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Some closing considerations about 1989
Nov. 15th, 2009 09:02 amWhen I hear that sentence "I never dreamed..."( Read more... )
PUtin's abysmal stupidity
Aug. 17th, 2008 10:59 amSome people credit Putin with some sort of scoundrelly brilliance for managing an international crime that nobody seems able or willing to stop. That is nonsense. In terms of Putin's own international policy goals, he has done himself an immense amount of no good.
What are Putin's goals? Roughly speaking, they amount to the reconstruction of the Soviet Union, at least at its European end. He evidently regards Western links, not only with old parts of the Soviet Union like the Ukraine and the Baltic states, but even in former client states such as Poland, as an intrusion. And here is the first bit of stupidity: where these freshly independent nations already have good reason to distrust Russian influence, he does not even try to woo them. Or if he does, he is not very good at it. Where Europe and America come with fistfuls of euros and dollars, big smiles, warm friendly talk of common heritage and mutual respect, Putin has tended to bully and has, on the whole, very little to offer. His oil and gas come at market prices, and are so handled as to give a sense, not of civilized mutual exchange and mutual advantage, but of blackmail. There is no visible attempt to rebuild the relationship about an idea of rationality and mutual respect. No doubt, the immensely rich West Europeans and the Americans with their colossal armaments do have their own interests to push, and no doubt their polite manners do imply a certain amount of self-serving. But Russia never shows anything but the naked knife. Which, in countries in which attempted genocide (the HOlodmor in the Ukraine, the Russification and mass deportation of locals in the Baltics) is a living memory, is not a clever kind of behaviour. When you add that Western Europe and America stand, in the eyes of East Europeans, for wealth, progress, freedom, even religious freedom and respect for tradition - for a culture that is admirable and admired in nearly every way - Russia stands both for a long tradition of tyranny and for social and economic backwardness. For anyone in Warsaw, Talinn or Kyiv, the choice between the West and Russia is a no-brainer. (Except of course for the large pro-Russian party in Ukraine, which is based not on such views, but on a sense of shared nationhood and history.)
In this context, the invasion of Georgia is something so colossally stupid as to seriously force doubts as to Putin's sanity. It is, to begin with, pathetically poorly concealed. When a country starts an attempt to bring a violent breakaway province back under control, and within twenty-four hours has its army completely smashed by a massive invasion from the third party that had been fostering the rebellion, it does not take genius to realize that it has fallen into an already prepared trap. Anyone who knows anything about the functioning of armies knows that you simply cannot gather together (over mountain terrain!) and send into action forces so enormous, with their supplies and weapons all ready for action, unless weeks of preparation had been carried out. When the Western heads of state and government ask for an opinion from their defence and intelligence staff, the answer will come back unanimous: it was a Russian trap. Russia wanted war and got it. Instead of dividing the West between people willing to believe Putin and people who see him for what he is, this transparent trap will have driven them closer together.
Second, there is the incredible imbalance between the goal achieved (if it has been achieved) and the damage it does. In terms of Putin's ultimate goals, probably the most important target would be the Ukraine, the second-largest country in Europe and the only one with a large and consistent pro-Russian party. The assault upon Georgia, with the help of hired Ossete thugs unleashed to commit all the kind of terrorist outrages that the world most fears and hates, will result in an immediate recoil. It would have been clear to anyone that if Georgia had been admitted to NATO as they had asked for, Putin would never have dared invade it. All the fears of the Ukraine - which, like Georgia, is an Orthodox country - will have been reinforced; let alone those of less Russophile countries. One day after Putin unleashed his troops and his government allowed itself such language as "scum" for the Georgian government and that "Georgia's territorial integrity is no longer an issue", Poland signed a nuclear weapons agreement with the United States - with not a word of disagreement from even the most anti-American groups in Europe. The context was too obvious to everyone. This signature is a diplomatic disaster of the first magnitude for Putin: it seals Poland, Russia's gate to Europe, against him, and threatens similar developments in the Ukraine. Poland and Ukraine are politically quite close and tend to act together.
All this for Georgia? And were the conquest of Georgia at least certain! The unanimous reaction of America and all the Europeans seems to have made an impact in Moscow. The demand that the democratically elected Georgian president, Michael Saakhashvili, should resign, has been silently dropped, and even the talk of partitioning the country is no longer as confident as it was. Behaviour on the ground is equally nervous and indecisive, suggesting that the bear has realized that it has got its paw very much into a trap of its own making. In spite of their complete military victory, the Russian troops seem terrified of seizing the moment: they crawl forward a few miles, then stop, then crawl forward again. There is no military reason for them to do so: Georgian resistance, for all practical purposes, no longer exist. And in the occupied areas it is the same story: the Russians unleashed the Ossete paramilitaries they had armed and backed - at the same time as they denied responsibility for their atrocities and actually begged the Georgian police to return to the city of Gori and restore order. This is all is evidence of nervousness, confusion, and a general lack of direction from the top. Putin and his associates must be wondering: "What do we do now?"
