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A Plea for
Caution From Russia
What Putin Has to
Say to Americans About Syria
VLADIMIR V. PUTIN,
New York Times Op-Ed, 11 September 2013
MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak
directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to
do so at a time of insufficient communication between our
societies.
Relations between us
have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the
cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The
universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established
to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.
The United Nations’
founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by
consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent
members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this
has underpinned the stability of international relations for
decades.
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of
Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if
influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without
Security Council authorization.
The potential strike
by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many
countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will
result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the
conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of
terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian
nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the
Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international
law and order out of balance.
Syria is not witnessing a
battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in
a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda
fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United
States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign
weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the
world.
Mercenaries from
Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries
and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our
countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in
Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.
From the outset, Russia
has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan
for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but
international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and
believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is
one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos.
The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or
not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or
by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the
United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of
aggression.
No one doubts that poison gas was used
in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian
Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful
foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that
militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be
ignored.
It is alarming that military
intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace
for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it.
Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy
but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the
slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”
But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is
reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces
withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war
continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an
analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to
repeat recent mistakes.
No matter how
targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are
inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to
protect.
The world reacts by asking: if you
cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your
security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass
destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We
are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality
this is being eroded.
We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of
civilized diplomatic and political settlement.
A new opportunity to avoid military
action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all
members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian
government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international
control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President
Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military
action.
I welcome the
president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must
work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting
in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward
negotiations.
If we can avoid force against Syria,
this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual
trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other
critical issues.
My working and personal relationship
with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully
studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a
case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy
is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is
extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional,
whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small
countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still
finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all
different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must
Vladimir V. Putin is
the president of Russia.
Russian Initiative Offers Hope Of Breakthrough on Syria
War
Fyodor Lukyanov
for Al-Monitor Posted on September
11.http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/contents/articles/opinion/2013/09/chemical-weapons-syria-russia-breakthrough.html#ixzz2ef8RP76d
Just a few days ago, Russian–US relations
were seen as hopeless, but it was these two countries that were capable of
coming up with an out-of-the-box idea for dealing with the Syrian problem.
Russia proposed that Damascus put its chemical weapons under international
control, and the Syrian government immediately agreed. At first this seemed to
be an ad lib, but the notion had already come up in talks between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama and later between Foreign
Ministers Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry.
Russia and America have a good history of working together to
counteract weapons of mass destruction in other countries. Back in the days of
the Cold War, despite their adversarial relationship, the Soviet intelligence
services informed their American colleagues of South Africa’s nuclear program,
and through joint efforts, the West and the USSR successfully pressured Pretoria
to discontinue the program. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United
States helped Russia organize the work — at first on a political and diplomatic
level, and then on a technical level — to move the nuclear arsenals from
Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan into Russian territory. In 2002,
Russian and American specialists moved weapons-grade plutonium to Russia from
Yugoslavia, where it had remained since the time of Josip Broz Tito’s efforts to
obtain nuclear weapons. If they can reach agreement now on joint actions to
neutralize Syria’s chemical weapons capability, it would be serious evidence
that Moscow and Washington are still responsible leaders on the issue of dealing
with weapons of mass destruction left over from the days of the Cold
War.
The move involving international control over Syria’s chemical
weapons refocuses the debate away from the pointless argument over who used the
poison gas, since there is not and will not be incontrovertible proof. There can
be no objection to the core idea of this solution. If Syria signs the Chemical
Weapons Convention and gives up its dangerous arsenal, that would be an
unqualified blessing. The proposal could be implemented only
cooperatively, through coordinated efforts by Russia, the United States, the
United Nations, countries respected for their neutrality (Sweden and Switzerland
come to mind) and the Syrian government.
Ultimately, everyone saves
face, which is extremely important in big-time politics. Obama and the United
States would have a way to avoid an unpopular war with unpredictable results.
And they could claim that it was the threat of a military strike that forced Damascus to agree to
give up its chemical weapons, and therefore the American policy succeeded.
Russia would finally reap the fruits of its consistent position — Bashar
al-Assad could agree only to a proposal from Moscow, which he trusts. Damascus
would avoid a military strike from outside by sacrificing weapons that
practically cannot be used without fatal consequences.
