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    Biden Changes the Russia Equation

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    The Biden administration is posing some stark choices for its European allies. It is not only challenging them to stand more firmly against the Kremlin, but is expanding America’s expectations of what democracy should be inside their own countries. President Joe Biden’s tough position on Russia, especially the sanctions announced on April 15, risks further exacerbating the split within NATO countries over how tough to be on the Kremlin. The administration also risks blowback from Central and East European (CEE) states over its strong support for liberal democratic standards that not all of them endorse.

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    For all the contempt that many Europeans held for Donald Trump, his policies toward Russia were easier for some of them to live with. Hard-line NATO nations drew comfort from his continuation of sanctions against Moscow, sale of lethal arms to Ukraine and fierce opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Trump questioned Article 5 of the NATO charter, but Russian President Vladimir Putin never had the stomach to put Trump’s jumbled position on the issue to the test. Meanwhile, Europeans eager to accommodate Russia were encouraged by Trump’s attempts to forge a personal relationship with Putin and his enduring belief that the Kremlin could somehow become an ally.

    Trump was also a convenient president for those in CEE nations with conservative social values and an unsteady commitment to the rule of law. Trump’s attitude toward their countries was simply transactional; his interest was in what America could gain from their relationship. How they were governed held little interest for him.

    Bows and Wrist-Slaps

    Biden has changed the equation dramatically. Some might have expected him to set aside everything that Moscow did during the Trump presidency and focus on the future. Instead, Biden did the opposite. On April 15, he expelled Russian diplomats and imposed significant new sanctions for Russia’s actions during Trump’s time in office, leaving space for a whole new set of possible actions in case of further provocations from Moscow. Some observers found the measures Biden announced to be wrist-slaps.

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    But in many respects, the measures were significant and pointed clearly to future possibilities, ranging from new financial actions to the criminal prosecution of senior Russian regime figures. Officials also intimated that the US might already be retaliating on the cyber front.

    Biden has made the appropriate bows to potential cooperation with Moscow and offered Putin a summit in the coming months in a third country. But overall, the tone of his message to Russia has been hostile, including calling Putin a “killer.” Putin’s claim to legitimacy, at home and abroad, is built on the idea that he is a respected statesman and even something of an intellectual rather than the boss of a dictatorship backed by organized crime. (While most Russian reports on Biden’s comments translated “killer” as “ubiytsa,” the usual word for “murderer,” some media chose the imported word “killer,” which in Russian means a mob hitman.) 

    With Biden taking a more uncompromising attitude to the Kremlin, the question now is whether Western responses to Russian provocations will become much more unified and move well beyond diplomatic statements and scattered financial sanctions. Is a point approaching where US pressure — plus Russia’s threats to Ukraine, its torture of Alexei Navalny, its cyberattacks against the West and its murder of opponents abroad — might finally lead the allies to slash the scale of business deals with Moscow, choke off the flow of illicit Russian money and impose tighter restrictions on visas to the EU? Even if sanctions don’t work, they say something about the values that the country imposing them stands for.

    In CEE countries, substantial numbers of citizens still believe Russia poses little threat to their nations. But the drumbeat of provocations from Moscow, including espionage and even sabotage inside CEE countries, will have its effect. Even though Visegrad nations lack a united policy on Ukraine — mainly because of Hungary — they all backed Czechia’s expulsion of Russian diplomatic staff over the explosion of an arms depot in 2014. Will allied nations now respond to Czechia’s call for them to expel Russian diplomats from their countries, too, to show solidarity?

    Human Rights Challenge

    Meanwhile, the new US administration has thrown down a human rights challenge not only to authoritarian regimes, but to some of its CEE allies. Biden’s team has made clear that America once again cares very much about democratic rights in other countries. When directed at Russia, this message has the dual advantage of reflecting American values while also pressuring Putin, who, judging by his repression of even tiny protests, seems to genuinely believe a “color revolution” is around the corner.

    Yet the policy may well make some allies uncomfortable. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a speech on March 30, declared that in America’s view, there is no “hierarchy of rights” in a democracy. He not only vigorously and specifically defended abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, but essentially put them on the same level as freedom of speech and religion. In so doing, he lined up with forces in the EU that are pressing some CEE countries not only to strengthen basic democratic institutions, but to also adopt liberal social values. The US position creates a new opening for pro-Russian and populist politicians who have been claiming for years that the West is intent on undermining the “morals” of former members of the Soviet bloc.

