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      The Pentagon’s Latest Glorious Failure

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      For centuries, the idea prevailed in our competitive civilization that when someone fails a fundamental qualifying test, it means they should return to their studies and keep a low profile until they felt ready to prove their capacity to pass the test. Someone who fails a driving test will be given a chance to come back a second or even third time. But most people who fail three or four times will simply give up trying to swallow their pride and accept their permanent dependence on public transport, family and friends. The same holds true for law school graduates seeking to pass the bar or indeed students in any school who repeatedly fails an examination.

      In the world of Silicon Valley, an entrepreneur whose first startup fails gets up, dusts off and returns to the race. The venture capitalists will often look at a second effort after the first one fails as proof of courage and resilience. Three- or four-time losers, however, will usually get the message that it may not be worth trying again. In the meantime, the venture capitalist will have removed them from their files.

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      Some privileged people and institutions exist who appear to be spared the indignity of having to retreat after a pattern of failure. The Afghanistan Papers revealed how the repeated mistakes of US military leaders over decades not only did not require them to return to their studies, but duly rewarded them for their service.

      Then there is the US Department of Defense itself. In November 2021, Reuters offered this startling headline: “U.S. Pentagon fails fourth audit but sees steady progress.” Since 1990, Congress has obliged all government institutions to conduct a thorough audit. The Pentagon got a late start but they are already at their fourth audit. And they have consistently failed. But like a backward pupil in an elementary school class, the authorities note that despite consistent failure, they should be encouraged for making progress. Will they prove to be better at failing the next time?

      The Reuters article reveals the source of the government’s hope. It isn’t about performance. Like everything else in our society of spectacle, it’s all about favorability ratings. Our civilization has elevated the notion of ratings to the ultimate measure of virtue. Mike McCord, the Pentagon’s CFO, explains why, despite the failure, there is no need to worry. “The department continues to make steady progress toward achieving a favorable audit opinion.”

      Our Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Audit opinion:

      The rigorous standard by which the most sacred part of the US government, the only one that has achieved the status of an object of worship, will be judged by

      Contextual Note

      Opinion is famously fickle, never more so than in the hyperreal world of politics. Like the wind, it can change direction at a moment’s notice. Political professionals have become adept at forcing it to change. That is what political marketers are paid to do. And they measure their success by shifts in the largely unstable numbers that appear in the ratings. Everything becomes focused on the numbers produced by surveys of opinion.

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      Concerning the Pentagon’s audit, McCord did mention some impressive numbers that went beyond registering opinion alone. The results of the failed audit revealed “more than $3.2 trillion in assets and $3 trillion in liabilities.” Learning that the Pentagon’s balance sheet is $200 billion in the black can only be encouraging. Any entrepreneur knows what that means. In case of forced liquidation, there would be a valuable stockpile of usable weapons to be sold to the highest bidder and still money left over to pay off all the debts. Or, more likely, the whole operation could be profitably sold to a competitor, say, Canada, Mexico, France or Israel at an even higher valuation. China would be excluded from consideration because of the feat, perhaps at the UN, that such a merger would produce a global monopoly.

      Reuters reassures us that optimism is in the air: “As the audits mature and testing expands, Department of Defense leaders expect findings to increase in number and complexity.” They underline the encouraging thought that “successive sweeps could expose more profound problems.” Even the idea of exposing “more profound problems” is promising. It means we may one day understand what’s behind the discovery that the DoD — according to a previous audit — left $21 trillion of expenditure unaccounted for over the past two decades.

      The commentator Jonathan Cohn highlighted an obvious fact that should resonate with the public in light of recent haggling in Congress over President Joe Biden’s agenda. “None of the ‘centrist’ Democrats or Republicans who complained about the cost of the Build Back Better Act,” Cohn notes, “have said a peep about the ever-growing Pentagon budget — and the fact that it is somehow still growing even despite the Afghanistan pullout. It has grown about 25% in size over the past five years, even though the Pentagon just failed its fourth audit last month.”

      In his book, “War is a Racket,”, the most decorated senior military officer of his time, Smedley Butler, explained the underlying logic that still holds true nearly a century later. “The normal profits of a business concern in the United States,” Butler wrote, “are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.”

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      A lot of corporations — with names like, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Halliburton and Northrup — have managed to “get it.” Those corporations are very careful with their own audits because they know that failing an audit, even once, let alone four times, would cancel their ability to keep milking the Pentagon’s cash cow. Luckily, the Pentagon doesn’t have to worry about losing its relationship with those corporations simply on the grounds that it failed yet another audit.

      Historical Note

      Ratings, and more particularly favorability ratings, are numbers with no stable meaning. Instead of reflecting reality, they merely register the state of shifting opinions about reality. And yet, ratings have become a dominant force in 21st-century US culture. This is perhaps the most significant sign of a fatal decline of democracy itself.

      The idea of democracy first launched in Athens nearly three millennia ago aimed at spreading the responsibility for government among the population at large. Inspired by the Athenian example, the founders of the United States and drafters of the US Constitution realized that what worked reasonably well for the governance of a city-state could not be directly applied to a nation composed of 13 disparate British colonies. Drawing on England’s parliamentary tradition, the founders substituted representative democracy for Athenian direct democracy.

      Instead of sharing the responsibility of governance with the general population, the new republic offered the people a simple tool: the vote. It was accompanied by the idea that any (male) citizen could seek to stand for election. The founders hadn’t fully appreciated the fact that this might lead to the constitution of a separate ruling class, an elite group of people who could compete amongst themselves to use the tools of governance to their partisan ends.

      Nor did they anticipate the consequences of industrialization of the Western world that was about to unfold over the next two centuries. It would not only consolidate the notion of political organization focused on partisan ends, it would ultimately spawn the “science” of electoral marketing. With the birth of technology-based mass media in the 20th century, that science would focus exclusively on opinion, branding and ratings, leaving governance as an afterthought.

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      By the 21st century, politics became totally dominated by the race for popularity and the cultivation of strategies to that end. The emergence of television in the second half of the 20th century, coupled with the presence of telephones in every home, sealed the deal. The science of polling was born. Once that occurred, everything in public life became subject to ratings. In the world of politics, the needs of “we the people” were fatally subordinated to a focus on the shifting and increasingly manipulable opinions of those same people. The science of electoral marketing definitively replaced the idea of public service and the quality of governance as the dominant force in political culture.

      The only trace of uncertainty left is the famous “margin of error” attributed to polls, usually estimated at around 3%. In contrast, the Pentagon’s margin of error is measured in multiple trillions of dollars.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Weekly Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      After Kazakhstan, What’s Next for the CSTO?

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      In early January, protests erupted in western Kazakhstan over increased gas prices, quickly spreading to other parts of the country. The demonstrations increasingly took on a political thrust and were directed in particular against former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had become a symbol of stagnation.

      Although Nazarbayev had stepped down in 2019, he retained the chairmanship of the National Security Council, continuing to play a major role in shaping political events in the country. When protests turned violent, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev finally dismissed Nazarbayev from his post and called in troops from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), whose membership Kazakhstan shares with Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, for support.

      A Momentous Decision

      In the course of the escalating street violence that originated from unknown actors, stores were looted and government buildings set on fire. Rumors spread that members of the security forces had abandoned their posts or even switched sides. President Tokayev, who had initially tried to contain the protests by offering dialogue, had obviously lost control and felt compelled to ask the CSTO for help, citing a supposed threat from “bandits and terrorists,” both local and foreign.

      This decision has far-reaching consequences for Kazakhstan’s relations with Russia, with Moscow now likely to see its role as an ally and guarantor of security strengthened. This increase in importance comes at a critical time. Tensions between Russia and the West have already made it difficult to maintain the foreign policy balance that the government has always advocated, and the equilibrium is now likely to shift further. It cannot be ruled out that Russia will demand something in return for its military support, such as a reduction in Kazakhstan’s military cooperation with the United States or recognition of the annexation of Crimea.

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      Closer ties to Russia are particularly problematic in terms of domestic politics. During the 30 years of Kazakhstan’s independence, a generation has grown up that no longer has any biographical connections to the Soviet empire and is increasingly questioning Russian influence on identity politics in Kazakhstan. Against this backdrop, Tokayev’s request for support also signals a political positioning in favor of Russia that is unlikely to benefit his popularity in Kazakhstan and could lead to a more authoritarian political style.

      Beyond the bilateral relationship with Kazakhstan, the CSTO’s military intervention represents an opportunity for Moscow to position itself as the most important security actor in Central Asia. Following its economic expansion, China has also broadened its security cooperation with the Central Asian states in recent years, thus undermining one of the most important pillars of Russia’s great power policy. The deployment in Kazakhstan could now rebalance Russia’s weight in the region vis-à-vis China.

      A secondary effect is that Moscow can also demonstrate to the United States and NATO that it is determined — and has the necessary capabilities — to assert its interests militarily if necessary. This increases the pressure of Russia’s coercive diplomacy vis-à-vis the West.

      New role for the CSTO

      The deployment of the Russian-led CSTO military alliance continues the trend toward the militarization of Russia’s foreign policy. What is new is the set of instruments that Moscow is now using. For the first time, the Collective Peacekeeping Forces, which are part of the CSTO’s military structure, are being deployed. Moscow is not concerned with burden-sharing; the alliance relies heavily on Russian personnel, equipment and command structures. This was demonstrated during the deployment in Kazakhstan, where other member states supplied smaller contingents. The CSTO mandate primarily serves to provide Moscow with multilateral legitimacy for the de facto Russian military mission.

