Saturday, March 29, 2014 11:05:35 PM
Vladimir Putin Keeps GOP Rep Hanging
by Chris Gentilviso
Posted: 03/28/2014 3:01 pm EDT Updated: 03/28/2014 3:59 pm EDT
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have left [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rohrabacher-russia-putin ] one member of the Republican Party hanging.
In a Thursday interview with the New York Times, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/us/politics/kremlin-finds-a-defender-in-congress.html ] expressed disappointment with Russia for not recognizing his defense of its annexation of Crimea. Rohrabacher was one of 19 representatives [ http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-na-pn-rohrabacher-ukraine-putin-reprise-20140327,0,3229059.story ] and the lone Californian to vote against aid for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
“I kind of wish I would get some sort of word back,” Rohrabacher told the New York Times on Thursday. “But I haven’t even gotten so much as a thank you.”
Rohrabacher's ties to Putin [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/13/dana-rohrabacher-vladimir-putin_n_3922187.html ] extend well beyond the U.S.' recent tensions with Russia. Back in September, Rohrabacher told KPCC radio [ http://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/2013/09/12/33692/congressman-dana-rohrabacher-i-arm-wrestled-vladim/ ] that they once had drunken arm-wrestling match in the early 1990s.
According to Rohrabacher's account, he did not know Putin at the time, but had the competition at a pub after "having a little bit too much to drink, I guess." Via KPCC:
Anyway, we started arguing about who won the Cold War, etc. And so we decided to settle it like men do when they've had too much to drink in the pub. So we got to these arm wrestling matches, and I ended up being paired off with Putin. He's a little guy, but boy, I'll tell yea. He put me down in a millisecond! He is tough. His muscles are just unbelievable."
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/vladimir-putin-dana-rohrabacher_n_5051198.html [with comments]
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Steven Seagal: Vladimir Putin is one of the 'great world leaders'
Buddy movie … Vladimir Putin and friend Steven Seagal, promoting a Russian national fitness programme last year.
Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/AFP/Getty Images
Action star has appeared in state-owned Russian media to back his personal friend the president and blast the west's anti-Putin stance on Ukraine
Ben Child
Friday 28 March 2014 09.38 EDT
Vladimir Putin's decision to annexe the Crimean peninsula may be opposed by the combined political might of Europe and the USA, but one man stands ready to defend the Russian president. Action hero Steven Seagal [ http://www.theguardian.com/culture/steven-seagal ], who considers Putin a personal friend, has labelled the former KGB lieutenant colonel "one of the greatest world leaders" and declared his actions in the Russian-majority Ukrainian province "very reasonable".
Speaking to the state-run newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta, in comments first noted by the Moscow Times [ http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/movie-star-seagal-backs-russias-actions-in-crimea/496896.html ], Seagal described western policy on Ukraine as "idiotic". He said Putin's desire "to protect the Russian-speaking people of Crimea, his assets, and the Russian Black Sea military base in Sevastopol … [was] very reasonable".
The 61-year-old actor and martial artist, who is currently filming an action movie in Romania, also said that media coverage of US opposition to Putin's actions was designed to promote the agenda of President Barack Obama. Seagal, who has appeared on the state-owned TV station Russia Today as an expert commentator on the standoff in Ukraine, was in turn tipped for a future political career in the US by Rossiskaya Gazeta. The newspaper bizarrely described him as on a par in terms of fame and authority with two former Hollywood heroes turned political titans, Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Seagal, a Republican who has mentioned an interest in running for office in the past, also said that he would consider following in the footsteps of French actor Gérard Depardieu [ http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/feb/24/gerard-depardieu-russian-resident-france ] by taking Russian citizenship.
Seagal and Putin are said to have bonded over a shared interest in martial arts. The actor, who recently helped Russia's government relaunch a nationwide fitness programme which had been dormant since the Soviet era, said he considered the president as "a brother".
© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/28/steven-seagal-vladimir-putin-ukraine [with comments]
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Kerry to meet Russia's Lavrov for Ukraine talks in Paris on Sunday
• Top diplomats discuss Ukraine and agree to meet in Paris
• Vladimir Putin calls Barack Obama late Friday
29 March 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/29/ukraine-kerry-calls-lavrov-russia-us-talks [with comments]
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UPDATE 3-Russia sees no need for Ukraine incursion, Lavrov to meet Kerry
Sat Mar 29, 2014
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/29/ukraine-crisis-russia-idINL5N0MQ06720140329 [no comments yet]
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Russia sees no need for Ukraine incursion, Tatars seek autonomy
Mar 29, 2014
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/29/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA2S0K020140329 [with comments]
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Vladimir Putin haunts - or helps - Obama’s trip to Europe
U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Pope Francis during a private audience at the Vatican on March 27, 2014. Obama met with Pope Francis for the first time on the third leg of a European tour.
03.28.14
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/03/28/4025579/vladimir-putin-haunts-or-helps.html [with comments]
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As Diplomacy Steps Up, Ukraine Candidates Narrow
Vitali Klitschko addressed Ukrainian supporters in London, following a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday.
Credit Carl Court/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and ANDREW ROTH
MARCH 29, 2014
MOSCOW — A day after the Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin proposed to President Obama that they boost attempts to resolve their standoff over Ukraine, Secretary of State John Kerry scrambled his travel plans to meet with his Russian counterpart in Paris on Sunday, according to a State Department official.
The meeting comes amid fears that Russia plans to seize more Ukrainian territory after its recent rapid annexation of Crimea that led to American and European sanctions.
As the tug-of-war over Ukraine’s future continued, Vitali V. Klitschko — one of the best-known faces of the antigovernment protests that helped set off the country’s political crisis — threw his support to a competitor for the presidency in hopes of unifying forces behind a single, pro-Western candidate.
The announcement by Mr. Klitschko, a former world champion boxer, that he would put aside his presidential ambitions in favor of the billionaire chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko reordered the race ahead of elections in May. The move appeared to reflect rising concern of a split in support among candidates who want closer relations with the West, including the former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, that could create an opening for a pro-Russia challenger and sow further divisions in a country already riven by months of political upheaval.
“The presidential elections in Ukraine on May 25 should join society and not become another war of everyone against everyone,” Mr. Klitschko said at a meeting of his party, the United Democratic Alliance for Reform. “This can be achieved only if you do not split the votes between the democratic candidates.”