    Virtuous as the US position may be, it is unclear how far the administration will go with it. Blinken, an experienced diplomat, knows that idealism often must bow to political realities. As his predecessor Mike Pompeo put it, “Our commitment to inalienable rights doesn’t mean we have the capacity to tackle all human rights violations everywhere and at all times.” Even if the administration recognizes no hierarchy of rights, it certainly has a hierarchy of interests. At the top of that hierarchy may well be the geopolitical imperative of keeping CEE nations out of Russia’s orbit.

    If the US runs into too-strong opposition over its human rights agenda, it could focus more on campaigning against corruption. That cause has wide public support. It is also effective against many anti-democratic forces, including pro-Russian actors who thrive on murky financial deals. This could de-escalate conflict over liberal social values while still encouraging activities that undermine Kremlin influence in the CEE region.

    *[Fair Observer is a media partner of GLOBSEC.]

    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

      The US Will Need Turkey to Counter Russia

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      When it comes to the already abysmal Turkish-American relations, Joe Biden’s presidency is being viewed as an ominous train wreck waiting to happen. The president-elect has previously signaled that his administration would “tame” Turkey for policies Ankara has pursued in Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh and the eastern Mediterranean. Moreover, in a sensational video that surfaced last summer, Biden hinted that his administration would provide all necessary tools (with the exception of military equipment) to the Turkish opposition in its endeavor to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who went ballistic over the revelations.

      To make things worse for bilateral relations, in December 2020, Ankara was slapped with the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act for the procurement of the Russian S-400 high-altitude defense system. However, there are mounting signs that the Biden administration will be reluctant to tighten its grip on Turkey, which would compel Washington to find ways to work with Ankara.   

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      Denouncing President Donald Trump’s denigration of the transatlantic alliance, Biden underscored NATO’s critical role in US national security, writing in Foreign Affairs last year: “To counter Russian aggression, we must keep the alliance’s military capabilities sharp. We must impose real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms.” The reality for the next administration is that Russia cannot be countered without Turkey being on board, given that its combat-proven military is considered to be a valuable NATO pillar and its unique geopolitical location has historically acted as a bulwark against Russia’s expansionist instincts.

      There is the perception that Turkey had drifted into the Russian orbit after the procurement of the S-400 system. However, due to having to frequently work with Moscow, Ankara has single-handedly developed capabilities and has taken steps in the Black Sea region, the South Caucasus and Syria that have proven to be effective in limiting Russian influence.  

      The Black Sea 

      The 2015 Maritime Doctrine of the Russian Federation clearly prioritizes the Black Sea as a pillar of Moscow’s power projection. In the last two decades, Russia has consolidated its Black Sea presence by annexing Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region in 2008 and Ukraine’s Crimea, home to the Sevastopol naval base, in 2014. Other strategic locations include the Baltic Sea and the Alaska region of the North Pacific, where American and Russian militaries frequently come dangerously close to physically clashing.

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      Last August, two Russian Su-27s intercepted a US Air Force B-52 strategic bomber over the Black Sea, about which General Jeff Harrigan, commander of US Air Forces in Europe and Africa, warned of possible future mid-air collisions. All things considered, Turkey has the means to limit Russian influence and has displayed resoluteness to not let the Black Sea be turned into “a Russian lake.” 

      In case of Russian aggression, Turkey’s support would be critical to any NATO or US response because of Turkish naval capabilities and responsibility for the straits under the Montreux Convention. The RAND Corporation’s 2018 Black Sea simulation suggests that effective deterrence will require a NATO Black Sea Center of Excellence to be established in Turkey alongside an active use of the Turkish straits. As Sweden’s former Prime Minister Carl Bildt succinctly puts it, “What happens on the Bosporus affects us all.” 

      Turkey has made moves in the Black Sea by establishing robust political and military cooperation with Ukraine. This particularly drew Moscow’s ire given the ongoing conflict between Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Last year, Turkish drone manufacturer Baykar Makina and the Ukrainian defense company Ukrspecexport signed an agreement involving the development and production of “sensitive technologies in defense and aerospace.” Furthermore, Ukraine is poised to purchase 50 Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 UAVs, which have a proven record of destroying sophisticated Russian-made arms such as S-300, Pantsir C1 and TOR-M.

      The success of the Turkish defense industry in the recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh has inspired experts to float the idea that the Ankara-Kyiv military cooperation may very well tip the balance in Donbas and Crimea in favor of Ukraine. Despite the potential of straining relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Erdogan has conveyed Turkey’s support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, a rare area of mutual agreement between Washington and Ankara. Erdogan went so far as to support the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in its row against the Moscow Patriarchate. Finally, Ankara has expressed its full support for the admission in NATO of the Black Sea nation of Georgia, Turkey’s neighbor, a move Putin has declared as a “red line.” 