      The fact that the CSTO’s first deployment has taken place in connection with anti-government protests in Kazakhstan shows that there is only one common threat perception within the alliance that is shared by the leaderships of all member states: the concern about a threat to authoritarian stability, which is always portrayed as being fomented from abroad. The security concept underlying the military alliance is thus one that equates national security with regime security.

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      The mission in Kazakhstan could thus serve as a model for further CSTO interventions. Russian President Vladimir Putin has already stated at the extraordinary CSTO Council meeting on January 10 that the unrest in the Central Asian country is not the first — and will not be the last — external attempt to intervene in the internal affairs of allies. Against this background, it is to be expected that CSTO members will in the future cooperate even more closely with regard to the elaboration and coordination of repressive measures against the opposition and civil society and their possible links with foreign actors. For authoritarian rulers who find themselves under pressure from large protests, appealing to the alliance may also be an attractive option.

      However, since the deployment of the CSTO also gives Russia the opportunity to exert influence, it is now important for Moscow to present itself as a reliable security partner for the authoritarian rulers in the post-Soviet space and to dispel concerns about the use of the CSTO as a hegemonic instrument. It is therefore only logical that the alliance has now completed its withdrawal from Kazakhstan: The impression that the deployment of CSTO troops would be accompanied by a longer-term Russian troop presence unwanted by Kazakhstan would be counterproductive for Moscow in the long term.

      In the medium term, Russia made gains by establishing a model for military intervention in alliance states — and possibly also in other former Soviet republics — with the multilateral legitimization of the CSTO.

      *[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Is Afghanistan Going to Break Apart?

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      After the shambolic US withdrawal, Afghanistan faces an existential problem: Its very existence as a state is now in question. Most people forget that Afghanistan is a patchwork of disparate ethnic groups and remote villages. Unlike Germany or Japan, it is not and has never been a nation-state. Since the 1880s, Afghanistan has been a state based on a loose coalition of poorly governed provinces, forgotten villages and marginalized ethnic groups. 

      A Chequered Past

      For more than a century, different power centers in Afghanistan have had some sort of representation in the central government, even if they often got leftovers from the dominant Pashtun ruling class. This class was repressive and often bloody. Abdur Rahman Khan, the Iron Amir, conducted genocide against the Hazaras in the 1890s, erased a substantial part of the cultural heritage of Nuristanis by forcing them to convert to Islam, and confiscated fertile lands of Tajiks and Uzbeks in the north only to redistribute them to Pashtun tribes. Even a modernist king like Amanulla pursued the Iron Amir’s policies. Yet, at the helm of power, there was generally a servant’s seat at the table for other ethnic groups such as the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and even the Hazaras. This seat at the table along with the backing of superpowers, first the British and then the Soviets, kept the state and the political order intact.

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      When the Soviets invaded in 1979, the Pashtun-dominated order of Afghanistan gradually crumbled. Ideology trumped ethnicity, and groups like the Tajiks, the Uzbeks and the Hazaras rose in prominence. Much credit for this goes to Babrak Karmal, the president of Afghanistan from December 1979 to November 1986. When the Soviets withdrew in February 1989, this order collapsed. The battle-hardened mujahideen groups fought a brutal civil war in which Tajik leaders Burhanuddin Rabbani, leader of the Jamiat Party, and Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the “Lion of Panjshir,” held the upper hand.

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      The Pashtuns struck back through the Taliban and took over Kabul in 1996. They exercised power over most of the country while Massoud was leading the resistance to the Taliban government from the Panjshir Valley. He was killed in Afghanistan two days before the 9/11 attacks in 2001 by an al-Qaeda suicide squad masquerading as journalists on the pretext of filming an interview. Even after his death, the resistance to the Taliban continued and Massoud’s fighters contributed heavily to the ground fighting that drove out the Taliban from much of the country, including Kabul.

      In the five years of Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, the Pashtuns returned as the dominant military and political group. They ran an autocratic regime, marginalizing other ethnic groups and suppressing opponents. Hence, resistance to the Taliban was persistent and ferocious in many parts of the country.

      The Post 9/11 Experience

      The 9/11 attacks led to the American intervention and the creation of a new democratic state. Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmens and other marginalized communities became active participants in the political process. Despite its fragility and flaws, the post-2001 political order and its democratic components offered a unique opportunity for Afghanistan to transform into a functioning polity and society.

      The governing Pashtun ethnonationalist elites, their non-Pashtun partners, including conservative warlords, and the reemergence of a Pashtun-led insurgency squandered the resources and opportunities that otherwise might have consolidated a civil and democratic political order.  

      The Taliban’s forceful return to Kabul last August ended the post-2001 American-backed constitutional order. Today, chaos prevails and a fanatical Pashtun clergy has a vice-like grip on every aspect of Afghanistan’s social, political and economic life. Furthermore, the Taliban are fanatical Muslims with ethnofascist tendencies and a profound apathy for Afghanistan’s ethnic, cultural and political diversity.

      In recent months, many analysts have been very charitable to the Taliban. In an interview with Fair Observer, political analyst Anas Altikriti said, “The reality is the Taliban have won and in today’s world, they have the right, the absolute right to govern.” If the right to govern comes from conquest, then Altikriti is right. Lest we forget, the Taliban have yet to win an election or demonstrate that they are actually capable of governing. Moreover, they are rigid, dictatorial and revanchist. An inclusive political formula that represents Afghanistan’s mosaic-like diversity is impossible so long as the Taliban remain exclusively in charge.

      The legitimate aspirations of non-Pashtun ethnic groups such as the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, the Hazaras, the Turkmens and others are now dissolving in the acid of Sunni fundamentalism. The Taliban have marginalized them completely. These groups have no seat at the table, no representation in the decision-making process and have to live under the barrel of the Taliban gun.

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      In 2022, this situation is untenable. Non-Pashtun ethnic groups are fed up and want control over their destiny. Many Pashtun technocrats, including the former president, Hamid Karzai, have switched sides and are part of the ruling dispensation. They claim the Taliban are the source of stability and have formed the only organization capable of ruling the country. However, they forget an important point. Marginalized groups in Afghanistan are chafing under Pashtun hegemony. If the Taliban-led Pashtuns cling to their unilateral rule and convert Afghanistan into a centralized state, the country will indubitably and inevitably break apart.

      Federalism Is the Way Forward

      To avoid a bloody partition along ethnic lines or a 1990s style civil war, Afghanistan needs a federal political system. Afghanistan is not France or the United Kingdom. It cannot be run out of a grand capital no matter how powerful the ruling class is. Like Switzerland and the United States, Afghanistan is an extremely diverse country with a history of local autonomy and a glorious tradition of bloody rebellion as the British, the Soviets and the Americans discovered at their cost.

      Therefore, the balance of power in any political system that can work must lie with local, not national government. Such a system could turn Afghanistan’s disparate ethnic groups into building blocks of a new federal state and avoid the looming bloodbath due to the Taliban’s autocratic rule.

      With China and Russia taking center stage, Afghanistan is increasingly forgotten. That is as risky as it is unfortunate. Conflict in Afghanistan could spill over into South and Central Asia, threatening global peace and security. Afghanistan needs dialogue between different groups ready to hammer out a territorial, judicial, and administrative settlement that leads to a functional union. Only then can we expect the fragile state of Afghanistan to survive.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Can a Non-Lethal Eco-Terrorism Strategy Pay Off?

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      In 2025, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is hit by a killer heatwave. The astronomical temperatures resulting from solar radiation kill 20 million people.

      In the wake of this climate disaster, a new movement arises in India: an eco-terrorist network called the Children of Kali. The Hindu deity Kali, “She Who Is Death,” is the goddess of doomsday, and her “children” seek, through extremist measures, to avenge the deaths of their countrymen and to halt the march of climate change.  

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      Such is the premise of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future,” a climate fiction novel that plays out how humanity will handle the climate crisis over the next decades. The scenario is far from science fiction, however. With the right ingredients — environmental disaster, government inaction and public support, combined with non-lethal and well-publicized tactics — eco-terrorism could prove a fiery cocktail.

      Special Interest Extremism

      Both premises, the killer heatwave and the eco-terrorist network, are based in reality. Last year’s Intergovernmental Governmental Panel on Climate Change report predicted more intense heat waves of longer durations, occurring at a higher frequency globally. Within the next decades, mean temperatures could be at least 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels, leading to intense heat waves and driving higher mortality and poverty rates.

      The second premise, the growth of eco-terrorism, sprung up in the late 1970s. At the turn of the century, the FBI identified the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) — radical environmentalists and animal rights activists, or what the bureau calls “special interest extremism” — as “the most active criminal extremist elements in the United States.”

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      ELF attacks included arson, sabotage and vandalism; other environmental extremists have been linked to what is known as tree-spiking to prevent deforestation and the sabotage of whaling and sealing vessels. The era of nuclear expansion was accompanied by attacks on nuclear installations: Between 1966 and 1977, 10 terrorist attacks took place across Europe, while between 1969 and 1975, US nuclear facilities faced 14 actual and attempted bombings and 240 bomb threats.

