTO rules once Moscow is admitted. That means exempting Russia from a 1974 law conditioning trade on Russia’s emigration policies.
The law, known as Jackson-Vanik, is outdated; it was passed to try to force the Soviet Union to allow Jews to emigrate. But granting Russia trade privileges now rightly seems to many in Congress to be an unwarranted concession to a regime that, under Mr. Putin and partner Dmitry Medvedev, continues to engage in massive human rights violations — not to mention epic corruption.
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