Every time the administration opens its mouth, it's only making things worse in Ukraine.

Something must be done about Syria,” the hawks cry. Well, try diplomacy

On Syria, it’s the D-word that has become unsayable. Yes, diplomacy. To call for a diplomatic or negotiated solution to the Syrian conflict is to invite ridicule and opprobrium from the neoconservatives and self-described liberal interventionists. They still, inexplicably, dominate foreign-policy debates in the west despite their support for the catastrophic invasion of Iraq just ten years ago.

Diplomacy is for wimps, naïfs or fools; proposed peace talks in Geneva are a distraction, an evasion and a waste of time. Bashar al-Assad will kill, kill, kill while we talk, talk, talk. Only a military strike by the western powers will deter him – and protect Syrian children from chemical attacks.

This is the seductive mantra that has dominated much of the discussion on Syria. Until the Russians proposed that the Assad regime place its chemical weapons under international control – and the regime apparently decided to agree to it. Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical judo throw didn’t just put his US counterpart on the defensive; it reminded the rest of us that the world isn’t as black-and-white as the neocons and their liberal fellow-travellers often claim.

Military action is unavoidable, say the hawks. Thousands of people are dead, millions are homeless. We have tried the diplomatic route, they declare, and found it wanting. Nothing could be further from the truth. Diplomacy hasn’t been tried in Syria. It has been 15 months since the first peace conference in Geneva, in June 2012, while the second peace conference (“Geneva II”) has now been postponed twice – at the request of the Americans, not the Russians. The UN peace envoy Kofi Annan quit in 2012, claiming that he “did not receive all the support that the cause deserved”.

In a bizarre twist, we now have diplomats – such as the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and British Foreign Secretary, William Hague – loudly demanding air strikes while the generals, including Martin Dempsey, America’s top soldier, and Richard Dannatt, the former head of the British army, quietly express their doubts over the viability of military action and lend their support to a political solution.

Diplomacy might not work, but it is our best bet – and I would still rather we try to pour water, not fuel, on the flames of Syria’s terrible civil war.

The New Statesman, Sept 12, 2013

Creating a New International Order

“The Diplomat”, April 25, 2012

The global order has been in flux since the end of the Cold War. Two fundamental trends are reshaping the international system. First, power shifts at the global level are creating a more diverse international order as emerging and resurgent players pursue and assert their own interests. The likelihood of effective policy coordination has been reduced. Diverging interests as well as diverse perspectives on how to approach the growing number of new and longstanding issues on the international agenda have led to greater fragmentation of world politics.

At the same time, the emerging international order is characterized by deepening interdependence. All major (and minor) powers face challenges of economic growth, energy security, and environmental sustainability, all of which are intimately interconnected and which no nation can successfully confront on its own.

This creates a fundamental dilemma: managing this interdependence through multilateral cooperation demands enlightened self-interest at the very time that established means of interaction are being undermined.

As a result, the prospects for effective global governance – broadly defined as the collective management of common problems at the international and transnational level – are deteriorating because challenges on the global agenda like climate change, poverty, food insecurity, nuclear proliferation, or economic crises, are increasing in number, scale, and complexity at the very time that international institutions and national governments are being hobbled in their capacity to address them.

The G-20 is the most important recent innovation in global governance. This group played a crucial role in dealing with the immediate challenges posed by the financial and economic crisis. Yet as soon as the sense of urgency – the fear that a global financial breakdown was a very real possibility – abated, diverging interests reasserted themselves to dominate discussions and frustrate action. Real solutions to the world’s financial problems remain beyond reach, and even the legitimacy of this new organization is being contested.

Nevertheless, the creation of the G-20 is one sign that the international system is trying to respond to new challenges and fix urgent problems through new initiatives. It also reinforced the perception that global governance is in essence global crisis management; in other words, a coordinated and coherent multilateral policy is only possible under the pressure of a global crisis that threatens to have immediate and severe impact on a multitude of domestic populations.

