12:50 PM 8/10/2014: Putin Has Stumbled in Ukraine | Opinion
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Researchers have long contended that the epicenter of global warming is also farthest from the reach of humanity. It’s in the barren landscapes of the frozen North, where red-cheeked children wear fur, the sun barely rises in the winter and temperatures can plunge dozens of degrees below zero. Such a place is the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia, translated as “the ends of the Earth,” a desolate spit of land where a group called the Nenets live.
By now, you’ve heard of the crater on the Yamal Peninsula. It’s the one that suddenly appeared, yawning nearly 100 feet in diameter, and made several rounds in the global viral media machine. The adjectives most often used to describe it: giant, mysterious, curious. Scientists were subsequently “baffled.” Locals were “mystified.” There were whispers that aliens were responsible. Nearby residents peddled theories of “bright flashes” and “celestial bodies.”
There’s now a substantiated theory about what created the crater. And the news isn’t so good.
It may be methane gas, released by the thawing of frozen ground. According to a recent Nature article, “air near the bottom of the crater contained unusually high concentrations of methane — up to 9.6% — in tests conducted at the site on 16 July, says Andrei Plekhanov, an archaeologist at the Scientific Centre of Arctic Studies in Salekhard, Russia. Plekhanov, who led an expedition to the crater, says that air normally contains just 0.000179% methane.”
The scientist said the methane release may be related to Yamal’s unusually hot summers in 2012 and 2013, which were warmer by an average of 5 degrees Celsius. “As temperatures rose, the researchers suggest, permafrost thawed and collapsed, releasing methane that had been trapped in the icy ground,” the report stated.
A crater located in the permafrost about 18 miles from a huge gas field north of the regional capital of Salekhard, roughly 2,000 kilometers northeast of Moscow, on June 16, 2014. AFP/Getty Images
Plekhanov explained to Nature that the conclusion is preliminary. He would like to study how much methane is contained in the air trapped inside the crater’s walls. Such a task, however, could be difficult. “Its rims are slowly melting and falling into the crater,” the researcher told the science publication. “You can hear the ground falling, you can hear the water running; it’s rather spooky.”
“Gas pressure increased until it was high enough to push away the overlaying layers in a powerful injection, forming the crater,” explained geochemist Hans-Wolfgang Hubberten of Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute, adding that he’s never seen anything like the crater.
Some scientists contend the thawing of such terrain, rife with centuries of carbon, would release incredible amounts of methane gas and affect global temperatures. “Pound for pound, the comparative impact of [methane gas] on climate change is over 20 times greater than [carbon dioxide] over a 100-year period,” reported the Environmental Protection Agency.
As the Associated Press put it in 2010, the melting of Siberia’s permafrost is “a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.”
Researchers with Stockholm University’s Department of Applied Environmental Science recently witnessed methane releases in the East Siberian Arctic Ocean. They found that “elevated methane levels [were] about ten times higher than in background seawater,” wrote scientist Orjan Gustafsson on his blog last week. He added: “This was somewhat of a surprise … This is information that is crucial if we are to be able to provide scientific estimations of how these methane releases may develop in the future.”
NASA also found the situation to be precarious. “The fragile and rapidly changing Arctic region is home to large reservoirs of methane, a potent greenhouse gas,” scientists wrote in 2012. It’s “vulnerable to being released into the atmosphere, where it can add to global warming.”
Now, as two additional craters have also recently been discovered in Siberia, researchers worry the craters may portend changes to local Siberian life. Two have appeared close to a large gas field. “If [a release] happens at the Bovanenkovskoye gas field that is only 30 kilometers away, it could lead to an accident, and the same if it happens in a village,” Russian scientist Plekhanov told Nature.
Terrence McCoy
is a foreign affairs writer at the Washington Post. He served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Cambodia and studied international politics at Columbia University. Follow him on Twitter
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Cows are seen at a new dairy farm containing 960 animals on the day of its opening in the village of Petrovskoye in Leningrad region, on August 8, 2014. Russia retaliated against tough new Western sanctions, banning most food imports from the United States and the European Union and threatening to block flights over its airspace. (Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images)
While it lasted, globalization was a beguiling tale we told ourselves about the future. The world is interconnected and therefore getting not just richer but more peaceful. The technologies of international capitalism — outsourcing, insourcing, offshoring — would not only make the world’s businesses more profitable, they would make people less quarrelsome. We would play chess online with Indians, and thus become more like them. We would buy software from China, and thus never go to war with them. Even better, once they started trading, India and China would never go to war with each other.