      Caucasus and Syria 

      Turkey’s explicit military and political support for Azerbaijan in its decisive victory against Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh at the end of last year has propelled Turkey to major-player status in the South Caucasus, traditionally Russia’s backyard. For the first time in more than a century — the last time being the Battle of Baku of 1918 — Turkish military is to be deployed to the South Caucasus after Ankara and Moscow agreed to monitor the ceasefire. The uncomfortable reality for Russia here is, at the end of the day, that soldiers from a NATO member country will be present in its “near abroad.” If Russia had been as strong in the region as it was once believed, it could have singlehandedly navigated the Azeri-Armenian conflict without having to concede to Turkey’s demands.  

      Even more disturbing for Moscow is Turkey’s acquisition of a physical route via Armenian territories to Azerbaijan, which is being dubbed as the Pan-Turkic superhighway, referring to Turkey’s uninterrupted physical link to its ethnic brethren in Azerbaijan and the Turkestan region in Central Asia —  another one of Russia’s post-Soviet satellites. Turkey has, since the fall of the Soviet Union, aspired to establish itself as the leader of the Turkic world. The last thing Moscow would want is to deal with is an ascendant Turkey in Turkestan. As the recent crisis in Kyrgyzstan has shown, Russia may be losing influence there.

      Turkey’s rising influence in the South Caucasus has also raised fears in Iran, home to some 30 million Azeri Turks whose secessionist feelings are now stronger than ever after Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh victory. With Turkey’s permanent presence in the South Caucasus, Russia and Iran will have to take Ankara more seriously in their regional calculations, particularly in Syria. All things considered, President Putin appears to have accepted Turkey’s broader role in the Caucasus. When asked about the topic on Russian television, he conceded: “What can I tell you. It’s a geopolitical fallout from the downfall of the Soviet Union.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      In Syria, as in the Caucasus, Russia has found itself having to work with Ankara. Through a series of accords like the Sochi Agreements of 2018 and 2019, as well as the ongoing Astana Process launched in 2017, Moscow has had to agree (to a certain extent) to concede to Ankara’s demands. Most importantly, Ankara has been able to keep Russia from employing Grozny-style destruction of Idlib province, the last rebel stronghold along Turkey’s border that is home to some 4 million civilians. When 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in an assault by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad last February, Turkey did not hesitate to retaliate by killing hundreds of Russian-backed Syrian army soldiers and destroying countless Syrian tanks and weaponry, which prompted Putin’s plea for a ceasefire agreement with Turkey. 

      If President Biden is serious about containing Russia through reinvigorating NATO, he will need Turkey’s geopolitical standing as well as its military and political clout, both of which have grown exponentially in recent years. The Biden administration will soon have to decide whether US national interests dictate a perpetual punitive approach toward the second-largest NATO member or a better understanding of Turkey’s concerns, particularly when it comes to the Syrian YPG (the Kurdish People’s Protection Units) and the need for a high-altitude missile defense system.  

      Turkey under President Erdogan has grown to be more self-confident. Pushing Ankara away may result in the complete loss of a valuable NATO ally. As James Jeffrey, the former US envoy to Syria, stated, “We really can’t do the Middle East, the Caucuses, or the Black Sea without Turkey.  And, Turkey is a natural opponent of Russia and Iran.” Losing Iran in 1979 cost the United States a strategic foothold in the region. Losing Turkey altogether may cost it Eurasia, where Russia — in tandem with China — has already been steadily building up its standing in defiance of American hegemony.  

      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

      Washington’s Sanctions on Turkey Are Another Gift to Putin

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      The latest sanctions against Turkey introduced by Washington on December 13 were invoked under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, a US federal law that imposes economic sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea. The act came into effect in August 2017. This is the first time it has been used against an ally and, what makes it even more remarkable, an ally who is also a NATO member.

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      As reported by AFP, “The sanctions target Turkey’s Presidency of Defense Industries, the country’s military procurement agency, its chief Ismail Demir and three other senior officials. The penalties block any assets the four officials may have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar their entry into the U.S. They also include a ban on most export licenses, loans and credits to the agency.”

