- It's been a busy week for Russian President Vladimir
Putin. First he had a visit from French President Nicolas Sarkozy 9 October,
followed by both United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
Defense Secretary Robert Gates 12-13 October, who were in Moscow for talks
with their Russian counterparts the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
and First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. He then squeezed in
a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas prior to departing to
Wiesbaden to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Then he set off
to Tehran to meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, despite reports
that suicide terrorists had been trained to assassinate him in Iran.
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- As the dust settles on the shiny new dynamo in the Élysée
Palace, Sarkozy is beginning to look like a bit of a goof. He is widely
compared to Monsieur Jourdain of Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, a
comically vulgar, social-climbing figure who can never attain the veneer
of nobility he seeks. It's not just his clownish, sad-sack grin, his bluster
and his frantic, pointless globe-trotting, but his continued loud protestations
of friendship with the US administration for which he gets absolutely nothing
in return. He twice proclaimed himself to Putin as "a clear ally of
the United States", and earlier described Russia as "a country
which complicates the resolution of the world's greatest problems."
God forbid that we live to see Sarkozy's resolution of these problems.
No doubt it would include reducing Iran to smoking ashes. After meeting
with Putin, he rushed off to visit Chechnya human rights activists. One
can only marvel at his chutzpah, or his stupidity. Putin was not amused
and coolly told Sarkozy to tell his "clear ally" to forget about
independence for Kosovo and that there was no evidence that Iran was intent
on producing a nuclear bomb.
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- Putin is a busy man and all these pointless meetings
clearly disrupted his schedule. He kept Rice and Gates waiting 40 minutes
at his private dacha while Lavrov entertained US reporters about possible
breakthroughs at the talks. "Breaks, definitely. Through or down,
I don't know." Putin swept in and proceeded to lecture his guests
on the crimes of their boss. Rice scowled as she scribbled away in her
notebook, while Gates remained impassive. No doubt he was recalling gleefully
how, as a CIA adviser under President Carter, he organised and armed Al-Qaeda
and their friends in Afghanistan and helped bring down the Soviet Union.
He reiterated his invitation for Russia to join NATO as a full partner
in a brand-new Joint Regional Missile Defence Architecture, complete with
invitations for Russian and American officers to be stationed at each other's
missile defence sites. "We remain eager to be full and open partners
with Russia on missile defence," he crooned. Like their "clear
ally", they also met with human rights activists.
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- And just what did the whirlwind of diplomacy accomplish?
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- As for the Americans' human rights activities, Tanya
Lokshina, director of Demos, said that given the focus on security matters,
the meeting with rights campaigners was mostly symbolic. She complained
that the US had "lost the high moral ground. The American voice alone
doesn't work anymore. The Russians are not influenced by it." According
to her, Rice bristled at the criticism, replying sharply, "We never
lost the high moral ground." Ouch.
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- Kosovo is threatening to declare independence from Serbia
on 10 December over Russia's strenuous objections. Russia has hinted it
could retaliate by pressuring the pro-US government of Georgia through
its relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two regions that broke away
from Georgia with Russian military help. No change.
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- Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated both his
threat to quit the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe accord by 12 December
if the US goes forward with its missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic,
and his offer of an old Soviet radar facility in Azerbaijan if the US backs
down. Gates thanked Putin for his offer of the base, but said this couldn't
possibly replace but only supplement the one in the Czech Republic. How
clever: let's station the CIA and US military in Azerbaijan as well as
in eastern Europe. Gates said on his scout's honour there is absolutely
no intention of targeting Russia's 4,162 nuclear warheads from these new
bases close to Russia's boarders. Lavrov was not impressed and warned that
Moscow would be forced to take measures to "neutralise" the shield
if it is built as planned. So no change there either.
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- Just as President George Bush has become famous for his
mangled malapropisms, Putin has become known for cutting through the diplo-speak
with sharp sarcasm. He described the American antimissile bases as a reaction
to a threat that had not yet materialised: "Both of us, one day, may
decide that an antimissile defence system can be deployed on the moon.
