"The Russians are a tough bunch of bastards"

That, at least, was Richard Nixon's verdict on November 1971.  His successors in office since 1989 would have done well to remember that.  The oafish, drunk, incompetent Boris Yeltsin was an exception and a national embarrassment to most Russians.  He is widely reviled for precipitating the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and facilitating the theft of the state's wealth by a small number of oligarchs.  The Clinton era is remembered in the US as the good times.  In Russia they were, for most people, a time frightening change and economic hardship, with a dose of national humiliation layered on top.

The years of the Bush administration saw better economic times in Russia, as Vladimir Putin brought a degree of stability to the country, but in foreign policy, the former KGB man Putin saw his country suffer (what were in his eyes) repeated indignities.  The US embarked on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  NATO and the EU's borders raced eastwards, pushing up against the Russian frontier itself.  The fruits of Clinton's air war against Serbia (Russia's long-standing friend and ally) were reaped by Kosovar independence.  George W barely missed an opportunity to kick the Russian bear in Poland, the Czech Republic and Georgia.  In the dying days of the crippled Bush presidency the bear gnarled, briefly, over the latter.

And while Obama and Secretary of State Clinon famously (embarrassingly now, looking back) tried to "reset" relations with Russia, preoccupied with Libya, Syria and a "pivot to Asia", when the Obama administration did pay attention to Europe, its focus was on the crisis in eurozone.

The Crimean hostage crisis

The Hindustan Times, 18th March 2014

This morning Russia and the newly declared independent Republic of Crimea (along with the city of Sevastopol) signed a treaty with Crimea to accept it as a subject of the Russian Federation on 1st January 2015.

For Russia's take on what this all means, Russia Today has some interesting coverage here, including Putin's placing the blame squarely at the feet of the "neo-Nazis, nationalists and anti-Semites" who seized power in a coup on Kiev.  (Not that adherence to the Ukrainian constitution and removal of Viktor Yanukovich from office by the legal method of impeachment would have made much difference, but the failure to do so certainly did give ammo to Moscow to de-legitimize the new Ukrainian government).

Amidst my musings on Twitter yesterday, I observed that the biggest threat of conflict in Crimea came from the plight of the Ukrainian military now trapped on the peninsula.

A way out of the crisis over Crimea: sell it

After having fought the Crimean War, Russia felt that its possessions in North America were vulnerable from attack by Britain from British North America (Canada) in the event of the outbreak of future hostilities.  Tsar Alexander II resolved that it was better to get something in exchange for what is now Alaska than to lose it and be left empty handed.

And so what is called in the United States the Alaska Purchase took place in 1867, turning sovereignty over Russian North America to the United States, in exchange for $7.2 million ($116 million in today's money).

Could a similar strategy offer a way out of the current crisis?

Russia: the Ukrainian February 21st agreement should stand

In an insighful piece in last Sunday's Observer, Dmitri Trenin drew attention to the importance, from Moscow's perspective, of the aborted 21st February agreement between ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich and the Ukrainian opposition:

The agreement, signed on 21 February, was a delayed capitulation by Yanukovych – who had been seen triumphant only a couple of days earlier. An even bigger surprise was the rejection of these capitulation terms by the radicals, and the opposition supporting Yanukovych's immediate resignation. Finally, the German, Polish and French governments, who had just witnessed the Kiev accord, raised no objection to the just-signed agreement being scrapped within hours.

Russia, whose representative had been invited to witness the signing of the 21 February document, but who wisely refused to co-sign it, was incensed. What Moscow saw on 21-22 February was a coup d'état in Kiev. This development led to a fundamental reassessment of Russian policy in Ukraine, and vis-à-vis the West.

In a few blog posts I have drawn attention to this element, but in various interactions have been accused of placing too much importance on it.

This afternoon (Washington time) the Russian Foreign Ministry carried a series of tweets from Russian Foreign Minister Dmitri Lavrov.  One of them in particular grabbed my attention:

#Lavrov: The document of 21 Feb signed by Yatsenyuk, Klitschko, Tyahnybok is not being fulfilled in terms of the obligations they assumed
— MFA Russia (@mfa_russia) March 8, 2014

Kissinger is mostly correct on Ukraine

Who did Henry work for, goddamn it? RT @wagssid @dick_nixon Do we need to send Henry to settle the Russians?
— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) March 4, 2014

Henry is mostly correct on Ukraine. http://t.co/rWXabxxncy
— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) March 6, 2014

Some of you may not realize that I have a personal relationship with Henry Kissinger.

