Russia: a dificil gestacao de um Estado democrático, e de uma sociedade liberal - Democracy Digest

Dois autocratas, Putin e Trump, um representando uma autocracia tout court, o outro uma democracia liberal (mas atualmente muito confusa, em sentimentos e ações), vão se encontrar proximamente, para discutir não se sabe bem o que, uma vez que Mister Trump possui uma agenda própria, misturada com seus negócios obscuros, no tratamento com a Rússia e o neoczar russo Putin, que possui uma visão clara, antiliberal, do que seja a Rússia e o seu império em reconstrução.
Pena que a política americana esteja praticamente dominada pela obsessão de impedir a China de ascender pacificamente como ela pretende fazer, elegendo o novo império de Mister Xi, como um adversário estratégico. Isso complica um pouco as coisas, porque congela a atual geopolítica mundial num jogo entre três impérios nacionalistas, dotados de líderes autocratas.
O que fazer nesse triângulo pouco afetivo? Nada a não ser procurar uma relação correta com a UE e outros parceiros, que vivem nas fímbrias dos três grandes impérios da atualidade.
Não, não estamos num novo equilíbrio de potências, como alguns pensam. A História NUNCA se repete, ainda que observadores superficiais estejam sempre buscando (falsas) analogias entre situações antigas e situações presentes. Difícil caracterizar o estado atual das relações internacionais, embora nossa primeira função seja focar estritamente os interesses nacionais nesse jogo de damas, bem mais do que de xadrez.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 
Brasília, 7 de julho de 2018

Why Putin abandoned Russia’s Western orientation

Less than a decade ago, it seemed self-evident that Russia, despite all of its cultural and political differences, was reclaiming its rightful place as part of the Western world. In a piece for a German newspaper, Vladimir Putin wrote of a “Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok” that aspires to free trade and shares common values, notes analyst Yaroslav Trofimov.

But now Russia is increasingly looking East, toward an uneasy alliance with an illiberal and much more powerful China, he writes in a must-read Saturday essay for the Wall Street Journal:

Wikipedia

The impulse to abandon Russia’s Western orientation was recently articulated by Vladislav Surkov [right], a close aide of Mr. Putin who advised him on the Ukrainian crisis. “Russia spent four centuries heading toward the East, and then another four centuries toward the West, without taking root in either place,” Mr. Surkov wrote in a much-discussed academic article in April. From now on, Russia—an eternal “half-breed”—will face “a hundred (two hundred? three hundred?) years of geopolitical solitude.”…..The profound disillusionment also stems from the failure of policies that aimed to bring Russia closer to the West following the Soviet Union’s breakup—a failure that many Western officials now admit wasn’t just Moscow’s.

“The West was not sufficiently imaginative or creative in how to embrace Russia back when Russia had the intention of becoming a normal country,” said Lithuania’s former foreign minister Vygaudas Usackas, the European Union’s former ambassador to Moscow, who now heads the Institute of Europe think-tank. “As a result, we are finding a Russia that is searching for its identity between Europe and Asia—and that, in the meantime, has become an assertive and aggressive power with the stamina and the resources to discredit and undermine Western democracies.”

Institute of Modern Russia

President Donald Trump’s summit with President Vladimir Putin on July 16 suggests that the U.S. is courting autocratic and illiberal states like North Korea and Russia because “Washington wants as many states as possible to maintain their strategic distance from Beijing,” according to Reuben Steff, Lecturer in International Relations and Security Studies at the University of Waikato.

“This is a task that will become more difficult as China’s power continues to rise and America finds it harder to reassure its allies that it can maintain its dominance in the region,” he writes for the Conversation:

A number of these states have authoritarian governance systems, forms of illiberal democracy or may be trending in this direction. They do not share America’s governing liberal ideology. This ideological difference could complicate America’s efforts to keep these states out of China’s orbit, which claims to have no interest in the domestic affairs of other states.

Some observers are worried that the summit will see the U.S. concede recognition of Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

RFE/RL

Daniel Fried (left), a former assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs [and a National Endowment for Democracy board member], is worried there is no clarity within the administration about the goals of the summit, he tells Foreign Policy. “I can’t tell you there’s no chance” the U.S. would recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, he adds.

Placing responsibility for the rapid deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations squarely on the shoulders of the Russian president has its appeal, notes Daniel Beer, a reader in Russian history at Royal Holloway, University of London.” It holds out the promise that Kremlin policy toward the West might pivot once again when Putin finally retires or is pushed out, he writes in a NY Times review of Michael McFaul’s From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia:

Maybe so, but the more pessimistic view is that Putin represents a now-entrenched revanchist nationalism that sees the liberal international order as a mere smokescreen for the advancement of Western political agendas. Deep-rooted antagonism toward the United States might well endure long after Putin has gone. 

