Office of External Relations
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The West can't appease Putin
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I used to be amazed how many – especially how many in government – either didn’t know or rejected despite decades of uninterrupted confirming evidence George F. Kennan’s 1940's wisdom that the Soviet (and specifically Russian)” view of the world came from a traditional 'Russian sense of insecurity...'" and that Soviet (and Russian) power was "impervious to the logic of reason", instead it was/is "highly sensitive to the logic of force".
Over and over we see American Presidents and other Western “leaders” wanting to play nice-nice with the Kremlin. It doesn’t work, never has, never will unless the West makes certain it has all of the unquestioned leverage.
In today’s
The Washington Post
Russian chess grandmaster and former world chess champion discusses the sad state of the West’s dealing with Putin.
Democratic leaders need to stop sending all-is-forgiven messages to Putin
By
Garry Kasparov
Contributor
September 17
When Russian
local elections
didn’t go President Vladimir Putin’s way on Sept. 8, he didn’t take it well. Despite the usual techniques of
banning
and jailing opposition candidates, beating peaceful
protesters
and putting the full weight of state-controlled media behind favored candidates, Putin’s United Russia party lost seats across the country, especially in Moscow.
Four days later, Putin launched the largest
security operation
of his 20-year reign. Raids took place in 43 cities across Russia, with police breaking into the offices and homes of opposition groups and activists,
confiscating
documents, computers and even coffee machines.
The supposed show of strength was evidence that Putin’s grip on Russia isn’t as tight as he pretends. He has switched from propaganda to a campaign of violence, first against the protesters and then with raids intended to produce terror, not arrests. Bystanders can be
arrested
and sentenced to years in prison for assaulting a member of the state security forces — a statute used against me in my own arrest seven years ago.
Putin’s popularity was
already sinking
as Russians struggle with economic stagnation — stagnation that has been exacerbated by Western
sanctions
prompted by his war against Ukraine. The crackdown is almost certain to further damage his support.
Whenever Putin faces domestic strife, he looks abroad. Usually this means stirring up trouble so he can portray himself as the bold defender of the motherland, although more Russians now
openly question
his deadly and
costly adventures
in Syria and Ukraine. In the current dangerous standoff between Saudi Arabia and his
client Iran
, Putin will be happy to fan the flames of conflict, knowing it will spike the price of oil — a boon for the oil-dependent Russian economy and for his hold on power.
Yet even as Putin’s position grows more precarious, he has been thrown a lifeline by two supposed leaders of the free world, President Trump and French President
Emmanuel Macron
. Trump’s inexplicable sycophancy toward Putin is well-documented. France has
increased trade
with Russia despite sanctions, and Macron
recently echoed
Trump in expressing support for Russia’s return to the group of leading industrialized economies. The idea is baffling, given that Russia was
ejected
from the Group of Eight in 2014 for invading and annexing Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that remains under Russian domination. [
Domination that includes an effort to make Crimea a massive and threatening Russian military operations base, and despicable human rights abuses. RAM
]
When the West sends these all-is-forgiven messages to Russia, Putin immediately exploits them to show Russian elites that he’s still the big man, that only he can get sanctions lifted — and that he’s not going anywhere.
Instead of deterring Putin from further acts of aggression, whether it’s election interference or invading a neighbor, such appeasement tells him only that there’s no reason to change his ways. What is needed is a united front of democratic nations declaring that Russia will never come in from the cold until it abandons its repression at home and its malign adventures abroad.
I have helped organize an
open letter
calling for such a response, with signatories prominent in politics, diplomacy, law, the arts and human rights, drawn from around the world and across the political spectrum. The letter urges democratic leaders to deny Putin the international legitimacy he craves and to cut off the economic ties that he uses to spread corruption and to fund his domestic repression, hybrid wars and global assassination campaigns. [
It says something – something quite pathetic – that such a letter needs to be written suggesting to “leaders” that common sense should have a role in governance. RAM
]
It cannot happen soon enough. The last thing the United States needs heading into a presidential election year is an emboldened Putin, this time with his favorite candidate wielding the powers of the presidency. [
Kasparov’s next couple of sentences support my question as to whether President Trump is Putin’s “favorite candidate.” Despite his troubling rhetoric Trump has so far done a number of things in support of Ukraine others refused to do. And, none of the Democratic candidates have yet even to suggest where and/or how dealing with the strutting little KGB colonel fits into their vision of the presidency. RAM
] It was astonishing that in the Democratic presidential debate last week, the word “Russia” wasn’t mentioned. Democrats appear to be joining Trump and the Republicans in ignoring what
U.S. intelligence agencies
regard as among this nation’s gravest national security threats. [
In fairness Kasparov has to mean Democrats and Republicans running for president – bipartisan voices from Congress and beyond clearly seem to grasp the situation and want further actions against Russia and in support of Ukraine. RAM
]
On Monday,
news broke
that Russia had breached FBI communications systems in 2010, while President Barack Obama was
still touting
his absurd “
reset
” with Putin. Trump has managed to make things even worse. Why bother bugging the president’s phones if he’s going to ring you up and tell all on his own? Imagine how much a former KGB man such as Putin could get out of him in two hours of unsupervised conversation like they had in
Helsinki
last year. [
A troubling question but who really knows? Not that it matters, but I have never pictured Putin as a clever KGB interrogator. I have seen him more as a heavy-handed KGB thug. RAM
]
I was honored to speak last Thursday at the
Black Ribbon Day Conference
in Toronto, devoted to the 80th anniversary of the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin that paved the way for World War II. The gathering had two main themes: reminding the world that Stalin was Hitler’s murderous partner for nearly two years and sounding an alarm about Putin’s project to rehabilitate Stalin’s reputation.
Lithuanian political scientist Marius Laurinavicius spoke powerfully at the event. He noted that in democracies, it’s inexcusable for citizens to blame elected officials for the paths their nations take. Responsibility lies elsewhere: “It’s you,” he said, “it’s all of us.” Unlike the people of Russia, citizens of the free world can hold their politicians accountable, and it is long past time to do so. [
And long past time for the United States and the West to take firm steps to squelch Putin’s aggression, some quite obvious steps, obvious for quite some time. RAM
]
Gary Kasparov is chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and the author of “Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins.”
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Bob McConnell
Coordinator, External Relations
U.S.-Ukraine Foundation’s Friends of Ukraine Network
rmcconnell@usukraine.org
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