Posts Tagged ‘reset’
Kasparov: Why Vladimir Putin Is Immune To American Reset
Lecture to Heritage Foundation by Garry Kasparov
Thank you for inviting me to attend this important event here at the Heritage Foundation today. My thanks to Speaker Boehner[1] and all the other participants for their interest and their comments.
For a little introduction of myself, there’s one fact from my biography that is always omitted. Many here might not be aware that I myself am from the Deep South, right next to Georgia. I’m referring to the Deep South of the Soviet Union. That’s my hometown of Baku, Azerbaijan, where I was born in 1963, next to what is now the Republic of Georgia.
Of course, much has changed since then. There are no more Communists in the Republic of Georgia—much as there are no more Democrats in the state of Georgia—and Georgia is as good a place as any to begin my talk on the Putin regime’s immunity to America’s attempts at a “reset.” Georgia is currently under great pressure from the U.S. and others to allow Russia to join the World Trade Organization, despite two large pieces of Georgian sovereign territory being occupied by Russian forces.
Many in the media and even some governments refer to Abkhazia and South Ossetia as “disputed territories,” not occupied, ignoring the fact they were taken by military force. Often, this is the same media that refers to parts of Palestine as “occupied” by Israel. Despite heavy pressure from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Georgia has remained staunchly pro-democratic and pro-Western, and yet it appears that getting Russia into the WTO is of greater importance to this U.S. Administration than protecting the rights and territory of an ally.
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U.S.-Russian Trade Ties Face Some Political Snags
With relations between Russia and the United States on edge over Syrian policy and strident anti-American statements by the Russian government in response to political protests here, the Obama administration and its Democratic allies in Congress have begun an aggressive push to end cold-war-era trade restrictions and make Russia a full trade partner.
The seemingly incongruous and politically fraught campaign to persuade Congress to grant permanent, normal trade status reflects a stark flip in circumstances: suddenly, after more than 35 years of tussling over trade, Russia has the upper hand.
In December, Russia became the last major economy to win admission to the World Trade Organization — a bid that was supported by the Obama administration because it required Russia to bring numerous laws into conformity with international standards, including tighter safeguards for intellectual property. It was also part of the so-called reset in relations with the Kremlin.
But if Congress does not repeal the restrictions, adopted in 1974 to pressure the Soviet Union to allow Jewish emigration and now largely irrelevant, the United States will soon be in violation of W.T.O. rules. American corporations could be put at a serious disadvantage — paying higher tariffs, for instance, than European and Asian competitors, which would immediately enjoy the benefits of Russia’s new status.
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Our Friends the Russians: The State Department and John Kerry still believe in the ‘reset’
In its latest display of political retribution, the Kremlin is putting a human-rights lawyer and corruption whistleblower on trial for tax evasion. The notable news here is that Sergei Magnitsky died in police custody two years ago. His prosecution is a poke in the eye of the man’s family, the U.S. and the rule of law in Russia.
Magnitsky worked for an American law firm in Moscow whose clients included a Jewish rights group and the investment house Hermitage Capital. In 2008 he uncovered evidence of police corruption and embezzlement. The police promptly put him in prison, claiming he had helped Hermitage evade taxes. Eleven months later, he died.
A Russian government committee found that Magnitsky was beaten and denied treatment for pancreatitis and recommended that his prison doctors and interrogators be investigated. This didn’t happen. Instead, with the Kremlin’s blessing, the police last summer reopened the case against a dead man and have now announced plans for a trial.
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The Failure of the “Russia Reset”: Next Steps for the United States and Europe
Abstract: The policies of the United States and the European Union should encourage and support Russian civil society and Russia’s democratic modernizers. And, if Russia continues to abrogate its international commitments to basic freedoms and human rights, the U.S. and the EU must stand up for democratic values and make it clear that Russian aggression will not be tolerated. President Obama’s Russia “reset” policy achieves the opposite. Just as the U.S. reset has shaped European thinking, overly lenient signals from the EU to Russia will have a negative effect on U.S. interests, including support of democracy and promotion of economic freedom. The U.S. should collaborate with individual European allies as well as the European Union to set an agenda that better defends transatlantic interests from Russian aggression.
President Barack Obama’s Russia “reset” policy has encouraged European Union politicians who have long advocated a “softly, softly” approach toward Russia to push for a “fast-forward” in Brussels’ relationship with Moscow. Clearly alluding to President Obama’s Russia-policy pronouncement at the EU–Russia summit in June 2010, President of the European Council Herman van Rompuy stated: “With Russia we do not need a ‘reset.’ We want a ‘fast forward.’”[1]
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What Putin’s Return Means for U.S.-Russia Policy
Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin as Russia’s President next spring will once again align real and formal power in Russia, as they were during his earlier two terms in office. Although the Russian Prime Minister is nominally subordinate to the President, Putin has dominated Russian politics throughout Dmitri Medvedev’s presidency. As if to underscore that point, both Putin and Medvedev have implied that they had agreed on Putin’s return as a condition for Medvedev’s assumption of the presidency in 2008. (The Constitution banned a third consecutive term for Putin.) Although that was likely true only in a general way—that Putin reserved the right to return should circumstances warrant—the public insinuations stripped Medvedev of credibility as a leader and his achievements in office of any lasting political worth.
