Category: WAR ON RUSSIA

Reset Reset

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn CONTRIBUTIONS TO GROUP DISCUSSIONS, WAR ON RUSSIA, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

Note February 2016. These were done for the Russia Profile Weekly Experts’ Panel which I cannot find on the Net now. Many were picked up by other sources and I have given links where I can find them.

http://www.expat.ru/analitics.php?item=1019

JRL/2011/145/21

Because I was not very impressed with Obama in the first place, I expected little from “the reset” and little there has been. The problem with any initiative of the Obama Administration is brutally this: is there any follow-up after the speech?

The “reset” did change the rhetoric, although there have been no real trials. The nuclear agreement was made. But Russians would complain that they still see geriatric obsolescences like Captive Nations and Jackson-Vanik, assurances on WTO admission that come and go, periodic resolutions on “the Russian occupation” of Georgia and moralistic finger-wagging. They would ask “where’s the beef?”. I leave it to Americans to make their own list of Russian sins (Anna Chapman, Magnitskiy; any day’s indictment from the Washington Post or Ariel Cohen).

But the bottom line is that the US-USSR relationship was much more important to the two –and to the rest of us – than the US-Russia relationship is. The important thing is that each stop thinking of the other as the Main Enemy; each must rid itself of superseded habits of thought. Getting there will take some time: the USA is still the most important country on the planet and Moscow obsesses about it (perhaps too much: Saakashvili is not Washington’s creation and neither was Yushchenko). From Washington’s perspective, Russia does not turn up very often in the daily White House crisis briefings and is only important to the still vocal Russia-the-eternal-enemy faction.

What interests do they have in common? Not very many, in truth. They share a common enemy in jihadism, although the anti-Russia lobby still hasn’t figured that out. Nuclear weapons are a factor, but less and less important. There are trade interests – although not big. Occasionally Russia’s influence in some forlorn place is potentially significant. They are not large on either’s radar.

What opposing interests do they have? Again, not many. For years the anti-Russia lobby has warned us that Moscow wants to take over Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltics or whatever but it still hasn’t happened. And, if Moscow truly had some existential desire to conquer Georgia, the anti-Russia lobby still hasn’t explained what stopped it three years ago: the Russia that they fantasise about would have gone to Tbilisi, seized Saakashvili and still be there. Moscow is nervously concerned about the ultimate use of US missiles in Europe. What Moscow actually wants is a quiet life so that it can modernise itself. But it doesn’t want to be played for a sucker as it believes it was in the 1990s. This is the root of the missile problem: Moscow does not trust Washington’s mere word after, to take one example, NATO’s expansion.

There is no advantage in closing off every entrance, rejecting every overture, suspecting everything and pretending that Russia is still the USSR and gradually working to turn Russia into a real enemy.

But, what frightens me about US-Russia relations is that many on the right side of the US political spectrum still reflexively believe that Russia is the Eternal Enemy and, the way things are going, as well as the House of Representatives, they will soon control the Senate and the Presidency.

But, what keeps me (faintly) optimistic is that the inheritors of the Obama Administration will have bigger, and more urgent, problems than Russia to deal with.

Russian Arab Spring?

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn CONTRIBUTIONS TO GROUP DISCUSSIONS, WAR ON RUSSIA

Note February 2016. These were done for the Russia Profile Weekly Experts’ Panel which I cannot find on the Net now. Many were picked up by other sources and I have given links where I can find them.

http://www.russialist.org/archives/russia-government-democracy-tunisia-uprising-protests-poll-jan-277.php

The chance of a Tunisian scenario in Russia is something less than zero. The conditions simply don’t exist.

The popular revolt in Tunisia – I assume it was not a phoney revolution like the “Orange Revolution” or the “Rose revolution” or the now-forgotten “Tulip Revolution” – was a result of revulsion at years of hopelessness and stagnation.