The months of demonstrations, which eventually toppled Viktor F. Yanukovych, the president at the time, centered on whether Kiev would tilt more toward Moscow or the West and eventually spilled over into the worst strains between Russia and the United States and its allies since the end of the Cold War.
On Saturday, in an apparent bid to defuse those tensions, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said in a television interview that Russia had “no intention” of invading Ukraine, although the United States and NATO have said Russian forces were massed along the Ukrainian border.
Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Kerry spoke by telephone on Saturday after Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin had agreed on fresh diplomacy. Mr. Kerry then delayed his return to the United States and headed for Paris to meet Mr. Lavrov on Sunday.
“We are bringing our approaches closer together,” Mr. Lavrov said in an interview on Rossia 1 television, according to a transcript on the station’s website. “My latest meeting with John Kerry in The Hague and my contacts with Germany, France and some other countries show that the possibility of a joint initiative is taking shape, which could be proposed to our Ukrainian colleagues.”
One Obama administration official on Saturday cautioned that it is unlikely that a deal is imminent, and noted the difference in tone between the statements issued by the United States and by Russia on what was said in the telephone call between the two presidents. (The White House stressed possible diplomatic movement, while the Kremlin stressed Mr. Putin’s complaints about “extremists” in Ukraine.) Russia’s solution to the impasse over Ukraine emphasizes a federation, allowing for greater autonomy for eastern and southern Ukraine, with their heavy concentration of ethnic Russians. The stress Moscow places on the federation concept is seen partly as an attempt to ensure that Ukraine does not coalesce into a strong pro-European, anti-Russian country right next door.
Mr. Lavrov rejected as “absolutely unacceptable” the formula devised by Western officials, whereby Russia and Ukraine would negotiate directly with each other under Western auspices. The Russians reject the current leadership in Kiev as illegitimate. And although he said there were no plans for another takeover, Mr. Lavrov also repeated that the West should do more to curb the “lawlessness” in Ukraine; that formulation is often interpreted as a veiled warning that Russia might intervene if the West and its allies do not push the Ukrainian leadership to bring stability.
The move by Mr. Klitschko on Saturday could propel Mr. Poroshenko to a formidable lead in the election, where his most prominent anticipated contender is Ms. Tymoshenko, the country’s former prime minister and a familiar if controversial figure in the country’s fractious opposition movement. But it might also help Ms. Tymoshenko by removing one popular rival.
Mr. Klitschko said he would run instead for mayor of Kiev, with a goal of transforming the city into a “truly European capital.”
Mr. Poroshenko hailed the decision by Mr. Klitschko to step aside, saying it would serve the goals of the thousands of people who demonstrated for more than three months in hopes of putting Ukraine on the path to a pro-Western political future.
“It would be a betrayal if we did not unite,” Mr. Poroshenko said in a speech to the United Democratic Alliance for Reform congress Saturday.
Mr. Poroshenko said that it was clear in light of the popular uprising, and the deaths of more than 80 demonstrators in clashes with the police before Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster, that officials had an obligation to be more responsive to the public.
On Thursday, Ms. Tymoshenko announced that she would run for president as the candidate of the Fatherland party. Ms. Tymoshenko, Mr. Yanukovych’s archrival, spent two and a half years in prison on charges that her supporters and the West have long criticized as politically motivated. Mr. Yanukovych narrowly defeated her in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential election.
A spokesman for Ms. Tymoshenko, who was attending her own party congress, did not have an immediate response to Mr. Klitschko’s announcement.
Ms. Tymoshenko is by the far the best-known politician in the race. But she faces an uphill climb, given the public’s deep mistrust of previous governments in a country with a long history of corruption and mismanagement.
In addition, although she has had extremely harsh words for Russia over the annexation of Crimea, she had a cordial relationship with the Kremlin as prime minister and was regarded as someone with whom Mr. Putin could do business — history that has spurred additional questions about what she might be like as president.
Neil MacFarquhar reported from Moscow, and Andrew Roth from Kiev. David M. Herszenhorn and Alexandra Odynova contributed reporting from Moscow; Michael R. Gordon from Shannon, Ireland; Michael D. Shear from Frankfurt; and Patrick Reevell from Kiev.
© 2014 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/world/europe/ukraine.html
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Vote by U.N. General Assembly Isolates Russia
MARCH 27, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/europe/General-Assembly-Vote-on-Crimea.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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The World's Post-Crimea Power Blocs, Mapped
What does this week's UN vote say about Russia's new place in the world?
Mar 29 2014
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/the-worlds-post-crimea-power-blocs-mapped/359835/ [with comments]
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Putin's Russia caught in US and Chinese double-pincer
Russia and China are on a collision course, and China will not be the one to yield.
Mr Putin is discovering that global finance is more frightened of the US Securities and Exchange Commission than Russian T90 tanks
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
9:06PM GMT 26 Mar 2014
Russia's Vladimir Putin has committed a grave strategic blunder by tearing up the international rule book without a green light from China. Any hope of recruiting Beijing as an ally to blunt Western sanctions looks doomed, and with it the Kremlin's chances of a painless victory, or any worthwhile victory at all.
Mr Putin was careful to thank China's Politburo for its alleged support in his victory speech on Crimea. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has been claiming with his usual elasticity that “Russia and China have coinciding views on the situation in Ukraine.”
This is of course a desperate lie. China did not stand behind Russia in the UN Security Council vote on Crimea, as it had over Syria. It pointedly abstained. Its foreign ministry stated that “China always sticks to the principle of non-interference in any country’s internal affairs and respects the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
We don't know exactly what China's Xi Jinping told President Barack Obama at The Hague this week but it clearly had nothing in common with the deranged assertions of the Kremlin. The US deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes appeared delighted by the talks, claiming afterwards that Russia could no longer count on backing from its "traditional ally".
If so, Mr Putin is snookered. He cannot hope to escape financial suffocation by US regulatory muscle, should he send troops into Eastern Ukraine or even if he tries to stir up chaos in the Russian-speaking Donbass by means of agents provocateurs.
Nor can he hope to turn the tables on the West by joining forces with China to create a Eurasian bloc, a league of authoritarian powers in control of vast resources. Such an outcome is the obsession of the 'Spenglerites', the West's self-haters convinced that the US is finished and that dollar will soon be displaced by the Eurasian Gold Ducat -- odd though that may seem at a time of surging oil and gas output in the US, and an American manufacturing revival.
