Category: International

Russian Television : Political Talk Shows as an example of pluralism in Russian society or as an exercise in state control of information?

Russian Television : Political Talk Shows as an example of pluralism in Russian society or as an exercise in state control of information?

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

Anyone looking into Russian television programming on both state-owned and privately owned federal channels cannot ignore the heavy presence of political talk shows.  They enjoy time on air comparable with formal news broadcasting. Indeed some are wrapped around news bulletins, and all make use of audio-visuals taken from the newsroom to drive the panelists’ debates.

The genre of political talk shows is as much a fixture of Russian television around the clock as the daily serials dealing with romance, detective stories, adventure. They tell you that the Russian public, young and old, female and male, is very politicized and keen to hear political views that are divergent from what state news program hosts are reading off their teleprompters. If I had to find a comparable interest in politics in Western Europe, I would name France.  I suspect that the US public trails far behind.

This article will consider the genre of political talk shows to address the following questions:

Does Russian television present the views of political Opposition to viewers? Does the Kremlin tightly control Russian television for political content?  Is Russian mass media monolithic or pluralistic? Are the talk shows journalism or state propaganda?

Methodology

The strength of the essay which follows is the first-hand participation of the author in nearly all the political talk shows on the federal channels from my debut in May 2016 through last week. The methodology is unapologetically qualitative as opposed to quantitative.

I stress the importance of personal participation, because of what I could learn about the culture of these shows, about the presenters and producers from chats in the holding pens before and in the refreshments rooms after the shows, as well as from talking to other panelists during the breaks. This is something you cannot get from watching the shows either in live broadcasts or on the internet postings afterwards (nearly all shows appear on the channels’ websites or on youtube.com) however valuable that may be.  Moreover, only by being present on set can you appreciate how the debates are cut in the editing room before they are broadcast in the case of those shows not going out ‘live’ or before posting on the internet for all shows. Even live shows can undergo substantial cuts before posting, to reduce the viewing time by as much as half; whether this is tendentious in terms of content depends on the given show and channel.

Meanwhile, the big differences in the quality of these shows from station to station and even between talk shows on the same channel reduce the usefulness of quantitative analysis such as counting minutes of time on air allocated to the opposition.  Panelists are individually weaker or stronger and there is a difference between their being allowed to make programmatic statements without interruption or their having to fight for the microphone to answer loaded questions.

For these reasons, I urge the reader to bear with me on what are my qualitative findings.

Programs under review

The political talk shows in which I participated are as follows. Except as noted all have their broadcast headquarters in Moscow:

Rossiya-1 (state-owned)  : Специальный корреспондент (Special Correspondent)  60 минут (60 Minutes)     Воскресный вечер с Владимиром Соловьевым  (Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev)

Pervy Kanal (state-owned):  Время покажет (Time Will Tell)

NTV (privately owned):   Место встречи (Meeting Place)

Zvezda (federal channel of the Russian Armed Forces):  Особая статья (Special Article)

Pyaty Kanal (state-owned, St Petersburg based channel 5):  Открытая студия  (Open Studio)

Pecking order   

In terms of intellectual level of discourse, the Vladimir Soloviev programs are Russia’s finest. They operate in several formats besides the one mentioned above. One of the most interesting is what is called “Duels” between exponents of two adversarial positions with breaks for coaching by their respective teams and call-in voting to tabulate who has been more persuasive.

 While numbers of viewers or ratings are not available and may in fact not be greater than for other programs on the same channel or than talk shows on Pervy Kanal, the numbers of viewers tracked by youtube.com for the Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev shows often come to 250,000 within 12 hours of posting. Given the demands of such shows on audience knowledge and interest, that is a very impressive showing.

It bears mention that the quality of Soloviev’s program is directly related to the level of the guests he attracts. They are chairpersons of the Duma or Federation Council committees, presidents of the Duma parties and the very best academic minds. The quality also may be attributed to the freedom the moderator enjoys both for his professional standing and as a Kremlin loyalist.  He appears to be very much his own man and interacts freely with his panelists. All of this raises the entertainment value as well as the journalistic content. I would set this in direct contrast to another leading daily talk show program on the same Rossiya-1, 60 Minutes, where the presenters Yevgeny Popov and his wife Olga Skabeyeva appear to be working strictly from the texts on their teleprompters and instructions given by their managers-producers coming through their ear plugs. The result is loss of spontaneity and authenticity.

In terms of national attention, I would place the Time Will Tell show of Pervy Kanal on a level at or above 60 Minutes.  Being an afternoon program with audience of pensioners, it does not draw in first quality analysts or politicians, although rank-and-file Duma members are frequent visitors.  Its outstanding feature is the relative freedom of action of the moderators.  Its drawback is the excessively tight control of panelists’ access to microphones which leads to a great deal of clamor and noise. But the control may be justified by its being the first program to broadcast live to the Moscow time zone, which carries greater political risk than Rossiya-1 shows that broadcast live to the Russian Far East and then are progressively rebroadcast by time zone East to West from recordings to reach Moscow 8 hours later. 

The commercial station NTV opted for a political talk show modeled on Pervy Kanal’s Time Will Tell,  taking over some staff, virtually duplicating the studio and also occupying live broadcast time in mid-afternoon.  Its ratings are said to trail substantially the competition, although the lead presenter came to the job with a lot of relevant experience.

The federal channel Five talk show Open Studio operates a split panel sitting in two cities, 2 in Moscow and 4 in St Petersburg, but its home audience is surely in the northern capital. The moderator conducts what might be called sequential interviews with each of the participants, and there is very little cross-talk. One peculiarity of this show is audience call-in of questions.

The Ministry of Defense channel Zvezda has the only talk show which is not broadcast live. From my experience, there was as much shouting on stage as in the noisiest major channel shows, but it was nearly all deleted in the cutting room to yield a smooth flow of debate to the audience.  Panelists are taken from a different pool than the major stations, which may be characterized as an advantage, as I will discuss below.

 

Political talk shows as a constantly evolving genre

 

Russian television programming follows the ratings, because all channels rely on paid commercials, which may take up 12 minutes or more of an hour on air. The hottest competition is between the leading state channels Pervy Kanal and Rossiya-1.  They fought tooth and nail to attract audiences to their New Year’s 2017 programming.  They fight daily in the talk program genre and ratings swing back and forth depending on the hour of day, topicality of the day’s subject, prestige or charisma of the invited panelists. When I appeared on Pervy Kanal’s show Time will Tell dedicated to the US presidential election of November 8, the hosts proudly told me their ratings that day spiked to 20%, well above their norm of 15%. This means that at the given hours of broadcast in the middle of the afternoon Moscow time 20% of all Russian television sets were tuned to the show. By contrast, the leading competitors had ratings of 10% or less at that given time.