As McFaul himself laments, “the hot peace, tragically but perhaps necessarily, seems here to stay.”

Like many of its predecessors, the Bush administration engaged in democracy promotion as a means of spreading stability and prosperity. But Russia rejected both the idea of moving past MAD and the historical inevitability of democratic change as profoundly threatening to its interests, according to Carnegie analysts Eugene Rumer, Dmitri Trenin and Andrew S. Weiss.

Instead, the Kremlin developed and articulated an alternative, illiberal, anti-Western narrative, they suggest:

The Russian narrative includes broken U.S. promises not to expand NATO, interference in Russian domestic politics and use of double standards when criticizing it for its democracy deficit, refusal to treat Russia as a peer, reliance on economic sanctions to achieve desired political and diplomatic outcomes, withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, unilateral use of military force, and regime change and destabilization under the guise of democracy promotion in countries within Russia’s self-proclaimed sphere of interests or that are simply friendly to it.

Russia’s leader may be capable of change, says Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 55, Putin’s most prominent opponent in exile, who has sought to promote democracy Russia through the Open Russia movement.

“My aim is not the overthrow of the president, but the establishment of parliamentary democracy. If Putin is prepared tomorrow to democratize the country himself, then I’m all for it,” he tells Der Spiegel.

But the Kremlin’s reaction to Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution suggests otherwise, he concedes.

“I had hoped that Ukraine would become a model for Russian society. Unfortunately, Putin has succeeded in preventing this. And, unfortunately, some people in Ukraine helped him to do so — out of greed,” he said.

“Other than that, though, I’m not disappointed. Ukraine is a large country, and no rapid changes could be expected. If the Ukrainians prevent a relapse into authoritarianism, the country will become a normal democracy after one or two changes of government.”

A divided EU – with an unstable Germany, a UK on its way out and renegade central eastern member states – indicates the dead end of the normative approach to foreign relations, according to analyst Vessela Tcherneva. Europe appears to be only of interest to the US as an ally in the competition with Russia and China, she writes for the European Council on Foreign Relations.

As the highly anticipated Putin-Trump summit nears, pundits are discussing the main challenges of the meeting and potential outcomes for the U.S-Russia relationship, the Institute of Modern Russia reports:

On the domestic front, as negative opinions about the pension reform persist, the Kremlin prepares to respond. One of the key political developments in the capital was the announcement of the list of candidates who will run for the Mayor’s and the Moscow Region Governor’s offices in the September elections. No member of the liberal opposition passed the electoral filter. RTWT

At the heart of the long-standing conflict between Russia and the United States is a disagreement about their respective approaches to the conduct of foreign affairs, the Carnegie analysts add.

While the United States has “traditionally championed (even though admittedly it has not always adhered to it) the international liberal order—including political liberalism, economic liberalism, and liberalism in international relations—and actively promoted liberal values beyond its borders,” they notes, “Russia has adhered to a very different—realist—philosophy and stressed the importance of national interests rather than liberal values in the conduct of its foreign policy.”

“As much as the United States has sought to promote the international liberal order, Russia has resisted its expansion.” RTWT

A Russia e o resto: a nova guerra fria - Book review, Richard Sakwa

'Russia against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order' [review]

Richard Sakwa. Russia against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. ix + 362 pp. $84.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-107-16060-6; $24.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-316-61351-1.
 

Reviewed by Gerard Toal (Virginia Tech) Published on H-Diplo (May, 2018) 
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=51562