At the height of this optimism, the “McDonald’s theory of international relations” was a thing one heard about quite frequently. The idea was that no country with a McDonald’s restaurant would ever go to war with another country with a McDonald’s restaurant, because in order to have a McDonald’s restaurant you had to be thoroughly integrated into the global economy, and if you were integrated into the global economy you would never attack another one of its members. This theory of “McPeace” was exploded, literally, by the U.S. bombardment of Belgrade, the city that in 1988 had opened the first McDonald’s restaurant in the whole of what was about to become the ex-communist bloc. But the hope that it might be true somehow lingered.
Anne Applebaum writes a biweekly foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. She is also the Director of the Global Transitions Program at the Legatum Institute in London. View Archive
This week, as Russia, a country with more than 400 McDonald’s, ramps up its attack on Ukraine, a country with more than 70 McDonald’s, I think we can finally declare the McPeace theory officially null and void. Indeed, the future of McDonald’s in Russia, which once seemed so bright — remember the long lines in Moscow for Big Macs? — has itself grown dim. In July, the Russian consumer protection agency sued McDonald’s for supposedly violating health regulations. This same consumer protection agency also banned Georgian wine and mineral water “for sanitary reasons” before the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, and it periodically lashes out at Lithuanian cheese, Polish meat and other politically unacceptable products as well.
Perhaps we should have paid more attention to these politically motivated trade boycotts, for it turns out they were a harbinger of what was to come. If we didn’t, perhaps it was because the tale of globalization promised more than just eternal McPeace. It also offered a reassuring promise of irreversibility. For the better part of two decades, we have taken for granted the assumption that globalization is a new stage in world history, not a passing phase. Surely the binding ties of trade would last forever because they were mutually advantageous. No country that had seriously begun to play this “win-win” game would ever be able to abandon it, because the political costs of doing so would be too high. Trade wars were meant to be a thing of the past.
This week — as Russia bans all U.S., European, Canadian, Australian and Japanese agricultural products — globalization suddenly began to unravel a lot faster than anybody imagined. The Russian president knew sanctions were coming and openly declared that he didn’t care. He also knows that a trade war will hurt a wide range of his countrymen, but he didn’t mind that either. Western sanctions on Russia were deliberately designed to target a small number of people in the financial and energy sectors. Russia’s food sanctions will hit a lot of large and small companies, mostly in Europe, but they will also affect almost everyone in Russia. Right now,Russia imports at least a quarter and possibly as much as half of its food, not only Camembert from France but frozen peas from Poland. Imports have both increased consumer choice and lowered prices for ordinary Russians. Now choice will shrink and prices will rise.
In other words, a large country that contains internationally traded companies has decided it prefers a territorial war with one of its neighbors to full membership in the international economic system. A large country that contains plenty of people educated in global economics has also decided it can accept higher food prices in the name of national honor. It is not only possible to reject the “win-win” mantra of globalization in favor of different values and another sort of politics, it is happening right now. And if it can happen in Russia, it can happen elsewhere, too.
Read more from Anne Applebaum’s archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.
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By Editorial Board August 9 at 4:28 PM
WHILE MOST of the world watches Russian President Vladimir Putin as he fuels separatist forces in Ukraine and curtails imports of Western goods, his growing repression of critics and independent organizations inside Russia is less noticed. This turning of the screws is the mirror image of the Kremlin’s foreign aggression, and it is more important to sustaining Mr. Putin’s regime than any of his sparring with the West.
Last summer, we were alarmed when hundreds of civil society organizations across Russia — groups that defended migrants, the environment, human rights, voting rights and other freedoms — were confronted with inspections by the authorities under a 2012 law that requires them to register as “foreign agents” if they engage in political activities and accept foreign funds. The law defined political activity broadly and vaguely, thus subjecting almost any organization to arbitrary targeting by the authorities.