Because of the fight for ratings and fierce competition, the genre of political talk shows is constantly evolving.  The technical sophistication of the studios, the decision to broadcast live (and to which time zones) or to distribute pre-recorded and edited videos, hosting by one, usually male, presenter versus male-female pairs, the level of control of the proceedings before cameras from unseen producers upstairs, the use of evening prime time versus afternoon hours when pensioners and housewives predominate:  all of these variables are constantly in play as given shows are enhanced or replaced with each season. 

Shouting matches or open forum of ideas

It has to be said that Russian political talk shows are meant to be entertaining as well as informative. They are more of a free-for-all than debate governed by Oxford Union type decorum. This reflects the streak in Russian culture that goes in for mixed discipline martial arts contests or single combat “without rules.” It is also calibrated to the time of day and target audience of the given show, as Artyom Sheinin, the moderator of  Time Will Tell explained to me when I first appeared there:  the show’s afternoon time slot attracts a disproportionately high number of retirees who want an “adrenaline shot” at mid-day. The evening programs on the same Pervy Kanal are less excited, so as not to disturb the digestion of those who just returned home from work and are seated in their armchairs in a reflective mood.

Still, even in the evening slots, most talk shows on both state and private channels put a lot of Russian intellectuals off by their noise.  The noise predominates at the middle quality range of the genre.  At the ends of the middle spectrum in terms of specifics of the audience (Zvezda with its military families or the more staid and traditional St Petersburg channel 5, where all panelists have a cultivated demeanor and dress in suits and ties), either the clatter is cut in the editing room, as in the former case, or it does not happen at all, because of the prevailing culture, the latter case.

Then there is another and very important exception to the practice of shouting matches, namely the top quality shows, in particular those moderated by Vladimir Soloviev. The very important politicians and political commentators whom he attracts expect and receive their due courtesy and are almost never interrupted. 

Subject matter

The talk shows or show segments in which I and other foreigners participate as panelists debate exclusively issues of international relations, as is entirely logical. If we have any value for the Russian viewers, it is as experts bringing in fresh perspectives and challenging what they otherwise hear from the Russian establishment. On domestic issues, our remarks would not be informed, nor would they be welcomed.

The subject matter on the talk shows closely tracks the topics on Russian news.  Over the period of my experience from May 2016 to present, the news has been heavily skewed to Russian relations with Ukraine, military conflict in the Donbas, implementation of the Minsk accords, NATO military exercises near the Russian borders, the NATO battalions arriving in the Baltic States, the Syrian civil war and in particular the liberation of Palmyra and Aleppo, the US presidential campaign, the election results of November 8 and what the new administration of Donald Trump might bring.

On the premier programs of Vladimir Soloviev, international affairs constitute close to 100% of the subject matter.   However, on other political talk shows domestic topics in the news may make up between 30 and 50% of the programming.  Subjects have included the draft law on violence in households, the “Yarovaya” law on electronic surveillance and record keeping, rising monthly fees of apartment owners for building services and repairs, how to deal with the many fatalities caused by joyriding of Russia’s golden youth.

Abstract debates on economic issues or social issues are not in the nature of the talk shows, which are so news-driven that the panelists may be interchanged, even the studio hours may be moved back in order to give the production team time to prepare visuals for a show devoted to some “breaking news.”

 

Panelists

The answers to the questions posed at the start of this essay depend heavily on how you characterize the panelists. The outstanding fact, which is surely the greatest weakness of the genre is that the pool of panelists from which the major channels draw overlaps excessively. On any given day, you can tune in to several of these talk shows on different channels and find the very same panelists holding forth. 

I do not have a firm explanation for this phenomenon.  A casual observer might guess that some of the panelists are making their livelihood by multiple appearances, but there is no way of knowing who is being paid to appear. From my chats at the sidelines, I understand that most panelists are being paid nothing other than their taxi fares if they are locals, as most are, or flights and hotel if they are out-of-towners. Foreigners are a special case: it is widely assumed that “enemies” are paid for their trouble, meaning in particular panelists coming from Poland and Ukraine.

Factors that I identify to explain the different channels’ drawing on the same pool are availability, known success with the competition and skill of repartee. Appearing on one show draws the attention of the young “producers,” meaning administrators, working at other channels. The job prospects of these handlers rise when they bring in and coach fresh talent. In the case of foreigners, it is fluency in Russian, which must be of rather high standard given the pressures of fast and interrupted debate.

As I have indicated in passing above, some of the best local panelists are Russian legislators, from the lower or upper houses of the Federal Assembly. Others are journalists, think tank political scientists, area specialists, military experts.  Most have well established professional careers. A very few are young docents seeking public exposure to gain promotions.

By nationality, the foreigners on talk shows panels come from countries which are in the news and which have tense relations with Russia:  Ukrainians, Poles, Baltic States, the UK and the USA. Most, but not all deliver, as expected, harsh critiques of Russian foreign policy. In this respect, Russian television for the domestic audience has a totally different set of requirements and objectives than the channel dedicated to foreign audiences, Russia Today, where foreign guests are uniformly “friends of Russia.”

Among the most experienced foreigners with near native fluency regularly appearing on the Pervy Kanal and Rossiya-1 is the British journalist and lecturer, Owen Matthews, from Newsweek.  I joined him at a session of 60 Minutes. Another journalist of major standing with whom I appeared on Time Will Tell is David Filipov, Moscow bureau chief of The Washington Post. It bears mention that, to my knowledge, neither they nor the other Western critics of Putin who are invited onto Russian talk shows have written anything about their experiences, while their readerships are led to believe by the publications they work for that Russian media are just monolithic propaganda outlets for the Kremlin.

Other US-based guests from the think tank world who appear regularly on the premier talk shows of Rossiya-1 are Ariel Cohen, from the Atlantic Council and Dimitri Simes, President of the Center for the National Interest. Both are given 5 or 10 minutes to themselves by satellite link from Washington, D.C. Their statements, usually about political developments in the USA from the perspective of Inside the Beltway, then are commented upon by the talk show’s in-studio panelists. Cohen is also occasionally in the Moscow studio as a panelist. Both, of course, speak native Russian.

Finally, there is the unique phenomenon of all Russian talk shows during the time period under review:  the journalist Michael Bohm, who spent a decade as editor of the Op Ed page of The Moscow Times and now provides spice to Russian television by energetically defending the views of the Neocons and Liberal Hawks in their anti-Russian policies. He is the American whom all Russians love to hate.  Nonetheless, his mastery of Russian folk sayings has endeared him even to his harshest detractors.

