AN OPINION FROM LITHUANIA ON UKRAINE`S CRISIS

Opinion: a victory for Putin in Ukraine and against the West

Vykintas Pugačiauskas

Friday, October 10, 2014

DELFI, BY THE LITHUANIA TRIBUNE

The Russian president has scored a victory in Ukraine and against the West. Vladimir Putin has got more than he hoped for, and yet there’s still a lot more that he can win. The game has now become long-term and one in which the most important thing will be strategic patience. And it’s not clear if Russia has the upper here.

The victories of Russia’s armed forces in Ukraine at the end of September crowned Moscow’s mid-year glories. Impeded Ukrainian troops will in all likelihood lose another strategic facility, not daring to brazenly violate the cease fire as units of the Russian separatists have. The conflict though has already frozen, just as planned by the Kremlin eight years ago.

The fact is that one year ago the unimaginable worst scenario is now the grim truth. 
Having lost thousands of its citizens, Ukraine is dividing its own territory into a buffer zone. Its government is pleased now that it has “stabilised” the front line defends the ceasefire which is essentially better than war. This nevertheless only compounds Kiev’s powerlessness in the face of Moscow’s actions.

The Crimea is lost and nobody no longer holds out any hope of regaining it.

Kiev itself is asking for a halt to the Association Agreement with the European Union only this time it’s not in exchange for a fifteen billion-dollar loan, as was the case with the president who fled, but for Russia’s fragile promise that it will not take punitive measures.

Initially, the price of gas was increased two-fold, the cynical justification of which was that Ukraine can no longer give a discount, when Ukraine can no longer supply Russian ships at the port of Sevastopol. Thereafter the gas supply was cut off completely. With the approach of winter the European Union imposes an agreement acceptable to Kiev, one according to which Ukraine is to pay not twice but one and a half times more than it can. A stab in the back came from Hungary which succumbed to Russia’s blackmail not to resell at a cheaper rate “Gazprom”-supplied gas.

The economy is on downturn and it’s clear now that agreed upon loans from the International Monetary Fund loans are woefully insufficient, and that’s if Kiev can show that it is worthy of them.

The society has been numbed by war and has become even more fragmented and disillusioned. Some of it has become radicalized. Almost one year since the Maidan has been lost; corruption is thriving more than ever (with the war it’s become even cynical); reforms have hardly been initiated. Many of the leaders are incompetent. The media, instead of becoming stronger, more often than not spreads Ukrainian propaganda which seen as an appropriate answer to Moscow’s propaganda.

The president and prime minister cannot agree if they really want to be a part of NATO. Lithuania, which consistently defended Ukraine in the European Union has only just now found out from the press that its work of many years has been thrown out by the president who has asked that the Association Agreement be postponed. “We cannot be bigger Ukrainian patriots than the Ukrainians themselves” is the conviction now expressed by Kiev’s former champions.

The international picture is even gloomier.

All fundamental international agreements endorsed by Europe have been ripped up with nobody in the West being able to secure them.

Russia has shown that it can it can effectively mobilise all its needed resources – from thugs for whom medieval torture is routine to propaganda that barefacedly paints another truth which incites the population. From oligarchs, scared that the usual silence of loyalty to business no longer suffices and who intrude with approval into the public space, to the central bank that finances well the government’s folly.

The Russian army is rapidly catching up with NATO and the “hybrid war” is several steps ahead of the West’s ability to respond.

The European Union which already a few months ago explained that there will not be a new Molotov and Ribbentrop pact is now not only discussing with Russia its disgruntlement with the Association Agreement, it’s actually giving the option of changing it, already ratified, to suit Moscow’s liking. In the meantime a coalition of Russia’s business partners are now urging that the sanctions that took six months to introduce, be lessened despite the fact that the situation is actually getting worse.

NATO admitted that it was powerless to defend its allies timeously and in the way it should have and that it dithered lest it provoke Russia into going all the way. Confronted with war the Alliance’s main weapon has been deterrence and which has undermined to the extent that Moscow can be tempted to ruin NATO by showing that the allies are “not prepared to die for the Narva”.

