Tag: Putin

  • The Resurgence of ‘Strongmen’ Like Trump Threatens Our Liberal World Order

      • Thomas Weber Author and Professor at the University of Aberdeen

        berggruen

        Hitler-centered historical comparisons with the new “strongmen” of the world are dangerous. They are perilous not so much because they tend to miss their target by a wide margin, but rather because they act as a smokescreen. They obscure the very worrying parallels between the great crisis of liberalism of the post-1873 world that lasted at least for three generations and the current crisis of liberalism. It is these parallels that should be the source of grave concern for the future of a liberal world order, as it was the post-1873 crisis of liberalism that was the root cause for the darkest chapters of the history of the last century.

        Neither any of the new or aspiring strongmen and women — be they Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen — are reincarnated Hitlers. Yet the fact that we do not have to fear the emergence of a new Auschwitz or Hitler-style world war should be no cause for complacency. The conditions in Europe after 1873 that gave rise to Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin look eerily similar to the conditions that have brought the strongmen of today to the fore.

        Prior to 1873, liberalism and old-style conservatism had competed for dominance all over Europe and the Western world. Yet for all their differences, the interaction of liberals and conservatives had been of a dialectic nature. Despite all the noise that their struggle had produced, all European countries had moved slowly, often painstakingly so, towards a more liberal order. Furthermore, there had been awareness both within states and between states that polities as well as the international system could only be governed if all players accepted the rules of the game. The pre-1873 world had been full of flaws, to be sure. Yet in comparison to the more than a century that followed, it had been a world that had worked.

        The conditions in Europe after 1873 that gave rise to Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin look eerily similar to the conditions that have brought the ‘strongmen’ of today to the fore.

        The crash of the Vienna stock market of 1873 heralded a new age, in which the losers, imagined and real, of the ensuing great depression and of industrialization abandoned the promises of liberal democracy and of conservatism alike. They flocked to left-wing and right-wing protest movements instead. By the end of the First World War, the struggle between liberalism, the old order and the new protest movements had metamorphosed to devastating effects into a three-way world war of ideologies between liberal democracy and right-wing and left-wing collectivism.

        In recent years, just as a century ago, it has been the losers, imagined and real, of liberalism — in our case marked by globalization, the move towards a new economy and a liberal world order based around ideas of free trade and pooled sovereignty — that has given rise to right-wing and left-wing populism.

        It is these forces that have fueled the rise of new and aspiring strongmen and women in the Americas, Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. Their rise does not imply that the kind of wars and kind of polities that the world experienced between 1914 and 1945 are awaiting us in front of our doorsteps. Unlike a century ago, we do not live in an age of disintegrating empires and social Darwinism. Nor are we experiencing the transformation of the fundamental organizing principles of the states in which we live akin to the transformation of multi-ethnic dynastic empires into nation states that the world witnessed between the early 19th and mid-20th century.

        Yet if we peel away the differences between the world of a century ago and of today from their similarities and focus on fitting historical analogies, the emergence of a new world order comes into sight that, while different from the world of Hitler and Stalin, should worry us all. If we do not manage to stem the flow of the new populism and the rise of new strongmen in today’s age of globalization, we are likely to witness a breakdown of the liberal world order that has at least five elements.

        The emergence of a new world order, while different from the world of Hitler and Stalin, should worry us all.

        Domestically, we will witness the electoral erosion of liberal democracy, as we did in the age of revolutions preceding and following the First World War. This has already happened in several countries in Eastern, Central and Southern Europe. Yet alarming signs abound even in stable, affluent countries such as Germany. For instance, 42.6 percent of voters in the state of Saxony-Anhalt recently cast their votes for right-wing and left-wing populist or radical parties. Anybody who has ever dared publicly to criticize Putin, Erdogan or Hugo Chavez when he was still alive will need no further elaboration about the grave consequences of the rise of illiberal democracy or outright authoritarianism for the fate of liberty and our ability to determine our own lives.

        Second, despite the many ills of a liberal economic order, no alternative economic order has produced comparable levels of wealth (and social welfare). A pursuit of illiberal and isolationist economic policies driven by a belief in autarky, rather than of reformed liberal policies, by the new strongmen would likely result in economic collapse, as it did in the past. The ensuing result would be a fanning of further political radicalization, hence triggering a vicious and self-reinforcing cycle of political, social and economic disintegration. It is thus very troubling indeed to see African news outlets making the case for autarky, sometimes even invoking the example of how Hitler’s turn to autarky reduced levels of unemployment in Germany.