By party affiliation, the Russian politicians appearing on the political talk shows belong predominantly, but not exclusively to the parties in the Duma.  Among the most frequent guests on the Soloviev shows are leading members of the ruling United Russia party Vyacheslav Nikonov, chairman of the Duma Committee on Education; Aleksey Pushkov, former chair of the Duma Committee on International Affairs; and his predecessor in this post, Konstantin Kosachev, now chair of the same committee on the Federation Council.

Though less often, the other Duma parties are definitely visible on these shows.  Which parties are invited and at what level varies from channel to channel. Vladimir Soloviev gives frequent invitations to the president of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Vladimir Zhirinovsky whose nationalist views he obviously shares. LDPR’s Duma Deputy Leonid Slutsky, the new chair of the Committee on International Relations, was on the talk shows soon after his appointment.  Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is invited far less often to the major talk shows and the invitation is usually in connection with commemoration of some event or personality from the Soviet era.

The political talk shows also regularly invite as panelists members of certain parties that were unable to reach the 5% voter threshold to win seats in the State Duma.  By rule of thumb at Time Will Tell, for example, they constitute 10% of the panelists.  The parties most commonly invited are Yabloko and Party of Growth

To what extent does the foregoing allow us to formulate conclusions and answer the questions posed at the outset, in particular whether Russian television presents the views of the Opposition?  It all comes down to definitions.

What do we mean by the “Opposition”?

I contend that for many American experts on Russia, the definition of “opposition” pre-determines the answer to the questions of pluralism, genuine journalism and the like on Russian television. This is because the notion of Russian opposition that has taken hold in the United States is attached to regime change, not to normal electoral politics. Only those committed to bringing down the “Putin regime” are deemed worthy of the designation “opposition.”  In this view, all Duma parties other than the ruling United Russia party – namely the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Just Russia, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia  – do not count as opposition. 

To be sure, nearly all Duma parties rally behind the foreign policy of Vladimir Putin, though several are still more strident nationalists than the ruling United Russia party. However, in matters of domestic policy the Duma parties have their own policies and strongly criticize the ruling party, seeking to modify its legislative initiatives and to introduce bills of their own.  To deny them the status of Opposition is like considering the Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. an undifferentiated mass because they largely share a bipartisan foreign policy (until the advent of Donald Trump). This point is all the more relevant when we consider, as I mentioned above, that a variable but always substantial portion of most talk show programming is devoted to domestic as opposed to foreign policy issues.

Until his death in 2015, Boris Nemtsov and his Parnas movement were THE OPPOSITION in the eyes of American experts. Nemtsov, Milov and Kasyanov were striking out against the corruption with which the Putin regime was said to rely to stay in power, against its authoritarian if not dictatorial ways, and stood in favor of accommodation with the West, which they claimed was obtainable if only Russia cast aside the aggressive, assertive habits of the Putin regime. 

Since Nemtsov’s death, the new White Knight in Russian politics for American observers has been the blogger Alexei Navalny, who showed his political muscle in the last mayoral elections in Moscow. Never mind that Navalny has little electoral support outside the capital or that his political views are ultra-nationalist. He is determined to bring down the regime, and that is enough.

From my observations of the period under review, neither representatives of Parnas nor Navalny and similarly minded, self-styled “non-systemic opposition” were ever admitted to any of the television talk shows whatever the channel precisely because of their seditious intent. 

But before our American experts exclaim “gotcha” I would ask them whether they can cite an appearance of leaders from Occupy Wall Street! on Meet the Press, say in 2009, or at any time since?  The American equivalent of “non-systemic opposition” is precisely that kind of folks. No government, including no democratic government will give such opponents the microphone to foment insurrection on national television, least of all during prime time.

For these reasons, I insist that the question of pluralism and the journalistic mission of informing the audience and bringing to them alternative points of view has to be posed more broadly, without reference to specific individuals or parties/movements being given the microphone on air. 

Besides the well-known positions of the Yabloko Party leaders who appear in the talk shows among the 10% reserved for defenders of the Yeltsin era accommodation with the West, mention has to be made of Sergei Stankevich, who since 2016 represents the Party of Growth, another non-Duma party. An early ally of Yeltsin who later fell out of favor, spent several years as a political exile in Poland and was later pardoned, Stankevich regularly questions on air the whole logic of Russia’s actions in Crimea, in the Donbas.

And, if we take a broad view and look to the airing of ideas challenging the official party line of the Kremlin on international affairs, the foreign guests who are always invited onto the panels are a proxy for the views of the anti-Kremlin domestic opposition, including the non-systemic opposition.

Conclusions

At a minimum, the talk shows in which I have participated were staged to present a discussion of topical issues of international relations by skilled and well-informed experts representing diverse points of view. In that sense, they demonstrate pluralism as opposed to Kremlin propaganda. They are guided by a journalistic interest to address current events and to expose the public to various interpretations.

 

 

 

© Gilbert Doctorow, 2017

 

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G.Doctorow is a Brussels-based political analyst. His latest book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.

Leery of Trump No Longer: Official Russia on the Trump-Putin Telephone Call of January 28th

Leery of Trump No Longer: Official Russia on the Trump-Putin Telephone Call of January 28th

 by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

Notwithstanding his disposition to establish constructive working relations with Russia repeated many times before and after the November 8 elections, in the past couple of weeks the incoming President got off to a bad start. 

In his interview with The Times of London just days before the Inauguration, Donald Trump  proposed changing the metrics used for possible lifting of sanctions on Russia from full implementation of the Minsk Accords which does not directly depend on Moscow and has been stymied by Kiev for its own reasons, to progress on curbing the nuclear arms race and disarmament, which is a matter for Washington and Moscow acting alone.  However, that splendid proposal failed to take into account the Kremlin’s aversion to any possible moves on nuclear weapons, which it sees as its great leveler, so long as there is no new security architecture in Europe and the world bringing Russia in from the cold. The answer from Moscow was a firm Nyet.

This false start was compounded by remarks from Trump’s spokesman after his boss was installed in the Oval Office suggesting that America still favored creation of safe havens, of a no-flight zone in Syria. This American initiative had already been dismissed when advanced by Barack Obama as just another ruse to protect the anti-Assad terrorists who were being supported by Washington and its Gulf State allies.

But now the early reverses have more than been repaired. In his 45-minute telephone call with President Putin on Saturday, January 28, Donald Trump appears to have kindled a very respectful and enthusiastic response from Official Russia.  By that term, I mean the Kremlin elites in parliament, in the universities and think tanks, in the media upon whom Vladimir Putin depends for nationwide support of his policies. Their collective views may be a better indication of where Russia is headed than remarks of Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson.

All that one needs to know to come to the above conclusion is available from Open Sources.  There is no need for a bug under Vladimir Putin’s pillow or that of his Kremlin entourage. And the best Open Sources in my estimation are the premier television news and political talk shows that run every Sunday night.