The reality is that China is breaking Russia's control over the gas basins of Central Asia systematically and ruthlessly. Turkmenistan's gas used to flow North, hostage to prices set by Gazprom. It now flows East. President Xi went in person last September to open the new 1,800 km pipeline to China from the Galkynysh field, the world's second largest with 26 trillion cubic meters.
It will ultimately supply 65 BCM, equal to half Gazprom's exports to Europe. Much the same is going on in Kazakhstan, where Chinese companies have taken over much of the energy industry. The politics are poignantly exposed in Wikileaks cables from Central Asia. A British diplomat is cited in a 2010 dispatch describing the "Chinese commercial colonization" of the region, saying Russia was "painfully" watching its energy domination in Central Asia slip away.
Yet more revealing is a cable quoting Cheng Guoping, China's ambassador to Kazakhstan, warning that Russia and China are on a collision course, and China will not be the one to yield. "In the future, great power relations in Central Asia will be complicated, delicate. The new oil and gas pipelines are breaking Russia's monopoly in energy exports."
Mr Cheng not only expressed "a positive view of the US role in the region" but also suggested that NATO should take part as a guest at talks on the Shanghai Cooperation group -- allegedly the Sino-Russian answer to EU/NATO -- in order to "break the Russian monopoly in the region." That word "break" again. So there we have it in the raw, what really goes on behind closed doors, so far removed from the pieties of a Moscow-Beijing axis.
There was much anguish about such an axis in the 1960s, then based on Communist fraternity. Henry Kissinger saw through it, suspecting that the two hostile cultures were at daggers drawn along their vast borders -- "Four Thousand Kilometres of Problems" to cite the title of a 2006 opus by Moscow writer Akihero Ivasita.
George Walden exposes deep roots of this mistrust in his superb little book "China: A Wolf in the World?". As a diplomat in Russia and then in China -- one of the tiny handful of Westerners in Beijing through the Cultural Revolution -- he saw first-hand how the Marxist brotherhood had come to loathe each other. Indeed, they came close to nuclear war. The CIA and State Department were dumbfounded by his accounts at a debriefing in Washington. They had no sources on the ground in Mao's era.
Mr Walden says the Chinese have never forgiven Russia for seizing East Siberia under the Tsars, the "lost territories". They want their property back, and they are getting it back by ethnic resettlement across the Amur and the frontier regions, much as Mexico is retaking California and Texas by the Reconquista of migration.
The population of far Eastern Siberia has collapsed to 6.3m from over 8 million twenty years ago, leaving ghost towns along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Russia has failed to make a go of its Eastern venture. With a national fertility rate of 1.4, chronic alcoholism, and a population expected to shrink by 30m to barely more than 110m by 2050 -- according to UN demographers, not Mr Putin's officials -- the nation must inexorably recede towards its European bastion of Old Muscovy. The question is how fast, and how peacefully.
Jonathan Fenby, a China expert at Trusted Sources, said there is a faction within China's National Security Council that wishes to "line up with Russia" over Ukraine, hoping to exploit the crisis to gain better terms on gas, food, and raw materials. These voices have been overruled by Xi Jinping. He plays on a more sophisticated strategic stage.
China is likely to walk a tightrope, "hiding its brilliance and biding its time" as the saying goes. This will becomes harder if the Ukraine crisis escalates. Beijing may have to choose. It is surely unlikely that imperious Xi Jinping will throw away the great prize of G2 Sino-American condominium to rescue a squalid and incompetent regime in Moscow from its own folly.
Mr Putin must realize by now how fatally isolated he has become, and how dangerous it would be to go a step further. Even Germany's ever-forgiving Angela Merkel has lost patience, lamenting an "unbelievable breakdown of trust." Enough of Europe's gas pipelines have been switched to two-way flows since 2009 to help at least some of the vulnerable frontline states, if he tries to pick off the minnows one by one. Eight EU countries have liquefied natural gas terminals. Two more will join the club this year, in Poland and Lithuania.
The EU summit text last week was a call to arms. Officials have been ordered to draft plans within 90 days to break dependence on Gazprom. Even if this crisis blows over, Europe will take radical steps to find other sources of energy. Imports of Russian may be slashed by half within a decade.
Capital flight from Russia reached $70bn in the first quarter. Russia's central bank cannot defend the rouble without tightening monetary policy, driving the economy deeper into recession in the process. Russian banks and companies must roll over $155bn of foreign debts over the next twelve months in a hostile market, at a premium already over 200 basis points.
Mr Putin is discovering that global finance is more frightened of the US Securities and Exchange Commission than Russian T90 tanks. Any sanction against any oligarch linked to any Russian company could shut it out of global capital markets, potentially forcing default. Creditors in the West would be burned. But nobody cares about them once national security is at stake, something markets have been slow to grasp.
Nor has he chosen a good moment for his gamble. Europe's gas tanks are unusually full. The price of oil is poised to fall -- ceteris paribus -- as Iraq's output reaches a 35-year high, the US adds a million barrels b/d a day this year from shale, and Libya cranks up exports again. The International Energy Agency says global supply jumped by 600,000 b/d last month. Deutsche Bank predicts a glut. So does China's Sinopec. Mr Putin needs prices near $110 to fund his budget. He may face $80 before long.
At the end of the day he has condemned Russia to the middle income trap. The windfall from the great oil boom has been wasted. Russia's engineering skills have atrophied. Industry has been hollowed out by the Dutch Disease: the curse of over-valued currency, and reliance on commodities.
He jumped the gun in Ukraine, striking before the interim government had committed any serious abuses or lost global goodwill, a remarkably sloppy and impatient Putsch for a KGB man. He took Germany for a patsy, and took China for granted. He has gained Crimea but turned the Kremlin into a pariah for another decade, if not a generation, and probably lost Ukraine forever. It is a remarkably poor trade.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2014
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10725643/Putins-Russia-caught-in-US-and-Chinese-double-pincer.html [with comments] [also at http://www.businessinsider.com/lack-of-chinese-support-for-crimea-is-a-big-problem-for-putin-2014-3 (with comments) (at/see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=99711846 and preceding {and any future following})]
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The Arctic: Where the U.S. and Russia Could Square Off Next
A U.S. Coast Guard crew in the Arctic Ocean.
