Category Archives: Russian policy

Yalta.

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From 4 to 11 February 1945, Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt met at Yalta in Crimea to “decide” the fate of post-war Europe. In fact, Europe’s fate had already been decided by the course of military operations. The agreements reached at Yalta merely tried to paper-over some of the ugly realities.

During 1944 the Red Army had plowed forward from inside the Soviet Union to a position forty miles from Berlin. In the process, the Red Army—three times the size of the combined British and American armies in Europe–had waded through a sea of blood—their own and that of the German army. The Russians had occupied almost all of Eastern and Central Europe. Meanwhile, from mid-1944 on, the British and Americans had occupied France, the Low Countries, much of Italy, and Western Germany. The war itself had divided Europe into spheres of influence.

The three leaders pursued their own agendas at the conference. Stalin wanted the Western powers to acknowledge Soviet power in the East. Churchill hoped to limit the scope of Communization there and to protect the interests of Britain’s Polish ally. Roosevelt wanted Soviet assistance in the war against Japan and Soviet participation in a post-war United Nations. In the end, Stalin got all of what he wanted; Roosevelt got all of what he wanted, but it turned out to be worthless; and Churchill got nothing of what he wanted, beyond fair words and promises.

At Yalta, the three leaders agreed that Poland would be kicked westward from its pre-war borders, yielding the Soviet conquests of September 1939 in return for territory taken from Germany. The Soviet puppet government in Poland would be reconfigured on a “broader democratic basis” by the admission of members of the government-in-exile in London. Stalin agreed to democratic elections in post-war Poland and in the other Eastern European countries at some unspecified date. Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan within two or three months after the end of the war in Europe. He also agreed that the Soviet Union would join the United Nations. The Soviet Union would receive reparations in kind and in forced labor from Germany. France would receive occupation zones in Germany and in Berlin, but these would have to be carved out of areas previously assigned to Britain or the United States. Soviet citizens found in the West would be repatriated, regardless of their own preferences.

Filled with hatred and distrust of Western capitalist democracies, Stalin had no intention of honoring his weak commitments to democracy in Eastern Europe. Where the Red Army stood, it would remain. Where the Red Army remained, Communist dictatorships would be imposed by any means necessary. A hard-headed pragmatist, Stalin meant to honor his promise to make war on Japan and to take a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations.

Churchill first, and Roosevelt subsequently, came in for considerable criticism and abuse for their failures to achieve the liberation of Eastern Europe. In fact, this liberation depended entirely upon the balance of power in the area. This tipped heavily in favor of the Soviet Union. The best the two men could have hoped for was to encourage future Soviet co-operation on essential issues. No one wanted a further war after so much blood-shed and with more still to come. Nor would the democracies fight for the “rights” of small states.

Yalta, like Roosevelt’s earlier “destroyers-for-bases deal” in 1940 and Richard Nixon’s Vietnam War peace agreement in 1973, was an “executive agreement,” rather than a treaty approved by the Senate.

 

Ukraine1.

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I’ve been reluctant to write about the Ukraine. I find myself totally out of step with opinion. I don’t like Vladimir Putin[1], but I think that someone should try to make a fair case for understanding his actions.[2]

For one thing, if you look at maps of Ukraine, you see that Crimea and the two eastern “oblasts” (administrative districts) of Donetsk and Luhansk are predominantly Russian-speaking: 77.0%, 74.9%, and 68.8%. In the referendum on independence from the Soviet Union the south-eastern “oblasts” all voted for independence like the rest of Ukraine, but the opposition vote was much higher than elsewhere and so was the abstention rate. In the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections, Viktor Yanukovich’s Russian-oriented “Party of Regions” carried a huge swath of south-eastern Ukraine. The Yulia Timoshenko bloc had carried a huge swath of western and central Ukraine. In the presidential elections of 2010, Yanukovich narrowly defeated Yulia Timoshenko by mobilizing the same pro-Russian electoral base in the south-east.

The opposition to the Yanukovich government’s decision to halt the process of integration with the European Community (EU) centered in the west and center of the country. These regions had voted for Timoshenko in the 2010. In contrast, there were few demonstrations or protests in the southeast. Only five protests were identified for the two eastern “oblasts” and Crimea combined. In contrast, there were large pro-Russian protests in the two eastern “oblasts,” Crimea, and elsewhere in the southeast. Finally, supporters of the “Euro-Maidan” protests seized control of local governments in western and central Ukraine, but never even made a stab at it in Crimea or the two eastern “oblasts.”