And there were achievements both at home and abroad, no matter how artificial the so-called Medvedev-Putin tandem may now appear. Abroad, Medvedev’s more “modern” image eased the repair of relations with the United States and Europe after the dark days of the last two years of the Bush Administration. At home, Medvedev’s presence as a second pole of power, albeit very circumscribed, fostered a much-needed broader elite discussion of the challenges facing Russia and the appropriate policy responses to them, enticing participation from progressives suspicious of Putin. Putin’s presence, meanwhile, reassured the more retrograde elements that Medvedev’s “reforms” would not spin out of control as Gorbachev’s had a generation earlier. As a result, Russia’s standing in the world improved and a spotlight was turned on the requirements for Russian modernization in the face of the corrosive effects of “legal nihilism.” Little was accomplished in a practical way in this latter portfolio, but there was at least hope, and hope can kindle morale and, ultimately, action.
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FPI Analysis: Moving Beyond the U.S.-Russian “Reset”
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The Autumn of the US-Russia Reset
A colleague and I have described the post-Soviet era in Russia as the “age of impunity,” whereby even the most howlingly obvious crimes of man or state are implausibly denied or whitewashed in a manner redolent of Stalinist propaganda. Two such examples have furnished themselves in quick succession in the last month, one relating to the conviction of a notorious Russian arms dealer and the other to a Russian nuclear scientist’s facilitation of Iran’s atom bomb project. Both acts would have spelt the end of the US-Russian “reset” without the added complications of renewed brinkmanship over the placement of a US missile defense shield in Eastern Europe and the drubbing delivered to Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in a transparently fraudulent parliamentary election on December 4th.
First the arms dealer. On November 2nd, Viktor Bout was sentenced in a New York court of attempting to sell heavy weapons to FARC, Colombia’s Marxist-Leninist terrorist group. Nicknamed the “Merchant of Death” and vaguely the model for Nicolas Cage’s character in the forgettable film Lord of War, Bout was a one-man clearinghouse of post-Soviet munitions for dictators and murderous regimes. There was scarcely a civil war fought in Africa in the 1990s and 2000s—and consequently, a limb dismembered or body decimated—without Bout’s hardware. He was chummy with the indicted war criminal and ex-president of Liberia, Charles Taylor. According to Bout’s biographer, Douglas Farah, the Merchant of Death was also seen schmoozing with Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, just prior to the second Israel-Lebanon War, which saw the Party of God firing Russian-made, armor-piercing antitank weapons that shocked even the IDF in terms of their sophistication and impact.
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ECFR Report: Dealing with a post-BRIC Russia
European Council on Foreign Relations
The European Council on Foreign Relations has released its latest report, ‘Dealing with a post-BRIC Russia’ by ECFR Policy Fellows Ben Judah, Jana Kobzova and Nicu Popescu.
The overall outcome of parliamentary elections on December 4th – with only tame parties standing in opposition to Putin – is not in doubt, but the specific results may signal that the Putin system is losing its legitimacy, just as he readies himself to retake the presidency (possibly until 2024). But Putin would not be returning to the same Russia as when he last held the presidency: buffeted by economic turbulence and fearful of stagnation, Russia is now post-BRIC. It no longer believes it shares the same power-trajectory as Brazil, India and China; instead, it thinks it is in relative decline with the West.
‘Dealing with a post-BRIC Russia’ looks at the domestic and foreign policy constraints on a post-BRIC Russia that will shape Putin’s next presidency. It analyses how Europe should rethink its relationship with Moscow. The authors argue that:
The economic crisis has exposed a governance crisis inside Russia: even Putin now admits that as much as 80% of Kremlin orders have been ignored in the regions. Instead of modernising, Russia in 2010 was as corrupt as Papua New Guinea, had the property rights of Kenya and was as competitive as Sri Lanka.
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Sanctions urged on Russian officials over abuses
The Obama administration is coming under pressure from Congress to support sanctions on Russian officials who are known human rights violators in return for repealing a cold war-era law that could limit bilateral trade after Russia joins the World Trade Organisation.
The White House is concerned that sanctions would harm a tentative thaw in relations with the Kremlin and is instead proposing the establishment of a foundation to promote democracy in Russia, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.
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