By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
I marvel at how some people are just tuning into the "Russia-as-rogue-state" understanding only NOW, two years into Russia's massively upscaled invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which of course followed its long war against Ukraine with many invasions, large and small, throughout 10 years since February 2014, starting with the seizure and forcible annexation of Crimea.
Many scholars began to concede this in 2014 -- after all, Russia had leased naval bases from Ukraine for decades, and its lucrative worldwide arms business out of Odessa had never been threatened by Ukraine, nor its presence in the Black Sea (now considerably diminished because of Russia's own actions, not Ukrainian policy or practice). Russia essentially owned and operated large parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts before the war via subsidies, Russian TV, and brute force as needed. It was only when Ukraine aspired to join the EU -- and not NATO, as some mischievously imply from wording in the EU accession agreement -- that Russian threatened and used massive force, that protesters amassed on Maidan Square, and then-president Yanukovych was forced to flee. (He fled, and was not "deposed" -- and fled to Russia. And then Russia invaded in earnest -- not in aiding one side in a "civil war" over "language rights" but in a naked land grab that is visible on the map.
IAN BREMMER
Ian Bremmer seems to have tuned into the "Russia is a rogue state" issue rather belatedly in 2022 although perhaps some assiduous troll can find a reference before that. My point is that now he is getting more rotation, although he began to get rinsed more and more as his predictions or punditry didn't add up, even in the New Republic where Andre Pagliarini pointed out that Bremmer's co-author in an enthusiastic piece about the new leader Putin -- Boris Nemtsov -- had been assassinated after becoming a vocal critic of VV. He went on to explain how wrong Bremmer was on a host of other issues like Brazil's president and noted that tone of authority on TV that makes people feel he is an oracle -- and which never seems to get checked before or after the talk shows.
Here on January 3, 2023, Bremmer makes a frank call of "rogue" -- but he also believes that Trump is the greatest risk factor to world security. It's hard to know where to start with a statement like that, even as a past and future Biden voter. Yes, things were terrible and will be terrible again under Trump -- but a big factor is his friendship and soft take with Russia. And Russia has invaded not just its own provinces but Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine, with mass crimes against humanity. Unless you're peddling some extremist theory about "the patriarchy" and "American imperialism" being responsible for mass deaths in a general sort of way like the weather, Russia is the real disturber of world peace on every front -- remember Russia aids Hamas and sells arms to Iran and puts North Korean laborers to work in its timber industry.
If you recall Bremmer in 2022 didn't believe Russia would invade Ukraine but long before that, in 1998 happily took Carter Page (injured but not innocent in the Steele Dossier) on his first voyage to Russia in 2011 to greet the new president Putin (he later disowned Page as "wackadoodle" downplaying his role, although he didn't last three months at Eurasia. The press has never pressed further to ask why he was ever hired in the first place). Bremmer consistently provokes with interviews like this where he imagines there was something the US "could have done" to prevent Putin from invading Ukraine that didn't involve massive threat of force.
STEELE DOSSIER
To take a detour here, I personally believed after writing along with Michael Weiss the longest and most thorough piece on the Steele Dossier anywhere, that Page is "injured but not innocent". The FBI was right to take a look at someone in the Trump campaign going to Russia and taking a cheery view of people and events there after everyone had gotten off the love train. But like so many stories related to Trumpkins and Russia, the smoking gun doesn't really materialize, although I personally agree "Michael Cohen was in Prague to meet the Russian" and "the server story" does have legs because sources don't keep their stories straight. (Note to self: save that article in case Coda goes under, like so many other brave publications these days.) That 8,000 word piece was actually cut down from much longer material.
Today, in headline after headline, under pressure and clouds of unknown from the GOP, plus the very real errors and distortions in the documents, the adjective "discredited" or even "fake" is used with regard to the Steele dossier. Even (especially?) VOA joins in this chorus deliberately missing the point. I don't think "falseness" is the way to understand this pastiche of materials, which we ourselves analyzed, showing how its internal workings weren't even consistent (speaking to the "pastiche" nature) and showing how there was a wrong or complete take on something like the "pee story" (it's not just that Trump is a clean freak; it's that the hotel rooms of such top figures as Trump are not controlled by the FSB, but by Putin's own Kremlin security force; hence the sourcing is dodgy).