What are the main
obstacles? Removing and destroying the Syrian arsenal would be a big and risky
job, requiring a long time and a predictable situation on the ground. The
rebels, of course, would not want it to succeed. They are relishing the prospect
of serious foreign military assistance, on the pretext of solving the chemical
weapons problem, which would change the balance of power. And the opposition,
primarily the more radical groups, has an incentive to interfere with the
implementation of the plan to relinquish chemical weapons.
The key to the success of the plan would be to draft the right
UN Security Council resolution. From Russia’s perspective, the resolution could
not take the form of an ultimatum to the Syrian government, authorizing military
intervention in the event of non-compliance. The resolution should establish the
legal basis for the process of neutralizing chemical weapons rather than
identifying those guilty of using them, especially since this is impossible to
prove. In this sense, Russia’s position would still not change —
throughout the Syrian crisis, Russia has prevented the Security Council from
adopting documents that could be interpreted as sanctioning the use of force.
This reflects both Russia’s general approach to international law — an extremely
cautious attitude toward interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states
— and the lessons learned from the Libyan campaign. At the time, it was widely believed in Russia
that Moscow’s goodwill in not blocking military intervention to protect the
civilian population was used in order to legitimize regime
change.
Of course, Moscow cannot be certain of
Assad’s complete sincerity. But in this case, there is reason to believe that
cooperation on chemical weapons is in his interest. First, it would actually
eliminate the most obvious rationale for an attack. Second, it would allow Assad
to look like a responsible head of state and burnish his image. Surely, in order
for this to succeed, Russia will have to constantly remind the regime in
Damascus that this is the last opportunity to avoid the use of force, and if it
is lost, there will be nothing more that Moscow can do. This is also important
to Russia, because only a political solution will vindicate the policy that the
Kremlin has been pursuing for two and a half years.
The crucial factor for
success is that, in tandem with the resolution of the chemical weapons crisis,
efforts are undertaken to resolve the conflict overall. Syria’s problem is not
chemical weapons, but rather the vicious conflict between various ethnic and
sectarian groups in the country and throughout the Middle East. In effect, Syria
needs a new model for a political system that reflects the interests of all
segments of society, without excluding anyone.
For two years, the Syrian
crisis has demonstrated the dysfunction of all international institutions and
the powerlessness of the world community. For the first time, there is an
opportunity not just to find a way out of this deadlock, but also to lay the
foundation for constructive efforts to resolve similar regional conflicts, the
number of which is likely to grow.
Over a year ago, on July 16, 2012, Foreign
Minister Lavrov made an important statement that provides the key to
understanding Russia’s position on Syria: “The model for how the international
community responds to civil wars in the future will largely depend on the way
the Syrian crisis is resolved.” Syria was called upon not to let the
“international community” entrench the Libyan example as the model for future
conflicts. From the perspective of Russian strategists, the Libyan model
consists of this: In an internecine conflict, outside forces choose the “right”
side and, by intervening, help it come to power. In Syria, as we can see, this
approach has screeched to a halt. But this new initiative may become the
prototype of a new cooperative model.
Fyodor Lukyanov is the editor of the journal Russia in Global
Affairs, chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and a
member of the Russian Council for International Affairs.
Putin: US on Dangerous Course In Syria
Fyodor
Lukyanov for Al-Monitor Posted
on September
5.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/09/russia-america-strike-dangerous-syria.html#ixzz2ef7ujkip
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/09/russia-america-strike-dangerous-syria.html#ixzz2ef7ujkip
A pattern is emerging: The
country holding the presidency of the G20 or the G8 carefully prepares an
agenda, discusses it with its partners and puts together a program for the
forum. Then something happens that either destroys the plans entirely or, at the
least, fouls them up and forces an urgent discussion of the immediate crisis.
Lebanon, Greece, Greece again, Libya, Cyprus and now Syria. In the modern world,
nothing can be planned. Everything has to be done ad hoc, frantically reacting
to events in hopes of guessing right.
Just two months ago, some looked
forward to the summit in St. Petersburg mainly as an opportunity to open a new
chapter in Russian-US relations. To some extent it was, but in the opposite
direction. Instead of a pragmatic attempt to move toward a set of topics for
dialogue, firm confirmation arrived that no dialogue exists or is foreseeable.