There’s another factor at work. As international relations become more diverse and complex, power isn’t only shifting from established to emerging countries, but also toward individuals and non-state actors. Modern information and communication technologies have empowered individuals and social groups to an unprecedented degree. The Internet and social media have extended the reach and influence of individuals and organizations and enabled them to directly engage in international affairs.

The growing importance and impact of non-state actors in international politics is one distinctive political development. Transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), civil society groups, social entrepreneurs, faith-based organizations, multinational corporations and other business bodies, as well as trans-sectoral public policy networks are increasingly effective in framing issues, setting agendas, and mobilizing public opinion. At the same time, however, non-state actors such as criminal organizations and terrorist networks, also empowered by new information and communication technologies, pose serious threats to the international system. Although non-state actors usually have no formal decision making power and don’t necessarily alter the policymaking process, their impact on world politics is significant and likely to grow.

The new configuration of international relations is, by and large, inherently chaotic and ungovernable. Power is increasingly geographically dispersed and politically fragmented. It’s shifting from established Western powers to emerging countries, but also, to some extent, to non-state actors who assume previously public responsibilities or pursue agendas of their own. This diffusion of power is creating a new international environment that defies clear definition. In our understanding, the new global order can’t be accurately described as a multipolar world, in which a few great powers are setting the rules of the game and disciplining those who violate them. We see little agreement on what those powers are, their willingness to work together, and the efficacy of actions if and when they do.

Global governance will become more difficult, but not impossible. Even in a world without powerful organizing forces, there are magnetic pulls and tugs that can align nations and facilitate cooperation and collaborative efforts. Let’s call this “weak polarity.” A new international order won’t emerge spontaneously, but there are many things that can and should be done to foster its creation. One defining characteristic of the emerging new age is that power, at least in the sense of traditional “hard” power, and leadership are less linked. In the absence of a comprehensive, unitary approach to global governance, new forms of leadership will emerge, not as enduring as traditional alliances or international institutions, but rather patchworks of overlapping, often ad hoc and fragmented efforts, involving shifting coalitions of state and non-state actors concentrating on specific issues. The leadership exercised by “coalitions of the willing” will be more fragmented, situational, and volatile than previous attempts. But they nevertheless might achieve concrete results.

There’s a thick layer of overlapping and competing authorities in the existing system of global governance and most emerging countries have no interest in upending this system; they prefer to make adjustments. But the future international order will be no mere outgrowth of existing mechanisms. Planetary problems pose new challenges and require new problem-solving mechanisms as management of them is of a different nature and dimension than past challenges. The lowest common denominator is no longer a sufficient starting point for meaningful coordinated action on the global level. Whether this means the creation of new institutions is of secondary importance: either existing intuitions may take up the challenges or new ones will be created.

There’s a lack of vision about the future of the international system and the emerging global order. To facilitate creation of such a vision, we need a strategic conversation about global governance and the foundations of a new international order.

An Anchorless World

The United States, through its secretary of state and president respectively, promises an “unbelievably small” military response to the gassing of hundreds of Syrian children by President Bashar al-Assad, then vows that “the United States military doesn’t do pinpricks,” and then backs away. Britain abandons its closest ally at crunch time. The European Union is divided, Germany silent, France left dangling, and NATO an absentee. If there are other pillars of the trans-Atlantic alliance, do let me know.

Vladimir Putin steps into the Western void, spurred by an off-the-cuff remark in London from John Kerry (that he himself seemed to dismiss), and suddenly Assad’s Syria promises to give up to international supervision the chemical weapons whose existence it has previously denied.

A war-weary America clutches at this Syrian straw and defers to Russian mediation; a congressional vote on military action that President Obama seemed set to lose is indefinitely postponed. A State Department spokeswoman had it right when she initially described Kerry’s proposal as purely “rhetorical,” because “this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons.”

