Tag Archives: news 2008

A Gem (or rather, a Ring) from Lucas

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The demented Russophobe Edward Lucas has surpassed even his own stellar record of profound insights about the evil empire, this time explicitly comparing Russia to Mordor (the land of shadow in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings) from his Yahoo! list.

Quoted below in its entirety for laughs.

The British author JRR Tolkien always hated any attempt to compare his fantasy world of Middle Earth to contemporary political systems. Yet his books were hugely popular in eastern Europe during the years of communist captivity. The “scouring of the Shire”, in which a prosperous agricultural economy is reduced to destitution and misery by the activities of the “gatherers” and “sharers” bears an uncanny resemblance to the collectivisation of the Baltic states in the early years of Soviet occupation. “A lot of gathering, and precious little sharing” says a hobbit dourly.

But as the skies darken once again over the European continent (or Middle Earth if you prefer) , the temptation to find analogies in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is overwhelming. Mordor is clearly the Russian Federation, ruled by the demonic overlord Sauron (Putin). His email address, to give a contemporary note, might be sauron@gov.morder.me (the suffix is for Middle Earth). The threat from Mordor—symbolised by the Ring—is the combination of dirty money and authoritarian political thinking.

And Sauron’s henchmen the Orcs are clearly the murderous goons of the old KGB. The new twist—the Uruk-Hai, is the mutation of the old Soviet intelligence service with organised crime and big business. Sauron’s allies—the Nazgul—are the Siloviki, the sinister chieftains of the Kremlin’s authoritarian capitalist system. Like the Nazgul, we seldom see their faces.

And what of the opposition? One candidate for Frodo couild Mart Laar, Estonia’s irrepresible former prime minister and someone who has consistently seen clearly the threat from Mordor and what to do about it. His faithful sidekick could be Sasha Vondra, the equally prescient and doughty deputy prime minister of the Czech Republic. Other possible hobbit-heros are Ivan Krastev, Bulgaria’s top foreign-policy analyst, Jüri Luik, Estonia’s ambassador to Nato,

(more suggestions for hobbits welcome)

The Fellowship of the Ring included elves—a strange but awe-inspiring folk whose presence in middle earth was drawing to an end. They are clearly the Americans, whose long-drawn-out withdrawal from Europe is halted but not reversed by the need to fight the titanic battle against the forces of Mordor. Prominent elves include the thinktanker and propagandist Ron Asmus (perhaps Elrond?_Galadriel (possibly Anne Applebaum), Celeborn, Galadriel’s husband is (twisting the plot a bit) could be Bruce Jackson. One candidate for Legolas could be America’s top diplomat for pipelines and energy security, Matt Bryza. Who would be a good Arwen?

What about Eowyn, or Eomer, Aragorn (poss Radek Sikorski or Carl Bild). Misha Saakashvili could be Boromir (desire for forbidden fruits led him to put his own personal interests ahead of the common cause)
Bilbo Baggins, the hero of the Hobbit, could be Vaclav Havel, or Vytautas Landsbergis, heroes of the battle against the evil empire in previous ages,

But who is Gandalf? One candidate would be Lennart Meri, the much-mourned Estonian former president and elder statesman, who had just the right blend of wisdom, courage and mischief and wizard-like abilities with both people and gadgets. Sadly, Lennart died in 2006. But Gandalf disappeared in the mines of moriar—and came back triumphantly in the third volume of the trilogy. Lennart’s many friends and fans hope for the same, at least in spirit.

Picking out the cast on the bad side runs the risk an encounter with England’s ferocious libel laws. It is not too hard, however, to see candidates to be Wormtongue, the slimy propagandist for Mordor who weakens the will of the King of Rohan, Theoden. His kingdom could be almost any country in Europe, but had better be Germany. And it is easy to think who might count as Germany’s foremost expert on Russia and a biographer of Sauron. Saruman is more difficult still—a hero of past wars who has switched sides to disastrous effect. He could be any one of the top West European leaders who have so disastrously forgotten the lessons of the Cold War and have been seduced by Mordor’s dirty money.

Too bad that poor Ed is not only totally disconnected from reality, but his madness isn’t even original.

Russia to Bail Out Iceland?

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Will Russia acquire Keflavik without the need for an amphibious invasion, as in the Clancy-verse? Potentially, they could neutralize the SOSUS (a long unrealized Soviet ambition) and reinforce their position in the Arctic-Atlantic region for just 5bn $. This is compared to the 700bn $+ the US has spent in Iraq to little discernible effect.

