cookie cut-outs .. lol, one is one, two is one too many, and three, well, hell! .. robotic .. oogh, one after one ignoring 2008 while blaming 'he's weak' Obama for doing all and more than they did back then .. and with no more solutions offered than what Obama is doing now .. they are cooked cookie cut-outs with Rand/Ryan-like moves to center .. crumbs in search of broader, more rational appeal ..
The politics of blaming Obama on Ukraine
'The president has done what I think Americans want him to do,' Cardin says. | AP Photo
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE | 3/5/14 11:29 PM EST Updated: 3/7/14 12:32 AM EST
Russian President Vladimir Putin is the one who moved troops into Crimea — but to Republicans, President Barack Obama is the one to blame.
GOP lawmakers have been out in force pointing the finger at Obama for a lack of leadership. Democrats, meanwhile, bemoan the partisan comments but have not been defending the White House’s handling of the situation in Ukraine.
What politicians in the U.S. say in opposition — or don’t say in support — matters in Moscow, said Michael McFaul, who just returned from three years as Obama’s ambassador to Russia.
McFaul said what’s going on now reminded him of September, when Obama pushed for military strikes against Syria and was rebuffed by a sudden eruption of anti-interventionism, first by the GOP but joined by Democrats. People in Putin’s circle sneered to him about the president’s problems on the Hill, McFaul said.
“They most certainly saw that as a constraint on the president’s powers,” McFaul said. Obama’s “weakness was not about his assessment of Russia. His weakness was about democratic constraints on what he could do — that Putin does not face.”
It’s not like American politicians have a history of having only one view of international affairs. For years under President George W. Bush, Republicans often returned to the argument that Democrats opposing his plans in Iraq and Afghanistan were comforting the enemy.
To the frustration of this White House, though, the attacks on Obama’s commitment and resolve aren’t like anything Bush ever faced from Democrats — including the last time Putin went into a former Soviet territory, in Georgia in 2008. Whatever happened to national unity in a crisis, a senior administration officials wondered Wednesday, arguing that the political divisions send a mixed message to Putin and other world leaders who are gauging the strength of the United States’ resolve on Ukraine.
Critics are attacking Obama for not doing some of the very things he already is doing, the official said, and any suggestion that Obama is responsible for Russia’s actions — which they say facts don’t support — essentially amounts to “Putin-boosterism,” the official said.
“I would be curious to see a word cloud,” Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer tweeted Tuesday, “that compared GOP criticism of Obama v criticism of Putin on Ukraine.”
“The fact that people are using this to politicize makes me very discouraged,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “It disrespects both the office of the president and the Ukrainian people if we’re in the middle of the crisis for people to be immediately taking political potshots instead of trying to solve the crisis.”
Another committee member, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), argued that there’s no need for Democrats to be out there defending the administration or advocating on Obama’s behalf. Americans know that the president is in touch with Putin and other leaders and that the White House is doing all that it can and should be doing, Cardin said.
“The facts speak for itself,” Cardin said. “The president has done what I think Americans want him to do.”
That’s in the face of intense Republican attacks. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made what amounted to gracious comments on the Senate floor Wednesday, saying of the president, “We’ll support him however we can to ensure a satisfactory outcome for the Ukrainian people, and to prevent this conflict from escalating into a wider war. They deserve our support.”
Of course, a couple of sentences earlier, McConnell recalled that he’s been talking for years about how Obama had eroded America’s place in the world, and concluded with a challenge: “This is a moment when President Obama is going to have to lead.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said Obama plays marbles while Putin plays chess.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) lit up the Internet by saying that the lack of a stronger response to the Republican obsession of Benghazi was enough to “invite this type of aggression.”
“In Ukraine, we’re seeing the direct consequences of a failure of American leadership,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Tuesday, criticizing Obama for receding from the world, abandoning allies and failing to show resolve either toward supporting the protesters in Kiev or standing up to the Russians.
Putin, Cruz said, “has taken the measure of President Obama and has determined that he has nothing to fear from the United States, and that is why he is proceeding with impunity.”
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark — the former NATO supreme allied commander and short-lived Democratic presidential candidate — said it’s problematic to simplify the Ukraine debate for partisan attacks.
“Think of it as being chess played on three boards, stacked one above the other. At the bottom board is the military piece. On the middle board is the economics and energy piece. On the top board is the diplomatic piece,” Clark said. “For the Republicans to say [Obama] isn’t being tough enough — that’s a very oversimplified argument, and it could get you in a lot of trouble.”
Asked whether he thought it was a problem for the White House that more of the president’s allies weren’t making that argument, Clark said, “I hope it does get out there.”
Beyond that, McFaul said, the whole idea that Putin sees Obama as weak is just wrong. On the contrary, the former ambassador said, the Russian president continues to demonstrate that he’s responding out of an outsize sense of menace from Obama — reflected in Putin’s comments at a Tuesday news conference .. http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/vladimir-putin-ukraine-speech-104219.html .. about the United States feeling “like they’re in a lab and they’re running all sorts of experiments on the rats without understanding consequences of what they’re doing.”
