{"id":6470,"date":"2013-09-12T11:06:19","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T18:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6470"},"modified":"2013-09-12T11:06:19","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T18:06:19","slug":"putin-saruman-come-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/putin-saruman-come-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin — Saruman Come Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire woke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 J. R. R. Tolkien,\u00a0<\/em>The Two Towers.<\/em><\/p>\n

If it were regrettable that Vladimir Putin\u2019s formidable diplomatic skills were wasted squashing rather \"\"than ensuring freedom inside Russia, it seems even more lamentable that his impressive prose likewise is not put to better use. Putin\u2019s\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to us, the American people, is brilliant sophistry. The best rhetoric is always that which blends truth with half-truth and occasional fiction. In Putin\u2019s case, he did all that\u2014while offering the dessert of channeling Obama back to Obama.<\/p>\n

Of course, as Putin reminds us, we fought together in WWII and should agree that such cooperation should be emulated. Russia suffered enormous losses for the Allied cause. Without such heroic sacrifices, the Anglo-American alliance may well have lost the war.<\/p>\n

Yet Putin forgets to remind us that Russia\u2019s war with Germany was prompted by betrayal. Russia was a de facto ally of Hitler. It kept sending him enormous amounts of material to help defeat France and attack Britain. Only Hitler\u2019s 1941 double-cross caused the Soviets to make war with Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n

We all, like Putin, wish the Security Council veto really had ensured the stability of international relations for decades. In fact, authoritarian regimes, like Putin\u2019s Russia and Communist China, have consistently thwarted efforts to address human-rights violations\u2014unless the charges are mostly false and mostly lodged against democratic Israel.<\/p>\n

It is odd that Putin laments the demise of the League of Nations, given that the League\u2014which the U.S. never joined\u2014expelled Russia in 1939 for unilaterally attacking Finland. Putin points out that the U.N. might suffer the same fate \u201cif influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.\u201d I suppose that might include the 2008 Russian use of force over Ossetia.<\/p>\n

Many of us share Putin\u2019s concern about bombing Syria\u2014yet from a slightly different perspective that such preemption, as it is envisioned and to the extent that it is even seriously envisioned, will not only not advance humanitarian solutions, but will harm present U.S. interests.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s fatherly lament evokes surprise when he says that any planned American unilateral action might \u201cundermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem.\u201d When has Putin ever considered theocratic Iran\u2019s efforts to acquire a bomb much of a \u201cnuclear problem\u201d\u2014given that Russia routinely sells the regime weapons and technology useful for proliferation, and provides it with political cover?<\/p>\n

Putin is certainly right to point out of Syria that \u201cthis internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.\u201d The misery, of course, is also due in large part to Putin himself, who insists on fueling the crisis by upping arms shipments to the Assad regime, many of which are used against third-party civilians. If Putin is right (and many of us think that he is) that the opposition to Assad is characterized by the inclusion of unsavory Islamists, he also must know that the Assad family regime is\u00a0itself\u00a0a criminal enterprise with a long history of bloodshed, from mass murder at Hama to assassinations in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Putin sounds so reassuring when he reminds us:<\/p>\n

We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today\u2019s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yet the smashing of Grozny or Russian violence in Georgia, even in such complex situations where Russians had understandable grievances and worries, seems to suggest that Russia acts in its perceived national interest to preserve its version of \u201claw and order\u201d\u2014and without much worry about what the U.N. happens to think.<\/p>\n

Still, what might have nonetheless been a brilliant rhetorical trope was mostly ruined with, \u201cNo one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack\u2014this time against Israel\u2014cannot be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, there is not every reason to believe that gas was used by opposition forces. There is real confusion about who used the gas. According to the U.N., which Putin now appeals to for ultimate adjudication of international differences, the Syrian government is the more likely suspect. Putin is rightly worried about a gas attack against Israel. If it were to come, however, there is a good chance that the incoming missiles would have been sold, supplied, or manufactured by Russia, and launched by a Russian client or friend, and mostly in desperate aggressive fashion, without Israeli provocation.<\/p>\n

