Tag Archives: Putin

Donald Johnston and Donald Trump: Europe and Russia

Donald Johnston and Donald Trump: Europe and Russia

by

Howard Adelman

Russia and Europe are both in the headlines these days, Russia because of the probe into the connections with the Trump White House, and Europe because of the fallout from Donald Trump’s visit last week. “The American-German relationship has been the core of the transatlantic alliance for more than 70 years. It was in Berlin in 1963 that President John Kennedy uttered the phrase, “Ich bin ein Berliner” signalling the unbreakable link between the U.S. and Germany.

Following last week, that close relationship is now dead. At its centre were trade and a military alliance. With respect to the latter, Donald Trump refrained from endorsing Clause 5 of the NATO pact. Trump even lectured his European colleagues for their failure to pay their fair share of NATO costs. Yesterday we learned that most are expecting Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris Accords.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel rebuked the American leader. “Anyone who accelerates climate change by weakening environmental protection, who sells more weapons in conflict zones and who does not want to politically resolve religious conflicts is putting peace in Europe at risk.” Angela Merkel said that it was time for Europeans, “to take our fates in our own hands.” Given “what I’ve experienced in recent days,” the days when “we could completely rely on others are over to a certain extent.” “We have to fight for our own future, as Europeans, for our destiny.”

These statements, as much as one might deplore this extraordinary breach in the trans-Atlantic alliance, seemed to prove Donald Johnston’s conviction that Europe had to have strong, visionary leadership. Though he had not seen it yet when he wrote Chapter 3 of his book, “Europe Listing, but Afloat,” the statements of German leaders, the election of Emmanuel Macron as President of France, the prior rejection in Austria of a right-wing populist government, the rebirth of Greece and its rejection of a Greek Grexit, the solidification of the Spanish and Irish economic recoveries, all spoke to a revived Europe, and one without the UK which had voted to leave the European Union in the Brexit upset referendum.

The UK seems to be on a downward slide. London’s place as a world financial centre will begin a slow spiral driven by the gravity of less access to markets. Further, the UK faces the possibility of disintegrating into even smaller nation-states as Scotland looks forward to another vote for separation and rejoining Europe. While most Germans, Dutch and French identify as Europeans, the English still overwhelmingly identify their nationality with their little British Isle. Nevertheless, Johnston believes that the English will soon come to their senses, especially as the unravelling gets closer and more difficult. He believes that Brits will reverse course before it is too late.

One reason Donald Johnston offers is not only the difficulties in unravelling membership, not only the increasingly apparent high costs, but his belief that the Brexit referendum “was a vote of passion, not reason.” Rational self-interest would win out over identity politics currently manifest in the U.K.’s resistance to the influx of outsiders, even though two-thirds of migrants to the UK were not Europeans. Further, like populists on the right in the U.S., those supporting exit from the EU hated the Brussels bureaucracy and called for “independence.”

Nevertheless, Johnston believes that Brits will change their minds before the break is finalized. “What government would have the courage to sign off on Brexit if the polls show a large majority of electors opposed, which is likely to be the case when the consequences are well understood?” If they don’t, separation will take place “against the will of the majority of people in the United Kingdom.” How does he arrive at that assessment? He adds together those who voted against exit with those who did not vote at all on the assumption that 100% would oppose Brexit. Further, even if the divorce is concluded, he expresses the belief that Britain would remain in the European economic zone or, at the very least, forge a free-trade agreement.

Ignoring the statistical sleight of hand above, which Johnston rails against in his chapter on stats, for someone who supports democratic institutions, it reveals a strong distaste for populism and referenda, a dislike he repeatedly expresses in the book. The problem, of course, is that a united Europe is primarily a mandarin’s dream while people throughout Europe and not only in the UK resent the usurping of tradition, of national parliaments and national pride. Johnston believes in a federated state model for Europe. He is an unabashed supporter of multilateralism and globalization as he envisions an even stronger Europe with increasingly open markets, a diminution of trade subsidies, a supporter of structural reforms in the provision of labour and manufacturing. But without completing the mission of creating a united federal state of Europe, the prospect of it becoming the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world while ensuring social cohesion is, for DJ, iffy.

It is not that Johnston has not considered the reasons for populism – the suspicion of remote bureaucracies or the desire for greater parochialism. He has, but only to dismiss such approaches and to double down in defence of globalization. Nowhere in the book could I find an analysis of the effects of restructuring and globalization on workers. Further, and this is most surprising, though he applauds the goals of the Lisbon Declaration in support of education, research and innovation, research and innovation are not included in his graphic summary of his moral economics. Nor is his support for representative democracy and his fears, even hatred, of referenda and populism. The latter just provide grounds for demagogues and irrational passions displacing the task of rational decision-making. DJ quotes Edmund Burke with enthusiasm for parliamentarians who offer unbiased opinions, mature judgement and an enlightened conscience applied to political decision-making. Even those who have a deep faith in rational decision-making can be romantic visionaries.

What remains wrong in Europe? No equivalent to a European-wide securities and exchange commission, no EU-wide drug or food agency, no effective common immigration and refugee position, if only to counter-balance population decline, no formula for redistribution and strengthening weak regions. These unachieved goals, not identity politics, are responsible for the reassertion of populist, irrational, ill-informed and volatile popular will.

Donald Johnston presents himself as the antithesis to Donald Trump. Except he thinks Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is an effective leader in Turkey and only became a radical pro-Islamic politician because Europe procrastinated and dithered on Turkey’s application to join the EU. Turkey’s flaws are largely the product of that rejection, even though he concedes that many who suspected his demagoguery and counter-democratic tendencies may have been correct. What he writes abut Russia offers a test of whether he can reconcile his support of parliamentary representative democracy and admiration for strong, effective leaders, for the latter is the trait he unabashedly shares with Donald Trump.

That, however, does not seem to be the case when he begins his chapter on Russia. “Putin’s personal agenda is totally incompatible with democratic ideals, free markets, freedom of expression, and even human rights.” Sounds pretty much like Erdoğan. Both men came to power with a very specific goal – to make their respective countries great again. Both used democracy to advance their own popularity and agenda. Both are economic mercantilists. And both are enemies of freedom and human rights. So why is Johnston so favourable to Erdoğan but critical of Putin? The sentence that follows partially answers the question. “His popularity is founded on hostility and aggressive policies towards the west.” (p. 41)

But what is the difference between the two leaders of Turkey and Russia respectively? Both disappeared adversaries, Erdoğan blatantly, openly and extensively. Putin was more surreptitious, but only Putin is accused. The difference seems to be that people eliminated in Russia included technocrats who Johnston knew – Boris Nemstov, for example.  Erdoğan only wiped out Kurds, jailed journalists and rounded up tens of thousands of members of his own party, civil servants and members of the judiciary, or anyone he thought might be opposed to his increasingly autocratic rule. The only substantive difference: Turkey had a much longer period as a democratic state.

But the causes are the same. Western failures. “Putin [like Erdoğan] is a product of Western blindness.” The stimulus may be different – the closure of the EU to Turkey versus the resurrection of the Cold War in a new form against Russia. The EU dithered on admitting Turkey. OECD procrastinated with Russia’s application to join.

Look at DJ’s answer to Putin’s query to him for an example of bad practices that OECD could help eliminate. Johnston replied, with only the slightest hesitation: “In Canada, which is a vast and diversified country and has similarities with Russia, we committed many mistakes. We pushed local development policies that were more tailored to positive political outcomes than to economic ones.” His reaction to Putin’s impassive response is even more interesting, explaining that passivity because Putin recognized that, “in democracies, placating local constituencies with public funds is an odious, yet obvious (my italics), by-product of the election process.” (p. 45) That says very little about Putin, but a great deal about Johnston’s cynicism and very guarded qualified defence of democracy, which seemed to boil down to the less you consulted your constituents, the less you tried to placate and cater to them, the better leader you were.

Putin could ignore proposals to liberalization of trade, effective taxation, privatization and methods for attracting foreign capital investments. Why? Because the West had made him justifiably wary because of the advance of Western missile defence systems eastward and NATO expansion to the borders of Russia. Those missile defence systems and the move of NATO eastward were not because former satellites had learned to distrust Russia throughout their history and needed reassurances if they were going to embrace the West.

Whether the problem was Crimea, the Ukraine or Syria, the answer is always the same: the mindblindness of the West. The West had failed to provide, in a timely way, healthy market-oriented and properly regulated economic nostrums in the nineties so that Russia could have avoided the depredations of corruption and kleptocratic oligarchs. Why? Because “the Harvard boys” with their unboundaried faith in self-correcting free markets got to Moscow before the OECD boys and their ethical economic doctrines. Russia could and should have been made part of the EU community earlier and history would have run a different course. The IMF got it wrong. OECD had it right.There are vast differences between DJ and DT: DJ’s high regard for civil servants and DT’s contempt for them; their joint appreciation of free markets, but Trump for unregulated ones and DJ’s belief in moral boundaries to them; DJ’s and DT’s contempt for the populace, but with Trump gleefully manipulating the public while DJ did so with his head down and with no sense of self-satisfaction. However, look at the similarities. Both support military withdrawal from spheres of Russian interest. Both share a belief in the power of personal diplomacy. Both respect strong leadership. Trump crusaded against corruption while openly admitting he was part of the corrupt system. DJ, though critical, was more accepting of corruption in its institutionalized democratic forms.

With respect to the latter, there is a major difference. DJ believes in consulting, placating and catering to constituents as little as possible. Trump does not exactly consult them, but psychologically he needs their approval and applause – look at how he is handling the abrogation of America’s signature to the Paris Accords.

DJ and DT are not the same. They are in many ways opposites. However, they are twins, though DT is the hairy one prone to mistakes, governed by instinct and unabashedly frank and even trusting. DJ is cautious, reads his briefing papers diligently and, even more importantly, appreciates others who do the same. Both have strong opinions and both offer very weak defenses of them. Trump’s are almost non-existent or simply products of his imagination.  But DJ respects mandarins. DT despises them. DJ is a globalist and cosmopolitan. DT is a nationalist. DJ is the epitome of civility. DT disses his opponents.

But both believe that history can be commanded and controlled – DJ through thoughtful and careful deliberation, DT through instinct and unabashed self-trust.

With the help of Alex Zisman

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A Potpourri

A Potpourri

From

Readers of the Howard Adelman Blog

I received a mélange of responses to yesterday’s blog on the decline of the Republican Party. Because I am busy in my new job as a nurse’s aide, I forego today’s blog and instead include a selection from the reactions to Monday’s blog with the odd additional comment. Some were brief and complimentary – “impressive and helpful analysis/synthesis Howard…it won’t help me sleep in coming nights but thank you/.” Some picked up one or two points of criticism and one was harshly critical, a reply which I include below. Others I have chosen based as much on geographical distribution as anything else, partly as a lead-in to my next blog on the Decline of the West. The salmagundi selected also added to my understanding. I have limited the selection to five to keep the blog at its average length. I also hope this will indirectly explain why I respond to very few of the feedbacks I receive.

1. Canadian Supporters of Trump

Polls indicate that 80% of Canadians support Clinton and oppose Trump. The only country that exceeds this one-sided support is Germany where the support for Clinton is 86% and even 75% of the alt-Right. 20% in Canada support Trump, many because he indicated that he would approve the Keystone XL pipeline. That, however, is not the only reason. Some admire him for who he is and what he says. This is what one reader wrote me yesterday:

Trump is a talented leader, who calls out the liberal and greedy elite. Like King David. He likes women like all healthy males including you and me.
Most women play to their sexuality through makeup and choice of clothes. Healthy and tasteful.
Bill Clinton rapes and abuses women. Hillary destroys women who speak up against her husband’s victims so that this power couple can play the corrupt system.
Trump earned his money. The Clintons stole theirs.
I am so happy they are now being called out along with Obama and his Jeremiah Wright and Muslim Brotherhood friends.
For me this is going to be a wonderful week.
Regards

2. The Deep Story Behind the Tea Party

An additional insight that I did not have was received from LA. I believe that the “deep story” is very insightful.

Hi from LA!

Nathaniel Rich reviews a book called “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” by Arlie Russell Hochschild in the New York Review of Books this week.

Rich describes Hochschild reaching for emotional explanations for the rise of Tea Party-ism / Trumpism and the anger of the white, working-class Republican voter; she finds other accounts to be lacking this emotional component. He quotes Hochschild:

“I found one thing missing in them all—a full understanding of emotion in politics. What, I wanted to know, did people want to feel, think they should or shouldn’t feel, and what do they feel about a range of issues?”

Rich goes on:

“How, then, do Tea Party voters feel? They’re angry, bitter, resentful—that much is obvious. Hochschild goes further, however. She develops for them what in brand marketing is referred to as the “back story,” a story that provides a unifying emotional logic to a set of beliefs. She calls it the “deep story.”

The deep story that Hochschild creates for the Tea Party is a parable of the white American Dream. It begins with an image of a long line of people marching across a vast landscape. The Tea Partiers—white, older, Christian, predominantly male, many lacking college degrees—are somewhere in the middle of the line. They trudge wearily, but with resolve, up a hill. Ahead, beyond the ridge, lies wealth, success, dignity. Far behind them the line is composed of people of color, women, immigrants, refugees. As pensions are reduced and layoffs absorbed, the line slows, then stalls.