According to “polling data by [the German polling agency] GfK taken from 4-18 March [2014] in all regions of Ukraine (including Crimea), 48% of Ukrainians support[ed] the change in power while 34% oppose[ed]. In the Eastern and Southern regions the revolution is supported by 20% of the population, whereas 57% or more of the population in the rest of the country supports the change in government. Also, only 2% of those polled said they fully or partially trusted former president Viktor Yanukovych.”[3] So, while Yanukovich was widely unpopular, a clear majority of people in the southeast opposed the revolution in Kiev.

Crimea has been annexed to Russia; the continuing “insurgency” in eastern Ukraine is limited to the two eastern “oblasts” where real opposition to the Kiev revolution was very strong for ethno-cultural reasons.

Is it possible that Vladimir Putin is doggedly[4] pursuing very limited aims with regard to Ukraine? His aims at the moment appear to be to take control of the two eastern-most “oblasts.” Will he desire to push beyond this to open a land bridge to Crimea? Would he wish to take all of the territory that voted for pro-Russian parties? Would he settle for a Ukraine “neutralized” as was Austria[5] during the Cold War? It’s hard to know unless someone asks him.

[1] As Joseph Joffe said on NPR: “he’s a nasty son-of-a-bitch.”

[2] “I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but evidence for the prosecution and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English. It is un-American; it is French.”—Mark Twain, “About the Jews.”

[3] Wikipedia. Reference misplaced.

[4] Putin isn’t much inclined to turn loose of something once he has engaged with it. Russians are still fighting in Chechnya in an insurgency that has gone on in fits and starts since 1994.

[5] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_State_Treaty

Man of Steel.

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In the first volume of his new biography of Joseph Stalin[1], Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin makes clear the disastrous effects of Bolshevik victory in the Russian Revolution. “The Russian Revolution—against the tyranny, corruption, and, not least, incompetence of tsarism—sparked soaring hopes for a new world of abundance, social justice and peace.” Garry Trudeau mockingly entitled a collection of his “Doonesbury” cartoons from the Vietnam War-era But This War Had Such Promise. The same might be said of the Russian Revolution. Twenty years on the country was a vast police state; millions were dead from famine or execution, while millions more were imprisoned in the Gulag archipelago; Russian agriculture had fallen below its prewar levels to off-set the increase in industrial production; and a murderous psychopath ruled the country without any check on his actions. Fifty years on from that sad state, Communism finally collapsed under the weight of its own failings.[2]

Historians have argued that circumstances forced Stalin to into certain courses of action, rather than him having chosen them. Thus, surrounded by a hostile world, Russia had to modernize its economy and be always on watch against subversion. The forced collectivization of agriculture offered the only means to rapidly modernize Russian peasant-based farming. Modernization of farming under State control held the only means to obtain the resources for rapid industrialization. The opposition from the peasants, then the wavering among Bolsheviks over the high human costs of collectivization forced the adoption of harsh measures.

Kotkin rejects such views. He argues that Stalin fulfilled, rather than diverged from, Lenin’s intentions. “If only Lenin had lived,” the same things would have happened to Russia and the world. From the first, the Bolsheviks “unwittingly, yet relentlessly reproduced the pathologies and predations of the old regime state in new forms.” Between 1918 and 1928, tyranny, corruption, and incompetence became the hall-marks of the Soviet state. Stalin rose to power in this environment thanks to his own ruthlessness, adroit skill at maneuver, and the spectacular incompetence of his rivals like Trotsky, Bukharin, and Kamenev.[3] (Indeed, the incompetence of these men at conspiratorial politics offers a clue to how Lenin himself rose to leadership of the Bolshevik party before the Revolution.) However, the Russian Revolution had never been carried through to completion. The resistance from the peasantry and many other people had forced the strategic retreat called the “New Economic Policy” (N.E.P.). While Lenin claimed to hold the “commanding heights” of the economy (foreign trade, finance, heavy industry), agriculture and commerce remained in private hands. The path to traditional capitalist economic development remained open. With that, Bolshevism would become irrelevant.

By 1928, when the first volume of Kotkin’s gigantic work ends, Stalin had gained control of the main levers of power in the Soviet Union. He set out to complete the Revolution. Heads would roll.

[1] Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 (New York: Penguin, 2014). See the review by Serge Schmemann, NYT, 9 January 2015, C29.

[2] Rather than from any actions of the Reagan Administration. American triumphalism in the wake of the collapse of Communism showed the first signs of that generational change in self-concept that was to prove so disastrous under the Bush II administration.

[3] See: Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 3-122.

 

Thoughts for the New Year.

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I don’t know anything. So, here are my thoughts on a couple of issues.