      These acts of eco-sabotage certainly feel a far cry from today’s conception of terrorism as violence, often lethal, targeted at civilians. Yet it does qualify: In 2002, following 9/11, the FBI defined terrorism as “the unlawful use, or threatened use, of … committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population … in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

      Despair Rising

      It is difficult to be precise about the number of eco-terrorism incidents because so little research within the field of terrorism is conducted on this particular type. The 2020 Global Terrorism Index merely notes that it falls outside its main categorizations. However, it appears to be on the rise. Last year, The Hill reported that the FBI was investigating 41 incidences of eco-terrorism in Washington state alone, including the derailing of a train that resulted in 29,000 gallons of crude oil being spilled. In September 2021, 53 activists from Insulate Britain were arrested while attempting to block the London Orbital Motorway.

      As deadly natural shocks become increasingly common worldwide, the specter of future eco-terrorism looms much more prominently now than it did two decades ago. In the wake of the UN Conference of the Parties climate summit (COP26) that took place in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, it is more evident than ever.

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      The conclusion of COP26 has widely been received as more of a whimper than a bang. A sense of disappointment, if not failure, greeted the final agreement despite what many have called historic achievements. Thousands of youth activists on the streets of Glasgow channeled the sense of fury felt by the leaders of countries most vulnerable to climate change. Such frustration may have its own consequences.

      According to a 2021 global survey on the impact of climate fears, despair is rising. The youth is scared and angered by governmental paralysis when it comes to the climate emergency. The division between the global south and the global north in the wake of COP26 is ever more acute, with rising resentment that the developed world is failing to fund the now urgently needed adaptation and mitigation measures. With escalating numbers of desperate people, extremist ideologies can find fertile ground.

      Sabotage, Ecotage

      As climate disasters worsen and public sentiments shift, radicalization may well follow. So, if eco-terrorism were to arise, what might it look like? A 2020 paper published in the Journal of Strategic Security explored exactly this thought experiment. Much like the now-inactive ELF, 21st century’s eco-terrorists would likely start with industrial sabotage, or “ecotage.” They might expand to fossil fuel plants, airports and container ships.

      Targeting humans, not infrastructure, as happens in Robinson’s novel, seems comparatively unlikely. In general, climate activism is associated with high regard for the sanctity of life. Even ELF guidelines emphasized the need to protect life during group actions, and that the goal of attacks on property is to cause targeted economic harm to industries that degrade the environment.

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      Lethal action would be left to fringe elements, which is a possibility we can’t rule out. But the saboteurs of Robinson’s fiction, who carry out targeted assassinations of major investors in fossil fuels and take down planes to reduce air travel, are likely to remain the bogeymen of ecological activism.

      How effective might such a non-lethal strategy of eco-terrorism be? A well-targeted campaign of attrition, wearing down governments and greenhouse gas-emitting corporations, would be costly and challenging to guard against. With maximum costs imposed on fossil fuel economies, they might simply choose to concede to the terrorists’ demands.

      Already technologies abound that are environmentally friendlier and less costly. The International Renewable Energy Agency’s 2021 report found that 62% of renewable energies are cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. With viable alternatives in reach, governments and private companies might concede to a policy change as the least costly strategy. Although governments might not admit to it, research has suggested that they often do yield to terrorist demands. Between 1980 and 2003, half of all suicide terrorism campaigns were closely followed by substantial concessions from the target government.

      Oxygen of Publicity

      Terrorism survives on “the oxygen of publicity,” to quote former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Research on eco-terrorist tactics has emphasized how well-designed and well-publicized acts of ecotage might galvanize public support if the public endorses the group’s goals and isn’t repulsed by its tactics.

      Public endorsement is certainly on the table. A majority of US voters now strongly believe in the need for climate action. An estimated 6 million people joined the climate protests around the world in September 2019, including peaceful occupations and roadblocks. According to a 2021 global survey on climate change conducted by the United Nations Development Program, one in three people said that climate change is an emergency and that the world should urgently do everything necessary in response.

      Every action necessary to respond to the climate crisis has instead included government crackdowns on non-violent ecological activism. Research from 2013 emphasized that there has been no documented evidence of harm to humans resulting from actions by radical environmentalists nor of violence being deployed to cause injuries or death. Yet in 2004, a senior FBI official described animal-rights extremism and eco-terrorism as “our highest domestic terrorism investigative priority.” As recently as 2020, the UK included organizations like Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion in its police counterterrorism guide alongside violent right-wing extremists.

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      These tactics are misguided. Although eco-terrorism does meet the definition of terrorist strategies, the consequences are, as yet, largely non-lethal and governments should respond appropriately. For one, it is more challenging to negotiate with, and concede to, terrorist organizations. Labeling climate-action groups as eco-terrorists runs the risk of undermining their stated objectives, stifling legitimate political dissent and preventing progress toward much-needed climate goals.

      Moreover, some groups have argued, the eco-terrorism designation has been used as an intentional tactic by corporations and governments to quash lawful campaigning. Research published by the Journal of Strategic Security suggests that this disproportionate response might fuel the radicalization of the groups and individuals most likely to turn to extremism.

      Siberia is burning, Shanxi is sinking, Alabama is rocked by tornadoes. Climate disasters will continue. Governments might stand by and watch or, worse, employ counterterrorism tactics against climate activists. In turn, the outraged might answer the call to arms.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      How the Legal Landscape Is Changing for War Crimes

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      War crimes, genocide, torture, forced disappearances, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international law have been characteristic of conflicts in the Arab world since even before they were codified in law. These crimes still occur in many Arab countries, most notably in Syria and Yemen. Not only do perpetrators often go unpunished, but they also find themselves rewarded and promoted.

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      So, when on November 30, 2021, a court in Frankfurt, Germany, handed down a life sentence to an Iraqi man who joined the Islamic State (IS) group for genocide against the Yazidi minority — the first time a former member of IS had been convicted of genocide and the first verdict for genocide against Yazidis — it was celebrated as a landmark case in the fight for justice and accountability. Taha al-Jumailly was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes, and bodily harm resulting in death.

      “Today, ISIS member Taha AJ was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison. This is the first genocide verdict against an ISIS member. This verdict is a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence, & the Yazidi community,” tweeted Nadia Murad, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and a Yazidi survivor of IS enslavement.

      Universal Jurisdiction

      The trial was also the first in Germany based on the principle of universal jurisdiction addressing crimes under international law committed abroad by a perpetrator who is not a German citizen and was only extradited on the basis of an international arrest warrant. Universal jurisdiction is the principle that some crimes are so serious that states should be allowed to claim jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where they were committed or any other relation with the prosecuting entity. None of the crimes in the Jumailly case were committed in Germany, and neither the victims nor the suspect were German nationals.

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      Though universal jurisdiction has been practiced in just a few countries in recent years, it has become an increasingly important tool for achieving accountability and justice for the survivors and victims of international crimes. Hundreds of investigations are ongoing and dozens of convictions have been obtained.

      The blossoming of universal jurisdiction is attributable to several factors, one of which is that the alternative route to prosecuting international crimes through the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has effectively been closed by geopolitics. The Syrian conflict, for example, has never been appraised by the ICC because Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad.

      The Pursuit of Cases

      In recent years, there has been a greater capacity and willingness on the part of some domestic authorities to pursue cases involving international crimes, at least in certain circumstances. More and more countries have also passed laws allowing them to conduct the kind of landmark prosecution that took place in Frankfurt. More countries are following the Dutch example in setting up specialized units within the police, prosecution and even immigration services dedicated to identifying perpetrators of international crimes and bringing them to trial.

      Another important factor in the power of universal jurisdiction is that victims and their advocates can contribute to investigations and prosecutions, and sometimes even influence the direction they take. In some countries, such as France and Belgium, victims and NGOs can initiate criminal proceedings. Even where this is not possible, victims and their advocates can still drive cases forward in other ways, such as by tracking perpetrators’ movements, sharing information with the authorities and exerting pressure on them to act.

      Dutch authorities have even issued directions for Syrians in the Netherlands on how to file a criminal complaint against other Syrians relating to violations in Syria. In February, after Germany’s top court ruled that war crimes committed abroad can be tried in the country, a court in Koblenz became the first court outside of Syria to rule on state-sponsored torture by the Assad regime when it sentenced a former member of the secret police to four and a half years in prison for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity. Another former Syrian intelligence officer is currently on trial in Germany for overseeing 58 counts of murder and at least 4,000 cases of torture, rape or sexual abuse.

      Many Challenges

      Despite this recent progress, enormous legal, evidentiary and logistical challenges remain before international criminal cases can be brought to trial. Investigating and prosecuting international crimes in domestic courts is not straightforward, especially in a complex conflict such as the Yemen war where crimes have been committed over many years by different actors.

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      Foreign investigators cannot easily gather evidence on the ground, so they have to rely on the cooperation of different parties to the conflict to build cases. UN bodies like the group of eminent experts, international organizations, local NGOs, and organizations such as Airwars assist with investigations.

      Even if evidence linking an individual perpetrator to war crimes can be established, the suspect still has to be apprehended. In some countries practicing universal jurisdiction, those accused of committing war crimes do not need to be within reach of authorities for an investigation to be opened, but they need to be physically brought to court before any trial can take place.