An even greater indignity follows: people begin cutting them in line. Many are those who had long stood behind them—blacks, women, immigrants, even Syrian refugees, all now aided by the federal government. Next an even more astonishing figure jumps ahead of them: a brown pelican, the Louisiana state bird, “fluttering its long, oil-drenched wings.” Thanks to environmental protections, it is granted higher social status than, say, an oil rig worker. The pelican, writes Hochschild,

‘needs clean fish to eat, clean water to dive in, oil-free marshes, and protection from coastal erosion. That’s why it’s in line ahead of you. But really, it’s just an animal and you’re a human being.’

Meanwhile the Tea Partiers are made to feel less than human. They find themselves reviled for their Christian morality and the “traditional” values they have been taught to honor from birth. Many speak of “sympathy fatigue,” the sense that every demographic group but theirs receives sympathy from liberals. “People think we’re not good people if we don’t feel sorry for blacks and immigrants and Syrian refugees,” one Tea Partier tells Hochschild. “But I am a good person and I don’t feel sorry for them.”

When Hochschild tells her deep story to some of the people she’s come to know, they greet it rapturously. “You’ve read my mind,” says one. “I live your analogy,” says Mike Schaff. She concludes that they do not vote in their economic interest but in their “emotional self-interest.” What other choice do they have?” [Emphasis added.]

Care to comment on Hochschild’s “deep story”? I’ve read a lot of attempts at explaining the Tea Party / Trumpist / Angry White Man phenomenon, but this little parable touches on something I don’t think any of those other accounts do. Maybe it’s just how it’s encapsulated in a nice little story, or maybe something more.

Thought you might find it interesting – the book itself looks really good, and I’d buy it immediately if I didn’t have piles to read already. Be well!

3. From BC

A key point in your latest is that there are those who still hope for community and are not getting it. They are legion. Sadly, real community has been corrupted and is still a huge deal but, in the modern sense, it now means little in pragmatic, comforting ways and a bit too much in divisive ways.

Like religion, our communities divide [and do] not include. And that division is encouraged. Us and them. We have the Cincinnati Bengals vs the Green Bay Packers, we have the Chicago Cubs vs the Cleveland Indians and that used-to-be uniting spirit of ‘game’ has been polarizing instead since the corporate mindset made the owners and the players so rich that even our ‘local boys’ were foreigners bought and paid for to play the game for us. People still cling to their teams like religious people do their churches but that kind of faith is divisive, destructive and sick. And, ultimately, counter productive.

Love is tolerance and acceptance. And there is little of that left in the modern world (except at an individual scale). And it is capitalism, corporatism, institutional-think, politics, government and blind greed that is at fault. We worship the golden calf more and more. See Trump.

You cannot have a successful community when money is more important than all else. Can’t happen. Because real community is not about ‘making a buck’ or ‘getting yours’, it is about mutual caring and sharing. Money ain’t got nothing to do with it. Never should.

And money is what the US is all about. And we are connected at the hip.

4. From Germany

Reading your wonderful analysis (which I will have to read a few more times to thoroughly savour and digest) made me think: whatever happens on Nov 8, or thereafter, the Donald did not singlehandedly cause it; just like Luther did not singlehandedly cause the 30-year war. There are sometimes people who find themselves in a complex situation that has evolved over time, due to a multitude of complex and relevant connections when they, either inadvertently or purposefully just upset the table that was already rather wobbly to begin with. Sometimes that is the only way to turn around a hopeless situation. I still think you are attributing too much intelligent and thoughtful analysis to Donald (projecting your own wise self into his feverish orange skull), when he is way too impatient and impulsive – he is not executing a well-thought-out strategy with a well-defined goal in mind: he is reactive, rather than proactive, improvising as he goes along, exploiting any given situation that he deems advantageous, and mercilessly mowing down any that he perceives as a threat to his person.

You are absolutely right to focus less on his person and more on the context in which he is operating: just like you say, “the pathway to a potential victory had been forged by the previous leadership of the Republican Party. Trump had simply upped the ante,” as he moved along. The Republicans not only had paved the way by endorsing most of the policies long before Trump arrived, they also wholeheartedly endorsed his person, banking on his popularity (disregarding his lack of political experience, impulsiveness, narcissism, etc. etc.), as if he were some sort of harmless lucky mascot. The real betrayal of America has been taking place for a long time in the background; I don’t think Trump the individual should be scapegoated on his own.

He just grabbed the opportunity to make the deal of all deals for himself (he probably is rubbing his eyes, still not able to fathom how he got this far with such little preparation) – BUT SO DID THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WITH HIM AS WELL – their deal is just as reckless and disgusting and immoral as are Trump’s moves (and their group is more culpable as they, unlike Trump, cannot necessarily be excused on account of a pathological mental state). They were coldly calculating and analyzing and strategizing when they endorsed him. I found it most telling how they never once acted outraged when he was spouting his anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, etc. garbage, but exploded in extreme righteous indignation about his “locker-room” remarks. I think they had probably long before realized that their choice of mascot was not that lucky after all, and the pussy riot was just a convenient excuse to demonstratively and noisily remove themselves from this increasingly embarrassing association with him, and score a huge PC point on the side.

Contrary to M. Gladwell’s Tipping Point, where the author identifies the factors that cause suddenly emerging trends, here, like among the Christians in Luther’s era, there is a long-term, slow brewing of a complex, increasingly negative situation, where an angry, overly emotional, impulsive, and somewhat mentally unstable man instinctively realized the opportunity that he could suddenly upset the table, not quite grasping the long-term deleterious consequences this may cause. A number of ghosts this Halloween!

Note: I see no contradiction between a unique strategy that is subject to critical analysis and the reality that the strategy itself may have been instinctual and had not been developed by means of deep thought. HA

5. From the Ukraine

You did not give enough attention to the role of Russia in both promoting Trump and in the corresponding latest decline of the Republican Party. It is widely recognized that Putin has launched Russia into a new stage of adventurism and interventionism outside its borders, particularly in the Ukraine and Syria. The Baltic states may be his next target. This is part of Putin’s campaign to “Make Russia Great Again.” These exercises in heightened patriotism are also crude attempts to cover up an economic system of corrupt patronage in an economy severely in trouble. In reference to your blog, there has been the brazen effort of Putin to promote Trump and diminish Clinton – an unprecedented Russian intervention in American politics.

Russia is one of the few and perhaps even the only country where the population favours Trump over Clinton, and by a large margin. This result is enormously assisted by Putin’s control over the media. A combination of reasons explain this support for Trump. First, Trump has flattered Putin and has compared him to Obama extremely favourably. Second, Putin has flattered Trump and called him “brilliant” knowing full well that he has a thin skin when it comes to ridicule (he responds viscerally with venom) and also when it comes to praise, with a very different result. Trump is inflated into a large red balloon floating towards the stratosphere. Third, Trump has criticized Hillary Clinton’s proposal to create a no-fly zone for humanitarian purposes in Syria and has argued against the Obama administration’s leadership in boycotting and ostracizing Russia over its aggression in the Ukraine. Fourth, Trump has emerged as the greatest threat to the Western economic and military alliance with his insistence that the allies “pay their own way.” The only downside is Trump’s suggestion that Japan and South Korea develop their own nuclear weapons.

The risk of the latter is well worth the very economical cost of hacking Democratic Party emails and stirring up the pot in the American election, especially when Trump refuses to accept the briefing by all seventeen American intelligence agencies that Russia is behind the hacking. What may have begun as a wild card prank has developed into a potential provocation into American domestic politics. Further, it was beyond even the Kremlin’s wildest dreams that Trump would actually adopt the Russian two-year-old line that America was preparing to initiate World War III. Who would have ever believed that the leader of the Republican Party of the United States would be an open admirer of Putin and even a Charlie Chaplin to Putin as Edgar Bergen.

There are, in addition, some noticeable similarities between Putin and Trump. Neither has any respect for the truth. Both are bullies and alpha males in the extreme. Putin, like Trump, is an improviser rather than a long-range strategist in foreign affairs, taking advantage of opportunities as they pop up. Like Trump, Putin reacts rather than acts, especially to perceived slights, without calculating the long term negative costs to Russia. Both men double down when attacked and project their own liabilities onto their “enemies.” Is there any difference between Putin riling up a resistance and providing it with military support in the Donbass region and Trump appealing to racists and riling up the masses at his rallies? Both have a populist base among malcontents.

Though Putin is far more disciplined than Trump, both are very hard workers. However, Putin does know his stuff which Trump does not. Both indulge in performance theatre on the world stage and pull off stunts to garner publicity, only, ironically, Putin sees the world as his stage whereas Trump has contracted the American stage to the homeland. Thus, the Republican Party, which used to be the bastion of the hard line against Russia, has undergone it most important revolution and, under Trump, has embraced Russia as its ideological ally at the expense of its traditional friends.

With the help of Alex Zisman

On Novorossia

On Novorossia

by

Howard Adelman

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What are Putin’s goals with respect to Ukraine? On Thursday, the cognoscendi on Russia, that is, those who are not simply experts on Russia but those who profess to understand and know the reasons for the actions of Russian leaders, perked up their ears when Vladimir Putin in a four hour television Q&A with the Russian people referred to Novorossia or New Russia. This territory includes both Eastern and Southern Ukraine. Putin said that the area had been detached from Russia in the 1920s and joined to Ukraine but without any reason and certainly no consultation with the people of Novorossia.

Christian Caryl wrote a piece in Foreign Policy on Novorossia on Monday. Linda Kinstler did the same in The New Republic (“Which Former Soviet State Could be the Next Ukraine?” 21 April 2014) but went further in suggesting that the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia), Belarus as well as Moldova (see my earlier blog on Transnistria or the self-proclaimed Transniester Republic that voted 96% in favour of Russian annexation), the five “stans” (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgzstan) as well as Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and even Poland that was never part of the old Soviet Union, all currently fear that they fall within the expansion plans of the new vision of Russia. For adumbrations of the new Putin doctrine, see George Friedman’s 1 April 2014 “Russia and U.S. Negotiate Ukraine’s Future” (Stratfor Global Intelligence) and David Ignatius 26 March article in The Washington Post. For the role of local Russian populations outside of Russia serving as a fifth column, see Mark Almond “It’s Not Just Russians Spoiling for a Fight” (Telegraph, 9 April 2014) and Cathy Young “Who Are You Calling Fascist, Putin?” (Weekly Standard, 9 April 2014).

What has emerged is the Putin doctrine. Russia is not just covertly and overtly seeding and orchestrating a separatist movement in both eastern and southern Ukraine. The ambition goes far beyond that. State borders are not just accidents of history but mistakes in history. Mistakes can and should be corrected. Further, according to the Putin doctrine, Russia’s true long-term interests do not lie in or rely upon multilateralism, integration into the world economy and the international rule of law. Russia’s economic prospects must be placed in service to political goals and only thereby will those economic interests best be realized.

On what grounds is the new Putin Doctrine articulated? Some believe that Putin is out to annex regions which include a significant Russian ethnic presence on the grounds that ethnic Russians need protection. Those Russians have the right to secede and rejoin Russia from which the people and lands were wrongly severed. This is what Jeffrey Sachs claimed in yesterday’s New York Times suggesting that Putin was leading an irredentist movement – “the effort to reunify a ‘lost’ territory inhabited by ethnic kin with either a mother country or with other territories also inhabited by ethnic kin.” I suggest that Putin is NOT a Russian ethno-nationalist but rather a Russian cosmopolitan, a very different entity.

Putin is determined to restore Russia as the lingua franca of a large part of the earth’s surface in which many ethnicities live but among which the Russian government will not discriminate. He is not trying to distract the Russian people with nationalist rhetoric, but trying to inspire them with the rhetoric of enlargement, with the dream of regaining a Russian civilization. It is the parallel to the ideology of the Han Chinese and Erdogan’s anti-Ataturk Turks. His adventurism is not simply a diversion but part of a long term policy in spite of and not because of a flagging domestic economy and a restive population tired of both corruption and repression. The Putin doctrine does not just defend ethnic Russians or even Russian speakers but a Russian World including minorities who need protection from ethno-nationalists. Kyiv’s efforts to protect Russia as a minority language and ethnic Russians are insufficient because it is the domination of Russian culture and civilization that is the prior aim. That is why Russia must prevail throughout Ukraine and in the media and why NATO cannot be permitted to encroach into the turn of the greater Russian civilization. The issue is not Ukraine independence. That is fully acceptable to Putin. The issue is whether Ukraine remains within the orbit of the prevalence of Russian culture.

Some background first.

