Obama's Summit in Russia: Which Side 'Blinks' First?
| Interviewee: | Stephen Sestanovich, George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Council on Foreign Relations |
|---|---|
| Interviewer: | Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org |
President Barack Obama's trip to Moscow from July 6-8 takes place at a time when both sides have said they want to improve relations. But CFR's top Russia expert, Stephen Sestanovich, says there are indications the summit could be marked by some hard bargaining on arms control issues, which are at the center of the talks. Russian officials have talked about linking any meaningful further agreement on downsizing nuclear arms to the United States dropping plans to put anti-ballistic missiles in Poland. "Some people in [the U.S.] government believe that the Russians think this is their moment to exploit Obama's interests in a successful summit and in nuclear arms control agreements that will help him to show that his aspirations for a nuclear-free world was a reality. The Americans' approach to this summit is actually a little more hard boiled. They're not prepared to make a lot of concessions merely to reach an agreement on START I [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty]," Sestanovich says. "What we're going to see is a little bit of [brinkmanship] in the last few days before the summit, and at the summit itself. The Americans are going to say to the Russians, 'we're prepared to walk away.' We'll see who blinks first. "
At the end of last year, the United States and Russia were at a pretty tense moment. When the Obama administration came into office, Vice President Joseph Biden said in February it was time to "press the reset button" in relations. Now we're having a summit involving President Obama, President Dmitry Medvedev, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. What do the two sides expect to get out of this summit?
You're absolutely right that neither side liked where the relationship stood at the end of last year. There was enthusiasm on both sides for the idea of pressing the reset button. But that was a term without a lot of content. What the summit is going to test is whether you can "press the reset button," even if the two sides have different expectations and understandings as to what that means. Russia's view has tended to be that the United States has to renounce the policies that Moscow found most objectionable: NATO enlargement, missile defense [ in Eastern Europe]. The American view has tended to be that the relationship should be reset by reaching arms control agreements, above all renewing the START I treaty. NATO enlargement actually seems to be on a somewhat slower track now. The administration's budget for missile defense is down. On that basis, you could imagine a different and more productive relationship, but not if the Russians are determined to get explicit agreements about every aspect of it. They've been saying recently that they can't rely on political understandings. They need legal commitments.
"What we're going to see is a little bit of [brinkmanship] in the last few days before the summit, and at the summit itself. The Americans are going to say to the Russians, 'we're prepared to walk away.' We'll see who blinks first."
So they want the United States to say explicitly it won't put up these anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic, which are ostensibly aimed at possible missiles from Iran?
That's one of the big sticking points. Medvedev recently suggested that it would be difficult to have a START I extension, or a new treaty on offensive arms, without an explicit link to missile defense issues. Other Russian [officials] have said the same thing, although there's a recognition that right now the Obama administration's missile defense policy is less threatening to them. There's no possibility that the plans for Poland and Czech Republic are threatening by themselves. But the Russians want to test how much leverage they have. Some people in [the U.S.] government believe that the Russians think this is their moment to exploit Obama's interests in a successful summit and in nuclear arms control agreements that will help him to show that his aspirations for a nuclear-free world was a reality. The Americans' approach to this summit is actually a little more hard boiled. They're not prepared to make a lot of concessions merely to reach an agreement on START I. What we're going to see is a little bit of [brinkmanship] in the last few days before the summit, and at the summit itself. The Americans are going to say to the Russians, "we're prepared to walk away." We'll see who blinks first.
The Obama administration had been seeking dialogue with Iran to try to get it to suspend its nuclear enrichment program. The Russians have gone along with this, but haven't favored very severe sanctions. Now, given the disputed elections in Iran, I would guess this would be a major subject. Do you think that's right?
It has to be an important subject of the discussions, because the United States has put a high premium on getting unity at the UN Security Council on a strategy to increase pressure on Iran. But the question is how plausible that strategy is at this point. It's arguable that the internal upheaval in Iran has made a dialogue with Iran harder to pursue. There will doubtless be a discussion of this issue, but it may be a little less central and a little lower on the agenda than we would have expected a few months back.
Obama is going to give a commencement speech at the New Economic School in Moscow, which will have a number of prominent Russians in attendance. He likes to give these broad, sweeping speeches. What do you think he's going to talk about?