      Long Anticipated

      The decision, long anticipated — and long resisted by President Donald Trump — came about because of Ankara’s refusal to back down from the purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system. Turkey announced back in 2017 it was going ahead with the deal, after feeling it had been rebuffed in its efforts to acquire the US Patriot system at what it considered a fair price and by the refusal of the US to allow for a transfer of the system’s technology.

      Tied into the politics swirling around the S-400 is the F-35, the stealth fighter jet the sale of which to the United Arab Emirates has caused ripples of anxiety in Israel. And given the ambitions of and mutual animosities between Mohammed bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi crown prince and de facto UAE ruler, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, there are, without doubt, similar feelings of anxiety in Ankara, though for different reasons.

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      The Americans took the sale of 100 F-35s to Turkey off the table because of concerns that the presence of the S-400 would potentially enable the Russians to acquire in-depth knowledge of the stealth fighter. In July last year, the White House released a statement that said, in part, that “Turkey’s decision to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems renders its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible. The F-35 cannot coexist with a Russian intelligence-collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities.”

      It was a decision that President Trump, eyeing the half a billion dollars the deal was worth, only grudgingly agreed to. “It’s not fair,” he said. And he groused: “Turkey is very good with us, very good, and we are now telling Turkey that because you have really been forced to buy another missile system, we’re not going to sell you the F-35 fighter jets. It’s a very tough situation that they’re in, and it’s a very tough situation that we’ve been placed in, the United States.”

      Trump, it hardly needs to be said, blamed the Obama administration, claiming his predecessor had blocked the sale. As ever with this president, that’s not true. (For readers who are interested in the actual story, the defense and security site War on the Rocks provides a blow by blow account which can be found here.)

      More in Sorrow

      Though Erdoğan and Trump have had a good relationship, the US president has no time now for anything other than his increasingly pathetic and forlorn crusade to stay in the White House. He couldn’t be bothered to veto the bipartisan decision to invoke sanctions on Turkey. It was left to the outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to try to paper over the cracks. In a statement couched in a tone of “more in sorrow, than in anger,” Pompeo said: “Turkey is a valued ally and an important regional security partner for the United States,” adding that “we seek to continue our decades-long history of productive defense-sector co-operation by removing the obstacle of Turkey’s S-400 possession as soon as possible.”

      The Turks were having none of it. And from them, there was plenty of anger and no sorrow. Calling the decision “inexplicable,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry delivered a blunt rejoinder: “We call on the United States to revise the unjust sanctions (and) to turn back from this grave mistake as soon as possible. Turkey is ready to tackle the issue through dialogue and diplomacy in a manner worthy of the spirit of alliance. (The sanctions) will inevitably negatively impact our relations, and (Turkey) will retaliate in a manner and time it sees appropriate.”

      Purring like the proverbial Cheshire cat was Vladimir Putin. The sanctions, though less harsh than might have been anticipated, play well to his strategy of pulling a NATO member, one with the second-largest standing army in the pact, closer to Moscow. Building on initiatives in Syria where Russian and Turkish forces are jointly policing a shaky ceasefire and on the deal the two countries brokered in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Russian president has further strengthened his hand.

      Faced with an already challenging Middle East portfolio, it is yet another Trumpian mess that the incoming president, Joe Biden, and his pick as secretary of state Antony Blinken, will have to contend with.

      *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest.]

      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

      Russia Has Planted Seeds of the EU’s Demise in the Balkans

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      Earlier this year, Kosovo elected Albin Kurti as prime minister. Progressive, pro-American, pro-justice and anti-corruption, Kurti was precisely the kind of politician Americans would ordinarily wish to see in power in the region. And yet the US has orchestrated what Kurti has called “a parliamentary coup d’etat” to replace him with Avdullah Hoti, who, as soon as he was installed, reversed the measures Kurti had taken to promote reciprocal sovereign relations between Serbia and Kosovo.

      Emerging out of the protests in Kosovo against the failures by the EU and the UN to address the massive corruption and pro-Serbian bias undermining peace negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, Kurti had staunchly refused American requests that Kosovo remove the import tariffs it had imposed on Serbia’s goods for its refusal to recognize Kosovo as an independent state. But if Kurti wanted to garner the same respect for Kosovo that Serbia was getting from the West, and the Trump administration in particular, his recalcitrance soon proved costly.

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      Congressional Republicans, with Trump’s blessing, threatened Kosovo with the loss of $49 million in US support, along with US peacekeepers still deployed in the country. And so, after less than two months in power, Kurti was labeled anti-American and swiftly ousted in a vote of no confidence. Unsurprisingly, Hoti, as Kosovo’s new prime minister, made immediate concessions to Serbia under the guise of aiding peace negotiations.