        Third, just as then, we are now experiencing an alarming rise of xenophobia and racism in all countries that have experienced the rise of new strongmen. It is a hallmark of the strongmen of both the past and the present to blame the problems members of their core constituency experience on people not belonging to their own tribe. We do not need images of Auschwitz to foresee that a further rise in populism will thus have dire consequences.

        Trump speaks during a rally at JetSmart Aviation Services on April 10 in Rochester, N.Y. (AP/Mike Groll)

        Fourth, the rise of aspiring strongmen and of populist movements in Europe makes it well nigh impossible to strengthen common institutions and to coordinate policies at a time at which most of Europe’s periphery stands in flames and in which half of Europe is in dire straits itself. Due to ill-designed institutions, Europe had already been in crisis and in urgent need of fundamental reform prior to the rise of the new populism.

        Yet just as in the pre-1873 world, there had been, despite all the European Union’s problems, a rough agreement about the rules of the games and the common purpose of the EU. With the emergence of illiberal democracy in the Visegrad states, the rise of economic radicalism in parts of Southern Europe, the flourishing of isolationist nationalism in Western and Northern Europe, a revival of a belief in autarky in parts of Europe, the resurgence of parochialism on the British Isles and federalists in defensive rather than in innovative reformist mode, there is no longer any agreement over the rules of the game, let alone about the future of Europe.

        Fifth, and most worrying of all, the rise of populism and of new strongmen fatally undermines functioning global governance. Putin, Erdogan and Trump share a contempt for international organizations, formalized rules and formalized systems of collective security. Their rejection of common liberal institutions and formalized rules would not be quite as grave if they at least shared common informal rules.

        We should fear the return of the world of Barbary piracy after the decline of the Ottoman Empire or of Europe after the fall of Rome.

        Yet the contempt displayed by the new strongmen of a G20-style system of global governance rivals that to their rejection of the UN and NATO. Putin, Erdogan and many others have been driven by short-termism in their pursuit of political goals. They have engineered conflicts that bring them short-term political advantages that they have been unable to consolidate and control. In doing so, they have opened Pandora’s box. Furthermore, they have been unwilling to use a formal or informal system of global governance to contain the forces flowing from Pandora’s box.

        The EU, meanwhile, has been in a state of near foreign and security policy paralysis, while the U.S. has allowed red lines to be drawn and crossed without consequences. The result of all this has been a mushrooming of ungoverned spaces — in other words a Somalification of parts of the world. It is thus not a renaissance of Hitler’s world order that we have to fear. Rather it is a return of the world of Barbary piracy in the wake of the decline of the Ottoman Empire or of Europe after the fall of Rome.

        Whether or not the rise of populism and the emergence of new strongmen will succeed in destroying our liberal world order will depend on all of us. It will depend on our ability to reform liberalism and to innovate our systems of domestic and global governance rather than to limit ourselves to pouring contempt over the supporters of populist movements. By timidly defending the status quo, we will be fighting a losing battle, not least since many criticisms of the liberal world order by left-wing and right-wing populists are well on target, even if their proposed alternative remedies are a recipe for disaster.

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        Donald Trump Protest
  • A THREAT FAR BIGGER THAN PUTIN

    A THREAT FAR BIGGER THAN PUTIN

    From: Seyma Arsel [scarsel@ttmail.com]
    Sent: Monday, March 14, 2016 5:07 AM

    bunu yazan kıskanç biri galiba, hiç çekemiyor asrın yöneticisini !!

    =========================================

    A THREAT FAR BIGGER THAN PUTIN
    Peter Hitchens
    Daily Mail

    The noisy promoters of a ‘New Cold War’ rage and shriek at the wrongdoings of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, even though Russia has no designs on us and poses less of a threat to this country’s freedom and autonomy than Jean-Claude Juncker or Angela Merkel.

    How odd that these people seldom if ever say anything about Turkey’s swollen and increasingly dangerous despot, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    President Erdogan, who rules his spectacularly corrupt country from a gigantic new palace, kills his own people by thuggishly suppressing peaceful demonstrations. He hates criticism. His political opponents are arrested at dawn and tried on absurd charges.

