Posts Tagged ‘reset’
Obama Must Reset Relations with Russia Along Economic Lines
As Vladimir Putin prepares for his May inauguration and return to the Russian presidency, the United States must design a new relationship with this often difficult leader and his country.
The “Russian Reset” of President Obama’s first term sought to overcome the strain in relations of recent years in order to achieve some specific foreign policy goals. It brought a new arms control treaty, Russian cooperation in transiting military material to Afghanistan, and help in pressuring Iran. But simply continuing the reset along the same lines is a dead end.
There is little likelihood of any significant progress in nuclear arms control because any new accord would require more meaningful reductions in weapons. The US and NATO engagement in Afghanistan is winding down. And Russia seems unwilling to pursue further sanctions against the Iranian threat of proliferation.
When Mr. Putin arrives in Camp David for the G8 summit in May, President Obama must be ready to lay out the framework for a new reset.
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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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Why is Obama Giving Up His Human Rights Leverage Against Russia?
At two separate events in Washington recently, Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, insisted that it should be a “total no brainer” for Congress to end the application of the Jackson-Vanik amendment—which denies normal, unconditional trade to non-market economies that restrict emigration—to Russia. The waning utility of Jackson-Vanik, McFaul claimed, was entirely exhausted by the completion of WTO negotiations. Now that the deal’s done, he said, “it’s really hard to understand in whose interest holding [onto this] does serve.”
But in predicating his argument on the grounds of free trade—citing, for example, imports and exports of “poultry and pork” between Russia and the United States—McFaul has shown a failure to grasp the essence of the legislation he’s discussing. By ignoring the Jackson-Vanik amendment’s historic significance for the promotion of human rights in the Soviet bloc and China, he is doing a disservice to Russia’s current democratic opposition figures.
Conceived by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Congressman Charles Vanik during the Cold War, the Jackson-Vanik bill tied trade status for communist countries to the freedom to emigrate, which Jackson saw not only as an important issue in its own right, but also as a wedge for improving respect for other human rights. That’s why it misses the point to simply note, as many have, that the Soviet Union no longer exists and today’s Russia doesn’t restrict emigration (indeed, quite to the contrary, Russia is suffering a massive brain drain). The main point about Jackson-Vanik—and the reason it is still relevant to U.S.-Russia relations—is that it has always been about maximizing America’s leverage on human rights and demonstrating a willingness to use it.
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US Senate panel may vote on Russian human rights bill
Human rights legislation named after an anti-graft lawyer who died in a Russian jail is likely to be considered by a U.S. Senate committee this spring, the panel’s chairman Senator John Kerry said on Tuesday.
The Sergei Magnitsky bill would require the United States to deny visas and freeze the assets of Russians or others with links to his detention and death, as well as those who commit human rights violations against other whistle-blowers like him.
The 2009 death of the 37-year-old Magnitsky, who worked for equity fund Hermitage Capital and died after a year in Russian jails, spooked investors and tarnished Russia’s image. The Kremlin human rights council says he was probably beaten to death.
Before his arrest, he had testified against Russian interior ministry officials during a tax evasion case against Hermitage.
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US trade upgrade may worsen relations with Russia
The Obama administration wants Congress to remove Soviet-era trade restrictions that have been a sore point in U.S.-Russia relations for decades. But the conditions lawmakers are demanding to make the change may only worsen America’s increasingly shaky relations with Moscow.
Republicans and Democrats are trying to tie the easing of the so-called Jackson-Vanik restrictions to a measure imposing sanctions against Russian officials linked to human rights abuses. That would infuriate Russia and would be the latest hitch in what administration officials consider a major foreign policy success: improved relations with Russia after a sharp downturn during the Bush administration. They call it the “reset.”
Obama administration officials are trying to keep the rights and trade measures apart. They are concerned about retaliation and do not want to aggravate relations further. Tensions have been growing over issues like missile defense and the international response to uprisings in Libya and Syria. But the U.S. still hopes for a degree of cooperation with Russia on other matters, such as stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
“We want to deal with trade issues in one sphere and democracy issues and human rights in another sphere,” said Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia.
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“Not Even Stalin Did That”
The House Foreign Affairs Committee met yesterday on the heels of the tainted Russian election that put Vladimir Putin back in power. (He never left.)
A top observer characterized Russia’s leadership as “corrupt, rotten and rotting.” A quarter to a third of the economy is lost to corruption, it’s believed. $84 billion in capital flight last year alone.
Human rights abuses abound. The head of an investment fund told the story of Sergei Magnitsky, his Moscow lawyer. In 2008, Magnitsky uncovered evidence of police corruption and embezzlement. He was dead eleven months later – imprisoned, beaten and denied critical medical treatment. One Committee member called this testimony “one of the most powerful the Committee has ever heard.” Magnitsky’s case has become a cause célèbre in Russia, an example of the systemic corruption and abuse of power that has driven tens of thousands of protesters to Moscow’s streets recently.
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Replace Jackson-Vanik With the Magnitsky Act
A number of opposition leaders — including myself, Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny and others — recently made an appeal to the U.S. Congress. We proposed that Congress repeal the outdated 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment and replace it with a tough Magnitsky act. The proposed law would allow the United States to target sanctions against more than 60 specific Russian politicians and officials who are directly responsible for the death of citizens, for illegally seizing the property of others and for falsifying elections.
Not everyone understood our position on Jackson-Vanik correctly — as if we had somehow become soft on Russia’s poor human rights record. They couldn’t be more wrong. Our position differs substantially from that of the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, and even more from the position taken by Kremlin hard-liners.