The first half-hour or so of Vesti Nedeli (News of the Week) on the 29th might have been mistaken for a US-origin program dubbed into Russian by anyone unfamiliar with their programming, because it was almost entirely devoted to the phone call with the American President and to the demonstrations against Donald Trump’s various Executive Orders that broke out across the country in the week gone by. The presenter, Dmitri Kiselyov, is also the head of all news reporting on Russian state radio and television, so his giving his seal of approval to the talks between the two presidents as harbinger of good things to come carried a lot of weight.

However, the more telling ‘thumbs up’ evaluation of the telecom came on the next featured program of the Rossiya-1/Vesti-24 channel, Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev, which has a deserved reputation as the most serious political talk show in the country. It was posted on youtube.com immediately after airing on nationwide television and within 12 hours had received more than 280,000 views, which is a fair indication of its popularity with Russia’s chattering classes (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ0wQ8qDk_Y ).

The Vladimir Soloviev show is important precisely because of the array of panelists having their own power bases and contributing what was complementary but clearly defined and individualistic appreciations of why the conversation between the presidents was so promising. Among the panelists and the first to speak was Vyacheslav Nikonov, who as the grandson of Molotov may be called hereditary Soviet aristocracy; he is also chairman of the Duma’s Committee on Education; member of the top governing body of United Russia, chairman of the Board of Russky Mir, the NGO supporting Russian culture and the Russian diaspora abroad.   Second in the pecking order was Aleksei Pushkov, Chairman of the Commission on Information Policy in the Federation Council and from 2011 to 2016 Chairman of the Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs. Other notables included Oleg Morozov, Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council;  Andrei Sidorov, Head of the World Politics Department, Moscow State University; and Sergei Stankevich, head of the  International Contacts section in the center-right Party of Growth (Boris Titov).

The boys did their homework both in historical comparisons and in parsing texts of the press releases. They came to the show well prepared. Their comments are worth reading at length, and at the end of this brief essay, I attach a verbatim record of their principal remarks in English translation.

Another noteworthy aspect of the program and of the positive view presented on prospects for collaboration with Donald Trump’s America is that it unfolded under the direction of the great Trump-skeptic, Vladimir Soloviev himself.

 

As I know from talking to him on the sidelines of one of his broadcasts in September, 2016 in which I took part, Soloviev was no fan of Trump before the US elections and preferred to see Hillary win on the logic that it’s better to deal with the devil you know.  In Trump he saw only unpredictability, volatility. He assured me that Trump’s pro-Russian statements were purely pre-election rhetoric which he would betray the day after taking office. In later broadcasts, after Trump’s election on November 8th, Soloviev was one of those who remained guarded, arguing that this businessman would hardly succeed in implementing his promises over the opposition of the Deep State.  Now it would appear that Soloviev himself is less leery and more hopeful. In a word, with one phone call Donald Trump has set the stage for serious negotiations and, possibly, substantive “deals” with the Russian leadership at their eventual summit.

 

© Gilbert Doctorow, 2017

 

 

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G.Doctorow is the European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd. His latest book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.

 

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Select comments of panelists

 

Vyacheslav Nikonov

“All things considered this [telephone chat] gave the maximum results one could hope for from the first conversation between Trump and Putin. To be sure, the American President is under very heavy pressure from opposition within his own party and the Senate of the USA, from the mass media with their anti-Russian tone.  The fact that the conversation was constructive will, I think, disappoint many of the critics of Trump and Putin in America, though it did not really make the news there, being overtaken by the huge scandal over emigrants…. What were the main aspects?  At the center of attention was Syria. This is precisely the aspect that was emphasized in the short press release from the White House. It means it is possible to create an anti-ISIS coalition with participation of both the USA and Russia. There are the first signs this is happening.  The second important aspect I’d note is in the Russian press release, namely the agreement to the establish partnership on an equal basis The United States has not had partnership relations of equals not only with Russia but with no one else as well in the years following the end of the Cold War. They dealt with Russia as the side that had lost the Cold War and towards whom you can carry out any policy line without regard to our concerns. Then another very important word we noted was “restoration” – used to characterize our future trade and economic relations. Restoration of trade and economic relations is a rather transparent reference to the idea that one way or another the sanctions will be reexamined. This is so although the word “sanctions” itself was not mentioned.  I’d also note that they reviewed a wide range of issues.  Syria, Ukraine, Iran, the Korean peninsula, and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. This presupposes, at a minimum, that in this rather short conversation there were no serious disagreements or differences of opinion. They discussed what they wanted to discuss. The questions were prepared and the participants in the discussion afterwards were satisfied. Therefore, I consider this a very good, encouraging start in Russian-American relations. Let us not tempt fate and let us knock wood..Let us hope this continues in the same way in the future. We could not hope for better than this.”

 

Vladimir Soloviev

 

“What bothers me is that I don’t remember that it was ever otherwise the first time in conversation with an American president. The first contacts with an American president always were very good, in their first terms in office. Is there anything special this time? You know, this Trump is a strange fellow. So far he is not at all like a traditional American president. He is fulfilling he pre-election promises like a bulldozer.”

 

Alexei Pushkov

 

“Trump is truly not like a traditional American president, because he does not come from the political milieu. He was never a Governor or a Senator or Congressman. He signifies a new style. Incidentally I think this is symbolic, because we are in new times. The times are changing. The world is changing. The US is changing. It think it makes sense that in new times Americans elected a new type of president.  As for the suggestion that we always began this way with new American presidents, it’s not quite right. With Obama, yes. But then relations were not on such a negative basis. It appears that Trump set as his goal to improve relations with Russia considering that they are deeply negative. We are not starting out at 0 but at minus 10. A very negative zone. He said he wanted to pull us out of this during the pre-election campaign and now has repeated it during the conversation.   That is the first distinction. Next, consider how it was with Bush.  He came to office on a very anti-Russian wave. He accused Clinton of having lost Russia, and he would apply a much tougher policy.  Under Bush we established contact only 6 months after his [inauguration],  that is  in June 2001 when they met in Ljubljana and he said he  looked into Putin’s eyes and saw his soul. But that is not how it started. At the very beginning,  he criticized Clinton for his close relations with Yeltsin. I won’t go into the details but it was a different scenario.  So what’s important here? It’s that Trump, unlike what his critics say, is very predictable.  He said what he did in the campaign, and now he is taking steps in this direction. He said, by the way, ‘I don’t know if I will succeed with Putin, but I hope it will work out.  That is, he puts the question quite openly and honestly. He doesn’t promise what he cannot be sure to achieve. ‘I’ll try…’ He will try to find common language. And this explains the general shock of the whole American elite who got used to candidates lying during the electoral campaigns and then backing off from it all. ….Let’s remember Obama. How much he promised. He tried to fulfill some of it, the medical insurance. “

Vladimir Soloviev

“So we should nominate Trump for the next Nobel Peace Prize?”