Novorossia is Russia’s west, the New Frontier in the Turner version of western expansion applied to Russia rather than the United States of America. The area north of the Black Sea known as the Wild or Devastated Fields was conquered in a series of wars from the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Turks by the Russian Empire at the end of the eighteenth century and settled by Russians during the nineteenth century to establish new towns and cities within the Novorossiysk Governate administered from Kremenchuk to enable not only Russians and Ukrainians but Poles and Armenians to establish farms and estates in the new frontier. When the Bolsheviks in 1922 annexed this area to Ukraine, for the new visionaries of the Russian Empire it was akin to giving Texas to Mexico. For Putin, the reasons were inexplicable and only God can decipher a rationale. But although the territory was severed, the Russian population remained in place and it is the duty of the Russian Federation to help the Russian-speaking population find a solution to their cultural displacement.

Recent History

When the Party of Regions won the presidency in the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary elections, it was in the territory of what had been called Novorossia that they garnered their greatest support. An historic error was about to be corrected, but the plan was undermined, not according to the Putin doctrine by corruption and misrule, but by American subversion through the CIA which backed a rebellion in Kyiv and by the cowardice of former president Viktor Yanukovych who fled his post for the safety of Russia in February. Acting President Alexander Turchinov and Prime Minister Alexander Yatsenuk as well as their cabinet ministers are not legitimate representatives but usurpers of power brought into their positions by the machinations of the CIA. Alexander Yakimenko, the former head of Ukrainian Secret Services (SBU) who escaped to Russia, claimed Andriy Parubiy, the current head of the SBU, forged a deal with the Americans. On American instructions, he hired the snipers who killed the 70 civilians as well as some of the riot police. This was done in spite of polls conducted ostensibly by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology that showed that 75.3% of residents in the Lviv region wanted to be reunited with the Russian Federation. In Lugansk, Donetsk and Kharkov in the East, the majorities were even much greater – 90.3%, 97.5% and 96.1% respectively. The February coup had set aside the rule of law in Ukraine in this interpretation.

The Putin Method

How does Putin intend to go about correcting this core central historic mistake as the second step following the accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation? By stealth. First there will be clear and unequivocal expressions of pacific intentions by the Russians as there were in last week’s negotiations with John Kerry in Geneva. Russia will move according to the old Russian proverb with great patience, but once started will proceed expeditiously – Russians take time to saddle their horses, but once mounted they ride with great speed. Those moves enjoy massive support in the Russian Duma. After all, as Putin said, “The Federation Council granted the president the right to use military force in Ukraine.” Putin then added that, “I really hope that I do not have to exercise this right and that we are able to solve all today’s pressing issues via political and diplomatic means.” Russia will begin by talking softly. But in the other hand Russia will not just carry one big stick but a batch of covert and overt coercive moves that will include fear mongering, economic blackmail, funding and organizing separatist forces, covert operations and only the use of overt military action as the final stage.

Western Responses

The European Union is an economic powerhouse but a military and diplomatic pygmy. Besides, it is dependent on Russian gas and oil for its economic prosperity in spite of Jeffrey Sach’s argument that the EU could survive without imports of Russian natural gas that only constitutes 10% of the EU’s overall imports, neglecting to say that gas and other energy (coal and oil) imports constitute 25% of Germany’s energy needs with no alternatives in sight. Germany is the economic engine of the EU. Germany for historic reasons did not follow France’s lead in the development of nuclear power but now Chancellor Merkel has said that in light of the Ukraine crisis, “all of Germany’s energy policies must be reconsidered.”Germany, the main powerhouse of the EU, and, in particular, Angela Merkel may be miffed by Vladimir Putin’s betrayal of her trust, but she has withdrawn from the field to lick her wounds and has no interim realistic policy to counter Russian aggression except to utter threats of economic retaliation that amount to mere pin pricks. This purportedly powerful leader has been reduced to practicing Haitian voodoo instead of an effective foreign policy to counter the Russian initiatives. Loans by western investors to Russian banks and corporations may not be renewed or may even be recalled, but Russia can be expected to initially step into the breach to counter the credit squeeze.

What is the American response? The United States just does not have the forces on the ground to counter Russian military moves. Further, the U.S. is till suffering from the scars of both the Afghan and Iraq wars. But both Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee,

thought that America had been blind-sided by Russia’s rapid military move into Crimea. Feinstein said, “It should not be possible for Russia to walk in and take over the Crimea and it’s a done deal by the time we know about it.” Others, particularly backers of Putin’s new doctrine, seem somewhat baffled by America’s muted response and a reading of their websites indicate that they believe that the rhetorical gestures are just that, gestures to distract the western public to the fact that America has already agreed to the dismemberment of Ukraine and the annexation of Novorossia to Russia otherwise why has there been virtually no official western response to Putin’s assertion on Thursday.  Ukraine stripped of its eastern and southern regions will, in any case, be more acceptable as part of the EU. Kerry and the key European leaders must have already secretly agreed to this outcome. Their pusillanimous response is a certain indicator that both centers of power regard the current government of Ukraine as constituted by “idiots” (the term of the opposition nationalists – see the blog of Anatoly Shary who prides himself on his careful analysis of Western politicians).

After all, Novorossia already has the hymn of the revived republic penned by Alexander Duhnovicha in the nineteenth century expressing the wish and desire for an autonomous Russian republic within Ukraine, Podkarpatsky rusiny, with the modern founding document approved by 109 delegates in the Russian drama theatre, Mukacheva, and the founding scheduled for 1 December 2014, supposedly the birth date of the priest and author of the republican hymn:

Podkarpatsky rusiny,

Leave a deep sleep.

The national voice calls

Do not forget

Our people are favoured.

You will be free

From the storm

And keep away enemies

Justice will visit

The Russian nation!

Yea, Russia lives – the people!

We Ask God Vyshnjago (most High)

Support russkago

  Grant this century to luchshago!

[luchshago = Russian self-determination and autonomy: the Russian commission on governance in 1681 provided “the legal case for luchshago, sovereign governance in the organization and management of the polity.”

Behind it is a religious war between the Eastern Orthodox church and the Latinate Catholic Church of western Ukraine. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kiev Patriarchate was accused by the Russian nationalists of handing “over 1 million hryvnia to finance armed groups” in Kyiv, an interpretation allegedly supported by Eastern Orthodox Archpriest George Gorodentsev. The efforts of Yatsenyuk to promise a new status for Russia in regions with a large Russian presence and increased decentralization of power does not hide the real power for these Russian separatists who see behind these moves en empty hand behind which lies a conspiracy of the CIA and the Ukrainian Latin Church. Further, such offers are but spoiled candy, for the separatist forces demand the acceptance of Russian as an official language for all of Ukraine and demand a referendum on Russian autonomy as well.

Conclusion

Immediate prospects for the Ukraine look poor indeed given Russian determination and the lack of a well thought-out response from the West. One should not longer be fooled by Putin’s peaceful feints. They are just that. The overall path and pattern has been set.

The question is: how should we respond?

Miscellany

by

Howard Adelman

  1.                   Israel Galván at Koerner Hall.

Last night we went to watch Israel Galván’s flamenco dance production at Koerner Hall called La Edad de Oro with the traditional combination of dancer, guitarist and soloist. But what a combination! What a tour de force! It is no wonder that Galván has won virtually every possible prize in the flamenco world for he is not only a brilliant and extremely athletic dancer but a very innovative choreographer who uses his hands and arms as much as his feet to greatly broaden the expressiveness of flamenco while retaining the classical lines of this dance. The exactitude and detail of his movements along with the sudden shifts – and even full stops – literally take your breath away. You see him virtually always as a side silhouette or a straight frontal view and almost always in square or rectangular patches of light rather than a round spot. He must bring along his own lighting man for the lighting really enhanced the performance.

Israel Galván was more than accompanied by David Lagos as the phenomenal flamenco singer and Alfredo Lagos on classical guitar. These are two outstanding soloists in their own right. The syncopated clapping that accompanied the dancing, the guitar playing or the singing was unforgettable and we had never seen anything like it before. I just wish I understood the grammar of flamenco or even just the Spanish lyrics and perhaps I could have been as wild and vocal as the appreciative audience. Some traditional positions of el toro are obvious, but I was unable to interpret the birdlike fluttering and the variety of other moves though one cannot mistake the great artistry in his bodily movements and twists as he dances with amazing speed, discipline and control or fail the appreciate a great evening. It is really a pity that only.05% of the Metro Toronto population got a chance to see and hear his one night tour, but it is probably thanks to Koerner Hall and the efforts of Mervon Mehta that we get to see such outstanding artists.

  1. Marry Me a Little at the Tarragon Theatre

You can tell that I am old. I love Stephen Sondheim. I suspet none of my children and certainly not my grandchildren would care for Sondheim – well perhaps Gabriel would appreciate the gore of Sweeney Todd. I think he is the greatest of all the great lyricists that emerged in the golden age – la edad de oro – of Broadway musicals. They are intricate plays on words and meanings and rhymes that are unsurpassed, especially when the melody inserts dissonance and atonality and has that punctuated character of a Seuret painting as in his best musical, Sunday in the Park with George based directly on Seuret’s painting. His use of polyphony intricately interweaving two different melodies is unequalled.

Though Sondheim never produced a musical the equal of Porgy and Bess, for me he never produced a song I did not like or at least, a song of his that I heard for I confess I probably have not heard a great many of his songs. West Side Story, for which he wrote only the lyrics, rivals Guys and Dolls for me as my second most favoured musicals.

Marry Me a Little, a pastiche of Sondheim music and lyrics woven into a story of a couple coming together and breaking up in a loft in New York as revived at Tarragon and performed by Elodie Gillett and Adrian Marchuk as the songwriter in the loft who dumps Elodie when she asks him to “Marry me a little”, is just a delight and excellently produced and performed. If you grew up in the golden age of Broadway musicals and love the genre and if you want to see an excellent revival, you too should go see it.

  1. The Obama Doctrine

If we believe many of the latest reports, Putin has decided to stop the build-up of troops on the eastern border of Ukraine. The reasons could not be the pin pricks of the sanctions already in place. As much an I am an admirer of Obama, I would also not credit his persuasive powers when he was on the phone with Putin from Saudi Arabia for an hour on Friday. Perhaps it was the threat of more sanctions, but I suspect the effect was really indirect resulting from the downs and ups of the Russian ruble and stock market during March. The Russian ruble was at an all time high before the crisis over the Crimea, reaching 36.66 per $US. After a relatively steep drop, the ruble rose back up on Friday to 35.79, when Putin signalled that Russian troops would not invade Ukraine and that he had agreed with Obama to begin a dialogue and diplomatic process to end the imbroglio.

Should anyone trust Putin? The signals are so unclear and ambiguous. His past record of promises do not inspire trust. Further, the outright barrage of lies about the Ukraine is just sickening. Further, financial speculation is based on hope for the future more than hard-headed analysis. At the beginning of March when Russia invaded Crimea, the Russian stock market, MICEX, fell 10.7% from almost 1500 points, wiping out well over $50 billion in value, and now sits at 1344.12. Putin’s crony capitalists are probably running scared and possibly urged Putin to take up Obama’s offer of re-engagement. If true, then my fears were misplaced and Obama’s gradual approach and eschewing the threat of force may have worked. We will have to just wait and see – something the Ukrainians cannot afford to do. Can you imagine what would have happened to the currencies and the stockmarkets of the West as well as Russia if Obama had taken the advice of Charles Krauthammer and put America back in the role of policeman of the world? Though there is evidence that Obama’s deliberate and steady withdrawal from that roll, particularly in the Gulf, has made allies like Saudi Arabia very nervous and resentful, I personally welcome America’s stand-down from imperial ambitions.

4. Bagels and Cream Cheese

Now that the ski season is over, I have to rush off to bring fresh bagels and cream cheese to my grandchildren in Toronto and resume our Sunday morning ritual. But one last item.

  1.       Jews in the Ukraine

Following David Frum’s brief visit and observations of what is happening to the Jewish community in the Ukraine, the Jewish Chronicle has an excellent report on Jewish support for the current government i as an antidote to Putin’s accusations of rampant anti-Semitism in Ukraine. (http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/116914/ukraine-community-ready-%EF%AC%81ght-russian-invasion)

Gennadiy Korban, multi-millionaire businessman and the deputy head of Dnepropetrovsk with the largest Jewish community in Ukraine is busy preparing a militia for defence of that eastern city because he is convinced the West will not provide military aid.

Billionaire Gennady Bogolyubov, has pledged to personally fight the Russians if they invade.

Regional Governor Igor Kolomoisky donated $25 million to the Ukrainian army’s southern command to pay for fuel for military vehicles and aircraft..

Dnepropetrovsk Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki declared: “What Putin is saying about antisemitism in the Ukraine is mostly just a lie to divide us. We Jews are fighting as Ukrainians, for freedom for all our country.”

Oleg Rostovtsev, a PR rep of the Jewish community in Dnepropetrovsk, stated: “This is our country, our community, our city. Jews are part of Ukraine’s political nation. Some Israeli citizens who served in the IDF have already come back to offer their services to the Ukrainian army and others are planning to do so,” 

The Obama Doctrine

The Obama Doctrine

by

Howard Adelman

 

Summary

1. The Ukraine crisis is a test for the West and the international order.

2. That test is one about values, not one about coercive or economic strength.

3. This clash of civilizations is one of democratic and liberal versus “might is right” values, of the modern world versus an old order.