Now, Mr. Putin is going beyond harassing inspections. When the law was first passed, dozens of Russian groups refused to register and fought the idea in the courts, with mixed results. In May, parliament amended the law, giving the Justice Ministry power to brand groups as “foreign agents” without their consent. Mr. Putin signed it in June. Then the government began to act — registering about 10 groups as foreign agents against their will. The term “foreign agent” has a deep and disturbing meaning from Soviet history. It was used in Stalin’s day to stigmatize and discredit people as traitors and spies, at a time when mere contact with a foreigner could be a pretext for arrest and execution.
The new designations are a KGB-like tactic to grind the organizations into oblivion. It didn’t take long for someone to spray-paint graffiti on the walls of the building that houses Memorial, a group that does human rights work and investigates and preserves the memories of Stalin’s crimes. “Foreign agent, Love, USA,” the graffitti declared. The selection of Memorial for this indignity is especially offensive; the organization has done more than any other to catalogue for future generations how people were mendaciously denounced as spies and foreign agents in Stalin’s day. The specific Memorial section that has been labeled a foreign agent carries out human rights work of the kind that Mr. Putin and his powerful acolytes in the Russian security services have long found discomfiting.
Even performance art tends to jangle nerves in the Kremlin. Recently, the authorities issued threats against two news outlets and blocked a Web page because they featured the views of Artem Loskutov, an activist and performance artist from Novosibirsk who has called for a demonstration advocating more autonomy for resource-rich Siberia. The authorities say this amounts to “extremism” and is prohibited. While Mr. Putin is encouraging and fueling separatist fighters in Ukraine, he does not like to hear talk about Siberia becoming more independent from Moscow, even as protest theater. Mr. Putin finds certain terms very scary. Free speech is one of them.
Fifteen years ago on Aug. 9, 1999, President Boris Yeltsin stunned Russia with his televised announcement of Vladimir Putin's appointment as prime minister, as well as his characterization of the new appointee as his successor.
Whatever the motivations behind this choice, it turned out to be the right one. It was a matter of honor for the second president to show his personal loyalty and fulfill his obligations to the first president.
But most importantly, after the upheavals of the 1980s and '90s, Putin was just the kind of leader people wanted: not brilliant, but dependable, capable of finally bringing the endless chaos to a close and ensuring the return of hope for the future. Putin, whom few initially considered an appropriate fit for politics, consolidated Russian society around the idea of stability.
Stability in the 2000s didn't mean stagnation or preservation (there wasn't anything at that point to preserve); it meant action. To achieve stability, it was necessary to take a series of measures to restore the management of the country, lay a foundation for economic development and give people a sense of purpose — not through a "big project" (not really Putin's forte), but through actively building and improving their own lives.
But Putin arrived under the banner of stability at the same time that stability was coming to an end in the world at large. He came to power at an uncertain time, against a backdrop of an eroding world order. This contradiction between internal goals and external conditions gradually became more and more apparent.
The West sees Russia's president as an enemy of progress, a symbol of outdated viewpoints and old-fashioned approaches. He, meanwhile, expresses his astonishment at the policies of leading nations, which seem to be almost intentionally adding fuel to the fire of international conflicts. Faith in the possibility of a "major deal" with the West, and Russia joining the circle of leading nations, has weakened, although Putin did see it as possible when he first took office.
But after Putin's return to power in 2012, he saw the West, primarily the United States, as the main destabilizing force in the world. This wasn't due to anti-Russian sentiment in Washington or Brussels (Putin considered that obvious in any case), but to the West's thoughtless and arrogant interference in one situation after another, destroying the foundations of national governance.
Many outside observers are sure that Putin is a cunning strategist, his actions governed by a larger idea: planned expansion, restoration of an empire, strengthening the so-called "power vertical," a return to the Soviet Union, anti-liberal measures, etc.
But he actually prefers to react, not lead the way. All his most decisive actions on the world stage have been reactions, frequently disproportional to the situation, with unforeseen consequences, but still in answer to an external event. The current crisis in Ukraine is no exception.
Until his third term, Putin was emphatically non-ideological; he was pragmatic, working to increase opportunities whenever possible while preserving freedom of action.
After his return he promoted an ideology of conservatism. This was probably a necessity. The president sensed the vulnerability of his country in the ungovernable global chaos and the absence of an agenda that would support Russia's national development. That is why he strives to simply maintain the status quo and protect against new upheavals. But if the stability of the 2000s was a conscious plan, stability in the current decade is a game of retention and preservation.