      Though international cooperation can be used to apprehend and extradite international pariahs like IS militants, pirates and slave traders, war criminals who are still serving members of Arab regimes are not about to be handed over. Only when they set foot in a country practicing universal jurisdiction — whether for work, vacation, claiming asylum or for any other reason — can they be arrested immediately, providing they do not benefit from immunity.

      Jumailly’s conviction “sends a clear message,” said Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the NGO Yazda, which gathers evidence of crimes committed by IS against the Yazidis. “It doesn’t matter where the crimes were committed and it doesn’t matter where the perpetrators are, thanks to the universal jurisdiction, they can’t hide and will still be put on trial.”

      *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest, a partner of Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Making Sense of Vladimir Putin’s Long Game

      by

      On November 21, Bloomberg reported that US intelligence had shared Russian plans for a potential invasion of Ukraine with its NATO allies. Estimates indicated about 100,000 soldiers in around 100 battalion tactical groups were deployed on the Ukrainian border. Since then, this troop buildup has continued with “tanks, artillery, armoured units, drones, [and] electronic warfare systems” poised on Ukraine’s border.

      Reports indicate that Moscow has called up tens of thousands of reservists, the first time since the end of the Cold War over 30 years ago. They could secure territory that regular troops capture. Moscow already has a blueprint to follow. In 2014, Russian troops took over Crimea. This time, they could gobble up significant territory in Eastern Ukraine.  As with the Crimea, Russia claims that Ukraine is historically and culturally an integral part of Russia 

      The Response to Russia’s Brinkmanship Over Ukraine

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      In response to this threat, US President Joe Biden has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin of “severe consequences.” for any aggression. Though Biden has ruled out putting American troops on the ground, the US president has promised Putin “economic consequences like [he has] never seen.”  Almost simultaneously, the foreign ministers of the G-7 group of the world’s seven most powerful economies warned Russia of “massive consequences and severe cost” if Russia were to invade Ukraine. 

      Biden has continued to ratchet up his threats of severe countermeasures. On 19 December, influential columnist David Ignatius wrote that “a knowledgeable official” revealed US plans to arm future Ukrainian “insurgents” with advanced weaponry should Moscow invade. The official mentioned that “the CIA and other key agencies, [have] been studying how insurgencies were organized against the Soviets in Afghanistan and Russian-backed forces in Syria — and also against the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.” If Putin invades Ukraine, the Biden administration wants “to make it hurt.”

      Even as Biden has been warning Putin, on the other side of the Eurasian landmass 7,500 kilometers to the east, Moscow and Beijing have been romancing one another, in a straightforward diplomatic counterbalance to the US and NATO. In October, China and Russia conducted a joint naval exercise that set alarm bells ringing in many international capitals. A joint Russian-Chinese flotilla of 10 warships sailed through the Tsugaru Strait that separates the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. This flotilla headed down Japan’s eastern coast and then back toward China through the Osumi Strait north of the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.

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      This joint naval exercise is significant. For the first time a Russian-Chinese flotilla passed through the strait, in what was likely a countermove to heightened naval activity by the rejuvenated “Quad” alliance that includes India, Japan, Australia and the US. The flotilla’s circumnavigation of Japan’s main island of Honshu was clearly intended to threaten Tokyo and send a signal to Washington.

      What is going on?

      Russian Resentment

      Over the years, both authors have spoken to and interacted with numerous Russians in intelligence, defense and diplomatic circles. One theme repeatedly crops up: The US and the West treated Russia imperiously and dismissively after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Most of our Russian interlocutors have believed that the US has long sought to weaken, even destroy, Russia, and interpret almost every US action and statement as pieces of a long term, coherent plan to undermine Russia and the government of Vladimir Putin.

      Dangerously, even seasoned diplomats and intelligence officers tend to ascribe a strategic coherence and hostility to rival states, when the rival states in fact almost always have competing and contradictory power centers, mutually incompatible objectives, and struggle to pursue a sustained and coherent policy. Accurate or not, the Russians have tended to view their American rival as strategically competent, and malevolent.  

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      As per this narrative, the US first cajoled the new Russia to commit samoubiystvo — suicide. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US funded a project by Harvard economists to reform the Russian economy. In the memorable words of Janine Fedel, neophyte reformers enabled “the Harvard boys [to] do Russia,” causing the misappropriation of Western aid and the plunder of Russian wealth. Till date, Boris Fyodorov, Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar remain hated names in Russia. Economist Jeffrey Sachs, then a  high-flying 38-year-old who arrived in Moscow to transform the Russian economy, evokes similar sentiments.

      With the zeal of a Cold War free market missionary, Sachs advocated that Russia implement “shock therapy.” Sachs took the view that shock therapy would work even in societies where there was “no collective memory of free markets or history of evenhanded rules of contract law and property rights.” In those heady days, Sachs was regarded as the slayer of hyperinflation, and the savior of the Bolivian and the Polish economies. He envisaged “an industrial comeback” in Russia “worthy of postwar Japan.” At that time, Russian industrial exports were around $5 billion and Sachs predicted they would “reach $50 billion by the turn of the century.”

      Today, it is easy to conclude that Sachs suffered from hubris. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has been damning in his critique of Sachs’s shock therapy. For Stiglitz, the key point is that privatizing an economy before establishing a functioning legal and juridical system inevitably leads to overwhelming corruption and concentration of wealth; in other words, to a thug’s kleptocracy.

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      Many US officials foresaw this danger at the time, and even as Sachs was pushing for total and immediate privatization of the entire Russian economy, the US government was trying to foster the establishment in post-Soviet Russia of the rule of law, the establishment of private property and the regulatory and legal regime required to avoid corruption, abuse, and excessive concentration of wealth. In particular, American officials were working to prevent the de facto theft of the state’s assets, capital and natural resources. One of the authors knows this first hand, having worked on this very issue. 

      Sachs, however, “succeeded,” and this now infamous privatization led to asset stripping, massive impoverishment and runaway inflation, averaging 204.91% in 1995.  Even as price rises made it impossible to pay for goods, Russia’s annual per capita income cratered, dropping over 50% in nine years, from $3,440 to $1,710.  The result of Sach’s policy was that the Russian economy foundered, poverty soared and life expectancy sank. Sachs’s recommendations brought, as Stiglitz stingingly put it, “Gucci bags, Mercedes, the fruits of capitalism to a few,” and misery and humiliation to 148 million Russians.  

      This economic catastrophe tore apart Russia’s social fabric and the legitimacy of Russia’s nascent post-Communist democracy. Contrary to a common Russian belief, the US did not seek to destroy Russia, but to help it succeed in its transformation into a successful, democratic market economy. However, the view among many Russian officials is that Sachs was implementing a longstanding strategic plan by the US to destroy Russia as a functioning power. Tragically, this American-induced calamity became Russia’s grim reality for a dismal decade.

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      One of the authors still remembers a protracted, boozy conversation with a former Russian psychological operations (PSYOP) officer. This gentleman had served in Chechnya and was convinced that Sachs plotted the destruction of the Russian economy. This former PSYOP officer’s thinking is most revealing. In his view, the US sent Sachs to ruin Russia’s economy. Then, at a time when Russia was weak, NATO gobbled up the nations of Eastern Europe that until 1991 were Soviet satellites and constituted Russia’s “near abroad” security cordon. The PSYOP officer also argued that the US never dealt with Russia in good faith. In 2001, Putin offered the US complete support after the attacks of September 11. In Russian eyes, the US responded to Russian loyalty with treachery. On December 13, then US President George W. Bush announced that the US would pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an act that still infuriates Moscow. 

      The other author, when serving as a US official, heard the same zero-sum game viewpoints from his Russian counterparts. How, they demanded, could NATO expansion be anything but an aggressive anti-Russian act? They took any of the author’s counter-arguments as proof of America’s disingenuous duplicity and as confirmation of their convictions.

      Putin Distills Russian Resentment

      Putin expresses Russian resentment and suspicion best. In a lengthy article published on July 12, he argues “that Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole.” He blames both Russian mistakes and outside forces for undermining that unity. In Putin’s words, “Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus.” Language, economic ties and the Orthodox faith bind them together.

      Unsurprisingly, Putin evokes a particularly Russo-centric version of history in making his claim. He refers to the 17th century war of liberation of the Russian Orthodox people from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which he blames for “social and religious oppression” of Russians. The Russian president also blames outsiders like the Poles and the Austro-Hungarians for “the idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians.” In Putin’s telling, this “idea” has no historical basis or much popular support.

      When Vladimir Lenin forged the Soviet Union in 1922, he gave constituent republics the right to secede, which was incorporated into the 1924 constitution. Putin blames this for the “parade of sovereignties” that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. He argues that “modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era.” Putin further argues that Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine “in gross violation of legal norms that were in force at the time.”

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      In his article, Putin takes the view that the borders between Soviet republics were never state borders. Communists ran a highly centralized government from Moscow. With the sudden disintegration of the USSR, “people found themselves abroad overnight, taken away, this time indeed, from their historical motherland.” Notably, Putin blames the West for using “the old groundwork of the Polish-Austrian ideologists to create an ‘anti-Moscow Russia’.” He accuses the new Ukrainian elites of hobnobbing with neo-Nazis, attacking the Russian language and unleashing an anti-Russia project.

