Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

European Union, Foreign Affairs, Government, Politics, Russia, Society, Ukraine

Ukraine and the difficulties ahead…

UKRAINE

Over the past two weeks events in Ukraine have moved fast. No day over the last fortnight has past in which something critical has happened. Following the ferocious rioting that led to 88 deaths, Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s former president, was dramatically dethroned. Events in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, are being perceived as one of the most epochal developments in central Europe since the end of the Second World War. Disruption is far from over.

Ukraine is deeply divided, with half of the population in support of joining the European Union. These people see the benefits brought to Poland, a country of similar size to the Ukraine, that is now firmly embedded within the EU and Nato. Poland’s GDP is now three times what it once was and people there enjoy living standards that are envied by those Ukrainians who wish to see their country afforded similar benefits. The other half, though, are deeply loyal to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and aim to see Ukraine integrated as part of Putin’s wider Eurasia Union, a new and emerging federation of countries aligned to the political aspirations of Moscow.

Ukraine’s future leadership and direction is far from settled. With no clear coalescence around an alternative leader, Ukraine remains more representative of a volcano that has erupted with extraordinary violence and with the after-effects still yet to be felt. Russia has been a dominant force over much of Ukraine’s history, and the world awaits to see how Putin will play his hand.

Hidden from view in the confrontation that has ensued in the centre of Kiev is a chronic economic and financial crisis. Whoever replaces Mr Yanukovych will need to tackle pressing issues to secure continued Russian funding of the country’s debt. Without this, a more widespread collapse beckons.

For its part, the EU needs to look critically at its mooted trade agreements with the country to ensure a fair balance of reciprocal benefits. A major criticism at the present is that these favour EU exports over Ukraine’s well-endowed agricultural sector. Given this delicate economic situation, it is not just Russia but also the West that needs to proceed with great caution before the election of a new government in Ukraine.

The great fear for Western leaders is that Russia will intervene militarily in the affairs of its most important geopolitical neighbour. Such a threat cannot be ruled out. Putin will view this kind of struggle as a matter of personal prestige – he has a renowned reputation in humiliating his rivals, rather than a record of striking appeasement and deals with them. While in power, Mr Yanukovych, became one of Russia’s main allies.

That Mr Putin may act rashly in the days ahead was one of the ‘many dangers’ that William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, has alluded to. Mr Hague also highlighted the possibility of renewed violence, or that ethnically Russian parts of the country, such as Crimea, will attempt to secede. This situation represents more of a direct challenge to the EU in particular, which has been attempting to woo Ukraine with a trade deal worth hundreds of millions of euros a year. Such a deal is not the same as membership of the EU, but for many it will not be far off. It would, for example, offer Ukraine guaranteed entry into a huge and developed market on its doorstep. Unlike Mr Putin’s recent offers and bribes to his neighbour of cheap gas and serviceable debt, the EU deal has few strings attached.

Ukraine needs a government, and elections will be held in May. In the coming days and weeks, Western leaders must do everything they can to promote a working economy in Ukraine so that its institutions can be free from corruption and outside interference.

Setting out a path to normalisation will be difficult, not least because the opposition forces in Ukraine are deeply divided. Hatred of Viktor Yanukovych masks profound differences in belief and ideology. An early and sympathetic engagement is vital if Ukraine’s open revolt and revolution is not to shatter the country even further and spark dangerous unrest across the entire region.

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Foreign Affairs, Government, History, Middle East, Syria, United Nations, United States

The US Secretary of State faces challenges, but is John Kerry sufficiently supported?

US FOREIGN POLICY

John Kerry has illuminated the paradox of current American foreign policy. No where is this more embodied than in the Middle East, the region that continues to consume so much time and effort for the US Secretary of State. Rarely has the diplomacy and energies spent been as active and as bold as they are today. But flamboyant charges that the US is enfeebled and in retreat are also accusations that are running in parallel.

Mr Kerry is tacitly involved on three immensely challenging and overlapping fronts: his efforts to end the bloody civil war in Syria; the continued search for a nuclear deal with Iran that might end more than three decades of hostility between Washington and Tehran; and, the renewed and engaging process to secure a two-state settlement between Israel and Palestinians that has eluded negotiators since 1948.

An analysis of the progress being made will reveal a mixed picture. Encouragingly, the best advances have been made with Iran, with an interim deal that parts of the country’s nuclear programme have been frozen for a period of six months. This deal could yet unravel, but the U.S. and Iran are engaged in a process of constructive dialogue.