The expectation is that he will try to put his approach to Russian-American relations in the context of American foreign policy in general. He'll describe American views on security in the twenty-first century and how the United States will try to advance its goals including cooperation with Russia. He will presumably address some of the questions of Russia's internal development that has been especially hard for American policymakers to handle over the past two years. This includes how to indicate American preferences for the advance of democracy without riling Russia's leaders. The New Economic School has presumably been chosen because it's a symbol of the most modern Russian thinking. It's a world class institution of research and instruction in economics. It produces top quality people. It's an institution that shows Russia can be competitive at a time when the Russian economy looks as though it depends entirely on energy exports. So it presumably will be an opportunity for the president to talk about how Russia and America can be modern partners. It'll also be significant for Obama because it will give us a picture of the kind of president he is when he sits down for hard bargaining with other leaders. This is something he really hasn't done in his previous foreign trips.
"What we can say is that [Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin and [President Dmitry] Medvedev are very close political partners and apparently close friends. All the same, the people around them do seem to have a different outlook about Russia's future."
There is a mystique about Russian-American summits, going back to Franklin Roosevelt's meeting with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin in Yalta in 1945, to the first visit by a U.S. president to Moscow, in 1972, by Richard Nixon when he signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I). Historians have always said that the meeting in Vienna between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev in the spring of 1961 was crucial because it may have led Khrushchev to think that Kennedy was weak, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis that autumn.
American presidents always have that Vienna example drummed into their heads by their advisers, and by pundits. They know that they're not supposed to go abroad and let some foreign leader bully them or underestimate them. And I think there's every reason to believe that Obama has heard that story himself. But the question is who is playing the role of Khrushchev here? It's surely not Medvedev, but it could be Putin. Putin is a little more in the model of Khrushchev: a more experienced leader, someone whose career has told him that talking tough to the Americans pays off. We may get something out of these meetings that suggest Putin has taken that approach. On the other hand, he probably knows that it didn't go all that well in the end for Khrushchev [he was removed from power in 1964]. Putin's advisers might be telling him that he should be the reasonable guy and make Medvedev to be the bad cop.
Russia announced last month that it was no longer seeking World Trade Organization (WTO) membership, but was instead going to seek membership for a customs union of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Why did it do this so suddenly?
People in Russia and in the West are still scratching their heads about this. The decision to withdraw Russia's membership application for the WTO was announced personally by Putin, and it was seen by many as a repudiation of the idea that Russia had to be a part of the international economy of trading arrangements. There's been speculation of all kinds. Some people see this as a move to allow Russia to take some protectionist measures that wouldn't be allowed by the agreement that had been reached with the WTO. Other people have said that this is a way Putin can show he's the only policymaker worth considering when dealing with Russia, and that he wanted to send that message specifically to Obama. What we can say for sure is that the decision came at just the moment when it seemed as though almost all of the obstacles to Russia's acceptance had been removed. People close to the trade negotiations say that it was imaginable that Russian accession could be completed in a couple of months. Putin took the wheel and turned the policy in a completely different direction. Many Russian economic policymakers are aghast at what has been done.
How do you see the relationship between Medvedev, an economist, who was handpicked to be president by Putin who couldn't run again, and Putin, who more or less named himself prime minister. Does Medvedev bow to Putin, or is he trying to get more daylight between himself and Putin?
There's even more speculation on this than on the WTO accession. What we can say is that Putin and Medvedev are very close political partners and apparently close friends. All the same, the people around them do seem to have a different outlook about Russia's future. So you've had squabbling among the entourages. The advisers who favor a more Western-style modernization with a greater emphasis on the rule of law and more commitment towards combating corruption see Medvedev as their advocate and their hope, and Putin as a symbol of proto-authoritarian Russian politics. The Putin people answer back that Putin has overseen a significant revival of Russian growth and stability. We don't really know whether this back and forth has infected the personal relationship between Putin and Medvedev. We may get some indication of it at the summit.
Uribe Falls to Earth
Colombia's president is used to being wildly popular. But now, his flirtation with a third term may be getting him into trouble.
BY ADAM ISACSON
A year ago this week, Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe was on top of the world. Employing a clever ruse, one of the country's elite army units miraculously (and bloodlessly) rescued 15 hostages who had been held in the jungle for years. The world applauded the operation's stealth and savvy - and the release of the rebels' top political hostage, French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, as well as three U.S. defense contractors and 11 soldiers and police.
Colombia, it seemed, was coming back from the edge, and the country was ecstatic. Two days after the July 2, 2008, hostage rescue, a Gallup poll of Colombians (those with telephones in the four largest cities, at least) put Uribe's approval rating at a remarkable 86 percent. Already, the cattle rancher and conservative president had been well regarded among Colombians for battlefield gains against the 45-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) insurgency, a drug-money-fueled leftist force that systematically targets civilians for murder and kidnapping. Uribe oversaw a military buildup that reduced the guerrillas' size by half and limited its range of operations. He negotiated the demobilization of tens of thousands of pro-government paramilitary militias, reducing -- though not eliminating -- those groups' murderous activity.