In Russia, innumerable polls, over many years – see, for example, the Levada data at http://www.russiavotes.org/ – show that Russians appreciate the steady improvement of their own living conditions and give the government a great deal of credit for it. They show no naïve belief that everything is wonderful, but they do show a steady increase in optimism (or reduction in pessimism) for the future and improvement of present circumstances. The Duumvirate is popular – most governments would love to have a constant 60-70% support in difficult times. The Levada data is especially useful because, with ten to fifteen years of results for a given question, one can make direct comparisons and observe trends. Other polling organisations show the same trends.

In short, the Putin Team has generally provided the things that people hire governments for.

Thus, the underlying conditions that sparked the Tunisian revolt do not exist in Russia. Observers who take the effort to analyse polling data rather than lazily phone up names on the Rolodex their predecessors bequeathed them would understand this.

But, nonetheless, those who predicted the collapse of the “Putin system” with Kushchevskaya, last summer’s fires, the expected collapse of the Russian economy in the global financial crisis, riots in Vladivostok, Beslan, the “Orange Revolution”, the Kursk sinking, the debt crisis, apartment bombings, the “virtual economy” (I keep a file of this stuff), will quarry the “Tunisian parallel” for indicators. Until the next thing pops up. Same story, new indicators.

I am dumfounded by the endless speculation about how Putin and Medvedev are struggling under the blanket and that Putin will re-appear as President. If Putin had wanted a third (and fourth and fifth) term, all he had to do was arrange for one little clause in the Constitution to be changed. And no one can doubt that he could have, and many wanted him to. But he didn’t. Why would he go through this elaborate charade to get back?

Perhaps he and Medvedev are part of the same team, carrying out the same program. As they say they are.

But what do they know?

START and ABM

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn HISTORY, WAR ON RUSSIA

http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2010/05/start-and-abm.html#more

Despite the general satisfaction in the two capitals over the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed on 8 April, a potential misunderstanding is visible. As before, it concerns American plans for missile defence. Last month, US Secretary of State Clinton declared “And the treaty places no constraints on our missile defence plans – now or in the future.” Perhaps a finicky reading of the Treaty may lead one to conclude this but Moscow has made it clear that the missile defence issue could cause it to leave the Treaty. Therefore, US missile defence programs could “constrain” the new Treaty. But Russian statements have also made it clear that they don’t have to. This misunderstanding – and perhaps that is all that it is – must be cleared up if the Treaty is to last for its ten to fifteen years and be succeeded by further reduction treaties.

There is a weird logic to nuclear weapons. The subtext of Einstein’s famous letter to Roosevelt is that we cannot afford to let the other side be the only one with nuclear weapons; from here, step-by-step, the logic builds to the arcane issues of first strikes, secure retaliatory strikes and all the rest. The theory is that, no matter what one side may do, the other side will always have enough weapons left to destroy the other. This is the logic of MAD – mutually assured destruction. Therefore, the theory runs, each side is deterred from ever using the weapons because of the certainty of destruction. The weakness of the theory is that no one knows whether it is actually valid: all that is known is that the USA and the USSR never used the weapons against each other. Will deterrence work against “rogue states”? No one can be sure and that uncertainty is the impetus for attempts to create a missile defence system.

ABM systems are a threat to the stability of deterrence. If (in theory) one side can develop a weapon that can reasonably reliably – and it doesn’t have to be 100% or anything very close to 100% – shoot down the other side’s missiles or warheads, in theory (a lot of theory) it can so unbalance the calculations that the other side can no longer be sure that it will have enough weapons left for a retaliatory strike and the delicate balance of MAD would be upset.

On one level, all this is perfectly logical; on another, it is all crazy. If, let us say, Side A, believing that its ABM system is reliable, fires 500 warheads at the other, and 450 of them explode on their targets and Side B launches its 500 and the ABM system destroys 490 of them (a success rate that is very hypothetical at present), Side A will have won because “only” 10 nuclear weapons have exploded on its territory. I suspect that the survivors in Side A would not be very enthusiastic about their “victory”. Nonetheless, this increased level of uncertainty, might, so goes the theory, encourage Side B to make a pre-emptive first strike, on the principle of “use them, or lose them”. Therefore, a strategic missile defence system unbalances the MAD-based deterrence and leaves everyone guessing again.

