Why the West MUST do business with Putin
Yes, the Russian leader’s a thug who’s run rings round Europe and America. But MAX HASTINGS controversially argues we can’t beat ISIS without him
RUSSIA’S President Vladimirir Putin is the architect of repression at home, sponsor of the mass-murdering President Assad of Syria abroad. He provided rebels in Ukraine with the missiles that 14 months ago murdered 298 innocent people aboard Malaysian airlines Flight MH17.
Yet this week, Putin received a respect- ful hearing for a keynote speech at the United Nations. He followed up by snatching the military initiative from the West in Syria, committing Russian an warplanes to strikes allegedly against ISIS Islamists, but quite likely against mere foes of his client Assad.
This is not an idle gambit: it is the first time Russia has launched a major military action outside what you might call the old Soviet empire since the end of the Cold War. Yesterday, the aggression in the air was underscored by the news that Putin has signed a decree to conscript 150,000 men into his army.
The Russian leader is running rings around the leadership of the West, and especially U.S. President Barack Obama, who has effectively been told to get out of the way as Putin’s fighter jets roar into the sky.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world, perhaps including the new labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, believe that Putin is no less moral, honest and trustworthy than Obama or David Cameron.
Despite his escalation of the Russian commitment to Assad, annexation of Crimea, threats against the Baltic States and the collapse of Russia’s economy, its elected dictator’s hold on the Kremlin seems secure. His success, if we can call it that, reflects a dismaying wider trend.
Canadian politician and writer Michael Ignatieff suggests that such authoritarian powers as Russia and China are creating an alternative model to democracy, based on state domination and r ej ection of universal moral values, unashamedly committed to expansionism. Chester Crocker, an American strategic guru, wrote recently: ‘The i nternational system is in a rudderless transition. Power is diffusing, and the relative power of the U. S. and its Western allies has declined.’
What has gone wrong? How has it come about that the U.S. and its Allies, including Britain, have been wrongfooted by the likes of Putin, who is essentially a gangster? The West’s l eaders find themselves floundering amid the crises of European migration, Middle Eastern chaos and continuing Russian aggression in Ukraine.
The first answer is that leadership and coherent policy-making have been shamefully absent. The shadow of the Bush-Blair disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan hangs heavy over the White House.
President Obama seems content to spend his last two years of office playing golf. In an extraordinary fashion, given his intelligence and rhetorical powers, he has renounced t he t r aditional r ol e of U. S. presidents, acknowledged leaders of the free world. His administration will go down in history as a tragic disappointment.
Obama’s failure matters to us all, with the United Nations toothless as ever. The great historian and strategist Professor Sir Michael Howard often observes that whatever America’s follies and faults, ‘it i s the only nation capable of getting things done in the world’. In the absence of America’s leadership, its allies around the world drift in bewilderment,be while Europe is weakwe and divided.
Even if the West was never going to war to save Ukraine, it was a huge mistake for Obama to give Putin a clear run by explicitly ruling out any military option there.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is tougher towards Russia than most of her countrymen, but Germany’s armed forces have been allowed to atrophy. Greece’s joke socialist government embraces Putin as a friend.
Only Britain and the East Europeans have real stomach for sustaining the current sanctions against Russia for its massive breaches of international law.
However, Britain’s foreign policy is dysfunctional. The Prime Minister talks tough about Russia, but at the same moment his Chancellor is conducting a love-in with the equally repressive and brutal Chinese, who are more dangerous than Russia, because they are much more powerful.
ELSEWHERE, David Cameron wants to bomb ISIS in Syria, but also to bring their enemy President Assad before The Hague war crimes court. Successive British governments close their eyes to the barbarity of many Arab societies, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain prominent among them. We consider them vital markets, and thus ignore the beheadings and mutilations of criminals which take place under their auspices.
None of this represents a case for us to break off relations with the world’s nasty regimes — indeed, quite the opposite. It merely emphasises the tangle our leaders have got themselves into — which the brutal realists of the Kremlin must observe with disdain.
We have lived through almost two decades in which Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and now David Cameron have pursued ‘ ethical f oreign policies’, which caused them to promote the overthrow of dictators in the Middle East — all of which have ended in disaster — and moral posturing elsewhere.
Yet each in turn has presided over rundowns of our Armed Forces. Not only does President Putin view our capabilities with contempt, but so, too, do the Americans.
Whatever courtesies they extend to the Prime Minister, I can assert from my own contacts with American senior officers that their respect for our military has waned, is waning and will continue to wane.
In terms of diplomatic potency, however, America is a feeble shadow
of its former self. Last week saw publication of Niall Ferguson’s excellent new biography of Henry Kissinger, once reviled for the supposed cynicism of his direction of America’s foreign policy as national security adviser and then Secretary of State under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the Seventies.