(Reuters/Kathryn Hansen/NASA)
A closer look at Moscow's claims in the northern seas
Uri Friedman
Mar 28 2014, 6:53 PM ET
In mid-March, around the same time that Russia annexed Crimea, Russian officials announced another territorial coup: 52,000 square kilometers in the Sea of Okhotsk, a splotch of Pacific Ocean known as the "Peanut Hole [ http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/11/russia_through_the_peanut_hole.html ]" and believed to be rich in oil and gas. A U.N. commission had recognized the maritime territory as part of Russia's continental shelf, Russia's minister of natural resources and environment proudly announced [ http://rt.com/news/okhotsk-sea-shelf-russia-038/ ], and the decision would only advance the territorial claims in the Arctic that Russia had pending before the same committee.
After a decade and a half of painstaking petitioning, the Peanut Hole was Russia's.
Wikimedia Commons
Russian officials were getting a bit ahead of themselves. Technically, the UN commission had approved Russia's recommendations [ http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2014/sea1999.doc.htm ] on the outer limits of its continental shelf—and only when Russia acts on these suggestions is its control of the Sea of Okhotsk "final and binding [ http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part6.htm ]."
Still, these technicalities shouldn't obscure the larger point: Russia isn't only pursuing its territorial ambitions in Ukraine and other former Soviet states. It's particularly active in the Arctic Circle, and, until recently, these efforts engendered international cooperation, not conflict.
But the Crimean crisis has complicated matters. Take Hillary Clinton's call [ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/clinton-warns-montreal-crowd-of-russias-increased-activity-in-arctic/article17560676/ ] last week for Canada and the United States to form a "united front" in response to Russia "aggressively reopening military bases” in the Arctic. Or the difficulties [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/business/energy-environment/potential-crackdown-on-russia-risks-also-punishing-western-oil-companies.html ] U.S. officials are having in designing sanctions against Russia that won't harm Western oil companies like Exxon Mobil, which are engaged in oil-and-gas exploration with their Russian counterparts in parts of the Russian Arctic.
In a dispatch from "beneath the Arctic ocean" this week, The Wall Street Journal reported [ http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304679404579461630946609454?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304679404579461630946609454.html ] on a U.S. navy exercise, scheduled before the crisis in Ukraine, that included a simulated attack on a Russian submarine. The U.S. has now canceled a joint naval exercise with Russia in the region and put various other partnerships there on hold.
This week, the Council on Foreign Relations published a very helpful guide [ http://www.cfr.org/arctic/emerging-arctic/p32620#!/ ] on the jostling among countries to capitalize on the shipping routes and energy resources that could be unlocked as the Arctic melts. The main players are the countries with Arctic Ocean coastlines: Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Russia, the United States (Alaska)—and, to a lesser extent, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. These nations have generally agreed [ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/science/earth/29arctic.html ] to work together to resolve territorial and environmental issues. But some sovereignty disputes persist, including American opposition to Russia's claims to parts of the Northern Sea Route above Siberia.
Here's CFR's infographic on where the Arctic's shipping and natural-resource potential is, and where the "Arctic Five" are most at odds with each other (you can even layer summer sea ice onto the map!):
[interactive map embedded]
"Few countries have been as keen to invest in the Arctic as Russia, whose economy and federal budget rely heavily on hydrocarbons," CFR writes. "Of the nearly sixty large oil and natural-gas fields discovered in the Arctic, there are forty-three in Russia, eleven in Canada, six in Alaska, and one in Norway, according to a 2009 U.S. Department of Energy report."
"Russia, the only non-NATO littoral Arctic state, has made a military buildup in the Arctic a strategic priority, restoring Soviet-era airfields and ports and marshaling naval assets," the guide adds. "In late 2013, President Vladimir Putin instructed his military leadership to pay particular attention to the Arctic, saying Russia needed 'every lever for the protection of its security and national interests there.' He also ordered the creation of a new strategic military command in the Russian Arctic by the end of 2014."
Ultimately, the remarkable international cooperation we've seen in the North Pole may continue even amid the standoff in Ukraine. This week, for instance, government officials from the eight members of the Arctic Council [ http://www.arctic-council.org/index.php/en/ ], including Russia and the United States, went ahead with a summit in Canada. "The Russians have been quite cooperative in the Arctic during the past decade," international-law professor Michael Byers told The Canadian Press [ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-continues-talks-with-russia-as-part-of-arctic-council-1.2587566 ], "probably because they realize how expensive it would be to take another approach, especially one involving militarization."
Copyright © 2014 by The Atlantic Monthly Group
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/the-arctic-where-the-us-and-russia-could-square-off-next/359543/ [with embedded video and scribd-style "Timeline: The Emerging Arctic" excerpt from the linked CFR guide, and comments]
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Poll: Ukraine crisis hurts Obama approval ratings
March 27, 2014
WASHINGTON — Foreign policy used to stand out as a not-so-bleak spot in the public’s waning assessment of Barack Obama. Not anymore. He’s getting low marks for handling Russia’s swoop into Ukraine, and more Americans than ever disapprove of the way Obama is doing his job, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
Despite the poor performance reviews, Obama’s primary tactic so far — imposing economic sanctions on key Russians — has strong backing.
Close to 9 out of 10 Americans support sanctions as a response to Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, the poll indicates. ...
[...]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/poll-ukraine-crisis-hurts-obama-approval-ratings/2014/03/27/234f5816-b57f-11e3-bab2-b9602293021d_story.html
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Barbed tongue a ready weapon for Obama
The Rachel Maddow Show
March 26, 2014
Rachel Maddow reminds viewers of Pres. Barack Obama's ability to deliver a stinging zinger, as he has done at past White House Correspondents Dinners, mocking his political foes.
©2014 NBCNews.com
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/54790136#54790136 / http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/54790136 [with transcript; show links at http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/links-the-326-trms-1 (no comments yet)]
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Putin's ego a target for Obama's sharp wit
The Rachel Maddow Show
March 26, 2014
Rachel Maddow shows how Pres. Barack Obama's ability to deliver a witty insult has taken a role in the tense relationship between the U.S. and Russia as Vladimir Putin's sensitive ego becomes a target.
©2014 NBCNews.com
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/54790146#54790146 / http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/54790146 [with transcript; show links at http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/links-the-326-trms-1 (no comments yet); the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf9sfY5ufdk (with comments); http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXOshAt4pxg (with comment) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q5kQTETi0w (with comment) together also cover the segment]
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Putin Not Ruling Out Military Response To Continued International Diplomacy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUXJRkYbLsE [with comments]
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by Chris Gentilviso
Posted: 03/28/2014 3:01 pm EDT Updated: 03/28/2014 3:59 pm EDT
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have left [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rohrabacher-russia-putin ] one member of the Republican Party hanging.
