PM decries marauding Russian Bear
Harper talks tough while other western leaders exercise restraint
THE HAGUE, Nether-lands — It has been a while since a world leader used the phrase “the free world.”
Yet Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper accurately captured the moment when he resurrected that Cold War expression on Saturday in Kyiv to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin’s naked revanchism in redrawing the contours of Ukraine.
“I think it is important that we in the free world not accept the occupation of Crimea, that we continue to resist ... the occupation of Crimea, and that there be no return to business as usual with the Putin regime until such time (as) the occupation of Crimea ends,” Harper said during remarks Saturday that got wide play on Ukrainian television news shows that evening.
Because of the cowardice and/or impotence of other leaders (take your pick), Harper has been out on point, to use a military term, criticizing Putin and Russia on Ukraine and Crimea more sharply than any other leader of a major western country and calling for closely co-ordinated economic policies to hurt Russia.
An emergency G-7 summit is to convene in the Dutch capital on the margins of a global meeting on nuclear security on Monday. Because German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks Russian and Putin speaks German, and because Berlin has the most comprehensive, balanced trade relationship with Moscow, Merkel will remain the West’s primary conduit for trying to reason with the Russian leader.
But the G-7 will want to know what Harper learned in Kyiv. Moreover, they will continue to count on him to do the rhetorical heavy lifting about Russia’s land grab, saying that they might wish to, but don’t, lest they upset the marauding Russian Bear.
Plans are afoot to exclude Russia from the G-8 summit, which was to have been in Sochi, Russia, this June, and to instead hold a G-7 summit at exactly the same time in London. Yet Harper remains the only western leader who is certain to call on Monday for Russia’s expulsion from the G-8.
U.S. President Barack Obama acts as if he would rather walk on glass than speak plainly about Putin’s military adventurism and the dangers that lie ahead because of it. As for the feeble western Europeans, they have been shockingly subdued about Putin using his armed forces as bullies.
Other than the Poles and the Baltic mini-states, who know too well the Kremlin’s boot, but don’t have much of a voice in European debates, the continent’s leaders have been handcuffed in discussions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea. This is partly because with Britain greedily leading the way, Europe has welcomed tens of billions of dollars of dirty money from a Who’s Who of Russia’s most unsavoury “biznismen.”
The other reason is that the Europeans have not done much to wean themselves from Russian oil and especially Russian natural gas. While making a shambles of their high-minded green energy policies regarding wind and solar power, they have preferred to rant about Canada’s energy industry rather than work with their ally on assuring reliability of supply and reducing their dependence on Russian energy.
That Putin can get away with doing as he pleases with Crimea is not complicated to explain.
After a few terrible years adjusting to the post-Soviet world, the Russians have greatly increased military spending and have seized two chunks of Georgia, and now one piece of Ukraine. Overmatched during the Cold War, the Russian army is now virtually unopposed in Central Europe.
Long before Obama’s much ballyhooed “pivot to Asia,” Washington was quietly stripping Europe of forces it reckoned it no longer needed there. The number of American troops in Europe has been reduced to about 70,000 from an early Cold War high of about 450,000, and about 210,000 soon after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Over the past 24 months alone, two more “heavy” U.S. infantry brigades, purposebuilt to stymie potential Russian military aggression, have packed up and gone home.
Canada joined the exodus, too. More than 20 years ago it brought home its mechanized brigade from Lahr, Germany, and its fighter jets from Baden-Soellingen. As for the Europeans, they were as keen as Canada to grab “a peace dividend” in the 1990s and made deep cuts in military spending.
All this made sense at the time. Almost everyone, except perhaps Putin himself, thought the Cold War was over. The priority became to integrate Russia into the global economy, the idea being that whoever was in the Kremlin would see how advantageous this was. Allowing Russia and its energy-skewed economy into the G-8, when it shared none of its partners’ democratic values or followed many of the their business practices, has turned out to have been a terribly misguided strategy.
Allowing Russia access to western capital and its most brazen crooks to buy up the best precincts in London, many of the finest beach properties in France and Spain and corner the world market on luxury yachts has turned out to be a two-edged sword.
The Europeans are far more worried now about damage to their own economies if Russia is hit with meaningful sanctions than the other way around.
Whether or not Harper points out these dramatic contradictions to his colleagues, he will give them some tough love on Monday. Maybe he can help Europe overcome its paralysis before the Bear decides to make another meal of eastern Ukraine.