“Russia’s Limousine Liberals,” Anatol Lieven’s June 10 article for The National Interest Online, triggered the Moscow-based Center Television Network to run a June 16 broadcast on Russian liberals’ criticism of the Obama administration’s efforts to improve America’s relations with Russia. The program’s transcript is reproduced below.
(Presenter Aleksey Pushkov in the studio) In a month’s time Barack Obama and Dmitriy Medvedev will meet in Moscow. And as the time of the meeting approaches, attempts are growing to prevent it from achieving good results. Recently American opponents of “resetting” (of relations between Russia and the USA) have been joined by representatives of the Russian right-wing liberal opposition. Moreover, the latter have picked as their main targets prominent American politicians who want to help improve relations with Moscow.
Coordinated publications in the Western media by this group of people does smack of a well-orchestrated theatre production. And here is our version of what is happening.
(Pushkov, speaking in video report) It is a two-act production. Act 1 is being written now, while Act 2 has already been written. The cast consists of Dmitriy Sidorov, Washington correspondent of the Kommersant newspaper; Georgiy Satarov, former aide to President Yeltsin and now head of the Indem foundation; Liliya Shevtsova from the US Carnegie Endowment; Lev Gudkov, head of the (public opinion) Levada Centre in Moscow; Andrey Piontkovskiy, ex-adviser to (former Yabloko Party leader) Grigoriy Yavlinskiy who now works for the US Hudson Institute, and Igor Klyamkin, a liberal political analyst.
In private, Satarov is known for pushing Boris Yeltsin towards dissolving the State Duma, which was in opposition to him, and Liliya Shevtsova is known for calling for making the Chechen conflict international, i.e. bringing US and their allies’ troops into Chechnya.
So, Act 1. On 31 March 2009 an article by Sidorov was posted on American Forbes magazine online. It was headlined “Why the rush to engage Russia?” Its key point was an attack on those in the United States who support the idea of “resetting”, and above all such prominent figures in American politics as Henry Kissinger and James Baker. Both are former US secretaries of state. According to the author of the article, they were recruited to promote a certain policy. And, naturally, it was the Kremlin that recruited them.
Sidorov did not say who exactly may have recruited these authoritative figures. According to him, we know that Kissinger’s consultancy, Kissinger Associates, according to some information, provides advice to the Kremlin. This unmasking as such is not really an unmasking because Kissinger’s meetings with Putin and Medvedev are widely known and it cannot be ruled out that during these meetings Kissinger did express his views to them on some issues, in other words provided advice. But the author provides no evidence that it was the Kremlin that recruited Kissinger.
In the same way, he provides no evidence to this effect as regards James Baker who is greatly respected in the USA. There are just some general words about his company’s links with Russian concerns. But the article was written not in order to prove anything but to smear and cast a shadow on those who want better relations with Moscow.
After that it became even more interesting. On 4 June 2009 the English-language newspaper, The Moscow Times, published an article by Andrey Piontkovskiy. The article contained the same message against the “resetting” of relations. But, most importantly, it was very similar in its contents to Sidorov’s article. The same targets were attacked: Kissinger, employee of his company Thomas Graham, who used to be senior director for Russia at the US National Security Council, and James Baker. The impression is that the article was dictated by the same people as Sidorov’s article - there are too many coincidences.
Judge for yourselves: (reads an except from Piontkovskiy’s article, which is shown on the screen) “US President Barack Obama’s policy on Russia is being nurtured with advice from people who have no official position in the administration but have close business ties to Russia and the Kremlin: former US secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and James Baker, Kissinger Associates senior director Thomas Graham and Nixon Centre president Dimitri Simes. They all write key reports for the administration, shuttling between Moscow and Washington, and coordinate the parameters of the Obama administration’s effort to “reset” the bilateral relationship.”
Thomas Graham is singled out in particular for his too soft attitude to Russia. And, again, no evidence is given of so-called business contacts between the afore-mentioned persons and the Kremlin.
And, finally, three days ago, on 9 June 2009, the Washington Post newspaper published an article by Lev Gudkov, Igor Klyamkin, Georgiy Satarov and Liliya Shevtsova (screen caption shows the headline: “False choices for Russia”).
The article is banal and intellectually primitive, but it contains the same attack on the so-called American “realists”, i.e. those in favour of improving relations with Moscow, a sharp criticism of the aforementioned Thomas Graham as a supporter of seeking common interests with Russia and a call for toughening rather than improving policy towards Moscow.
The two-party Hart-Hagel Commission (on US Policy toward Russia chaired by former US senators Gary Hart and Chuck Hagel), which recently visited Moscow and had a meeting with Dmitriy Medvedev, is the target of particular attack. Admittedly, the authors of the article did not dare to accuse prominent Democrat Gary Hart and Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of financial links with the Kremlin but they still accused them of supporting Kremlin propaganda and repeating, I quote, “Russian nationalist rhetoric”.
Let’s sum up the results. A rather active group of opponents of the “resetting” of relations who hold Russian passports have declared war on people in the USA who support the idea of “resetting”, and the latter are people who carry much more weight, authority and potential than the former. The fact that someone is standing behind the former is obvious. The same text and contents are in part repeated in the articles and, hence, the unmistakable conclusion can be reached that these efforts are being coordinated and directed, and probably even from the same centre.
We have already covered in one of our programs the story of the US agent Smith who exists in many incarnations and who is professionally against an improvement of relations with Russia. It is becoming clear that the American agent Smith now has supporters in Russia. They use the same arguments and the same tricks and have exactly the same face.
(Pushkov back in the studio) I have just a few words to add. Isn’t it amazing that a group of Russian nationals who - like Shevtsova or Piontkovskiy - work for American organizations and receive money from these organizations attack influential American politicians? To say the least this shows that quite serious forces are standing behind them inside the USA. It also shows that our right-wing pro-American liberals, who have totally lost all political battles in Russia and who are needed by very few here in Russia, have understood nothing and learnt nothing.
British professor Anatol Lieven read these articles with a profound feeling of depression, on his own admission. (Pushkov reads passage also shown on screen) “There is something bizarre and twisted about pro-Western Russian liberals attacking the recommendations of the Hart-Hagel Commission or statesmen such as Henry Kissinger and James Baker,” writes Anatol Lieven. “It is also because their criticism serves as a mouthpiece for the agendas of the most bitterly anti-Russian and geopolitically aggressive liberal interventionists and neocons who help maintain tensions between Russia and the West—and actually between the United States and the rest of the world.”
The assessment is quite exhaustive but it is still not clear what support this political group expects in Russia. Or, perhaps, this is not the point—it is about fulfilling some political commission. In this case everything becomes clear.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 06/18/2009 03:00:24 PM |