Russia

Monday

Daniel Korski

The end of special relationships

Today, two of my colleagues, former senior MoD official Nick Witney and US analyst Jeremy Shapiro, issued a hard-hitting report about transatlantic relationships. Their message is simple. Europe has the US president it wished for, but Barack Obama lacks the strong transatlantic partner he desired. With EU leaders heading to Washington for their transatlantic summit on 3 November, Shapiro and Witney caution European governments: an unsentimental President Obama has already lost patience with a Europe lacking coherence and purpose. In a post-American world, the United States knows it needs effective partners. And if Europe cannot step up, the US will look for other privileged partners to do business with. Unfortunately,

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Russia pockets Obama’s concession and moves on

The strategic logic behind President Obama’s decision to alter US plans for a missile defence shield based in Eastern Europe was that this would persuade the Russians, who didn’t like the shield, to agree to the US’s push for tougher sanctions on Iran. But it appears that Moscow isn’t going to play ball.   The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared after a meeting with Hillary Clinton yesterday that, “Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive.” So, all that Obama’s concession has done is anger the Czechs and the Poles who weren’t told about the move until the last minute. Iran

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Gordon Brown gets something right!

Gordon Brown is expected to offer to decommission one of Britain’s four Trident submarines as part of nuclear non-proliferation discussions at the UN today. The Times has the details: ‘Mr Brown will signal tomorrow that he is ready to negotiate at a meeting of the UN Security Council on nuclear non-proliferation. It follows President Obama’s decision to ditch the US missile defence shield in Eastern Europe. That move, and Russia’s delighted response, has bolstered hopes that a new non-proliferation treaty could be agreed next spring. Officials travelling with the Prime Minister to New York insisted that there was no question of surrendering Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent. They claimed that current

Friday

Alex Massie

The Limits of A Munichean Worldview

Well that didn’t take long. No sooner had I decried the notion that President Barack Obama’s decision to move (but not cancel) the US’s proposed missile defence shield from eastern europe than, sure enough, up more folk arrive to suggest that OMG! It’s Munich All Over Again! This time it’s Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, who, in a fit of blinding orginality, argues: With just one announcement, the Obama administration undercut two loyal allies, rewarded Russian bullying, and diminished our ability to counter an emerging Iranian threat. If there were awards for self-defeating weakness, this move would deserve a Neville for Appeasement in a Perpetually Threatened Region. Enough with

Daniel Korski

Petraeus’ lonely fight

At last night’s Policy Exchange lecture, General David Petraeus said he had known the former CDS, Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, since “he was simply Sir Charles.” I met Petraeus for the first time when he was simply a colonel, serving with NATO forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Even then he was thought of as a rising star. His leadership in Iraq, first in Mosul and then in Baghdad has only cemented his reputation. Now, however, the scholar-warrior faces his probably greatest task – helping to defeat Taliban insurgents on both sides of the Durand Line. An effort, he said upon assuming command of CENTCOM in 2008, which might turn out to be

Alex Massie Alex Massie

In Praise of Neville Chamberlain

18th March 1940: British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940) walking across the Horse Guard’s Parade, Buckingham Palace on his seventy-first birthday. Photo: Davies/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images. Neville Chamberlain, it is fair to say, does not receive a good press these days. The War Party – on both sides of the Atlantic – sees Munich popping up every six months or so and, for reasons that escape one, presumes that it is always better to fight a war as soon as possible. All of subsequent human history is seen through the lens of Munich. This is a baffling virus but one that is, I fear, ineradicable. To take a pair of

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Mr Obama, tear down these missile sites

Today Barack Obama publicly tore down the missile installations that George W Bush put up in the Czech Republic and Poland. The system was ostensibly meant to counter threats from Iran, but given the swift creation of missile sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in the wake of Russian’s invasion of Georgia, Moscow’s elite never bought into this rationale – and perhaps rightly so. The strength of Russian feeling has always been clear. The latest Russian National Security Strategy states that the “ability to maintain global and regional stability is being significantly aggravated by the elements of the global missile defence system of the US”. So if Obama wanted

Wednesday

Miles Johnson

The great Russian takeaway

That the rise of a powerful coterie of Russian billionaires overlapped with Britain’s transformation into an offshore tax-haven is unlikely to escape the notice of both countries’ future historians. Indeed it is entirely plausible that had successive British governments in the 1990s been less amenable to foreign wealth, this book would have been entitled Genevagrad rather than Londongrad. Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley raise interesting questions about how the rocketing price of property, contemporary art and even private school fees of early Noughties Britain, fuelled by a steady supply of roubles, contributed to the bubble preceding the bust. While there are several excellent studies of the impact of the oligarchs

Sunday

Alex Massie

A Georgian Folly

I must say I was surprised by Fraser’s praise for Mikheil Saakashvili on Friday and his support for the stance taken by David Cameron and Liam Fox on matters Russian and Georgian. Surprised, because I’d thought Cameron’s dash to Tbilisi last year one of the more reckless moments of his leadership that demonstrated that, like John McCain, his judgement in foreign affairs was too often too open to accusations of rashness.  Apart from anything else, as Carl Thomson ably demonstrates, Saakashvili is a poor poster boy for liberalism, even by the standards of the Caucasus. If Georgia is, in Fraser’s description, “a light of democratic freedom” it’s a light that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