In a Thursday interview with the New York Times, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/us/politics/kremlin-finds-a-defender-in-congress.html ] expressed disappointment with Russia for not recognizing his defense of its annexation of Crimea. Rohrabacher was one of 19 representatives [ http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-na-pn-rohrabacher-ukraine-putin-reprise-20140327,0,3229059.story ] and the lone Californian to vote against aid for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
“I kind of wish I would get some sort of word back,” Rohrabacher told the New York Times on Thursday. “But I haven’t even gotten so much as a thank you.”
Rohrabacher's ties to Putin [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/13/dana-rohrabacher-vladimir-putin_n_3922187.html ] extend well beyond the U.S.' recent tensions with Russia. Back in September, Rohrabacher told KPCC radio [ http://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/2013/09/12/33692/congressman-dana-rohrabacher-i-arm-wrestled-vladim/ ] that they once had drunken arm-wrestling match in the early 1990s.
According to Rohrabacher's account, he did not know Putin at the time, but had the competition at a pub after "having a little bit too much to drink, I guess." Via KPCC:
Anyway, we started arguing about who won the Cold War, etc. And so we decided to settle it like men do when they've had too much to drink in the pub. So we got to these arm wrestling matches, and I ended up being paired off with Putin. He's a little guy, but boy, I'll tell yea. He put me down in a millisecond! He is tough. His muscles are just unbelievable."
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/vladimir-putin-dana-rohrabacher_n_5051198.html [with comments]
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Steven Seagal: Vladimir Putin is one of the 'great world leaders'
Buddy movie … Vladimir Putin and friend Steven Seagal, promoting a Russian national fitness programme last year.
Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/AFP/Getty Images
Action star has appeared in state-owned Russian media to back his personal friend the president and blast the west's anti-Putin stance on Ukraine
Ben Child
Friday 28 March 2014 09.38 EDT
Vladimir Putin's decision to annexe the Crimean peninsula may be opposed by the combined political might of Europe and the USA, but one man stands ready to defend the Russian president. Action hero Steven Seagal [ http://www.theguardian.com/culture/steven-seagal ], who considers Putin a personal friend, has labelled the former KGB lieutenant colonel "one of the greatest world leaders" and declared his actions in the Russian-majority Ukrainian province "very reasonable".
Speaking to the state-run newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta, in comments first noted by the Moscow Times [ http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/movie-star-seagal-backs-russias-actions-in-crimea/496896.html ], Seagal described western policy on Ukraine as "idiotic". He said Putin's desire "to protect the Russian-speaking people of Crimea, his assets, and the Russian Black Sea military base in Sevastopol … [was] very reasonable".
The 61-year-old actor and martial artist, who is currently filming an action movie in Romania, also said that media coverage of US opposition to Putin's actions was designed to promote the agenda of President Barack Obama. Seagal, who has appeared on the state-owned TV station Russia Today as an expert commentator on the standoff in Ukraine, was in turn tipped for a future political career in the US by Rossiskaya Gazeta. The newspaper bizarrely described him as on a par in terms of fame and authority with two former Hollywood heroes turned political titans, Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Seagal, a Republican who has mentioned an interest in running for office in the past, also said that he would consider following in the footsteps of French actor Gérard Depardieu [ http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/feb/24/gerard-depardieu-russian-resident-france ] by taking Russian citizenship.
Seagal and Putin are said to have bonded over a shared interest in martial arts. The actor, who recently helped Russia's government relaunch a nationwide fitness programme which had been dormant since the Soviet era, said he considered the president as "a brother".
© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/28/steven-seagal-vladimir-putin-ukraine [with comments]
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Kerry to meet Russia's Lavrov for Ukraine talks in Paris on Sunday
• Top diplomats discuss Ukraine and agree to meet in Paris
• Vladimir Putin calls Barack Obama late Friday
29 March 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/29/ukraine-kerry-calls-lavrov-russia-us-talks [with comments]
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UPDATE 3-Russia sees no need for Ukraine incursion, Lavrov to meet Kerry
Sat Mar 29, 2014
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/29/ukraine-crisis-russia-idINL5N0MQ06720140329 [no comments yet]
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Russia sees no need for Ukraine incursion, Tatars seek autonomy
Mar 29, 2014
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/29/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA2S0K020140329 [with comments]
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Vladimir Putin haunts - or helps - Obama’s trip to Europe
U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Pope Francis during a private audience at the Vatican on March 27, 2014. Obama met with Pope Francis for the first time on the third leg of a European tour.
03.28.14
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/03/28/4025579/vladimir-putin-haunts-or-helps.html [with comments]
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As Diplomacy Steps Up, Ukraine Candidates Narrow
Vitali Klitschko addressed Ukrainian supporters in London, following a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday.
Credit Carl Court/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and ANDREW ROTH
MARCH 29, 2014
MOSCOW — A day after the Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin proposed to President Obama that they boost attempts to resolve their standoff over Ukraine, Secretary of State John Kerry scrambled his travel plans to meet with his Russian counterpart in Paris on Sunday, according to a State Department official.
The meeting comes amid fears that Russia plans to seize more Ukrainian territory after its recent rapid annexation of Crimea that led to American and European sanctions.
As the tug-of-war over Ukraine’s future continued, Vitali V. Klitschko — one of the best-known faces of the antigovernment protests that helped set off the country’s political crisis — threw his support to a competitor for the presidency in hopes of unifying forces behind a single, pro-Western candidate.
The announcement by Mr. Klitschko, a former world champion boxer, that he would put aside his presidential ambitions in favor of the billionaire chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko reordered the race ahead of elections in May. The move appeared to reflect rising concern of a split in support among candidates who want closer relations with the West, including the former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, that could create an opening for a pro-Russia challenger and sow further divisions in a country already riven by months of political upheaval.
“The presidential elections in Ukraine on May 25 should join society and not become another war of everyone against everyone,” Mr. Klitschko said at a meeting of his party, the United Democratic Alliance for Reform. “This can be achieved only if you do not split the votes between the democratic candidates.”