Kissinger made plenty of mistakes, yet today he can be seen as one of the most brilliant policy-makers in U.S. history, guided by a fundamental pragmatism which seems inspired alongside the messes would-be idealists have been getting us into ever since.
His heroes, depicted in his recent book World Order, were cynics — the scheming churchman Cardinal Richelieu, French diplomat Talleyrand, Metternich the Austrian politician. They had in common in their different centuries a belief that the foremost duties of statesmen were to pursue national interests and sustain international stability.
KiSSiNGeR recognised the importance of military strength, to gain respect as well as security. But he was willing to talk to anybody about anything, in pursuit of keeping the world on a more or less even keel. Kissinger’s 1971-72 handling of détente with China is today acknowledged as a diplomatic masterpiece.
The Chinese premier Mao Zedong was a far more appalling monster than Assad, Gaddafi or Putin — responsible for the mass murder of millions. He ranked alongside Hitler and Stalin, the most dreadful men of the 20th century. But Kissinger and President Nixon judged, surely rightly, that however odious the Chinese leadership, the world would be a slightly safer place if the U.S. talked to them.
The lesson for today seems plain: the West cannot afford the luxury of choosing other nations’ leaders. For the most part, it must deal with them as they are.
Tony Blair and David Cameron’s enthusiasm for toppling dictators and forging democracies, heedless of local cultures, have done immense harm, created murderous vacuums of governance.
We have paid a terrible price for believing that liberal democracy is the only, universally applicable form of government.
Putin is a gangster, but he commands immense popular support in his own country because the Russian people feel affronted by the West’s refusal to treat them with respect. if they cannot be loved, they seem content to be feared.
The people of Libya — whose ‘liberation’ was so foolishly proclaimed by David Cameron — are now racked by civil war and worse off than under Gaddafi’s tyranny.
However odious Putin’s creature Assad is, we cannot credibly fight him and iSiS simultaneously, and we have nothing to put in his place. We need an accommodation with Putin to achieve any sort of peace in Syria or Ukraine. Russia’s determination to retain Syria as a client — and to keep its naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean coast — will sooner or later have to receive Washington’s acquiescence.
Many people, both inside and outside Russia, consider the West hypocritical, because we launch drone st rikes against our enemies abroad, almost certainly in defiance of international law, invade iraq and send troops to Afghanistan — then denounce Russia when it pl ays t he same games.
if we are honest, we should acknowledge that there is something in what the critics say.
i accept that by arguing this, some will denounce me as a would-be appeaser. i call myself instead a Kissinger-style realist.
The rules for conducting a successful foreign policy are to say what you mean and mean what you say — which Obama and, less importantly, Cameron, almost invariably fail to do.
it is also indispensable to bargain from strength, both political and military. Today, the Russian leader counts his 2,000 tactical nuclear warheads and gazes with contempt upon the disarray of the Western Powers and continuing run-down of our Armed Forces.
David Cameron makes much of our participation in air strikes against iSiS, but two pairs of Tornados is the most we can put into the air.
BRiTAiN’S Armed Forces will soon be left only with the Trident deterrent at the high end, which can never be used, and at the low end with the SAS. The British Army will need to mobilise most of its manpower to Troop the Colour.
if we expect the Americans, Russians or anybody else to take Britain and indeed europe seriously, we need credible Armed Forces, which today we lack.
A new twin-track foreign policy towards Russia demands that we bow to Putin’s foremost interest — preserving himself in power — by acknowledging his legitimacy. Russia’s continuing presence in Syria will have to be accepted.
There may be scope for a deal to remove Assad but only after an agreed interval to save Putin’s face. The Russians, however, will never agree to any war crimes trial.
We have a genuine common interest with Russia, 15 per cent of whose population are Muslims, in fighting islamic extremism.
Contrarily, at the same time we must make plain that the West will, if necessary, fight to defend the Baltic States, currently under threat from Russian subversion.
Putin is an attack dog. Today, he believes that he can get away with almost anything, without the West responding effectively.
We have to show him that he is wrong — but also hold out the expectation of an accommodation, and respect for Russia’s place in the world, if he moderates his aggression.
it is most unlikely that Russia can be our friend, but it can at least become a manageable neighbour.
There is no single world order, nor any universal panacea for its troubles. instead, there are myriad problems and conflicts which must be addressed piecemeal.
Our leaders are far more likely to manage these successfully if they seek stability and containment, rather than pursue unattainable moral purposes which have contributed to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.
‘Power is in unprecedented flux,’ Henry Kissinger has written. ‘The goal of our era must be to achieve . . . equilibrium while restraining the dogs of war. And we have to do so amid the rushing stream of history.’
The West cries out for leaders with the strength of personality to hold their own in the stream, as today they do not.
We need fewer empty words — instead a cool, ruthless pursuit of both our own national interests, and international stability.
With every new Russian bombing raid over Syria, that pursuit becomes a little more challenging.