The Great Satan, NATO, and Putin’s Hypocrisy
As we all know - annual conferences are a great venue for peacock pride, barrel-chested bravado, and well-worn speeches full of optimism and strategy yet hollow on truth and outcome.
The annual Munich Conference on Security Policy is this and so much more. The conference, in its 43rd year, invites “the international security community - ministers, representatives of the armed forces, members of parliament, journalists and experts” to a two day “unique forum for discussions on security and peace policy.”
The 42nd Conference - a look back:
Last year the U.S. sent the former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, accompanied by Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain - who was awarded the ‘Peace through Dialogue’ Medal. Go figure.
The newly elected German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel - Germany’s version of the Iron Lady - Thatcher - “demanded that NATO was given a key role in security issues” and that “the alliance’s range of capabilities should be tested in the next three years.”
As with all balanced diplomacy - it appears the positive (the ‘Ying’) of Chancellor Merkel was quickly squelched by the negativity (the ‘Yang’) of NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer with his huffy “NATO is not a global policeman” speech. But in a perhaps hasty effort to not look like the party-pooper, Mr. Secretary General Jaap reached out with a verbal hug to Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. “Ve could use you, you know! Let’s discuss over some rotting fish and salami und rye bread? ok?”
And the U.S. contribution to this love-fest? Rummy picked up the tempo of the event and added a little spice to the discussions when he “demanded that the rest of the NATO should start to support the common goals financially!“. In other words; the U.S. spent almost 4% of it’s GDP on military expenditure and yet our allies only have the balls to spend less then 2%!
“What, you don’t have a military-industrial complex to support? Damn we need Putin! Where the heck is Putin?”
The conference ended on a happy - almost giddy note - as “representatives of NATO and Russia formed a tight phalanx opposing Tehran’s [naughty] attitude.”
As per the conference cliff notes:
- German Chanceller Merkel said “Iran has deliberately crossed the ‘red lines’“.
- Donald Rumsfeld called Iran “the central focus” on the war on terror.
- Russian Defense Minister (and next budding Russian president) Sergey Ivanov was in favor of a hard-line against Iran but firmly in the hands of the IAEA.
So, in a nutshell, nothing was accomplished but everyone ate very well and the spietzel and sauerkraut were as good as the prior year.
Russian Ivanov climbed into his fine Russian automobile but not before challenging Rummy to a vodka or Jägermeister taste test next year - to which Rummy shook his head and pointed to his delicate stomach.
Twelve Months of Fun and Hyprocrisy Later:
Senator John McCain, that well-known peace activist - stretched and exercised his ‘Peace through Dialogue’ medal winning attitudes by saying “Washington should be prepared to take military action if necessary against Iran” as quoted by Agence France Presse.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was fired for his handling of Iraq which includes his inability to control Iranian-supported insurgents and an undeclared war by Iran against U.S. interests in the Middle East.
NATO’s activities in Afghanistan have failed to crush the Taliban insurgency and US Marine Corps General James Jones, NATO’s supreme commander of operations, has admitted that the fierce resistance put up by the Taliban and the burgeoning insurgency has taken the alliance by surprise.
Meanwhile, Russia has had a wonderful twelve months with sales of conventional weaponry to ‘evil doers’ exceeding all forecasts. Iran, the “the central focus” on the war on terror, purchased and took delivery of a multitude of useful ‘reasons to hate America’ tools including anti-aircraft missiles, just incase the ‘McCain Doctrine‘ took effect.
And on a positive note, NATO, Australia, New Zealand and Japan took another step closer to an expanded NATO-pact as pacifist Japan voted to enlarge its ‘Self-Defense Forces’ role with its pacific allies, the U.S. and NATO. Meanwhile Iraq still remains the almost exclusive playground of the U.S. and the British.
Exciting Plans for the Upcoming 43rd Conference:
The Great Satan returns to the Munich Conference on Security Policy under the auspices of a sexy, new, and much mightily eager Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will honor the conference with his presence, and some sales brochures and military weapons catalogues.
The European Union folks will puff their chests and announce EU as “a regional model of peace, security and prosperity” so long as their alter-ego, and much maligned United States does the heavy lifting as global policeman / nation builder.
