Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Russia, Syria, United States

Syrian recriminations continue. Is the tide turning towards Russia?

FRATRICIDAL SYRIAN CIVIL WAR

The continued recriminations over Syria remain fast-paced, but there is one central fact that remains unchanged: neither the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, nor his enemies have the strength to achieve outright victory. A fratricidal civil war of this scale – in which a third of the total Syrian population have now been displaced – can only end with a political settlement.

A key question is whether Britain’s parliamentary veto and abdication from military intervention (and America’s possible withdrawal under a similar scenario) will make the achievement of such a resolution of political will more or less likely? A case could be constructed either way.

The optimist might suggest that President Vladimir Putin, satisfied that his Western rivals will not tread the path that Moscow warned them most sternly against, could now become a more willing and amenable partner by delivering Assad to the negotiating table. From this stance, a combination of the G20 summit that opens in St Petersburg on Thursday, the humiliation of the British prime minister following last week’s Commons vote, and new doubts that are emerging by the day whether President Obama will execute his threatened punitive strike, all create something of a slender opportunity. If that is so, something good might yet come from the acrimony of the past few days.

Unfortunately, though, the pessimistic scenario looks more likely. Mr Putin now has the glee of satisfaction of watching Britain retreat from the Syria drama and America’s continued prevarication over whether to enforce its ‘red line’ over the use of chemical weapons. Putin is hardly the kind of leader ennobled for his munificence; instead of trying to find ground with his chastened and frustrated opponents, the Russian President is more inclined to press home his advantage and insist that he was right all along. Mr Putin is still angered over the West’s intervention in Libya, and has sought to make Syria an example in various ways.

Russia’s position has always been that the West must stay out of Syria and leave the problem to be resolved by the Kremlin. Some will baulk at that given Russia’s continued supply of arms and munitions to the Assad regime, but Vladimir Putin’s preferred solution is to help the regime in Damascus achieve a Carthaginian peace by crushing rebel units. As for the Syrian President, he is bound to feel emboldened by recent events and his acolytes hailing Mr Obama’s climbdown as the ‘beginning of the historic American retreat.’ If Assad feels that events are turning his way, what reason will he have to negotiate?

Mr Obama publicly declared that his mind was made up in using military force against Assad’s use of chemical weapons which claimed the lives of more than 1,400 civilians, more than a third of which were children. But, his insistence that he must now first ask Congress makes him look indecisive.

It is not inconceivable to believe that another attempt could be made by the British Parliament in the light of any new evidence that may emerge that action is necessary. Despite the setback of last week’s Commons vote, Britain should remain confident in itself as a nation with the will and the means to help shape a better world.

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Economic, Government, Politics, Russia, Society, United States

Bilateral relations between America and Russia…

RUSSIA ISN’T WHAT IT ONCE WAS

At the pinnacle of the Cold War, leaders from both Russia and America would meet on fairly equal terms to bargain over the fate of the world. If either titan refused to meet the other, that generally signalled a cast chill over humanity.

Yet, the idea that Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin remain genuine peers today is a delusion and remnant left over from the era of superpower confrontation. For all the bombastic rhetoric emanating from the Kremlin, the inescapable reality is that America possesses a widening advantage over Russia on every possible measure of national power: from economic strength to its military might.

The decision by Mr Obama to cancel a proposed summit with Mr Putin in Moscow next month, ostensibly because of the furore surrounding Russia’s decision to grant the US fugitive and whistleblower Edward Snowden asylum status, was both inevitable and eminently sensible. Washington’s justified response to the posturing of a weaker rival was credible because Mr Snowden offered himself as a convenient antagonist to needle the United States.

The White House, of course, has not escaped criticism from some quarters at home. Some are asking why, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union managed to hold summits even during the depths of the Cold War – when the divide separating the rival superpowers was even greater – why President Obama, who has regularly stood by his faith and doctrine in resetting relations with Russia, could not have gone through with the September Summit?

Any historical comparison, though, is false; the Cold War ended almost 22-years ago, and America has always been perceived as the silent victor. But as Mr Obama has rightly pointed out, the Kremlin acts as if it continues, almost reflexively, to take the opposite point of view to Washington on every conceivable problem of the moment. Putin’s nationalistic approach to a domestic audience may play well at home with some, but one may wonder whether the Russian President has even noticed how much the world has changed since the demise of the Soviet Union in December 1991 when the red flag with the hammer and sickle was hauled down for the last time from the Kremlin towers.

No one should doubt that the global balance of power is turning against the West, but Russia cannot be classified as being among the world’s rising powers. For one, the country’s population is in remorseless decline. Poor health, alcoholism and emigration are steadily reducing the number of Russian citizens. The UN has forecast that by 2050 the country will have lost some 36 million people, reducing its overall population to 107 million – Uganda, a country whose territory is less than 2 per cent the size of Russia, has a population not much above 103 million.

Compare and contrast America, with a populace of more than 300 million people – or even Britain, which now has the fastest growing population in Europe. The UK adds about 400,000 people every year, which is close to the annual rate at which Russians are dying off. While some Britons remain uneasy over the scale of immigration on these islands, it is true that fewer people make a weaker economy.

And another reason for Russia’s long-term decline is due to its actual economic health. Today, the American economy remains eight times bigger than Russia’s. Remarkably, too, is that Russia’s gross domestic product is still 30 per cent smaller than Britain’s. Its economic strength has been artificially inflated by high oil prices and the vast energy reserves it has at its disposal. Despite that, Russia’s customers are increasingly turning to shale gas from fracking, and future oil prices will become an uncertain indicator for economic health.