In the 1960s both the USSR and the USA began work on missile interceptors and were faced with this unfolding logic: uncertainty would be increased and another area for an arms race would be opened. Stepping back from this possibility, the two negotiated the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972. It froze developments and prohibited further construction of ABM defences. Washington abrogated the treaty in 2002. Abrogation made some sense because the reality had changed. The threat to the USA, and other countries, was not hundreds of sophisticated missiles, with all their decoys and deception devices, coming from Russia; the threat, in the near future, was a much smaller number of simple missiles and warheads coming from what used to be called “rogue states”.

In 2007 Washington announced a plan to put radars and anti-missile systems into Poland and the Czech Republic. The reason given was that these emplacements would protect Europe and the USA from potential missiles from Iran. Russian experts, however, maintained that these locations could (in theory – but it’s all theory) be used against Russian ICBMs. Not today, of course, but in the future. (For those who are interested, here is an analysis by Theodore Postol arguing that the Russians were correct.) Moscow is not unaware of the potential threat from third parties and is not in principle opposed to some sort of defence against these future possible threats. Prepared to accept a local defence system and following the principle of “trust, but verify”, it first sought involvement in the system and offered a radar station in Azerbaijan which it leased (having secured Baku’s agreement). When this offer received no real answer, Moscow sought verification: it asked to have Russian officers stationed in the proposed bases so that they could see for themselves that the radars were looking south and not east. This also received no response. Russians, who are no less suspicious than anyone else, became more sceptical of the stated purpose of Washington’s scheme. And, as we have seen, the logic of the nuclear balance is that if something might happen, preparations must be made to regain the MAD balance.

But President Obama has cancelled this plan and replaced it with one that does not concern Moscow. At present. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said in his press conference on the Treaty about current US plans: “The initial focus is on regional systems, systems that do not prejudice strategic stability, and do not create risks for the Russian strategic nuclear forces. When and if our monitoring of the realisation of these plans shows that they are reaching the level of a strategic missile defence, and this level will be regarded by our military experts as creating risks for the Russian strategic nuclear forces, it is then that we will have the right to take advantage of those provisions which this Treaty contains.” (My emphasis) Note the clear distinction he makes between regional systems and strategic systems: the latter can destabilise the MAD balance.

Given its concerns about anti-missile defences and their scepticism over mere declarations, Moscow has made it clear, in its statement appended to the Treaty, that unilateral development of anti-ballistic missile defences by the US could cause them to abrogate the treaty. “The Treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms signed in Prague on April 8, 2010, can operate and be viable only if the United States of America refrains from developing its missile defence capabilities quantitatively or qualitatively.” The statement specifically refers to Art XIV.3 which allows either party to withdraw from the Treaty at any time “if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardised its supreme interests”

There should be no doubt that the Russian government means it. Moscow abrogated the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in 2007 – one of the very few arms treaties that has actually destroyed weapons, and one very much in Moscow’s interests today – when, after years of complaints, no one else had ratified it and NATO kept adding new conditions to ratification. Contrary to much casual opinion, Moscow does not make threats, it makes statements. If ABM systems on Poland, then Russian anti-ABM systems in Kaliningrad. No ABM systems in Poland, no anti-ABM systems in Kaliningrad. Its appended statement to the Treaty makes it clear: if Washington develops its ABM systems in a way that Moscow believes undermines the strategic nuclear balance, in short develops a strategic missile defence, then Moscow will abrogate the Treaty. Therefore, while Clinton may be correct in a narrow sense, it is clear that she is wrong in a wider sense. There is a constraint on the agreement the US Administration is so pleased with: Moscow will accept tactical or limited defences, and indeed wishes to be part of any such system, but resists strategic missile defence.

