Monday, March 17, 2014
Crimea - Obama and the EU Should Have Thought before Threatening Putin
Sunday's Crimea referendum, with a 97% vote to return to Russia, has had swift effect -- the Crimean parliament has seized all Ukraine assets in Crimea and nationalized them - voted to take the Russian rouble as its currency and to establish a central bank with $250 million in funds provided by Russia - asked the world to recognize its existence - called up 20,000 reservists to regular military duty - passed a resolution allowing Ukrainian military in Crimea to join the Crimean (i.e., Russian) army - filed a petition with President Putin and with the Russian parliament to be accepted as an independent country and to be taken into the Russian Federation. Concurrently,President Putin has signed a proclamation recognizing the independence of Crimea, Russia's parliament will consider Crimea's independence on Tuesday, and Russia continues to secure the Black Sea Fleet base at Sevastopol and the rest of Crimea militarily. President Putin will speak to a joint meeting of the houses of the Russian parliament on Tuesday. ~~~~~ In the West on Monday, the most comprehensive sanctions against Russia since the end of the Cold War were announced by President Barack Obama when he froze the US assets of seven Russian officials, including top advisers to President Putin, for their support of Crimea's vote to secede from Ukraine. Obama warned that more people could face financial punishment : "We stand ready to impose further sanctions," Obama said, moving to "increase the cost" to Russia for its actions in Crimea, and he warned that more people could face financial punishment. He added in a brief statement from the White House that he still believes there can be a diplomatic resolution to the crisis and that the sanctions can be "calibrated based on whether Russia escalates or pulls back in its involvement....We are imposing sanctions on specific individuals responsible for undermining the sovereignty, territorial integrity and government of Ukraine. We're making it clear that there are consequences for their actions," Obama said. The US Treasury also imposed sanctions on four Ukrainians, including former President Viktor Yanukovich, who have supported Crimea's separation - under existing authority under a previous Obama executive order. Those targeted will have all US assets frozen and no one in the United States can do business with them. The sanctions are meant to warn Russia that unless it abides by its international obligations and returns its military forces to their original bases and respects Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, the US is prepared to take additional steps to impose further political and economic costs," a White House statement said. The US list included Dmitry Rogozin, a Russian deputy prime minister, Valentina Matviyenko head of the upper house of the Russian parliament and the ousted Ukrainian leader, Viktor Yanukovych. Obama administration officials say there is some overlap between the US and European list, which today placed sanctions on 21 people. The EU has also shown its support for Ukraine by announcing it will temporarily remove customs duties on Ukrainian exports to the EU. The President said that western leaders are demonstrating a "solemn commitment to our collective defense." Obama administration officials say there is some concrete evidence that some ballots for the referendum arrived pre-marked in many cities and "there are massive anomalies in the vote." The officials did not say what that evidence was. Obama and the EU say that the Crimea referendum violated the Ukrainian constitution and international law and took place in the strategic peninsula under duress of Russian military intervention. Putin maintained that the vote was legal and consistent with the right of self-determination, according to the Kremlin. Ukraine's acting President Oleksander Turchinov said Kiev was ready for negotiations with Russia, but it would never accept the annexation of Crimea. ~~~~~ But for many, Obama is not going far enough. Senator John McCain, just back from a weekend trip to Kiev, said on MSNBC that Obama's response was inadequate : "I don't know how it could have been weaker, besides doing nothing - seven people being sanctioned after naked aggression has taken place." White House spokesman Jay Carney responded by saying that President Obama did not rule out future sanctions against Putin himself : "We have the authorities to more broadly identify individuals and entities in the future, and we will do that as necessary if the costs to Russia need to be increased." Two other prominent Repubicans have warned that failure of the United States to deter Russia in Ukraine will only embolden Russian President Putin and could end in a military standoff. Today, Senator Lindsey Graham and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote in an op-ed on CNN.com that failure of the United States and Western Europe to act could give Putin the green light to "test our resolve" in Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia. Those three former Soviet republics are now members of NATO, which all other NATO members, including the United States, are bound by treaty to protect with military force. "Trouble there could 'reset' us right back to direct warfare with Russia," according to Graham and Gingrich : "That would be a disaster and very, very dangerous." Passivity, they say, is the path most likely to lead to war. "The Obama administration should grant the request