The hesitancy since the chemical attack has highlighted a lack of U.S. leadership throughout the Syrian conflict. The just cause of rebels fighting the 43-year tyranny of the Assad family was never backed by arming them; and when Islamist radicals moved into Syria, their presence was used to justify the very Western inaction that had fostered their arrival.

The sight of a president who draws a red line on chemical attack and then says “I didn’t set a red line” (the world did); who has Kerry plead a powerful case for military action only to stall; who notes that for “nearly seven decades the United States has been the anchor of global security,” and then declares “America is not the world’s policeman” — the sight of all this has marked a moment when America signaled an inward turn that leaves the world anchorless.

NY Times, Sept 12, 2013

Europe’s Truths

Over the past three years, since Greece hit the panic button, Europe’s pain has been much examined, with inconclusive results.

The crisis that began in Greece has been controlled for now, but much of Europe, including France, is in recession. The questions triggered here about the future of Europe, and its common currency, are unresolved.

The Union that was the European miracle of the second half of the 20th century now embodies the malaise of the 21st.

A counterargument exists. It is that the agony of the euro will end up illustrating Jean Monnet’s phrase that crises are the great federators of history. The planned European banking union, single supervisory system and fiscal harmonization will prove to be the catalysts of the Continent’s ever closer union.

What is unquestionable is that Europe is living its deepest unease since the end of the Cold War.

France and Germany were the twinned engines of European integration: France gave the political lead, Germany the economic muscle. That is over. German dominance over a drifting France is so evident as to be almost embarrassing.

The French can no longer persuade themselves that the Union will be France writ large, and so they are ambivalent. Germany, uncertain about power because of the way it once used it, is hesitant about assuming what it is: Europe’s leading nation. It faces plenty of misgivings, not least in Greece, about any whiff of German assertiveness.

Britain might have stepped into this void. Instead, it stepped out the way. Under a Tory leader, in the grip of diffuse anger spewing from austerity, it has gone on a euro-skeptic walkabout. A referendum looks likely on continued E.U. membership in 2017.

It is compounded by austerity, exacerbated by strong feelings of injustice, fed by the fact that in countries like Greece credit is not getting into the real economy. Without credit there can be no resumption of growth. Massive fiscal adjustments have been made but people do not believe the worst is over — and they blame the Union.

What, they ask, is this undemocratic thing for? Not for our defense (peace is taken for granted); not for our prosperity (it has dwindled); not to build a United States of Europe that will count (the idea has become fanciful).

Ingratitude and short memories are facts of life. The Union is suffering from them at a time when the euro needs federalizing measures to be a credible currency. The question is whether these needed unifying steps are politically tenable as a populist anti-European right is rising in France, under Marine Le Pen, and elsewhere.

The federalizing path is achievable. But it will require new leadership to make the case. About 80 percent of the world’s growth in the past five years has been in developing countries. For a Europe of dwindling importance to break itself up would be to ignore the course of history.

Europe needs a persuasive idea of its future that can rebuild democratic support. It needs growth. For that it needs competitiveness. These truths must be told. As the 100th anniversary of World War I approaches, the European killing fields of the 20th century fade. Their story, and how the Union stopped the cycle of bloodshed, and how it later cemented the freedom of ex-Communist states, needs to be retold.

The euro is a political idea born of calamitous European experience. Unraveling would provide a sharp reminder of the calamities. That truth also needs to be retold. I can think of no one better to do so than the winner of the German election in September.

Crisis can still be the federator if leaders have a sense of history and a view of the future that extends beyond tomorrow.

The International Herald Tribune, July 2, 2013

DIPLOMACY IS DEAD

Effective diplomacy — the kind that produced Nixon’s breakthrough with China, an end to the Cold War on American terms, or the Dayton peace accord in Bosnia — requires patience, persistence, empathy, discretion, boldness and a willingness to talk to the enemy.