Richard Sakwa does not like the term the “new Cold War.” To him, the label is misleading and obscures a much broader shift in global politics since 2014. His new book, Russia against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order, is an account of that larger shift, and Russia’s place within it. Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent and an associate fellow at Chatham House. He is a remarkably productive scholar. This is his seventh book on Russian politics since 2008, and there is another, The Putin Phenomenon, in the works (cited p. 119). Sakwa, who is of British Polish decent, is also no stranger to controversy. His 2015 book, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, argued that Euro-Atlantic expansionism and Ukrainian nationalism were key negative forces contributing to the Ukraine crisis of 2014. The book was strongly criticized by some Ukraine scholars though critically appreciated by others. Sakwa is part of a select group of scholars regularly invited to the Valdai Discussion Group (which includes the chance to hear Vladimir Putin in person) and his latest book reflects his deep knowledge of Russian elite thinking on world order and geopolitical change.
Sakwa provides a comprehensive account of post-Cold War geopolitics, with a decided emphasis on great power diplomacy, institution-building, strategic competition and its baleful results. He dubs the twenty-five years between 1989 and 2014 an era of “cold peace,” one characterized above all by the failure of Western security organizations to transcend Cold War institutions and habits. Russia was shut out of negotiations over the creation of a post-Cold War security order in Europe as NATO and the EU saw matters in terms of enlargement of their own existing structures, not the creation of something new in dialogue with Russia. By denying “the logic of transcendence,” Sakwa argues, this enlargement precipitated the result it sought to avert. “Europe could not be ‘whole and free’ if Russia was effectively excluded” (p. 6) is an arresting early claim (repeated p. 165). Throughout Sakwa uses a distinctive vocabulary of contrasting geopolitical visions to describe this dynamic. The EU and NATO represented the Historical West; they viewed themselves as victors in the Cold War. Afterwards, they wanted to create a Wider Europe based around extended and radicalized Historical Western norms and practices (what others term an expanded liberal empire). Russia’s aspiration, however, was to become a founding member of a transformed Greater West that would establish a Greater Europe on the Eurasian landmass. Mikhail Gorbachev’s “common European home” and Charles de Gaulle’s Europe “from the Atlantic to the Urals” are expressions of this vision. Greater Europe is ostensibly pluralist, open to political regimes of many different types. The European Union is only one of many different visions of being European. The problem of the cold peace, according to Sakwa, was that NATO and the EU represented monological visions of security and prosperity. The Historical West viewed the United States as the security lynchpin on the European continent and liberal market democracies as normative for the domestic structure of states. Willing only to enlarge not to change, the Historical West generated accumulating frustration, disillusionment, and resistance on the part of an excluded Russia. With Greater Europe off the table, Russia sought instead to create a Greater Eurasia (the Eurasian Economic Union). In 2014, the cold peace impasse on the European continent gave way to a hot war in Ukraine. Russian neorevisionism emerged as a predictable backlash against the expansionist logic of Euro-Atlantic liberal hegemony. Today, Russia and China are both neorevisionist powers. It is not, in the end, Russia against the Rest but Russia as part of the Rest against the Historical West.
Sakwa documents this thesis in great detail in the book, providing an impressive synthesis of international relations theory, post-Cold War history, and in-depth discussion of contemporary contentious issue areas. The great value of Sakwa’s work is its thorough articulation of Russian leadership perspectives and commentariat writings on the dilemmas of cold peace geopolitics alongside those of select Western observers, usually political realists but not exclusively so. Sergei Karaganov, dean of the faculty at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and honorary chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, and Henry Kissinger are liberally quoted through the text. Karaganov argued in 2016 that the West after the Cold War sought to continuously limit Russia’s freedom, sphere of influence, and markets while expanding its own. The West “used Russia’s weakness to take away its centuries-old gains and make it even weaker” (p. 39). Sakwa sees this argument as “going too far” for the West was open to Russia’s inclusion in Western security structures but “it wanted a different Russia to the one on offer; while Russia wanted to join the community, but on its own terms” (p. 39). Kissinger argued that Russia should have been engaged by the West in traditional realpolitik terms. The goal should not have been transformation of Russia but the development of a strategic concept that could manage their differences within an emerging multipolar world order.
There are some standout chapters in Russia against the West. Using English school international relations theory, Sakwa provides a compelling account of the Kremlin’s geopolitical attitude towards world order. This distinguishes between two levels of the international system, the primary institutions of international society which are states, and the secondary level of institutions which are collective organizations that seek universal practices and norms. Russia is a clear supporter of the primary level of institutions, which rest on state sovereignty and bargaining between great powers in a multipolar system. The secondary level is the realm of international organizations, regimes of norms, and systems of global governance. These bind and constrict state sovereignty in the name of universal norms and aspirations. Russia and other non-Western powers object to what they see as the capture of this second level by liberal internationalist norms and values, which ultimately advance the self-interest of Western states. Sakwa argues that Russia is not a revisionist power seeking to tear up the current international order. Rather, it is a neorevisionist state, critiquing the hegemonic ambitions and double standards of the liberal international order but, at the same time, defending the autonomy of an international society organized around state sovereignty. “Moscow assumed the paradoxical position of challenging the practices of the liberal order while defending the principles of international society” (p. 129). Putin is a traditionalist, not a radical; a “legitimist,” not a revolutionary. Neorevisionism is “an unstable combination of attempts to modify the structures and practices of the hegemonic global order while remaining firmly ensconced in that order” (p. 132). International law has different meanings in this contest. To neorevisionist states, international law belongs to the primary level of international society. It is or should be delimited by respect for state sovereignty above all else. To liberal hegemony, international law is an expression of universal values and rules. It can and should be used against states that violate these.