4. In this clash, there is a danger of stumbling into war as in WWI.

5. The old order as encompassed by the Soviet Union imploded not because the West bankrupted the USSR and certainly not because the West beat the East on the battlefield, but because Western ideals were adopted and fought for by the citizens of the satraps of the Soviet Empire.

6. That war, now resumed, is won by condemnation, by witnessing, and by diplomatic engagement and not by confrontation and the threat of coercive power.

7. Nevertheless, the threat of the use of coercive power must be held at the ready, but only for those states that already belong to the Western defensive alliance.

8. Military power will not be used both in any effort to recover Crimea for Ukraine but also not in defence of the Ukraine.

9. Military power will not be threatened to be used if Russia invades or stirs up a civil war in Ukraine for two reasons, 1) the West’s unwillingness to fight in a country that is not part of the Western defensive alliance, and 2) because one should not wave a big stick unless one intends to use it.

10. This new conflict as an echo and replay of an old conflict will be fought by posing truth to power, by diplomatic isolation, by economic sanctions, by continuing diplomatic engagement and, possibly, by the Ukrainian citizens themselves rising up.

The Doctrine

Yesterday, Barack Obama made one of the most important speeches of his presidency. On 26 March 2014 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels Obama gave one of his most eloquent yet very plain-spoken speeches. This is not just my opinion but a general consensus view of most listeners and readers of the speech. Further, I agreed with it – at least with almost all of it. By and large it reflected my own writings on the issue, and, except for its eloquence, almost all the major ideas in the speech reflect my own ideas and, more specifically, what I have written about the crisis as late as the last two days. In that speech Obama spelled out the Obama Doctrine on how to deal with military aggression by a regional power. As you will see, I have one major difference with Obama and I hope he is correct and I am wrong.

Obama defined the crisis over Ukraine as a test for Europe, the United States and for the international order, not a test of the military or economic power of the West versus that of Russia, but a test of the values of the West versus those exhibited by Russia in its seizure of Crimea. What are those value? For the West they are a “particular set of ideals [that] began to emerge, the belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose, the belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding,” versus “an older, more traditional view of power…[that] argues that ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs, that order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign.” Obama went on to define a source for that alternative view that “might is right”. “Often this alternative vision roots itself in the notion that by virtue of race or faith or ethnicity, some are inherently superior to others and that individual identity must be defined by us versus them, or that national greatness must flow not by what people stand for, but what they are against.”

So Western value and ideals are pitted against the belief in power, the belief the centralization of that power, rooted in a paranoid division in “us versus them”. The ongoing clash of these two sets of ideas is ongoing, both within nations and among nations. Like myself, Obama is haunted by the nightmare of repeating the errors at the beginning of the twentieth century and stumbling into war. “This morning at Flanders Field, I was reminded of how war between peoples sent a generation to their deaths in the trenches and gas of the first world war,” said Obama. The conflict continued through WWII and the Cold War.

Then Obama articulated his interpretation of the source of victory in the latter for Western values. “That contest was won, not by tanks or missiles, but because our ideals stirred the hearts of Hungarians, who sparked a revolution, Poles in their shipyards who stood in solidarity, Czechs who waged a Velvet Revolution without firing a shot, and East Berliners who marched past the guards and finally tore down that wall.” We may have won WWII by force of arms. But Obama challenged the view that the West won the Cold War by bankrupting the Soviet Union through an arms race. The people within the nations making up the USSR won the war by throwing off the yoke of oppression themselves. We may have lent them moral and intellectual support, but they, and only they, won the battle by standing up for the universal values for which the West stands.

Today, Obama said, we are once again confronted “with the belief among some that bigger nations can bully smaller ones to get their way — that recycled maxim that might somehow makes right.” “What’s at stake in Ukraine today. Russia’s leadership is challenging truths that only a few weeks ago seemed self-evident, that in the 21st century, the borders of Europe cannot be redrawn with force, that international law matters, that people and nations can make their own decisions about their future.” So values stand against the use of coercive power to get one’s way. Further, once again, those values are won, not on the battle field between nations but in the battle over ideas and ideals within nations. “Just look at the young people of Ukraine, who were determined to take back their future from a government rotted by corruption; the portraits of the fallen shot by snipers; the visitors who pay their respects at the Maidan. There was the university student wrapped in the Ukrainian flag expressing her hope that every country should live by the law; a postgraduate student speaking for fellow protesters, saying, I want these people who are here to have dignity.”

Once again, Obama reiterated the values of the West. “Yes, we believe in democracy, with elections that are free and fair, and independent judiciaries and opposition parties, civil society and uncensored information so that individuals can make their own choices. Yes, we believe in open economies based on free markets and innovation and individual initiative and entrepreneurship and trade and investment that creates a broader prosperity.

And yes, we believe in human dignity, that every person is created equal — no matter who you are or what you look like or who you love or where you come from. That is what we believe. That’s what makes us strong. And our enduring strength is also reflected in our respect for an international system that protects the rights of both nations and people — a United Nations and a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international law and the means to enforce those laws.”

So how does one fight a war between the values of the West and the belief in might is right of Vladimir Putin? First, by condemnation. “Russia’s violation of international law, its assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, must be met with condemnation, not because we’re trying to keep Russia down, but because the principles that have meant so much to Europe and the world must be lifted up.” Secondly, and most importantly in characterizing the Obama doctrine, not by confrontation. Obama is no JFK defending American interests in the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is not a Cold War. Russia is no longer a global power. It is not governed by a ruling and competing ideology, for the belief in “might is right” is not a set of competing values but just a stance of a bully. Thirdly, and very importantly, the doctrine eschews military conflict between the West and Russia. “The United States and NATO do not seek any conflict with Russia. In fact, for more than 60 years we have come together in NATO not to claim other lands but to keep nations free.” It follows, fourthly, that the aim of the conflict is not to defeat Russia.

What is the implication of the doctrine for the use of military force by the West? “NATO planes patrol the skies over the Baltics, and we’ve reinforced our presence in Poland, and we’re prepared to do more. Going forward, every NATO member state must step up and carry its share of the burden by showing the political will to invest in our collective defense and by developing the capabilities to serve as a source of international peace and security…Ukraine is not a member of NATO, in part because of its close and complex history with Russia.” In other words, military forces of the West will be restricted to the defence of existing members of NATO.

Obama went onto say that, “Nor will Russia be dislodged from Crimea or deterred from further escalation by military force.” Not only will force not be used to help Ukraine recover Crimea, but it will not be used if Russia attacks eastern and/or southern Ukraine. The battle of Ukrainians with Putin’s Russia will be left to the ability of Ukraine to resist Russian force. As Obama said, “in the end, every society must chart its own course. America’s path or Europe’s path is not the only ways to reach freedom and justice. But on the fundamental principle that is at stake here, the ability of nations and peoples to make their own choices, there can be no going back. It’s not America that filled the Maidan with protesters. It was Ukrainians.” Will weapons be supplied to the Ukrainians? There is certainly no indication in the speech that they will be, and every indication that they will not. Why did the Obama doctrine not leave this unarticulated thereby allowing Putin to fear that invading Ukraine may risk a war with the West?

“Now is not the time for bluster. The situation in Ukraine, like crises in many parts of the world, does not have easy answers nor a military solution.” (my italics) In other words, if you do not intend to use military force, don’t hold out that prospect as a bluff. The risk, and perhaps, likelihood is that it will be called. And the results could be disastrous. So how will the battle with the West between values and ideals versus a leader determined to be a bully? In the Obama doctrine, through patience. “But with time, so long as we remain united, the Russian people will recognize that they cannot achieve the security, prosperity and the status that they seek through brute force.” With continued engagement even as Putin is excluded from one forum after another. “And that’s why throughout this crisis we will combine our substantial pressure on Russia with an open door for diplomacy.”

As Obama articulated his continued belief in diplomacy and eschewing the threat of using military force. “I believe that for both Ukraine and Russia, a stable peace will come through de-escalation, a direct dialogue between Russia and the government of Ukraine and the international community, monitors who can ensure that the rights of all Ukrainians are protected, a process of constitutional reform within Ukraine and free and fair elections this spring.” But what if Putin acts first? What if he invades and does not give democracy a chance? What happened to the doctrine of deterrence and the maxim, “Speak softly but carry a big stick.” That is not part of the Obama doctrine.

Obama is not dumb. He recognizes that Putin has ignored many opportunities for engagement. “So far, Russia has resisted diplomatic overtures, annexing Crimea and massing large forces along Ukraine’s border. Russia’s justified these actions as an effort to prevent problems on its own borders and to protect ethnic Russians inside Ukraine. Of course, there is no evidence, never has been, of systemic violence against ethnic Russians inside of Ukraine.” In other words, Putin, you are a liar. Further, the issue is not the reunion of Crimea with Russia because of historical security and demographic reasons, but the procedures for pursuing those goals through force of arms rather than negotiations with respect for the international rule of law.

Besides, the way Putin acquired Crimea cannot be allowed to set an international precedent. “Many countries around the world face similar questions about their borders and ethnic minorities abroad, about sovereignty and self-determination. These are tensions that have led in other places to debate and democratic referendums, conflicts and uneasy co- existence. These are difficult issues and it is precisely because these questions are hard that they must be addressed through constitutional means and international laws, so that majorities cannot simply suppress minorities and big countries cannot simply bully the small”.

What about America as a bullyboy on the international stage? Kosovo is not a precedent. “NATO only intervened after the people of Kosovo were systematically brutalized and killed for years…Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo’s neighbors. None of that even came close to happening in Crimea.”

Iraq is also not another example of hypocrisy by America for, “America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people in a fully sovereign Iraqi state that can make decisions about its own future.”

Russia’s bullying tactics have been rationalized by accusing America of  “conspiring with fascists inside of Ukraine” and “failing to respect the Russian people.” The first is simply a lie. As for the second, “We Americans remember well the unimaginable sacrifices made by the Russian people in World War II, and we have honored those sacrifices. Since the end of the Cold War, we have worked with Russia under successive administrations to build ties of culture and commerce and international community, not as a favor to Russia, but because it was in our national interests… we believe the world has benefited when Russia chooses to cooperate on the basis of mutual interests and mutual respect…America and the world, and Europe, has an interest in a strong and responsible Russia, not a weak one. We want the Russian people to live in security, prosperity and dignity like everyone else, proud of their own history. But that does not mean that Russia can run roughshod over its neighbors. Just because Russia has a deep history with Ukraine does not mean it should be able to dictate Ukraine’s future. No amount of propaganda can make right something that the world knows is wrong.”

In sum, America will give witness to the values it upholds and, in the case of Ukraine, will not back up that witnessing with the use of force but with conviction.” “In the end, the success of our ideals comes down to us, including the example of our own lives, our own societies.”  “I believe that if we hold firm to our principles and are willing to back our beliefs with courage and resolve, then hope will ultimately overcome fear, and freedom will continue to triumph over tyranny.”

After Obama’s speech, my fear of a repeat of 1914 has decreased enormously. But my fear for the Ukrainian people has also increased enormously. My questioning of the reliance on engagement and diplomacy alone continues at the same time as I too would prefer to avoid the use of force over Ukraine. But I also fear that if force is not threatened, and possibly emplyed, the likelihood of its use by Putin increases. Further, if a credible threat is made that it would be used, the  possibility that Putin will not invade Ukraine goes up not down.

The Obama doctrine can provide little comfort o the people of Ukraine and will, instead understandably fill them with fear and trembling.

The Current Ukrainian Crisis in Theoretical and Historical Perspective

by

Howard Adelman

I am torn between wanting to write about the psychological premises of Saving Mr. Banks, the hagiographical paeon to Walt Disney’s universal lesson of hope based on fulfilling childhood fantasy versus the deep fears that pervaded Pam Travers, the author of Mary Poppins in the context of Walt getting Pam Travers to allow him to make his movie of Mary Poppins. But since I myself am increasingly gripped more by fear these days than hope, I have set that task aside.

I am afraid as I have never been since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. I finished Margaret MacMillan’s book a month ago, The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, and am currently reading Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. In the current crisis with Putin over the Ukraine, will the world stumble into war in a topsy turvy fashion, unintended but somehow with alternative avenues seemingly each closed off in turn and set off by a catalyst on the eastern border of Ukraine or perhaps in Moldova or even Syria? Everywhere I look for, and perhaps magnify, signs of hope, signs that the exit route that keeps being signalled to Putin will be taken, but instead the signs of escalation keep mounting higher and higher, and we are only at the very initial phases.

Further, the latest character of that escalation – in the banning of certain individual Canadians from entry into Russia – is a giant search light signal. For while Canada banned oligarchs and politicians associated with the annexation of Crimea, Russia responded by banning Canadians from entry to Russia based on either their record as defenders of modern individual rights and/or for their expertise on Russia and the defence of civil rights in the Russian Federation. The real war is a war of values – the worst kind of war – one between a substantive sense of justice based on equity, fairness and the rule of law that provides the basis for true unity that allows for and encourages difference, versus prejudice and superstition and the desire to impose an inflexible and dogmatic orthodoxy of belief and practice imposed by an arrogant leadership who project fears onto outsiders as distractions from substantive failures and disagreements within.