Climate change is a grave reality. However, I doubt that people can entirely hold back (let alone turn back) global warming. Carbon-burning is central to the industrialization of developing-economies. There aren’t a lot of cheap and ready-to-use alternatives. Instead, there is going to be a long period of adaptation to worsened conditions. It is going to make environmentalists, intellectuals, and other “progressive” people very angry that there will turn out to be market-driven profit opportunities when statist restrictions might have provided more desirable outcomes.

In terms of foreign policy, Vladimir Putin is considerably more of an adult than are American leaders. Balance-of-power politics and spheres of influence are realities in world politics. Power and influence are not the single and permanent prerogative of the United States. For one thing, Ukraine is to Russia as Mexico is to the United States. (“Pity poor Mexico. So far from God, so near the United States.”) For another thing, Putin has tried to help the US out of a couple of ditches into which American leaders have driven it. Syrian chemical weapons and a possible solution to the Iranian nuclear problem are the key examples. All the while he has been vilified because he isn’t a democrat at home and he’s resisting the onward march of Western power around the borders of Russia.

In the Middle East we are witnessing a re-writing the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Iraq is fragmenting into Shi’ite, Sunni, and Kurdish enclaves. This fragmentation is being papered-over during the current emergency. The Shi’ites will never be able to repair their behavior during the Maliki period. Syria is going to fragment into Alawite, Sunni, and Kurdish enclaves. A Kurdish state will emerge. This new country will have trouble with both Turkey and Iran. Will Jordan or Saudi Arabia absorb the unstable and impoverished new Sunni micro-state in western Iraq?

The “two-state solution” to the Israel-Palestine conflict isn’t. Israel cannot afford to have a Palestinian state created. That state would be implacably revanchist, regardless of whatever professions its spokesmen might make in order to obtain sovereignty. Over the centuries, many people have felt that the problems of the world could be resolved if only the Jews would die and stop bothering people. Well, the Israelis aren’t buying this line.

The United States gets much less from the US-Israel alliance than does Israel.

ISIS isn’t a serious problem. The enthusiasm for “jihad” among many Muslims is a serious problem. It is likely to be around for a long time. I’m not sure that it can be de-legitimized by Western propaganda. I’m not sure that playing military whack-a-mole with every new outbreak will solve the problem.

Much as I agree with the objectives being pursued by President Obama on some key issues, I don’t believe that he has the authority for some of his actions. The Supreme Court is likely to overturn the authority-grab carried out by the EPA. The immigration problem wasn’t/isn’t a crisis. It’s just a stick with which to beat the Republicans and an effort to keep Hispanic-American voters on the side of the Democrats. American liberals are going to rue the day that they celebrated his unilateral actions on coal-burning energy generation and immigration. One day, a Republican president will invoke the Obama example.

Putinium.

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Vladimir Putin was born in 1952 in Leningrad. He had impeccable Communist credentials; his father was a manual laborer, his mother was a school teacher. He studied law in university (like Mikhail Gorbachev), then took a job with the KGB. (See: irony.) Here he was an intelligence officer, operating in East Germany. When the USSR began to withdraw its forces from its East European empire Putin came home to Leningrad. Here he worked for a number of politicians in the new democracy. One of these was Boris Yeltsin.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had not thrilled the Russians. Street crime and white-collar crime exploded, while the economy decayed, and Russia fell from the status of a superpower. People around Yeltsin piled up immense fortunes by seizing control of Russia’s natural resources, banking, and media. Mikhail Khodorkovsky got control of the Yukos oil company, which established a virtual monopoly on Russian oil production and exports. Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky created media empires. Generally, nobody paid taxes. A few people got rich while most suffered.

In 1998 Yeltsin appointed Putin to run the FSB, heir to the KGB. Two years later in 2000, when the ailing Yeltsin left government, Putin ran for President of Russia. During the campaign someone bombed an apartment building in Moscow, killing 200 people. The suspected bombers were Chechen separatists. Putin promised to wipe them out. He won the presidency.

In power, Putin turned on the “oligarchs” who had risen up during the Yeltsin era. Khodorkovsky went to jail and Yukos Oil was nationalized, Berezovsky and Gusinsky fled abroad. Taxes got collected. Street crime got squashed. Putin’s nationalization of Yukos Oil coincided with a sharp increase in demand for oil around the world. By 2007, Russia was earning about $170 billion a year from oil exports. Prosperity returned to Russia. Putin has distributed favors on a far more prudent basis than Yeltsin ever did. He uses them to build support for himself without harming the interests of the Russian people. At the same time, Putin has been ruthless in dealing with critics: he has used control of the media to prevent opposition candidates from getting out their message; and he is suspected of having prompted the assassination of dissidents Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. In the December 2007 elections voters had to mark the ballots in public view—of soldiers. This is a lot like mid-19th Century elections. Not exactly the Australian ballot. Still, it seemed to work. Public opinion polls showed Putin enjoying a 70 percent favorable rating among ordinary Russians. In December 2007 Putin’s United Russia party won 400 of 450 seats in the Russian parliament (the Duma).