The appearance of Edward Snowden, the fugitive former National Security Agency
contractor, forced President Barack Obama to cancel a separate trip to Moscow on
the eve of the summit, and the scandal involving the use of chemical weapons in
Syria made it pointless to even have a private conversation at the G20
meeting.
Obama will arrive at the forum
having announced in advance that a strike will be launched regardless of the
position of the UN Security Council and the objections of other countries. It is
impossible to imagine a situation in which the US president would take back
these words in response to the arguments made by leaders who disagree.
Politically, this is simply unthinkable and produces an absurd conversation in
which everyone knows there is no chance of changing anyone's mind. So why waste
the time?
From Russia’s perspective, everything
happening around Syria today is a grandiose propaganda campaign with an
incomprehensible purpose, because anyone can tell by looking at Obama how much
he does not want to get drawn into another military action in the Middle East.
Concepts are being blatantly manipulated: Chemical weapons were used in Syria
(which is probably true), so the “red line” has been crossed and therefore a
strike must be launched against the regime. It is taken for granted that only
the government side could use chemical weapons.
One can assume so, but
it would be nice to have even a little evidence. The body of evidence cited by
the United States amounts to nothing more than a mantra: We have no doubt that
it was Assad. We have incontrovertible evidence. The evidence is secret, of
course, but we have it, believe us.
If not for Secretary of State Colin
Powell at the UN Security Council and Prime Minister Tony Blair before the
Parliament 10 years ago, it would be possible to cite “perfectly reliable”
intelligence. After the Iraq precedent, however, this no longer works. Of
course, every intelligence service has information that it cannot disclose, but
to justify a war, one must provide something, at least the recording of the
conversation in which Assad’s officers supposedly discuss the attack. Let the
public hear it. There is still nothing but statements, even if they are
absolutely definitive and permit no doubt about the regime’s guilt.
Until the last few days, Russia’s
reaction to the growing American campaign was relatively soft, much softer than
was to be expected given the general state of the relationship. In an interview
on the eve of the summit, Putin spoke calmly and even positively about Obama,
and with regard to the plans in Syria, he said that Russia might even support
strong measures if there is incontrovertible evidence of the Syrian army’s
guilt. Of course, this means nothing, because almost any evidence can be seen as
controvertible, but still. However, the more the conflict intensifies and moves
closer to a war that clearly raises doubts even among many US allies, the more
the American political machine will operate in a straightforward and linear way.
Public opinion in America and the world must be quickly prepared for the
campaign, so the propaganda push will intensify, including accusations that
Russia cynically supports the bloody dictator. An explanation is needed for
bypassing the UN Security Council.
For its part, Russia will likely turn up
the heat of criticism and attacks on the US policy, trying to mobilize important
countries – its BRICS and SCO, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, counterparts —
that share its view. After the US attack, the political process to organize the
Geneva II conference will probably stop, first, because its consequences are
unclear and time is needed to evaluate the situation, and second, because
Moscow’s desire to work with Washington will rapidly cool.
In Russia, many people are
pointing out the surprising shift in the dispute over the legitimacy of using
force. Moscow is taking the traditional position — without sanctions imposed by
the UN Security Council, it is an aggression. Ten years ago, the United States
had bypassed the Security Council in putting together its “coalition of the
willing,” but the George W. Bush administration did not pretend that the Iraq
War was legal from the perspective of international law.
Now Obama is
announcing to the world that he will seek legitimacy for military action not
from the international institution, but from his own country’s legislature. In
other words, he is treating international and domestic legitimacy as equal, and the vote of the Congress
will be seen as an absolutely lawful basis for action. This triumph of unilateralism will
happen not under the neo-conservative Bush, but under the liberal left Obama,
who has always insisted on the need for joint action in the world
arena.
What does all this
mean for US-Russian relations? The relationship is going through a strange
phase. It is not hostility in the classical sense of a military or political
rivalry or an ideological conflict. There is, instead, a growing alienation, a
gulf in mutual understanding. In the United States, it seems that almost no one
can understand why Russia and President Vladimir Putin have latched on to Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad and thus have tried to find rational explanations,
like arms contracts. Explanations involving principles of international
relations, noninterference and concerns about making things worse are treated
with skepticism. Such can’t be taken seriously.
