Putin is bluffing that Russia has emerged as a major world power. In reality, Russia is merely a regional power, but mainly because its periphery is in shambles. He has tried to project a strength that that he doesn't have, and he has done it well. For him, Syria poses a problem because the United States is about to call his bluff, and he is not holding strong cards.
Friedman goes back into recent history – the 1990’s, through Kosovo, the Ukraine, and Georgia, to trace the lack of Russia’s rise to Soviet power. Russia is “a humbled global power” that nevertheless still wants to consider itself to be a player on the world scene. “The Soviet Union had collapsed, the Russian Federation was in ruins and it was not taken seriously by the United States -- or anywhere else for that matter. The Russians recall this period with bitterness.”
Non-governmental Christian groups – missionaries, in fact – have been having an impact:
The United States [not necessarily the government of the US] has supported, financially and otherwise, the proliferation of human rights groups in the former Soviet Union. When many former Soviet countries experienced revolutions in the 1990s that created governments that were somewhat more democratic but certainly more pro-Western and pro-American, Russia saw the West closing in. The turning point came in Ukraine, where the Orange Revolution generated what seemed to Putin a pro-Western government in 2004. Ukraine was the one country that, if it joined NATO, would make Russia indefensible and would control many of its pipelines to Europe.
In Putin's view, the non-governmental organizations helped engineer this, and he claimed that U.S. and British intelligence services funded those organizations. To Putin, the actions in Ukraine indicated that the United States in particular was committed to extending the collapse of the Soviet Union to a collapse of the Russian Federation.
That has led to a sequence of back-and-forth maneuvering which has culminated in the supposed standoff between Putin and Obama over Syria in recent days.
According to Frieden’s analysis, Obama is not going to give a single whiff about what Putin thinks.
Obama was furious with Russia's involvement in the Snowden case and canceled a summit with Putin. But now that the United States is considering a strike on the Syrian regime following its suspected use of chemical weapons, Washington may be in a position to deal a setback to a Russia client state, and by extension, Moscow itself….
Putin made [Syria] a core issue for him. I don't think he expected the Europeans to take the position that al Assad had used chemical weapons. He thought he had more pull than that. He didn't. The Europeans may not fly missions but they are not in a position to morally condemn those who do. That means that Putin's bluff is in danger.
History will not turn on this event, and Putin's future, let alone Russia's, does not depend on his ability to protect Russia's Syrian ally. Syria just isn't that important. There are many reasons that the United States might not wish to engage in Syria.
Russia just doesn’t figure into the Obama administration’s calculations about Syria. Whether Obama is going to make a wise decision is still in question, but I took several things away from this article:
1. The United States is still the United States. That is, the US is still a world-influencing military power. The fact that a weak and immoral president like Obama is currently in charge may make some difference in the eyes of the world, but not much in reality.
2. The Middle East is less important now than it has been at any time since before WWII. Other sources of oil are being developed, and it’s less important now to prevent radical Islamists from killing each other. It’s a concern that innocent people are caught in the crossfire, and that’s probably going to be a leading reason if Obama intervenes.
3. Christians in the land of “We the people” still have an obligation to articulate policies based on Biblical thought. Whether or not Christians can generate enough support to elect a president who understands Christian values, Christians need to continue working as Christians in the world. Currently we have as president someone who is articulating “American values” that are completely at odds with “Christian values”, and yet, Christianity has the ability to influence how the world is operating.
It’s a strange and different world today, from what we’ve experienced. What we’re seeing, I think, is a re-do of the way that early Christianity (of the first three centuries) affected the Roman world of its day. Christianity functioned in the world, but not of it – they affected that world, and in some ways, shaped it, and eventually made an important enough difference that it converted the government (which, though helpful at the time, ended up having an unintended set of consequences).
We don’t know what the future will hold. But we are tasked with being Christians in the world.
I realize the world in 2013 is a different place in many respects from 1913.
ReplyDeleteBut I still think that governments will take their nations to war over "honor." I think that certain circles of decision-makers (and strategists) have concentrated all their thought around calculations of energy expenditure--and neglected the sphere of moral power.
Courage is primarily indexed to the will, not to confidence in superior equipment, logistics, and training. The will to battle must be actuated by visions of one or more of the following: glory, plunder, revenge, or justice. Only the last has any real index to moral authority.
The USA govt. has squandered most of its moral capital. Whether or not the above organization has considered the moral-calculus in its scales (a touchy business even in the most clear-cut circumstances), Putin's call is an "old-school" move, that strange as it may sound, puts him in the stronger (albeit underdog) position morally.
Who would have thought--within the lifetimes of many of us who grew up in the era of the cold-war--that the USA would be known worldwide as the belligerent exporters of war (do what we say, or else!); that the principal organs of information dissemination in the USA would be homogeneous mouthpieces masquerading as independent news media, dutifully reporting the party line; and that a new Russian czar, a former KGB head, would hold (even if a molehill) the moral high ground?
Putin, the defender of Christians? Against USA-backed Islamic/AlQuaeda fanatics? It's all P.R.; I can appreciate that. It was P.R. when the good-ole-USA was doing it. It's still incredible.
There are many sound geopolitical, economic, social, practical, and generally moral reasons (natural) to view every Middle-Eastern conflict as "not germane to the vital interests of the citizens or government of the USA." Christians have more, beside their primary concern for their true brethren-aliens all around the world.
Prv.26:17 "He that passeth by, and vexeth himself with strife belonging not to him, Is like one that taketh a dog by the ears."
Hi Bruce, I saw your note at a time when I didn't have time to reply. You are right about "the will to battle" and that the US government is known as "a belligerant exporter of war" and that it has squandered most of its moral capital. I think George W. Bush is partly accountable for this, having launched an all-out ground war vs a country (Iraq) that was, to be sure, itself a rogue state, but one that was not in a position to move outward from its own borders at the time.
Delete"The United States" is more than just its government, and more than just the moral corruption of its people and its laws. Those things weigh heavily right now, but the "United States" encompasses its history, its constitution, its ideals, and the positive influence it has had on the world over the last few centuries.
The article does not say "Putin, the defender of Christians". Yes, he was able to appear as if he had some perceived "moral high ground" (in the eyes of some), but there is also a lot to be said for the requirement to enforce one's own word in case of the use of (say,) chemical weapons (as in the case of Obama).
But in fact, Putin was annoyed with the Christian groups as having influenced the creation of a "pro-Western government in 2004" in Ukraine, and accused them of having been funded by various spy agencies.
And you are right -- Christians do need to have a primary concern for "their true brethren - aliens all around the world".