But what goes up must come down, and Uribe's luck has certainly done so in recent months. By early May 2009, Gallup put Uribe's approval rating at 71 - still pretty good, but its lowest in two years. A plurality of Colombians told the pollster that the country was on the "wrong track." There are bigger problems at work here than a normal come-down: Uribe's spectacular progress in security and economic matters has slowed, and scandals have taken their place in the news.
Economic decline is the most straightforward concern. With a relatively low foreign debt, Colombia is better cushioned than its neighbors, but the global economic crisis has still dealt the country a blow. Demand for its exports, especially manufactured goods to the United States, has plummeted. Prices of commodities, particularly Colombia's oil, coal, and minerals, have fallen. The country's urban unemployment rate has returned to double digits after a few years of prosperity, with an additional 30 percent of the workforce underemployed and toiling in the informal sector.
Just as the economy has begun to sputter, the security situation -- Uribe's strongest suit - also seems to have stopped improving. The FARC, under new command since March 2008, appear to be regrouping in rural areas. The group's founding leader, Manuel Marulanda, died of natural causes in late March 2008, and was replaced by Alfonso Cano, a former professor who joined the FARC in 1968. Since then, with the exception of the July 2008 hostage rescue and a battlefield victory south of Bogotá in March 2008, the military hasn't dealt any further blows to the guerrillas' leadership. FARC's ambushes, attacks, and operations aimed at local government leaders are becoming more frequent.
Murder rates have increased since 2008 in all of Colombia's major cities, especially Medellín. Here, the it's not the now mostly-rural FARC that is to blame, but drug gangs. What's happening is a sort of turf war to gain territory opened up when 15 of the top paramilitary leaders involved in trafficking were extradited to the United States in the first half of May 2008. "New" paramilitary groups, most of them more accurately described as the armed wings of drug-trafficking organizations, are sprouting up and growing quickly to fill the vacuum.
Drug production, meanwhile, continues to be robust, despite a June 2009 U.N. report that detected an 18 percent reduction in coca cultivation between 2007 and 2008. In fact, the "reduction" is a mere return to the levels of 2003 to 2006, after a surprisingly high year in 2007.
Colombia's editorial pages now speculate that the president's military-heavy security policies may have reached their limit. This development would be less damaging if not for the scandals that have scraped (though not yet deeply wounded) the president, some of them carrying serious human rights implications. Over a third of the members of Congress Colombia elected in March 2006 are now under investigation, on trial, or behind bars for alleged ties to the paramilitary death squads; most are members of pro-government parties.
Meanwhile, Colombians have been shocked by revelations that members of the armed forces, prodded by a president pushing for results, may have killed well over a thousand innocent civilians in the past few years, passing many off as armed-group members killed in combat. Yet another unpleasant surprise came in February 2009, when the presidential intelligence service was found to have been carrying out wiretaps and surveillance against dozens of prominent Colombians: Supreme Court justices, opposition politicians, journalists, and human rights defenders.
Uribe has been most deeply affected, however, by more venal scandals. Two members of Congress were convicted of bribe-taking in 2008, making it apparent that Uribe was able to pass a 2006 amendment to the constitution, allowing him to be reelected for a second term, only because a handful of undecided legislators were promised big favors. Then, in late 2008, a series of pyramid schemes collapsed, wiping out tens of thousands of Colombians' savings. Press reports soon revealed that one of the largest such schemes had underwritten much of the mid-2008 petition drive to change the constitution once more -- so that Uribe could run again in 2010.
The president has chosen to go on the offensive against many of these accusations, constantly seeking to minimize them as the work of "bad apples," and even to claim publicly that accusers and investigators are doing the work of terrorists. This has done little to reduce the intensity of questioning, especially in certain print media outlets.
All this is happening as Uribe considers whether to try and extend his presidency to 12 years. The president claims he has not yet made up his mind, though time is running out and his political surrogates are intensely lobbying the Congress to pass legislation that would set a constitutional referendum in place for late this year.
Polls indicate that most Colombians would support giving Uribe at least the right to run again -- 84 percent in the May Gallup survey. Yet fewer would vote for him, and a second reelection is not assured: Concerns are growing about democratic checks and balances and the prospect of an increasingly personality-driven government led by a man unable to loosen his grip on power.