The months of demonstrations, which eventually toppled Viktor F. Yanukovych, the president at the time, centered on whether Kiev would tilt more toward Moscow or the West and eventually spilled over into the worst strains between Russia and the United States and its allies since the end of the Cold War.
On Saturday, in an apparent bid to defuse those tensions, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said in a television interview that Russia had “no intention” of invading Ukraine, although the United States and NATO have said Russian forces were massed along the Ukrainian border.
Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Kerry spoke by telephone on Saturday after Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin had agreed on fresh diplomacy. Mr. Kerry then delayed his return to the United States and headed for Paris to meet Mr. Lavrov on Sunday.
“We are bringing our approaches closer together,” Mr. Lavrov said in an interview on Rossia 1 television, according to a transcript on the station’s website. “My latest meeting with John Kerry in The Hague and my contacts with Germany, France and some other countries show that the possibility of a joint initiative is taking shape, which could be proposed to our Ukrainian colleagues.”
One Obama administration official on Saturday cautioned that it is unlikely that a deal is imminent, and noted the difference in tone between the statements issued by the United States and by Russia on what was said in the telephone call between the two presidents. (The White House stressed possible diplomatic movement, while the Kremlin stressed Mr. Putin’s complaints about “extremists” in Ukraine.) Russia’s solution to the impasse over Ukraine emphasizes a federation, allowing for greater autonomy for eastern and southern Ukraine, with their heavy concentration of ethnic Russians. The stress Moscow places on the federation concept is seen partly as an attempt to ensure that Ukraine does not coalesce into a strong pro-European, anti-Russian country right next door.
Mr. Lavrov rejected as “absolutely unacceptable” the formula devised by Western officials, whereby Russia and Ukraine would negotiate directly with each other under Western auspices. The Russians reject the current leadership in Kiev as illegitimate. And although he said there were no plans for another takeover, Mr. Lavrov also repeated that the West should do more to curb the “lawlessness” in Ukraine; that formulation is often interpreted as a veiled warning that Russia might intervene if the West and its allies do not push the Ukrainian leadership to bring stability.
The move by Mr. Klitschko on Saturday could propel Mr. Poroshenko to a formidable lead in the election, where his most prominent anticipated contender is Ms. Tymoshenko, the country’s former prime minister and a familiar if controversial figure in the country’s fractious opposition movement. But it might also help Ms. Tymoshenko by removing one popular rival.
Mr. Klitschko said he would run instead for mayor of Kiev, with a goal of transforming the city into a “truly European capital.”
Mr. Poroshenko hailed the decision by Mr. Klitschko to step aside, saying it would serve the goals of the thousands of people who demonstrated for more than three months in hopes of putting Ukraine on the path to a pro-Western political future.
“It would be a betrayal if we did not unite,” Mr. Poroshenko said in a speech to the United Democratic Alliance for Reform congress Saturday.
Mr. Poroshenko said that it was clear in light of the popular uprising, and the deaths of more than 80 demonstrators in clashes with the police before Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster, that officials had an obligation to be more responsive to the public.
On Thursday, Ms. Tymoshenko announced that she would run for president as the candidate of the Fatherland party. Ms. Tymoshenko, Mr. Yanukovych’s archrival, spent two and a half years in prison on charges that her supporters and the West have long criticized as politically motivated. Mr. Yanukovych narrowly defeated her in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential election.
A spokesman for Ms. Tymoshenko, who was attending her own party congress, did not have an immediate response to Mr. Klitschko’s announcement.
Ms. Tymoshenko is by the far the best-known politician in the race. But she faces an uphill climb, given the public’s deep mistrust of previous governments in a country with a long history of corruption and mismanagement.
In addition, although she has had extremely harsh words for Russia over the annexation of Crimea, she had a cordial relationship with the Kremlin as prime minister and was regarded as someone with whom Mr. Putin could do business — history that has spurred additional questions about what she might be like as president.
Neil MacFarquhar reported from Moscow, and Andrew Roth from Kiev. David M. Herszenhorn and Alexandra Odynova contributed reporting from Moscow; Michael R. Gordon from Shannon, Ireland; Michael D. Shear from Frankfurt; and Patrick Reevell from Kiev.
© 2014 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/world/europe/ukraine.html
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Vote by U.N. General Assembly Isolates Russia
MARCH 27, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/europe/General-Assembly-Vote-on-Crimea.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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The World's Post-Crimea Power Blocs, Mapped
What does this week's UN vote say about Russia's new place in the world?
Mar 29 2014
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/the-worlds-post-crimea-power-blocs-mapped/359835/ [with comments]
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Putin's Russia caught in US and Chinese double-pincer
Russia and China are on a collision course, and China will not be the one to yield.
Mr Putin is discovering that global finance is more frightened of the US Securities and Exchange Commission than Russian T90 tanks
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
9:06PM GMT 26 Mar 2014
Russia's Vladimir Putin has committed a grave strategic blunder by tearing up the international rule book without a green light from China. Any hope of recruiting Beijing as an ally to blunt Western sanctions looks doomed, and with it the Kremlin's chances of a painless victory, or any worthwhile victory at all.
Mr Putin was careful to thank China's Politburo for its alleged support in his victory speech on Crimea. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has been claiming with his usual elasticity that “Russia and China have coinciding views on the situation in Ukraine.”
This is of course a desperate lie. China did not stand behind Russia in the UN Security Council vote on Crimea, as it had over Syria. It pointedly abstained. Its foreign ministry stated that “China always sticks to the principle of non-interference in any country’s internal affairs and respects the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
We don't know exactly what China's Xi Jinping told President Barack Obama at The Hague this week but it clearly had nothing in common with the deranged assertions of the Kremlin. The US deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes appeared delighted by the talks, claiming afterwards that Russia could no longer count on backing from its "traditional ally".
If so, Mr Putin is snookered. He cannot hope to escape financial suffocation by US regulatory muscle, should he send troops into Eastern Ukraine or even if he tries to stir up chaos in the Russian-speaking Donbass by means of agents provocateurs.
Nor can he hope to turn the tables on the West by joining forces with China to create a Eurasian bloc, a league of authoritarian powers in control of vast resources. Such an outcome is the obsession of the 'Spenglerites', the West's self-haters convinced that the US is finished and that dollar will soon be displaced by the Eurasian Gold Ducat -- odd though that may seem at a time of surging oil and gas output in the US, and an American manufacturing revival.