In this context, the worst thing anyone could possibly do would be to show any yielding to Putin's brutality and demands. Show a stony face to the bully, and he will crumble. Give him space to bully further - and you will be the next victim. And if you think that is a remote possiblity, just ask the shareholders in BP and other companies who had been unwise enough to invest in Russia.
EDITED IN: Now Angela Merkel, Chancellor of GErmany, who had been the most important opponent of admitting Georgia to NATO, has stated in front of a crowd in Tbilisi that she favours it. Does anyone need more evidence to show that Putin has been a fool?
EDITED IN AGAIN: And yet more Georgia bills come flooding in. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/08/ukraine_acts.html. This one could be even more damaging than Poland's, since it seriously compromises the Russian fleet.
AND AGAIN - ANOTHER BODY BLOW From the Miami Herald:
Criticized by the West, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday asked China and four ex-Soviet nations to sign a declaration of support for Russia's role in the conflict in Georgia.
But Russia's hopes of gathering support were dealt a huge blow when the five countries denounced the use of force and called for respect for every country's territorial integrity. The joint declaration from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization deepens Russia's international isolation.
Medvedev had appealed to the alliance - which consists of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - for unanimous support of Russia's response to Georgia's "aggression."
Medvedev's appeal had raised fears in Western capitals of the emergence of a competing strategic alliance to NATO forming around Russia - but the other Asian nations may have been reluctant to strain their relations with Europe and the United States.
Medvedev also discussed the situation in Georgia's breakaway regions with Chinese President Hu Jintao. China has traditionally been wary of supporting separatist movements, mindful of its own problems with Tibet and Muslims in the western territory of Xinjiang.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying "the situation in the region ... should be resolved in dialogue."
Did Putin seriously think that China, with its own problems in Tibet and Uighur Sinkiang, would support this sort of border redrawing? Or that they would be grateful to him for raining on their beautiful Olympic parade? And that four countries which share Georgia's past and memories of Russian rule would be so eager to make a rod for their own backs? Well, if he really needs friends, I dare say that Robert Mugabe is still available.
What are Putin's goals? Roughly speaking, they amount to the reconstruction of the Soviet Union, at least at its European end. He evidently regards Western links, not only with old parts of the Soviet Union like the Ukraine and the Baltic states, but even in former client states such as Poland, as an intrusion. And here is the first bit of stupidity: where these freshly independent nations already have good reason to distrust Russian influence, he does not even try to woo them. Or if he does, he is not very good at it. Where Europe and America come with fistfuls of euros and dollars, big smiles, warm friendly talk of common heritage and mutual respect, Putin has tended to bully and has, on the whole, very little to offer. His oil and gas come at market prices, and are so handled as to give a sense, not of civilized mutual exchange and mutual advantage, but of blackmail. There is no visible attempt to rebuild the relationship about an idea of rationality and mutual respect. No doubt, the immensely rich West Europeans and the Americans with their colossal armaments do have their own interests to push, and no doubt their polite manners do imply a certain amount of self-serving. But Russia never shows anything but the naked knife. Which, in countries in which attempted genocide (the HOlodmor in the Ukraine, the Russification and mass deportation of locals in the Baltics) is a living memory, is not a clever kind of behaviour. When you add that Western Europe and America stand, in the eyes of East Europeans, for wealth, progress, freedom, even religious freedom and respect for tradition - for a culture that is admirable and admired in nearly every way - Russia stands both for a long tradition of tyranny and for social and economic backwardness. For anyone in Warsaw, Talinn or Kyiv, the choice between the West and Russia is a no-brainer. (Except of course for the large pro-Russian party in Ukraine, which is based not on such views, but on a sense of shared nationhood and history.)
In this context, the invasion of Georgia is something so colossally stupid as to seriously force doubts as to Putin's sanity. It is, to begin with, pathetically poorly concealed. When a country starts an attempt to bring a violent breakaway province back under control, and within twenty-four hours has its army completely smashed by a massive invasion from the third party that had been fostering the rebellion, it does not take genius to realize that it has fallen into an already prepared trap. Anyone who knows anything about the functioning of armies knows that you simply cannot gather together (over mountain terrain!) and send into action forces so enormous, with their supplies and weapons all ready for action, unless weeks of preparation had been carried out. When the Western heads of state and government ask for an opinion from their defence and intelligence staff, the answer will come back unanimous: it was a Russian trap. Russia wanted war and got it. Instead of dividing the West between people willing to believe Putin and people who see him for what he is, this transparent trap will have driven them closer together.