What the Russians want in return for bailing out Iceland

Near-bankrupt Iceland’s €4bn ($5.43bn) loan from Russia is still not a done deal. Iceland’s central bank Governor David Oddsson says that talks are still “ongoing” but that any aid from Russia would be “very much welcomed.”

You can understand why Iceland is desperate for a massive euro-injection in the current bank crisis: the Sedlabanki, the central bank in Reykjavik, urgently needs euros because it has only €4.5bn in its current reserves and the country’s banking system needs to refinance about €10bn before year end — not easy when the Icelandic krona has fallen 40 per cent against the Euro currency so far this year.

But what price will the Russians demand for their bailout? A highly-placed source in Reykjavik tells Coffee House that Iceland might look kindly on requests from Russia’s military to use America’s former military base in Iceland. America closed its Naval Air Station at Keflavik Airport two years ago, handing back the Nato facility to the Icelandic government.

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Comprehensive Outline of Russia’s Point of View on 2008 War of Ossetia

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So let’s get this straight – breaking their own ceasefire, Georgia attacked Russian citizens and peacekeepers, and there are grounds to believe they committed war crimes, in violation of the latters’ peacekeeping mandate. All Russian military action is aimed at repelling the Georgian military from South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which at times involves bombing the source of attacks originating in Georgia proper. Saakashvili mounts a pathetic, whiny PR campaign of “Russia murdering poor democratic Georgia” and the Western media swallow it line and hooker, despite their own governments’ complicity in making this happen (i.e. offensive arms’ sales).

Putin: ”The very scale of this cynicism is astonishing — the attempt to turn white into black, black into white and to adeptly portray victims of aggression as aggressors and place the responsibility for the consequences of the aggression on the victims.”

Interview by Minister of Foreign Affaires of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov to BBC, Moscow, August 9, 2008. Granted, a bit dated as of today, but none the less important for understanding Russia’s reasons for getting involved in maintaining peace. I have highlighted in bold Lavrov’s most important points.

Question: What is Russia’s aim in South Ossetia?

S.Lavrov: Russia’s aim is to keep peace. This is not just Russia’s aim, this is Russia’s obligation. Russian peacekeepers have been brought there under the agreement between the parties after the war which started in the early nineties. The late President Gamsakhurdia who was the leader of Georgia at that time declared his policy “Georgia for Georgians”. He cancelled autonomies of Southern Ossetia, Adjaria and of Abkhazia. He brought his troops into these areas and then the resistance took place. And Georgian army was wiped out of those regions. It was then that after quite nervous and intense negotiations a peacekeeping mechanism was established comprising Georgians, Ossetians and Russians. The peacekeeping force was established and this peacekeeping force has a mandate. The mandate is to make sure that there is no violation of quiet in the zone of conflict and the peacekeepers are required by this document to prevent any violations and to put out any violations. Since Georgian forces for the second time are engaged in aggressive actions in full violation of the obligations under those international agreements and international humanitarian law by attacking civilians, residential quarters, humanitarian convoys, attacking the convoys trying to remove the wounded from the area of the fighting and even, by some reports, finishing off the wounded. So this is absolutely unacceptable and the responsibility of Russia as a peacekeeper could be only sustained by responding to this aggression.

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Western Hypocrisy Lambasted Before the World

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Russia’s representative at the UNSC, Vitaly Churkin, against the dramatic backdrop of Georgia’s criminal assault on Ossetia that is implicitly backed by the US and its closest allies, made a great speech lambasting Western hypocrisy, comparable to Putin’s bravura performance in Munich.

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News 21 July: Expansion amidst Turbulence

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Let’s start with two excellent new resources I’ve recently come across. Russia: Other Points of View states its objectives thus:

We believe there is need in the public forum for a venue which offers opinions and facts that at times may differ from the prevailing view in western media.

Hmm… Sounds quite similar to Da Russophile, in fact, and makes a substantial part of our News posts redundant. As such I’ll be referring to it frequently.

The other is the Moscow Defence Brief, an English-language quarterly that offers analysis on Russian, Eurasian and world military affairs from a Russian perspective.