And if I am frightened, what about the Ukrainian citizens who now stand on the frontier? We are once again at a schism in history. How our leaders and statesmen handle this chasm will determine the future. And it is a historicial divide, not because Crimea was seized by or voted to reunite with Russia, but because the process so thoroughly challenged an international order built on the rule of law, an order that has been challenged before by stupid and illegal actions, but never in such a brazen way and for imperial purposes built on the basis of misrepresentation and falsehhoods.

What follows is a short extract from an essay I published on eschatology that offers a theoretical framework for my fears and basis for hope. I will follow up tomorrow with a historical-theoretical essay on the nature of the modern world order and the fundamental challenge that Putin is posing. I will then send out a blog on the application of this eschatological and historical framework to the contemporary situation. I will, sooner or later, publish my review essay on Margaret MacMillan, but I so need the relief of fiction and movies and plays to allow me to see the looming potential disaster with greater clarity.

I do not mean to be frightening but only wish to share the source of my own fears. So I will be sending out updated extracts, mostly theoretical, to offer the fundamental sources for the modern political order that is once again being fundamentally challenged.

I begin with the premises about eschatology and radical change.

On Eschatology: Jews and Visions of a World Order

I begin with a huge conceit. When you are truly in love, when you embrace this world with all its follies and foibles and do not dream of replacing it with an ideal order, but instead work to construct a system to avoid evil rather than achieve the good, to avoid an apocalypse rather serve a philosophical idealistic dream of a messianic promise, when meaning is found in bringing the past into the present to construct a future that will patch up fissures and fault lines rather than searching for that meaning in an eternal truth intended to prove the finitude of temporality, then the whole world is Jewish. The modern dream of building a Tower of Babel with a vision of a globalized culture and a universal normative language is deconstructed. World Order is a chimera.

I begin with eschatology and its three different meanings: an ultimate end of days and absolute destruction of this world and human history; a radical transformation within history out of which a new world order will emerge; and, third, a point of transformation in history in which the Hebraic image of a peaceful compact of nations once again emerges from the nightmare of a global and universal order combined with the image of an eschatological absolute destruction. In other words, the third vision of eschatology, the re-emergence of an already revealed truth of the finitude and diversity of humankind is always at war with the marriage of a divine and uniform utopian vision of the good married to a nightmare of absolute collapse.

Tomorrow I will describe the nation-state system as the reemergence of an older inherited vision that eschewed dreams of a universal order in favour of a system of diverse self-governing nations. The day after tomorrow, I will apply to the contemorary situation the modest and more personal vision of eschatology as another stage in the struggle between the vision of nations trying to create order while recognizing diversity, and the eschatological dreamers of a new world order who, through their utopian visions, threaten to bring about the very nightmare they fear, the destruction of the world as we know it.

On Eschatology

There are three radically different views of eschatology. Two are opposing visions, absolute opposites. In one, the world comes to an end and it is replaced by paradise. In the second, the world we know experiences absolute destruction. In the paradoxical Christian vision, the two opposite eschatological visions are combined. It is a vision of paradise following absolute destruction. In a very different third view, eschatology is the study of a profound rupture between different moments in history in which there is a dramatic change from one historical period to its successor brought about externally by either a very catastrophic event – destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD – or a trying but ultimately transformative experience – the alleged freeing of the Jewish slaves in Egypt from the tyrannical pharaoh, the 1688 revolution in Britain, the Civil War in the USA that freed Black slaves, and the Holocaust. On a personal level, these catastrophic ruptures are but macroscopic extensions of experiences of personal ruptures in one’s personal life, such as when an individual experiences a dramatic rupture when a beloved closest to one’s soul dies. Cataclysmic ruptures are experienced both personally and politically. When either is made absolute, the result is madness in history,

Eschatology in all three meanings refers to the end of days (in Hebrew, aharit ha-yamim) and the science of what happens after one dies and, in the ultimate end of days, the election of God to rule over all humanity when Israel can live peacefully in its own land in prosperity, and the bones of dead humans would once again have flesh as the dead are resurrected from that vale of skeletons (Ezekial 37:1-14) generally associated with the Valley of Kidron, or at the end of time itself and mankind’s life on this planet (kez ha-yamim). But if the governing macro-eschatology is a concern with the end of time, then the primary concern after someone dies is the destiny that awaits each individual after he or she dies – hence heaven (paradise) or hell. Eschatology also refers to ruptures in time and human history as a whole in which aharit ha-yamim simply means the end of these days and the coming of a very different future.

If the primary concern is with rupture and succession within time, the key issue is the significance of an individual life on future history. First and foremost, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has written, individuals become immortal by engraving their values on their children in the transmission of memory across generations. On a larger scale, if the governing macro-eschatology is a concern with ruptures in time, then the primary concern after an individual dies is what contribution that individual has made to tikkun olam, literally mending the world, trying to leave the world as a slightly better place than it would have been had the individual not lived and not on how the individual will be judged in terms of some absolute abstract norm of goodness and serving justice.

In Christendom, eschatology has been focused not only on the most dramatic ruptures in life – death and the evaluation of the worth of that life – but on heaven and hell as successor realms to that life beyond temporality. For most contemporary Jews, the characterization of the end of days and its possible succession, including the resurrection of bodily existence for all who died, is left to the end of days. In Plato’s writings that had such an influence on Christianity through Saul of Tarsus, and eventually Islam, the soul faces judgment after death depending on the contribution of that individual to serving the Good. But Plato had a cyclical view of history as a whole. Thus, there was no end of time, only resurrection in time. In the myth of Er told at the end of the Republic, those who experienced trials and tribulations are very cautious in choosing their lot for their next round of life, while those who were children of privilege are ignorant of caution and rashly choose their lots for their next life on earth. The synthesis of judgment of each individual by a divine being after each dies combined with the Jewish vision of the end of days, produced a novel theology of the resurrected Jesus through whose death and sacrifice individuals could be redeemed. In contrast, Judaism emphasizes ruptures within time, and evaluation of each life by the community in terms of that person’s contribution to bringing about needed repairs or avoiding catastrophic threats. In rabbinic Judaism as it developed in the common era, the focus is on history and not eternity.

How did this happen when the end of days is such a repeated theme in the Torah? Isaiah prophesized that a messiah would grow up as a “root out of dry ground” (title of my play produced at Hart House in 1961) who will make judgments based, not on existing historical laws and empirical facts, but to provide for the meek of the earth through righteousness that smites the earth with the rod of his mouth and slays the wicked, so that then, “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb and the leopard with the kid.” (Isaiah 11.6) This prophetic vision combined with Deutero-Isaiah’s transcendent eschatological vision (41-45) was to be brought about by a new prince of humans who personifies the spirit of Israel. Through his suffering, he atones for human sins, and, further, brings peace and salvation to the world. It is a vision divorced from the particularity of the Hebrews and their historical condition and universalized with great power in the Christianity of Paul based on the belief that Jesus was that prophesized messiah rather than a prophetic teacher. Paul believed in the immanent coming of God’s earthly kingdom. He preached not only to Jews, the “lost sheep of the House of Israel,” but to the gentile nations as well.

Father Bruce Chilton in his book, Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography, called Paul “the most successful religious teacher history has ever seen.” In his letter to the Colossae, Paul told the pagans that they did not have to abide by the laws of the Torah for converts were “set free from the sins of the flesh” and were born again into a new life. Acceptance of Jesus provided as radical a rupture as death, for it meant being reborn into Christ. The preacher of death in life and everlasting life in death taught that all humans share a common humanity through the suffering of Christ. Pagans were allowed to come inside God’s circle of love and purpose (Ephesians 2.12) (on the false premise that they had once been excluded by the Hebraic religion). Most importantly, by his suffering, Jesus removed what Paul labeled the “hostility” of the law to create a new human who could live in peace above and beyond rules, commandments and laws. In Acts, according to Paul, Peter prophesied “signs on the earth” – blood and fire, vapor and smoke, the sun turned to darkness and the moon bathed in blood, consistent with a huge nuclear war or a super volcanic eruption. (cf. Amos 5:18; 8:10; Zephaniah 1:2-24) Paul preached that the nation of Israel crucified Jesus and rejected him as both Lord and Christ. Christianity and a new eschatology had been created on the backs of an abused Israel, and the very source of that abuse was a Jewish dissident. Hence, the historic rupture between Christianity and Judaism, as well as a history of Christian persecution of Jews!

Do we mean by eschatology the end of a world as we knew it and the end of the rule of law, or the end of the world altogether, in massive devastation and/or collective redemption in a new world order? Does this vision in the face of an expectation of total disaster entitle anyone to live outside the rule of law? Or is eschatology simply the end of my world, the end of the world to which I have become accustomed?

Putin versus the Modern Nation-State System

The Development of the Modern Nation-State System

by

Howard Adelman

 

Putin versus the Westphalian Order

To comprehend the enormity of what is at stake in Putin’s Russia seizing and annexing part of Ukraine and now threatening eastern Ukraine, it is important to but the current crisis within the long trajectory of the development of modernity and the modern nation-state system. Putin is challenging the system on two basic norms: (1) prioritizing the unity of a large national group over the sanctity of state borders; (2) allowing powerful states through the use of their military might and economic leverage to reduce adjacent states to satraps and to change borders at will. These challenges have contributed to enormous international political turbulence and the risk of an expanded war is now possible. How to respond and with what degree of intensity and effort depends on understanding what is at stake. This blog, which borrows extensively from my previous publications, is intended to provide a succinct historical narrative to clarify what has been fought for and won in the existing international order.

In many world histories, the following radical shift at the beginning of the modern era likened our present time to that period. “Our current period is reminiscent of the turbulence and chaos that accompanied the transition from the feudal world order to the early Modern Period (pre-Westphalian Europe). This was a period of ‘declining empires, retreating feudal lords and an emerging class of traders and capitalist entrepreneurs.’ At that time, the Holy Roman Catholic Church represented God’s rule on earth (a divine element in that world order) and had established itself as the ‘divinely-delegated’ hegemonic power, an influential power that became an instrument of European governance. City-states were the main political units, although they were mostly controlled by monarchs. However, by the early 1600s there were already signs of tremendous turbulence in this feudal world order. One indication of this was the first pan-European (religious) war, which severely weakened the influence of the Church and resulted in the hegemon being replaced by about 300 sovereign princes. The disorder of the religious wars facilitated the disintegration of the old order which was slowly replaced by a new pan-European secular order in 1648 based on the equal sovereignty of newly created states.”

The message is that modern states succeeded empires replacing a centralized Christian empire with a diversity of different secular states. The new world order was consecrated by the Treaty of Westphalia. Though there is much truth in this historical schema, it errs by fundamental omissions. First, the resurrection of the concept of the nation as the bearer of collective values precedes the emergence of nation-states. Second, that emergence is facilitated by the resurrection of an Old Testament idea of nations at peace with one another; there is a utopian aspiration, as distinct from an apocalyptic vision, as well as an historical precedent on which these moderns relied. The aspiration included the Achilles heal of the nation-state system — whenever states and statesmen see themselves as the bearers and protectors of ALL fellow nationals in total disregard of accepted borders and the rights of states. Third, the states were not secular but Protestant, and the Protestant nation-states were at war with Catholic empires.

The Catholics were often viewed as fifth columnists, threats living within the bosom of the nation, with justification in some cases. But also because of provocation! After all, it was the true Catholic believer, Lord Robert (Robin) Catesby, in 1604 who organized Guy Fawkes, the explosives expert, and his aristocratic friends – Thomas Wintow, John Wright, Thomas Percy and Robert Keyes – to blow up James I, his wife and heir as well as all his officials in 1605 when the House of Lords reconvened in the second year after the Scottish King, James VI, son of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, succeeded Elizabeth to the throne of England. James was perceived as failing to fulfill his ostensible promise to permit freedom of worship for the Catholics. Of course, there had been provocations. Sir Robert Cecil had persecuted Catholics mercilessly. Under a 1586 statute, priests had to live and scurry about England in secrecy. When caught, they were most often killed. Protestant church attendance was compulsory.

Robin Catesby was a devout Catholic and a recusant, a refusenik of the time who refused to attend a Protestant church even nominally. His sister hid the Jesuit Priest, Father Henry Garnett, who was believed to be trying to carry out the 1570 Papal Bull of Pius Quintet that Catholics were not bound by any oath of fealty to their Protestant King or Queen. In 1604, freed from the restraining influence of the King, the exposure and capture of the Bye Plot conspirators who planned to kidnap the King brought the wrath of the Sir Robert Cecil onto the backs of the Catholics, a wrath that encouraged the rebels even though Farther Garnet had advised against the plot in prescient fear of an even greater persecution of Catholics.