This is an age of impatience, changeableness, palaver, small-mindedness and an unwillingness to talk to bad guys. Human rights are in fashion, a good thing of course, but the space for realist statesmanship of the kind that produced the Bosnian peace in 1995 has diminished. The late Richard Holbrooke’s realpolitik was not for the squeamish.

There are other reasons for diplomacy’s demise. The United States has lost its dominant position without any other nation rising to take its place. The result is nobody’s world. It is a place where America acts as a cautious boss, alternately encouraging others to take the lead and worrying about loss of authority. Syria has been an unedifying lesson in the course of crisis when diplomacy is dead. Algeria shows how the dead pile up when talking is dismissed as a waste of time.

Violence, of the kind diplomacy once resolved, has shifted. It occurs less between states and more dealing with terrorists. One result is that the military and the C.I.A. have been in the driver’s seat in dealing with governments throughout the Middle East and in state to state (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq) relations. The role of professional diplomats is squeezed.

Of course diplomats do many worthy things around the world, and even there were a couple of significant shifts — in Burma where patient U.S. diplomacy has produced an opening, and in Egypt where U.S. engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood was important and long overdue.

Breakthrough diplomacy is not conducted with friends. It is conducted with the likes of the Taliban, the ayatollahs and Hamas. It involves accepting that in order to get what you want you have to give something. The central question is: What do I want to get out of my rival and what do I have to give to get it? Or, put the way Nixon put it in seeking common ground with Communist China: What do we want, what do they want, and what do we both want?

NY Times, Jan 21, 2013

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back - Democracy is in retreat

Over the past two years, the world's attention has been captured by previously unimaginable -- even rapturous -- changes throughout parts of the Arab world, Africa, and Asia, where political openings have been born in some of the most repressive and unlikely societies on Earth. "The Arab Spring is the triumph of democracy," Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki told the Guardian in 2012.

Don't believe the hype. In reality, democracy is going into reverse.

Global economic stagnation since the 2008 crash has weakened public support for democracy. New middle classes have been hit hard by the malaise, particularly in Eastern Europe. A comprehensive study of Central and Eastern Europe by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development released in 2011 found that the crisis severely lowered support for democracy in all 10 of the new EU countries. "Those who enjoyed more freedoms wanted less democracy and markets when they were hurt by the crisis," the report noted.

Countries often held up as new democratic models have regressed over the past decade. When they entered the European Union in 2004, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia were considered success stories. After nearly a decade as EU members, however, all of these bright lights have dimmed. Populist and far-right parties with little commitment to democratic norms gained steady popularity and public distaste for democracy increased.

Even where democracy has deeper roots, disillusionment with the political process has exploded in recent years. From hundreds of thousands of Indians demonstrating against corruption to the French pushing back against government austerity measures, middle classes are increasingly turning to street protests to make their points.

In his second inaugural address, U.S. President Barack Obama, like every U.S. president for decades, spoke of America's role in helping promote democracy around the globe. He may have the best of intentions, but in reality there is little he can do. The sad, troubling regression of democracy in developing countries isn't something that America can fix -- because it has to be fixed at home too.

Foreign Policy, March 2013

U.S. – RUSSIAN RELATIONS - TIME FOR A PAUSE

At the beginning of Obama's first term U.S. and Russian interests seemed to overlap enough for both countries to compromise on some divisive issues. After Washington and Moscow launched the "reset" in March 2009, a number of cooperative efforts followed. These included the cancellation of Washington's planned deployment of missile interceptors and a radar in Poland and the Czech Republic; the signing of New START; and Moscow's vote in June 2010 for UN Security Council Resolution 1929, which imposed sanctions against Iran.

But by the end of 2011, Washington and Moscow began to drift apart, as a changing geopolitical context has produced a growing disconnect between the two countries' objectives and guiding values in key policy areas. In the nuclear arena, European missile defense appears to have hardened into an insurmountable obstacle to Russia's cooperation on other strategic arms reduction agreements. Moscow has threatened to withdraw from New START, and in October 2012, it announced its abandonment of the 20-year-old Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, under which the United States has spent more than $7 billion to help deactivate over 7,500 Russian strategic warheads.