for military aid immediately - before it's too late for deterrence," they wrote. Gingrich and Graham also call for President Barack Obama to immediately issue an executive order approving the export of American natural gas to 20 countries awaiting bureaucratic approval. "The highest priority should go to approving exports to Europe, where in many places, Russia has a near-monopoly on natural gas," they said. They also call on Obama to issue an executive order approving 24 pending liquefied natural gas facilities they say have been delayed by "bureaucratic red tape." Europe is heavily dependent on natural gas from Russia, leading many Republicans to call on increased production in the US to lessen Putin's stranglehold on Europe, which has been less willing to buy into sanctions against Russia for fear of it holding back energy exports. The op-ed notes that while Obama hosted Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk last week as a show of support and Secretary of State John Kerry announced "very serious" steps if Russia does not back down by Monday from its attempt to annex Crimea, those words must be backed by action."Theodore Roosevelt is famous for a foreign policy he summarized as 'speak softly and carry a big stick,'" the pair wrote. "Obama's foreign policy is closer to 'scream loudly and carry no stick.'" ~~~~~ Dear readers, I cannot help but conclude that the Ukraine crisis is a self-inflicted wound that the West cannot now easily heal. Originally, the problem was in Kiev, where protesters finally brought down the pro-Russian Yanukovich government. As that played out, Yanukovich fled to Russia and Putin saw both the need and the opportunity to secure Russia's Black Sea Fleet port at Sevastopol in Crimea. Swept along by the newly democratic Ukraine, both European and American leaders took a hard line against Putin's self-interest actions, threatening and demanding instead of conciliating and negotiating with both Kiev and Putin. The West having announced that force was not on the table, Putin knew that he held the winning hand - control of petroleum for Europe, the will to use military force in Crimea, the weakness of Obama when faced with quasi-military crises. Putin has played these into a fait-accompli. He now controls Crimea which, being Russian traditionally, has now voted to return to Russia. It may be illegal. It may be counter to current European territorial norms. But it is over. What will Obama and the EU, read that German Chancellor Merkel, do now? Slap on sanctions that do not anger Putin enough to make him stop gas and oil shipments to Europe. This is no way to win a war of nerves against a popular dictator. The next time Putin strikes, Obama and the EU had better make a serious analysis before responding, knee-jerk fashion, to a self-interested nationalistic cry for military back-up. And of course there will be a next strike. The West has now taught Putin and others of his like that they can pretty much do what they want if they simply move faster than Obama and the EU can think.
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As of this morning the major fact to come to the limelight is that Obama is afraid of and incompetent to deal with Putin. That's a bistable fact in the words Obama uses about Putin and the fact that Putin was omitted from the sanctions.
ReplyDeleteObama again hestitated to act in a strong, forceful manner and that made it game, set, match Putin.
Another "F" for the Obama-Kerry non- foreign policy report card.
The politics of post-independence Ukraine clearly demonstrates that the root of the problem lies in efforts by Ukrainian politicians to impose their will on disobedient parts of the country, first by one faction, then by the other. That is the essence of the conflict between Viktor Yanukovych and his principal political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko. They represent the two wings of Ukraine and have not been willing to share power.
ReplyDeleteThe two wings of Ukraine are not equally responsible for the mess Ukraine is in. Responsibility rests squarely with Yanukovych and his criminal Party of Regions.
There are 3 factors that could possibly lead to a settlement: 1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with EU. 2. Ukraine should not join NATO. 3. Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the expressed will of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt for a policy of reconciliation between the various parts of their country. Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to that of Finland - They leave no doubt about its fierce independence and cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids institutional hostility toward Russia.
The last line is a classic...thanks.
ReplyDeleteThis is the respect and seriousness that Russia has towards President Obama and his Foreign Policy team ... "Comrade Obama, what should those who have neither accounts nor property abroad do? Have you not thought about it?" Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted. "I think the decree of the President of the United States was written by some joker." This is what Russian leaders in general think of the “moxie” of Obama.
ReplyDeletePutin issues a resolution of sorts taking in Crimea as to the wishes of the Crimean people’s vote on Sunday. And we’re off to the races. All because the United States had ZERO relationships with either Ukraine or Crimea up until the very last minute of the last day before the prearranged and unstoppable actions started to take place.
