Posts Tagged ‘paul saunders’
Former Bush Advisor: Keep Calm and Submit to Putin
It’s hard to imagine how someone could be more discredited regarding Russia than by being intimately associated with both the George W. Bush and Richard M. Nixon administrations. That’s the case with Russia pundit Paul J. Saunders: he worked for Bush as a key Russia advisor and now works for the Center for the National Interest, known as the Nixon Center until 2011.
Recall Bush infamously looked in Vladimir Putin’s eyes, glimpsed his soul, and declared him trustworthy. And hosted a Russian war criminal in the Oval Office, before Putin invaded Georgia and annexed two huge chunks of territory. The Center for the National Interest is actually run by a Russian, Dimitri Simes, another discredited figure who has urged the same disgraceful policy of appeasement towards Russia that has been embraced by the disastrously failed “reset” policy of Barack Obama.
In the May 23 Washington Post, Saunders published an editorial fully supportive of the Obama reset. The column is one of the more dishonest and outrageous pieces of writing about Russia I’ve come across in my career of monitoring Russian affairs.
Saunders argues that the United States should not oppose dictatorship in Russia until Russian troops begin “massing on the country’s Western border” and “opposition activists are being executed by the hundreds.” Yes, really.
He denies that dissidents are being sent to psychiatric wards, Siberia, or being subjected to show trials like those that occurred in Soviet times, and therefore urges Americans to do as Obama says and to thank their lucky stars, because things are just fine in Russia as far as Americans are allowed to be concerned.
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Resetting the U.S.-Russian Reset
The following is a transcript of an interview with Dmitry Peskov, deputy chief of staff and press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin, conducted by Paul Saunders, associate publisher of The National Interest and executive director of the Center for the National Interest, Washington, D.C. The interview was conducted Wednesday morning, January 23, 2013.
Paul Saunders: Thank you very much for taking time to talk to us. The “reset” in the U.S.-Russia relationship was one of the first foreign policy initiatives during President Obama’s first term. We heard recently that senior State Department officials have said that the word “reset” should be retired because the relationship has moved in a new direction and it’s no longer necessary to have a reset. How do you see the future of the reset after President Obama’s reelection?
Dmitry Peskov: Well, as a matter of fact Russian Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov would say that is a very popular idea here in Moscow [to retire the word “reset”] and that it is a process that cannot be endless. And if the reset lasts for too long, that means to make something different, a different operation to get the process going. So let’s hope together that this is not the case. Well, unfortunately the flow of our bilateral relationship, the flow of some steps from Washington, it shows a kind of an attitude that unfortunately cannot be treated in Moscow as a “reset” mood. So that’s why we are very sorry because we are looking forward to having a working relationship of close partnership with the United States, developing a mutual responsibility for global security, for global strategic security, for regional security and solving all the issues in that connection and originally by diplomatic and peaceful methods, taking into account each other’s relationship, but definitely it takes two to tango. I mean we cannot build a bilateral relationship of friendship and partnership on our own. Unfortunately we witnessed some steps that in no way can be treated as a “reset” attitude.
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Spinning the Realities of the Reset
The Washington Post’s editorial page is entitled to endorse Barack Obama for president—as it did in October 2008—but all too often the paper’s reporters appear to endorse the administration as well, through slanted reporting that fails to question administration policy and perspectives and in fact serves to defend them. Kathy Lally’s May 17 article “Anti-American rhetoric subsides in Russia” is the latest example of the Post’s weak and simplistic work.
Lally implies that Moscow’s rhetoric and policy toward Washington are softening after Vladimir Putin’s reelection as president—something administration officials doubtless hope is true, given the emphasis they have put on the “reset”—and then proceeds to make her case on the basis of a superficial reading of Putin’s May 7 instructions to the Russian Foreign Ministry, buttressed by quotes from two liberal Moscow intellectuals and a woman in the audience at a U.S. embassy-sponsored jazz concert.
Putin’s decree does call for “stable and predictable cooperation” aimed at “a truly strategic level” of cooperation—but then proceeds to explain that this should be on the basis of “non-interference in internal affairs” “respect for mutual interests,” and remaining “committed to Russia’s position” on missile defense. If Lally had read the decree carefully rather than selectively, it should have been apparent to someone with her experience in Russia that it does not signal any improvement in Russian policy—on the contrary, it pays lip service to cooperation while emphasizing Moscow’s grievances diplomatically but clearly. The contrast is especially apparent if one also reads the section on Europe, which is largely unqualified in its positive tone and also appears much earlier in the document in a not-too-subtle statement about Russian priorities. Putin’s decision to skip the G-8 summit at Camp David, and to attend the Beijing summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in early June, makes a similar point.
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