Prominent members of Colombia's establishment, including some who served as top ministers during Uribe's first term, have come out against his reelection. U.S. President Barack Obama, in a public appearance with a visiting Uribe on June 29, noted that "our experience in the United States is that two terms works for us." In Washington -- where no Colombia-watcher, right, left or center, has gone on record supporting Uribe's reelection -- it is generally acknowledged that a third-term bid will render nearly impossible the already difficult task of convincing Congress to ratify a controversial free trade accord.
Colombia's legislature will consider a bill this month that would nail down a date for a referendum on reelection. No matter what the result, the country is in for a very tumultuous political season. One year after the miraculous rescue in Colombia's jungles, economic woes, security concerns, and scandals are digging in to what was already a hotly contested 2010 election campaign. Down from the high-water mark, Uribe is back in the rapids.
A Coup for Democracy
And a major defeat for Chavez.
by Jaime Daremblum
To say that people in Latin America are sensitive about military coups would be an understatement. Due to the often tumultuous and bloody histories of their respective countries, they have a strong aversion to anything that looks like military interference in civilian politics. Recent events in Honduras have struck many Latin Americans as a return to the bad old days when power-hungry generals routinely dislodged elected officials and stomped on democracy.
Yet upon closer examination, the removal of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya bears very little resemblance to traditional Latin American military coups. Indeed, it was not really a "coup." Rather, it was a response to a leader who had trampled the law and attempted to hold an illegal referendum on constitutional reform. Zelaya's ouster was approved by Honduras's Congress, Supreme Court, Electoral Tribunal, attorney general, and national prosecutor.Zelaya started this whole imbroglio when he ignored a Supreme Court ruling and tried to use thuggish mob tactics to impose his will on the Honduran political system. When the court told him that his proposed referendum was unconstitutional, Zelaya acted as if he were above the law. General Romeo Vásquez, boss of the Honduran armed forces, declined to participate in Zelaya's anti-democratic charade, and for that "offense" he was fired. The court objected to Vásquez's dismissal, at which point Zelaya and a gang of his supporters raided a military base to seize the referendum ballots. Press reports of armed Venezuelan and Nicaraguan agitators suggested the involvement of Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega in what
Many Latin Americans are troubled by the fact that Zelaya was arrested and exiled by military officers. The army's involvement was indeed symbolically damaging. But the Supreme Court had authorized the military to play this role.
"I feel bad about what happened," General Vásquez told the Miami Herald. "I tried very hard to counsel the president to find a legal way out of this. There was no way. Nobody is above the law." Vásquez added: "We felt that if he stayed here, worse things were going to happen and there would be bloodshed. He had already been acting above the law."
Let's be clear: Zelaya's illegal referendum was a transparent attack on democracy. It was part of his broader scheme to rewrite the Honduran constitution, lift presidential term limits, and extend his rule. These are the same tactics that have been used or proposed by populist leaders in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador. All those countries have moved away from democracy and toward a more authoritarian style of governance. Venezuela is now a near-dictatorship, with President Chávez having demolished the independent media, corrupted the judiciary, and turned the legislature into a virtual rubberstamp.
While myriad foreign leaders have denounced Zelaya's removal, Chávez has been the most vociferous. Mind you, in the early 1990s Chávez was convicted and served jail time for leading an attempted coup in Venezuela. Today, his angry response and wild threats indicate just how much is at stake in Honduras. Zelaya was a close Venezuelan ally. His ouster represents a major defeat for the "Bolivarian revolution" that Chávez has promoted in countries across the region. If Honduras's democratic institutions prevail in their efforts to block Zelaya's return, they will have scored a landmark victory over Chavismo. Governments and politicians throughout Latin America will take notice. It may become more difficult for other Chávez acolytes to subvert democracy.
Since Zelaya left, Honduran lawmakers have been scrupulous about following the appropriate procedures. Indeed, both the legislature and the judiciary have upheld the rule of law and acted in accordance with the country's constitution. Lawmakers have appointed former congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as interim president. Micheletti has confirmed that national elections will take place as scheduled this November. In a conference call with reporters on Monday, Micheletti said that Honduran officials could not let Zelaya lead their country into "communism or socialism."
Nevertheless, foreign observers continue to protest. The hypocrisy of certain critics is astounding. Take José Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS). Insulza has fiercely condemned Zelaya's ouster, which he misleadingly calls an "old-fashioned coup," and vowed that Honduras will be suspended from the OAS if it fails to reinstate the former president within a 72-hour time frame. It's too bad that Insulza suffers from selective moral outrage: While he is now condemning Honduran officials for acting to safeguard their democracy, he has been utterly silent about genuine assaults on democracy in countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
Here are the important facts to remember about Honduras: Zelaya tried to hold an unconstitutional referendum. The Supreme Court rebuked him. Zelaya embraced mob tactics and launched his own coup against democracy. He deliberately and unambiguously broke the law. With judicial backing, the army moved to stop him. If you want to blame someone for what happened in Honduras, blame Zelaya.