The Obama-Kerry traveling show seems to either be a “Johnny Come Lately” or just a threatening No-Show spectator at world events that use to demand the US responsiveness and involvement.
The Obama Administration has been officially out flanked by Putin and from here until January 20th, 2017 Putin will feel enabled to do just he wants for the furtherance of Mother Russia. Is Putin’s planning a good plan? For Russia it is. Maybe that is where the problem lies with Obama – he cares not about the betterment and furtherance of the United States, but about the furtherance of Obama and his Progressive Socialists program for the world.
John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in Ukraine. Another Obama “Red Line” in the snow to fall short of any positive action has been issued this time by John Kerry. In Russia’s multiple time zones it is nearly Tuesday and nothing substantive is forth coming from the White House.
ReplyDeleteBy this point I would have thought that a man that been self-appointed as the smartest president ever would have learned … “say what you plan to do and then do it, or say nothing at all”.
“War is when the government tells you who the enemy is. Revolution is when you figure it out on your own.”
ReplyDeleteLike most other governments, the Russian government doesn’t usually take kindly to foreign governments telling it what it can and can’t do in its own neighborhood, and it doesn’t respond well to threats and punitive measures. If this has surprised Westerners in the past, it shouldn’t be a surprise now.
ReplyDeleteWhen the U.S. passed the Magnitsky Act, did this persuade Russia into adopting reforms of its legal system or force it to commit fewer abuses? Obviously, it did nothing of the kind. All that it achieved was to irritate Moscow and convince them of American hostility, and it led to a series of Russian retaliatory measures that damaged relations with the U.S. and made the situation inside Russia significantly worse than it was before. Attempting to compel desired changes in Russian behavior contributed to deterioration in the conditions that the attempt was supposed to ameliorate.
These tactics almost never work, but Westerners keep trying them out of a misguided belief that anything that the other government dislikes must be the right and the smart thing to do. All sanctions are ultimately “unserious” in that they are reflexive responses to international events that often achieve nothing good. Sanctions frequently can’t deliver the results that their advocates claim that they can, but they can be dreadfully serious in their ability to wreck relations with other states and make bad situations worse.
Sanctions advocates should realize that threatening punishment and then following through on the threatened punishments has had absolutely no effect on Russian behavior. Then again, why would they have any positive effect? It’s almost as if Western punishments are useful to Moscow, because they provide something for it to ignore and/or defy. The administration’s position is that it can impose additional sanctions as needed, but this suffers from the same flawed assumption that Russia can be successfully coerced out of what it is doing. What if that isn’t true? If it isn’t, it doesn’t matter whether the sanctions that Obama announced are “flippant” or not, because imposing such sanctions is based on a misunderstanding of how to alter Russian behavior.
ReplyDeleteConsider Cuba in our own hemisphere. Our imposed sanctions have not altered the pitiful life style there for the worse at all. Life in Cuba was bad for the citizens and pretty good for the Communist Party leaders some 50 years ago when we took it upon ourselves to smack them with sanctions a plenty. Well 50 plus years later life is about the same in Cuba – bad for the citizens and good for the party leaders. There are American products available in Cuba today that were bought by another country and the resold to Cuba. The world is a small place today. The same is nearly as true for finical sanctions. Is a “tyrant” from Russia really going to be 100% dependent on US Banks and depositories for “safe havens”?
Citizens of Ukraine have not yet realized what economic confusion would await them in becoming a close ally of Europe (EU), they may just want to look at Greece, where the IMF and EU imposed privatization of public services and a burden of debt to the IMF have turned the population into everlasting insolvents.
ReplyDeleteIn the Ukraine, a overwhelming FREE Trade agreement (sic) and a burden of IMF and EU imposed debt to restructure its economy, privatization and massive unemployment, would do likewise. If the people of Ukraine would see this coming, they would forever be grateful for NO intervention by anyone.
“Requiem for a Nun” is a book written by William Faulkner in 1950. From the book comes one of Faulkner most memorable lines: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
ReplyDeleteThis seems to fit well the situation that today exists in the Ukraine, Crimea, and old Mother Russia. Russian leaders never really seem to change – only the names are different.
“An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.”
ReplyDelete― Ayn Rand