 

Alexei Pushkov

 

“I think the Nobel Prize Committee is also in shock over Trump. They are liberal and Obama was rather close to them.  Trump is on another branch entirely.  The second thing I’d note, and this is in the American release, that the conversation between Trump and Putin took place in a warm atmosphere.  It was a ‘warm conversation.’ By contrast the conversation with Merkel was ‘business-like’ and rather dry. And the conversation with Hollande was tense.  These are the terms they used. Hollande is the outgoing president; he has practically no importance and can say what he likes. Trump called him out of respect for France and the French people, not respect for Hollande who has ratings of 10% if not less. The value of the conversation between Trump and Hollande was, for us, that Hollande, unlike Merkel, who is trying to stay in power and is very cautious and careful in my view,  Hollande presented Trump with the whole list of liberal claims against him.  You can see in his list the pressure points liberal Europe will try to use against Trump: that you cannot remove the sanctions until the full implementation of Minsk Agreements, that half-dead formula; then on Syria…..Hollande presented this fully aware of what he was doing. …. Trump has to find common language with Europe, with NATO allies. You have to remember that around Trump there are people who are accept the concerns of Europe. So not everything is decided. “

 

Sergey Mikheyev – political scientist

“This is not Reagan and Gorbachev…Gorbachev was trying so hard to please the West he forgot about the Soviet Union and everything else. ..If only they would like him in the West, he could change the whole world.  Putin cannot do the same because over these years we learned a lot. If Trump tries to behave with Putin the way Reagan did with Gorbachev then that is an absolute dead end and will lead to conflict. If we try to behave like Gorbachev and please the President, then that is also a dead end. The challenge before them and us is to find a wholly new formula. ….We need to find a qualitatively new form of dealing with one another.  In my view that will not be very easy. “

 

Oleg Morozov

“You posed the question – what has changed with the coming of Trump. I understand perfectly that the times of Gorbachev are long gone and thank God they will not return. ….What did we have before?  There was always an agenda from one side and an anti-agenda from the other side.  Each side set out an agenda that was not necessarily at all topical or important for the other side.   What did they set out 4 years ago: how to build democracy in Russia in dialogue with the USA , or human rights defenders, or whether it is good or bad that rockets appear right on the border with Russia because there is some sort of threat from Iran, so let’s put rockets in the Baltic States, in Romania, in Poland. What is now radically new is that the agenda proposed in this dialogue, which was clearly discussed in advance, this is an agenda that is absolutely interesting in equal measure to both sides.  My second observation:  all of the issues discussed are really of prime importance. They only had 45 minutes and Putin and Trump managed to cover it all. …Thirdly, I want to continue the idea of Alexei Pushkov.  Here in this studio, but more especially outside this studio, there was a very strange reading of Trump – that he is a populist,  that he doesn’t understand what foreign policy is all about, he doesn’t understand  where Russia is located and what to do about Russia, that he will look to his  more experienced partners who understand the world much better than he and so what will happen is he will succumb. But look at what is happening: instead he is constantly seeking to strengthen his own positions. Intuitively he entirely correctly guides the policy line he set out in his electoral campaign. He does not weaken his position but instead strengthens it.  So when Trump says ‘let’s try to find a dialogue with Russia,’ in my view this Is not just tactics, it is really a long-term strategy of Trump today. And this gives us a good chance for this format…”

 

Vladimir Soloviev

“We have no illusions.  We don’t expect anything good from Trump. Our task is to formulate our own agenda…..Soviet and Russian diplomacy had a tendency to get disappointed. When they say we have to reexamine our commercial and economic relations, remember that they will never be what they were before.  We don’t need it.  We were used to setting the table for guests.  The vodka and snacks were gone and we were left asking, where is their technology, where is…?  That won’t happen again.  We seek equal relations. “

 

Alexei Pushkov

“We have just heard the phrase that ‘Europe has been sleeping.’  The discussion today is between Trump and Putin. ….Merkel and Hollande are stuck in the old formulas…..They have an old agenda. They don’t have anything in particular to offer…..Europe is off the highway and sidelined.  This is another point that comes out of the [Trump-Putin] conversation.”

 

Yakov Kedmi [Israel, ex-Soviet, ex-Israeli intelligence]

“The conversation showed Trump’s rejection of bloc mentality. – EU and NATO are blocs.  The USA prefers to deal with nations one to one.  There is sense in this. When the US is so confident in its might, it is easier to deal with one than with many. They expect to achieve better results, and most likely it is correct….Two other observations.  The conversation with President Putin was in a constructive tone, to agree and resolve conflicts. This is not due to Russia having changed its policy. Russia has not moved a millimeter from the position it held. The US administration was obliged to change its position.  That is the US was obliged to change its positions and Russia stayed in the positions it held. The same happened with Turkey, which has radically changed its position.”

 

Sergey Stankevich

 

“It is good that the Presidents of the United States and Russia had a conversation. As a citizen of Russia, I don’t like to think half the world is holding its breath over how they prepare for this conversation and then hangs on every word, that we expect the course of the world to change or of Russia to change as a result of the two presidents conversing. I’d like a predictable international order. And I hope after this conversation it will begin. An order that is safe, comfortable and pleasant to live in. I’d like to see in this diplomacy the start of it which responsible statesmen….”

 

Vladimir Soloviev

 

“And I think of battalions marching when I hear the term ‘new world order.’ This is a dangerous combination of words.”

 

Sergey Stankevich

“We had a new world order at Yalta, Potsdam,  then the creation of the UN, then in Helsinki where a new order was set down that included many elements including humanitarian issues and defense of human rights that were necessary for the world.  I’d like to see this now, in the sense of building on predictability…”

 

Oleg Morozov

“Before this telephone conversation the world order existed in a state that did not suit anyone. Even the Americans were not satisfied with it. Not one of the tasks called out could be resolved.  Dialogue between Russia and the USA is precisely the foundation on which you can build the new world order.”

 

Andrei Sidorov

“I’d like to start with agreeing terms. World order is precisely the agreements between victorious powers after a global war. That is what was done at Yalta, Teheran, Potsdam.  Helsinki was not on that level. When the Yalta arrangements collapsed the West, and the USA in particular took this to mean its victory. And it was not accidental that we had all those discussions about the unipolar world. And it was the dissatisfaction of Russia and others with this unipolar world led to the fact that now Trump will set up a new world order by reaching agreement with those powers who did not accept globalization from the 1990s which was supposed to set up a new world order. ….Russia can now be a participant in the creation of the new world order. Putting aside the list of issues, the main item on the conversation was when do we meet and in what format…..ISIS is the number one evil of our times. And if it is possible to joining forces to combat ISIS why not do so. That would be the implementation of precisely what Trump spoke about all during his electoral campaign.”