    President Erdogan, pictured, who rules Turkey from a gigantic new palace, kills his own people by thuggishly suppressing peaceful demonstrations

    He throws journalists into prison and seizes control of newspapers that attack him. He has been one of the keenest promoters of the disastrous Syrian war, which has turned millions into refugees and hundreds of thousands into corpses.

    He is an intolerant religious fanatic, and curiously unwilling to deploy his large armed forces against Islamic State. And now he seeks to blackmail Western Europe into allowing his country into the EU and dropping visa restrictions on Turks, not to mention demanding trainloads of money.

    If we do not give him these things, then he will continue to do little or nothing about the multitudes of migrants who use Turkey as a bridge into the prosperous West.

    And yet for years he has been falsely described as a ‘moderate’ by Western media flatterers, and his country has been allowed to remain in Nato, supposedly an alliance of free democracies.

    He is a direct threat to us. Yet the anti-Putin chorus never mention him. Is it because they cannot pronounce his name?

    Or is it because they have a silly phobia about Russia, left over from the real Cold War, and aren’t paying attention to what’s really going on?

    =====================

    Peter Hitchens

    Peter Hitchens

    Author

    Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is an English journalist and author. He has published six books, including The Abolition of Britain, The Rage Against God and The War We Never Fought. He is a frequent… wikipedia.org

    • October 28, 1951 (age 64), Sliema, Malta
    • British
    • Eve Ross (m. 1983-present)
    • Yvonne Jean, Eric Ernest Hitchens
  • Putin: Turkey Will Regret Downing Plane

    Putin: Turkey Will Regret Downing Plane

    Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday vowed Turkey’s leadership would be made to regret the downing of one of Moscow’s warplanes as the top diplomats from both countries held their first high-level meeting since the incident.

    Moscow announced a halt to talks on a major gas pipeline with NATO member Ankara as Putin fired another salvo in their war of words, while Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan shot back by claiming he had “proof” Russia was involved in illegal oil trading with the Islamic State group.

    Turkey has become Moscow’s prime international sparring partner after it shot down a Russian jet on its border with Syria on November 24 — sparking fury and economic sanctions from the Kremlin.

    Erdogan’s claims of Russian complicity with IS mirror allegations made by Moscow against Turkey and its leader in recent days.

    “We will not forget this complicity with terrorists. We always considered and will always consider treachery to be the ultimate and lowest act. Let those in Turkey who shot our pilots in the back know this,” Putin told lawmakers in his annual state of the nation speech, which also focused on Russia’s air strikes in Syria.

    Russia has accused Erdogan and his family of personally profiting from the oil trade with IS, which controls a large chunk of Syrian territory including many oil fields.

    “We know for example who in Turkey fills their pockets and allows terrorists to make money from the stolen oil in Syria,” Putin said.

    “It is precisely with this money that the bandits recruit mercenaries, buy arms and organise inhuman terrorist acts aimed against our citizens, the citizens of France, Lebanon, Mali and other countries.”

    Erdogan has furiously denied the accusations against him and his family and said Turkey had proof that Russia was, in fact, involved in trading oil with IS.

    “We have the proof in our hands. We will reveal it to the world,” the Turkish leader said in a televised speech in Ankara.

    Putin, whose administration has already announced sanctions against Ankara including a ban on the import of some Turkish foods, and reintroduced visas for visitors from the country, insisted Turkey would be made to regret its actions.

    “We will not rattle our sabres. But if someone thinks that after committing heinous war crimes, the murder of our people, it will end with (an embargo on) tomatoes and limitations in construction and other fields then they are deeply mistaken,” Putin said.”We will not stop reminding them of what they did and they will not stop regretting their actions.”

    Immediately after the speech Russia’s energy minister Alexander Novak announced the suspension of talks between Ankara and Moscow over the major TurkStream pipeline project.

    Negotiations over the project to pipe Russian gas to Turkey under the Black Sea have been floundering since Moscow launched air strikes in Syria in late September in support of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which Ankara fiercely opposes.

    But the official announcement of the break-off in the talks dealt another blow to floundering Russian-Turkish ties, as Putin lamented the damage to a relationship that he has spent years nurturing.

    “Only Allah, most likely, knows why they did this. And evidently Allah decided to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by depriving them of their intelligence and reason,” he said.

    The latest furious exchange comes as the two countries’ top diplomats met for the first face-to-face meeting between the two sides since the plane incident.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed to talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of a conference in Belgrade after Putin on Monday snubbed Erdogan at the UN climate summit in Paris.

