Is Madeleine Albright Right about Putin in Time?
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I do admire Madeleine Albright. I think she and I are the only Czech-born members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Having been mentored by her father, Josef Korbel, I was proud that she brought down the genocidal, Serbian dictator Milosevic. However, calling Vladimir Putin an “irritant” to NATO in 2008 was not just a mistake, but a grave mistake. Nor is she alone.
Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates frankly admitted that the US. “badly underestimated the magnitude of Russian humiliation in the Cold War and then in the dissolution of the Soviet Union…” He spoke further of the “arrogance” of both U.S. policy-makers and academicians.
While President Barack Obama proclaimed Putin had misread the West: “…We have no interest in encircling Russia," Gates knew that was not Vladimir Putin´s perception. The rush to incorporate so many states into NATO was a “mistake” in Gates´ view. “Trying to bring Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.” Romania and Bulgaria was “a provocation.” Moreover, the deployments of missile defense systems in Poland and Czech republic was, to Gates, “… a further step in the ´encirclement’ of their country.” En toto, “When Russia was weak in the 1990´s and beyond, we did not take Russian interests seriously.” We did “a poor job of seeing the world from their point of view and of managing the relationship for the long term.”
To be fair to Madeleine, however, I wish Bob had not “dutifully supported the efforts to bring Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO…” since he thought the “French and Germans would not allow it.” He should have spoken up and even resigned if necessary. After all, as he also explained, “The roots of the Russian Empire trace back to Kiev in the 9th century, so that was especially a monumental provocation…. NATO expansion was a political act, not a carefully considered military commitment, thus undermining the purpose of the alliance and recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.”
And Madeleine, as you know, Gates has been always characterized as a GOP hardliner. As he he put it, “Guilty as charged.” Having known him, he has not been a partisan but a genuine, hardliner. Instead of vilifying Putin, you should, as Gates suggests, seriously analyze his concerns. Then you should advocate doing what you did so well in Yugoslavia, sticks and carrots policies. Let us arm the Ukrainians with defensive, lethal weapons as Leni Friedman Valenta and I suggested in the Kyiv Post, April 21 and jvlv.net. The U.S. and NATO should then make a commitment never to seek the membership of the Ukraine and Georgia, and to support their association both in the EU and Customs Union. I bet Putin will go for it. Do you have the courage to do it?
President of the Institute of Post-Communist Studies and Terrorism
Blog: US, Russia and China: Coping with Rogue States and Terrorists Groups
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