Red buildings in Anarctica, 2009. Photo by K. Hurley.

So the Cold War is really resuming, and all we can agree on are frigid issues at the edges of the complex relationship, the management of the Anarctic and Bering Straits?

Good! Cold is what you have to be to a country that itself has made you an enemy, declared you an enemy, and thwarted international collaboration on solving the world's problems. That's more than fine. When Romney explained that Russia is our main enemy, he was explaining a truth concealed by the Obama administration for four years and one papered over by the Bush administration. Russia declares us its enemy and goes to extremes to denounce NGOs getting American funding as if they are committing espionage and sabotage; its military leaders call for launching missiles against us (!) if we deploy missiles in Europe against its unpredictable ally, Iran.

The State Department has anodyne coverage today of a signing ceremony between Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in which he is often inaudible. Clinton is brisk and cheerful and "delighted" to be in Russia, and says:

During the past three and a half years, the United States and Russia
have deepened our cooperation to address shared challenges. We adopted a
New START Treaty, we increased trade and investment, and supported
Russia’s joining the WTO. And we’re taking three more steps to do work
together.

Except, the Russians haven't exactly cooperated on START, have they? We increased trade and investment despite Jackson-Vanik being on the books still? Then why all the agida, guys?! We supported Russia's joining the WTO because we couldn't really oppose it, since Russia now has an, um, market economy, albeit run by state monopolies like Gazprom, which the EU is now probing over monopolization… Russia is joining the WTO, but we aren't fixing our possible problem, by retiring the application of J-V AND adding the Magnitsky Act — that's because Obama, Sen. Kerry, and all the "progressives" are avidly fighting this, using "administrative resources" (see William Burns long intervention the other day).

Meanwhile, Romney has put in a plank in his campaign in support of Magnitsky along with retiring J-V. Good! Another reason to vote for him. It's not obscure; it's central. It's about putting human rights at the center of foreign policy the way Carter and Clinton said they would, although particularly Carter was soft on the Russians and required a lot of pressue to do the right thing. Same with Obama, who is far worse on Russia than they were.

What are these "three steps"? (Notice that now we have "steps" instead of "a reset"). Um, deepening scientific cooperation on Anarctica! Brrr! Befitting a re-start of the Cold War, which I'm all for because it's the right response (by contrast with hot war, you know?) to crimes against humanity — it was in the 1930s and 1940s; it is today. But really, Anarctica? That's as good as you got? It's easy for scientists concentrating on one issue to get along, but even they are politicized and often precisely around the US-Russian relationship.

The next step sounds vague, and I hope it doesn't include any on the Magnitsky list, or their soul brothers:

We are signing a Joint Statement on Inter-Regional Cooperation to
encourage greater collaboration at all levels of our governments.
Regional and local officials will host trade delegations and introduce
businesses to new markets. And when it comes to economic growth, local
partnerships can have global impacts.

This sounds like a lot of opportunity for bear-hunting-with-the-Politburo type stuff.

And then a third cold thing, "Finally, we’re issuing a joint statement that signals our desire to
collaborate more closely in the region where our countries are only
miles apart, a segment of the Bering Strait we refer to as Beringia." Paging Sarah Palin! We can see Putin from our window!

Then Clinton mentions another thing that didn't qualify as a "step," so I don't know if it is a "baby step" or what it really is — the proof will be in the pudding:

Let me also mention one more example of Russian-U.S. cooperation which
has special resonance this weekend. Tomorrow our historic visa agreement
will come into force. It will facilitate travel between our nations,
which will strengthen both people-to-people ties and business contacts.
It is fitting that this agreement will come into force during APEC.
Business communities in our countries repeatedly ask us for visa
liberalization to make it easier for them to work together, and we are
happy to be able to deliver." Russian visa procedures have always been onerous and bureaucratic, and the US has played tit-for-tat and also defaulted automatically to assuming that all Russians are potential immigrants — which many have turned out to be.

Nothing is said about Vladivostok, and the need to have an exit passage from the Afghanistan war, particularly for heavy equipment. Now, why is that? There's an agreement, right? It's not going to be stalled, right?

To get the real story, head on over to Yahoo news and see the more accurate headline: "Russia Rebuffs Clinton on Syria, Iran Penalties." This explains the real problem of why Russia in our enemy — it makes ourselves its enemy, and it makes common cause with some really serious hands-on international thugs, Syria and Iran, who are our major enemies in every theater of actual war we are actually in, declared or not.

Lavrov made a surprisingly frank statement about why his country opposes sanctions — it harms Russia's financial interests:

"Our American partners have a
prevailing tendency to threaten and increase pressure, adopt ever more
sanctions against Syria and against Iran," Lavrov said. "Russia is
fundamentally against this, since for resolving problems you have to
engage the countries you are having issues with and not isolate them."

"Unilateral
U.S. sanctions against Syria and Iran increasingly take on an
extraterritorial character, directly affecting the interests of Russian
business, in particular banks," he said. "We clearly stated that this
was unacceptable, and they listened to us. What the result will be, I
don't know."

So…Russia is so tied up, bank-wise, with Syria and Iran, that it can't participate in sanctions against perpetrators of crimes against humanity? As AP reports:

Russia and China
have blocked three Security Council resolutions that would have
punished Syria if the Assad government did not accept a negotiated
political transition. Clinton said in Beijing this past week that the
U.S. was "disappointed" by the vetoes.

She
had earlier called the actions "appalling" and said they put Russia and
China on the "wrong side of history." 

Well, exactly. Lavrov thinks such sanctions "don't accomplish anything". Except he also said it hurt Russian banking. The $1 billion in armaments sold to Syria are a factor, of course.

Liberals fret about how the US isn't doing enough about Syria; they talk at the UN about safe zones and no-flight zones and help to refugees but they won't do the politically-effective thing and put the blame for this squarely on Russia's soldiers. Just as the world intelligentsia has been an antagonistic pose for 40 years against the US over everything from Vietnam to Iraq, now it should get into that pose about Russia, which is to blame for helping a regime kill 20,000 people. Russia should be made to feel it owns the Syria problem, and has a fire lit under its ass constantly in every international meeting or interaction on Syria.

US policy should be all about helping to remind the international community and the justice jet-setters about this Russian ownership. It has neither the appetite or the ability to get into another war with a Muslim country, and it can't guarantee any safe zones or refugee passages and shouldn't set up another Srebrenica. Turkey should get off its obsession about Israel and America and pull in its chits with Russia, of which it has plenty, as it lets all kinds of Russians in to do everything from shuttle trade to massive illegal international business. Every time anyone raises Syria anywhere, the watchword should be "Russia, Russia, Russia". The Kremlin has to own and take care of this — if it doesn't, the world has to give it the cold shoulder and cooperate nowhere except in Anarctica.

 

 

 

 

The
Kapitan Dranitsyn in the ice, September 2006. Photo credit: NOAA
Climate Program Office, photographer, Mike Dunn, NC State Museum of
Natural Sciences. Type in "Russia" and "Arctic" on Flickr to see more of
these breath-taking photos.