    There appears, however, little chance that the two sides will lower the tone as the two strongmen insist the other should apologise over the incident.

    Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday accused Moscow of running a “Soviet propaganda machine”.

    “There was a Soviet propaganda machine in the Cold War era,” Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara.

    “They were called Pravda lies,” he said, referring to the daily newspaper that was the mouthpiece of the Communist Party.

    © AFP 2015

  • President Putin: By Shooting Down Our Fighter Jet Turkey Practically Declared War on Russia, Turkish Dictator Erdoğan Is an Accomplice in ISIS Crimes

    President Putin: By Shooting Down Our Fighter Jet Turkey Practically Declared War on Russia, Turkish Dictator Erdoğan Is an Accomplice in ISIS Crimes

    According to Moscow Times, the Russian President Vladimir Putin held an emergency cabinet meeting in Kremlin to evaluate the implications of the downing of a Russian Su-24 fighter jet near the Syrian-Turkish border area.

    “…Today they practically declared war on us by shooting down our fighter jet. Our patience wears thin with Erdoğan and his criminal clique who is accomplice in all atrocities committed by ISIS terrorist. To avoid a bitter war which nobody craves, for several times, I told Americans to muzzle their rabid dog in Turkey,” Russian News Agency TASS cited the Russian President as saying.

    “I was informed that Turks have shot down a Russian aircraft on the border with Syria and reportedly the navigator has been killed; my deepest condolences to his family and the Great Russian nation,” said Mr. Putin vowing that the ‘revenge’ is what the Turkish dictator will receive in return.

    We are indeed on the verge of an all-out war with the godfather of all terrorists in one of the extremely volatile areas in the world, added Mr. Putin, we worked diligently to solve the Syrian crisis through diplomatic means, but much to the international community’s chagrin, the Turkish AK Parti-led regime under Erdoğan seeks to ignite the fires of war.

    Russia’s defence ministry, in a series of tweets, confirmed a Russian Su-24 had been shot down, but insisted the plane had never left Syrian airspace and claimed that fire from the ground was responsible. “At all times, the Su-24 was exclusively over the territory of Syria,” the defence ministry said.

    “The Su-24 was at 6,000 metres and preliminary information suggests it was brought down by fire from the ground. The circumstances are being investigated.”

    Tensions between Turkey and Russia have risen over Moscow’s bombing campaign against Islamist rebels close to the Turkish border. Turkey has repeatedly expressed concern over the attacks on the Islamic State positions.

    AWD News

  • Putin: Turkey is governed by a demagogue dictator who supports terrorists

    Speaking on the sidelines of the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, the Russian president Vladimir Putin accused the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of supporting foreign Islamist rebel fighters in Syria and providing them with medical care and turning turkey to an international hub for global terrorism.

    “The Turkish regime became a serious threat to international security and is jeopardizing the regional stability; hence the Russian Federation won’t hesitate to ignore this grave menace and will do the necessary steps to prevent Erdoğan from committing a suicide adventure in the Middle-East,” state news agency Itar-Tass cited Putin as saying on Friday in Russian resort town of Sochi.

    The Russian strongman mentioned the ISIS vicious phenomenon, adding that beneath the Saudi-backed terrorist group’s barbaric and brutal façade lies the Turkish and Qatari intelligence agencies that ignited a sectarian war in Iraq and neighboring Syria, claiming tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

    Previously having blamed Ankara for deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Syrian Kurdish besieged border-town of Kobani, Putin further criticized the Turkish deceitful Prime Minster, Ahmet Davutoğlu, who recently stated that Ankara would take part in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS in only if it ultimately leads to Syrian government’s overthrow.

    “If Mr. Erdoğan intends to intervene in Syria only and only to unseat the Syrian president, Moscow will certainly increase the pace of sending missiles and weaponry consignments to its Arab ally,” warned Putin in a stentorian language reminiscent to the Cold War rhetoric.

    Meanwhile the Chairman of the Russian State Duma, Sergey Naryshkin blasted Turkey for plotting to replace the Syrian government with a puppet regime since early 2011 and trying to intervene under the pretext of creating a buffer-zone inside the Syrian territory, describing Erdoğan’s latest move to obtain Turkish parliament’s authorization for a possible military action against Damascus as ‘a pathetic charade’.