It's a collection of materials that is partly false, partly true, partly misleading -- I suggested that we assign a value to every line so we could get a percentage factor, so that statements like "Putin wishes to influence Europe" ("the sky is blue") would get a 10, and a statement like "a hotel manager says Trump peed on prostitutes" would get a 0 (or you could work the evaluation in the opposite way -- and in the end you might get "47% true" or whatever you got. Along the way, the chronicles of which official in the PA is still there, or has been rewarded with jobs like speaker of parliament or official in charge of the Minsk accords or whatever the story, is rated as true because it is true. No journalist bothered to research in the weeds with available Russian language sources where Igor Sechin and Carter Page were -- the fact is, that while Sechin does intersect with Page in Moscow briefly, he is hardly likely to have met with the lowly Carter when he could meet with Rex Tillerson, the Exxon head, briefly Secretary of State, at the St. Petersburg Forum not long before the same time frame (and appears to have done so) and accomplish the same influence operation, you know? And so on down the line. The Steele Dossier as an artifact of US foreign news drama is decidedly yesterday's newspaper wrapping the fish; it seems like a very quaint and silly thing now by contrast with the whole war in Ukraine since then.
And the real story of the Steele Dossier which I should try to explain some day is that it represents a tracking of the all-important Russian Presidential Administration and its takeover of functions that the FSB either use to have or does but now faces competition, and that the Russians took a complicated computer network and people network set up to influence their own parliamentary elections out of the PA their way, and turned it around and translated it for use against Hillary in particular, but to distract and confuse and disinform people in the US elections in general. That's all. Most of the sources are Russian emigres, some still with Russian passports. Who else can still go to Russia, talk to any kind of official, and leave and come back again -- and yet not really have serious access but only talk to those who themselves might have?
Also at least one of the sources has even talked to me on Twitter; that is, a lower-level foreign-facing flak whose job consist of providing a mixture of facts (to retain credibility) and fakes to foreigners of varying levels of gullibility.
My point here with this detour is to explain that lots of stuff over the years gets discredited, discounted, written off, and then people sometimes realize they were too hasty with the box cutter, and too hasty in blessing or condemning this or that figure wholesale, and should realize it is all more nuanced. One humorous footnote is that Igor Danchenko was exonerated and released from custody, a story nobody noticed.
So..."rogue presidents" have a variety of friends, in and out of office, and friendlies who are not knowing collaborationists always, and there are exposes of their antics over the years, whether the now-maligned Steele Dossier or new reporting on the member of the Latvian parliament working for the GRU. It's a shame that these new exposes keep needing to be done -- along with examination with facts on the ground like people turning up dead in the West (that they fall out of windows in Russia is a given).
SHORT HISTORY OF CALLING RUSSIAN 'ROGUE'
This statement may have begun as an interrogative by the BBC in 2013, but Molotov's grandson, Putin loyalist, and Snowden greeter Vyacheslav Nikonov was there to tell you back then, now 14 years ago, that the real rogue was the US due to Guantanamo and Afghanistan. (Sound like the same formula again? "The real disrupter of world peace is Donald Trump.")
Brookings' respected Fiona Hill and Steven Pifer had Putin going Rogue in 2014.
Atlantic Council's Andrew Kornbluth tried to argue it was a "troll state" not a "rogue" state. That's cute, but trolls are mainly a nuisance on Twitter, where Russian disinformation activists run rampant -- that's not the same thing as massacring civilians in Bucha as a rogue state.
Time published Conservative UK parliament member Tom Tugendhat who called Russia "a rogue state" after the attempt to kill Russian defector Skripal and his daughter, but that doesn't count because he's right-wing, correct?
RAND Corporation called Russia a "rogue state" in 2019.
Journalist Luke Harding tweeted this in 2020.
Kristofer Harrison "either rogue or failed" in 2021.
The Obama Administration apparently only used the term "rogue" to refer to Russia once -- and this thinky piece tells you the criteria for the "rogues" -- but note that two out of the list -- Iran and Syria -- have long been armed by Russian and provided political cover. And that's why I wish the "rogue police" would look at not only the individual leader they to whom they wish to apply this designation, but the other world leaders they help. Nutty lefties on Twitter put up silly pictures of NATO bases saying "Russia, move your country away" but that disguises where Russia's bases are within its vastness, ready to deploy to Europe, and where they are throughout the rest of the world. Amnesty was once honest in admitting that Russia was the world's largest seller of armaments to rogue states and dictators massively violating human rights -- not America -- but now it puts out tables showing that the US is the largest arms dealer, obfuscating the fact that arms sales to...Canada or Australia or even Saudi Arabia...are very different than arms sales to Iran and Syria.
Why is this always so hard?
You could argue that by the second Chechen war, Russia was a rogue state although back in the 1990s, it was Chechnya that was called the "rogue". By 2007, when Russia invaded Georgia directly after the NATO summit in Germany where votes failed to be gathered to include Georgia in a process to join the EU. It's hard to pretend to justify as a security or anti-terrorism measure.
