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The Letter Obama Should Write to Putin
Over at Forbes, I’ve just penned a version of the letter that Barack Obama would send Vladimir Putin if he was serious about stopping Russian expansionism and wanted to salvage the final two years of his presidency. A taste:
Despite your pledges to recognize the May 25 Ukraine presidential election, you continue to the present day to characterize the Kiev government as an illegitimate, extremist, and neo-Nazi regime intent on genocide of ethnic Russians. (This criticism from a country that allows a Miss Hitler contest). Ukraine has no history of Ukrainian-on-Russian ethnic violence, and credible public opinion polls show that the residents of the rebellious Donbas, even to the present day, do not wish to secede from Ukraine. On the basis of your illegitimacy claims, you make the bizarre argument that the sovereign Ukrainian government has no right to deploy its forces in its own country. Using the same logic, Ukraine could argue that Russia has no right to station troops in break-away Chechnya.
Further:
Ukraine could just as easily decry the illegitimacy of your government, in which your electoral commission determines which candidates are allowed to compete against you – an electoral practice common in dictatorial regimes of the third world. Ordinary demonstrators risk prison sentences or extended house arrest for participating in normal political rallies, and dissident leaders are roughed up or brought before your courts on trumped up charges to keep them quiet.
Your false claims of illegitimacy and genocidal threat are your rationale for organizing, supporting, propagandizing, and supplying with advanced weaponry the so-called separatist forces in self-proclaimed people’s republics of eastern Ukraine, which until recently were headed by Russian nationals. Your doctrine that Russia has the right to protect Russians wherever they may be is no different from Hitler’s Anschluesse under the façade of protecting das Deutsche Volk.
Read the whole thing and let me know what you think in the comments.
Published in Foreign Policy, General
I see the pronoun “you” (along with “your”) used several times, much more that “I” or “me”. Obviously you didn’t capture the President’s voice.
Who do you think is the target audience of Putin’s lies? Does he speak propaganda to sway Ukrainians? Is he trying to secure support from people he needs in Russia? Or is he offering Western leaders convenient excuses to let him go unchallenged?
You address this directly to Putin, but who is really your own target audience? Who can and must be convinced for the situation to be remedied?
Obviously, fossil fuel initiatives from this President are extremely unlikely, but there’s no harm in continuing to push for them. Since we have already afforded Ukraine some military resources, however paltry, there is at least hope for more aid in that form. As for NATO, I wonder how many member nations are still committed to defending their Eastern European neighbors, with whom Western Europe’s cultural and economic ties seem weak.
It’s good not to let lies go unchallenged and to offer proposals of action. But I wonder who you are trying to convince.
This is sort of an exercise in futility, because there is absolutely NO WAY Obama would pen anything near this. Obama has no interest in confronting Putin – or actually anyone else. Note his response to ISIS – tepid would be an overstatement. Kudos to the Kurds have been mostly mouthing platitudes; no serious aid has gone their way. No weapons, and the “airstrikes” are woefully inadequate and hugely below our capability. I mean, the total number of air strikes we’ve run so far could probably have been done in 1 or at most 2 days. So basically we aren’t even trying.
One has to go back to the basic question, ?just what IS our “foreign policy”.