Commitments for a duly financed defense were identified in Wales for the first time but just as vague goals.

In parallel, in the universe of the Kremlin’s leaders, America is to blame for all of Russia’s woes and which in reality just trying as much as possible to withdraw from the greatest security challenge in Europe. The president is taking the correct steps and says the right things but shows no leadership neither with Ukraine nor with any foreign policy issue.

The West is generously supplying weapons to groups in Iraq and Syria but openly supplies weapons to Ukraine after it participated in all NATO operations. A Taboo. 
So many changes in one year as slow as they are far too many. They will however slow down from now on and the equilibrium will revert to a long-term game.

Although often accused of pragmatism, Russia for the time being is actually taking preventative action. It started a war to block Kiev’s road to choose drawing closer to the West. And now Moscow is openly declaring, even from a United Nations rostrum, that Ukraine must remain a neutral country, a “buffer zone”, and if it agrees with this the war will stop. It has most of the required leverage to effectively blackmail Kiev.

For all the practical steps taken by Petro Poroshenko, it doesn’t look as he is questioning this state of affairs imposed by Moscow. Barring any sudden upheavals, everybody will just have to live with it at least for the time being. Bearing in mind that Ukraine will not suddenly find the determination to start internal reforms, it will take a long time for it to become robust.

On the other hand, Russia too will need a lot of time if it conceives of moving further west and redrawing NATO’s and the European Union’s boundaries, for example in the Baltic States. That would be a truly pragmatic step and not just an available opportunity in Ukraine to use to achieve its aims. This would cost Russia dearly, at least in the near future.

Russia’s isolation is now starting to be felt. This could increase the people’s passion to a level of Germany’s in the 1930s. Still, judging from steps taken by the Kremlin to moderate propaganda ardor, it is more probable that once it reached its most important and closest foreign policy goal, Moscow will for at least a certain time settle down.

It’s plain to see that Mr. Putin has the strategic patience to play a long-term game. The most important question here though is does the West? On one hand the West could break up and in its weakness turn attention to other problems. On the other, no matter how hopelessly sluggish the awareness of Europe’s major capital cities may be, even the major champions for a return to good relations with Russia cannot ignore the fundamental changes it has triggered in Europe.

The tectonic plates have shifted and as they clash there will no doubt be friction. Occurrences like seizing ships, abductions by security agents and violations of air space will increase. A perfidious Russia is and will be the main threat to NATO. However, if Russia shows muscle only but goes no further, the long-term tension that holds sway will no longer be too bad for Lithuania – that is if it can just manage to stick to maintaining a forceful but wise line in the European Union and NATO. At the same time Lithuania must be able to strengthen its internal institutions, first and foremost defense, so that it does not present Russia with a similar opportunity like Ukraine, and improve integration with the West (Lithuania will at least no longer have to prove it was paranoiac towards Russia and will certainly be possible to demand solidarity).

A long-term game opens up a lot of opportunities for big politics and lessens the need to react quickly to Russia’s actions, something the West has not managed to do. Securing a vigorous and united policy on fundamental issues and ensuring effective deterrence will be the most important challenges. There are however already questions as to how the West is to resolve things within its own community. In the long term, the West’s resilient societies with centuries of developed values and its strength of economy should be sufficient support for Lithuania.

The West has not managed to help Ukraine and in all likelihood attempts will have to be put off before starting again. They now have to prepare themselves in earnest for a long winter.

Nationalists primed for victory in Bosnia - Europe - Al Jazeera English

Nationalists primed for victory in Bosnia - Europe - Al Jazeera English

EAST EUROPE NOW NEAR TO RUSSIA?