But, as was said earlier, the threat to Washington and its allies does not come from hundreds of ICBMs from Russia but from a much smaller number of less sophisticated missiles from somewhere else. This is a threat that Russia also shares and defence against it is an obvious matter of mutual interest. Medvedev in the press conference after the signing made Moscow’s interest in cooperation clear: “We also offered our services to the United States in creating a global missile defence system which should be our concern in light of our world’s vulnerabilities and terrorist threats, including the possibility that terrorists could make use of nuclear weapons”.

It ought to be a no-brainer: if the civilised world is concerned – and it ought to be – about defence against “rogue states” with nuclear weapons and missiles, then it would be idiotic not to include Russia in the defence system. Russia has geography that is much more convenient than anything in eastern Europe and it has technology which is not to be slighted. A defence system against small numbers of not very sophisticated or accurate missiles with nuclear warheads that took in the territories and technologies of North America, Europe, Russia and Japan would be worth having. A defence system excluding Russia and threatening the new START would not be worth having.

So, what is to be done?

  1. Take the Russians at their word: no unilateral MAD-eroding strategic ABM systems; Moscow will abrogate the new Treaty if that happens.
  2. Take up Medvedev’s offer of cooperation on a defence system appropriate to the actual threat: incorporate Russia’s territory and technology into a defence system for the civilised world.
  3. And, it might be a good idea to negotiate a new ABM Treaty that excludes what should be excluded and includes what should be.

The Cold War is over, Russia and the USA are not enemies; they have common enemies. Defend against them, not against the past.

Unguided Missiles

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, WAR ON RUSSIA

http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2009/09/unguided-missiles.html#more

For some years Washington has been planning a missile defence network with a radar in the Czech Republic and ten interceptor missiles in Poland ostensibly to counter possible intercontinental ballistic missiles from Iran. Last week the plan was dropped. At a briefing at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Gates provided the rational: there had been, he said, two changes since 2006 when he had recommended the Polish and Czech bases: “The intelligence community now assesses that the threat from Iran’s short- and medium-range ballistic missiles… is developing more rapidly than previously projected” while “the threat of potential Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities has been slower to develop than was estimated in 2006”. Thus a different defence against a different threat is planned.

Immediate Polish and Czech official reaction was that Washington had abandoned them: “we are not firmly anchored”; “losing a strategic alliance with Washington”; “the Americans are not interested in this territory”; “defeat primarily of American long-distance thinking”. It should be emphasised that the idea was never especially popular in either country and a Polish poll immediately after the announcement shows approval. Here, as in other places, the leadership is not in line with the population.

Abandoned to whom? Why to Russia of course: the decision “may embolden Russian hawks”; it was an “appalling appeasement of Russian aggression”; it “advances Russia’s goal” and “betrays” allies; it resembles Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler; it rewards “bad Russian behaviour”. Little talk of Iranian ICBMs here.

From the beginning, Moscow had objections. Regarding the threat of Iranian ICBMs as overblown, military planners assessed that the locations of the bases suggested that Russia was, or could be, the real target. These concerns were ridiculed and dismissed: “Technically speaking and militarily speaking, this is not a threat to Russia: the geography is not right”. Others, however, saw justification in the Russian position.

Moscow’s concerns were caricatured: “The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous and everybody knows it” said US Secretary of State Rice in 2007 (Imagine saying “Soviet” while implying that Moscow was “grounded somehow in the 1980s”!). But Moscow was worried about future possibilities: as Medvedev said last November, it was the constant step-by step “construction of a global missile defence system, the installation of military bases around Russia, the unbridled expansion of NATO and other similar ‘presents’ for Russia” that made it nervous. What would be next?

As to Washington’s assurances that the sites were only looking at Iran, Moscow no longer believes mere promises. And why should it? Jack Matlock, US Ambassador to the USSR from 1987 to 1991, and present at many of the discussions, has many times stated that a condition of Moscow’s acquiescence to German reunification was the “clear understanding (though not a legal obligation) that NATO’s jurisdiction would not be moved further eastward”. Or, perhaps, these numerous assurances led to a “misunderstanding” in which Moscow was foolish enough to think that an undertaking not to expand NATO’s “jurisdiction” precluded expansion. “The whole history of Russia’s relations with NATO is a history of broken promises, guarantees and obligations”. Mere verbal promises have lost the force in Moscow that they might once have had.