    I regret to see that Turkey’s Prime Minister’s famous doctrine of “zero problems with neighbors” is turned to be “zero friends policy” in the Middle-East, added Naryshkin.

    via AWDNews – Putin: Turkey is governed by a demagogue dictator who supports terrorists.

  • Russia and Turkey: Cool pragmatism | The Economist

    Russia and Turkey: Cool pragmatism | The Economist

    “ASSAD is a butcher, Putin a devil, Erdogan a saint,” rasps Mohammed Mustafa, a bony Muslim cleric, who endured 13 years of torture in a Syrian jail. He is among the 20,000-plus Syrian refugees sheltering at a camp near the town of Ceylanpinar on the Turkish-Syrian border. “If Russia withdraws its support, Assad will fall in minutes,” claims Ibrahim Jabbali, a Free Syrian Army rebel.

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    The exchange took place as Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, arrived in Istanbul on December 3rd for talks with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister (pictured above). Russia is wary of Syria’s Islamists and their pull over its own restive Muslims. It is bent on blocking America and its friends from gaining further ground in the region. It continues to back Syria’s embattled president, Bashar Assad, with cash and weapons.

    The Russians have repeatedly blocked more sanctions against Syria in the UN Security Council and are firmly against any international intervention. Turkey is at the forefront of a campaign to overthrow Mr Assad. It has opened its doors to thousands of refugees (135,519 at the last count), and granted haven and the free flow of arms to rebels. Turkey has also been lobbying for the establishment of a buffer zone and humanitarian corridors.

    When Syria downed a Turkish fighter jet over the Mediterranean in June some claimed that it had done so with Russian help. Tension increased on October 10th when Turkey intercepted a Syria-bound passenger jet which it said contained Russian-made radar equipment. Russia denied this and claimed that 17 Russians on board had been manhandled by the Turkish authorities. Mr Putin then postponed a planned trip to Turkey.

    Yet in the end Mr Putin did come, and even signed 11 different agreements with the Turks. “The level of economic and political relations is such that neither Turkey can forgo Russia, nor Russia Turkey…the future of Assad is nothing,” argued Mehmet Ali Birand, a veteran commentator.

    That is an exaggeration, but Russia has become Turkey’s top trading partner. This is mainly in Russia’s favour: the bulk of the transactions are made up of Russian natural-gas sales to Turkey. Next year Russia will start building Turkey’s first nuclear- power plant near the Mediterranean port of Mersin. Turkey has also agreed to let Russia build a second pipeline via the Black Sea to Europe. Russia is the biggest market for Turkish contractors; Turkey is the top destination for Russian tourists. The two countries boast that two-way trade will triple to some $100 billion in the coming years.

    On the political front decades of cold- war hostility have given way to a cool pragmatism. Turkey remained pointedly neutral during Russia’s 2008 war against Georgia and has worked hard with the Russians to resolve conflicts in the Balkans.

    Meanwhile, Russia seems to have overcome its twitchiness over the deployment of NATO-manned defensive missiles along Turkey’s border with Syria. It says it “understood” Turkey’s security concerns. (Reports that Mr Assad has been shuttling around his chemical weapons have set off alarm bells in Ankara.) And Mr Putin’s assertion in Istanbul that Turkey and Russia “share the same goals in Syria” but “differ on how to get there” is being touted by Turkey as an encouraging sign that the Russians are slowly coming around.

    Turkey’s secular opposition CHP party disagrees. “Turkey did not convince Russia nor the other way round,” insists Faruk Logoglu, a CHP deputy and former ambassador to Washington. Russia wants “a phased transition”, which calls for dialogue between the opposition and Mr Assad. Turkey and the opposition rule out any scenario that would allow Mr Assad to remain in place. In truth Russia has not got the clout to get Mr Assad to leave; nor has Turkey to rein in the rebels. The result, concludes Mr Logoglu, is that “the Syrian people continue to die”.

    It is not just the Russians who dislike Turkey’s Syrian policy. Even Mr Erdogan’s pious base is airing doubts. In Ceylanpinar Ismail Arslan, the mayor, complains that clashes between the rebels and Mr Assad’s soldiers have turned his town “into a hell.” Like many he believes that had Turkey not sided with the rebels, the war would have been kept away. Tell that to the thousands of Syrians who continue to flock to Turkey. Jamila, a recent arrival, points to her baby. “If it were not for Turkey,” she murmurs, “we would all be dead”.

    via Russia and Turkey: Cool pragmatism | The Economist.