In Russia, in turn, many people sincerely cannot understand
what exactly the United States is doing in the Middle East. What does it hope to achieve? Its actions look contradictory
and inconsistent. Obama comes across as either a befuddled simpleton or a
cynical manipulator. As the discussions in Mexico and Northern
Ireland have demonstrated, personal meetings between leaders do not clarify the
situation, but quite the opposite.
In Russia, the United States is seen
more and more as a source of global instability, made even more dangerous by the
fact that its actions are dictated mainly by domestic political considerations
and the alignment of forces between the parties in Congress. This is the reason
for the desire to neither cooperate with nor resist the United States, but
rather to try somehow to avoid it and minimize the risks from its policy. Until
recently, the dominant viewpoint among the Russian public was that the United
States always knows what it wants and pursues its goals. The aggrandizement of
the American strategy found its apotheosis in the popular notion of “manageable
chaos” promoted by conservatives in Russia. Supposedly, the United States is
intentionally creating total chaos and turmoil in the Middle East so it will be
easier to control everything in the muddy waters of never-ending
crisis.
Now, of course, a
different opinion is more often heard. The Americans are confused. They do not
understand what to do, but they see the use of force as the solution to every
problem, even when the consequences are unknown. Russia does not know how to work
with such a partner. In any case, Putin seems inclined to this point of
view.
Fyodor Lukyanov is the editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, chairman of the Council on Foreign
and Defense Policy and a member of the Russian Council for International
Affairs.
As Obama Pauses Action, Putin Takes Center
Stage
STEVEN
LEE MYERS, New York Times, 11 September
2013
MOSCOW — President
Vladimir V. Putin has been many things to President Obama: a partner at times,
an irritant more often, the host of the elusive Edward J. Snowden and “the bored
kid in the back of the classroom” who offered so little on the administration’s
foreign policy goals that Mr. Obama canceled plans to hold a summit meeting in
Moscow last week.
Yet suddenly Mr. Putin has eclipsed Mr.
Obama as the world leader driving the agenda in the Syria crisis. He is offering
a potential, if still highly uncertain, alternative to what he has vocally
criticized as America’s militarism and reasserted Russian interests in a region
where it had been marginalized since the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
Although circumstances could shift yet
again, Mr. Putin appears to have achieved several objectives, largely at
Washington’s expense. He has handed a diplomatic lifeline to his longtime ally
in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, who not long ago appeared at risk of losing
power and who President Obama twice said must step down. He has stopped Mr.
Obama from going around the United Nations Security Council, where Russia holds
a veto, to assert American priorities
unilaterally.
More generally, Russia has at least for
now made itself indispensable in containing the conflict in Syria, which Mr.
Putin has argued could ignite Islamic unrest around the region, even as far as
Russia’s own restive Muslim regions, if it is mismanaged. He has boxed Mr. Obama
into treating Moscow as an essential partner for much of the next year, if
Pentagon estimates of the time it will take to secure Syria’s chemical weapons
stockpile are accurate.
“Putin probably had
his best day as president in years yesterday,” Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia
Group, a political risk consultancy, said in a conference call on
Wednesday, “and I suspect he’s enjoying himself right
now.”
In an Op-Ed
article in The New York Times released on Wednesday, Mr. Putin laid
down a strong challenge to Mr. Obama’s vision of how to address the turmoil,
arguing that a military strike risked “spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s
borders” and would violate international law, undermining postwar
stability.
“It is alarming that
military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become
commonplace for the United States,” Mr. Putin wrote. “Is it in America’s
long-term interest? I doubt it.”
When Mr. Putin returned to the presidency a year ago, he
moved aggressively to stamp out a growing protest movement and silence competing
and independent voices. He shored up his position at home but, as his government
promoted nationalism with a hostile edge, passed antigay legislation, locked up
illegal immigrants in a city camp, kept providing arms to the Syrian government
and ultimately gave refuge to the leaker Mr. Snowden, Mr. Putin was increasingly
seen in the West as a calloused, out-of-touch modern-day
czar.