Moscow’s concern was, notwithstanding promises today, that tomorrow the ten might become twenty, then forty, then sixty…. As Medvedev said in November 2008: “we must take this into account in defence expenditures” and announced some counter-measures including deployment of missiles in Kaliningrad. The first mention of this obviously conditional reaction was, typically, interpreted as a threat of nuclear attack on Poland; a “military threat to the West” or, said NATO, a threat to arms control agreements (although, puzzlingly, the US missiles were not). Here we see a certain cock-eyed logic at work: NATO insists that some action – missiles, new members – does not “threaten” Russia; Moscow says that it feels threatened and may take counter-action; the counter-action is called a “threat” by NATO; and so NATO must counter-threaten Russia.

But Medvedev’s statement was not Moscow’s first reaction; it was its last. At the 2007 G8 meeting, then-President Putin offered the leased Russian radar station at Qabala Azerbaijan (having first secured Baku’s agreement) as a part of the system and later the newly-opened Armavir radar. That offer went nowhere. Then Moscow asked whether Russian officers could be stationed onsite in order to observe that the radars were really only looking at Iran. That too went nowhere. Naturally the arguments of those who claimed that the locations were – or easily could be – aimed at Russia were strengthened; the Kaliningrad deployment was a last attempt to point out that there would be consequences.

Now it appears that Moscow was right all along. The Pentagon agrees that the threat of intercontinental missiles (as opposed to shorter range missiles) from Iran was overblown; leaders in Poland and the Czech Republic agree that the missiles had more to do with Russia than with Iran.

What of the future? Moscow has already cancelled the Kaliningrad deployment – but that was always conditional. Many think that Washington’s decision is part of something larger and, indeed, there are hints in Obama’s speech (“In confronting that threat, we welcome Russians’ cooperation to bring its missile defense capabilities into a broader defense”), Gates’ speech (“Their Armavir radar in the southern part of Russia could be integrated into this network and could be very effective in helping us”); Medvedev’s response (“we agreed that the United States and Russia will strive to work together to assess the risks of missile proliferation in the world”); and the NATO Secretary General’s speech (“This brings me to another area where Russia and NATO can and should work together, which is missile defence”).

We will see what comes next. It’s a common problem, after all.

Airbrushing History

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn HISTORY, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, REVISIONISM, WAR ON RUSSIA

http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2009/05/airbrushing-history.html#more

“Other countries could blame Russia for their lost decades; Russia, having no one to blame, couldn’t face its history” This piece of rhetorical puffery appeared about two years ago as an explanation for Russia’s alleged “de-democratization”. Not only does it ignore such things as the abortive trial of the CPSU in May 1992 and the Butovo Memorial, but it has a serious blind spot: the former communist countries have not come to terms with the fact that many of their people eagerly participated in the Bolshevik experiment and that they have a share of responsibility in the disaster. Bolshevism was not a purely “Russian” phenomenon.

A Latvian government commission has been working away to produce a monetary figure to put on the losses suffered by Latvia as a result of its incorporation into the USSR from 1940 to 1990. It has not finished its calculations yet, and may never, but the numbers that are bruited about are in the many billions. When it completes its work, the final number will be as accurate or as inaccurate as such numbers will always be.

