Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

G20 and America’s defining moment…

WATERSHED MOMENT

The G20 summit that ended in St Petersburg yesterday failed to produce any kind of agreement on the Syrian crisis. The chasm and bridge separating the United States and Russia on Syria is as wide as it has ever been. Yet, few such gatherings in recent years have offered a truer picture of how and where the real balance of global power lies. A genuine watershed in international affairs may at last have arrived; replacing a vestige of what has been referred to of late as the ‘Arab Spring’ – a term synonymous with upheaval and chaos spreading through many Islamic states.

Related:

The two-day gathering in St Petersburg have confirmed many things. It underscored, for example, just how determined Vladimir Putin is in reasserting Russia on the world stage. It displayed quite clearly, too, that a mercantilist China will do nothing to unsettle its economic interests, and in the process laid bare Europe’s total inability to act on its own.

A senior Kremlin official was reported to have said that no one pays any attention to Britain, a ‘small island’. But could the same not be said of the rest of the EU? Germany, for instance, Europe’s economic powerhouse, is notable only for its deafening silence. France, eager to push a military agenda in punishing the Assad regime for its alleged use of chemical weapons, is unwilling to do so without America’s lead. Other G20 participants wring their hands in aghast and disbelief at what is happening in Syria, but most are keen to shriek away from any involvement. At a moment of high international drama, it leads us back – as it invariably does – to the United States and its role in the world.

It shouldn’t have required a Kremlin official to point out Britain’s diminished influence in the world; the empire ended more than half-a-century ago. But, like it or not, with the United Nations no more than a fractious and divided talking shop, the U.S. is the closest thing we have to a global policeman. No country, it has been argued, has the right to behave as such, and America’s actual ability to change history, for all its military might and superpower status, is sometimes exaggerated – not least by itself. We need to look no further than the sorry state of Iraq, a decade after George W Bush’s invasion, to provide clarity to the argument. In any major crisis, however, all eyes turn to Washington, as they are now in Syria as the regime is accused of violating a ban on the use of chemical weapons. Syria is a signatory against the banned use of such weapons, and yet here we have a paralysed UN Security Council that is powerless to enforce an international binding treaty.

With a vote in Congress on the use of U.S. military force in Syria to be held on the 9th September, the next few days will be decisive. Britain’s role on the world stage has been diminished given the veto in the House of Commons last week, but for President Obama the stakes are vastly higher. On Syria, Mr Obama’s approach has been feckless. First, he declared that Assad must go without saying how, and then laid down his ‘red lines’ over the use of chemical weapons. Later, he announced his decision to use force, and more recently has passed the buck to Congress on Capitol Hill. Deep down, many will suspect that he would prefer to stay well out of Syria given what has happened in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Syria is ablaze and arguably much more contentious than anything the United States has dealt with in the past 30-years. Mr Obama’s uncertainty in how to proceed in Syria is resonating in all corners of the world.

If present indications are anything to go on, the House of Representatives could well follow the House of Commons in opposing military action. If so, a definitive moment will have arrived. Unlike David Cameron, Obama will either defy his legislature and go ahead with strikes, or he will acquiesce, and there will be no military response. If military action is taken off the table, not only would Barack Obama’s presidency be gravely weakened at home, but in the eyes of the world so too would the credibility of America as a global policeman. Either way, a watershed is at hand.

Standard
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.

Standard
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.

Standard