Sakwa also gives us a succinct chapter on Russia’s grievances against the West, one that is empathetic without being uncritical. NATO enlargement gets a full discussion but so does missile defense, critique of Western interventionism, and objections to “trans-democracy.” This latter notion describes how democracy got absorbed into Euro-Atlantic visions of security. The spread of democracy and the pursuit of security became fused in practice. Democratic peace theory became dogma: “the security of the Atlantic power system is best advanced by creating a system of states moulded in the Western image and committed to liberal internationalism, the ideological foundations of post-war American power” (p. 99). This liberal imperial compound generated a Kremlin backlash that saw “colored revolutions” as Western-sponsored active measures, interpreting popular protests against autocratic and kleptocratic rules on Russia’s borders as Western plots. Implicit here is a Kremlin domino theory wherein the West is toppling autocratic regimes as a means of eventually knocking over the final piece: Putin’s Russia. Sakwa will infuriate many when he writes: “In a philosophical sense Putin was right: popular democratic revolutions have become a way for the Atlantic ideological and power system to advance. There is plenty of evidence that Western agencies have prepared for, funded and provided ideological support for pro-democracy movements whose ideological orientation is Atlanticist” (p. 102). But he also writes that this denies independent agency and popular demands for free and fair elections, less corrupt administrative systems, and, above all, civil dignity (p. 102). This mode of reasoning—affirming a Kremlin-friendly position yet articulating criticism also—is one he adopts on the all-important question of Crimea: “Crimea’s return can legitimately be considered a ‘democratic secession,’ since the overwhelming majority of the population (as later independent opinion polls confirmed) favored being part of Russia; although the view that it represents an ‘imperial annexation’ is justified to the degree that it lacked agreement with the country from which the territory seceded” (p. 157). Sakwa also writes that the armed insurgency in the Donbas was “covertly assisted by activists and some state bodies in Russia” (p. 157).
Sakwa’s work is impressively comprehensive. He discusses in relative detail the evolution of Russian foreign policy and European Union diplomacy, Eurasian integration, the Ukraine crisis, Western sanctions, Russia’s evolving military doctrines and modernization efforts, NATO’s responses to Russia, the breakdown of arms control regimes, US foreign policy and Russian interventionism in the Syrian civil war, information warfare, and Russia’s aspirational pivot towards China. The book concludes by outlining what he describes as a “global impasse.” This is a new “normal” of wide-ranging and increasingly deeply rooted confrontation between Russia and the United States. The United States is concerned to maintain its hegemonic status while China, Russia, and other powers are forcing a global realignment of power and the rules governing international affairs. He sees a rising of McCarthyism in the United States which is having a chilling effect on the quality of public debate, with those advocating “dissident” views condemned as “Putin apologists” (p. 313). On the central issue inflaming elite opinion in the United States (Russia’s information operations during the 2016 presidential election), Sakwa is skeptical that Russia’s role has been fully proven. The Steele dossier “hit a new low in its puerile collection of unsubstantiated allegations” (p. 241). Instead, he sees a renewed “Russian threat” as generating considerable budget increases for US and NATO agencies to fight Russian “information warfare.”
Sakwa’s work has some clear weaknesses. First, his focus is largely on great power politics. As a result, he has little to say about the strategic dilemmas faced by post-Soviet states next to Russia. There is some discussion of Ukrainian crisis but little about Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, or Armenia, nor of the enduring territorial conflicts in the near abroad. Central Asia is discussed but only as it relates to the great powers. He shows little interest or empathy for the position of these states. Instead his arguments are shaped by conversations on panels at Valdai, Moscow, London, and Brussels—not Kyiv, Tbilisi, and Tallinn. Sakwa’s book is valuable in terms of enriching the quality and depth of debate over topics that tend to quickly polarize interlocutors, but debate should extend to consider the historical experiences and aspirations of small and medium states too. This does not mean privileging that experience over Russian experiences, as often happens in the West where curated nationalist versions of subaltern experiences, and traumas, are a means of establishing superior victimhood. Rather, the conversation need to include everyone and hold all to the same critical standards of reasoned debate.
Second, Sakwa’s schemas and categorizations tends to structure debate toward Russian standpoints and positions. In some ways, this is a function of his desire to be a correction to widespread antipathy against Russia. But this correction itself needs a critical check. For example, Sakwa makes frequent use of the distinction between “monological” and “pluralist” perspectives, with the former standing in for Western liberal hegemony or Ukrainian nationalism whereas the latter expresses tolerance for diverse regime types and civil nationalist traditions. In practice, however, this reduces divergent traditions of politics—liberal, center-right and social democratic—into a singularity while creatively configuring acceptance of autocracy as “pluralism.” Indeed, autocracy is a category that is largely missing from Sakwa’s discussion. It deserves greater consideration as do variant kleptocratic state arguments made by scholars of Eurasian states. Sakwa does articulate positions that are critical of Russian government behavior, but in a mild manner. The Duma election of December 4 2011, is described as “flawed” (p. 115). Putin’s lies to Angela Merkel early in the Crimea crisis were his “being economical with the truth” (p. 217). Russia’s endorsement of European populists has damaging reputational consequences (p. 276). Because he is much more a hermeneutist of Putin than critic, Sakwa’s arguments shows considerable empathy for Russian government positions. This leads him to re-present arguments more than probe them for contradictions. Thus, for example, he writes that “Russia is not so much concerned with changing international hierarchy, but to defend a space for the conduct of international relations for itself, through the universal application of international law and respect for state sovereignty throughout the international system” (p. 129). Needless to say, many of Russia’s neighboring states would scoff at this.
Third, Sakwa engaged throughout his work with international relations theory but only the most traditional kind: realism (offensive and defensive), liberalism, and some constructivism. Emergent issue areas like cyber warfare and climate change are discussed in passing. There is little consideration of gendered practices or the role of affect, of feminist analysis, or of contemporary scholarship on visuality, memory, and nonhuman agency. This is not because it is absent in the speeches, debates, and practices he discusses. Rather, it is not called out and given separate analytical treatment by him. We need to think deeply, after all, about the micro- and macrosociological dynamics of respect, humiliation, frustration, anger, fear, and reassurance, as well as about the gripping power of spectacles of revolution, “self-determination,” and national glory. Sakwa’s work is more a deliberative approach to Russia-explaining, focused on presenting contentious debates and divergent practices based on clashing conceptualizations.
Finally, some may find the book frustrating because its key concepts and arguments are discussed again and again in the text. Because the book strives to engage with nearly all aspects of current debates on Russia, it sometimes feels like Sakwa has written too much and that his chapters are not as joined up as they could be. In sum, however, Russia against the West is a valuable addition to the growing literature on the “new cold war” (that may not be a new cold war). It deserves to be read,  debated, and criticized.
 