The reality is that China is breaking Russia's control over the gas basins of Central Asia systematically and ruthlessly. Turkmenistan's gas used to flow North, hostage to prices set by Gazprom. It now flows East. President Xi went in person last September to open the new 1,800 km pipeline to China from the Galkynysh field, the world's second largest with 26 trillion cubic meters.
It will ultimately supply 65 BCM, equal to half Gazprom's exports to Europe. Much the same is going on in Kazakhstan, where Chinese companies have taken over much of the energy industry. The politics are poignantly exposed in Wikileaks cables from Central Asia. A British diplomat is cited in a 2010 dispatch describing the "Chinese commercial colonization" of the region, saying Russia was "painfully" watching its energy domination in Central Asia slip away.
Yet more revealing is a cable quoting Cheng Guoping, China's ambassador to Kazakhstan, warning that Russia and China are on a collision course, and China will not be the one to yield. "In the future, great power relations in Central Asia will be complicated, delicate. The new oil and gas pipelines are breaking Russia's monopoly in energy exports."
Mr Cheng not only expressed "a positive view of the US role in the region" but also suggested that NATO should take part as a guest at talks on the Shanghai Cooperation group -- allegedly the Sino-Russian answer to EU/NATO -- in order to "break the Russian monopoly in the region." That word "break" again. So there we have it in the raw, what really goes on behind closed doors, so far removed from the pieties of a Moscow-Beijing axis.
There was much anguish about such an axis in the 1960s, then based on Communist fraternity. Henry Kissinger saw through it, suspecting that the two hostile cultures were at daggers drawn along their vast borders -- "Four Thousand Kilometres of Problems" to cite the title of a 2006 opus by Moscow writer Akihero Ivasita.
George Walden exposes deep roots of this mistrust in his superb little book "China: A Wolf in the World?". As a diplomat in Russia and then in China -- one of the tiny handful of Westerners in Beijing through the Cultural Revolution -- he saw first-hand how the Marxist brotherhood had come to loathe each other. Indeed, they came close to nuclear war. The CIA and State Department were dumbfounded by his accounts at a debriefing in Washington. They had no sources on the ground in Mao's era.
Mr Walden says the Chinese have never forgiven Russia for seizing East Siberia under the Tsars, the "lost territories". They want their property back, and they are getting it back by ethnic resettlement across the Amur and the frontier regions, much as Mexico is retaking California and Texas by the Reconquista of migration.
The population of far Eastern Siberia has collapsed to 6.3m from over 8 million twenty years ago, leaving ghost towns along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Russia has failed to make a go of its Eastern venture. With a national fertility rate of 1.4, chronic alcoholism, and a population expected to shrink by 30m to barely more than 110m by 2050 -- according to UN demographers, not Mr Putin's officials -- the nation must inexorably recede towards its European bastion of Old Muscovy. The question is how fast, and how peacefully.
Jonathan Fenby, a China expert at Trusted Sources, said there is a faction within China's National Security Council that wishes to "line up with Russia" over Ukraine, hoping to exploit the crisis to gain better terms on gas, food, and raw materials. These voices have been overruled by Xi Jinping. He plays on a more sophisticated strategic stage.
China is likely to walk a tightrope, "hiding its brilliance and biding its time" as the saying goes. This will becomes harder if the Ukraine crisis escalates. Beijing may have to choose. It is surely unlikely that imperious Xi Jinping will throw away the great prize of G2 Sino-American condominium to rescue a squalid and incompetent regime in Moscow from its own folly.
Mr Putin must realize by now how fatally isolated he has become, and how dangerous it would be to go a step further. Even Germany's ever-forgiving Angela Merkel has lost patience, lamenting an "unbelievable breakdown of trust." Enough of Europe's gas pipelines have been switched to two-way flows since 2009 to help at least some of the vulnerable frontline states, if he tries to pick off the minnows one by one. Eight EU countries have liquefied natural gas terminals. Two more will join the club this year, in Poland and Lithuania.
The EU summit text last week was a call to arms. Officials have been ordered to draft plans within 90 days to break dependence on Gazprom. Even if this crisis blows over, Europe will take radical steps to find other sources of energy. Imports of Russian may be slashed by half within a decade.
Capital flight from Russia reached $70bn in the first quarter. Russia's central bank cannot defend the rouble without tightening monetary policy, driving the economy deeper into recession in the process. Russian banks and companies must roll over $155bn of foreign debts over the next twelve months in a hostile market, at a premium already over 200 basis points.
Mr Putin is discovering that global finance is more frightened of the US Securities and Exchange Commission than Russian T90 tanks. Any sanction against any oligarch linked to any Russian company could shut it out of global capital markets, potentially forcing default. Creditors in the West would be burned. But nobody cares about them once national security is at stake, something markets have been slow to grasp.
Nor has he chosen a good moment for his gamble. Europe's gas tanks are unusually full. The price of oil is poised to fall -- ceteris paribus -- as Iraq's output reaches a 35-year high, the US adds a million barrels b/d a day this year from shale, and Libya cranks up exports again. The International Energy Agency says global supply jumped by 600,000 b/d last month. Deutsche Bank predicts a glut. So does China's Sinopec. Mr Putin needs prices near $110 to fund his budget. He may face $80 before long.
At the end of the day he has condemned Russia to the middle income trap. The windfall from the great oil boom has been wasted. Russia's engineering skills have atrophied. Industry has been hollowed out by the Dutch Disease: the curse of over-valued currency, and reliance on commodities.
He jumped the gun in Ukraine, striking before the interim government had committed any serious abuses or lost global goodwill, a remarkably sloppy and impatient Putsch for a KGB man. He took Germany for a patsy, and took China for granted. He has gained Crimea but turned the Kremlin into a pariah for another decade, if not a generation, and probably lost Ukraine forever. It is a remarkably poor trade.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2014
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10725643/Putins-Russia-caught-in-US-and-Chinese-double-pincer.html [with comments] [also at http://www.businessinsider.com/lack-of-chinese-support-for-crimea-is-a-big-problem-for-putin-2014-3 (with comments) (at/see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=99711846 and preceding {and any future following})]
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The Arctic: Where the U.S. and Russia Could Square Off Next
A U.S. Coast Guard crew in the Arctic Ocean.
