Putin the (Not So) Great « Grumlino palėpė

Rgp 10th, 2014 by grumlinas

Įdomus b.JAV pasiuntinio Rusijoje straipsnis:
The West, led by the United States, should continue to stimulate this debate – by continuing to confront Putin’s aggressive policies. This does not mean that we will invariably succeed. History is replete with examples over the last 70 years of the United States and our allies failing to deter Kremlin leaders in aggression against their neighbors, be it Ukraine today and Georgia in 2008 or Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956. But neither does that mean we should just stand back. Although we have failed often in stopping Kremlin aggression, we have succeeded at times in making Russian belligerent actions costly. Obama’s response today looks more like Ronald Reagan’s response to the Soviet supported crackdown against the Solidarity protest movement in Poland in December 1981 than weaker responses to other Kremlin interventions. He should continue that course. That was the last time that Washington imposed serious sanctions against Moscow. Reagan and his team did so not because anyone predicted that sanctions would change Russian (or Polish) behavior but because they believed that bad behavior had to be punished. Reagan didn’t immediately change Brezhnev’s mind, but he did help to frame the conflict as one about norms and not just calculating interests, an echo that resonates today in the outrage that should animate our response to Putin’s dismembering of a neighbor whose borders he has legally pledged to secure.
I will admit it. When I was leaving Russia as the U.S. ambassador earlier this year, I was impressed with Putin’s gains. He was leading the anti-American coalition in the world, a role he had joyfully played during the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg in September of last year. He had “succeeded” in Syria, was loving all the positive international publicity that his granting of asylum to American whistleblower Edward Snowden generated for him, and of course there was that spectacular show at the Sochi Olympics.
But he has squandered all these gains with his actions in Ukraine. It’s hard to see right now how he will end up in the history books next to Peter the Great or Catherine — unless, of course, he orders them to be written that way!

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