Citation: Gerard Toal. Review of Sakwa, Richard, Russia against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. May, 2018. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=51562
This work is licensed under a Creative Common

The New Cold War is Boiling Over Syria - Dimitri Trenin

The New Cold War is Boiling Over Syria

Dmitri Trenin

Director
Moscow Center

António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, recently said the Cold War was back with a vengeance but also with a difference. This is correct but belatedly so. The new confrontation between Russia and the United States started already in 2014 and has been intensifying ever since, culminating in Friday evening’s U.S.-led strikes on Syria, which the Trump administration blamed on the Syrian government and its Russian allies and vowed to sustain indefinitely, if it deemed necessary. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded, in turn, that the attacks were an “act of aggression” that would “have a destructive effect on the entire system of international relations.”

Dmitri Trenin

Director
Moscow Center

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@DMITRITRENIN

The new confrontation between Russia and the United States has thus reached its first “missile crisis” moment. The way it is handled — whether it produces a direct military collision between the armed forces of the United States and Russia — will matter gravely for the entire world.

The original Cold War was very different from today’s confrontation between Washington and Moscow. There is no longer symmetry, balance, or respect between the parties. There is also no heightened fear of a nuclear Armageddon, which has the paradoxical effect of making it far easier to slide beyond the point of no return.

Taking on Russia, for many in the West, has become a continuation of the war on terror, with Putin cast in the role of Saddam Hussein. Thus, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is dealt with as a rogue state. In this very unequal contest, the United States has essentially excluded the possibility of a strategic compromise with its unworthy adversary: For U.S. leaders, to compromise with Russia means to compromise oneself. This raises the stakes for the Kremlin to the absolute maximum.

