Quentin Peel: Cheney’s cold war miscalculation
Quentin Peel: Cheney’s cold war miscalculation
By Quentin Peel
Published: May 8 2006 19:57 | Last updated: May 8 2006 19:57. Copyright by The Financial Times
More than 16 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid disintegration of the Soviet empire, cold war attitudes are proving hard to shake.
The war of words between Russia, the US and the European Union about gas supplies from Gazprom, the suppression and promotion of democracy in former Soviet republics and the reassertion of Kremlin control over Russia’s economy risks dissolving into open hostility.
Coming just as the White House and its European allies desperately want Russian help to persuade Iran to abandon any intention of acquiring nuclear weapons, the escalation of rhetoric from the US in particular seems hard to understand. That is, unless any hope of getting a united front on Iran has already been abandoned, and Russia is merely being set up as a scapegoat.
Last week’s speech by Dick Cheney, US vice-president, in Lithuania sounded deliberately provocative. He referred to Russia’s oil and gas becoming “tools of intimidation and blackmail”, and seemed to bracket backsliding on democracy in Russia with the far more blatant intimidation of opposition parties in neighbouring Belarus.
It was little surprise that his words caused consternation in Moscow, mostly in the media, but also in the entourage of President Vladimir Putin. They called it Russophobia. Kommersant, the business newspaper traditionally critical of the Kremlin, compared it to the 1946 Fulton speech by Sir Winston Churchill, when he first warned of an Iron Curtain across Europe.
Yet the truth is that both sides are guilty of clinging to cold war attitudes well past their sell-by date, as much for domestic political purposes as from sheer inertia.
Mr Cheney was not fundamentally wrong about some of Mr Putin’s recent examples of bullying of the newly-independent former Soviet republics. The banning of Georgian and Moldovan wine imports and, most recently, Borjomi mineral water from Georgia – all products much loved on the Russian market – is a peculiarly petty act of revenge to punish small countries seen as unhelpful by Moscow. The clumsy attempt by Gazprom to turn off the gas taps to Ukraine at the New Year was a stupid miscalculation that has sorely damaged Russia’s reputation as a reliable supplier.
But Mr Cheney’s criticism of Russia’s human rights, including freedom of religion, was simply exaggerated. He gave no credit for the transformation of Russian society since the end of communist rule, even if it still has far to go towards becoming a genuine democracy. Then he showed a breath-taking example of double standards by denouncing Belarus’ Aleksander Lukashenko as a corruptly elected dictator, and then flying straight to Kazakhstan where he praised Nursultan Nazarbayev, just re-elected president with 92 per cent of the vote in an equally flawed poll, as a true friend and ally of America.
Russians have always been obsessed by what they perceive as western hypocrisy. They also resent being accused of playing “pipeline politics” with their gas, when the US does much the same: lobbying furiously for the new Baku-Ceyhan pipeline to avoid Russian territory for energy supplies from the Caspian, and blocking plans to build shorter and cheaper lines through Iran.
Lecturing today’s Russia in fine cold war style will only make matters worse. Mr Putin enjoys great popularity as a nationalist who has brought a degree of order and economic growth, thanks to oil and gas prices, after the chaotic years of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. With poll ratings consistently around 70 per cent, he is rather more popular at home than Mr Cheney, whose score in the US is now below 20 per cent. Speeches such as those by Mr Cheney not only boost Mr Putin, they encourage hardliners who regard him as far too willing to accommodate the west.
The answer is certainly not to abandon all attempts at criticising Russian attitudes, which are not so much redolent of the cold war as of a post-imperialist hangover. But closer engagement, and a better understanding of Russian sensitivities, is an essential part of a two-pronged strategy that also involves well-informed criticism.
It will take time for Moscow to get used to the fact that it must negotiate with countries it used to regard as mere vassal states. That is a job the EU may be better able to perform than the US: helping Russia understand that stable and prosperous neighbours are a far better option than failed states locked in endless civil wars. It is a lesson best taught by example, not lecturing.
quentin.peel@ft.com
By Quentin Peel
Published: May 8 2006 19:57 | Last updated: May 8 2006 19:57. Copyright by The Financial Times
More than 16 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid disintegration of the Soviet empire, cold war attitudes are proving hard to shake.