Second, there is the incredible imbalance between the goal achieved (if it has been achieved) and the damage it does. In terms of Putin's ultimate goals, probably the most important target would be the Ukraine, the second-largest country in Europe and the only one with a large and consistent pro-Russian party. The assault upon Georgia, with the help of hired Ossete thugs unleashed to commit all the kind of terrorist outrages that the world most fears and hates, will result in an immediate recoil. It would have been clear to anyone that if Georgia had been admitted to NATO as they had asked for, Putin would never have dared invade it. All the fears of the Ukraine - which, like Georgia, is an Orthodox country - will have been reinforced; let alone those of less Russophile countries. One day after Putin unleashed his troops and his government allowed itself such language as "scum" for the Georgian government and that "Georgia's territorial integrity is no longer an issue", Poland signed a nuclear weapons agreement with the United States - with not a word of disagreement from even the most anti-American groups in Europe. The context was too obvious to everyone. This signature is a diplomatic disaster of the first magnitude for Putin: it seals Poland, Russia's gate to Europe, against him, and threatens similar developments in the Ukraine. Poland and Ukraine are politically quite close and tend to act together.
All this for Georgia? And were the conquest of Georgia at least certain! The unanimous reaction of America and all the Europeans seems to have made an impact in Moscow. The demand that the democratically elected Georgian president, Michael Saakhashvili, should resign, has been silently dropped, and even the talk of partitioning the country is no longer as confident as it was. Behaviour on the ground is equally nervous and indecisive, suggesting that the bear has realized that it has got its paw very much into a trap of its own making. In spite of their complete military victory, the Russian troops seem terrified of seizing the moment: they crawl forward a few miles, then stop, then crawl forward again. There is no military reason for them to do so: Georgian resistance, for all practical purposes, no longer exist. And in the occupied areas it is the same story: the Russians unleashed the Ossete paramilitaries they had armed and backed - at the same time as they denied responsibility for their atrocities and actually begged the Georgian police to return to the city of Gori and restore order. This is all is evidence of nervousness, confusion, and a general lack of direction from the top. Putin and his associates must be wondering: "What do we do now?"
In this context, the worst thing anyone could possibly do would be to show any yielding to Putin's brutality and demands. Show a stony face to the bully, and he will crumble. Give him space to bully further - and you will be the next victim. And if you think that is a remote possiblity, just ask the shareholders in BP and other companies who had been unwise enough to invest in Russia.
EDITED IN: Now Angela Merkel, Chancellor of GErmany, who had been the most important opponent of admitting Georgia to NATO, has stated in front of a crowd in Tbilisi that she favours it. Does anyone need more evidence to show that Putin has been a fool?
EDITED IN AGAIN: And yet more Georgia bills come flooding in. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/08/ukraine_acts.html. This one could be even more damaging than Poland's, since it seriously compromises the Russian fleet.
AND AGAIN - ANOTHER BODY BLOW From the Miami Herald:
Criticized by the West, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday asked China and four ex-Soviet nations to sign a declaration of support for Russia's role in the conflict in Georgia.
But Russia's hopes of gathering support were dealt a huge blow when the five countries denounced the use of force and called for respect for every country's territorial integrity. The joint declaration from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization deepens Russia's international isolation.
Medvedev had appealed to the alliance - which consists of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - for unanimous support of Russia's response to Georgia's "aggression."
Medvedev's appeal had raised fears in Western capitals of the emergence of a competing strategic alliance to NATO forming around Russia - but the other Asian nations may have been reluctant to strain their relations with Europe and the United States.
Medvedev also discussed the situation in Georgia's breakaway regions with Chinese President Hu Jintao. China has traditionally been wary of supporting separatist movements, mindful of its own problems with Tibet and Muslims in the western territory of Xinjiang.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying "the situation in the region ... should be resolved in dialogue."
Did Putin seriously think that China, with its own problems in Tibet and Uighur Sinkiang, would support this sort of border redrawing? Or that they would be grateful to him for raining on their beautiful Olympic parade? And that four countries which share Georgia's past and memories of Russian rule would be so eager to make a rod for their own backs? Well, if he really needs friends, I dare say that Robert Mugabe is still available.
