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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 6:39 pm Post subject: Putin: Master Troll |
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A Plea for Caution From Russia
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RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.
Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.
The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.
The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.
Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.
Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.
From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.
No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”
But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.
No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.
The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.
We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.
A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.
I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.
If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
Vladimir V. Putin is the president of Russia. |
Fun!
Next: Vladimir Putin will shake-down Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 7:07 pm Post subject: |
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I went to a forum at Harvard today and the expert consensus was that Putin wasn't sincere in his offer of helping with the Dyrian issue and it was a way to delay things. Niall Ferguson, who is a professor there and I guess writes for Newsweek was the only one fully for regime change, but the rest all agreed that force should be an option, which many of the students didn't seem to agree with. Everyone pretty much agreed that Ibama handled the whole thing about badly as possible.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/index.php/news-events/events-calendar/attacking-syria-yes-or-no-how-do-you-vote
My current international law professor thinks a strike would be a disaster for international law and seems almost personally offended that everyone in the administration is ignoring the UN charter and not explains how it would be legally justified. |
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GF
Joined: 26 Sep 2012
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| Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2013 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
| the expert consensus was that Putin wasn't sincere in his offer of helping with the Dyrian issue and it was a way to delay things. |
Why believe that he is insincere about helping the US, Syria, and other states avoid an escalating war?
Delay what "things", and for what intended benefit? |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 3:34 am Post subject: |
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| GF wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| the expert consensus was that Putin wasn't sincere in his offer of helping with the Dyrian issue and it was a way to delay things. |
Why believe that he is insincere about helping the US, Syria, and other states avoid an escalating war?
Delay what "things", and for what intended benefit? |
Keep in mind this isn't my opinion but that of the speakers at the panel I attended, but the basic idea that they shared, with some variations, was that of course Putin wanted to avoid a war, but that he wasn't going to allow any enforcement procedure to be put into place. Basically he wants to take away the teeth from the American position, and that due the the situation on the ground finding and destroying all the chemical weapons would be near impossible. One speaker had an interesting alternative theory that Russia had a lot to lose if somehow extremists come to power it would be in Russia's advantage to have already destroyed the weapons, but even she thought it was mostly a way to delay and possibly prevent U.S. action without being that sincere in the proposal.
The most interesting part was when there was some ex CIA bigwig in the audeince, I can't remember name or position, who had worked on Iran affairs asking why the Iraq use of chemical weapons was not an affront to humanity even though it killed more people. All the speakers there could be, fairly I think, considered elites, they've all held high government, media or academic positions, and they were all for some use of force. The Harvard student body that attended seemed to be mostly against it, and fairly vocal about it. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:17 am Post subject: |
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| GF wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| the expert consensus was that Putin wasn't sincere in his offer of helping with the Dyrian issue and it was a way to delay things. |
Why believe that he is insincere about helping the US, Syria, and other states avoid an escalating war? |
I cannot believe so many on this board become so weak-knee'd when talking about Putin. The man is a politician. He cannot write a long piece like that without injecting massive amounts of insincerity in it.
Peace serves Putin's ends here, and I am grateful that it does. I prefer Putin to Obama as well. But lets not get too sentimental about him. He is a politician, after all. |
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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 5:03 am Post subject: |
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| No Putin fan but he is on the right side of history here. |
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Julius
Joined: 27 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 7:42 am Post subject: |
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| The man talks sense. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 11:10 am Post subject: |
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The comments about the article are a bit of a joke, such as this one:
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| Dear Mr. Putin, when you state that God created us all equal, you mean also gay people, right? |
Yeah, he's a hypocrite and perhaps a bigot. That doesn't discount his op-ed. Talk about a red herring. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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What Putin understands but many Americans do not
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This may surprise American readers, but being a cynic that dispatches your political opposition is not necessarily a position that lacks popular support in Russia. Avoiding debt, side-stepping recessions and having massive oil reserves is actually a pretty great way to assure your long-standing popularity. What makes Putin dangerous is that he's not hanging on by any threads in his country. He is not lying in fear of a populist uprising. He may not be understood this way by Americans, but Russians, with their own history, understand him quite well as largely the most successful apparatchik since Khrushchev, both in keeping with his own interests and with Russia's.
As we examine whether or not Obama was playing chess, we should also examine whether or not, in this instance, he played against a superior opponent. And we must then assess the damage this game did. Because Putin wasn't writing to United States citizens, even as that was the premise. He was writing globally. He was writing for a world that is quite willing to accept the narrative of Americans quick to rush into war, quick to disrespect the Security Council, quick to disregard international law. And he is writing from a position of an alternative power.
He is making his case, a case that the world will not understand as Americans understand it. He has protected his interest in Syria under the banner of advancing an international interest. He has established, further, a precedent. That the United States does answer to the council, that it cannot act unilaterally and that our nation can be made to suffer a geopolitical consequence. If you were a country in the Middle East, whose protection would you want right now? |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 3:34 pm Post subject: |
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I am currently taking a class on international law. Today the professor brought up this point, which is Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on Laws and Treaties.
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"Article 52
Coercion of a State by the threat or use of force
A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations." |
http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf
According to my professor, and perhaps Kuros can comment on this, if Assad signed a treaty at this point it wouldn't be legally binding in international law because it was signed under coercion by the United States. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
I am currently taking a class on international law. Today the professor brought up this point, which is Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on Laws and Treaties.
| Quote: |
"Article 52
Coercion of a State by the threat or use of force
A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations." |
http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf
According to my professor, and perhaps Kuros can comment on this, if Assad signed a treaty at this point it wouldn't be legally binding in international law because it was signed under coercion by the United States. |
Ha, very interesting. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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White House Proclaims "Exceptional" Obama Deserves Credit For Any Syrian Deal.