 

Yakov Kedmi

“What we are talking about is not a new world order but a new set of rules of conduct. It is not just a stop to military interventions but also to interference in other countries in general. That is what Trump was talking about. ….Order is too rigid…. That is what Trump was saying, what Putin was saying.  Let’s set up proper relations: everyone will live at home as he wishes. No one will give instructions to others. Not in the name of democracy, not in the name of God…All the wars and cruelty took place in the name of ideals. Therefore let’s not speak about a new world order but about a new, civilized way of communicating and dealing with one another.”

 

Vyacheslav Nikonov

“In fact that world order which is now being reconstructed, it was born not in Yalta or Potsdam but in the end of the Cold War. This was a unipolar world order in which strictly speaking the ‘world government’ was the United States itself , which was more powerful than the Roman Empire in its day, or the United States and its allies acting through the NATO bloc and the international financial institutions. This was the global, liberal world order in which Russia had its place as a conquered power on which others wiped their feet or in the best of circumstances was ignored. Precisely this world order is passing into history.  Firstly because the United States was unable to maintain world domination nor did it have the desire to do so as we now see.  As Trump said in his Inauguration speech, you have to allow that other states have their own interests. That had a revolutionary sound to it coming from an American President, since they never recognized national interests other than their own and their allies. Nobody now wants to dissolve the NATO bloc, but I’d call attention to the following. During all the years of NATO’s existence, the press of the member states has not been allowed to ask any serious questions about the American leadership, except for the period of the war in Iraq.  Now 90% of what you read in the newspapers about the USA is so very negative like we never saw before.  A real trans-Atlantic split that never existed before.  So, what is coming? We see application of the term “new normalcy,” which is very debatable.  The “new normalcy” of a world with Trump, Putin, Brexit. What does that mean?  There are various opinions, but it is clear it will be a multi-polar construction in which the poles are the great powers:  ….China, India, Russia, United States.  Maybe it will be 4-sided.  Brzezinski recently spoke about the need for a triangular system: the USA, Russia and China. We also have a place in the Eurasian project, in the Chinese Silk Road, which might include the European Union.  Ahead will be very serious re-formatting over the coming years, not months….But one thing is clear, in the new world order one of the decisive places will be held by our country.”

Debating Foreign Policy: Do think tanks have a role to play?

It is the patriotic duty of the present management of the Council on Foreign Relations and of its ‘Foreign Affairs’ publication, as well as of management in the many lesser but still important think tanks and university institutes operating in the international relations discipline to hand in their resignations now

Continue reading “Debating Foreign Policy: Do think tanks have a role to play?” →

Letter from India: Local and global speculation about Henry Kissinger

Letter from India: Local and global speculation about Henry Kissinger

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

 

Is there any escape from geopolitics?  The answer is resoundingly ‘no’ as I discovered yesterday when I picked up the local newspaper, The Times of India, Kochi (Kerala State) on what was intended to be a carefree getaway holiday. I was brought straight back into global relations with an article entitled ‘From Russia with Love’ by Indian political observer Swagato Ganguly. The subtitle left me no squirm room: “A rapprochement between Putin and Trump could transform the world in 2017.”  

The author set this particular transformation within the broader context of a possible return to the ‘Westphalian principle of sovereignty, which bars intervention in another state’s domestic affairs…’

And it is made concrete and directed to the newspaper’s Indian audience when the author goes on to ask: ‘What If Trump were to repeat Nixon’s rapprochement in reverse? President Nixon’s handshake with Chairman Mao in 1972 may have decisively tilted the Cold War in America’s favour, as it broke the Chinese away from the Soviet bloc. Today China, rather than Russia is America’s principal strategic rival.’

The author concludes his examination of the global reorientation that would follow by noting how this would work to India’s benefit given that ‘’India would like to count both the US and Russia as its allies.’’

That closing remark tends to contradict the logic of this week’s major domestic news in India: the successful launch of a 3-stage solid-fuel and nuclear-capable intercontinental missile with 5000 kilometer range, meaning coverage of all of Russia and China, and not merely its neighbor and acknowledged adversary, Pakistan.  But the question of whether any nation values its allies above its own sovereign defense capability is one we can deal with on another day.

I call attention to this featured Indian international affairs prognosis, because it is based on Henry Kissinger’s identification of the Peace of Westphalia principles as the key to Realpolitik and on implementation of his signature strategy from the past even if Henry is not mentioned once. That strategy was to ensure that Washington was closer to Beijing and to Moscow than either of the two was to one another. This last element is surely what has attracted Americans, Germans, Russians and pundits of other countries to Kissinger’s reappearance on the political scene in recent days.

The question of Henry Kissinger’s possible designation as foreign policy advisor to President Donald Trump and specifically as intermediary between Trump and Vladimir Putin for normalization of relations arose ever since Kissinger gave a series of interviews to the German newspaper Bild and other media in the days before Christmas.

In the less serious media outlets we hear about Kissinger’s special rapport with Vladimir Vladimirovich with whom, we are told, he has met often. These same gossips tell us that in Moscow his expertise and experience are held in high regard.

All of these glib statements are deeply flawed. They are more appropriate to society pages or People magazine than to serious discussion of where Henry Kissinger can and should fit into the evolving foreign policy team that President-elect Trump is assembling, and to what that foreign policy should reasonably resemble in these times. They ignore the record of Henry Kissinger’s policy recommendations on Russia in the decades since the end of the Cold War, which are not so flattering, and place him squarely among those responsible for getting us into the confrontation with Russia that reached its climax under Barack Obama. They also ignore how the times and the challenges we face today are so very different from the late 1960s, early 1970s when Kissinger and Nixon made their very important changes to the architecture of international relations.

However, before going into the details of the negatives, I am obliged to call out the very real positives in Henry Kissinger’s figuring among the advisors to Trump.  We have heard about how former stars in the Republican firmament from the Reagan and Bush administrations (Senior and Junior) have come out to endorse the nomination of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, meaning ultimately the foreign policy reorientation outlined by Donald Trump.  Kissinger brings an aura of still greater intellectual rigor to the Trump camp, and that is all to the good.  After all, Henry Kissinger is America’s best-known thinker and practitioner of the Realist School of international affairs, meaning a foreign policy based on national interest. That is a more accurate and less aggressive packaging than the “America First” slogan which Donald Trump used during his electoral campaign, though the intent of both terms is identical.

Even a severe critic of Kissinger from among his former colleagues at Harvard who opposed his policies in the Vietnam War, Professor Ernest May, wrote of him in letters published in The New York Times in 1994 at the end of a public spat over the merits of Kissinger’s latest book: “Mr. Kissinger’s scholarly credentials and public stature give his name on the title page the quality of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.”