Now, in the interests of fairness, I should admit that it is more akin to the sort of relationship that some people have with Jesus, than the one you have with your BFF: which is to say that only one party to the relationship knows it exists.

Nonetheless, over the course of the best part of four years of my life, poring over HAK's memos and conversations and briefing notes and doodles in the margins of the aforementioned, having read all volumes of his autobiography and just about every biography written about him, I feel that I have a connection with Henry Alfred Kissinger.  I feel I know a little bit about how his mind works.

Henry Kissinger (l) and me, when I used to be Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus.

And having written previously about the parallels, as I see them, between HAK's boss and Putin (and even having had a twitter interaction with @dick_nixon about it),  I was surprised that Kissinger had not yet weighed in on the Ukrainian crisis.  Thankfully, that wait was ended yesterday evening when an opinion piece by him was published in the Washington Post online, and which is presumably in today's print edition.

Although it was still a number of years before my birth, my relationship with Kissinger ended, more or less, in the summer of 1973, just before he was sworn in as Secretary of State, so I was delighted to see that, unlike when he was just National Security Adviser in the first Nixon White House (as opposed to both NSA and Secretary of State from September 1973 to November 1975), the good folks down in Foggy Bottom appear to have taught Henry a thing or two about the power of ideas and ideologies, about which he was somewhat scornful and dismissive when he worked in the White House.

On the whole, if you rolled up my own thoughts on what has been happening in Ukraine, and combined them with decades of experience as, for better or worse, one of the world's most prominent statesmen and thinkers on international affairs, you could say that Henry and I have arrived at almost the same conclusions.

I also think it is fair to say that Henry's analysis of the current crisis has gained him some respect from those who would not normally be inclined towards him:

For the undead corpse of a soulless, Satan-spawned golem, Henry Kissinger is making a surprising amount of sense. http://t.co/Ed9PouSFyr
— billmon (@billmon1) March 5, 2014

Boy, that escalated quickly

Obama during his 90-minute phone all with Putin.

I've been pretty busy these past few days and am just properly catching up on events in Ukraine and Crimea.

I am beginning to wonder whether I have underestimated Putin's intentions. AP are quoting him having told Obama that Russia has the right to take action to protect Russian lives and interests, and Russian speakers.

That last point is the most significant: the majority of Crimeans are ethnic Russians. People in the east of Ukraine are Russian speaking Ukrainians.  Putin has reserved the right to take further intervention from across Ukraine's eastern border.

Has Russia really just invaded Crimea?

US intel agencies insist Russia is bluffing in Ukraine, reports @elilake. http://t.co/eEag0QR2hw
— davidfrum (@davidfrum) February 28, 2014

Despite US intelligence this morning apparently concluding that Russia was bluffing in its stance towards Ukraine and Crimea, within the past 10 minutes the BBC are reporting that a column of Russian APCs is advancing on Simferopol, while at least 5 Russian military planes have apparently already landed there.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26380336

This is despite a warning just a short while ago from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that Russian intervention in Ukraine would be a "grave mistake".

It would appear that Vladimir Putin is setting out to demonstrate the limits of American power and European influence.

The Ukrainian crisis becomes an international crisis

My blog post on Sunday about Ukraine disagreed with a New York Times analysis of the driving factors behind the crisis there, particularly the (US-centric) view that it was a hangover from the Cold War.  The writer and historian Anne Applebaum had an article in The Telegraph on Sunday that on the one hand supported my argument, and on the other disagreed with some of my other conclusions, her central argument being that it had nothing to do with ethnicity, geography or language.

With respect to Anne Applebaum, a distinguished historian and writer on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, I disagree, and feel that her focus is too immediate term and ignores, as did the NYT piece, the larger structural factors.

What has happened in recent days in Crimea (an issue I touched upon in my original post) has shown that in that part of Ukraine at least, language and ethnicity are a factor, and a potentially explosive one at that.

Admittedly, what makes Crimea different is that the majority of the population is Russian, as opposed to Russian-speaking Ukrainians that dominate the west and south of the rest of Ukraine, and sovereignty over Crimea was transferred by the USSR from Russia to Ukraine only 60 or so years ago.  Nonetheless, it has the potential, even if not the likelihood, to ignite Ukraine into a full-blown ethnic or linguistic conflict, should Russia continue in its support for Yanukovich and, more dangerously, take military action from the naval base that it continues to operate in Crimea in support of the Russian separatists.