The escalating external turbulence has always worried Putin because it echoes and compounds internal disorder in Russia. This year has confirmed those fears; the coup in Ukraine was a greater challenge to Putin than any previous event and led to the end of a paradigm, with as yet unforeseeable consequences.
Putin has always favored an approach that scholars of international relations call realpolitik or a realist political thinking. The interaction of different nations is an endless struggle, a battle for influence and prestige. This is the norm. Stability comes from a balance of power; one party having an unequal advantage leads to tension and conflict. All must strive for balance, but realism means understanding the limits of what is acceptable and each party measuring its strength against its wishes, so as not to cause a consolidation of other nations against it.
Fifteen years ago, when Putin appeared at the top of the power structure, his task on the international stage was clear: restore the country's former position as a significant global player and raise its status in the international hierarchy. This became a recurring theme. By the end of last year, Moscow's influence had indeed grown. Putin's realism, his ability to set appropriate goals and achieve them with cold pragmatism, had borne fruit.
The annexation of Crimea in March was a risky, but calculated, move. Without a doubt, the main motives were to ensure the presence of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea and prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. This radical move to protect Russia's strategic interests and strengthen the country's position doesn't deviate far from the realistic spirit of all Putin's political actions.
However, the March 18 speech he gave in Crimea was definitely in the nationalist/romance genre as opposed to a work of realism. Putin appealed to Russians as a divided people, emphasizing national values. Bringing ideology into politics, especially romantic nationalism, commits a leader, tying his hands.
A pragmatist can react flexibly when circumstances change. But romantic rhetoric, even when used as an instrument, can't be so quickly cast off. It plays on the emotions, which can bring about a strong element of irrationalism, which is something Putin has always tried to avoid in his foreign policy.
Putin's departure from his usual realistic approach thrust Russia into a serious international crisis. The civil war in eastern Ukraine brought Moscow back from the global level to the local. Russia is now bogged down in an internecine conflict in a neighboring country with unclear goals and questionable methods. Most importantly, the end result of the internal conflict will not impact global politics on a large scale or the current global balance of power.
What we can take from this situation is that Russia is undergoing a crisis of purpose. The Soviet identity is definitively gone, and nothing convincing has emerged to replace it. No large-scale national development project, demand for which comes from the populace, has been proposed.
And the fight for Ukraine, which began as a geopolitical squabble, has turned into a moment of decision about Russia's future path. Putin has been successful in achieving the goals set 15 years ago. But today the time has come to achieve new goals, ones that have yet to be defined.
Fyodor Lukyanov is editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs.
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Smoke rises after airstrikes by the U.S. forces targeting Islamic State militants near the Khazer checkpoint outside the city of Irbil in northern Iraq, on Aug. 8, 2014.(Photo: Khalid Mohammed, AP)
WASHINGTON — Navy jets and drones pounded ISIS rebels Saturday in a series of four airstrikes, according to U. S. Central command.
The first attack occurred around 11:20 a.m. ET. Surveillance aircraft observed an armored personnel carrier firing at civilian targets. It was destroyed as were several other vehicles about 20 minutes later in two additional strikes.
A fourth airstrike occurred at 3 p.m. ET, destroying an armored vehicle, according to Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East.
In a statement Saturday, U.S. Central Command said the attacks were "to defend Yazidi civilians being indiscriminately attacked" by militants.
ANALYSIS: Limited U.S. airstrikes may not work
While the Islamic State's heavy weapons and armor have made it a potent fighting force against Iraq's military, they also make the militants vulnerable to newly authorized American airstrikes.
Unlike insurgents who use hit-and-run tactics, the Islamic State is operating more as a conventional army, often moving through open terrain where they can be easily struck from the air.
"It inherently gives you a more visible footprint," said Jeff White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. White cautioned, however, that the militants do not have the organization and hierarchy of a regular military unit with a clear-cut structure.
The United States has been flying up to 50 surveillance and reconnaissance missions a day over Iraq in recent weeks, providing the American military with a clear picture of the enemy.
Brett McGurk, a State Department official, said recently the Islamic State functions more as a "full-blown army" than a typical terrorist organization. The militants are operating in large groups, with tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons, much of it U.S. equipment captured from Iraq's army.