      Putin’s aggrieved and self-justifying version of history, however, grossly misrepresents the past.  A little perspective: It is true that many Ukrainians initially welcomed the Nazi invaders as liberators in 1941. They wanted relief from the oppressive and exploitative mass-murdering communist regime of Joseph Stalin, whom Putin has been rehabilitating as a Russian icon. Unfortunately for the Ukrainians, Adolf Hitler’s Nazis proved to be as murderous and imperial as the Soviet Union. Longsuffering Ukrainians were quickly and hideously disabused of the notion that the Nazis themselves offered Untermenschen Slavs anything but enslavement and death. In the end, the Nazis massacred 3 million Ukrainians, a lower number than the 3.9 million killed by the Soviets. In his self-serving version of history, Putin omits such awkward facts.

      Third Rome: Will Russia Save Europe From Itself?

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      Biden and his European allies are understandably worried by this amalgam of Soviet and pre-World War I pan-Slavic and imperial Russian historiography. On December 7, Biden and Putin spoke for about two hours to defuse rising tensions over Ukraine. Putin “demanded legal guarantees that NATO would not expand eastward toward Russia’s borders or deploy offensive weapons systems in Ukraine.” Biden “reiterated his support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and called for de-escalation and a return to diplomacy.” Two days later, Putin used harsher language. He accused Ukraine of Russophobia and discriminating against Russian speakers in the country. He argued that Ukrainian action in the eastern Donbas region “certainly looks like genocide.” On December 23, Putin articulated Russian resentments in a four-hour press conference even as US officials announced possibilities of talks in January.

      On December 17, Moscow “demanded strict limits on the activities of the US-led NATO military alliance in countries in Eastern Europe.” Moscow wants no troop or weapon deployment in areas where they could be a threat to Russia. If Washington accepts this demand, NATO would no longer play a role in the three Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia or, for that matter, in highly vulnerable Poland. Russia also wants a guarantee that Ukraine and Georgia would never join NATO.

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      Putin has long called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century” and argued that “the epidemic of collapse has spilled over to Russia itself.” He has repeatedly pointed out that 25 million Russians became foreigners in their own homes. From Lithuania to Tajikistan, Putin sees Russians as an oppressed minority instead of full citizens of a once mighty nation.

      But nowhere is this more galling than Ukraine, home to the historic Kingdom of Rus. His consistent objective as Russian leader has been to restore Russia to its historic greatness and global power. In his mind, the best defence for Russia is now offence.

      Ideas Animating Putin

      It is important and instructive to remember that Putin was a KGB officer for years. He was inspired by Max Otto von Stierlitz, the Soviet James Bond who infiltrated the German high command in World War II. Like Stierlitz, Putin served in Germany too and was posted in Dresden in 1989. Thousands of Germans took to the streets, the Berlin Wall fell and “Moscow [was] silent.”

      The collapse of the German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union turned Putin’s life upside down. Recently, he mentioned moonlighting as a taxi driver during those days to make ends meet and, like many older Russians, is haunted by those memories. The collapse of Soviet theology allowed Putin and all Russians to return to their history, culture, Slavic ethnicity, and Orthodox religion as the essence of the Russian nation and greatness. Over 70 years of Communist internationalist ideology dissipated in an instant, and has left virtually no trace on Russian culture.  

      Instantaneously, Putin and millions of Russians have reverted to Russian nationalism for identity and pride. At its core, this nationalism is Orthodox, Slavic and autocratic. The Russian Orthodox Church, persecuted during the Soviet era, has made a spectacular comeback. Putin has been filmed dipping into the freezing waters of a cross-shaped pool to observe an Orthodox Christian ritual that marks the feast of Epiphany on more than one occasion. Cossacks, the glamorized sword arm of Tsarist Russia, are also back in fashion. 

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      Putin has brought back the idea of a collective Russian identity, in which Western individualism and cosmopolitanism are decadent Western infections. The strength and stability of the state takes precedence over human rights. In this “new” (old) Russia, respect for the ruler is sacrosanct and Putin is a father figure for a powerful strong nation that can once again project its power. After the humiliating years of a weak Mikhail Gorbachev and a drunk Boris Yeltsin, Russians see Putin as a leader who has restored dignity to a great nation and people.

      A 2016 tour de force analysis by Charles Clover explains how the Russian leader has found inspiration in the ideas of the late historian Lev Gumilev. This son of Soviet dissidents Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova spent many years in the Siberian Gulag. Gumilev developed a fascination for “the irrational in history” as he watched his fellow prisoners “die of exhaustion and hypothermia.” Just as Italian Renaissance thinker Niccolò Machiavelli coined the idea of virtù, as a character of moral excellence devoted to the state, and Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun of asabiyya, the tribal solidarity of desert nomads, Gumilev came up with the idea of passionarnost, a human capacity for suffering.

      In his 2012 annual address to the Russian federal assembly, Putin noted that the world was becoming more unequal and competition for resources more intense. New economic, geopolitical and ethnic conflicts were likely. As per Putin, victory and defeat would “depend not only on the economic potential, but primarily on the will of each nation” and the inner energy that Gumilev termed passionarity.

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      Clover explains how Gumilev came up with the idea of Eurasianism, “the germ of a new Russian nationalism.” This idea seeks inspiration not from the westward-looking Peter the Great or Catherine the Great but from the nomads who swept out of the steppes to destroy everything before them. Gumilev took the view that European social theories like the Enlightenment and communism had led Russia to ruin. Instead, Russians were heirs to the Huns, the Turks and the Mongols, the conquering peoples who united the Eurasian steppes and the forests under “a single conquering imperial banner.” In Gumilev’s view, the Russians “were the latest incarnation of this timeless continental unity.” Putin seems to be deeply influenced by Gumilev’s ideas.

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      In this regard, one author recalls a memorable evening spent with a Russian counterpart nearly 30 years ago, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The discussion turned around what Russians believed in and the author asked in some frustration:  Are you European or Asian? Implicit in the question was the assumption that the Russians must choose between the two, and would surely finally embrace the westernizing approach of Peter the Great.  “Of course we are neither,” the Russian replied quite accurately, “and both.” 

      Putin also adheres to the views of Ivan Ilyin, an influential pan-Slavic Russian nationalist and fascist who exalted the Russian soul and who was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1922. He took the view that the 1917 October Revolution was the worst catastrophe in Russian history. As an exile, Ilyin first lived in Germany and then in Switzerland, where he died in 1954. His work strongly influenced mystical Russian nationalists like Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. Putin was personally involved in bringing back Ilyin’s remains to Russia and consecrated his grave in 2009. Noted historian Timothy Snyder has called Ilyin “Putin’s philosopher of Russian fascism” because he saw individuals as cells in the body of society, freedom as knowing one’s place in society, democracy as a ritual, the leader as a hero and facts as of no value whatsoever. Ilyin saw Russian nationalism as the only truth in the world and imagined “that his nation could redeem the world.”

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      Gumilev and Ilyin are the modern Russian muses, and Putin the renascent tsar of the Eurasianist “neither European nor Asian” Russian culture and nation. But Putin’s Russian Eurasianism is the Russian strain of a widespread phenomenon called Traditionalism. It is a reaction to and rejection of the cosmopolitan, international, modernizing forces of Western liberalism and capitalism. Ironically, Traditionalism’s believers consist of a heterodox melange of French Catholic royalists, Muslim intellectuals, left-wing anti-materialists, social conservatives and nationalists brought together by their profound malaise at the culturally destructive and personally alienating forces of the technological and material developments of the industrial and modern era and, in their view, of the nihilism and imperialism of cosmopolitan Western liberalism.

      The philosophical roots of Traditionalism and Russia’s “Eurasianism” version reach back to one of the fathers of Fascism, an Italian philosopher named Baron Giulio Evola. Evola’s thought became the basis for Fascism in Italy, National Socialism in Germany, and — after World War II and the spread of democracy and the success of market economies — for the far-right across Europe, and the ascendancy of anti-Western Muslim extremism in Islamic societies.    

      One of the authors first encountered Traditionalism personally in the mid-1980s when he was assigned to follow and understand the neo-fascistic movements in Western Europe then called the “euro-right.” The “nation,” the “people,” and “tradition” became the roots of personal meaning for the euro-right in the progressively mutable world of capitalism, materialism, individualism, and democracy. The very successes of the Western economic and political model were the basis of the Euro-right’s indictment of liberal democracy and the Western Alliance.  

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      The author recalls sitting in a café in Paris and through the cigarette smoke listening in some astonishment and progressive alarm as the right-wing French political figure across the table confidently denounced American liberal decadence (that was no surprise), evoked the fascistic and conservatively Catholic ideas of the French politician Charles Maurras (again, no surprise)… and then spoke warmly of the concordance of the rejection of democracy, capitalism, and the West by Islam, Italian Fascism, and Russian Orthodoxy. The author has followed the Traditionalist movement in the 40 years since that cafe conversation and watched it wax in direct proportion to the speed and scale of social and political change caused by globalization and the end of the Cold War.

      Evola’s movement and the French politician from the cafe morphed into today’s “Rassemblement national” (RN) party (formerly the National Front) in France and to the other ascendant far-right parties in Europe today. These new Traditionalists consistently identify with Putin’s Russia, because both exalt the “nation” and reject “rootless” materialism. The Russian “Eurasian” manifestation believes “liberal” democracy would lead to the ruin of Russian civilization and to Russia’s domination by a nihilistic West. Under Putin, Russia’s intelligence services have also insinuated Eurasianist, Traditionalist ideas into populist and right-wing parties throughout the West.