Putin, like lots of Americans, questions both the efficacy and the morality of our frequent interventions abroad. He is right to remind us that they sometimes may not be in our own interests. But most often when they stall, they do so out of misguided idealism. For example, Russia never much worried about constitutional order in Afghanistan. Both nations may have proved incompetent in their respective nation-building there, but our ultimate aims were not the same as Russia\u2019s. Putin\u2019s U.N. never joined the Russian \u201cnation-building\u201d effort there as it did the American.<\/p>\n

Just when Putin returns to the mesmerizing propaganda, and seems to be again scoring points, he jolts readers back to reality with the following: \u201cThe world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, yes, but most often the violators are simultaneously proliferators, searching to enhance their outlawry, not to react to the lawlessness of others. A few of them are either de facto friends of Russia or former clients. Here one thinks of North Korea and Iran in particular, whose success in getting or almost getting a bomb, and promoting terrorism has not always earned Russian condemnation or a severance of relations. Oddly, in the long run, Russia has more to fear from its friends like a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran or North Korea than it has from U.S. allies like Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan that all could easily become nuclear, but choose not to.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s oil blackmail, trade threats, artillery barrages, and tank advances, might cause the Eastern Europeans, the Chechnyans, and the Georgians to agree with Putin that, \u201cWe must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.\u201d<\/p>\n

After calling the U.S. secretary of state a \u201cliar\u201d and \u201cpathetic,\u201d only someone as brazenly confident in his mellifluousness as Vladimir Putin could write, \u201cMy working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putin ends with another flourish in lecturing the U.S. in response to Obama\u2019s pleas that America is always exceptional in its concern for stopping atrocities abroad:<\/p>\n

And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States\u2019 policy is \u201cwhat makes America different. It\u2019s what makes us exceptional.\u201d It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Where have we heard something like this before?<\/p>\n

Putin, I think, is reminding us that it was largely from Barack Obama himself. \u201cI believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism,\u201d said our president. Like Obama here, Putin too believes that everyone is about the same, both democracies and perhaps those like Syria (and Russia?), which Putin might be thinking of when he says that they too \u201care still finding their way to democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putin saves the best for last. As the man who ended the Chechnyan war on rather tough terms, he now assumes the role of a campus-diversity czar: \u201cWe are all different, but when we ask for the Lord\u2019s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ask a Russian critic of Putin if there is such concern for respecting differences inside Russia.<\/p>\n

So what to make of Putin?<\/p>\n

He is J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s melodic and fatherly Saruman come alive.<\/p>\n

A year ago the world snubbed him over his cynicism in arming Bashar Assad to the teeth. But incrementally his stature has increased, while ours has shrunk. At each moment that Obama and his associates have so loudly sermonized\u2014about Assad having to leave, red lines over WMD that would earn U.S. responses, shots to come across the bow, unbelievably small attacks to follow, a U.S. that doesn\u2019t do pinpricks, a Congress to be bypassed, to become the car that the dog caught, to be put off or ignored if not compliant, an Assad as \u201creformer\u201d and \u201cmoderate,\u201d especially in comparison to Qaddafi, who in contrast really did earn his Tomahawks\u2014Putin has acted and quietly so.<\/p>\n

He upped his arms shipments to Syria and now Iran. He quietly dispatched his vessels and did not dub them \u201cmy military.\u201d He, the egoist, sparingly uses \u201cI\u201d; our president the supposed consensus builder promiscuously so. He reminded Americans of the demonstrably true fact of Islamists in the opposition and lied about the probably false fact that the Assad government is not using WMD. In general, Putin has conveyed a tougher military stance than has the far more powerful U.S., a more humanitarian image than our smart- and soft-power leadership (do we still remember Hillary\u2019s public chortle about Qaddafi\u2014\u201cWe came, we saw, he died\u201d?), and a more internationalist pose than our Nobel Laureate internationalist.<\/p>\n

Putin lecturing Obama on the sacred value of the U.N.\u2014 who\u2019da thunk it?<\/p>\n

If a Russian dissident wrote and had published such a cry of the heart to the Russian people, begging Vladimir Putin to stop his harassment of opposition groups, journalists, gays, and ethnic activists, and to moderate his behavior toward the former Soviet republics, he would either be jailed or disappear. That we not merely forget that fact, but are now increasingly unaware of it, is testament to Putin\u2019s political genius that has capitalized on each embarrassing American mishap.<\/p>\n