More Trouble in the Caucasus

Clumsy. Stupid. Counter-productive. Russian policy in Georgia has moved into a new phase. As I suggested yesterday, the Russians now seem determined to answer a Georgian miscalculation with one of their own. Yes, Russia is projecting “strength” by moving into indisputably Georgian territory, but at what cost? It may be that the Russians don’t give a fig about what the West thinks, but in the longer run it seems that toppling Sakaashvili is an unnecessary over-reaction. Once the Georgians had offered their ceasefire (or been driven out of South Ossetia) a more prudent Russian response might have been to accept this. There’s much to be said for quitting while you’re

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Why Georgia matters

When David Cameron flew to Georgia last year, it was perhaps the clearest and most welcome statement of foreign policy made by the party since he became leader. Liam Fox’s piece on conservativehome today pays tribute to this, and gives us a welcome reminder of the stakes. The Russian threat is growing: there are 10,000 troops there and settlements will soon start. The best the West can do is show solidarity, and there is no clearer sign than going there. As Cameron did. Like Israel in the Middle East, Georgia is a light of democratic freedom in an area with plenty of unlit candles. There is something totemic about its

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Obama’s bear-hug

Presidents Obama, and Medvedev (and Prime Minister Putin) seem to be having a good summit. Nuclear talks look like they have gone well, there has been mention of expanding NATO’s transit for its Afghan mission through Russia, and the mood – crucial at any summit – has been reasonably good. Nobody stared into any one else’s soul, but the leaders nonetheless agreed, as Bush and Putin did a few years ago, that the US and Russia can do business. But is a rapprochement between the US and Russia really possible? Dmitri Trenin, of Carnegie Russia, says the West and Russia share many threats. But he also says that anti-Westernism is

Friday

Alex Massie

Valery Gergiev: Pawn of Putin?

There was an interesting, if occasionally frustrating, profile of Valery Gergiev in last week’s New York Times magazine. Frustrating because the article was headlined “The Loyalist” (the cover line was “An Overture to Russian Nationalism”) that seemed to want to condemn Gergiev for being a) proud of being Russian and b) far too close to the Kremlin. The former charge seems perverse unless, that is, any expression of Russian patriotism is inherently threatening and the latter seems, in some ways, almost inescapable if the Mariinsky Theatre (formerly the Kirov) wants to be able to do business and thrive in Russia. Still, the article opens with a striking scene: Gergiev conducting

Saturday

Clementine Cecil

Red Star Over Russia

Winston Churchill’s cousin, the sculptor Clare Sheridan, gazes up at her bust of Trotsky, made during a trip to Moscow in 1920. Her subjects were leading Bolsheviks including Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the KGB, Lenin and Trotsky. While she worked, she asked Lenin, via a translator, if Churchill was the most hated man in Russia. ‘He is our greatest enemy because all the forces of capitalism are behind him,’ he replied. Sheridan’s mother wrote to her on her return: ‘I forgive you, darling, as I would even if you had committed a murder,’ but Churchill never spoke to his cousin again. Sheridan left England for New York, where her

Monday

Robert Salisbury

A strong line required

Putin and the Rise of Russia, by Michael Stuermer For many years, Professor Michael Stuermer has been one of the West’s most respected authorities both on Russia and on Germany. As at home in English as in his native German, he has pursued not only an academic career, but has brought lustre to the usually grubby trade of journalism as chief correspondent for Die Welt. Few can be as well qualified to write about contemporary Russia, to analyse the extraordinary phenomenon of Putin or to add a late addendum on Putin’s successor, Dmitri Medvedev. The resulting book is authoritative, readable and concise. Stuermer traces Putin’s rapid rise via Sobchak’s mayoral

Thursday

Alex Massie

Bush Saves Saakashvili…

Well, sort of. According to this report from Charles Bremner in the Times: With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia, Mr Levitte [Sarko’s chief diplomatic advisor] said. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin replied. Mr Sarkozy responded: “Hang him?” “Why not? The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein,” said Mr Putin. Mr Sarkozy replied, using the familiar “tu”: “Yes but do you want to end up like (President) Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah, you have scored a point there.” …President Mikhail Saakashvili,

Saturday

Thursday

Alex Massie

Headline you won’t see: “Palin Agrees with Obama”

I guess this is going to get some attention: EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY Well, yes and no. Here’s what Sarah Palin told ABC News’s Charlie Gibson: GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn’t we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia? PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help. But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to — especially with new leadership

Monday

Alex Massie

The Lessons of the Past

Bill Keller’s piece on “Springtime for Autocrats” in the New York Times has received plenty of attention (See Yglesias’s sane response for instance) but for Russian and Caucasus commentary I’d recommend Neal Ascherson’s article in the Observer. It’s probably the best-balanced, most historically aware and, for that matter, humane piece I’d read on the whole grisly affair. As he puts it, we’ve been here before in the Caucasus and only the Russians have learnt anything from history. A foolish, counter-productive Georgian policy has failed (again) and the west should think long and hard about when and how it plans to bluff in the future… Ascherson, a veteran Black Sea hand,

Monday

Alex Massie

Did you know Putin is really (another) Hitler?

How about this for an opening sentence? The details of who did what to precipitate Russia’s war against Georgia are not very important. Who, you ask, is this clown? None other than Robert Kagan, writing today in the Washington Post. His second sentence is also a doozy: Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia? And how about this? Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Russia’s attack on sovereign Georgian territory marked the official return of history, indeed to an almost 19th-century