At the same time, beginning in the 1990s Henry Kissinger has modified his message of realism so as to reach an accommodation with the dominant American school of idealism, or values-based foreign policy. This mixed message resulted from Kissinger’s defending himself from the ridicule of the triumphant Neoconservatives, who criticized his détente policies of the 1970s for seeking merely to manage relations with the Soviet Union when the overthrow of the Evil Empire was entirely possible, as later events had seemingly proven, through the uncompromising promotion of democracy such as practiced by Ronald Reagan.

Thus, the updated Kissinger line has been that universal moral principles serve as the ultimate objective of foreign policy, but realism must guide the day-to-day management of international affairs.  Lest this seem to be a neat division between tactics and strategy, the two become confused in Henry’s public stance given that he always has placed primary emphasis on achieving a ‘balance of power’ in the international community, which alone can keep the peace and safeguard the vital interests of all parties. Thus, it would be fair to say that Kissinger is a realist who at times uses idealist vocabulary to meet the expectations of and to motivate the general public, which is unmoved by considerations of balance of power and realism.

Finally, in speaking of the gravitas which Kissinger may bring to the Trump team, he is correctly perceived as a champion of the art of diplomacy, which is another word for compromise and deal-making. It is precisely diplomacy which has been sorely lacking in the US Government over the past 8 years, while ideology has held sway at State and in the White House.

 The most severe negative one can say about Kissinger and Russia goes back to the fateful year 1994. In 1993, Boris Yeltsin had made an important visit to Warsaw during which he withdrew all Russian objections to Poland’s joining NATO.  The clearly understood quid pro quo which the Kremlin expected for this major concession to US and Polish wishes was that Russia be named next in line for membership in the club.  Indeed, during 1994 the Clinton Administration was weighing that very possibility. At this point, in Congressional testimony, Henry Kissinger delivered strong objections and played a significant role in the defeat of Russia’s candidacy. 

We get a fairly good idea of Kissinger’s reasoning back then in the passages relating to American policy on Russia in the last chapter of his 1994 master work Diplomacy. A realistic approach to Russia meant America had to look at the respective foreign policy interests and national traditions, and to pay less attention to domestic Russian politics and the personalities of its leaders. Said Kissinger, this meant taking into account Russia’s long tradition of expansionism, as evidenced by military bases in the former Soviet republics and interventionism in their ‘near abroad.’ And as if to drive a stake through the heart of unnecessary chumminess with Moscow, Kissinger reminded his readers that Russia had always stood apart from the Western world. It had no democratic traditions or familiarity with modern market economics. In his words, it did not partake of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Age of Discovery.

Indeed, Kissinger’s thinking about Russian history is so clear one might imagine he knows what he is talking about. The question is of key importance because the Realist School is built upon the assumption that one can accurately appraise the strengths of all players and that one has a solid knowledge of the history and traditions of the players. In this it distinguishes itself from idealism, with its focus on universal values and disinterest in regional knowledge.

From Kissinger’s own academic career made in studying European diplomacy in the 19th century, Russia should have been on his plate, given that the country was one of the three decisive players in the first half of the century (Holy Alliance) and one of the 5 or 6 decisive players in the second half of the century. However, that was manifestly not the case.

Kissinger is widely reputed to be a voracious reader.  Yet, it is obvious that Russia has never and does not now figure among the topics he reads. In Diplomacy, for his analysis of Russia he relied on the very dated 19th century classics of Russian history like Vasily Kliuchevsky that he read in translation during his graduate student days at Harvard. Kliuychevsky is unquestionably a good starting point for students of Russian history. He was the father of the historiography that came down to Kissinger in the person of Michael Karpovich, the founder of Russian studies at Harvard. But his notion of Russia’s manifest destiny of borders moving out across the Eurasian land mass was part of an Liberal and anti-tsarist historiography. By today’s standards, reading Kliuchevsky has mainly curiosity value. To put the issue in terms which will be closer to an American reader, it is as if Kissinger were using de Toqueville as the key source for writing about contemporary America.

Among the main 20th century works on Russia cited in Kissinger are those by his comrade in realism, George Kennan. Notwithstanding Kennan’s generally high reputation in Washington, his choice of sources and interpretation of Russia is tendentious in ways that Kissinger was unable to judge, and that is why it is regrettable Kissinger did not read other sources.

Kissinger’s argument in Diplomacy for the separateness of Russian history may be no more than the conventional wisdom of his times. He speaks of Russia as a paradox, an obvious allusion to Winston Churchill’s witticism that Russia was ‘a riddle wrapped in an enigma.’ But then Churchill was not a serious scholar and Kissinger is assumed to be one. The notion of separateness is in fact misleading if not fallacious.

Kissinger’s prescription for a policy vis-à-vis Russia after the Cold War assumed that ‘imperial expansionism’ was the country’s defining national tradition. But then the same was true of all the key world powers.  He indulges in tired mystification of Russia drawing on the 19th century nationalist movement and writers such as Dostoevsky. Such smoke and mirrors writing would be seen as unduly psychological and irrelevant to foreign relations if someone served them up as a description of Germany. Thus, we read in Kissinger that: “The paradox of Russian history lies in the continuing ambivalence between messianic drive and a pervasive sense of insecurity. In its ultimate aberration, this ambivalence generated a fear that, unless the empire expanded, it would implode.”

It is rather sad to consider that one of the country’s great scholar-statesmen of the 20th century was taken in by mystical tripe when formulating and implementing the nation’s policies towards its nuclear adversary. This puts in question the validity of attention to history and local specifics which Kissinger says are distinguishing features of realism versus idealism with its universalistic over-simplifications.

* * * *

Henry Kissinger’s later writings offering foreign policy recommendations for the world at large and specific major countries in particular display the same wrong footing when dealing with Russia. His 2001 opus facetiously entitled Does America Need a Foreign Policy? is a case in point. Kissinger breaks the international community into regional groupings and Russia is placed among the ‘great powers of Asia.’

Once again Kissinger tells us that “Russia has always been sui generis – especially when compared with its European neighbors.” His highlighting the ‘mystical’ Russian Orthodox Church and autocracy suggests a trite approach to this complex nation.  We hear again of Russia’s ‘creeping expansionism’ as a returning them of Russian history.

Kissinger rightfully faults American policy to Russia for excessive personalization of relations at the expense of sober reflections on respective interests and institutions to drive and implement any rapprochement. But then he falls prey to personalization himself. He characterizes the recently installed Russian President Vladimir Putin as a KGB operative whose secret police background presupposed a strong national commitment: “It leads to a foreign policy comparable to that during the tsarist centuries, grounding popular support in a sense of Russian mission and seeking to dominate neighbors where they cannot be subjugated.”