      Putin clearly derives his worldview and policies from this coherent Traditionalist, Eurasian rejection of and hostility to the West. In his words, “The liberal idea [has] outlived its purpose….[Western views on gender, culture and power] must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.” For Putin, Eurasianists, and far-rightists across Europe, the postwar globalized, capitalist, democratic liberal world order, and US-led Western alliances are wantonly destroying faith, culture and, for Putin, the Russian soul and nation.     

      Could There Be War With Russia?

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      While Evola, Gumilev and Ilyin might be patron saints of Traditionalism, Eurasianism and Russian nationalism, the strident nationalist Aleksandr Dugin is the evangelist of Putin’s new (old) Russia. In 1997, he published “Foundations of Geopolitics,” a work that has deeply influenced the thinking of Russia’s military, secret services and political leadership. Ferociously opposed to US hegemony, Dugin advocates Russian Eurasianism as a response to Anglo-Saxon Atlanticism. Dugin’s views derive directly from the Eurasian and Traditionalist focus on the supposedly inevitable geopolitical clash of cultures, pitting Orthodox and continental Russia against the atheistic and cosmopolitan West. Instead of direct conflict, however, Dugin “advocates a sophisticated, asymmetric program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services, supported by a tough, hard-headed use of Russia’s gas, oil, and natural resource riches to pressure and bully other countries into bending to Russia’s will.”

      Putinism’s Strangely Unreal World

      Even as others provide ideas, Vladislav Surkov, a brilliant Putin aide puts them into operation. On a spring day in 2013, Surkov claimed to be “the author, or one of the authors, of the new Russian system.” In the words of Peter Pomerantsev, “Surkov [consciously and explicitly] has directed Russian society like one great reality show.” Through puppet political parties, fake social media accounts and manipulation of truth, in the press, on television and on the internet, this modern master of propaganda has blurred truth and falsehood, reasoning that, as the public becomes less able to discern the truth, the state can shape reality to discredit its opponents and to consolidate its power. Even as Russia maintains the illusion of democracy, political challengers find every path forward thwarted, by murder if need be, and one man rules.

      For ordinary Russians, Surkov has conjured up the specter of a deadly enemy and authored a new chapter of Putinism in Russian history. Putin “is the president of ‘stability,’ the antithesis to the era of ‘confusion and twilight’ in the 1990s.” Anyone who opposes Putin, by definition, is disloyal to Russia. Unlike Stalin’s iron-fisted oppression, Putinism “climbs inside all ideologies and movements, exploiting and rendering them absurd.” In Surkov’s Putinist Russia, “everything is PR” and only fools believe in anything. Putin, through Surkov’s cynical wizardry, reigns by turning Russia into a real-world combination of George Orwell’s 1984 and the Keanu Reeves starring The Matrix.  It is the dystopian triumph of the nihilism and solipsism of jaded postmodernists, literally weaponized by the State: Truth no longer exists, but it does not matter, because one can feel good through delusional self-regard and meaningless pageantry.  And Surkov, the Russian intelligence services and, above them both, Putin control the images, shape the public’s consciousness, and wield the real-world power.      

      Yet even Surkov seems to have some beliefs. In conversations with journalists, he reveals a “sharp nationalist edge.” Surkov claims that Putin did not abolish democracy. Instead, the Russian leader just “married it with the monarchical archetype of Russian governance.” Surkov claims, “this archetype is working. It is not going anywhere . . . It has enough freedom and enough order.”

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      If Surkov had confined his dark arts to Russia, he would not be one of the seminal figures of the 21st century. But he has deployed his skills to advance Russia’s national interests abroad, specifically by interfering in elections in other countries. The most famous examples are the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election of 2016. There is strong evidence to suggest that Russia interfered not only in these two elections but in many others. There have been spin doctors galore in the past, from Edward Bernays who invented PR in the US to Dominic Cummings who coined “Take Back Control” for the pro-Brexit campaign. Yet Surkov has taken propaganda to another level. He has created what documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis has termed “HyperNormalisation,” a strangely unreal world of total inauthenticity.

      The Cold War Never Quite Ended

      In the heady days after the end of the Cold War, the likes of Francis Fukuyama heralded the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism.” In an iconic article, he called it the end of history and celebrated “the triumph of the West, of the Western idea.” Fukuyama’s celebrations were premature. For 15 years, from Gorbachev’s assumption of power in 1985 to the departure from office of Yeltsin on December 31, 1999, the Western-oriented views and aspirations of Peter the Great’s Russia dominated.  But as one author’s Russian interlocutor from years ago pointed out, Russia is neither West nor East — it is both.  And so after the catastrophe of shock therapy and the expansion of NATO, Russian resentment returned in the form of Eurasianist Putin.

      The Russian president has always sought to restore Russia’s greatness and reestablish hegemony over its “near abroad” — states in Central and Eastern Europe that the Soviet Union once forced into the Warsaw Pact. Of course, while making Russia great again, Putin seeks to solidify and perennialize his power, and, along the way, to enrich himself. He has always rejected the normative unipolar international order created and dominated by the US that, in Putin’s eyes, institutionalized American imperialism and hegemony. In the past decade, the Russian president has modernized his military, eliminated any potential rival at home, and embarked on a series of aggressive foreign moves that are changing the balance of power in Europe and the Middle East. Notably, he has constantly argued that “the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world.”

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      Putin realizes that, to prevail, Russia must leverage its strengths against the more powerful economies of the US and Europe, and he has been fortunate that many Western leaders have neither realized the scope of nor the power in the asymmetric warfare tactics of Dugin and Surkov. In contrast, Putin is very aware that the US GDP is 14 times larger than Russia’s, where oil and gas comprise close to 40% of the GDP.  Hence, he engages in a different “battle space” and, in so doing, has restored much of the influence Russia lost when the Soviet Union imploded in 1991. Putin’s military and intelligence services have reasserted Russian predominance all along the “near abroad” states and former Soviet republics. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and the Baltics have all felt the sting of Russian operations, and have had to temper their pro-Western positions and accommodate Russian demands. 

      Bolstered by success, Russian confidence and aggression has been growing. In 2014, Russia invaded and (re)annexed Crimea. In 2015, Putin sent the Russian military into Syria. Since 2019, he has used “private sector” mercenaries, who act under the guidance of the Russian intelligence services, in Libya. By intervening in Syria and Libya, Putin has made Russia a key power broker in the Middle East for the first time since 1972. Russian mercenaries are also active in Mozambique, Sudan and the Central African Republic. As if this was not enough, Putin has actively sought to destabilize his greatest rivals, the UK and the US. Russia has conducted a series of intelligence operations to influence the attitudes of the British and American public, with an overall goal of delegitimizing and paralyzing the UK and US governments. 

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      Even as Putin has ratcheted up pressure on Ukraine, he has also ostentatiously deepened relations with China, the other bugbear of the West. Russia’s new China play is a classic example of the balance of power and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach to geopolitics. The cruise of the Russo-Sino fleet around Japan’s main island is a clear signal by Moscow and Beijing that they will support each other against the West. Putin has also worked assiduously to bolster relations with India, a nascent global power that has reservations about recent US decisions such as pulling out of Afghanistan and entering into a nuclear submarine deal with Australia and the UK. As a former Soviet ally, India also has strong elements hostile to a strategic entente with the US. 

      Should Western powers implement tougher sanctions on Moscow, an allied China and neutral India are likely to stay close trading partners, attenuating Russia’s economic hardship. Relations with the two Asian giants also boost morale at home by demonstrating that a Putin-led Russia is a global power and Moscow will not bend to the imperial and arrogant US.

      Uncertain Times in a World Without American Hegemony

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      As a nimble judoka, Putin is also using gas diplomacy to pressure the West. On December 15, Putin and his new best-friend-forever, Chinese President Xi Jinping, had a highly-publicized conversation about the Power of Siberia-2 project, a mega pipeline through Mongolia that would deliver up to 50 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to China every year. Beijing has long feared that the US Navy could block the Straits of Malacca, choking China’s energy supplies. Power of Siberia-2 serves both Russian and Chinese interests, weakening future leverage for both Europe and the US.

      To pressure Europe, Russia is planning to sell gas not only to China but also to other growing Asian economies, while always holding the implicit threat over Western Europe of restricting gas shipments, just as it has done before in its “gas wars” with Ukraine. Putin’s “gas pivot” is making Europe nervous because Russia remains Europe’s main gas supplier. On December 20, The Moscow Times reported that Russia had cut gas supplies to Europe even as temperatures dropped, a clear example of “gas-politik.” Gas prices have surged as a result, leading to added inflationary pressures in European economies. 

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      Russia is using gas diplomacy not only to cause economic pain to Europe but also to divide its opponents. For years, Russian companies have been building the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany, bypassing Ukraine to deprive the country of gas transit revenue and to leave Kyiv in no position to completely block Russian gas supplies to Europe. Berlin favored Nord Stream 2 because Germany is boosting natural gas imports to transition away from coal and nuclear energy, and the pipeline would double the supply of cheap natural gas from Russia. 