      Ad Hoc Border Redrawing

      A few weeks ago, an ad hoc White House summit between Serbia and Kosovo intended to promote the idea of land swaps within the region was abruptly canceled after a special prosecutor in The Hague hijacked the US plan with a surprising move by indicting, on June 24, Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaci, for war crimes in the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office even before the pre-trial judge’s confirmation of the charges. This indictment may or may not prove legitimate according to due process, but it did achieve the immediate result of removing the one remaining obstacle to a rushed peace treaty from which Kosovo was unlikely to benefit.

      Thaci’s role as president is largely ceremonial, but his early leadership of Kosovo’s liberation from Serbia and his standing as one of the country’s most prominent politicians of the last 20 years would have made him a formidable peace negotiator.  

      Embed from Getty Images

      The conspicuous timing of this indictment, then, was entirely to the advantage of Serbia and, by extension, Russia. The peace negotiations will go on with Kosovo’s delegation being limited to Hoti, a bit player likely to agree to whatever is put on the table. Serbia, on the other hand, is led by a rising authoritarian, Aleksandar Vucic, whose party has just won a parliamentary majority in an election the integrity of which has been broadly questioned by the country’s opposition.

      Serbia’s minister of information in the late 1990s, Vucic, is credited with banning foreign media and any criticism of the government. Equally sacrosanct is his relationship with Russia. Vucic recently hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Belgrade, gifting him, perhaps symbolically, with yet another puppy. In return for this kind of clearly demonstrated loyalty, Putin has been good to Serbia, delivering anti-aircraft weapons but also actively arming Bosnian Serb police and training paramilitary units to strengthen the voices of separatists in the region.

      Putin has similarly turned Milorad Dodik, the current representative of Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (Bosnia) tripartite presidency, into a political puppet. Emboldened by Trump’s deference to Putin, Dodik has undermined all of Bosnia’s efforts to join the NATO alliance. He has even promised to Bosnian Serbs that he would break up Bosnia and annex nearly half of its land to Serbia, which Serbia — along with Bosnian Serbs — has already ethnically cleansed of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) during the 1990s genocide. Dodik’s continued destabilization of his own country reflects the extent to which Putin dominates the region. To bolster Dodik’s power, in April of this year, Putin stunned Bosnia and Herzegovina’s government by sending Russia’s military units into the country, uninvited.

      If it was not already clear enough, it is now: Putin has successfully enlisted Donald Trump as a pawn in Russia’s long-term geopolitical game in Europe. And with an unfettered Russia free to make such moves as Putin chooses, we may soon be witnessing another round of serious bloodshed in the Balkans. The threat has not gone unnoticed.

      European Concerns

      Europe saw Thaci’s indictment as an opening to inject itself into the peace talks between Kosovo and Serbia. Only a day later, the president of the European Council met with Kosovo’s prime minister; the “1st physical visit since coronavirus” by the president of the European Commission was also with Hoti. Having now been summoned by the EU and perhaps overwhelmed by the pressure brought to bear by his western neighbors, Hoti agreed to participate in new Europe-led peace talks with Vucic that would take the place of that canceled White House summit. 

      The EU was rightly concerned with the direction of the peace talks led by Trump’s envoy, Richard Grenell, and the consequent violence that might have ensued had the peace agreement legitimized the idea of land swaps, as Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, has now confirmed were being discussed. As far as Bolton is concerned, “This happens in history, that’s just something you have to live with.”

      But Europe is far less indifferent to the kind of bloodshed such land swaps might trigger in the Balkans. The EU, after all, now includes Croatia, a country bordering Serbia, which, if drawn into a conflict, would undermine the long-term viability of the already weakened transnational organization. In short, a peace treaty endorsing the land swaps would open a Pandora’s Box of tensions reigniting Serbs’ old claims over territories in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and beyond. Violence of this kind in the Balkans will assure Putin’s ultimate goal of destabilizing Europe. Once again, Russia will have a point of reentry into Eastern Europe, through its own backdoor — the Balkans.

      Under the malign neglect of Trump’s presidency, Vladimir Putin has crafted for himself a unique window of opportunity within which to instigate violence in the Balkans, capitalizing on likely Serb secession from the handful of nations born out of the fall of Yugoslavia. Serbs in Montenegro, Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbs in Croatia and Serbs in Kosovo have long hoped to join into a Greater Serbia, an ethnically cleansed and imagined nation void of religious diversity. It was this same Serb ambition of ethnic purity that led to several wars and the unforgettable genocide against Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s.