Where is he headed? He appears to be aiming at a restoration of Russian power. He has begun a $200 billion rearmament program. He has tried to block the extension of an American anti-missile system into Eastern Europe. He has challenged the idea of America as the sole super-power. He is still fighting the Chechen war. He turns off the flow of oil to the Ukraine whenever it seems too independent. Then there’s the Crimea.

The question is not whether Russia could have been held down permanently after the collapse of Communism. It could not. But could Russia have become a Western-style democracy? Is a collision inevitable between a reviving Russia and the West?

“Why Russia Loves Putin,” The Week, 21 December 2007, p. 11.

Obama versus Putin.

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Russian-American relations broke down during the Russia-Georgia war of 2008. At the beginning of his first term, President Obama hoped that there might be a chance for improved relations with Russia. His national security advisor, Thomas Donilon, and his chief adviser on Russia, Michael McFaul, both believed that the opportunity existed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were doubtful. However the latter two took the view that it was worth a shot. What’s the worst that could happen?

In April 2009 President Obama met Dimitri Medvedev for the first time at the London G20 conference. The two hit it off, or at least Mr. Obama saw a sympathetic figure in Mr. Medvedev. Both were young lawyers who saw themselves as pragmatists rather than ideologues. According to Peter Baker, “Mr. Obama resolved to do what he could to build up Mr. Medvedev in hopes that he would eventually emerge as the real power.” The Americans pitched the Russians the idea of a new nuclear weapons reduction agreement. The two sides made progress on this topic during the following weeks. The two countries agreed that Russia would allow America to air-lift men and supplies to Afghanistan through Russian airspace. The United States also won Russian agreement for tougher sanctions against Iran, while the Americans facilitated Russian entry into the World Trade Organization.

In March 2011 the United States wanted to join in the air campaign against Libya. This would require a vote by the UN Security Council. Medvedev agreed not to block the vote. Very soon, it became apparent that President Obama had expanded the humanitarian mandate from the UN into a regime-change mission directed at bombing Colonel Ghadaffi out of power. According to then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, “The Russians felt that they had been played for suckers on Libya. They felt that there had been a bait and switch.” Putin became incensed. Putin himself saw the Libyan intervention as the latest instance of a strand in American foreign policy that ran from Kosovo in the Clinton administration to Iraq in the Bush administration. Not the least of his concerns sprang from the evidence that overturning regimes in Muslim countries led to the triumph of Islamic radicals like the ones Russia has been fighting in Chechnya. Moreover, the Russians have not interfered with the airlift to Afghanistan nor have the reneged on the nuclear arms agreements. Apparently, they feel that a promise is a promise.

By September 2011 it had become apparent that Putin would be returning to the presidency in Spring 2012. American officials speculated on what impact this would have on Russo-American relations. The State Department was not optimistic.

In May 2012, Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency of Russia. President Obama sent his national security advisor, Thomas Donilon, to explore relations with the Russian strong-man. Obama may have hoped for a cordial relationship, but Putin did not welcome the initiative. For one thing, Putin blamed Secretary of State Clinton for encouraging the mass street demonstrations that attended his re-election. For another thing, “In Mr. Putin’s view, the United States wanted only to meddle in places where it had no business, fomenting revolutions to install governments friendly to Washington.” An American diplomat recalled that “Putin was very dug in on this idea that we will never have another Libya.” “When are you going to start bombing Syria?” Putin demanded.

Putin took up the matter with President Obama himself at another meeting in Mexico in June 2012. Obama argued that the two countries should co-operate to achieve a negotiated settlement in Syria. [NB: Implicit in this was the idea that Assad would have to go.] Putin refused to agree. A bunch of tit-for-tat harassment followed. The White House came up with a plan for a second “reset”: they would take up a number of suggestions made by the Russians earlier on as the agenda for trying to improve the relationship. The list of things to be addressed were further cuts in nuclear forces, a data-sharing plan to relieve some of the Russian anxiety over American missile defense, and expanded American trade and investment.