Meanwhile, from Washington's vantage point, this new geopolitical context is also marked by a significant diminution of Russia's relevance to key U.S. interests. With respect to Iran, Moscow has ceased support for even the weakened version of sanctions it previously voted for in the UN Security Council. Syria, of course, has been the starkest demonstration of the divergence in guiding values and objectives between the United States and Russia: Moscow has thrice vetoed U.S.-supported Security Council resolutions calling for sanctions against Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The divergence of the United States' and Russia's core foreign policy objectives has left the White House with two strategic options. The first is attempting to revive the "reset". Although U.S. President Barack Obama has signaled lately that he will attempt to revive the "reset" with Russia, Washington's best option may well be a strategic pause: a much-scaled-down mode of interaction that reflects the growing disparity in values and objectives between the two countries yet preserves frank dialogue and even cooperation in a few select areas.

Foreign Affairs

The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy

The United States emerged from the Cold War as the single most powerful state in modern times, a position that its diversified and immensely productive economy supports. The fortuitous geostrategic position of the United States compounds its economic advantages. Its neighbors to the north and south possess only miniscule militaries. Vast oceans to the west and east separate it from potential rivals. And its thousands of nuclear weapons deter other countries from ever entertaining an invasion.

Ironically, however, instead of relying on these inherent advantages for its security, the United States has acted with a profound sense of insecurity, adopting an unnecessarily militarized and forward-leaning foreign policy. That strategy has generated predictable pushback. Since the 1990s, rivals have resorted to what scholars call "soft balancing" -- low-grade diplomatic opposition. China and Russia regularly use the rules of liberal international institutions to delegitimize the United States' actions. In the UN Security Council, they wielded their veto power to deny the West resolutions supporting the bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and more recently, they have slowed the effort to isolate Syria. They occasionally work together in other venues, too, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Although the Beijing-Moscow relationship is unimpressive compared with military alliances such as NATO, it's remarkable that it exists at all given the long history of border friction and hostility between the two countries. As has happened so often in history, the common threat posed by a greater power has driven unnatural partners to cooperate.

American activism has also generated harder forms of balancing. China has worked assiduously to improve its military; Iran and North Korea have pursued nuclear programs in part to neutralize the United States' overwhelming advantages in conventional fighting power. Some of this pushback would have occurred no matter what; in an anarchic global system, states acquire the allies and military power that help them look after themselves. But a country as large and as active as the United States intensifies these responses.

Foreign Affairs

Hold the Referendum

In case you have wondered, “Brexit” is not a new breakfast cereal; it is the neologism doing the rounds to describe possible British withdrawal from the European Union.

David Cameron, the Tory prime minister, is to give a much-awaited speech on Europe later this month in which he will demand renegotiated terms and set out the road map for an eventual referendum on revised membership. So-called “Outs” are convinced they can win.

The alarm is on the rise. The United States, Germany and British business leaders have all warned Cameron in recent weeks that a 21st-century Britain bobbing adrift off the Continent is a losing proposition. Philip Gordon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European affairs, said this month of Britain that, “More than most others, its voice within the European Union is essential and critical to the United States.”

It was an unusually forthright U.S. intervention in the murk of euro-affairs, reflecting geostrategic concerns that a British exit would destabilize Europe, leave it under German-French domination, reduce the free-market voice within it, and deprive a multitude of British-based American corporations of the benefits of the vast single European market.

Has the Obama administration overreacted? I think not. This time the British rumblings are serious. A recent Guardian poll found that 51 percent of respondents would vote for a British exit, against 40 percent who would vote to stay in. The causes for concern lie deep.

The euro crisis has cemented the British conviction that it was right to stick with sterling and soured the image of Europe in general.