Now he appears to be
relishing a role as a statesman. His spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in an
interview that the Russian president was not seeking “ownership of the
initiative,” but wanted only to promote a political solution to head off a wider
military conflict in the Middle East.
“It’s only the beginning of the road,”
Mr. Peskov said, “but it’s a very important
beginning.”
To get started, Mr. Putin sent his
foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, to Geneva on Thursday to meet with Secretary
of State John Kerry, in hopes of hammering out the myriad logistical details of
putting a sprawling network of chemical sites under international control in the
middle of a deadly civil war.
Even that step was
another indication of just how much the circumstances have changed in such a
short time. Only a week ago, Mr. Putin was accusing Mr. Kerry of lying to
Congress about the presence of militants allied with Al Qaeda in Syria. “He’s
lying,” he said in televised remarks. “And he knows he’s lying. It’s
sad.”
On Wednesday, when
Russia submitted a package of proposals to the Americans and others ahead of
that meeting in Geneva, Mr. Peskov again used the opportunity to try to paint
Russia as the peacemaker to the United States’ war maker. Mr. Peskov declined to
release details of the plan, other than to say Russia’s most important condition
was that Syria’s willingness to give up its weapons could only be tested if the
United States refrained from the retaliation Mr. Obama has threatened. “Any
strike will make this impossible,” Mr. Peskov said.
From the start of the war two and a half years ago,
Russia has been Syria’s strongest backer, using its veto repeatedly to block any
meaningful action at the Security Council. While Russia has ties to the country
dating to the Soviet era, including its only naval base left outside of the
former Soviet republics, Mr. Putin’s primary goal is not
preserving Mr. Assad’s government — despite arms sales that account for billions
of dollars — as much as thwarting what he considers to be unbridled American
power to topple governments it opposes.
Mr. Putin’s defense
of Syria, including continuing assertions that the rebels, not government
forces, had used chemical weapons, has at times made him seem intent on opposing
the United States regardless of any contrary facts or evidence. Russia has long
had the support of China at the Security Council, but Mr. Putin had won support
for his position by exploiting the divisions that appeared between the United
States and its allies. That was especially true after Britain’s Parliament
refused to endorse military action, a step Mr. Putin described as
mature.
He also slyly voiced encouragement when leaders of
Russia’s Parliament suggested they go to the United States to lobby Congress to
vote against the authorization Mr. Obama sought — something he himself would
deride as unacceptable interference if the table were
reversed.
Mr. Putin’s palpable
hostility to what he views as the supersized influence of the United States
around the world explains much of the anti-American sentiment that he and his
supporters have stoked since he returned as president last year after serving
four years as prime minister under his anointed successor, Dmitri A. Medvedev.
It was under Mr. Medvedev that Russia abstained in a Security Council vote to
authorize the NATO intervention in Libya that ultimately toppled that country’s
dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Mr. Putin has made it clear that he would not
repeat what most here consider a mistake that unleashed a wave of extremism that
has spread across the region.
For now, Mr. Putin succeeded in forcing
the international debate over Syria back to the Security Council, where Russia’s
veto gives it a voice in any international response. With Russia’s relations
with Europe increasingly strained over economic pressure and political issues,
the Security Council gives Russia a voice in shaping
geopolitics.
At the same time, Mr.
Putin carries the risk of Russia again having to veto any security resolution
that would back up the international control over Syria’s weapons with the
threat of force, as France proposed.
Not
surprisingly, given the Kremlin’s control over most media here, Mr. Putin’s
11th-hour gambit was nonetheless widely applauded. “The Russian president has
become a hero in the world these days,” the newscast of NTV began on Wednesday
night before going on to note that Mr. Putin should be nominated for a Nobel
Peace Prize if he averted the American
strike.
There was also
satisfaction that it was Mr. Putin who gave an American president whom he
clearly distrusts a way out of a political and diplomatic crisis of his own
making. Aleksei K. Pushkov, the chairman of the lower house of Parliament’s
foreign affairs committee, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Obama should gratefully
grab Russia’s proposal with “both hands.”
“It gives him a chance not to start
another war, not to lose in the Congress and not to become the second Bush,” Mr.
Pushkov said.
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