To the other extreme, Syria constitutes a total failure. The recent Geneva conference which could not even deliver an agreement on bringing humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of civilians, trapped by the savagery of the conflict, epitomises this rank failure. Vladimir Putin’s Russia continues to arm and supply the regime, while progress on securing Assad’s chemical weapons and stockpiles is, at best, described as being limited. More accurately, it would not be amiss to say that progress in removing Assad’s arsenal has been brought to a stuttering halt.

The current state of play in dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is less clear. Whilst Mr Kerry has been doggedly determined in keeping talks going, his indefatigability may be perceived from different angles of thought. For those who support him, this involvement and persistent diligence is proof of resolve. It is also recognition of his courage by placing his prestige on the line in a way that many of his predecessors never did. For the detractors, though, the US Secretary of State is merely on an ego trip, driven largely by the naïve belief that hope will triumph over experience. The more impartial may wonder whether Mr Kerry’s goal of a ‘framework’ plan – an agreement by the two sides on the shape of the final agreement with the details being worked out later – is really any different from the other diplomatic formulae’, such as the ‘road maps’, that have littered nearly seven decades of futile peacekeeping.

Underpinning Mr Kerry’s efforts on all three fronts is the ‘damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t’ scenario faced by the US in the Middle East. Most expect America to lead, even if its ability to shape and bend the region to its will is often grossly exaggerated. When the U.S. has taken decisive action, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, it has been accused of being a blundering warmonger. Following on from these two long and costly interventions, Americans will have no appetite for another. Yet, when it steadfastly refuses to robustly intervene in Syria (or to a lesser extent in Egypt), it is denounced for abandoning its responsibilities, and of condoning and supporting human rights abuses. It can hardly wave a magic wand and expect all to be well.

American history tends to suggest that the most effective Secretaries of State tend to be those that have been closest to their respective Presidents. Henry Kissinger, for instance, under President Richard Nixon, or James Baker who held post during the reign of President George HW Bush, spring to mind. Secretary of State Kerry is barely a year into his tenure, and so it is too early to say whether he will join this company. Success, however, on one of the three major challenges he is faced with would amount to a distinguished and noteworthy achievement.

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Britain, Middle East, Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

Can the West still stand by following new evidence from Syria?

SYRIA

The evidence stemming from the organised mass murder by the Assad regime in Syria have led to international war crime experts using phrases that are loaded with historical weight and meaning. One such term now being used is ‘concentration camp’. Such terms should never be used lightly.

Photographic evidence smuggled out by a Syrian military policeman, who has since defected to opposition forces, adds to the chronicled death of some 11,000 people, many of whom appeared to have been tortured before they died.

The former chief prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone, Sir Desmond de Silva, has described many of these photographs as being reminiscent of Nazi death camps such as Auschwitz and Belsen. Such comparisons should not be made without a great deal of sober reflection.

That war crimes experts now feel able to use these terms to describe the slaughter in Syria should give the world pause for thought. Such an assessment and use of rhetoric suggests everyone with a stake in the Syrian conflict – particularly those countries in the Middle East adding proxy support to the Assad regime – need to take a step back and reassess their positions on a conflict that has been going on for almost three years.

Wholesale slaughter in Syria should not come as a surprise. In July last year, the United Nations had already spoken of a death toll exceeding 100,000. However, if 11,000 bodies showing signs of torture turn up in just one area, it suggests that the figure declared by the UN may be a massive underestimation.

Following detailed examination we now have a greater understanding of the nature of many of these deaths. Not all have been casualties of fighting, or those caught up in the collateral damage caused by the indiscriminate shelling of civilian neighbourhoods. Experts are now learning that many were the result of systematic imprisonment and murder on an almost industrial scale.

Assad tested the West’s resolve last year with the use of chemical weapons against a rebel neighbourhood in Aleppo. Possible military repercussions against the Syrian government stalled when MPs in the House of Commons refused to endorse the use of limited force by the British military. Partly as a result, the United States backed away too from its plans in striking at the Syrian regime. The way was then left open for Vladimir Putin of Russia to find a way in brokering a deal that would involve the dismantling of the regime’s inventory and stockpiles of chemical weapons, with Assad remaining in power. But in light of this new evidence, is this diplomatic stalemate still a tenable option?

These revelations were timed to coincide with last week’s peace talks on Syria that were held in Geneva. Some interested parties have said that a ‘peace settlement’ might simply entrench the Assad regime and allow its barbarism to continue unchecked.  Following military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the West is rightly cautious about further military adventures in the Middle East that might involve ‘boots on the ground’. But with a new light now adding a new dimension to the horrors of the Syrian conflict, can the West really stand idly by? Being quiescent witnesses to a new holocaust requires action the West has so far been unprepared for.

 

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