Tag: Russia
Stevenson’s army, November 15
– FT says intelligence warns of Russian escalation in Ukraine.
– Defense groups warn of problems with delayed CR.
– Politico says Samantha Power has leverage.
-NYT says GOP gaining in redistricting.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Admire Russia’s provocative statecraft, even if its objectives are odious
Russian President Putin is feeling his oats. He is pushing against the West along a front that extends from the Baltics to Syria and possibly beyond. Here is an incomplete account of his maneuvers:
- The Baltics: Russia has concentrated troops along its border with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Moscow is also conducting menacing exercises and violating Allies’ airspace.
- Belarus: Again lots of military exercises, but more inventively Putin has encouraged President Lukashenko to import Kurds from Iraq and try to push them across the border into Poland and thus the EU. This constitutes intentional weaponization of third-country nationals.
- Ukraine: Moscow has (again) concentrated military forces on the border with the apparent intention of threatening an expansion of Russian-controlled territory inside Ukraine beyond Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. Moscow is also raising gas prices and shipping more gas to the West avoiding Ukraine and thus reducing its revenues.
- The Balkans: Russia is giving and selling arms to a vastly re-armed Serbia, is financing the Serb entity inside Bosnia and Herzegovina and encouraging secession talk there, and has gained vastly increased influence through proxies inside Montenegro.
- Turkey: Moscow has sold its advanced air defense system to Turkey, which as a result has lost its role in manufacturing components of the American F-35 fighter and will likely look to Russia for modernization of its fighter fleet.
- Syria: Russian air forces intervened in Syria in 2015, when rebels were seriously threatening the regime in Damascus. Russian forces have occasionally tested their mettle against the Americans and US-supported forces in the northeast.
Russian military forces have also taken on a “peacekeeping” role inside Azerbaijan after its 2020 clash with Armenian-supported secessionists in Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow’s troops were already stationed inside Armenia. Prior Russian interventions in Georgia and Moldova were explicitly aimed at preventing NATO and EU membership, respectively, and have resulted in separate governance of Russian-controlled territories within those states.
For Putin, not only NATO but also the EU is an enemy. He is right: the EU and NATO are committed to open societies, democratic governance, and the rule of law, which are anathema to Putin. He wants none of their members on Russia’s borders or even nearby. The Eurasian Economic Union is intended as the economic dimension of his fight against the West. He is also seeking to weaken the EU and NATO from within. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is Russia’s handmaiden within the EU. Montenegro risks becoming one inside NATO.
It is difficult to know how the West should respond to all this. Neither the EU nor NATO is skilled at anticipating and preventing trouble. Nor can they coordinate and focus resources as quickly as an autocrat can. But it is important to recognize that for Russia all these pieces are part of the same puzzle. Obsessed with being surrounded, Russia responds by trying to expand and establish autocratic hegemony in what it regards as its near abroad, even if that designation is no longer so commonly used. You have to admire Russia’s provocative statecraft, even if the objectives are odious.
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Normalization won’t normalize, but UAE and Russia will gain
Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat, and Venus Mohammed write:
The visit of the UAE Foreign Minister can be analyzed in two complementary ways:
- Washington’s silence reflects its disinterest in the Syrian file in general and also preparation for an upcoming strategic dialogue with Moscow in Geneva next week, which will focus on keeping the cross-border routes for humanitarian aid open. Washington is offering an initial reward to Moscow by remaining silent on the Emirati openness to Damascus and thus indirectly encouraging it tacitly. In return, Washington expects Damascus to reciprocate, with support or pressure from Moscow. This could mean a new step-by-step road map in Syria, which the US hopes will emerge in the meeting with Moscow next week.
- The visit came within the framework of coordination between Tel Aviv and the UAE to support Moscow, which coordinates extensively with Tel Aviv to target Iranian sites in Syria. Israel and Russia want to weaken Iran in Syria. Israel has three times within a week attacked storage sites for Iranian weapons, drones, and missiles in Damascus, at T-4 airport, Shayrat and Homs countryside, and even the coastal regiment In Tartous, where American reconnaissance aircraft are operating over the Syrian coast.
The Americans want to stabilize the balance of power in Syria as it is. Having lost influence Trump’s departure from the White House, the UAE wants to show itself useful to the Biden Administration. Abu Dhabi is trying in to tell Washington that it can provide services even if immoral, such as normalization with Assad. The UAE Foreign Minister had informed his American counterpart about this visit and its goals last week, which helped neuter the American position.
As Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has said, the situation in Syria is frozen. The UAE visit has some symbolic significance, but there will be no serious impact on the ground as long as Washington insists on the status quo until a ceasefire paves the way for a new political settlement. The UAE wants to be the main Arab country that has a relationship with the Assad regime so it can function as the link between Damascus and the West in general, hoping that it can influence the the Assad regime to change some of its behavior, in particular limiting the Iranian presence.