Professional military and national security officials in the United States probably realize the dangers of the situation far better than politicians and public opinion leaders. In Syria, deconfliction between U.S. and Russian military forces has worked rather successfully. The chief of the Russian General Staff has had regular contacts, including face-to-face meetings, with the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretary of defense, and is about to meet with NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe. At the beginning of the year, the heads of Russia’s principal intelligence agencies — the Federal Security Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, and the Main Intelligence Directorate — made an unprecedented joint visit to the United States.

In the atmosphere of rampant hysteria and bluster, these channels of communication look much more solid than the famous back channel in Washington between Robert Kennedy and a Russian intelligence operative that served to relay messages between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. Yet, unlike in the original Cold War, which was mostly a war by proxy, the new confrontation is a more direct engagement. In the fields of information, economics and finance, politics, and the cyberdomain, the U.S.-Russian fight is already direct. In the military sphere, Russia and the United States are for the first time since World War II fighting in the same country, but now their goals and strategies are vastly different, if not opposed to each other. The military leaders on both sides can do much to avoid incidents, but making policy is above their pay grade.

What has just played out is the least bad scenario: a series of U.S. and allied strikes that are largely symbolic, targeting some Syrian military facilities but sparing the main command and control centers and avoiding any potential Russian targets — not just Russian bases or forces but the Russian personnel and civilians who are widely spread throughout the Syrian military and government infrastructure. Such an attack would send the Russian-Western relationship to a new low point and lead to even more recrimination, sanctions, and countersanctions, but it would not endanger peace.

The worst scenario, by contrast, would do precisely that. Many people may have missed the warning by Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, who, a few weeks before the alleged chemical attack in Douma, painted exactly the scenario of a staged chemical attack in the then-rebel-held enclave, which in his scenario would have served as a pretext for massive U.S. strikes against the Syrian leadership in Damascus. Should Russians be targeted in such an attack, Gerasimov said, the Russian military in the region would respond by intercepting the incoming missiles and firing at the platforms from which they were launched.

Some commentators have since dismissed these warnings as bluff. They point to Russia’s clear inferiority in advanced conventional weapons in comparison with the United States. Should the Russians try to implement what Gerasimov has outlined, the argument goes, their entire military contingent in Syria would be wiped out in minutes, and Moscow would have to accept a humiliating defeat, which might as well be the end of its ill-conceived challenge to America’s dominant might. Perhaps. But there is a chance that the regional conflict may not stop there and instead escalate to a wholly different level.

Even if the current standoff in Syria does not lead to the worst-case scenario becoming a reality, the U.S.-Russian situation will remain not only dire but essentially hopeless for the indefinite future. America’s approach toward Russia will likely consist of a methodical mounting of pressure on it in multiple domains — in anticipation that, at some point, the pressure will become unbearable for Moscow. The Kremlin, for its part, is adamant that it will not surrender, knowing that the adversary will be merciless even after its victory.

The outcome, for now, is wide open. What’s clear is that periodic tests of will and resolve will continue to lead to international crises, whether in Syria, Ukraine, or elsewhere. Policymakers need to learn from their military subordinates: They should keep their heads cool and think of the consequences of their actions, both intended and unintended. Allowing the new U.S.-Russian global confrontation to run its course is much preferable to a sudden head-on crash.

This op-ed was originally published in the Foreign Policy

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A nova Guerra Fria mais ou menos quente: sanções americanas a oligarcas russos

US slaps new sanctions on Russian individuals, entities

Xinhua

Source: Xinhua   Editor: Wang Qingchu  

13:00 UTC+8, 2018-04-07       

AFP

In this file photo taken on May 26, 2015 Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev (L) looks at President Vladimir Putin during a meeting with the BRICS countries' senior officials in charge of security matters at the Kremlin in Moscow. The United States slapped a new round of sanctions on Russia on Friday, targeting Russian business elite and senior government officials. These include Nikolai Patrushev, the chief of Russia's security council who formerly succeeded Putin as head of the FSB security service.

The United States slapped a new round of sanctions on Russia on Friday, targeting Russian business elite and senior government officials, a move that may further damage the already soured ties between Washington and Moscow.

The US Treasury announced that it has imposed sanctions on seven Russian business leaders, who were referred to as "oligarchs," along with 12 companies owned or controlled by them.

The blacklist also included 17 senior Russian government officials and the state-owned Russian weapons trading company, Rosoboronexport, and its subsidiary, Russian Financial Corporation Bank.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin accused the Russian government in the statement of engaging in "a range of malign activity" around the world, including its involvement in the Ukrainian and Syrian issues, and "attempting to subvert Western democracies, and malicious cyber activities."