Boris Yeltsin is dead
Apr. 23rd, 2007 06:58 pmMe, I am willing to excuse him a lot. Many of the things that made him a public clown and even a public reproach are not so much his fault as the fault of the complete lack of a certain kind of governing culture in Russia, that takes a lot to grow even in countries of old liberal traditions. For instance, the notorious bouts of strange public behaviour - picking up a baton and playing conductor, or sleeping through what should have been a brief state visit to Ireland - whether or not due to drunkenness, are as much the fault of his aides as his own. The staff of any European or American politician are trained to avoid such public misfortunes, and to spin them out of sight when they happen. Whether or not Yeltsin was really a drunkard, he would hardly have been the first politician to be; but President Saragat of Italy (1964-1969), Senator Ted Kennedy, or British LibDem leader Charles Kennedy, all could count on one or two guys around them to keep them awake for important appointments and make sure that one or two suspicious appearances in public were not followed by a whole flock of equally suspicious ones. Yeltsin's failure in these matters of public image is the failure of his staff more than himself. And one might add that there have been a few Western leaders - beginning with Churchill - who had the chutzpah and the personality to get away with behaviour quite as buffoonish once in a while. To Yeltsin, such behaviour might even have seemed a justified reaction against Communist stuffiness. By the same token, where was a country and a ruling class that was taught from the cradle to consider private profit both anti-social and condemned by history, to look on capitalism in the blackest possible colours, is it imaginable that this same country and ruling class would move into a capitalist world without stumbling? That they would gain from a moment to the next a sense of the realities, the compromises, the written and unwritten rules, the real goals, of free enterprise and of the kind of government that supports it? A liberalized Russia was going to be, at least at the start, a dog-eat-dog Russia; when you study how difficult and conflictual the process was even in the USA and western Europe, and all the legislation it required, there is absolutely nothing surprising about the bruising and brutal early days of Russian liberalism.
But Yeltsin deserves our thanks for two things: the way he took power, and the way he left it. His famous stand against the Communist coup d'etat, visible and personal, atop a tank for the whole world's press to see, was not only one of the classic moments of the confrontation of freedom and tyranny, but an act of great personal courage. If he had lost, there is no doubt that he would have died swiftly and badly in the hallowed Communist way: and he knew it. And when he surrendered his power to a legally and democratically elected successor, it was the first time in a thousand years of Russian history that anyone did. His stewardship may have been erratic, but with those two gestures he did as much as anyone could possibly have to establish the rule of democratic law in Russia. That his successor has turned out rather less interested in such things cannot, in my view, be blamed on him. May the God in whom he declared his faith forgive his sins and bring him to everlasting life.
But Yeltsin deserves our thanks for two things: the way he took power, and the way he left it. His famous stand against the Communist coup d'etat, visible and personal, atop a tank for the whole world's press to see, was not only one of the classic moments of the confrontation of freedom and tyranny, but an act of great personal courage. If he had lost, there is no doubt that he would have died swiftly and badly in the hallowed Communist way: and he knew it. And when he surrendered his power to a legally and democratically elected successor, it was the first time in a thousand years of Russian history that anyone did. His stewardship may have been erratic, but with those two gestures he did as much as anyone could possibly have to establish the rule of democratic law in Russia. That his successor has turned out rather less interested in such things cannot, in my view, be blamed on him. May the God in whom he declared his faith forgive his sins and bring him to everlasting life.
A tremendous experience
May. 23rd, 2005 09:40 amThere is no eulogy in the English language more radiant than the one that the journalist Bernard Levin wrote in 1976 for the Russian writer Alexander Solghenitsin after meeting him during a BBC interview. And until yesterday, Levin’s passionate and obviously sincere account of the great writer was the main reason I had to admire the man.
As a historian, I feel that I know quite enough of the monsters who polluted the twentieth century. I tend to avoid eyewitness accounts of the crimes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and less famous fiends such as King Leopold II (whose hideous rule in the Congo may well surpass Hitler and Stalin’s worst excesses, and for far meaner motives) or Plutarco Calles of Mexico. When I read statistics that speak of millions of dead, or describe a permanent shortage of males in the Russian population through fifty years of Soviet governance, I do not feel the need to recreate the experience of those victims. I already know what to think; and at any rate, I have seen and read enough not to want to see or read any more.
( Read more... )
As a historian, I feel that I know quite enough of the monsters who polluted the twentieth century. I tend to avoid eyewitness accounts of the crimes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and less famous fiends such as King Leopold II (whose hideous rule in the Congo may well surpass Hitler and Stalin’s worst excesses, and for far meaner motives) or Plutarco Calles of Mexico. When I read statistics that speak of millions of dead, or describe a permanent shortage of males in the Russian population through fifty years of Soviet governance, I do not feel the need to recreate the experience of those victims. I already know what to think; and at any rate, I have seen and read enough not to want to see or read any more.
( Read more... )