      The Bells of Hate

      Today, the bells of hate chime more widely yet, drawing upon white supremacy throughout the West. Aided by Russia and a half-witting Trump, an authoritarian-led Serbia is entirely capable of initiating bloodshed as relentlessly and dangerously as it did in the 1990s — perhaps even more so.

      Setting aside Trump’s own race and religion-based sympathies for Serbian nationalism, American national interests in no way align with Serbia’s agenda of redrawing borders in the Balkans. But with Putin pushing for it, Trump has been in a hurry to help out however he can. And why wouldn’t he be, just ahead of a November election in which his Russian friend may once more be able to play a critical role?

      So while Europe and the US continue to trip over each other, this is the perfect opportunity for Putin to legitimize the idea of redrawn borders. Serbia and Kosovo are one thing, after all, but validating the concept for implementation elsewhere? This would really be something, taking geopolitics back to a mode in which military conquest and ethnic cleansing, rather than aspirations to democracy, human rights and social justice, are what shape the fortunes of nations.

      Putin is a long-term strategist who, while no one was watching, has actively planted the seeds of the EU’s demise in the Balkans. And make no mistake: Neither a canceled meeting in the White House nor another summit hosted by Europeans this summer is going to stop him. In the wake of Richard Grenell’s White House summit debacle and the EU leaders’ evident panic for what comes next, the only thing meaningfully standing in Putin’s way is the tiny NATO-protected country of Montenegro. Last year, Russian military intelligence agents were convicted for their role in a 2016 coup d’état aimed at thwarting Montenegro’s attempt to join NATO. Though the attempt failed, Putin didn’t stop there.  

      In 2018, only three days after the infamous off-the-record meeting between Trump and Putin in Helsinki that shocked the world, President Trump stunned us all yet again when he proclaimed that NATO’s insistence on protecting this newly admitted member, Montenegro, would trigger a war of global proportions. Few were inclined to take this seriously at the time, but watching Trump’s hastened interest in appeasing Russia with the peace treaty between Kosovo and Serbia, America’s indifference toward the rise of Putin’s control over Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the recently announced costly withdrawal of American troops from Germany in the midst of America’s own national crisis shines a light not only on Washington’s shifting alliances but also new dangers on the horizon.

      While the US president insists on enabling serious mischief in the Balkans, Europe can only watch in fear, too weak to stop what may be coming next. Bearing in mind the fact that it was Franz Ferdinand’s assassination by a secret Serb military organization that triggered the First World War, we would do well right now not to look the other way.

      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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      The Mount of Autocrats

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      Donald Trump would dearly like to add his face to Mount Rushmore as the fifth presidential musketeer. His fireworks-and-fury extravaganza on July 3 was the next best thing. Trump’s dystopian speech was almost beside the point. Much more important was the photo op of his smirking face next to Abraham Lincoln’s.

      More fitting, however, would be to carve Trump’s face into a different Rushmore altogether. This one would be located in a more appropriate badlands, like Mount Hermon in Syria near the border with Israel. There, Trump’s visage would join those of his fellow autocrats, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. To honor the illiberal locals, the stony countenances of Bashar al-Assad and Benjamin Netanyahu would make it a cozy quintet.

      Has Putin Won the Vote on Constitutional Amendments?

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      Let’s be frank: Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are not the company that Trump keeps, despite his “America First” pretensions. His ideological compatriots are to be found in other countries: Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Narendra Modi of India, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Viktor Orban of Hungary and so on. Alas, this global Rushmore of autocrats is becoming as crowded as a football team pressed together for a selfie.

      But Putin and Xi stand out from the rest. They get pride of place because of their long records of authoritarian policies and the sheer brazenness of their recent power grabs. By comparison, Trump is the arrogant newcomer who may well not last the season, an impulsive sprinter in the marathon of geopolitics. If things go badly for Team Trump in November, America will suddenly be busy air-brushing 45 out of history and gratefully chiseling his face out of the global Rushmore. Putin and Xi, however, are in it for the long haul.

      Leader for Life

      At the end of June, Russia held a referendum on a raft of constitutional changes that President Putin proposed earlier in the year. In front of Russian voters were over 200 proposed amendments. No wonder the authorities gave Russians a full week to vote. They should have provided mandatory seminars on constitutional law as well.

      Of course, the Russian government wasn’t looking to stimulate a wide-ranging discussion of governance. The Russian parliament had already approved the changes. Putin simply wanted Russian voters to rubber-stamp his nationalist-conservative remaking of his country.