The sanctions will freeze any assets the individuals or entities punished hold in the United States and prohibit US citizens from conducting business with them.

The punitive act was also believed to discourage international financial institutions from doing business with persons and entities on the list.

The Russian Embassy in the United States shot back on Friday by claiming that the new sanctions targeted Russian business leaders "who refused to play by Washington's rules."

"The US made another erroneous step to destroy the freedom of entrepreneurship and competition, integration processes in the world economy," said the embassy in a statement.

The latest move was among a series of the Trump administration's confrontations against "Russian activities that threaten our institutions, our interests, or our allies," said the White House in a statement on Friday.

On March 15, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on five entities and 19 individuals, including Russian intelligence services, for their alleged interference in the 2016 US elections and engagement in "malicious" cyber attacks.

At the end of January, Washington published a list of Russian officials and business tycoons eligible for sanctions for alleged meddling in the US presidential elections. The list incorporated 114 senior Russian political personages and 96 "oligarchs."

So far the Trump administration has punished 189 Russian-related people and entities with sanctions under various programs, said a senior US government official on the condition of anonymity at a briefing on Friday.

The new sanctions were seen as another blow on the already sinking ties between Washington and Moscow.

In March, the United States expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed the Russian consulate in Seattle in a concerted action with Britain and other Western nations over a poisoning case involving a former Russian spy.

Washington's actions have been met with countermeasures from Russia, which categorically denies these allegations and demands solid evidence.

Meanwhile, Trump has kept from launching from direct verbal attack against Moscow over the poisoning attack.

Gorbachev: o apaziguador (sobre os mísseis nucleares de Russia e EUA) - The Washington Post

 

 

 

 

 

Opinions

Mikhail Gorbachev: My plea to the presidents of Russia and the United States

President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at a signing ceremony for the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in the White House on Dec. 8, 1987. (Barry Thumma/AP)

By Mikhail Gorbachev  

The Washington Post, October 11 at 11:00 AM

 

Mikhail Gorbachev was leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991.
 

This December will mark the 30th anniversary of the signing of the treaty between the Soviet Union and United States on the elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles. This was the start of the process of radically cutting back nuclear arsenals, which was continued with the 1991 and 2010 strategic arms reduction treaties and the agreements reducing tactical nuclear weapons.

The scale of the process launched in 1987 is evidenced by the fact that, as Russia and the United States reported to the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 2015, 80 percent of the nuclear weapons accumulated during the Cold War have been decommissioned and destroyed. Another important fact is that, despite the recent serious deterioration in bilateral relations, both sides have been complying with the strategic weapons agreements.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, however, is now in jeopardy. It has proved to be the most vulnerable link in the system of limiting and reducing weapons of mass destruction. There have been calls on both sides for scrapping the agreement.

So what is happening, what is the problem, and what needs to be done?
Both sides have raised issues of compliance, accusing the other of violating or circumventing the treaty’s key provisions. From the sidelines, lacking fuller information, it is difficult to evaluate those accusations. But one thing is clear: The problem has a political as well as a technical aspect. It is up to the political leaders to take action.
Therefore I am making an appeal to the presidents of Russia and the United States.
Relations between the two nations are in a severe crisis. A way out must be sought, and there is one well-tested means available for accomplishing this: a dialogue based on mutual respect.
It will not be easy to cut through the logjam of issues on both sides. But neither was our dialogue easy three decades ago. It had its critics and detractors, who tried to derail it.
In the final analysis, it was the political will of the two nations’ leaders that proved decisive. And that is what’s needed now. This is what our two countries’ citizens and people everywhere expect from the presidents of Russia and the United States.
I call upon Russia and the United States to prepare and hold a full-scale summit on the entire range of issues. It is far from normal that the presidents of major nuclear powers meet merely “on the margins” of international gatherings. I hope that the process of preparing a proper summit is in the works even now.
I believe that the summit meeting should focus on the problems of reducing nuclear weapons and strengthening strategic stability. For should the system of nuclear arms control collapse, as may well happen if the INF Treaty is scrapped, the consequences, both direct and indirect, will be disastrous.
The closer that nuclear weapons are deployed to borders, the more dangerous they are: There is less time for a decision and greater risk of catastrophic error. And what will happen to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if the nuclear arms race begins anew? I am afraid it will be ruined.
If, however, the INF Treaty is saved, it will send a powerful signal to the world that the two biggest nuclear powers are aware of their responsibility and take their obligations seriously. Everyone will breathe a sigh of relief, and relations between Russia and the United States will finally get off the ground again.
I am confident that preparing a joint presidential statement on the two nations’ commitment to the INF Treaty is a realistic goal. Simultaneously, the technical issues could be resolved; for this purpose, the joint control commission under the INF Treaty could resume its work. I am convinced that, with an impetus from the two presidents, the generals and diplomats would be able to reach agreement.
We are living in a troubled world. It is particularly disturbing that relations between the major nuclear powers, Russia and the United States, have become a serious source of tensions and a hostage to domestic politics. It is time to return to sanity. I am sure that even inveterate opponents of normalizing U.S.-Russian relations will not dare object to the two presidents. These critics have no arguments on their side, for the very fact that the INF Treaty has been in effect for 30 years proves that it serves the security interests of our two countries and of the world.
In any undertaking, it is important to take the first step. In 1987, the first step in the difficult but vitally important process of ridding the world of nuclear weapons was the INF Treaty. Today, we face a dual challenge of preventing the collapse of the system of nuclear agreements and reversing the downward spiral in U.S.-Russian relations. It is time to take the first step.