That we now receive sermons from Putin not just about morality, but even about U.S. self interest, and that such advice is only two-thirds fantasy is testament to our own recent ineptitude and confusion\u2014and, yes, to this administration\u2019s bad habit of engaging in its own fantasies and obfuscations.<\/p>\n

Sadly Putin is now an impressive creature\u2014but one in part of our own making. Mr. Putin, the fact that you are a more adroit Machiavellian than our own president is a Wilsonian proves only that you are the superior strategist\u2014not the moralist you imagine yourself, and surely not more moral than the president whom you seem so easily to embarrass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner \u201cIt was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire woke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves.\u201d \u2014 J. R. R. Tolkien,\u00a0The Two Towers. If it were regrettable that Vladimir Putin\u2019s formidable diplomatic skills were wasted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[846],"tags":[12,249,115,365,1041,424,1030,76,1068],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Gm","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11043,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/putins-nuclear-posturing-part-of-effort-to-win-back-displeased-public\/","url_meta":{"origin":6470,"position":0},"title":"Putin’s nuclear posturing part of effort to win back displeased public","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 7, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This article is by a colleague of mine: Dr. Paul Gregory \/\/ The Hill Vladimir Putin served up his election platform for his perfunctory March 18 re-election in his\u00a0annual address\u00a0to the two houses of Russia\u2019s parliament on Thursday. Putin addressed two audiences \u2014 the Russian people and his external enemies,\u00a0namely\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Putin"","block_context":{"text":"Putin","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/putin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12676,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/armenia-azerbaijan-conflict-adds-to-putins-headaches-wests-worries\/","url_meta":{"origin":6470,"position":1},"title":"Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict adds to Putin’s headaches, West’s worries","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill The last thing\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0needed is another hotspot in Russia\u2019s \u201cnear abroad\u201d \u2014 Russia\u2019s term for the 14 republics that once were part of the old Soviet Union, along with the Russian Republic.\u00a0 In 2014, Putin boasted of an\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11077,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/overlooked-in-putins-reelection-the-kremlins-challenge-is-from-the-left\/","url_meta":{"origin":6470,"position":2},"title":"Overlooked in Putin’s Reelection: The Kremlin’s Challenge Is From The Left","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Please read a new essay by my Hoover colleague, Paul Gregory. Paul Gregory \/\/ Forbes Vladimir Putin has destroyed his liberal-democratic opposition led by Alexei Navalny and the late Boris Nemtsov through repression. The March 2018 election reveals that danger to the Putin regime comes from a communist left reconstituted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Paul Gregory"","block_context":{"text":"Paul Gregory","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/paul-gregory\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6440,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-bare-chested-machiavelli\/","url_meta":{"origin":6470,"position":3},"title":"A Bare-Chested Machiavelli","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner \u00a0 It is unfortunate that Vladimir Putin could not use his formidable diplomatic skills at home to address his own near failing state rather than showcasing them abroad at our expense. Oh, well . . . Without much effort, his Alice-in-Wonderland proposal of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12716,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-new-putin-worse-than-the-old-putin\/","url_meta":{"origin":6470,"position":4},"title":"A new Putin worse than the old Putin?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 12, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill Vladimir Putin\u00a0is mortal. Russia, sooner or later, will have to navigate the transition from his 20-plus years of rule to someone else. It now appears that \u201csometime\u201d could come as early as January 2021, if ill-health\u00a0rumors denied by\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7055,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/putin-is-putin\/","url_meta":{"origin":6470,"position":5},"title":"Putin Is Putin","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 I am used to being sent bizarre things from readers of\u00a0The American Conservative, but former Ron Paul\u00a0foreign-policy adviser Leon Hadar\u2019s accusation that I somehow published on\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0a pass for Vladimir Putin is unhinged: \u201cOther conservative-leaning pundits perpetuated the meme. Matt Drudge\u00a0called\u00a0Putin the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Russia"","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6472,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6470\/revisions\/6472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}