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News 2 May: Russia’s Second Oil Peak

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For all the noise being made this month about Georgia, about NATO, about Tibet, etc, possibly the most portentous is that it seems Russia hit its oil peak (strictly speaking, its second – the first happened in 1987), well in line with peakist predictions. Production increases via application of new technology, as seen in the late 90′s and early 2000′s have been mostly exhausted; there are no megaprojects to bridge the gap beyond 2010. (There has been some noise about new oil field discoveries off Brazil’s coast which could contain as many as 33bn barrels, which has our dear Economist rejoicing: “the discoveries do suggest that the gloomiest pundits are wrong to predict that the world will soon run out of oil”. Just two problems. The issue is not about the world running our of oil – it’s about economically damaging declines in production which will, and are, hitting crucial sectors like transport and agriculture. Secondly, and more to the point, even the high estimate of 33bn barrels is enough for less than half a year of today’s demand of 85bn barrels.) Massive expansion in Russia has been the main reason while oil is peaking now, rather than five years ago. This, coupled with stagnant Saudi Arabia ‘refusing’ to increase oil production so as to leave more for future generations and oil prices rising to 120$, looks set to vindicate the Oil Drum predictions below.

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News 7 Apr: NATO Founders, Western Media Deconstructed

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America’s desire to have Ukraine and Georgia accede to MAP foundered on European opposition from Germany, France and (somewhat surprisingly) the UK, despite Saakashvili’s implicit comparison of this to Nazi appeasement. Nonetheless, this is good for NATO as an alliance (as we’ve covered previously, the European desire for a rapprochement is linked to Russian logistical help on Afghanistan), as well as in line with public opinion about the importance of good relations with Russia amongst the Ukrainian and Georgian publics. This is not to mention Russia itself, where 64% think Georgian accession to NATO is a security threat and where Ukrainian accession could result in restrictions in territorial revisionism and new visa controls.

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News 30 March: The Paradoxes of Russophobia

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Medvedev gives his first foreign media interview (to the Financial Times), in which he charts the bedrock of his presidency.

  • Will continue to pursue primarily Russia’s, not the West’s, interests.
  • Will work in tandem with Putin, to whom he is neither puppet nor rebel.
  • Will strive to root out “legal nihilism” / proizvol in Russia and corruption, including amongst the siloviki (“power people”) by asserting the law’s supremacy over executive power, cultivating popular respect for the law and improving the courts system, e.g. by raising pay for judges.
  • Will keep trying to demolish Russophobe myths.

Speaking of “legal nihilism”, it seems Medvedev has already started work in this area by forbidding state inspectors from carrying out checks on small businesses in the absence of a court ruling. Hopefully this should help expand the role of small businesses in Russia’s economy, which now make up just 1.1mn small businesses, 3.4mn individual businesspeople and 17% of GDP (typically 40-70% in advanced industrial countries), and expand the middle classes.

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News 19 Mar: It Takes 2 (or 3) to Tango in Human Rights

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The US State Department has released its latest human rights report – as usual, a veritable list of America’s bugbears (North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan are the ‘top ten’). It is true that the majority of the above are pretty odious regimes, with the partial exception of Belarus and Cuba.

Nonetheless, the State Department shoots itself in the foot – the hypocrisy is revealed immediately by thinking Belarus; Kazakhstan; Saudi Arabia. Obviously, having lots of oil and being friendly to the superpower has highly democratizing effects…

The fact that China was dropped from The List didn’t stop them from issuing a Human Rights Record of the US in 2007, which cites an increase in violent crime, police brutality and unaccountability, world beating prison population, racism, sexism, increasing socio-economic stratification and huge HR abuses abroad and calls on Americans to finish with double standards and ‘reflect on their own issues’. Russia wasn’t much impressed either.

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News 2 Mar

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The most important development has been Medvedev’s election to the Presidency with 70.2% of the vote. While it has not been squeaky clean (and as such, no different from any other Russian election under either Yeltsin or Putin), the more hystryonic claims of voter intimidation are to be treated with a pinch of salt – for a start, it’s a secret ballot, and as such authorities can have no control over how people vote in the booth. Even Nigel Evans, a British parliamentarian and member of PACE’s monitoring team, admitted “There does not seem to be any voter intimidation“.

Media coverage has been skewed towards Medvedev (who was a key government official – deputy prime minister – as well as election candidate), but this is not surprising in a country where opinion polling typically put his popularity at around 80%, in contrast to Zyuganov’s c.10%, Zhirinovsky’s c.10% and the ‘Liberals” c.1%. (This is also the reason Medvedev refused to participate in TV debates). The elections followed the polls, which heavily suggests that they were free. In fact, the major upset was Zyuganov, who managed to scrape 17.8% (well above what most polls predicted) to the detriment of Medvedev.

Now Russians do get coverage of the latters’ platforms and as such it is not surprising they are rejected – the Communists talk the talk but can’t walk the walk; the Liberal Democrats are too crudely clownish to have genuine popular appeal; and the ultra-low ratings of ‘liberals’ is largely of their own making. After all, the media reflects, as well as manufactures, consent.

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