Whilst it is true that Russia can act as an obstructionist on a range of international issues (Syria being one such example) one should seek to understand whether Mr Putin is deliberately irritating the U.S. rather than being a competitive rival to the West.

Today, military might and the size of a country’s nuclear arsenal count far less than its economic prowess, its entrepreneurialism, competitiveness and how central it is to the global trading system. With neither the EU nor China having the desire to send fleets and armies to the opposite ends of the earth, the United States remains the autonomnous military superpower having achieved that position largely by default. Despite Mr Putin’s bluster, Russia no longer has the capacity it once had in challenging America as a superpower.

Economically, Russia is a mid-sized power, with a GDP that is barely a 10th of that of the US. Russia is often quoted for its corruption, its scant respect for the rule of law and its continued dependence on raw materials, particularly oil and gas.

Had September’s summit gone ahead, Mr Obama would have been on a hiding to nothing as Vladimir Putin’s obstructionist style would have seen to that. Such summits are not spontaneous, one-off occasions, but are carefully choreographed and prepared; usually communiqués are worked out well in advance. Presently, however, apart from the evident dislike between the two men, the differences appear unbridgeable – on Syria’s continuing bloody civil war, missile defence and Mr Putin’s internal repression, to name but a few of the issues. Moscow’s granting of asylum status to Edward Snowden would have been the last straw. Had Mr Obama attended the summit in Moscow and returned empty-handed, as was all but certain, he would have been pilloried at home by Republicans as being weak and over-trusting.

With bilateral relations as low as they are, it isn’t inconceivable to say they will remain that way so long as Mr Putin is on the world stage.

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China, Foreign Affairs, Government, Japan, Military, Russia, United States

Russian war games in a show of strength…

RUSSIA FLEXES ITS MILITARY MUSCLES

RUSSIA has just started the biggest military exercises since the Soviet era, involving 160,000 troops and about 5,000 tanks across Siberia and the far eastern region in a massive show of strength.

Throughout this week dozens of Russian Pacific Fleet ships and around 130 combat aircraft will take part in military manoeuvres. Part of those drills will be on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific, where thousands of troops have been ferried and airlifted from the mainland.

Russia’s deputy defence minister, Anatoly Antonov, has made clear and assured foreign military attachés that the exercises are not directed against any particular nation, though some military analysts believe the show of force is aimed at China and Japan.

A retired officer of the Russian military’s general staff, Konstantin Sivkov, gave an interview to the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta and briefed that the Sakhalin part of the manoeuvres are intended to simulate a response to a hypothetical attack by Japanese and US forces.

Russia and Japan are currently in dispute over a group of Pacific islands, which Russia calls the Kurils and Japan calls the Northern Territories.

Russia tanks move across Sakhalin Island during military exercises seen by many as a warning to China and Japan.

Russia tanks move across Sakhalin Island during military exercises seen by many as a warning to China and Japan.

Mr Antonov said that Russia had warned its neighbours about the exercise before it started, and provided particularly detailed information to China, in line with an agreement that envisages a mutual exchange of data about military activities along their 2,700-mile border.

The Cold War-era rivals have forged what they have described as a ‘strategic partnership’ since the 1991 Soviet Union collapse, developing close political, economic and military ties in a shared aspiration to counter US power around the world.

Russia has supplied sophisticated weapons to China, and the neighbours have conducted joint military drills, most recently a naval exercise in the Sea of Japan earlier this month.

But many in Russia have felt increasingly uneasy about the growing might of China.

Russia and China had territorial disputes for centuries. Relations between Communist China and the Soviet Union ruptured in the 1960s, and the two fought a brief border conflict in 1969. It wasn’t until 2004 that Moscow and Beijing signed a new border treaty, which saw Russia yielding control over several islands in the Amur River. Some in Russia’s sparsely populated far east feared that the concessions might tempt China’s resolve or by teasing its appetite.

Alexander Khramchikhin, an independent Moscow-based military analyst, said the massive exercise held in the areas along the border with China was clearly aimed at Beijing. He said: ‘It’s quite obvious that the land part of the exercise is directed at China, while sea and island part of it is aimed at Japan.’

Mr Khramchikhin, who recently posted an article online portraying a grim picture of Russia being routed in a surprise Chinese attack, said that the war games along their shared border was intended to discourage China from harbouring expansionist plots. In his article, Mr Khramchikhin wrote: ‘China may now think that Russia has finally become more aware of what could happen.’

The manoeuvres are part of recent efforts to boost the military’s mobility and combat readiness after years of post-Soviet decline, but they have far exceeded previous drills in both numbers and territorial scope.

As part of the war games, held across several time zones, some army units have been deployed to areas thousands of miles away from their bases. Paratroopers have been flown across Russia in long-range transport aircraft, and some units were ferried to Sakhalin under escort of navy ships and fighter jets.

A decade of post-Soviet economic meltdown has crippled Russia’s military capability, with a lack of funds for building and maintaining equipment, and mass draft-dodging of soldiers due to corruption and bullying.

The Kremlin responded to weaknesses revealed in a brief conflict with Georgia in 2008 by launching reforms intended to turn the bloated military into a more modern, agile and rapid reaction force.

The government has also unveiled an ambitious arms modernisation programme, though this has come under attack by a number of analysts describing the proposals as ‘clearly insufficient’.

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