Jaime Daremblum, who served as Costa Rica's ambassador
to the United States from 1998 to 2004, is director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Hudson Institute.
Obama's Wrong-turn on Honduras
By Oliver NorthIt took the Obama administration less than eight hours to side with Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega over the ouster of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras.
As we have come to expect, Mr. Obama got it wrong again, but this time, nobody noticed. The U.S. news media, preoccupied with the sudden demise of Michael Jackson, ignored the event in Central America.
For those who care about things more important than the passing of a "pop music legend," here's the rest of the story:
Manuel Zelaya, a wealthy rancher and agribusiness executive but self-described "poor farmer," won a four-year term as Honduran president in November 2005 with 49.8 percent of the vote. Article 374 of the Honduran Constitution bars the nation's chief executive from serving consecutive terms. Apparently, one term wasn't enough for Mr. Zelaya, a protege of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's phobic anti-American leader, Daniel Ortega.
Late last year, as the Honduran economy tanked and unemployment grew to nearly 28 percent, Mr. Zelaya forced Elvin Santos, the country's elected vice president, to resign and began holding conversations with Mr. Chavez and Mr. Ortega on how to hold onto power. In lengthy Chavez-like populist speeches, he denounced the United States and wealthy landowners and linked himself with leftists in the Honduran labor movement. On March 23, he issued an executive decree directing a national referendum on a Venezuela-style constituent assembly to rewrite the country's constitution in time for presidential and legislative elections in November. The Obama-Clinton State Department was mute about all this.
Unfortunately for Mr. Zelaya's aspirations, the Honduran Constitution requires that amendments be passed by a two-thirds vote of the country's unicameral Congress during two consecutive sessions. By late May, the Honduran Congress, the Honduran Supreme Court, the commissioner for human rights and the Honduran Supreme Electoral Tribunal all had overwhelmingly declared the referendum unconstitutional.
Mr. Zelaya ignored the people's representatives, had ballots printed in Venezuela and announced that the vote would take place June 28. Again, the O-Team was silent.
In keeping with the rule of law, Honduran Attorney General Luis Alberto Rubi took the case to court. The Honduran Supreme Court ruled the referendum to be illegal and ordered the ballots to be confiscated. Late on June 23, Mr. Zelaya countermanded the court order and directed the army to distribute the ballots. Gen. Romeo Vasquez, the chief of staff of the Honduran military, sought legal opinions and decided not to distribute them. The following day, Mr. Zelaya accepted the resignation of Defense Minister Angel Edmundo Orellana and fired Gen. Vasquez.
The Honduran Supreme Court unanimously ruled the Vasquez firing illegal and reinstated the general on June 25. That prompted Mr. Zelaya and a group of supporters to seize the ballots and issue another executive decree, which directed government officials to set up 15,000 polling stations at schools and community buildings across the country. In response to a request from Mr. Rubi, the Honduran Congress - controlled by Mr. Zelaya's own Liberal Party - opened an investigation into the president's mental stability and fitness to govern.
Mr. Zelaya replied with a two-hour broadcast harangue in which he claimed: "Congress cannot investigate me, much less remove me or stage a technical coup against me, because I am honest. I'm a free president, and nobody scares me."
On Sunday, just hours before the referendum was to begin, the Honduran army, acting on a warrant issued by the Honduran Supreme Court, arrested Mr. Zelaya and sent him, in his pajamas, into exile in Costa Rica. The Honduran Congress affirmed Mr. Zelaya's departure and, in accord with the constitution, named Roberto Micheletti, who had been president of the Congress, interim president of the country.
It has been downhill from there. Mr. Chavez, Mr. Ortega, Mr. Castro and Bolivia's Evo Morales immediately condemned the "coup" and demanded that Mr. Zelaya be restored to power. Mr. Chavez went so far as to threaten military action.
When asked about these events on Sunday, the O-Team punted the issue to the Organization of American States, calling for "all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter." Now there's a powerful statement of support for a constitutional process and the institutions of democracy. Meanwhile, the Clinton State Department is said to be looking at cutting off aid to the impoverished country.
The O-Team doesn't seem to grasp that simply holding an election does not guarantee a democracy. Adolf Hitler was elected. Hugo Chavez was elected. The Castro brothers were "elected." When potentates decide the rule of law does not matter, that constitutional restrictions on power can be overcome by executive fiat, the people inevitably suffer.
It's a point to remember this Independence Day weekend, our nation's 233rd.
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