President-elect Vladimir Putin, in dealing with the West, would like to exclude any discussion of democracy, human rights and corruption. This would get in the way of the ruling elite’s main goals: to reap profits from the sale of the country’s natural resources and to transfer those funds into safe havens in the West.
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End of Jackson-Vanik Shouldn’t Be the End of Russian Accountability
Vladimir Putin’s brazen election fraud, conducted twice in the last few months, has put the Obama administration in an uncomfortable position politically. The administration touts its “reset” policy as a success, but with Russia’s recent attempts to shield Iran’s nuclear program and protection of Bashar al-Assad at the Security Council–not to mention the election-year efforts to stir up anti-Americanism–that policy is increasingly defined by American concessions to Russia.
The reset has also put its architect, current Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, in the unenviable spot of having to defend his signature achievement. McFaul has a long and distinguished career writing about Russian democratization, and the inherently political job of a diplomat requires him to either excuse or ignore behavior by the Putin administration that he has been warning against all along. But the issue that put McFaul on the defensive is the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik amendment, which punished the Soviet Union’s trade status for its restrictions on Jewish emigration.
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Putin’s election victory is a headache for the west
The Guardian
After Sunday’s Russian election, David Cameron called Vladimir Putin. He didn’t quite congratulate him, but Cameron said that he looked forward to working with Russia’s new president when he moved back into the Kremlin. The PM also said he hoped London and Moscow could “overcome the obstacles in the relationship”, which, as everyone knows, are rather large.
Putin’s election victory on Sunday poses a dilemma for all western nations, not just the UK. Nobody is any doubt that the Putin who returns to the Kremlin in May is the same Putin who has effectively run Russia for the past 12 years – prickly, uncompromising, suspicious and fond of snide remarks about western hypocrisy and double standards.
Inside Russia, the middle-class-led, Moscow-centric uprising against Putin is likely to continue. But the calculation inside EU foreign ministries is that Putin will tough out the protests and complete his new term in office until 2018. For better or for worse, then, it is Putin who will call the shots on Russia’s foreign policy and prove strategically co-operative – or not – on the western Balkans, Syria, Iran and other international problems.
Relations between London and Moscow have been tricky for nearly a decade. They were made worse by the 2006 polonium assassination of Alexander Litvinenko. Cameron has attempted a mini “reset” of ties, including a visit last year to Moscow with William Hague. But while his emphasis is on British business interests, Hague can’t afford to ignore Russia’s abysmal human rights record. Plus, there is the outstanding extradition request – rejected by Putin – for Andrei Lugovoi, Litvinenko’s alleged murderer.
“All foreign policy and diplomatic relations are a mixture of realpolitik and moralpolitik,” said Denis MacShane, Labour’s former Europe minister. He believes the “big foreign ministries of the world” need to get together to work out how to deal with Putin over the next five to 10 years, while also reaching out to Russia’s growing opposition. They need to bear in mind that Putin won’t last for ever, he said: “We should learn from lying back and having our tummy tickled by Gaddafi and Assad.”
Over the past decade, nobody had managed to come up with a successful Putinpolitik, or policy towards Russia, MacShane added. “The Germans refuse to criticise him. Mrs Clinton announced a great reset after the George Bush era. Blair rushed to embrace him. Cameron, to be fair, has been more cautious and distant. But none of this has worked.”
MacShane and other MPs will call for 60 Russian officials involved in the killing of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky to be named and shamed – and to be denied entry to the UK. Magnitsky died in prison in 2009. Officials refused him medical treatment. The 37-year-old had accused Russian interior ministry officials of having stolen £150m in taxes paid by Hermitage, a British asset management company.
The backbench debate has attracted heavyweight support from three former foreign secretaries and Tory and Labour MPs. A similar bill in the US is making progress towards Senate approval. Foreign Office officials hint there is some government will for a travel ban for corrupt officials – but it would have to be applied globally. For the moment the emphasis with Russia is on business matters – Russia is Britain’s third biggest trading partner.
According to David Clark, a former adviser to Robin Cook and chair of the Russia Foundation, visa bans and asset freezes are one of the few levers Britain has in its dealings with Moscow. “They make Russian officials extremely angry,” Clark said. “They are scared by the idea because they love to go shopping in London.
‘It isn’t like old Soviet times, with everyone penned into an insular state and not able to travel. Kremlin bureaucrats are global now. And while they proclaim Russian nationalism, they regard themselves as global citizens.” Russian officials enjoyed “hobnobbing” in Britain, Clark said – which was also a place where Russia’s elite offshores its money. He conceded, however, that there were obstacles towards taking a tougher line on Moscow, principally European disunity and dependency on Russian oil and gas. Clark singled out German and Italy, and to a lesser extent France, for their accommodating attitude towards Moscow, which saw “unilateralist commercial interests” placed above human rights. “You have to identify the point of vulnerability in Putin’s system. There is a disconnect between this greater Russia chauvinism and Russian officials jetting around the place.”
For the moment, the best cards remain with Putin. Over the past week, he has hinted that he is willing to let Britain play a role in the Nord Stream project, which will see Siberian gas pumped under the Baltic directly to Germany. He has also struck a slightly more conciliatory tone on Syria. This may be helpful. It may not. Either way, it is now Putin – and not the hapless Dmitry Medvedev – who is again the west’s interlocutor. hairy women срочный займ на карту https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php займ на карту
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