Eastern Europeans are bowing to Putin’s power

JACKSON DIEHL, THE WASHINGTON POST, OCTOBER 12

To grasp how Vladi­mir Putin is progressing in his campaign to overturn the post-Cold War order in Europe, it’s worth looking beyond eastern Ukraine, where the Kremlin is busy consolidating a breakaway puppet state. After all, Ukraine, as President Obama likes to point out, is not a member of NATO — which has extended Western security and democratic governance to a dozen nations that had been dominated by Soviet dictatorship.

So let’s consider Hungary, a NATO member whose prime minister recently named Putin’s Russia as a political model to be emulated. Or NATO member Slovakia, whose leftist prime minister likened the possible deployment of NATO troops in his country to the Soviet invasion of 1968. Or NATO member Czech Republic, where the defense minister made a similar comparison and where the government joined Slovakia and Hungary in fighting the European Union’s sanctions against Russia. Or Serbia, a member of NATO’s “partnership for peace” that has invited Putin to visit Belgrade this month for a military parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Red Army’s “liberation” of the city.

Obama has been congratulating himself on leading a “unified response” by the West that, he claims, has isolated Putin. In reality, a big chunk of the NATO alliance has quietly begun to lean toward Moscow. These governments do so in part for economic reasons: Dependent on Russia for energy as well as export markets, they fear the consequences of escalating sanctions.Then there is Poland, which until recently was leading the effort within NATO and the European Union to support Ukraine’s beleaguered pro-Western government and punish Putin’s aggression. This month its new prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, ordered her new foreign minister to urgently revise its policy.As the Wall Street Journal reported, she told parliament she was concerned about “an isolation of Poland” within Europe that could come from setting “unrealistic goals” in Ukraine.

But some also seem to be hedging their security and ideological bets. They figure it’s not worth testing whether Putin’s reported threat to invadeformer Soviet-bloc countries was really in jest — or whether a NATO led by Obama would really come to their defense. Why else preemptively announce, as did the Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka, that his country did not want the troops NATO dispatched to Poland and the Baltic States as a deterrent to Russia?

Sobotka was trumped by Slovakia’s Roberto Fico, a former Communist, who followed up his rejection of NATO troops by dismissing Obama's appeal for increased defense spending and calling sanctions against Russia “suicidal” and “nonsensical.” Fico’s pandering, in turn, looked weak compared with the speech delivered in late July by Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who described Russia as an exemplar of how “we have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing a society . . . because liberal values [in the United States] today incorporate corruption, sex and violence.”

If this is a “unified response,” it looks orchestrated more by Putin than by Obama. “Some Central European politicians are angling either to remain below the radar screen — don’t speak up and make your nation the target of Putin’s ire — or to ingratiate themselves with Putin and therefore fare better than other allies when the waters get even choppier,” Damon Wilson, the executive vice president of the Atlantic Council, told me. “The issue for many politicians will be how to survive when the Russians are back, nastier than ever . . . and the Americans are remote, available only for genuine 911 calls.”

Remarkably, the wobbling in Eastern Europe comes only a decade after NATO’s big 2004 expansion and a dozen years after Poland and the Czech Republic gratefully and enthusiastically backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. What happened? As Robert Coalson of Radio Free Europe suggested, one answer can be found in the “open letter” political leaders and intellectuals from those countries sent to Obama in July 2009, when, during his first year in office, he launched his “reset” with Putin’s regime.

“Many American officials have now concluded that our region is fixed once and for all,” the letter warned. “That view is premature.”

JOSEPH NYE ON U.S. POLITICAL FUTURE

How concerning is US political gridlock?

By Joseph S. Nye

Oct 7 2014

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

With the approach of the US Congressional elections, questions about the health of America’s political institutions and the future of its global leadership have become rampant, with some citing partisan gridlock as evidence of America’s decline. But is the situation really that bad?

According to the political scientist Sarah Binder, the ideological divide between America’s two main political parties has not been as large as it is now since the end of the nineteenth century. Despite the current gridlock, however, the 111th Congress managed to pass a major fiscal stimulus, health care reform, financial regulation, an arms control treaty, and revision of the military policy on homosexuality. Clearly, the US political system cannot be written off (especially if partisan gridlock is cyclical).