This time around the conference Peace Medal will go to European Union Common Foreign & Security Policy High Representative Javier Solana for his role in helping Europe do absolutely nothing whilst Iran continues to excitedly build upon its nuclear ambitions.
The conference organizers are careful to suggest that the agenda is still fluid and might change substantially but as always - it will amount to very little for the Great Satan - the United States, more of the same for NATO and further add to the hypocrisy of Vladimir Putin’s arms deals to the very people the conference is supposed to “form a tight phalanx” against.
I wait with bated breath.
For continued coverage of the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy : click here
Posted on February 7th, 2007 under Australia, EU, Great Satan, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Japan, Lieberman, McCain, Merkel, Munich, NATO, New Zealand, Putin, Robert Gates, Rumsfeld, Russia, Sergey Ivanov, Taliban • 
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February 7th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
why am I laughing…..it is all so rediculous. Fantastic read highlighting politics at its finest! xx
February 10th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Putin told a security forum attracting top officials that “we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations” and that “one state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.
Another Russian viewpoint:
SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER SERGEY LAVROV –
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,464531,00.html
An American perspective:
Chalmers Johnson: Militarism and the American Empire (an interview)at
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6379.htm
February 10th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
dk,
you’re right! i just read the story on AP story.
it’s obvious Putin wants to restore the perceived balance by restoring Russia’s counterweight role in the world.
perhaps it’s a good thing!?
hegemony leads to … the iraq war?
ap story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070210/ap_on_re_eu/security_conference
thanks again for the comment.
R
February 11th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Putin - Speech at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy
http://www.securityconference.de/konferenzen/rede.php?menu_2007=&menu_konferenzen=&sprache=en&id=179&
“Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.
We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?”
News archive: Modernization of Russia’s missile forces
http://en.rian.ru/trend/missile/
Russian analysts suspect U.S. of intentions to revive Cold War
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070208/60414285.html
February 13th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Putin Lays Down the Law But Misses the Point
JURIST Contributing Editor Michael Kelly of Creighton University School of Law
Russian President Vladimir Putin chastised President Bush in a speech at the 43rd annual Munich Conference on Security Policy on Feb. 10 for America’s illegal and unilateral use of force outside the parameters of the United Nations. Specifically targeting Bush’s revitalization of the old preventive war doctrine (used most recently to invade Iraq), Putin noted that even with the backing of NATO or the EU, international law prohibits use of military force without the backing of the Security Council, over which Russia wields a veto. President Putin technically has a point on the merits. The U.N. Charter makes no room legally for operating outside its provisions with respect to military action absent an invocation of Article 51’s self-defense provisions, which require an armed attack to trigger a return military response. Thus, from the standpoint of the Charter, America’s 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was legal while its 2003 invasion of Iraq was not. Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted that distinction on several occassions.
However, President Putin misses the point, probably intentionally, on the current state of international law with respect to unauthorized humanitarian intervention. Kosovo was a major test case in this regard. During the ethnic cleansing of that province by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in 1999, the U.S., Britain and France attempted to move the Security Council to intervene. Russia and China balked, aware that such precedent for allowing intervention by foreign powers in a state’s “internal affairs” could be turned back on them and their brutal repression of Chechens in Russia and Tibetans and Muslims in China. In the face of a frozen Security Council and a mounting humanitarian disaster, NATO undertook round-the-clock bombing of Serb ground forces and targets within Serbia proper until Milosevic relented and recalled his forces. NATO then managed the return of refugees to Kosovo, which project later came under the mantle of the United Nations. Secretary-General Annan recognized this as a newly emerging customary norm.
President Putin is seizing the opportunity to condemn American unilateralism around the world, which the vast majority of states have already condemned (along with President Bush’s shaky legal theory on preventive war) to advance his own agenda of shoring up the notion that states remain masters of what goes on within their borders. While it remains true that complete sovereignty over one’s territory is the rule rather than the exception of the state-centric system of international law, there are exceptions. Even 19th Century scholars such as Woolsey recognized that humanitarian intervention could be undertaken by foreign powers against the will of the state being interfered with if the gravity of humanitarian concerns were great enough, citing the 1827 intervention by Britain, France and Russia against the Ottoman Turks on behalf of the beleaguered Greeks. Needless to say, Westphalian sovereignty prerogatives were much more muscular back then than today.