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It will likely come as no surprise but the political one-up-manship continues as the Obama White House try to rescue themselves from a face-melting Putin Op-Ed... As Politico reports, WH press secretary Jay Carney stated: “If we were to see a situation unfold where Assad were to give up his chemical weapons to international supervision that would be an enormous accomplishment ... would be due to the decisions made by the Russian leadership but also the decisions made by the United States, by the president, to take the approach he has taken in response to the horrifying use of chemical weapons on his own people." Feeling the need to make one more jab at the Russians, Carney added, "The United States, in part because it is an exceptional nation, is called upon the lead in situations like this." Indeed, that's what it felt like eh? Under control the whole time...
Via Politico,
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President Barack Obama would deserve some credit if the Syrian crisis is ultimately resolved with the Assad regime relinquishing its chemical weapons, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday.
“If we were to see a situation unfold where Assad were to give up his chemical weapons to international supervision that would be an enormous accomplishment and it would represent a wholesale change to where Syria and Russia were … three weeks ago,” Carney said.
“That would be due to the decisions made by the Russian leadership but also the decisions made by the United States, by the president, to take the approach he has taken in response to the horrifying use of chemical weapons on his own people.”
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Carney didn’t respond directly when asked if the prestige and credibility of the United States is also on the line.
“The United States, in part because it is an exceptional nation, is called upon the lead in situations like this,” Carney said. “That is what this president and this country has been doing.” |
Naturally, should the military standoff re-escalate, and lead to all out war, dragging in Japan, Europe, the middle east, and China, we doubt Obama will be quite as enthused in taking credit for starting World War III... |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
I cannot believe so many on this board become so weak-knee'd when talking about Putin. The man is a politician. Peace serves Putin's ends here, and I am grateful that it does. I prefer Putin to Obama as well. But lets not get too sentimental about him. He is a politician, after all. |
I think it's pretty understandable that anti-democratic posters would wax enthusiastic about Putin. Titus drools when he looks at Putin for the same reason Libertarians slobber over Ron Paul.
Here's a more important issue: should "Libertarians" be capitalized? What about "Libertarianism?" I feel intuitively like Libertarianism (or Communism, or Democracy, or so forth) should be treated as a proper noun: they refer to something specific, even if the specific thing is an ideology, and if so, it seems strange and asymmetrical to not capitalize "Libertarians" as well. None the less, I often see such words (especially "democracy") go uncapitalized, and I don't like it. I feel like the "correct" answer is not the answer my intuition gives, and that makes me want to raze all acknowledged standards to the ground and rebuild a perfect linguistic order. Really, I'd be fine with the capitalization of all nouns across the board.
Last edited by Fox on Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
White House Proclaims "Exceptional" Obama Deserves Credit For Any Syrian Deal.
| Quote: |
It will likely come as no surprise but the political one-up-manship continues as the Obama White House try to rescue themselves from a face-melting Putin Op-Ed... As Politico reports, WH press secretary Jay Carney stated: “If we were to see a situation unfold where Assad were to give up his chemical weapons to international supervision that would be an enormous accomplishment ... would be due to the decisions made by the Russian leadership but also the decisions made by the United States, by the president, to take the approach he has taken in response to the horrifying use of chemical weapons on his own people." Feeling the need to make one more jab at the Russians, Carney added, "The United States, in part because it is an exceptional nation, is called upon the lead in situations like this." Indeed, that's what it felt like eh? Under control the whole time...
Via Politico,
| Quote: |
President Barack Obama would deserve some credit if the Syrian crisis is ultimately resolved with the Assad regime relinquishing its chemical weapons, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday.
“If we were to see a situation unfold where Assad were to give up his chemical weapons to international supervision that would be an enormous accomplishment and it would represent a wholesale change to where Syria and Russia were … three weeks ago,” Carney said.
“That would be due to the decisions made by the Russian leadership but also the decisions made by the United States, by the president, to take the approach he has taken in response to the horrifying use of chemical weapons on his own people.”
...
Carney didn’t respond directly when asked if the prestige and credibility of the United States is also on the line.
“The United States, in part because it is an exceptional nation, is called upon the lead in situations like this,” Carney said. “That is what this president and this country has been doing.” |
Naturally, should the military standoff re-escalate, and lead to all out war, dragging in Japan, Europe, the middle east, and China, we doubt Obama will be quite as enthused in taking credit for starting World War III... |
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I agree that the statement, even if it was true in a way, is stupid, I don't get how this can somehow drag in Japan and China and all of them and create a new world war. I haven't heard a credible explanation of this theory yet, I haven't even heard a credible theory of how it would evolve into a direct confrontation between the US and Russia. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:54 pm Post subject: |
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Fox Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:33 pm Post subject:
Leon Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:35 pm Post subject:
Last edited by Fox on Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
You realize, Leon, that this is the kind of thing that makes a man such as myself become a serial killer, yes?
World War III is probably a wild over-extrapolation. On the other hand, early 1900s Fox probably would have said the same about World War I. Things can escalate in seemingly irrational ways, which is why we should be reluctant to antagonize other nations and eager to find common ground with them. The era of "World War" style conflict is probably over, but why risk it? Casually starting international wars of aggression is a habit with which the United States needs to part. |
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