But it seems to be expected that, when the commission arrives at a number, Latvia will present a bill to the Russian Federation. But why should Russia be expected to pay? Bolshevism was not especially “Russian.” Determining ethnicity in a multi-national state like Russia is always somewhat a matter of opinion and Russian has two words to distinguish between ethnic Russians (русский “russkiy”) and citizens of the state (российский “rossiyskiy”). Thus, while all members of the Bolshevik Central Committee which plotted and executed the seizure of power in Petrograd in 1917 had been born into the Russian Empire, only two were ethnic Russians (Lenin and Bubnov); the remainder were Jews – certainly not considered “Russians” at the time – (Zinoviev, Kamenev-Rosenfeld, Sokolnikov-Brillyant, Trotskiy-Bronshteyn) and Lenin’s “miraculous Georgian”, Stalin-Jughashvili. But the true leadership can be gauged from Lenin’s famous “testament” of 24 December 1922 in which he criticises his likely successors: Stalin, Trotskiy, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Pyatakov and Bukharin – the last the only “Russian.” The leadership of the Bolshevik Party cannot be said to have been especially “Russian” and Volkogonov’s biography many times shows Lenin’s contempt for all things Russian. “Russians” alone did not make the Bolshevik Revolution; the Bolsheviks were, as they always claimed to be, “internationalists.”

Where did the Bolsheviks get the force that allowed them to seize power? The most reliable and potent military force that the Bolsheviks controlled was the Latvian Rifles: this force supplied the bayonets in the Petrograd coup and the dismissal of the Constituent Assembly. Without the power of these disciplined troops the Bolshevik coup might not have happened at all. The other force behind Bolshevik rule was the Cheka, the political police. Its first leader was the Pole Feliks Dzherzhinskiy-Dzierzynski and, when he briefly resigned after the assassination attempt on Lenin in 1918, his principal deputy, the Latvian Jekabs Peters-Peterss, served as head, ably assisted by another Latvian, Martins Latsis-Lacis.

So, given the essential role of Latvians in the coup itself and the creation of the Red Terror, perhaps Latvia should ask for compensation from itself.

The actual takeover of Latvia in 1940 was the decision of Stalin-Jughashvili (who ruled the USSR for nearly half its existence) assisted by his political police chief Lavrenti Beria (a Mingrelian or, in today’s parlance, another Georgian). This was hardly a “Russian” decision: as Donald Rayfield says in Stalin and his Hangmen (p 356): “In 1939 the whole of the USSR could be said to be controlled by Georgians and Mingrelians”.

Therefore, perhaps Latvia should apply to Georgia for compensation.

Or, perhaps, Russia should demand compensation from Latvia or Georgia. It is pointless to argue about which nationality suffered most but Russians also suffered greatly: as then-President Putin said at the Butovo memorial: “This is a particular tragedy for Russia because it took place on such a large scale. Those who were executed, sent to camps, shot and tortured number in the thousands and millions of people. Along with this, as a rule these were people with their own opinions. These were people who were not afraid to speak their mind. They were the most capable people. They are the pride of the nation.” The communists killed millions: they did not distinguish among nationalities: They were “internationalist” and their murders and their murderers were too. The fact that Beria was from Georgia did not prevent him from wiping out the Georgian intelligentsia. As Latsis said, perfectly defining the Red Terror: “The first question you must ask is: what class does he belong to, what education, upbringing, origin or profession does he have? These questions must determine the accused’s fate. This is the sense and essence of red terror.” There is nothing to suggest he excluded Latvians.

Several of the post-communist states are engaged in an exercise of re-writing their history. Native communists and their involvement in Bolshevism are airbrushed out of the picture. Gone from the new picture are Latsis and Peters, Derzhinskiy and Orjonikidze; gone are Kossior and Zhdanov; Sultan-Galiyev, Narimanov and Vakhitov are airbrushed out; Vares and Snieckus are gone. In their place is erected a narrative of Russians imposing Russian-invented communism on innocent nations. Perhaps the most preposterous example of this reconstruction of reality was the proposal that the still-existing museum in Gori to its favourite son, Ioseb Bissarionis-dze Jughashvili, be re-named the museum of the Russian occupation of Georgia. Perhaps Russia should create a museum of the Georgian occupation of Russia: given the effect on Russian mortality of Stalin, Beria, Orjonikidze, Goglidze and Gvishiani, that would have more historical credibility. Some people in Ukraine want to paint the great famine of 1932-33 that killed so many Ukrainians as an act of Russian genocide. In fact the famine was caused by the drive to export wheat to obtain the capital to fuel Stalin’s ambitious industrialisation plans: the whole black earth zone of the USSR was targeted; people starved in the Kuban, as well as in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. It is simply otiose to say that because the Russian Federation assumed responsibility for the USSR’s debts, left-over troops, nuclear weapons and Security Council seat (to the approbation and relief of the West, be it understood), it also assumed responsibility for the doings of Stalin or Peters.