Moreover, Britain has changed in unpredictable ways. The recent census revealed a country where 7.5 million people are foreign-born, an increase of 2.6 million since 2001. The country is more diverse, less white, less Christian, less religious overall, more open.

Still, Cameron should go ahead with his referendum plans. The democratic deficit of the European Union is real. It is a core problem. Precisely because the British debate is serious and deep-rooted this time, it has to be played out. A vote is needed. And I believe that British good sense would prevail.

NY Times, Jan 14, 2013

The Pivot to Nothing

The joke about the Obama administration's "pivot to Asia" is that the only people who don't believe it is happening are in Asia.

All over the world, America's friends and allies feel the ebbing of attention from their regions and problems. But they mistakenly believe that this reduction has resulted in greater attention elsewhere. So Iraq understands that President Barack Obama is indifferent to the violence that continues to burn in their country, but they assume he is increasing engagement in Afghanistan. Afghans understand that Obama is indifferent to the war still raging in their country, but assume he must be deeply involved in ensuring a peaceful transition of power in some other country America cares about more. Europeans see a president walking back from missile defense deployments and the Budapest Memorandum, which commits the United States to the territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine, and believe that he has chosen to focus on Asia.

But Asian governments understand they're getting the same treatment as everyone else: trade negotiations without political investment by the White House, foreign policy that takes a back seat to domestic political wrangling, sporadic mania of involvement in foreign policy that achieves nothing, and lack of a strategy that either identifies common goals or elucidates the means to collectively achieve them.

Countries with small margins for error and dependence on the protection of others -- like America's allies in Asia -- tend to have very sensitive antennas to the potential for abandonment. The Obama White House may think that its fecklessness on Syria has no consequence or that its downward negotiation of what constitutes an end to Iranian nuclear weapons programs has no downside. The administration seems genuinely to believe that the president proudly insisting that "I don't bluff" is adequate to reassure countries nervous about America's willingness to make good on promises. It isn't. The pivot to Asia is one more instance of the Obama White House patting itself on the back while America's allies fret about the country's lack of seriousness.

FP, Apr 21, 2014

The White House Needs to Shut Up

Every time the administration opens its mouth, it's only making things worse in Ukraine.

The Obama White House cannot resist the temptation to parade its every move in the Ukraine crisis -- much to the detriment of its policy succeeding. This is an indiscipline born of self-regard: The White House thinks the president is so compelling and so central to the narrative that his every utterance is advantageous. And, of course, this is an administration in which no national security issue is assessed innocent of domestic political impact. They are failing to understand that by making the crisis so personal, the United States is doing a disservice to the people of Ukraine and making it much more difficult for the Russians to walk back their reckless grab for Crimea.

The White House not only tells reporters when the president talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but then spills the contents of the phone calls. So we know they talked for 90 minutes on Saturday, March 1, and again five days later when President Barack Obama told Putin, according to a White House readout, that "Russia's actions are in violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, which has led us to take several steps in response, in coordination with our European partners." The president himself stepped up to the mic that same day to say, "We are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders."

But it is a mystery why this White House thinks any of this will soften Putin's resolve to see this gambit through. Maybe Obama thinks pious reassertion of Western values will cement European support for economic sanctions on Moscow (that will hit their economies, but not America's). In any event, the White House seems not to appreciate that the president's statement is factually untrue, as Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008 actually did redraw borders over the head of a democratic leader, and this very administration did precious little to penalize a Russia with which it wanted to "reset" relations on more positive footing.

Moreover, let's recall just how much moral, if not legal, ambiguity we face in this crisis. The United States has sided with people who just overthrew a democratically elected government -- the protests in Kiev overturned a democratic process, just as the protests in Cairo ousted President Mohamed Morsi. So the administration looks to be on pretty thin ice when it touts the unassailability of democratic processes. It not only makes the United States look hypocritical -- the country only respects the rules when they produce outcomes it likes -- but it also gives credence to the upcoming plebiscite in Crimea. All the White House grandstanding has painted its policy into a corner: The United States is now in the position of arguing against the will of the majority in Crimea to protect the will of the majority in Kiev.