RUSSIA IS A TERRORIST STATE
In fact, if you really want to talk turkey here (BTW, Russia built a nuclear power station for Turkey and sells arms to its frenemy, although suspends these activities when Turkey shoots down a Russian plane near its border), the Russian state has always been rogue since 1917. It is and was a terrorist state, not under the rule of law, and not even under "rule-by-law" as the German term Rechtsstaat has it -- different but still better than rogue-ness. The Bolsheviks (and the Social Democrats and others before them) ran terrorist conspiracies and used bombing of government, business and residential buildings to "make a point", although with assassinating people in large numbers. Lenin's terror and then Stalin's terror are all mass crimes against humanity of a rogue state. As some dissident commentators have pointed out over the years, Russia never properly formed an open state; it was always a conspiracy of men who had personally used or directed terrorism and used cover names and body doubles.
When you get to Yeltsin and Gorbachev, the crimes in Chechnya are massive; the crimes of Lenin and Stalin were never tried. There was never a Soviet Nuremburg trial. Russia was included in world security structures -- the UN, the OSCE (where the thinking was that in exchange for recognition of post-war borders, the Soviets could be coddled into recognizing human rights), many other institutions and agencies where really, they never had any business being in, ever (Interpol).
OLD ANECDOTES ABOUT EURASIA GROUP, OSCE, STATE
A word about all this from my own life, as I am beginning to realize that I will never get my memoirs written unless I use blog posts to start putting together things as I did with my Snowden book in 2013.
The Eurasia Group's initial embryonic form years ago in New York City was mainly in the form of luncheons with high officials from different countries, sometimes even leaders, often during the UN General Assembly, when many of them were here. They were "Chatham House rules" (or off-the-record) affairs and invitations could be hard to come by. In their earliest form, some of the colleagues of the Eurasia Group would insist on having human rights organizations send representatives to ask questions of some of these rogue world leaders, or they would at least bring in academics with a little more critical take on them. I'm not sure how big the staff or how big the Eurasia client list was back in the late 1990s but surely it was smaller than it is today or has been in the 30 years since. My recollection is that the Eurasia Group consulting firm founded in 1998 was preceded by the Eurasia Group policy luncheons by some years, so no double some people will begin to complain they were different things, but they involved the same people. The crew of those willing to follow what was happening in Kyrgyzstan back then was very small -- "Eurasia" generally meant "Central Asia, and Russia, and how it affects it." But the largest Eurasia -- which means whatever it means, ask around, you get a host of answers on that question -- meant Belarus as well.
Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the dictator of Belarus, came to power in 1997, at first with enthusiasm by some who thought he would clean up corruption. Unlike Russia at that time, Belarus had a robust, professional opposition in parliament, government, and with its own radio stations -- Belarus, despite all its trials and tribulations over the centuries, still is closer to Europe. In 1999 I believe, Lukashenka came to the General Assembly; by that time, critical figures like even Lukashenka's own Interior Minister and others in parliament, TV, and business, had begun to disappear as if in Central America, not Central Europe, never to be found. So it was felt Bat'ka should take some questioning on that subject. But in discussing this with a State Department official at the Belarus desk at the time, I found that State preferred groups not to meet with Lukashenka at all so as not to give him recognition. I told them about the Eurasia Group lunch which technically wasn't outside the mile limit from the UN that State was going to put on Luka. Well, State can inform you of their policy, but private groups can do what they wish within the law.
When Bremmer found out about my conversation through colleagues, he called me to yell at me at length and threaten me with loss of my job by getting my boss (who had invited me to the meeting) and others to turn on me. He was terrified at the time that with this news of his luncheon's existence reaching State (like that would remain a secret even under Chatham House rules with 40 people at a luncheon with a head of state?!), he would lose his generous State Department grants which he had at the time for his studies.
I shrugged at this because I did not fear him and did not feel it was my job to worry about his grants with State, which I was certain would not be discontinued over this and were not. That's not how the world works. There are officials within State and NSA and other agencies who may be more critical of these countries than their bosses or the current president would like to be, and sometimes they find themselves reassigned to Fiji, and during certain periods of history they suddenly get a hearing or a promotion but the bulk of the policy for 30 years has been Realpolitik and International Realism. This article in Mosaic , discussing the "peace processers" in the Middle East, provides background for the types we might call "the security arrangers" in Europe. These are certain people in and out of State, in its revolving door or proximity, who endlessly invoke "security arrangements" with Russia -- as if Russia could arrange any security now out of a paper bag, given its outrageous mauling of Ukraine.