The war of words between Russia, the US and the European Union about gas supplies from Gazprom, the suppression and promotion of democracy in former Soviet republics and the reassertion of Kremlin control over Russia’s economy risks dissolving into open hostility.
Coming just as the White House and its European allies desperately want Russian help to persuade Iran to abandon any intention of acquiring nuclear weapons, the escalation of rhetoric from the US in particular seems hard to understand. That is, unless any hope of getting a united front on Iran has already been abandoned, and Russia is merely being set up as a scapegoat.
Last week’s speech by Dick Cheney, US vice-president, in Lithuania sounded deliberately provocative. He referred to Russia’s oil and gas becoming “tools of intimidation and blackmail”, and seemed to bracket backsliding on democracy in Russia with the far more blatant intimidation of opposition parties in neighbouring Belarus.
It was little surprise that his words caused consternation in Moscow, mostly in the media, but also in the entourage of President Vladimir Putin. They called it Russophobia. Kommersant, the business newspaper traditionally critical of the Kremlin, compared it to the 1946 Fulton speech by Sir Winston Churchill, when he first warned of an Iron Curtain across Europe.
Yet the truth is that both sides are guilty of clinging to cold war attitudes well past their sell-by date, as much for domestic political purposes as from sheer inertia.
Mr Cheney was not fundamentally wrong about some of Mr Putin’s recent examples of bullying of the newly-independent former Soviet republics. The banning of Georgian and Moldovan wine imports and, most recently, Borjomi mineral water from Georgia – all products much loved on the Russian market – is a peculiarly petty act of revenge to punish small countries seen as unhelpful by Moscow. The clumsy attempt by Gazprom to turn off the gas taps to Ukraine at the New Year was a stupid miscalculation that has sorely damaged Russia’s reputation as a reliable supplier.
But Mr Cheney’s criticism of Russia’s human rights, including freedom of religion, was simply exaggerated. He gave no credit for the transformation of Russian society since the end of communist rule, even if it still has far to go towards becoming a genuine democracy. Then he showed a breath-taking example of double standards by denouncing Belarus’ Aleksander Lukashenko as a corruptly elected dictator, and then flying straight to Kazakhstan where he praised Nursultan Nazarbayev, just re-elected president with 92 per cent of the vote in an equally flawed poll, as a true friend and ally of America.
Russians have always been obsessed by what they perceive as western hypocrisy. They also resent being accused of playing “pipeline politics” with their gas, when the US does much the same: lobbying furiously for the new Baku-Ceyhan pipeline to avoid Russian territory for energy supplies from the Caspian, and blocking plans to build shorter and cheaper lines through Iran.
Lecturing today’s Russia in fine cold war style will only make matters worse. Mr Putin enjoys great popularity as a nationalist who has brought a degree of order and economic growth, thanks to oil and gas prices, after the chaotic years of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. With poll ratings consistently around 70 per cent, he is rather more popular at home than Mr Cheney, whose score in the US is now below 20 per cent. Speeches such as those by Mr Cheney not only boost Mr Putin, they encourage hardliners who regard him as far too willing to accommodate the west.
The answer is certainly not to abandon all attempts at criticising Russian attitudes, which are not so much redolent of the cold war as of a post-imperialist hangover. But closer engagement, and a better understanding of Russian sensitivities, is an essential part of a two-pronged strategy that also involves well-informed criticism.
It will take time for Moscow to get used to the fact that it must negotiate with countries it used to regard as mere vassal states. That is a job the EU may be better able to perform than the US: helping Russia understand that stable and prosperous neighbours are a far better option than failed states locked in endless civil wars. It is a lesson best taught by example, not lecturing.
quentin.peel@ft.com
posted by Carlos T Mock at 9:16 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home