      At the same time, a poor turnout would not have been a good look. To guarantee what the Kremlin’s spokesman described as a “triumphant referendum on confidence” in Putin, workplaces pressured their employees to vote and the government distributed lottery prizes. Some people managed to vote more than once. On top of that, widespread fraud was necessary to achieve the preordained positive outcome.

      Instead of voting on each of the amendments, Russians had to approve or disapprove the whole package. Among the constitutional changes were declarations that marriage is only between a man and a woman, that Russians believe in God and that the Russian Constitution takes precedence over international law. Several measures increased executive power over the ministries and the judiciary. A few sops were thrown to Putin’s core constituencies, like pensioners. Who was going to vote against God or retirees?

      But the jewel in the crown was the amendment that allows Putin to run for the presidency two more times. Given his systematic suppression of the opposition, up to and including assassination, Putin will likely be in office until he’s 84 years old. That gives him plenty of time to, depending on your perspective, make Russia great again or make Russia into Putin, Inc.

      The Russian president does not dream of world domination. He has regional ambitions at best. Yet these ambitions have brought Russia into conflict with the United States over Ukraine, Syria, even outer space. And then there’s the perennial friction over Afghanistan. Much has been made in the US press about Putin offering the Taliban bounties for US and coalition soldiers. It’s ugly stuff, but no uglier than what the United States was doing back in the 1980s.

      Did you think that all the US money going to the mujahideen was to cultivate opium poppies, run madrasas and plan someday to bite the hand that fed them? The US government was giving the Afghan “freedom fighters” guns and funds to kill Soviet soldiers, nearly 15,000 of whom died over the course of the war. The Russians have been far less effective. At most, the Taliban have killed 18 US soldiers since the beginning of 2019, with perhaps a couple tied to the bounty program.

      Still, it is expected that a US president would protest such a direct targeting of US soldiers even if he has no intention to retaliate. Instead, Trump has claimed that Putin’s bounty program is a hoax. “The Russia Bounty story is just another made up by Fake News tale that is told only to damage me and the Republican Party,” Trump tweeted.

      Knowing how sensitive the US president and the public are to the death of America soldiers overseas, Putin couldn’t resist raising the stakes in Afghanistan and making US withdrawal that much more certain. Taking the United States out of the equation — reducing the transatlantic alliance, edging US troops out of the Middle East, applauding Washington’s exit from various international organizations — provides Russia with greater maneuvering room to consolidate power in the Eurasian space.

      Trump has dismissed pretty much every unsavory Kremlin act as a hoax, from US election interference to assassinations of critics overseas. Trump cares little about Ukraine, has been lukewarm if not hostile toward US sanctions against Moscow, and has consistently attempted to bring Russia back into the G8. Yet he has also undermined the most important mechanism of engagement with Russia, namely arms control treaties.

      President Trump’s servile approach to Putin and disengaged approach to Russia is the exact opposite of the kind of principled engagement policy that Washington should be constructing. The United States should be identifying common interests with Russia over nuclear weapons, climate, regional ceasefires, reviving the Iran nuclear deal — and, at the same time, criticizing Russian conduct that violates international norms.

      Territory Grab

      China’s Xi Jinping has already made himself leader for life, and he didn’t need to go to the pretense of a referendum on constitutional changes. In 2018, the National People’s Congress simply removed the two-term limit on the presidency and boom: Xi can be on top ‘til he drops. Forget about collective leadership within the party. And certainly forget about some kind of evolution toward democracy. Under President Xi, China has returned to the one-man rule of the Mao period.

      So, while Putin was busy securing his future this past weekend, Xi focused instead on securing China’s future as an integrated, politically homogeneous entity. In other words, Xi moved on Hong Kong.

      Hong Kong once had great economic value for Beijing as a gateway to the global economy. Now that China has all the access to the global economy that it needs and then some, Hong Kong has only symbolic value, as a former colonial territory returned to the Chinese nation in 1997. To the extent that Hong Kong remains an enclave of free-thinkers who take potshots at the Communist Party, Beijing will step by step deprive it of democracy.

      On June 30, a new national security law went into effect in Hong Kong. “The new law names four offences: secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces,” Matt Ho writes in the South China Morning Post. “It also laid out new law enforcement powers and established government agencies responsible for national security. Conviction under the law includes sentences of life in prison.”