Obama, McFaul said, doesn’t underestimate Putin. But just like Bush in Georgia, or going further back to when the Soviet Union declared martial law in Poland during Ronald Reagan’s presidency or sent tanks into Hungary during Dwight Eisenhower’s, the White House’s options tend to be limited, no matter how outrageous the Kremlin’s decisions.
“[Putin] believes that President Obama — the United States — is seeking to foment revolution around the world against regimes that are unfriendly to the United States,” McFaul said. “He thinks that he was defeated by President Obama in Ukraine. That’s not an assessment that Obama is weak. That’s an assessment that we are actually a threat to his interests.”
“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.”
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."
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 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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
New Sanctions Against Russia Could Deal Big Blow To ExxonMobil
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, right, shakes hands with Rex W. Tillerson, chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corporation at their meeting in the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Monday, April 16, 2012. CREDIT: AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Government Press Service
by Ryan Koronowski Posted on September 13, 2014 at 2:56 pm Updated: September 13, 2014 at 4:20 pm
On Friday, the United States and the European Union imposed a new round [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/europe/european-union-details-tightened-sanctions-against-russia.html ] of sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s intervention in eastern Ukraine and following its annexation of the Crimean peninsula in March. The goal is to clamp down further on the Russian economy but it will significantly affect the drilling plans of western oil giants ExxonMobil and BP.
Prior rounds of sanctions have primarily targeted the Russian banking and defense sectors, but in late July, the U.S. and E.U. agreed to crack down [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/world/europe/european-sanctions-russia.html ] on Russia’s access to Western fossil fuel technology for future development of deepwater, Arctic offshore, and shale oil and gas deposits. Russia has the largest combined oil and gas reserves in the world but lacks the oil and gas technology needed to access complex and dangerous deposits like those deep under the waters under Russia’s Arctic coast. So it enters into deals with the Western oil giants — most prominently Exxon — to exploit those resources. Exxon and Russia agreed to a $3.2 billion deal [ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/09/10/316176/exxon-climate-change-deniers/ ] that gives the company access to a Texas-sized [ http://online.wsj.com/articles/sanctions-over-ukraine-put-exxon-at-risk-1410477455 ] chunk of the Arctic.
To kick off the Exxon offshore well in August, President Vladimir Putin got on a videoconference call [ http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0809/Despite-sanctions-ExxonMobil-XOM-starts-drilling-in-Russia.-Putin-cheers ] with the CEO of Rosneft — Russian state-owned oil giant — and Glenn Waller, Exxon’s top man in Russia, to laud the promise of international cooperation on display. “I am convinced that the joint projects between Rosneft, Exxon Mobil and other companies will benefit our national economies, will contribute to strengthening the global energy situation,” Putin said.
Waller responded that “our cooperation is a long-term one,” and that Exxon was excited to keep working in Russia because “we see big benefits here and are ready to work here with your agreement.”
the provision, exportation, or reexportation, directly or indirectly, of goods, services (except for financial services), or technology in support of exploration or production for deepwater, Arctic offshore, or shale projects that have the potential to produce oil in the Russian Federation, or in maritime area claimed by the Russian Federation and extending from its territory…
Exxon spokesperson Alan Jeffers told [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/business/energy-environment/new-sanctions-to-stall-exxons-arctic-oil-plans.html ] the New York Times that “we have to look at what was issued today … and determine how it affects us.” In May, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson told shareholders that “we don’t find [the sanctions] to be effective unless they are very well-implemented,” and that the questions people should really be asking is “who are they really harming?”
BP owns nearly 20 percent of Rosneft, and ExxonMobil has a joint venture with the Russian oil giant. Sanctions that last for a significant period of time could complicate both relationships in the long term. In May, BP signed an agreement [ http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/24/uk-russia-forum-rosneft-idUKKBN0E40A920140524 ] with Rosneft to explore for shale oil in Russia.
In the near term, Exxon’s revenues should not drop by very much at all since it has operations across so much of the globe, with the Russian projects representing so little of that total. Yet because an oil company’s profits depend on maintaining or growing reserves, and Exxon’s have been flat for the last few years, anything that cuts off access to existing or potential reserves would hit them on Wall Street at the very least.
ExxonMobil stocks dropped 1.3 percent [ http://www.jamestownsun.com/content/wall-street-declines-string-gains-ends ] on Friday. The oil giant has been looking to maintain its massive reserves as old fields dry up and access to promising fields gets curtailed by geopolitical turmoil and expiring contracts. Arctic offshore drilling presents a risky target for even Exxon’s technological expertise — the company decided not [ http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article1346574.ece ] to bid for a new round of licensing off the coast of Greenland last December.
One of the main reasons Russia is able to begin to develop such risky Arctic oil and gas deposits is because Arctic sea ice is thawing due to a warming climate.
The sanctions do not just target deepwater Arctic offshore drilling — they also cover deepwater and shale oil exploitation. Many western companies, including Exxon and BP, are just as eager as Russia is to see how promising Russian shale deposits are. Exporting technology, goods, and services to develop those potential resources just got a lot more complicated.
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