As these six former ambassadors now loudly proclaim, the time for talking about "security arrangements" with Putin is long past the sell-by date. That's not just because Russia is a rogue state; it's a terrorist state; it's a state with a leader, Vladimir Putin, for him arrest warrants have been issued on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide notably on the matter of abducting large numbers of children into Russia from Ukraine because their parents were killed or lost or separated from them -- a warrant that became possible because Russia's own officials took pride in this massive abduction and spoke of it in glowing terms.
I wish these six former ambassadors/State Department officials had said these sorts of things while in office in the last 30 years -- the world would be a better place. But that's not how the world works.
I will mention my meetings with five of them over the years. The 6th, Jovanovich, I never met; she was not in her job long in Kyiv before she was targeted with an outrageous smear campaign run by Trump which ultimately led to her resignation (though she was not found to do anything wrong) -- a dreadful loss for the Foreign Service in the US and not the only one triggered by Trump.
I recall taking around to meetings in Washington, DC Andrei Sannikov, former deputy minister of foreign affairs in Belarus who resigned when Luka came to power, and who later had a brief life as a opposition presidential candidate before he was jailed for about two years. Back in the 1990s, he would visit Pifer and Pascual (then at NSA) to provide information about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Belarus and plead the cause for recognition of the independent sector and US sanctions. The US was uneven on this score, at one point developing a curious carrot-and-stick approach that seemed all carrot and never any stick -- although at a certain point, the US and numerous other foreign embassies were simply kicked out of Minsk.
I recall dealing with Taylor during his time at the embassy in Kazakhstan, particularly when a US citizen in a media assistance program was murdered (and that followed the severe beating of another US government official involved in democracy aid and these cases were played down to maintain good relations -- Chevron is in Kazakhstan). And on other countries and cases later.
Meetings with Herbst took place over the years in various groups related to Uzbekistan and Ukraine, including the Atlantic Council.
All these officials were conscientious, informed, filled with good will, some of the "Guardians" as I call such people in these often large and faceless bureaucracies like State who do the right thing at crunch time, often as they are shredding papers and turning off the lights and fleeing a mob outside the door in a country under civil war -- like an official who took the time among his last urgent chores to fax out the visa confirmation for a Tajik journalist who might have been murdered along with dozens of others in that civil war.
But they all had constraints in their jobs which related to the over all Borg or Blob or whatever you want to call the foreign policy establishment and actual foreign policy arm of the US government.
BUYING UP ALL THE GASOLINE IN INGUSHETIA
I'm also recalling what is called a "pull-aside" with the then-ambassador to OSCE -- that's when a busy aide won't give you an actual appointment for a meeting, but enable you to ask a few questions for 10 minutes in the hallway. I said I had an urgent report from Sergei Kovalev, then ombudsman for human rights in Yeltsin's government warning of the impending second invasion of Chechnya which had begun with the Chechen rebels attack on Dagestan in August 1999. My pull-aside then turned into a meeting sitting in his office in the dark -- he had turned off his lights and was about to go to lunch. I gave him the translated field reports with information such as all the gasoline disappearing in Ingushetia -- the Russian army was buying it up. Families of certain officials fleeing the area -- they got a tip-off. Stuff. Nonsense. He took it seriously. But little could be done by then by the US, apparently.
Make of it what you will but the fancy cars with Moscow license plates, the Russian equivalents of jeeps appearing en masse in a place like Ingushetia is usually the first sign of trouble -- as it was with the fake protest in parliament in Crimea. "Here's how protesters go out to demonstrations these days," said one Crimea-based photographer on Facebook who I knew from family -- they were cars with Moscow plates circulating around before the parliament was taken over. That fellow found himself arrested and it was a miracle that his camera -- his livelihood at a local news outlet -- was not broken merely because the regime goons got too busy with a lot of cases. When he was let go, he began posting pictures of his cats.
Everything is terrible. "That animal eye is just what you say". And "The world is ugly and the people are sad." I'm a footnote in history at best and my work has been futile and so has yours. As for Thomas Graham, excoriated by the six ambos in the Bulkwark, I know personally that even he has done good privately although publicly I view him as wrong about everything for most of his career at the Kissinger Associates. It doesn't matter now; it's larger than we are, and we let it get that way, to the point where assigning blame now would take away too much effort from emergency response and help to Ukraine rather than "peace processing" and "security arranging."
Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is, and has been a rogue state even if you don't believe it always was, or believe this only recently. I think we can all agree on this now, pretty much
So what are we going to do about it?
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