      However, Nord Stream 2 has caused a rift within NATO with allies like Poland and the US opposing Germany’s decision to go ahead with this pipeline project. Recently, the German economics minister has called the pipeline a “geopolitical mistake” and warned Russia that an invasion of Ukraine would lead to a suspension of this controversial project. Yet both Berlin and Moscow know that such a cancellation would depress the German and West European economies. The pipeline, even unfinished, gives Putin good sway over Germany and Europe.

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      Putin is also exploiting the refugee and migration crisis in Europe and the Middle East to pressure the West. Imitating Turkey’s use of Syrian refugees to pressure the EU, the Russian leader has massed thousands of migrants in Belarus, a country now firmly under Russia’s thumb. These migrants have been trying to enter Poland, a member of the EU. Polish police have used tear gas and water cannons to deter migrants from crossing the Belarusian-Polish border, under the keenly watchful eyes of the media. Images of such police action have portrayed Europe as uncaring and inhuman, damaging its reputation, causing internal European divisions, and diverting attention from Russia and Belarus, and especially from Russia’s threatening moves on Ukraine’s border.

      What Will Putin Do Next?

      Fundamentally, Putin is a cold and calculating practitioner of realpolitik. He wants to keep the pot boiling but not spilling over. He wants to avoid war if he can.  So, Putin will keep seizing the initiative, creating strategic dilemmas for the US, NATO and the West on multiple fronts.  He calculates that the West is decadent and unwilling to fight, despite the series of diplomatic and economic sanctions Western states have imposed in response to his actions, especially after his invasion of Crimea.  

      Now, Putin is focused on Ukraine, the “heart of Rus.” In his pan-Russian nationalist worldview, Ukraine is Russian land. Even so, the authors believe it unlikely, on balance, that Putin will invade. But he is likely to extract de facto changes to the status quo in Eastern Ukraine. He is also seeking to destabilize Ukraine’s government and to stop the West from bringing Ukraine within the western fold. He calculates, probably correctly, that the West does not view the Donbas or Luhansk regions of Ukraine, or the fates of ethnic Russians in Ukraine as worth a war between the world’s great powers. Biden did all but make this explicit in his announcement that the prospect of sending US troops to Ukraine was “not on the table.”

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      But Putin’s aggressive actions in Ukraine are merely parts of his larger worldview and strategy.  He has consistently pursued a sphere-of-influence international order, in part to bring the US down a notch, but in line with deeply held beliefs concerning existential Russian security needs in Russia’s “near abroad.” His Eurasianist worldview is coherent, resonates with traditional Russian Orthodox pan-Slavic ideology, and makes it possible for Russians to see themselves as heroes in the drama of world history. Whatever happens to Ukraine, Putin will always seek to reorder Europe and international relations to Russia’s advantage, to weaken his decadent US and European rivals, and to oppose the cosmopolitan, liberal West.

      The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      US Foreign Policy in the Middle East Needs a Rethink

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      In 2019, former US President Jimmy Carter told a church congregation about a conversation he had with Donald Trump, the incumbent president at the time. He said Trump called him for advice about China. Carter, who normalized US ties with China in 1979, told the president that the United States had only been at peace for 16 years since the nation was founded. He also called the US “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.”

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      Carter considers his time in office to be peaceful, but his record says otherwise. Under his one term as president from 1977 to 1981, the US was still instigating conflicts across the world. The most notable was the Iran-Iraq War, which the US, the Soviet Union and their allies were heavily involved in by supporting the Iraqis.

      Causing Trouble

      The Civility Report 2021, a publication of the Peace Worldwide Organization, labels the US the world’s worst troublemaker. The evidence for this is clear.

      First, the US maintains at least 750 military bases in around 80 countries. It also has more than 170,000 troops stationed in 159 countries. Second, in 2016, The Washington Post reported that the US has tried 72 times to overthrow governments of sovereign nations between 1947 and 1989. These actions were in clear violation of the UN Charter. Third, the US continues using economic sanctions against numerous countries to force their leadership to bow to Washington’s demands.

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      The worst example is Iran, which the US has sought to use a policy of “maximum pressure” against. Sanctions are also in clear violation of the UN Charter and affect civilians more than the political leaders they seek to squeeze. These unwarranted interventions in Iran have brought pain and suffering to people in a country that is not known for its human rights.

      The US, meanwhile, is known well as a country that pays lip service to human rights, democracy and peace. It talks about a lack of democracy in some nations but favors tyrannical rulers in others. This includes countries like Bahrain, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

      The US today is the world’s only superpower, and with such power comes great responsibility. If the US is truly interested in human rights, democracy and peace, then it too must change its actions. It must begin by complying with the UN Charter and respecting international law. Washington must right its many wrongs — particularly in the Middle East — not because it is forced to do so, but because it is the right thing for a world in which peace can prosper. For this to become a reality, there are a number of areas for the US to consider.

      Never Forgotten

      The first area is addressing the US relationship with Iran. In the 1980s, in violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, the United States and its European allies provided assistance to Iraq when it leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops. Most victims of that attack in 1988 died instantly, while many others are still suffering from the consequences. Some survivors of the chemical warfare now struggle to find inhalers in Iran, which is scarred by sanctions. The US should acknowledge the role it played in the war and provide reparations for the injuries and damage it caused. 

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      Today, the draconian sanctions the US has placed on Iran has deepened a rift with the European Union, Russia and China, all of which signed a nuclear agreement with Tehran in 2015. The US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 under US President Donald Trump led to the reintroduction of crippling sanctions that have hurt the Iranian middle class and the poor, causing hardship and death.

      Washington must lift its unlawful sanctions, which Trump introduced to bring Iran to its knees. The US thinks that Iran is meddling in the affairs of countries like Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, and that a policy of “maximum pressure” will force it to rethink its foreign policy. The Trump administration used this as an excuse to pull out of the nuclear deal, despite the Iranians complying with all of its obligations under the JCPOA. The US under President Joe Biden should also comply with the JCPOA by rejoining the agreement and lifting sanctions.

      In the long term, a détente between the US and Iran could pave the way for the Iranians to forgive the 1953 coup d’état against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. During the Cold War, a US-orchestrated campaign led to the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh. He was replaced with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the brutal last shah of Iran, who himself was overthrown in the 1979 Revolution. In a country struggling under US sanctions, memories of the coup have never been forgotten.

      Lies Over Iraq

      Iraq is another country where US actions have not been forgotten. If you attack anyone without being provoked, any court with an ounce of justice would require you to repair the inflicted damage. Relations between nations work in the same way. If a nation harms another without provocation, the aggressor is expected to repair the damage caused.

      In 2003, under the false pretext that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ties with al-Qaeda, the US under President George W. Bush invaded Iraq. The result was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his government, the destruction of infrastructure, the death of hundreds of thousands in the years to come and the displacement of 9.2 million Iraqis.

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      The US invasion inevitably led to the rise of radical groups like the Islamic State (IS), which in 2014 seized territory in Iraq and Syria. The trillions that American taxpayers paid for the Iraq War could have been well spent in the US on addressing poverty, building high-speed rail networks or repairing infrastructure. Instead, the dollars were spent on bombs and bullets to counter insurgents like IS.

      When Iraqis led by Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Mahdi al-Muhandis formed a resistance against IS militants and expelled them from Iraq, many people were jubilant that their country was freed. Instead of congratulating Soleimani and Muhandis for the role they played, the US violated Iraq’s territorial integrity. In a US drone strike at Baghdad airport in January 2020, both men were assassinated in violation of international law. The US action was not only unlawful, but it also puts all foreign diplomats in danger by setting a precedent for other countries to assassinate enemies.

      There are two ways the US can make up for its illegal actions of 2003. First, holding those responsible to account for the invasion and human rights violations would show the world that the US is serious about the rule of law. That includes the likes of Bush and his accomplices, who lied and betrayed the trust of the American people, as well as security and military personnel who went beyond the rules of war. Holding such persons to account would restore respect for the US across the world by demonstrating that no one, not even the president or American soldiers, is above the law. Second, providing reparations for the loss of Iraqi and American lives, the injuries caused, the people displaced and the property destroyed is essential.

      Famine in Yemen

      Yemen is another place where bombs have destroyed the country under the watchful eye of the Americans. In 2015, a Saudi-led coalition supported and armed by the United States, Britain and France began indiscriminatingly bombing Yemen in response to a takeover by Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The destruction of Yemen has led to accusations of war crimes by all parties involved. It has also resulted in 5 million people being on the brink of famine and millions more facing starvation.

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      The US must promptly stop all military and intelligence support to the coalition. As the one nation with such political power, the US must work on bringing the combatants together by implementing the UN Charter that calls for respecting “the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.”

      As citizens in a free world, we must assume responsibility for our political leaders’ actions. First, as a bare minimum, we should realize that the problems we cause for others, sooner or later, will come back to haunt us. The example of US support for the mujahideen during the 1980s in Afghanistan is well known. Second, electing the right political leaders who strive for freedom and peace will not only benefit people in faraway lands, but also in the US itself. Instead of taxpayer dollars being spent on weapons, cash can be reinvested into our society to educate children, improve access to health care and do much more.  

      United, we can put “maximum pressure” on the US to become a leader in creating a world free from war, oppression and persecution.

      *[The author is the founder and president of Peace Worldwide Organization, a non-religious, non-partisan and charitable organization in the United States that promotes freedom and peace for all. It recently released its Civility Report 2021, which can be downloaded here.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Could There Be War With Russia?