It is possible that Washington and the UAE can benefit in the short term by improving their own bilateral relations, but this does not spell the success for the Emirati efforts in achieving any results in Syria. The Iranian alliance with the Assad regime dates back four decades, when the Assad regime sided with the Iran against Iraq. Iran founded Hezbollah, which expelled the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon. Iran also financed the construction of the Syrian nuclear reactor that was destroyed by Israel in 2007. Without the Iranian presence, the Assad regime would have collapsed years ago. The UAE has nothing to give Assad to pry him away from Iran. Normalization with the regime, including Assad’s return to the Arab League or the extension of a gas pipeline, will do nothing other than strengthen Iran in Syria, as has already happened in Lebanon and Iraq.
But if the UAE’s goal is to please the Americans by offering Syria as a gift to Iran in exchange for a return to the nuclear agreement, that is a different issue. Only time will tell if Washington’s reticence is Machiavellian.
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Stevenson’s army, November 3
– Big night for GOP. It will have consequences, but observers are divided. Good summary from WaPo.
– Administration argues over “sole purpose” of nuclear weapons.
– Joe Nye says we shouldn’t call competition with China a cold war.
– Sen. Hawley, whose defense staffer was at our brownbag, has new bill for Taiwan aid.
– Good resources: while looking for something else, I discovered excellent recent CRS report on NSC and UVa site listing key staff in WH and NSC.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, November 2
– Russian troops near Ukraine border.
– Prof. Brands discusses how war might start with China.
– FEC allows foreign money for ballot fights.
– IG says US rarely enforced conditions on Afghan aid.
– Shocking poll reveals strong anti-democratic feelings, support for violence against opponents, and more. 2/3 of GOP believe election was stolen from Trump.
– Biden promises to fight for F16s to Turkey.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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The Balkans got its due, but there are bigger issues
Deputy Assistant Secretary Gabriel Escobar, in charge of relations with the Western Balkans, testified this morning at the House Subcommittee on Europe, Energy, the Environment and Cyber. He toed the traditional US lines: EU accession within a foreseeable timeframe of all the Western Balkan states, maintenance of their sovereignty and territorial integrity, and countering the malign influence in the region of Russia and China. The specifics included
- a start to EU accession negotiations for Albania and Macedonia before the end of this year,
- support for the EU “normalization” dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade with the aim (ideally) of mutual recognition,
- insistence on sovereignty, inclusiveness, and democracy in Montenegro,
- hope for electoral, economic and rule of law reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and
- sharp criticism of those who want Republika Srpska’s 49% to secede.
The House members were supportive but questioned Escobar on whether US the negotiator for electoral reforms was too close to the ethnic nationalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whether enough is being done to counter China and Russia, what more might be done on energy and trade, and how the Adminstration’s authority to impose corruption-related sanctions will be used. Escobar asserted that the US push for Bosnian electoral reforms will aim at ensuring all citizens are treated equally (as required by European court decisions), he emphasized the US lacks the autocratic tools that China uses to penetrate the region economically, he elaborated on energy issues (especially the prospects for liquified natural gas), and he pledged vigorous use of the new sanctions authority.
It was a fine performance, but I would fault it on a few details: even a lukewaram endorsement of the Open Balkans initiative that Serbia is pursuing should be conditioned on the requirement to treat all prospective members, including Kosovo, as equal partners. Failure to mention the EU’s long delay in granting Kosovo a visa waiver program is an important error of omission, as it has caused the most EU-positive country in the region to suffer increasing doubts about whether its government can deliver. I am also skeptical of the pursuit of electoral reforms within a flawed constitutional structure in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We’ll just have to wait and see whether that will work well or simply solidify the ethnic nationalist hold on power. Russian progress in penetrating and instrumentalizing its relationship with Serbia was not, I think, adequately appreciated, especially in the military sphere as Serbia massively re-arms to the consternation of its neighbors.
All that said, the big missing piece was how we get to the Administration’s goals–EU membership for all the countries of the Western Balkans–from where we are. The EU quite rightly has tightened requirements for membership, based on its not entirely happy experience with new members who slide backwards in their commitments to accountable and transparent government, individual rights, foreign policy alignment, and other important dimensions of joining the EU. The Western Balkan countries are complaining bitterly that enlargement lacks political support among many member states. The result has been a seemingly ever-more-distant horizon for accession, over which the US has precious little leverage.
One parting note: the House members may not be able to pronounce “Podgorica,” but their questioning was apt and even perspicacious. Two of the members have significant numbers of Bosnians resident in their districts, one has been involved with the region in various capacities for decades, and others just seemed well-staffed. But no one should be fooled: this hearing will get little or no ink in tomorrow’s papers, which are much more interested in the torturous trajectory of President Biden’s budget proposals. Today’s hearings on climate change will attract a lot more attention. The Western Balkans got its due, but there are a lot bigger issues out there.
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