      The protests that have roiled Hong Kong for the past many months, from Beijing’s point of view, violate the national security law in all four categories. So, violators may now face very long prison sentences indeed, and police have already arrested a number of people accused of violating the new law. The new law extends to virtually all aspects of society, including the schools, which now must “harmonize” their teaching with the party line in Beijing.

      What’s happening in Hong Kong, however, is still a dilute version of the crackdown taking place on the mainland. This week, the authorities in Beijing arrested Xu Zhangrun, a law professor and prominent critic of Xi. He joins other detainees, like real-estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang, who was linked to an article calling Xi a “clown with no clothes on who was still determined to play emperor” and Xu Zhiyong, who called on Xi to resign for his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

      Meanwhile, Beijing’s treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang province amounts to collective punishment: more than a million consigned to “reeducation camps,” children separated from their families, forced sterilization. Uighur exiles have charged China with genocide and war crimes before the International Criminal Court.

      Like Putin, Xi has aligned himself with a conservative nationalism that appeals to a large portion of the population. Unlike Putin, the Chinese leader doesn’t have to worry about approval ratings or periodic elections. He is also sitting on a far-larger economy, much greater foreign currency reserves, and the means to construct an illiberal internationalism to replace the Washington consensus that has prevailed for several decades. Moreover, there are no political alternatives on the horizon in China that could challenge Xi or his particular fusion of capitalism and nationalism.

      Trump has pursued the same kind of unprincipled engagement with China as he has with Russia: flattery of the king, indifference toward human rights and a focus on profit. Again, principled engagement requires working with China on points of common concern while pushing back against its human rights violations. Of course, that’s not going to happen under the human rights violation that currently occupies the White House.

      And Trump Makes Three

      Trump aspires to become a leader for life like his buddies Putin and Xi, as he has “joked” on numerous occasions. He has similarly attacked the mainstays of a democratic society — the free press, independent judges, inspectors general. He has embraced the same nationalist-conservative cultural policies. And he has branded his opponents as enemies of the people. In his Rushmore speech on July 3, Trump lashed out against:

      “… a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us. Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.”

      He went on to describe his crackdown on protesters, his opposition to “liberal Democrats,” his efforts to root out opposition in schools, newsrooms and “even our corporate boardrooms.” Like Putin, he sang the praises of the American family and religious values. He described an American people that stood with him and the Rushmore Four and against all those who have exercised their constitutional rights of speech and assembly. You’d never know from the president’s diatribe that protesters were trying to overthrow not the American Revolution but the remnants of the Confederacy.

      Trump’s supporters have taken to heart the president’s attacks on America’s “enemies.” Since the protests around George Floyd’s killing began in May, there have been at least 50 cases of cars ramming into demonstrators, a favorite tactic used by white supremacists. There have been over 400 reports of press freedom violations. T. Greg Doucette, a “never Trump” conservative lawyer, has collected over 700 videos of police misconduct, usually violent, toward peaceful demonstrators.

      As I’ve written, there is no left-wing “cultural revolution” sweeping the United States. It is Donald Trump who is hoping to unleash a cultural revolution carried out by a mob of violent backlashers who revere the Confederate flag, white supremacy and the Mussolini-like president who looks out upon all the American carnage from his perch on the global Rushmore of autocrats.

      *[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

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      Has Putin Won the Vote on Constitutional Amendments?

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      On July 3, the Russian central election commission announced the results of the nationwide vote on constitutional reforms, the biggest shake-up of the constitution since it was adopted in 1993. According to official data, 77.92% of voters, or 57.7 million people, cast their ballots in favor of the reforms, with a 67.97% turnout. The vote […] More

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      Vladimir Putin Keeps a Tight Grip on Power

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      Since the beginning of 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity has dropped to its lowest point in 14 years. From February to March, Putin’s favorability dropped from 69% to 63%, and his disapproval ratings rose from 30% to 36%. While the Russian president continues to have a net favorability among his citizens, the declining numbers […] More

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      Putin Proposes, Trump Disposes

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      In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin is proposing a new constitution. Meanwhile, in Washington, US President Donald Trump is disposing of the old constitution. The first is a demonstration of power meant to showcase the unity of the Russian political system behind a strong leader. The second is an act of desperation that reveals the […] More

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      Putin Is Leaving, But Not Saying Goodbye

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      The reorganization of power has begun in Russia. This process is also referred to as the solution to the so-called “problem 2024” — the year that marks the end of Vladimir Putin’s last term as president. By law he has no right to run in the next election, since Russia’s Constitution stipulates a limit of […] More