By contrast, the al-Qaeda-linked insurgents the United States fought in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 were equipped only with light arms and operated in small groups.
In Afghanistan, American forces have faced an enemy that operates in small groups without heavy equipment, allowing them to easily hide in the mountains.
Kurds and Yazidi take part in a protest rally in Frankfurt, Germany, on Aug. 9, 2014.(Photo: Boris Roessler, European Pressphoto Agency)
Since President Obama authorized the strikes Thursday, U.S. aircraft have hit convoys, mortars and artillery manned by militants.
On Saturday, Obama said there was no timeline for ending the strikes.
"So far, these strikes have successfully destroyed arms and equipment that ISIL terrorists could have used against Irbil," Obama said, referring to the militant group by its acronym.
Obama said he authorized the airstrikes in order to protect Americans and support a humanitarian mission to assist Yazidis, a religious minority that fled their homes and were trapped in the mountains.
Islamic State militants had driven the Yazidis from their homes in Ninjar and were beginning to threaten Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region and home to a U.S. Consulate and a joint U.S.-Iraqi military operations center.
The Kurdish militia, called the peshmerga, is a well-disciplined force, but prior to the airstrikes they were struggling to defend towns and villages along the border of the Kurdish region.
They faced a formidable enemy in the Islamic State, which captured tanks, armored vehicles and other weapons and equipment, much of it supplied by the United States, when they attacked Mosul in June. Four Iraqi divisions collapsed at the time, leaving much of their equipment and arms behind.
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Doug Stanglin and Katharine Lackey, USA TODAY 8:57 a.m. EDT August 10, 2014
A woman cries while holding her newborn baby as she sits inside a bomb shelter in a maternity hospital during shelling in Donetsk on Sunday.(Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff, AFP/Getty Images)
As fighting raged Sunday in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, a Ukrainian military spokesman denied separatists' calls for a cease-fire, saying a truce would only be possible if they surrender.
"If there is this initiative, it should be carried out by practical means and not by words — by raising white flags and by putting down guns," military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said while speaking to journalists Sunday, according to Reuters. "We have not seen these practical steps yet."
In a statement released after Lysenko spoke, rebels said they still wanted a temporary cease-fire on humanitarian grounds, but remained defiant, adding, "As long as the Ukrainian army is continuing military action there can be no cease-fire," according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, conditions were deteriorating in Donetsk as Russian-backed rebels and the Ukrainian military exchanged fire Sunday. At least one person was killed and 10 wounded in shelling, while more than 10 residential buildings, a hospital and a shop were heavily damaged overnight.
"This is a real war! It's impossible to live in this city, I've been sleeping in the basement for the past week," said Inna Drobyshevskaya, a 48-year-old lawyer in Donetsk.
"We don't want Novorossiya (New Russia) for this price," she added, referring to a term used by rebels to describe the parts of eastern Ukraine seeking independence from the government in Kiev.
The developments come after a top separatist leader admitted that Ukrainian forces had surrounded Donetsk and called for a cease-fire Saturday.
"We are ready for a cease-fire in order to avert the humanitarian catastrophe growing," Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-styled Donetsk People's Republic, said in a statement posted on a rebel website, according to the Associated Press and AFP news agency.
Igor Girkin, a top commander of the pro-Russia militants, also acknowledged Saturday that Donetsk was surrounded and conceded that Ukrainian troops had gotten the upper hand in eastern Ukraine after four months of fighting.
The appeal by Zakharchenko comes as Russia is pressing to send a humanitarian convoy into Ukraine to parts of the besieged eastern regions, an offer that the Ukrainian government has labeled a ploy to cover a military invasion.
Although Western countries says Moscow has assembled about 20,000 troops just across the border, Russia has denied it.
Zakharchenko — who took over as prime minister of the DPR last week — warned that rebels were determined the defend Donetsk if Ukrainian forces tried to capture the city of 1 million people. At least 300,000 of Donetsk's residents have fled.
"The fight will be for every street, for every house, for every meter of our land," Zakharchenko said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday and called for "urgent measures for preventing an impending humanitarian catastrophe" in eastern Ukraine, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It added that Kerry "confirmed such work is being carried out with the Kiev authorities."
Contributing: The Associated Press
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