(Reuters/Kathryn Hansen/NASA)
A closer look at Moscow's claims in the northern seas
Uri Friedman
Mar 28 2014, 6:53 PM ET
In mid-March, around the same time that Russia annexed Crimea, Russian officials announced another territorial coup: 52,000 square kilometers in the Sea of Okhotsk, a splotch of Pacific Ocean known as the "Peanut Hole [ http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/11/russia_through_the_peanut_hole.html ]" and believed to be rich in oil and gas. A U.N. commission had recognized the maritime territory as part of Russia's continental shelf, Russia's minister of natural resources and environment proudly announced [ http://rt.com/news/okhotsk-sea-shelf-russia-038/ ], and the decision would only advance the territorial claims in the Arctic that Russia had pending before the same committee.
After a decade and a half of painstaking petitioning, the Peanut Hole was Russia's.
Wikimedia Commons
Russian officials were getting a bit ahead of themselves. Technically, the UN commission had approved Russia's recommendations [ http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2014/sea1999.doc.htm ] on the outer limits of its continental shelf—and only when Russia acts on these suggestions is its control of the Sea of Okhotsk "final and binding [ http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part6.htm ]."
Still, these technicalities shouldn't obscure the larger point: Russia isn't only pursuing its territorial ambitions in Ukraine and other former Soviet states. It's particularly active in the Arctic Circle, and, until recently, these efforts engendered international cooperation, not conflict.
But the Crimean crisis has complicated matters. Take Hillary Clinton's call [ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/clinton-warns-montreal-crowd-of-russias-increased-activity-in-arctic/article17560676/ ] last week for Canada and the United States to form a "united front" in response to Russia "aggressively reopening military bases” in the Arctic. Or the difficulties [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/business/energy-environment/potential-crackdown-on-russia-risks-also-punishing-western-oil-companies.html ] U.S. officials are having in designing sanctions against Russia that won't harm Western oil companies like Exxon Mobil, which are engaged in oil-and-gas exploration with their Russian counterparts in parts of the Russian Arctic.
In a dispatch from "beneath the Arctic ocean" this week, The Wall Street Journal reported [ http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304679404579461630946609454?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304679404579461630946609454.html ] on a U.S. navy exercise, scheduled before the crisis in Ukraine, that included a simulated attack on a Russian submarine. The U.S. has now canceled a joint naval exercise with Russia in the region and put various other partnerships there on hold.
This week, the Council on Foreign Relations published a very helpful guide [ http://www.cfr.org/arctic/emerging-arctic/p32620#!/ ] on the jostling among countries to capitalize on the shipping routes and energy resources that could be unlocked as the Arctic melts. The main players are the countries with Arctic Ocean coastlines: Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Russia, the United States (Alaska)—and, to a lesser extent, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. These nations have generally agreed [ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/science/earth/29arctic.html ] to work together to resolve territorial and environmental issues. But some sovereignty disputes persist, including American opposition to Russia's claims to parts of the Northern Sea Route above Siberia.
Here's CFR's infographic on where the Arctic's shipping and natural-resource potential is, and where the "Arctic Five" are most at odds with each other (you can even layer summer sea ice onto the map!):
[interactive map embedded]
"Few countries have been as keen to invest in the Arctic as Russia, whose economy and federal budget rely heavily on hydrocarbons," CFR writes. "Of the nearly sixty large oil and natural-gas fields discovered in the Arctic, there are forty-three in Russia, eleven in Canada, six in Alaska, and one in Norway, according to a 2009 U.S. Department of Energy report."
"Russia, the only non-NATO littoral Arctic state, has made a military buildup in the Arctic a strategic priority, restoring Soviet-era airfields and ports and marshaling naval assets," the guide adds. "In late 2013, President Vladimir Putin instructed his military leadership to pay particular attention to the Arctic, saying Russia needed 'every lever for the protection of its security and national interests there.' He also ordered the creation of a new strategic military command in the Russian Arctic by the end of 2014."
Ultimately, the remarkable international cooperation we've seen in the North Pole may continue even amid the standoff in Ukraine. This week, for instance, government officials from the eight members of the Arctic Council [ http://www.arctic-council.org/index.php/en/ ], including Russia and the United States, went ahead with a summit in Canada. "The Russians have been quite cooperative in the Arctic during the past decade," international-law professor Michael Byers told The Canadian Press [ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-continues-talks-with-russia-as-part-of-arctic-council-1.2587566 ], "probably because they realize how expensive it would be to take another approach, especially one involving militarization."
Copyright © 2014 by The Atlantic Monthly Group
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/the-arctic-where-the-us-and-russia-could-square-off-next/359543/ [with embedded video and scribd-style "Timeline: The Emerging Arctic" excerpt from the linked CFR guide, and comments]
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Poll: Ukraine crisis hurts Obama approval ratings
March 27, 2014
WASHINGTON — Foreign policy used to stand out as a not-so-bleak spot in the public’s waning assessment of Barack Obama. Not anymore. He’s getting low marks for handling Russia’s swoop into Ukraine, and more Americans than ever disapprove of the way Obama is doing his job, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
Despite the poor performance reviews, Obama’s primary tactic so far — imposing economic sanctions on key Russians — has strong backing.
Close to 9 out of 10 Americans support sanctions as a response to Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, the poll indicates. ...
[...]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/poll-ukraine-crisis-hurts-obama-approval-ratings/2014/03/27/234f5816-b57f-11e3-bab2-b9602293021d_story.html
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Barbed tongue a ready weapon for Obama
The Rachel Maddow Show
March 26, 2014
Rachel Maddow reminds viewers of Pres. Barack Obama's ability to deliver a stinging zinger, as he has done at past White House Correspondents Dinners, mocking his political foes.
©2014 NBCNews.com
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/54790136#54790136 / http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/54790136 [with transcript; show links at http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/links-the-326-trms-1 (no comments yet)]
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Putin's ego a target for Obama's sharp wit
The Rachel Maddow Show
March 26, 2014
Rachel Maddow shows how Pres. Barack Obama's ability to deliver a witty insult has taken a role in the tense relationship between the U.S. and Russia as Vladimir Putin's sensitive ego becomes a target.
©2014 NBCNews.com
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/54790146#54790146 / http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow/54790146 [with transcript; show links at http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/links-the-326-trms-1 (no comments yet); the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf9sfY5ufdk (with comments); http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXOshAt4pxg (with comment) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q5kQTETi0w (with comment) together also cover the segment]
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Putin Not Ruling Out Military Response To Continued International Diplomacy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUXJRkYbLsE [with comments]
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in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (linked in):
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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