The 1605 Gunpowder plot was the 9/11 cataclysm of its day. But the centre of the intellectual and ideological war between Protestant nation-states and the Holy Roman Empire was Holland, not England, where thinkers such as Hugo Grotius provided the ideological rational for the new order, an order highly influenced by a belief in resurrecting a new version of the old biblical order embraced by the rule of constitutional law domestically and international law more globally.

The Hebrew bible is clearly based on a politics of peoples. God promises to make the descendents a great nation (Genesis 12:2) with numerous descendents. (Genesis 15:4; 17:2; 22:17). This collection of books is premised on ethno-nationalism and populated with goyim, nations. The central concern is with the politics of the nation, the proper polis for the nation (Daniel Elezar), and securing a nation’s freedom within God’s realm on earth, not God’s realm in heaven. (Leo Strauss) The nation is premised on the principle of descent as central though not exclusive (as the Book of Ruth clearly indicates), and governance over a particular territory both to protect the nation and to pass laws that apply equally both to members of the nation and the gerim or strangers who live amongst any nation.

The children of Israel are not native to the soil for, like the Arameans who came from Kir and the Philistines who came from Caphtor, the Israelites became a nation when they came up from Egypt to settle in the land of Israel. The implication is that many if not most nations are forged from their process of movement and settlement. Further, in the case of the Hebrews, as with many other peoples – the Armenians, the Kurds, the Circassians – their unity continues even when uprooted from what became their ancestral territory. During that exile, the collective experience includes a degree of self-rule even when the nation lived within the bosom of a state in which the members of the minority nation were not equal subjects.

Thus, there are laws and practices governing the nation which lack the coercive force of the state, but which regulate the life of a people and all of its members who voluntarily adhere to that law – Torah and dat. State laws apply to those norms and rules for the protection of the nation or the people. State laws also provide equal protection of the welfare of all citizens of the realm who live on its territory, provided that they are not threats, whatever the source of their national affiliation. Finally, state laws apply to inter-national relations under applicable universal norms. The problem of Putin is not that states do not have a responsibility to protect fellow nationals who live outside the confines of the state, but how and when that obligation to protection is exercised. Are fellow nationals really in dire fear or is the creation of that fear a construct and excuse for intervention? If they are in fear, have all other methods of protection been exhausted or has the state dispensed with established international procedures for pursuing protection?

At the foundations of modernity in the seventeenth century, Holland emerges as the modern New Israel, the Republica Hebraeorum at a time when Hebrew studies and biblical research flourished at Leiden University and Jews arrived in large numbers in the United Provinces, mostly in flight from persecution and discrimination elsewhere – such as Catholic Spain where even the Conversos were being persecuted as racism rather than religion revealed itself to be at the heart of the persecution. Though these new political ideals incorporate in their political theoretical concerns the preoccupation with the ideal form of government as well as concerns with power and justice and the relationship between those who rule and those governed by the laws of the state largely inherited from the Greeks, it is from Jewish thinkers who lived in exile that Holland inherited its tradition for developing theory and rules of law applicable to the Dutch nation. (Cf. E.H. Krossman (2000) Political Thought in the Dutch Republic)

Although the material benefits of providing hospitality to the great Jewish merchants of the time, who were enjoying a Golden Age, played a part, the influence of traditional Jewish political thought on the political foundations of the post-Westphalian order was profound. The Jewish polis was not viewed as a source for universal truths, but as a model with lessons to be learned. This not just an exercise in speculation, but an actual pattern of political concern by a nation that was so critical in providing the foundations of modernity, for it was William of Orange in 1688 coming from the Netherlands who gave Britain its character as a modern nation-state.

However, the Dutch tradition differed from that of the Hebrew nation, for Holland arose out of a tradition in which the separation of Church and State, the separation from the laws that are God’s and those that are Caesar’s, was a central theme. The tradition of the king’s two bodies, and the dominion of the Church over spiritual matters versus the State over earthly matters, was not part of the Hebraic tradition of political thought. That political tradition of two political realms intersecting in the sovereign also influenced issues of membership, for canonical law had been used to de-nationalize the Jews of Spain and drive them out of the polity in the Spanish Inquisition. Thus, the Dutch had to intertwine at least three traditions, the tradition of defining the ideal polity in accordance with Greek philosophy, the tradition of defining the rights of the nation and of the excluded stranger in Jewish political thought, and the need to separate Church and state.

Hugo Grotius adapted the conceptions of equality and justice in his 1600 volume, De Republica Emendanda, and in his 1614 recommendations to the United Provinces on the treatment of foreigners seeking safety in Holland that had such an influence on the 1617 book of his friend, Petrus Cunaeus, who was less interested in emulating the ancient Hebrew Kingdom’s constitutional provisions, than its ethical ones, namely its conceptions of equity and justice.

The three different sections of De Republica Emendanda deal with constitutional, legislative and leadership issues in the first 27 paragraphs comparing the Hebrew and Dutch constitutions, the analysis of disaggregated sovereignty in the Hebrew polity divided among the different levels of structure and individuals assigned authority over those different levels, including the supreme representation of sovereignty, and, thirdly, a historical sketch of the history of the Dutch Republic thus far and its shortcomings. Those shortcomings boiled down to loss of a true substantive sense of justice that was the basis for unity, and the substitution of prejudice and superstition and the desire to impose an inflexible and dogmatic orthodoxy of belief and practice imposed by arrogant and ignorant clergy (then on such issues as predestination and the Lord’s grace) to replace true piety and respect. De Republica Emendanda explicitly refers to the ancient Hebrew Commonwealth as a prototype of those same weaknesses that produced a lack of unity because of superstition rather than a respect for inviolable laws, and that led to futile and meaningless debates over sacred ritual and places of worship rather than freedom, equality, justice and power.

This disunity led to the downfall of the ancient Israelite state. As a consequence, the failures of the ancient Israeli effort at state-building could be repeated bringing on interventions by wayward princes or emperors, the promotion of idolatry, the growth of internal strife from within, and the culminating calamity of all, civil war, and tyranny from without. In the face of such divisions and displacements, fears are projected onto outsiders as distractions from substantive failures and disagreements within. Those exercises in displacement were used to cover up rather than deal with an absence of unity so critical for the administration of a successful polis. The issues were self rule in accordance with inherited privileges and local interests that guaranteed local inalienable rights, and the limitation of powers of external sovereigns, including inhibiting the extension of those powers to exclude providing hospitality and safety to people expelled by that foreign sovereign.

In the debates over whether Jews could be granted freedom of religious belief and practice when not only Roman Catholics and specific other Protestant denominations lacked such rights, and in the face of public scandals in which one Jewish male was caught having intercourse with a Christian girl and another, a pharmacist was caught committing adultery with a Christian maid, Grotius, though not clearly and distinctly, but ambiguously and half-heartedly, commended the intake of Jews. Immigration of Hebrews was to be allowed because of an affinity between Calvinist Holland and the history and experience of Jews, and between their ancient commonwealth and its constitution and their reference to God as the supreme commander, so that humans are committed, not to following the whims of the people, but to follow divine commandments for hospitality which are couched as universal obligations of duty rather than as the universal rights of those claiming the beneficence of the host state. No quota was to be placed on immigration. At the same time, the freedom of Jews to publish had to be restricted lest they try to proselytize and seduce Christian girls. Jews could not serve in public office and young Christian girls could not work as maids in Jewish households. (These were Grotian pragmatic concessions to mob fear.) But no restrictions were to be placed on Jewish rights to trade, subject to Christian imposed closing times, or to where they could live. They were neither prevented from wearing special attire (versus the 2013 proposed Quebec Charter of Values) nor was the wearing of special attire imposed upon them. The Jewish national sense of freedom and equality, justice and beneficence provided the standard for the Dutch nation as it sought self-rule.

Grotius failed to save Holland from its religious zealots and political fanatics, and, in 1618, was forced to flee to Paris and live in exile for the rest of his life when the greatest rupture first appeared in the process of creating a modern Dutch state. However, he left a legacy of intellectual wariness of those who promoted ultimate apocalyptic visions. He also bequeathed a respect for the political values of the ancient Hebrew nation and its respect for the rule of law. Nationality had to be married to a republican order of law and self-government.

This was what Putin does not understand. Nationality does NOT trump a republican order but works in concert with it. Putin seems to be driven more and more by a Milosevic utopian vision of a union of a greater Russia and a willingness to flirt with the apocalypse. The principle of the rule of law both within states and in the international order among states is a fundamental value worth fighting for. But any fight involving a nuclear power in contemporary times poses an existential risk, not simply to the modern world order, but to any order whatsoever.

The threat of nationalism to a state political order can come from without or from xenophobic nationalists from within who may try to seize control of the levers of the state. Further, expansionist nationalism and xenophobic nationalism, while ostensibly opposed, easily become partners in dismantling the legal order of the state system. That is why, while opposing expansionist nationalism, it is also necessary to be wary of internal xenophobic nationalists who may be the keenest opponents of the expansionist variety, for both pay little regard to the nature of the state, the importance of a civil order, the crucial role of state institutions and the rule of law as protectors of minorities domestically and internationally.

The nation-state system as it has developed must be protected and defended whether the threat comes from Western neo-liberal imperialists or Eastern pan-nationalist or pan-religious zealots.

Putin’s Version of Post-Cold War history

Putin’s Version of Post-Cold War History

by

Howard Adelman

 

Putin’s current version of post-Cold War history consists of the following trajectory, one fully immersed in a culture of conspiracy, :

WOUNDED PRIDE

1. The end of the Cold War in 1991 was the result of internal initiatives within Russia to dissolve the Soviet Union and not the result of the Soviet Union dissolving in response to Western economic and political pressures; when the West takes the credit and claims to have won the Cold War, it is an insult to Russians because it defines Russia as a loser.

ENHANCED ANGER

2. NATO as a security alliance has ignored the detente arrived at through negotiations and has continued to treat Russia as an enemy by moving NATO assets increasingly closer to Russia, first into former states associated with the USSR and then into the three Baltic republics that were part of the Soviet Union, namely Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

PANIC

3. The effort to forge a political association agreement between Ukraine and the EU, with its own security as well as economic clauses, was the last straw in ignoring Russia’s legitimate and traditional sphere of interest and in pushing Russia into a corner.

THE CATALYST

4. The ouster of Ukraine’s legitimately elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych because he was unprepared to accept the EU’s association agreement and turned to Russia for financial aid, was a move fostered by Western political manoeuvres and financing of dissidents and even the rebellion and was the final straw, especially when an entirely Western-oriented government drawn largely from the protest leadership took control of the Ukraine. This step crossed the red line that Russia had signalled to the West, and did so in a manner that was both insensitive and irresponsible indicating that the West no longer wanted an international partnership with Russia.

PUSH BACK

5. Russia moved swiftly to annex the Crimea which it effectively controlled militarily, which had a majority Russian population, and with which Russia had deep historic, strategic and emotional ties, an annexation which reversed a historic mistake when the Ukrainian, Nikita Khrushchev, transferred the Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 without consulting its population, and an annexation which will never be reversed no matter what actions are taken by the West.

RUSSIAN ASSERTION

6. The period of Russian passivity in the face of over two decades of Western aggressive political, economic and military moves to hem Russia in is now over; although Russia has no intention of invading Ukraine, annexing it or dismembering it, significant numbers of Russian troops and military assets have been deployed near, but deliberately not next to, eastern Ukraine’s eastern, the country’s industrial heartland with large Russian speaking minorities, in the clear and unequivocal message that if the interests of the Russian population is under threat, Russia reserves the right to come to their protection.

ACTION IN OTHER AREAS OF RUSSIA’S SPHERE OF INTEREST

7. The west can expect other initiatives in eastern Europe – such as in Moldova, in Georgia and in the Balkans – now that Russia is determined to act strictly from its own strategic interests where it has the clout to change the situation; the partnership with the West has been dissolved by the West.

RESPONSE TO SANCTIONS

8. The initial sanctions and contemplated stronger and broader sanctions that will be forthcoming not only will not deter Russia – which in its history has endured far worse – but, on the contrary, will be met with countermoves that will seriously undermine the efforts of the West to be the world’s hegemon.

EFFECTS ELSEWHERE

9. The West can no longer count on a Russian partnership in Iran, Syria or North Korea, though Russia will continue to work in the interests of peace, but no longer as a junior partner and fellow traveller to Western interests.

NATO

10. The West can expect a very serious response not only in eastern Ukraine but in other areas of the world, particularly in other areas of eastern Europe, if NATO takes initiatives to embrace Ukraine within the NATO fold.

The dilemma for the West is that in order to defend the eastern Ukraine from a Russian annexation under the pretext of “fraternal assistance” to ethnic Russians under assault, many see economic sanctions as insufficient. Ukrainian troops with foreign observers would have to be deployed along the eastern border, a deployment which would be seen as a provocative action and could expect an aggressive response. On the other hand, if Ukraine does not become a member of NATO and if troops, primarily Ukrainian, are not deployed along the eastern border, then Ukraine would be unable to defend itself against another annexation which would become a fait accompli.  The West does not believe Putin when he says he will not invade because it is a pledge that is conditional on how he regards the treatment of the Russian minority, especially if thugs are used to stir up the mob. Putin no longer believes that NATO is a defence organization but now reads any move as the dynamic initiatives of NATO’s expansion. If Putin is at base a bitter autocrat with dreams of restored Russian glory, if he truly harbours deep resentments about Russia’s alleged humiliations by the West, then there is a real risk he will move into Ukraine in full knowledge that Obama has taken a military response off the table and that the EU never put it on the table to begin with.

