Obama misfires on Russian 'threat'
In his otherwise excellent State of the Union address last week, President Obama drew rare bipartisan applause when he said:
‘We’re upholding the principle that bigger nations can’t bully the small – by opposing Russian aggression, supporting Ukraine’s democracy, and reassuring our NATO allies. Last year, as we were doing the hard work of imposing sanctions along with our allies, some suggested that Mr Putin’s aggression was a masterful display of strategy and strength. Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated, with its economy in tatters.’
Obama was misadvised to speak so boastfully and contemptuously of Mr Putin and Russia.
The Cold War ended 25 years ago in 1991, yet the desire in certain quarters to weaken Russia has never gone away. I still feel that to write anything in defence of Putin’s Russia is aiding and abetting the enemy. But this is nonsense. Russia now poses no ideological or strategic threat to the West. It is just another country, albeit a very large and nuclear-armed one, trying to make its own way in an unfriendly world.
To its west and south-west, Russia faces unrelenting hostility and suspicion from the governments of Poland and of former Soviet member republics Georgia, Ukraine, and the Baltic states. By contrast, relations with Finland, Byelorussia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Central Asian post-Soviet states, Mongolia and China are quite normal.
The shaky Ukrainian successor state has lost Russian-populated Crimea to Russia, for good reasons and almost certainly irretrievably. A largish part of the Russian-speaking formerly rich industrial eastern Ukraine, the famous Donbass region, is controlled by rebel forces demanding human rights and autonomy within a looser federal Ukraine, or political separation from Ukraine and integration into Russia.
Russia’s role in the conflict has ranged from cross-border humanitarian aid, through reported tacit approval of entry of trained Russian ex-military volunteers, up to alleged covert large-scale military advice, troops and munitions support. This increasingly bitter and bloody fratricidal war defies political settlement so far. This civil war. marked by ongoing human rights abuses, is an open wound largely ignored by the West.
US-supported President Poroshenko in Kiev blows hot or cold in negotiations, according to whether his forces seem behind or ahead at the time. This could continue, as with the long porous border, war materiel and fighters could keep filtering in from Russia as needed to keep