If this argumentation, this jumping to conclusions, were delivered by anyone other than Henry Kissinger, one might dismiss it offhandedly. What we have here is the soft underbelly of Realpolitik: realism can be only as useful as the expertise and judgment of its practitioner.

To be sure, in an Afterword written in 2002, that is, after the 9/11 attacks and Russia’s very substantial efforts to assist the developing US response to the Taliban by opening its military bases in its backyard, Central Asia, to US military forces, Kissinger changed his view of Vladimir Putin, comparing him now to tsarist Chancellor Alexander Gorchakov, who for the 25 years following the Crimean War worked to restore the nation’s position in international affairs, and largely succeeded. For Putin, this likeness is most flattering. But then Kissinger otherwise misjudges Putin’s character and interests. Kissinger saw the generous support to George Bush as evidence that Islamic fundamentalism was the ‘dominant concern’ of Russia.  He missed entirely the possibility that this was a favor for which the hoped for reciprocation was full acceptance in the West, including NATO membership.

At the same time, Kissinger’s bark was more fearsome than his bite. In his specific remarks on how America should conduct its foreign policy towards Russia which followed, he urged continued readiness to assist the country with its transition to democracy and free markets, moderation and attentiveness to Russia’s voice in international forums. Note especially his comment on prospective NATO expansion to the Baltic States, which Kissinger believed in 2001 would be provocative, saying it would put NATO forces within 30 miles of St Petersburg, one of Russia’s largest population centers. He correctly foresaw that  “Advancing the NATO integrated command this close to key centers of Russia might mortgage the possibilities of relating Russia to the emerging world order as a constructive member.”

It is curious that in his 2001 book Kissinger was unable to offer any serious incentives for Russia to behave nobly. He derided even the watered down affiliation of Russia with NATO in the NATO-Russia Council. He believed it gave the Russians too much say and was ‘not the wisest solution.’ Finally, he dropped all pretense at diplomatic niceties, telling his readers that “NATO is basically a military alliance, part of whose purpose is the protection of Europe against a reimperializing Russia. ..To couple NATO expansion with even partial Russian membership in NATO was, in a sense, merging two contradictory courses of action…[As] Russia becomes a de facto NATO member, NATO ceases to be an alliance, or becomes a vague collective security instrument.”

 

* * * *

Having participated actively in keeping Russia out of the security architecture of Europe, Kissinger became alarmed in the course of the new millennium by the consequences of such exclusion as Russia and the US-led West came into growing mutual recriminations and confrontation.

From this point on, Henry Kissinger began to play a clearly constructive role in the midst of each successive crisis in relations that threatened war.  The first case was in 2008-09 when bilateral relations hit bottom during and after the Russian-Georgian War. The second has come in 2013 to present, when in the context of the developments in and around Ukraine, Russia and the US became actively engaged in what is a proxy war, entailing as well economic and information wars.

In 2008, Kissinger worked in tandem with other major US statesmen, the ‘wise men,’ to provide the candidates in the US presidential election of that year, and ultimately the Obama Administration with sage advice on how to reduce tensions and return to normal relations with Russia.  Many of their points underlay the ‘reset’ program that was rolled out in early 2009 by President Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Henry Kissinger was also a participant in the preparations for the first summit meeting in London on April 1, 2009 between Presidents Medvedev and Bush.

Regrettably, the policy recommendations of Kissinger and the other wise men in 2008-2009 were much too cautious and amounted to softening the rhetoric towards Russia without addressing the substantive concerns of Moscow about international security and equal treatment. The single issue of substance was arms reduction and it in isolation proved insufficient to establish normal and durable relations.

Following the Russian move to annex or re-unite (depending on one’s point of view) with Crimea and the outbreak of anti-Kiev insurgency in the Donbas, Kissinger, like his Democratic Party counterpart Zbigniew Brzezinski sensed the growing dangers and in op-ed essays in The New York Times and other mainstream media urged the Obama Administration to examine solutions to the impasse which would reposition Ukraine as a bridge between East and West rather than a Western outpost on Russia’s border.  This advice, of course, fell on deaf ears in Washington. As mainstream media became progressively less open to foreign policy views that differed with the Administration’s, even Henry Kissinger was no longer given space on op-ed pages. Official dismissal of his current value was shown by the fact that for the first 7 years of Obama’s tenure, Kissinger was not once invited to the White House for consultations.

 

* * * *

Finally, there is the question of the extent to which Kissinger’s experience re-orienting relations between Russia, China and the USA is relevant to the challenges we face today.

Today relations with Russia must be improved in and of themselves, without reference to greater global strategies for the obvious reason that during 2016 we have drawn too close to a hot war, meaning the possibility of nuclear exchange. I have in mind the close proximity of our and Russian forces in Syria, the limited  and the uncontrollable nature of our respective proxies in Ukraine, all in a context of sharply curtailed communications between Russia and the USA due to our attempts to punish the Kremlin.

On the other task named by our Indian pundit, pulling Russia away from China’s embrace so as to better face up to the Kingdom of Heaven, I think the goal is unachievable and reveals a lack of comprehension of the fundamental laws of attraction.  The situation in 1969 was of two countries, China and the Soviet Union joined and also divided by a shared ideology. China was mortally afraid of Soviet nuclear attack justified by clashes at their immense shared border in Asia.  These were the cards which Nixon and Kissinger picked up and played masterfully.

Today Russia and China have been driven into one another’s arms by the shared threat of US encirclement and economic warfare.  However, their strategic partnership and close cooperation in international forums like the UN Security Council and the G-20 are supported by ever closer and more significant economic and technical cooperation.  Russia is fast becoming a major energy supplier to China through  shared infrastructure investments worth tens of billions of dollars. This factor is a critical protection for China against the US and its allies using choke-points in the transport of hydrocarbons to China from the Persian Gulf.  Meanwhile, the Chinese market is an invaluable protection for the Russian energy producers against the efforts of the Baltic States, of Poland to choke off or frustrate its energy sales to the EU.  From these foundations, the economic and technical cooperation between the two is moving in all directions with close facilitation from the leadership of both countries.

By contrast, the United States has very little prospect for large-scale expansion of trade volume with Russia once it removes the sanctions and capital once again can flow freely into Russian markets. The common attraction is primarily on the geopolitical level, to avoid stepping on one another’s toes. 

In conclusion, it is inconceivable that Russia under any president, not only under Vladimir Putin, will drop its Chinese ties for the sake of a flirtation with Washington. What we can and should seek during the Trump years is normal and constructive relations in the United Nations and the other international institutions for resolution of regional conflicts that threaten the world order.

 

 

 

© Gilbert Doctorow, 2016

 

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G. Doctorow is the European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd. His latest book, Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.