After Obama won re-election in November 2012, he sent Donilon to see Putin once again. In June 2013 Obama and Putin met at another G8 conference in Northern Ireland. Putin declined to take up any of the American proposals for a new “reset.” Putin did agree to meet separately with Obama during a conference in St. Petersburg. However, when Obama made a speech in Berlin suggesting a new round of Russo-American nuclear cuts, the Russians did not respond. Soon afterward, they agreed to shelter Edward Snowden, the NSA “leaker” then in flight from American law. Already wondering if the meeting with Putin would be worth having, Obama reacted to the asylum decision by cancelling the meeting. Obama publically belittled Putin as the “bored kid in the back of the classroom.”[1] Later on, during the Ukraine crisis of early 2014, Obama would describe Russia as “just a regional power.”

There are several questions worth considering. First, Vladimir Putin is as Josef Joffe has said, “a nasty son-of-a-bitch.” However, is he just a megalomaniac? Or does Putin have real reasons for obstructing American action in Syria and Ukraine? Looking at the results of President Obama’s foreign policy in Libya, Yemen, and Egypt, is it possible that there are many other powerful people at the head of unpopular governments who think that Putin may have a point?

Second, is international relations the same thing as a Chicago Parks and Recreation basketball court? Is trash-talking an opponent a useful way of resolving a conflict or gaining an advantage?

[1] Peter Baker, “U.S. Feels Chill in Its Relations with Russians,” NYT, 3 September 2013, pp. A1, A8.

 

Buyer’s Remorse: Russia and Ukraine.

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Russian is a big exporter of natural gas to Western and Central Europe. During the life of the Soviet Union, the USSR had supplied natural gas to both the Ukraine region within the USSR and to Western Europe. The price charged Western European purchasers was below world market rate. Two of the USSR’s natural gas pipelines to Western Europe ran through Ukraine and carry 80 percent of Russia’s natural gas exports. After the Soviet Union broke up and Ukraine voted to secede, the Russians negotiated a natural gas agreement with Ukraine. The agreement provided that Ukraine would receive 17 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year as a fee for the pipelines that crossed Ukraine. This agreement also sold 8 billion cubic metres of natural gas to Ukraine at the prevailing world market price.

During the 1990s the Russians claimed that the Ukrainians had not paid for much of the gas that they received. They stopped deliveries of natural gas to Ukraine until they were paid, while continuing to ship gas through the pipelines across Ukraine. The Ukrainians then diverted some of the gas bound for Western Europe to make up for the suspended gas deliveries. (The government of Ukraine later admitted that they had done this.) The two countries finally settled this dispute in an agreement in October 2001.

Negotiations for a new agreement began in 2005. In the process, it was revealed that the Ukrainians had “misplaced” almost 8 billion cubic metres of gas that the Russian energy company Gazprom had stored in Ukrainian facilities in 2004-2005. When Ukraine balked at some of the Russian terms, the Russians cut down on gas deliveries in January 2006. Ukraine soon gave in. However, the Russians repeatedly claimed that the Ukraine of the “Orange Revolution” failed to pay for natural gas deliveries. Growing weary of Ukraine’s repeated “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” approach, in early 2008 the Russkies said Ukraine had to pay the whole 2008 bill up-front or no more gas starting immediately. Ukraine’s government, headed by Yulia Timoshenko, rejected that deal.

In late 2008 Ukraine caved-in and paid what they owed the Russians. Negotiations for a 2009 agreement immediately broke down. The Ukrainians wanted a subsidized price, the Russians wanted the market rate; the Russians insisted on payment up front. The Russians turned off the tap in gas supplies to Ukraine, so Ukraine resorted to a number of under-handed practices in response: the pressure dropped in the pipelines to Western Europe (indicating siphoning by Ukraine); the government called on the EU to involve itself; and the Ukrainian court voided Ukraine’s agreement to trans-ship Russian gas to Western Europe. The Stockholm Tribunal of Arbitration soon smashed Ukraine’s pretensions. Moreover, this was costing everyone a lot of money. Eventually, in late January 2009, the two countries negotiated an agreement to cover the period to 2019.

Later in 2009 the Russians agreed to revise the contract in light of the recession in Ukraine. Then in 2010, they agreed to cut the price of gas to Ukraine by thirty percent in exchange for an extension of the lease on the naval base at Sebastopol to 2042.

In late 2013, Russia offered Ukraine a further big cut in price if it would not sign the Association Agreement with the EU. The overthrow of the Yanukovych government put an end to this discount. The Russian seizure of Crimea put an end to the discount for an extended lease on the Russian naval base there. Why pay rent for what you now own?

So, the stuff in the news about an “80 percent price increase” isn’t fully accurate.

Also, Ukraine tends to cheat. The Russians already know this. The US soon will.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_disputes