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      First, let’s be clear: Russia already invaded Ukraine. At the end of February 2014, Russian soldiers without insignia seized key facilities in Crimea and then helped secessionists in eastern Ukraine some weeks later. Crimea is now under Russian control and a civil war continues to flare up over the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east.

      Second, the United States has repeatedly provoked Russia by pushing the boundaries of NATO ever eastward. Virtually all of Eastern Europe is part of the military alliance, and so are parts of the former Soviet Union such as the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Ukraine is in a halfway house called “NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partners” and it has contributed to NATO-led missions.

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      A majority of Ukrainians — those not living in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk — support NATO membership, according to a November 2021 poll. Such poll results are no surprise given that membership would provide Ukraine with the additional insurance of NATO’s collective defense clause. Of all the countries considering membership in NATO, Ukraine is the one that most threatens Russia’s national interests in what it calls the “near abroad.”

      That’s some of the necessary context to the recent news that Russia has been massing around 100,000 soldiers along its border with Ukraine, coupled with medium-range surface-to-air missiles. Russia argues that such maneuvers are purely precautionary. Ukraine and its supporters think otherwise.

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      The United States has rallied its allies to warn Russian President Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine. It has promised to levy additional economic sanctions against Moscow as well as send more US troops to Eastern Europe to add to the several thousand American soldiers in Poland as well as those stationed at four US military bases in Bulgaria, a military facility on Romania’s Black Sea coast and elsewhere. The Biden administration has been clear, however, that it wouldn’t send US soldiers to Ukraine to confront Russian invaders.

      Putin, meanwhile, has demanded that Ukraine’s membership in NATO be taken off the table. He has also called for an immediate security dialogue with the United States and has been strategizing with China’s Xi Jinping on how to coordinate their policies.

      The transfer of troops to the Ukrainian border may simply be a test of the West’s resolve, an effort to strengthen Putin’s hand in negotiations with both Kyiv and Washington, a way of rallying domestic support at a time of political and economic challenges or all of the above. Given enormous pushback from the Ukrainian army among other negative consequences of a military intervention, a full-scale invasion of Ukraine is not likely in the cards. Putin prefers short wars, not potential quagmires, and working through proxies wherever possible.

      A hot war with Russia is the last thing the Biden administration wants right now. Nor is an actual détente with Moscow on the horizon. But could Putin’s aggressive move raise the profile of US-Russia relations in such a way as to lay the foundation for a cold peace?

      Fatal Indigestion?

      The civil war in Ukraine does not often make it into the headlines these days. Ceasefires have come and gone. Fighting along the Line of Contact that separates the Ukrainian army from secessionist forces breaks out sporadically. Since the beginning of the year, 55 Ukrainian soldiers have died and, through the end of September, so have 18 civilians, including four children. Many residents of the border towns have fled the fighting, but millions who remain require humanitarian assistance.

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      For the Russian government, this low-level conflict serves to emphasize its main message: that Ukraine is not really a sovereign country. Moscow claims that its seizure of Crimea was at the behest of citizens there who voted for annexation in a referendum. It argues that the breakaway provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk are simply exercising their right of self-determination in a political climate that discriminates against Russian speakers. Such fissures in the territory of Ukraine, according to this logic, suggest that the government in Kyiv doesn’t have complete control over its borders and has thus failed at one of the principal tests of a nation-state.

      For Ukraine, the issue is complicated by the presence of a large number of Russian-language speakers, some of whom feel more affinity for Moscow than Kyiv. A 2019 law that established Ukrainian as the country’s primary language has not helped matters. Anyone who violates the law, for instance, by engaging customers in Russian in interactions in stores, can be subjected to a fine. So far, however, the government hasn’t imposed any penalties. That’s not exactly a surprise given that the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who objected to the law when he was running for office, is more comfortable speaking Russian in public.

      Despite its domestic challenges and the recent history of Russian military incursions, Ukraine is very much a country. It is a member of the United Nations. Only a handful of states — Somalia, Palau — have neglected to extend it diplomatic recognition. There is no strategic ambiguity about Ukraine’s place in the international order as compared to, say, Taiwan.

      Not even Putin, despite his paeans to “one Russia,” realistically contemplates trying to absorb a largely resistant country into a larger pan-Slavic federation with Russia and Belarus. After all, Moscow has had its challenges with the much smaller task of integrating little Crimea into the Russian Federation. Upgrading the peninsula’s infrastructure and connecting it to the Russian mainland has cost tens of billions of dollars even as the sanctions imposed by the West have cost Russian corporations more than $100 billion. A water crisis in Crimea — because Ukraine blocked the flow from the Dnieper River into the North Crimean Canal — has offset the infrastructure upgrades Moscow has sponsored, leading to speculation last year that Russian would invade its neighbor simply to restart the flow of water.

      Invading Ukraine to resolve problems raised by the earlier invasion of Crimea would turn Vladimir Putin into the woman who swallowed a fly (and then swallowed a spider to catch the fly, then a bird to catch the spider and so on). Such a strategy promises larger and more diverse meals followed by the inevitable case of fatal indigestion.

      An Improbable Peace?

      So far, the Biden administration has offered a mix of threats and reassurances in the face of a possible Russian invasion. New sanctions and the dispatch of additional troops to Eastern Europe have been balanced by the refusal of the administration at this point to consider any direct involvement in Ukraine to counter Russian forces. Biden communicated this strategy not only in speeches, but in a two-hour telephone call with Putin last week. It was, by all accounts, a diplomatic conversation, with no bridge-burning and no Donald Trump-like fawning.

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      Biden and Putin may meet in early 2022. If that sounds like deja vu, you’re right. After Russia mobilized troops on Ukraine’s border last April, a Biden–Putin summit took place in mid-June in Geneva. Long ago, North Korea discovered that missile launches were an effective way of getting Washington’s attention. Russia can no longer count on Trump’s affection for authoritarian leaders to secure summits, so it has now adopted the North Korean approach.

      The important thing is that Putin and Biden are talking and that the respective diplomatic establishments are engaging with one another. The problem is that both leaders face domestic pressure to take a more aggressive stance. In the United States, bipartisan efforts are afoot to send Ukraine more powerful armaments and escalate the threats against Moscow. In the Russian Duma, far-right nationalists like Vladimir Zhirinovsky and putatively left-wing leaders like Communist Party head Gennady Zyuganov have at one point or another called for the outright annexation of Ukraine’s Donbass region. Also, the approval ratings of both Putin and Biden have been dropping over the last year, which provides them with less maneuvering room at home.

      To resolve once and for all the territorial issues involving Ukraine, the latter has to be sitting at the table. The civil war, although still claiming lives, is thankfully at a low ebb. But it’s important to push through the implementation of the 2014 Minsk accords, which committed Ukraine to offer special status to Donetsk and Luhansk that would provide them greater autonomy within Ukrainian borders. Ukraine can bring such a compromise to the table by pushing stalled constitutional amendments through the parliament.

      Crimea is a different problem. Even if Ukraine has international law on its side, it cannot easily roll back Russian integration of the peninsula. As the Brookings Institution’s Steven Pifer points out, success might be the best form of revenge for Ukraine. If the country manages to get its economic act together — a difficult but not impossible task — it will present itself as a better option for Crimeans than being Moscow’s charity case. Queue a second referendum in which Crimea returns to Ukraine by popular demand.

      The question of NATO membership should be treated with a measure of strategic ambiguity. The US government won’t categorically rule out Ukrainian membership, but it also can deliberately slow down the process to a virtual standstill. Russia has legitimate concerns about NATO troops massed on its border. Putin’s demand that the alliance not engage in a military build-up in countries bordering Russia is worthwhile even outside of its value as a bargaining chip.

      Another major thorn in US-Russia relations is Washington’s opposition to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany. Obviously, it should be up to Germany where it gets its energy, and surely Russia is no worse than some of the places the US has imported oil from in the past (like Saudi Arabia). But the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is yesterday’s problem. The pipeline will soon become a huge stranded asset, a piece of infrastructure that will send unacceptable amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and will be made redundant by the falling price of renewable energy. The European Union, additionally, is considering a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism that will only add to the cost of imported natural gas, stranding that particular asset even earlier than expected.

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      Everyone talks about the United States and China working together to battle climate change. The same spirit of cooperation should animate US-Russia relations. The Russian government has been a little bit more forthcoming of late on setting decarbonization goals, but it has a long way to go, according to the analysis of these three Russian environmental activists.

      Imagine Washington and Moscow working together to wean themselves off of their mutual dependency on fossil fuels. Let’s call it a “green détente” that includes regular “carbon control” summits designed to reduce mutual emissions, much as arms control confabs have aimed to cut back on nuclear armaments.

      Of course, there are plenty of other issues that can and will come up in talks between the two superpowers: denuclearization, cyberwarfare, the Iran nuclear agreement, the future of Afghanistan, UN reform. Sure, everyone is talking about avoiding worst-case scenarios right now. The conflict over Ukraine and the conflict inside Ukraine are reminders that the United States and Russia, despite powerful countervailing pressures, can indeed go to war to the detriment of the whole world. Perhaps Putin and Biden, despite the authoritarian tendencies of the former and the status-quo fecklessness of the latter, can act like real leaders and work together to resolve mutual problems that go well beyond the current impasse in Ukraine.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More