BRICS Co-operation: Assessment and Next Steps - Seminar Itamaraty, August 1, 2017, 9am-4pm

BRICS Co-operation: Assessment and Next Steps

Auditório Paulo Nogueira Batista, Anexo II, Palácio Itamaraty

Brasília, 1 August 2017

Draft Programme*

09:00–09:20	Opening
	§  Ambassador Sérgio Eduardo Moreira Lima, President of FUNAG §  Ambassador Georges Lamazière, Under Secretary General for Asia and the Pacific §  Ambassador Li Jinzhang, Ambassador of China to Brazil §  Assistant Minister Hu Zhengyue, Vice President of China Public Diplomacy Association (CPDA)
09:20–10:40	One Decade of the BRICS: Assessment and Next Steps
	§  Professor Wu Xiaoqiu, Vice-President of Renmin University §  Ambassador Sergio Florencio, Director for International Economic and Political Relations, IPEA §  Minister Mariana Madeira, Head of the Division for BRICS and IBSA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs §  Minister Benoni Belli, Secretary for Diplomatic Planning, Ministry of Foreign Affairs §  Professor Thomas Dwyer, Co-ordinator, BRICS Studies Project, University of Campinas
10:40–11:00	Coffee Break
11:00–12:40	Breadth and Depth: Priorities for BRICS Co-operation Moderator : Professor WangWen, Executive Dean Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China
	§  Mr. Zhao Xiyuan, Secretary-General of China Public Diplomacy Association (CPDA) §  Counsellor Rina-Louise Pretorius, Embassy of South Africa to Brazil §  XX, Embassy of India to Brazil §  XX, Embassy of Russia to Brazil §  Professor Zhao Xijun, Deputy Dean of School of Finance, Renmin University of China
12:40–14:00	Lunch Break

14:00– 15:40	Financial Co-operation, Investment and the New Development Bank Moderator: Minister Paulo Roberto de Almeida, Director of IPRI
	§  Professor Murilo Portugal, President of FEBRABAN §  Minister Norberto Moretti, Director of the Department for Financial Affairs and Services, Ministry of Foreign Affairs §  Professor Wang Wen, Executive Dean, Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China (RDCY) §  Professor Marcos Troyjo, Director, BRICLab, Columbia University §  XX, Embassy of China in Brazil
15:40–16:00	Wrap-up and Closure
	§  Minister Paulo Roberto de Almeida, Director of IPRI §  Minister Mariana Madeira, Head of the Division for BRICS and IBSA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs §  Professor Wu Xiaoqiu, Vice-President of Renmin University

Supporting Partners:

Alexandre de Gusmão Foundation (FUNAG)

China Public Diplomacy Association (CPDA)

Co-Host:

Institute for Research on International Relations (IPRI), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Brazil

Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies,Renmin University of China (RDCY)

* Participants' names to be confirmed.

Chinese Participants' list:

- Hu Zhengyue, Vice President of China Public Diplomacy Association (CPDA)

- Wu Xiaoqiu, Vice President of Renmin University of China

- Zhao Xiyuan, Secretary-General of China Public Diplomacy Association (CPDA)

- Zhao Xijun, Deputy Dean of School of Finance, Renmin University of China

- WangWen, Executive Dean Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies ,Renmin University of China

- Hu Bin, Deputy Division Chief, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China

- Cui Yue, Executive Editor-in-Chief of Information Centre, Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies ,Renmin University of China

- Cheng Cheng, Vice Research fellow of Industry Research Department of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies , Renmin University of China