Preoccupation with Putin overshadows work at G20
Prime Minister Stephen Harper may be slowly moving toward acceptance of more environmentally-friendly policies ahead of next fall’s federal election.
The prime minister once again on Sunday hailed an agreement reached by the U.S. and China last week to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It was the first concrete sign that a binding global accord involving all the leading pollution emitters, including Canada, might be possible, he said at the conclusion of the twoday G20 economic summit.
Harper further signalled his evolving position on the environment by announcing that Canada intends to contribute to a UN Green Climate Fund that U.S. President Barack Obama gave $3 billion dollars to during his visit to Australia.
The movement by Harper on this issue proves that those who may have looked immutable on some issues can change. On the other hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin seems impervious to pressure to shift from his current path over Ukraine. He has preferred to constantly up the ante there and to keep other countries off balance by sending airplanes and warships to the margins of their territories.
The G20 was supposed to be about ways to stabilize and expand the global economy by ensuring financial institutions were properly capitalized, that there was greater sharing of information of those suspected of tax evasion and that G20 members work together to increase world GDP by two per cent more than current forecasts over the next few years. And that is what bureaucrats concentrated on in the months leading up to the meeting. But at Obama’s insistence, environmental issues were also discussed.
Ukraine was not on the formal agenda at the G20, although University of Toronto professor John Kirton, co-director of the G20 Research Group, wondered why. It was Kirton’s alarming, although not necessarily alarmist, view that the duelling, escalating sanction regimes established by the West and by the Kremlin since the spring could trigger a global financial crisis. This was why, he said, that Ukraine should have been urgently discussed at what is supposed to be the world’s largest leaders’ forum on economic issues.
Kirton’s other point was that because terrorist attacks and conventional military successes of the Islamic State — also known as ISIS or ISIL — were disrupting trade and commerce, its murderous outrages should have been discussed in Brisbane, too. Unlike the Ukraine crisis, where Putin appeared happy irritating everyone, ISIL’s barbaric behaviour got scant mention.
Russia’s aggressive behaviour in Ukraine, and the sour reaction by politicians such as Harper and Obama, Britain’s David Cameron and Australia’s Tony Abbott to Putin’s presence in the Antipodes with Russian warships looming just over the horizon, largely pushed the economy and the environment to the side.
What to do about Putin? That has become a central obsession of many leaders this year. So it was again at Brisbane, where the cocky Russian leader was shunted to the end of the row at dinner and during theatrical performances and was even isolated in the diplomatic equivalent of Siberia during carefully orchestrated group photos.
Harper seemed to get a kick out of garnering the most attention of any leader at the G20 by demanding that Putin stop messing with Ukraine.
Economic sanctions on Russia had had a devastating effect, Obama boasted. That appears to be true, but they have not yet moderated, let alone curtailed Putin’s perverse delight in stirring the pot.
This lack of success calls into question strong hints from Obama, Germany’s Angela Merkel and the European Union that more, stiffer sanctions against the Kremlin were being considered.
As the G20 convened, NATO and the Organization on Security and Co-operation in Europe both reported large numbers of Russian troops had once again crossed from Russia into eastern Ukraine. This time they had brought with them heavy weapons, weaponized radars and precision targeting systems.
Russian aircraft and warships have been unusually active in recent weeks and days in the North Pacific and near the borders of eastern Europe, Portugal and California and on the polar approaches to Canada and Alaska. To give NATO, the Kosovars, Croatians and Bosnian Muslims something new to fret about, Russia has just held its first joint exercises ever in Serbia. The Georgians have been out in the streets protesting a decision to create a joint-Russian-Abkhazian military force in the so-called “frozen conflict zone” inside Georgia where Russian troops have helped separatist forces maintain control for many years.
To paraphrase what was arguably Margaret Thatcher’s most memorable quote, Putin’s not for turning. With further sanctions unlikely to convince the Russian leader to surrender territory that it or its proxies control, and with no western country wanting to go to war over Ukraine, more creative strategies may be required.
Nothing has meant more to Russians since the collapse of communism than the ability to travel widely. It might be an idea to greatly toughen visa regimes. Or to slap a freeze on all international transactions involving wealthy Russians and more Russian banks.
Whatever the West does, Putin is still likely to be a serious irritant when the G20 convenes again next fall in Turkey while his main antagonist, Stephen Harper, may or may not still be Canada’s prime minister.