Nonetheless, today’s Congress is plagued by low legislative capacity. Though ideological consistency has more than doubled over the last two decades, from 10% to 21% of the public, most Americans do not have uniformly conservative or liberal views, and want their representatives to meet one another halfway. Political parties, however, have become more consistently ideological since the 1970s.

This is not a new problem for the US, whose constitution is based on the eighteenth-century liberal view that power is best controlled by fragmentation and countervailing checks and balances, with the president and Congress forced to compete for control in areas like foreign policy. In other words, the US government was designed to be inefficient, in order to ensure that it could not easily threaten the liberty of its citizens.

This inefficiency has likely contributed to the decline in confidence in American institutions. Today, less than one-fifth of the public trusts the federal government to do the right thing most of the time, compared to three-quarters in 1964. Of course, these figures surged occasionally during that period, such as after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; but the overall decline is considerable.

The federal government is not alone. Over the last several decades, public confidence in many influential institutions has plummeted. From 1964-1997, the share of Americans who trusted universities fell from 61% to 30%, while trust in major companies fell from 55% to 21%. Trust in medical institutions dropped from 73% to 29%, and in journalism from 29% to 14%. Over the last decade, confidence in educational institutions and the military has recovered, but trust in Wall Street and large corporations has continued to fall.

But these ostensibly alarming figures can be misleading. In fact, 82% of Americans still consider the US to be the world’s best place to live, and 90% like their democratic system of government. Americans may not be entirely satisfied with their leaders, but the country is certainly not on the brink of an Arab Spring-style revolution.

Moreover, though party politics have become more polarized in recent decades, this follows the 1950s and early 1960s, when the escape from the Great Depression and victory in World War II fuelled unusually high confidence in US institutions. In fact, the sharpest decline in public trust in the government occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Moreover, declining trust in the government has not been accompanied by significant changes in citizens’ behaviour. For example, the Internal Revenue Service is among the government institutions that inspire the least public confidence; yet there has been no major surge in tax evasion. In terms of controlling corruption, the US still scores in the 90th percentile. And though voting rates in presidential elections declined from 62% to 50% in the latter half of the twentieth century, they stabilized in 2000, and rose to 58% in 2012.

The loss of confidence that Americans have expressed may be rooted in a deeper shift in people’s attitudes toward individualism, which has brought about decreased deference to authority. Indeed, similar patterns are characteristic of most post-modern societies.

This social shift probably will not influence US institutions’ effectiveness as much as one might think, given America’s decentralized federal system. In fact, gridlock in the national capital is often accompanied by political cooperation and innovation at the state and municipal levels, leading citizens to view state and local governments, as well as many government agencies, much more favourably than the federal government.

This approach to governance has had a profound impact on the mentality of the American people. A 2002 study indicated that three-quarters of Americans feel connected to their communities, and consider their quality of life to be excellent or good, with nearly half of adults participating in a civic group or activity.

That is good news for the US. But it does not mean that America’s leaders can continue to ignore the political system’s shortcomings, such as the gerrymandered “safe seats” in the House of Representatives and obstructive processes in the Senate. Whether such sources of gridlock can be overcome remains to be seen. And there is legitimate reason to doubt America’s ability to maintain its “hyperpower” status, not least owing to the rise of major emerging economies.

But, as the conservative author David Frum notes, over the last two decades, the US has experienced a swift decline in crime, auto fatalities, alcohol and tobacco consumption, and emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which cause acid rain – all while leading an internet revolution. Given this, dire comparisons to, say, the decline of Rome are simply unwarranted.

Published in collaboration with Project Syndicate

Author: Joseph S. Nye, a former US assistant secretary of defense and chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, is University Professor at Harvard University. 

Image: A lone worker passes by the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, October 8, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Reed

LA ARGENTINA EN LOS RANKINGS MUNDIALES

- INTERESANTE RANKING DEL CARI