The Russian leader also assailed any further expansion of NATO eastward toward his country as an unnecessarily threatening move, and condemned the extension of a U.S.-backed anti-ballistic missile shield over NATO territory in Europe. From the perspective of Moscow, blunting the ability of military alliances like NATO to intervene militarily around the world without U.N. backing is becoming more personal the closer that alliance creeps toward the Russian border. However, pulling down the supports underpinning a newly useful theory of humanitarian intervention for completely self-interested reasons is unbecoming for a permanent member of the Security Council which, after all, is supposed to be filling its seat in that capacity with a fiduciary duty to act on behalf of the 187 nations not so represented.
February 13th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Citation for above:
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2007/02/putin-lays-down-law-but-misses-point.php
And for further reading:
Suggested Citation
Kelly, Michael J., “Pulling at the Threads of Westphalia: Involuntary Sovereignty Waiver - Revolutionary International Legal Theory Or Return to Rule By the Great Powers?” . UCLA Journal of International Law & Foreign Affiars, Vol. 10, No. 2, p. 101, 2005
Available at SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=960581
Abstract:
This paper explores the nature of sovereignty, its 17th century fusion with the state as a new political entity, its evolution over time, and challenges to its systemic primacy in the 21st century by thinkers such as Dr. Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, whose involuntary sovereignty waiver theory is deconstructed as a viable alternative to U.N. Security Council military intervention preventing human rights abuses, terrorism, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The article also explores Haass’s recommendation that the world return to a Concert of Powers system modeled on that which developed from the 1815 Congress of Vienna, and evaluates use of the anticipatory self-defense doctrine as a method of executing involuntary sovereignty waiver theory. This paper also discusses the interplay between internationalist, realist, and neoconservative schools within the Bush foreign policy apparatus and evaluates the efficacy of Haass’s theory being employed by each.
February 13th, 2007 at 10:17 am
In view of Mr. Putin’s perspective on international law, one must consider his viewpoint on his application of Russian law:
Potemkin Justice; Mr. Putin’s Legal System at Work
February 8, 2007
The Washington Post
We won’t accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of being subtle this week. On Monday, Russian prosecutors leveled charges against a pair of Mr. Putin’s one-time political enemies that are beyond implausible. The outcome from Russia’s pliant legal system is all but inevitable: convictions and more jail time for ex-billionaire Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his former business partner, Platon Lebedev.
Russian prosecutors in Chita, a small Siberian outpost far from reporters and the defendants’ lawyers, accuse the two of laundering an astonishing $20 billion by moving cash from one Yukos subsidiary to another. Mr. Khodorkovsky apparently managed to pull this off at a time when PriceWaterhouseCoopers regularly reviewed Yukos’s books. Yet the two were supposedly moving vast sums of money through the company without anyone noticing — not its bookkeepers, its shareholders or the Russian authorities watching Yukos at the time.
Precisely why Mr. Putin wants to keep these two men in jail for another 15 years or so is still up for speculation. Observers of Russian energy politics see it as a way to assist the Kremlin in grabbing the remaining bits of Yukos’s assets inside and outside the country. Human rights advocates note that the two would have been up for parole before this year’s parliamentary elections; a new conviction would ensure that Mr. Khodorkovsky does not rally anti-Kremlin political forces then or in the presidential election next year.
Mr. Putin has systematically dismantled the institutions of democracy inside Russia while bullying his neighbors and jailing his opponents. After the new charges were announced, a State Department spokesman said that the proceedings “raise questions about Russia’s commitment to the responsibilities which all democratic, free market countries embrace,” and that American policymakers will discuss the issue with the Kremlin “at an appropriate time and at the appropriate level.” We doubt that Mr. Putin will lose much sleep over that prospect.
http://www.mbktrial.com/
——
Mikhail Khodorkovsky defense lawyer Robert Amsterdam issued a new White Paper titled “Abuse of State Authority in the Russian Federation,” detailing how the West has failed to protect its own interests by ignoring the YUKOS affair and other abuses of power committed by Russian authorities
http://www.robertamsterdam.com/Abuse%20of%20State%20Authority%20in%20the%20Russian%20Federation.pdf
February 13th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
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