Obama knows all this. So he insists that he will restrict Western actions to the sanctions expressway while keeping the gates open for diplomacy. He knows that Russian forces are now massing near though not yet along Ukraine’s eastern borders, so he expanded the sanctions regime the third time in succession to twenty more top Russian officials, including Putin’s right hand man, Sergei Ivanov, and Bank Rossiya, a St. Petersburg-based bank used to launder the billions of roubles for the super-rich oligarchs of Russia who strongly support Putin, including Yuri Kovalchuck, Vladimir Yakunin and the Rotenberg brothers. It is not clear why Obama has left Roman Abromovich off the list. Obama has also threatened to take a fourth step and impose sanctions on key sectors of the Russian economy – defence, energy, mining and financial services — if Russia, but only if Russia takes any further aggressive steps with respect to the Ukraine in full knowledge  that such sanctions will disrupt the global economy.

Will carrying the big economic stick be sufficient to get Putin to re-engage with the diplomatic route and savour his victory over Crimea given his reconstruction of post-Cold War history, or will the escalation continue unimpeded as we are thrust back to July of 1914? Will the West have to prepare to ship arms and equipment and trainers to the Ukraine and even Delta forces to support a long term underground war by Ukraine against Russia that must of necessity spread to Russia itself if the autocrat is to be stopped? The reduced number of provocateurs in Donetsk might be a dodge or, alternatively, a signal that Russia prefers to take the diplomatic road.

My Trivial and Specious Blog on Sanctions

My Trivial and Specious Blog on Sanctions

by

Howard Adelman

I first reprint Dr. David Goldberg’s response to my blog and then respond to his criticisms.

Dear Howard

I am sorry to have to say this, but I find your analysis below a far cry from your usual incisive jugular-directed intellectual dissection of complex events. It would not be entirely unfair to you to describe it as trivial and specious. 

Let us start with the 1st paragraph. You make a great song and dance about Crimea being removed from Ukraine without the consent of the citizens of Kiev, but what about the citizens of the Crimea itself? What Cesar gives, Caligula can take away. The Ukranian Kruschev took it from Russia and gave it to the Ukraine. Were the Crimeans consulted? Were they given the benefit of a ballot box —– stuffed or otherwise? Yet I hear not a peep from you, and others of your persuasion,  about the illegitimacy of this process that is only now being redressed.  It is obvious on the basis of demographics alone and past voting records that the proposition  would pass by a large majority. The decision of the Tatars and the Ukranian Opposition in Crimea to boycott the polls was anti-democratic and a puerile attempt to paint the vote as illegitimate. Just as the Bangkok Opposition is doing to bring down the multi-times elected Shinowatra Government. In the better democracies, NOT VOTING is an offence punishable by law (eg Australia). OK,so a few dissidents “disappeared”. Did you check this out for yourself? Do you know these individuals and their families personally? Do you know precisely who “disappeared” them?  Regular Russian Army personnel or local street gangs? Playing arm-chair detective is all very well, but evidence has to be tested and corroborated. And the question? I cannot see how it differs substantially from that used in any past or future Quebec Referendum, or the proposition upon which my fellow-Scots will vote next year. Please explain this to a naive simpleton like myself: If I vote YES to Crimea joining Russia, is it not axiomatic that I am simultaneously voting NO to Crimea staying as part of Ukraine.  Finally, cutting off communications may not have been a bad thing. At least the violence that plagued Kiev for months was prevented and the loss of life and limb effectively minimized. 

Now, as for the West’s response: I think it would have been much better to have done nothing and kept their mouth’s shut. It would have had precisely the same effect as their “micro-nano-Sanctions”, and they would not have made asses of themselves. What effect did Sanctions have on Mugabe and his Zimbabwe supporters? Or Milosevic? Or anyone else? I recall the EU that had banned Mugabe from all travel and even threatened his arrest and transfer to The Hague welcomed him at various conferences with open arms. Cowardice, Hypocrisy and Antisemitism: the three cornerstones of Western Diplomacy. You failed to see the irony in your own text, and the fantasy in your own predictions, when you seemed to suggest that the failure to include Putin and Lavrov in the Honours List was intended to force them to the negotiating table, of which you thought there was an excellent chance. Sure there is. In fact, it is a foregone conclusion, just as Iran came to the same table while their centrifuges keep whirling. Meantime, massive build-ups of Russian troops on Ukraine’s Eastern border continue unabated while Putin and Lavrov are laughing all the way to their banks.

There is only one way to stop Putin’s depredations: to send NATO troops immediately to the Eastern Ukraine as I believe the Ukrainian leaders have suggested, if not requested. And there is only one forlorn hope for having the Crimea returned to the Ukraine in violation of the “democratic rights” of its citizens, if that is what you pretend to call them.  That is to convene a meeting of the General Assembly of UNO  to debate cancelling Russia’s membership. The West should make it clear, one way or the other, that if it fails, they will withdraw from the organization en mass.  

Best regards

David

DR DAVID M GOLDBERG, MD, PhD, FRCPC

MY REPLY  

In response to the criticism about the illegitimacy of the process of annexing the Crimea to Russia, my point was to note the illegitimacy and to query why a the same result could not have been obtained by a significant majority vote legitimately conducted instead of under force of arms, a skewed ballot and the use of non-Crimean voters.

The only place where it is antidemocratic to boycott an election is where voting is compulsory. Of the almost two dozen polities with such legislation, only half enforce it. Neither Crimea nor Ukraine is one of them so the point is irrelevant. Boycotts of elections are used when a process is perceived as fraudulent and the voter does not want to lend legitimacy to an illegitimate process. The fact that election boycotts are rarely efficacious does not make them an illegitimate tactic when groups feel oppressed by a majority. And since when does compulsory voting make a polity a better democracy. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has compulsory voting. Is it a democracy let alone a better one?

On disappearances, Human Rights watch documented and reported on 15 March that with the Russian army present, so-called “self-defense” units and militias, with 11,000 personnel according to Crimean government authorities, were “abducting, attacking and harassing activists and journalists.” “Oleksiy Gritsenko, Natalya Lukyanchenko and Sergiy Suprun have not made contact with friends or family since 11pm on 13 March. Oleksiy Gritsenko’s father told Amnesty International that he believes they have been abducted by paramilitary forces in de facto control in Crimea.” “The mobile telephone signals of both Oleksiy Gritsenko and Natalya Lukyanchenko were located in the vicinity of the military conscription commission (kommissariat) in Simferapol, which is being guarded by military officers who are not wearing any identifying insignia and who deny they are holding the activists there.” “Ihor Kiriushchenko, a civic activist from Sevastopol, was abducted on Monday.  Mr Kiriushchenko has been active in helping Ukrainian soldiers in the military units occupied and blocked by Russian forces, as well as in protests.  He took part in Sunday’s demonstration in the centre of Sevastopol to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Taras Shevchenko and protest against Russian military occupation of the peninsula.” He too is still missing. Yesterday a Ukrainian soldier in Crimea was shot.

“The whereabouts of two leaders of the Ukrainian community – Andriy Shchekun and Anatoly Kovalsky – remain unknown following their abduction in Simferopol on Sunday.  Volodymyr Sadovyk, commander of a Bakhchysarai military unit, is also missing.” ” The three young women whose disappearance was reported on Sunday – Ukrainsky Tyzhden journalist Olena Maksymentko and two activists – Kateryna Butko and Oleksandra Ryazantseva – are still missing, together with press photographer Oleh Kromples and Yevhen Rakhno, whose car they were travelling in.” “Ukraine‘s Greek Catholic Church said a priest was seized by armed men from a chapel in Sevastopol on Saturday.”

A fair vote in a democracy does require all options to be on a ballot. One could vote NO to annexation with Russia and vote yes for independence, but there was no option that said you prefer the status quo since you must vote once for one of the two propositions on the ballot – annexation or independence. That is the difference between even the imperfect referenda conducted in Quebec.

You argue that, “Finally, cutting off communications may not have been a bad thing. At least the violence that plagued Kiev for months was prevented and the loss of life and limb effectively minimized.” First, since when does an open democratic media contribute to violence. By all accounts, overall, the demonstrations in Maidan were non-violent until the police were sent in. Secondly, I had reported the Estonian Minister quoting the famous doctor helping the wounded saying that the sniper fire seemed to target both sides. The Minister evidently misunderstood Oleh Musiy who subsequently corrected the Minister’s account and my repeating it by saying that only protesters were shot by snipers. 81 were killed. Thank you for the opportunity to clear up this error. Violence did not plague Kyiv for months. Violence was certainly NOT prevented and the loss of life and limb effectively minimized by the suppression of the media.

As far as the effectiveness of sanctions, the whole point of my blog was that these light sanctions were not intended to change Putin’s mind or actions but to send a signal that the West was interested in cooperating with Putin in deescalating the conflict. Nevertheless, sanctions can be effective. They were almost certainly effective re Iran’s nuclear program.  

As for the claimed ineffectiveness of sanctions on Mugabe and Milosevic, let me deal with Mugabe first. The real problem is that they have been too effective in disrupting the economy of Zimbabwe but not effective in dislodging Mugabe.  The sanctions in Zimbabwe were supposedly targeted against a few individuals. However, as bank studies have shown, the US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Bill and the declared and undeclared sanctions that resulted have impacted on the entire economy. The Zimbabwean government itself has complained that the economy is under siege and has blamed the international community, particularly the US rather than Mugabe’s programs, for the negative downstream effects on vulnerable groups and civilians and led to cancellation of life-line projects, humanitarian assistance, and humanitarian infrastructural development support.

Sanctions can be very effective. The critical problem is how much breadth and strength to lend to them and how to target them to get the impact desired, hence the shift to targeted sanctions that include imposing travel bans and freezing foreign bank accounts more than restrictions on trade which were used in Zimbabwe in restricting access to lines of credit. According to Mugabe’s own government, “Since the imposition of declared and undeclared sanctions against Zimbabwe, the effects of these sanctions have been widespread and continuous.”

As for Milosevic, in Milica Delevic’s study, “Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool” in the International Journal of Peace Studies, sanctions were certainly effective but the real question was whether the costs and unintended harm caused was worth it.” “Sanctions, helped to a great extent by pre-existing economic difficulties and macroeconomic mismanagement, had a devastating effect on the Yugoslav economy, thus helping make Serbian President Milosevic more cooperative, but were of no decisive importance for stopping the war in Bosnia. Moreover, poverty, which increased as a result of the sanctions, made people more receptive to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, making democratization ever more difficult to achieve.”

I am puzzled by your next complaint. Where did I “suggest that the failure to include Putin and Lavrov in the Honours List was intended to force them to the negotiating table”?

Where did you get the evidence that “massive build-ups of Russian troops on Ukraine’s Eastern border continue unabated.” I would like to explore it.

 

As for the use of NATO, I am wrestling with that in my own mind and plan a future bl;og on the subject.

For additional consideration, readers might want to consult this other blog reference which a reader sent in.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/lets-not-yield-to-putin-o_b_4944846.html.

Some excerpts from the Voice of Russia follow.

“Sanctions are just unprofessional and illogical. One of the persons who was so to say cracked down upon, is Elena Mizulina but she never played a particular role in the Crimean affairs or in Russia’s relations with Ukraine. She has been made into some sort of a bogyman by the western media and by the Russian liberal media because she was one of the initiators of this law against homosexual propaganda to minors. But it is strange that this person was included into a law which is supposed to punish people who somehow disturbed the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

“I think this Magnitsky list was an excellent warning for everyone in Russia that it is dangerous to keep your assets in the US or in the European Union especially if you are a rich person connected to the Russian government. So, I just consider these sanctions stupid. They are not mild, they are not too harsh, they just hit the wrong targets.”

“Russian lawmakers and the Kremlin have been extremely vocal as to the ridiculousness of US designed sanctions with all Russian MPs passing a statement saying they volunteered to be subject to the US/EU sanctions and the Kremlin saying they view them with irony and sarcasm. Many Russian lawmakers, officials and others see the sanctions list as a point of honor and even as an “Oscar” from Washington, in recognition that they have defended Mother Russia. They echoed earlier words by Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic, who said he would be honored to be on that list with people who proudly defend their homeland and he added that he would be offended if he did not top it. Personally I would love to be on that list as well, perhaps someone in Washington will take me up on it?”