But before we get there, the possibility of reaching an agreement may be
lost because you will have implemented your own plans." He smoothly
added, "but our American partners' constructive disposition on continuing
the dialogue is, of course, a very positive signal."
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- Putin has already said that Russia would target its nuclear
arsenal at Europe for the first time since the Cold War if the "shield"
is not moved. In order to hit Europe, Russia could move its short-range
missiles to Kaliningrad. But it is hampered by the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear
Forces treaty. The Kremlin is unhappy about the treaty because of the growing
mid-range nuclear arsenals of its immediate neighbours China, Pakistan,
India and now Iran. The treaty currently only applies to the US, Russia,
Ukraine and Belarus. It was highly disadvantageous to the Soviet Union
as it did not include US naval nuclear cruise missiles or the nuclear arsenals
of Britain or France. Analysts say that Russia's withdrawal from the INF
treaty is all but inevitable. So, some change here. US foolhardiness means
a historic peace treaty is being thrown in history's rubbish bin.
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- Rice and Gates also raised the issue of ways to extend
limits on nuclear weapons when the existing nuclear arms proliferation
treaty expires in 2009. That no doubt provoked a chuckle in the Kremlin.
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- Concerning upping US/EU sanctions against Iran, Lavrov
said, "we believe collective work would be much more effective if
there were no parallel steps to use unilateral sanctions against Iran,
let alone recurring calls to use force against Iran." Rice fired back,
saying the United States would continue to impose financial sanctions on
Tehran for funding "terrorist activities". Under US pressure
European trade to Iran has fallen shaprly -- by up to 40 per cent this
year. No change, at least not for the better.
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- As for the meeting with Merkel, it merely emphasised
that Ostpolitik is dead. "Germany used to be an active mediator between
Russia and the West," says Alexander Rahr, director of Russian policy
at the Germany Council on Foreign Relations. "Merkel is now just a
passive player, and this means there is no European strategy toward Russia."
Putin's summit with Merkel was probably the last before March presidential
elections in Russia. Since taking office nearly two years ago, she has
gone out of her way to placate Poland and the Baltic states, and has made
confrontation with Putin on human rights the centrepiece of her politics,
unlike Schröder, who focussed on economic relations and apparently
developed a genuine friendship with Putin. He was recently fêted
in Moscow, launching the Russian edition of his memoirs.
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- The irony in this obsession with "human rights"
is that real human rights have never been more scrupulously observed in
Russia's entire history than they are today, exposing the hypocrisy of
this ruse to return Russia to its traditional role as the West's enemy.
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- No doubt Putin, in Tehran this week for a regional conference
on Caspian oil, commiserated with Ahmadinejad about this. Incidentally,
this is the first trip by a Kremlin leader to Teheran since 1943, when
Joseph Stalin met British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, presumably, the Iranian head of state Mohamed
Reza Shah, son of the exiled Reza Shah. The allies had brusquely overthrown
their puppet monarch in 1941 as a suspected Nazi sympathiser in favour
of his more staunchly pro-American son, who reigned as a faithful friend
of the US until the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the symbolism of which
no doubt is not lost to Ahmadinejad.
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- Of course, the answer to any unresolved issues between
the US and Iran, as recognised by rational people of all political persuasions
(which seems to exclude current Western leaders), is direct US talks with
the Iranians. This would not only weaken Russian influence (surely a logical
US policy goal), but give a real boost to the supposedly pro-American Iranian
people (surely another logical US policy goal) suffering under their supposed
dictatorship, who now can only be accused of being traitors.
- Sadly, these visits are really just schoolyard games,
where the bullies taunt and threaten the aloof new boy on the Free World
block, clearly planning to gang up on him when no one's looking and possibly
throw some Free World projectiles at him. But the composed Vlad merely
spits in their faces and continues to practise his judo chops, ready for
all comers.
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- Not to be entirely left out, Belarussian President Aleksandr
Lukashenko announced he was closing ranks with his big brother, that Russia
is still Belarus's best friend despite a quarrel over energy prices earlier
this year. The Belarussian leader now fancies himself as peacemaker, both
apologising for his angry outbursts against Moscow and calling for improved
relations with Western countries. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed
man is still king.
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