The more the administration makes the crisis in Ukraine about a conflict between the West and Russia, the less likely Moscow is to accede to Washington's preferred outcome. Secretary of State John Kerry understands this, but the White House keeps interjecting the "President vs. Putin" story line, which only tempts journalists with "can he deliver the West?" articles. What Obama should be doing instead is putting the challenges of Ukraine in the center of the picture. This is a state that struggles to be a nation, with a deeply corrupt leadership that has bankrupted a wealthy country and with low levels of social trust between its eastern and western populations. Moreover, it's clear the new legislature in Kiev did set off alarms in Crimea that its opening effort to outlaw the speaking of Russian; that doesn't justify the Kremlin's aggression, but it does give some context for fears of Ukrainians in the east of the country.

The best way forward in this crisis is to focus our immediate attention on putting Ukraine in a position to elect a legislature broadly representative of the country. That goes both at the national level, where parliamentary elections are scheduled for May 25, and regionally in Crimea, where a snap vote on separation from Ukraine will be held on March 16. In that narrow window of time we should be racing to address legitimate Crimean concerns, flood the zone with international observers of every stripe to provide information and bear witness to events, deeply engage with leaders on all sides to condition their behavior by making clear our responses to a variety of outcomes, and publicly support principled policies that reassure the losers of elections that their rights will still be respected. Rather than declaring, as Obama did, the Crimean plebiscite illegal, we should do what democracies do: win the argument.

Now is the time to unleash Jimmy Carter on Crimea! And not in terms of Obama's policy, but in a legion of international observers who will inform the world and scold the parties to the conflict to behave consistent with international norms. Where is Code Pink putting daisies in the rifles of Russian soldiers? Where are business reports that Gazprom being an arm of the Russian state should attract more regulatory attention and less investment? We so seldom actually use these tools of free societies to our advantage. Let's see how the Russians manage when faced with the real power of the West: not governments, but civil society.

Once Ukraine is on more stable footing we can turn our attention to the dish best served cold: retaliation against Putin and his cronies for their bare-knuckled attempt to establish "protection of Russians" as the basis for intimidating neighbors. Putin has already achieved a valuable aim: showing the region what Russia is capable of. As authoritarians understand much better than do those of us who live in secure freedom, once you instill fear in people, it actually doesn't take much repression to sustain it. By asserting the primacy of Russians' rights wherever they reside, he has cast a self-censoring shadow into the politics of the Baltic states. The Obama administration is to be commended for moving swiftly to reassure America's NATO allies that the United States will defend their territorial integrity; more needs to be done to show the country will also protect their domestic politics from Russian interference.

Instead, however, the White House is madly backgrounding reporters about what the United States is privately demanding of the Russians: The White House said Obama told Putin there still was a way to resolve the situation diplomatically, which would include Kiev and Moscow holding direct talks, international monitors, and Russian forces returning to their bases. There was no indication of Putin's response.

Putin agreeing to those things -- all of which are good policy objectives -- will seem a climb down and are, frankly, unlikely. Washington's smarter move would be to allow the Russians to claim credit for things it wants to have happen. But this is a White House that can't even give credit to allies for their work in Libya and Mali; there's no chance this White House is able to get past the effrontery of Russian snubs to achieve bigger objectives.

The White House is still trying to outrun its self-characterization of "leading from behind" by showing the president to be an active, forceful presence in the Ukraine crisis. It's still trying to dig him out of the embarrassment of his unwillingness to enforce his red line on Syria. In other words, the White House is fighting the last war. This political solipsism is actually making this potential war more likely and making less likely an outcome consistent with U.S. interests and those of the people of Ukraine. The president needs to discipline himself to stop talking and start doing the small things that can be done.

Foreign Policy, March 2014

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29