Sanction America for “Funding, training, arming and supporting neo-nazi elements and then using them to carry out the illegal overthrow of a democratically elected government. Using USAID and other organizations to subvert and manipulate the population of sovereign country. Spending $5 billion of taxpayer money without the knowledge or permission of the people to subvert Ukraine. Attempt to and then organizing a puppet government that does not represent the people. Killing police and protestors. Causing unrest, terrorizing the population and stripping groups of their human right to their language or their very lives. Covering up or ignoring evidence of murder and high crimes. Ordering the overthrow of said government. Placing paid mercenaries on the sovereign territory of a country. Planning false flags attacks. Supporting nazi elements and ignoring Nuremberg Trial denial. Attempting to organize through surrogates terrorist attack against civilians in Crimea, etc., etc”

 

The West’s Economic Sanctions Against Russia

The West’s Economic Sanctions Against Russia

 

by

 

Howard Adelman

 

SUMMARY

This BLOG argues that the sanctions thus far imposed are deliberate pin pricks, intended only to send a message and to invite Russia to join in a diplomatic effort to resolve the crisis without significant further economic or military escalation. The BLOG further argues that Russian responses seem also to point to an eagerness to resolve the dispute through diplomacy. Further, there is a diplomatic solution in the wings. I therefore, interpret that what has thus far taken place offers a guarded but optimistic promise.

 

BLOG

I think there is very little question among objective observers that the referendum conducted in Crimea was bogus on a number of grounds, first by being conducted with an army of occupation present, with minority Tatars and Ukrainians largely boycotting the vote, noted anti-Russian activists having “disappeared”, the critical media silenced, cancelled air and electronic communications with Ukraine, with the ballot not including an option to stay within Ukraine, with Russian non-Ukrainian citizens in Ukraine casting a ballot, and with clear evidence of overstuffing the ballot boxes since the votes were significantly higher in some constituencies. The absence of the Russian army, the posing of an honest question and a vote in favour of Russia over Ukraine would undoubtedly have produced a good majority for the Russian option if honestly conducted provided Kyiv agreement was obtained.  

Obama on behalf of the United States and the EU have now imposed very mild targeted sanctions against Russia as a result of the Russia’s occupation of Crimea and the recent vote overwhelmingly in favour of Crimea seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia. What are those sanctions intended to achieve and what is the likelihood of success, especially given the initial narrowness of the target and the shallowness of the sanctions regime? What are the risks associated with the imposition of such sanctions?

The sanctions regime has not been imposed as a milder aspect of a military conflict as in a blockade, but as a message, in Obama’s words, “to uphold the principle Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected, and international law must be upheld,” a principle which is generally accepted as fundamental to the modern transnational order and the essential fabric of the Euro-Atlantic security alliance. But how can such sanctions work since they do not seem inherently to be able to induce Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine or to reverse the continuing integration of Crimea into Russia whether that integration is accomplished through political union or simply by making Crimea economically, legally, politically and militarily part of Russia without the final step of annexation or union?

First, the economic sanctions seem more like symbolic gestures to signal a process of diplomatic isolation that has been initiated, beginning with named individuals (Vladislav Surkov, a Putin aide; Sergey Glazyev, a Putin adviser; Leonid Slutsky, a state Duma deputy; Andrei Klishas, member of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, Valentina Matviyenko, head of the Federation Council, Dmitry Rogozin, deputy prime minister, and Yelena Mizulina, a state Duma deputy). All are seen to be directly involved and responsible for “undermining the sovereignty, territorial integrity and government of Ukraine” but clearly the main ones responsible, namely Vladimir Putin himself and his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov,have not been targeted. The sanctions were expanded a bit on Monday to include Russian officials who provide material support to senior officials of the Russian government as well as  entities operating in the arms sector in Russia. But the scope of the application is very limited and the restrictions – visa restrictions and the mild economic sanctions – are merely signals that a process is underway which will be followed by further escalation. They do, however, target key architects and ideologues responsible for the Crimea policy who also seem to have been intimately involved in human rights abuses in Russia.

Efforts to begin a process of economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation are not stand alone initiatives. NATO has been involved, not only through the movement of some military assets to Poland and the Baltic states, but in the verbal signal by Obama that, “As NATO allies, we have a solemn commitment to our collective defense, and we will uphold this commitment.” This is clearly a vague formulation, deliberately so, to provide room for political and diplomatic manoeuvring as well as time to consult allies this week to develop a more coordinated policy. But the signals focus on diplomatic isolation and economic initiatives and not military threats, though military threats are clearly not off the table as they seemed to be earlier. The main stress at this time, however, is on diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions.

It should be noted that Russia itself has engaged in token sabre rattling – the Russian fleet conducted live fire exercises, MIG-29s were deployed to Yerevan, Armenia, Turkish airspace was probed to rattle one of the quivering NATO members, and an ICBM test, admittedly pre-scheduled, was launched when it could have been postponed. But these gestures pale into insignificance compared to a call up of Russian troops to the Ukraine border. Both sides seem willing to wave starter pistols but seem reasonably clear that neither side wants this to escalate into a military conflict. 

But what are the goals? To prevent Russia from continuing its adventurism in eastern Ukraine? Or just to uphold a principle? Or to actually get Russia to reverse its position as seems to be signalled when Obama vowed that, “The international community will continue to stand together to oppose any violations of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and continued Russian military intervention in Ukraine will only deepen Russia’s diplomatic isolation and exact a greater toll on the Russian economy”? The signals so far seem to indicate that it is the principle that is at stake – and various diplomatic formulations can be devised for upholding the principle while effectively giving Russia de facto sovereignty over Crimea, a position that even Kissinger, the arch-realist and concessionary towards Russian interests, opposes  – as well as inhibiting Russia from taking further initiatives along this line given the promise to calibrate the measures up or down depending on whether Russia chooses to escalate or de-escalate.

Obama clearly continues to believe that diplomatic engagement still has a chance and that he understandably fears the alternative of more serious actions. Further, the solution is signalled in his words – Russia keeps its troops in Crimea and “pulls them back to their bases”, allows OSCE monitors to be deployed and then permits Russia and Ukraine to negotiate the solution through a constitutional change that will allow Crimea to legally secede and set out the conditions for such secession. That way the principle is maintained, Crimea is surrendered, but the integrity of Ukraine is otherwise maintained as well as the principle of self-determination of the Ukrainian people. Ukraine will enter the Western economic sphere and Russia will inherit Crimea.

That seems clearly to be the program. Will it work? Lavrov and Putin have both signalled back that the most important issue is the retention of US-Russian relations and not the Ukraine. Russian leaders have unequivocally warned the West that the existing order should not be sacrificed on the altar of the principle of sovereignty generally or the sovereignty of the Ukraine in particular. On Friday, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman reinforced the message that Russia did not want a return to the Cold War and openly recognized that the West was seeking a diplomatic solution and that Russia still had hopes “that some points of agreement could be found as a result of dialogue”. Russia was still referring to the United States as a partner in maintaining the international order. But Russia has sent no signal that it is willing to recognize the new central government in Kiev which ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, but would Russia be willing to engage in negotiations to recognize the government to be elected this Spring in return for the West recognizing a legal and formal way for the Ukraine to secede and become once again part of Russia?

At the same time as Russia has been talking softly, it is waving a big stick – economic reprisals of its own and on-and-off military manoeuvres. Russia has aimed its most belligerent remarks at the EU, especially when the EU suspended talks on a new comprehensive economic and political pact with Russia. Clearly, it will be difficult for the EU to hold all its members together in a unanimous policy, especially its south-eastern members such as Greece. But the key factor seems to be the resolve of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Like Obama, Merkel and Putin have been talking. Further, they have agreed not to take actions which would increase violence. The solution on the European front would involve a positive sum economic game involving not only Ukraine but Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaidjan in a formula that would allow countries like Georgia and Ukraine to be both part of the EU economic zone as well as Putin’s new eastern European customs union thereby serving as a bridge between the two blocks. Of course, easier said than done, but it is another one of the chess pieces in this critical international crisis. At the same time, Merkel has been tough and unequivocal that Ukrainian sovereignty is not up for discussion.

Will the mild signals thus far and the threat of diplomatic isolation and massive economic consequences from both sides while the military option remains off the table (though only in reference to actual deployment of troops on the ground) be able to steer the crisis into a negotiations stream? Russia has not only signalled a willingness to enter such negotiations but had initially signalled its own interest in de-escalating the conflict by NOT annexing Crimea yesterday, but simply recognizing Crimea’s independence of Ukraine, but then made it a fait accompli today. The two options are, admittedly, only a difference in name, but even such slight differences are significant in international diplomacy and the signalling attendant thereto.The EU and the US have been working together to forge a political and diplomatic path out of the crisis which seems to explain a small part of why the initial sanctions have been so mild and shallow.

The issue is how ready are Western nations to impose much more drastic state sanctions given the boomerang effect on their own economies. The words of ultra-nationalist Russian members of the Duma, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky, that sanctions will not have any negative effect on Russia is, of course, nonsense. The fact that the initial sanctions were so mild and, as almost as a direct consequence, the value of the Russian ruble rose making up for part of its earlier more precipitous fall, is simply one signal that the international economic market alone will significantly punish Russia if the situation escalates rather than de-escalates. The sanctions imposed thus far are simply intended to signal that the West is serious and has stepped onto the second stage of the escalator but in such a way as to allow for reversal and not to insult the key decision makers or Russia itself. But like the MAD doctrine with the nuclear standoff, the signals will only carry that message if they are also backed by the threat of much more serious steps.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 14-3 in favor of imposing much broader sanctions on Russians and Ukrainians involved in human rights violations and anyone involved in undermining Ukraine’s security and stability. Those sanctions, that would include freezing assets held in the United States as well as travel bans and denying visas to a wider cohort, were combined with the promised aid to the Ukraine directly and through the IMF. Hopefully, those signals will not be undercut by any decisions of the House of Representatives. There is a problem with freezing individual assets abroad, however. In this year alone, an estimated $50 billion has flown out of Russia already. This has significantly harmed the Russian economy. If some of such assets are frozen, then the export of capital would stop and Russia’s economy would benefit.

The US has only to hold its 50 states together through a majority, mainly be bringing the House of Representatives on side. The EU is a federation that has to hold its 34 states together in a consensus. The weakest economic link for both, but more for the US, is the need to strengthen the IMF, a move opposed by a significant number of Republicans including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who argues that giving the money to Kyiv will only reward Russia by allowing Kyiv to pay its huge Russian debts. Therefore, such loans are not a threat but a reward offered to Russia. Nevertheless, only three Republicans on the committee actual cast votes against the IMF provisions, Senators Paul, as could be expected, joined by Senators Jim Risch of Idaho and John Barrasso of Wyoming.

Will the EU which is so dependent on Russia for gas be willing to do this, or, more importantly at this stage, signal that it is willing to take much more drastic steps if diplomacy fails and send enough signals that these threats are serious even though they will be significantly detrimental to the European economy just as it is beginning its recovery from the series of blows around the Euro crisis? More visa bans and asset freezes are on the table for the third stage of escalation (the steps Monday were the second stage for visa restrictions on Russian and Crimean officials and private citizens had already been imposed). But what about much more vigorous economic restrictions?

Germany already has an unprecedented (for it) unemployment rate of 7% and exports goods and services worth $130 billion to the Russian Federation (US exports are only $2.9 billion), let alone its dependency on Russia for 40% of its oil and gas. If, for example, more crippling sanctions, such as imposing limitations on Russian oil and natural-gas purchases, Germany would itself suffer enormously and the initiative has a significant risk of throwing Europe as well as Russia into a downward economic spiral let alone the devastating effect on the Ukraine economy. 45%  of Russian exports, 2/3rds oil and gas, goes to the EU. Ukraine sells almost $16 billion to Russia. Wider sanctions would be devastating all the way round, most devastating on Ukraine, extremely devastating on Russia and very devastating on the EU. But unless the EU holds a credible threat that it will resort to such sanctions, the possibility of Russia following a path of greater escalation increases. Russia has to know, as the Dutch foreign minister, Frans Timmermans, noted, that sanctions will be inevitable, thereby enabling Russia to “realise that sanctions will hurt everyone, but no one more than the Russians themselves.”

So broad sanctions will be avoided except as a last resort such as in response to a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine. The sanctions imposed are extremely mild and are merely a pin prick on the Great Bear. But they are intended only as a signal and are not intended as a deterrent or punishment for they are far too gentle for that. The velvet glove of diplomacy not only thus far lacks an iron glove inside but even a green padded boxing glove, green for both St. Patrick’s day and significant economic sanctions. The sanctions imposed thus far are not intended to hurt. They are just tweets to say more can and will be forthcoming – freezing bank balances, stopping credit lines, cancelling barter deals and suspending joint projects, still far short of broad sanctions – unless we join together in a process of de-escalation.

Sarajevo and 1914 rather than Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 really haunt the current crisis. The West is NOT diplomatically impotent even if, militarily, its hands are tied behind its back with few military options available. Should the West escalate by offering Georgia and Ukraine associate status in NATO? Would that act as a deterrent or be seen as an abandonment of the diplomatic route? Diplomacy is accomplished not simply by what states do but by what they credibly convey they are willing to do. But the dilemma is that if the threat is to be meaningful, it must be made credible. But the more credible it becomes the more such measures inspire the other side to adopt equal and balancing counter-measures.

Tomorrow – Margaret Macmillan and How the Peace Was Lost.