The view that Bolshevism and the USSR was “all-Russian” has persisted over some time, usually as an unstated background assumption in some piece about Moscow’s desire to re-occupy post-Soviet space. But it’s false history and false history is an impediment to reality.

As for one country claiming reparations from another, there is no one to present the bill to: those truly responsible are long dead, they were not products of their countries and all peoples of the USSR were equally ruined.

Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Eastern Europe in Danger?

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn ACCUSATIONS, CONTRIBUTIONS TO GROUP DISCUSSIONS, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, WAR ON RUSSIA

http://neftegaz.ru/en/press/view/5698

When NATO expansion was light-heartedly (George Kennan’s expression) begun by the Clinton administration its proponents sold the idea (I well remember earnest Americans patiently explaining this when I was a diplomat in Moscow) as a means of improving European security. And, had there been any serious intention to include Russia, perhaps it would have been. But wiser people, like Jack Matlock, foresaw that the exclusion of Russia would make things rather less stable.

And so it has proved to be. Even proponents of NATO expansion can see the connection with Tbilisi’s attack on South Ossetia last August and are fond of claiming that Russia puts up gas prices in order to weaken Ukraine (ignoring the fact that Russia has put up prices for everyone – even Armenia and Belarus which have no intention of joining NATO). NATO expansion has steadily crept east, from Poland to Latvia and now to Ukraine and Georgia (although their accession looks less likely today). Now the argument seems to be little more than because Moscow does not want these countries in NATO, they must be admitted (and, above all, we must not give Moscow a “veto”). A thin reason indeed.

NATO now has members that have re-painted their history under communist rule: gone are the home-grown communists like Wladyslaw Gomulka or Martin Latsis and in their place is a picture of Russian imperialism and native resistance. These countries are a lobby pushing NATO into a reflexive anti-Russian stance. They do not need actual evidence of Russian hostility: Russian imperialism is the very foundation stone of their new historical mythology. Perhaps the most preposterous example of this reconstruction of reality was the proposal that the still-existing museum in Gori Georgia to its favourite son, Iosef Bissarion-dze Jughashvili, be re-named the museum of the Russian occupation of Georgia. Perhaps Russia should create a museum of the Georgian occupation of Russia: given the importance to Russian history of Stalin, Beria, Orjonikidze, Golglidze and Gvishiani, this would have more historical credibility. “In 1939 the whole of the USSR could be said to be controlled by Georgians and Mingrelians” says Donald Rayfield in Stalin and his Hangmen. But these people have been painted out of the portraits – de-communisation was often more airbrushing than an honest recognition of the reality of enthusiastic native participants. And now they’re selling these paintings to NATO. As Matlock saw ten years ago: “it creates greater polarization of attitudes as the line moves east”. Kennan called it “a tragic mistake”.

The actual problems of the post-communist countries are all similar: corruption, out-dated industry, bad work habits, decaying infrastructure, crashing demographics and fragile economies. Countries that had the full 70-year dose of communism are worse off than those who received the 40-year dose to be sure, but the problems are shared. NATO is not the answer to any of them.

There is no better illustration of this truth than the parlous state of Ukraine today. The post “Orange Revolution” obsession with NATO has only exacerbated the political division in the country.

And finally, why would Russia, which is surviving the financial storm better than most – if not all – of its neighbours, want to acquire these countries anyway? Much more trouble (and expense) than they’re worth. After all, there wasn’t much stopping Russia from seizing most of Georgia last August if it had wanted to.