Putin, the ignored friend

Putin, the ignored friend
Putin’s gestures towards the USA since 2000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War 

This article is longer, both because of the importance of the subject and also because of the compilation of historical data.
Peter Kopa, Prague, 30.11.2024

Augusto Zimmermann is Professor and Director of Law at the Sheridan Institute of Higher Education in Australia. He was also Associate Dean of Law (Research) at Murdoch University and Commissioner of the Western Australian Law Reform Commission. On 25.11.2024 he published an article in the magazine ‘Mercator’, Sydney, on Putin’s interest in cooperation in the fight against Islamic terrorism. We extract from here his texts about a series of friendly gestures of Putin’s openness towards the USA and the West. At the present time it is important to put his image in the right context and perspective, against the background of the invasion in Ukraine. Before condemning him for this attack it is necessary to consider the history of US behavior, as explained by the foremost scientific authority on the subject, Jeffrey Sachs in USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOCBkN-UDd0&t=194s.

Jeffrey Sachs and not a few experts in the field argue that the US threw away the contract it had signed in 1991 with Russia, initiating a series of interventions in Ukraine in order to get it to join NATO. This triggered a whole series of political and social upheavals that culminated in the coup d’état and the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. This event was linked to the mass protests known as the Euromaidan, which began in November 2013, and were initially a response to Yanukovich’s decision to suspend a partnership agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia.

Putin’s attitude toward Europe

In February 2000, a British journalist, David Frost, asked Russian President Vladimir Putin how he saw future relations with NATO and even Russia eventually joining this military alliance, provided it was treated as an equal partner. Putin replied:
Russia is part of European culture. I cannot imagine my country isolated from Europe and from the so-called, as we usually say, civilized world. So it is difficult for me to imagine NATO as an enemy. It seems to me that… even to raise the issue in this way can be harmful. And at another point he added:
I have the impression that too often our partners remain prisoners of their previous views and continue to regard Russia as a potential aggressor. This is an absolutely wrong image of our country. It is false and prevents the development of normal relations in Europe and in the world as a whole.

Russia and the USA against Islamic terrorism

On September 11, 2001 there were four coordinated Islamic terrorist attacks against the American people. Putin was the first world leader to call US President George W. Bush to offer his condolences and assistance. Putin was shocked, but not surprised, not least because he had called Bush the day before to tell him that he believed “something serious” was about to happen. https://thinktanklatam.org/la-muerte-del-patriotismo-3/

Vladimir Putin linked the 9/11 attacks in the United States to the same global terrorist threat facing the Russians in Chechnya. Russia had supported NATO with arms and money for several years in an effort to curb the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. Supporting the Americans, Putin thought, could only help garner support for his own campaign against global terrorism.

Russia was then fully aligned with the US in the war against terrorism. Hence Putin offered logistical assistance, intelligence, search missions and even military rescue in case US pilots were shot down in Afghanistan. He even offered the right for U.S. servicemen to fly over Russian territory. Putin told Bush, “I am ready to tell the heads of government of the Central Asian states that we maintain good relations with the United States, and that we have no objection to the United States playing a major role in Central Asia in the fight against terrorism.”

Putin was alerted to the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil within minutes of the first tower being hit. It was 5 p.m. Moscow time. His first reaction was to call the U.S. president, but he was aboard Airforce One and out of reach. So the Russian leader spoke first to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asking her to convey to President Bush Russia’s unconditional support for the United States. It was an opportunity, Putin thought, to demonstrate to the hardliners in Bush’s entourage that Russia was – as Bush had said in Ljubljana – a true “partner and friend” on whom the United States could rely when needed.
Indeed, Putin called the White House even before the dust had settled from the explosions. He was the first foreign leader to express his full solidarity. Putin even told Rice that his country fully accepted the U.S. decision to put forces on high alert, and that Russia would take no such action. In a statement later that evening, Putin declared on national television that he wanted the American people to know, “We are with you. We share and feel your anguish totally and completely. We have your back.”

However, Putin felt that the Americans were dangerously ignoring, and at their peril, the lessons of previous wars in Afghanistan. “The mistake of the USSR was to install a pro-Soviet government. Afghanistan is not a country that can be privatized.” Americans should not make the same mistake. But, as so often, Washington “knew better”. In October 2001, the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan was launched, marking the first phase of what would become a 20-year war in the region. Twenty years later, the world was watching the horrific images of the unstoppable advance of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The advance was accompanied by brutal repression and mass executions of anyone suspected of collaborating with the U.S.-backed government, and the denigration of women and religious minorities. At Kabul airport there were scenes of desperate people clinging to planes and falling from the sky. The entire country was overrun in eleven days by the Taliban.

U.S. President Joe Biden has admitted that events moved faster than his administration had anticipated. Instead of accepting responsibility for the carnage and collapse of Afghanistan, he blamed the country’s military leaders for surrendering and fleeing the country. In a speech to the media, Biden bluntly asserted that nation building was never one of the goals of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. In reality, the goal was to hunt down Osama bin Laden, who had found refuge in Afghanistan, and to degrade the Taliban. Moreover, his assertion that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was never aimed at nation building does not explain why it was necessary for U.S. military forces to remain there for 20 years. During that time, the Taliban, rather than being degraded, were able or allowed to keep their weapons. They functioned as a kind of shadow government and controlled large swaths of Afghan territory.

What were the consequences of the Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan?

https://thinktanklatam.org/5219/

First, the Taliban regime announced that its mission will only be completed when the entire world is subjected to its brand of Islamic terror. Second, there has been abominable discrimination and oppression of women and girls. In an article published on August 16, 2021, Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor of The Australian newspaper, indicated the darkness that had descended on Afghanistan. He wrote:

‘We are about to witness one of the worst tragedies for women and girls in modern history. From now on, once again, young, pre-teen girls will be married off to much older men, often with multiple wives. Girls will not be allowed to go to school, will not be allowed to learn to read and write, let alone sing, will not be allowed to pursue most professions, will not be allowed to go to the bazaar without the permission, and usually the presence, of their controlling male relative.
Third, on the occasion of the takeover of Kabul, reports confirm that the Taliban have been “carrying out targeted killings of Christians and other minorities who have been found with biblical software installed on their cell phones.”

Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the Christian community in Afghanistan was growing exponentially, in part because of the minimal security provided by the U.S. occupation. In 2019, many Afghan Christians voluntarily included their religious affiliation on national identity cards. Now, the U.S. withdrawal left these Christians with the looming threat of public executions, floggings and amputations. Interestingly, the U.S. remains the largest donor of “aid” to Afghanistan, totaling some $2.6 billion since the collapse of the previous Afghan government. A U.S. federal report shows that billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money has been sent to Afghanistan’s Taliban-controlled central bank, resulting in the flow of U.S. funds to the extremist group.

“Coalition of the willing” stumbles in Iraq

In October 2002, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution giving the U.S. president the power to use military force against the Iraqi government. Along with Iraq’s alleged development of weapons of mass destruction, another justification for the invasion was the alleged links between Saddam Hussein’s government and Al Qaeda. Obviously, nothing in the UN Charter authorized regime change in Iraq. For this reason, Putin rightly warned that any unilateral action in Iraq would be “counterproductive,” “controversial” and “a big mistake.” If the Americans decided to act on their own, the result would be “the radicalization of the Islamic world and a new wave of terrorist acts,” Putin predicted. It is time, he said, “for less emotional statements and more common sense.” Putin rarely says anything without thinking through the possible consequences.

In the first four years of his presidency, from 2000 to 2004, writes his biographer Philip Short,
Putin felt he had gone out on a limb to help the United States in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Russia had done everything Bush had asked of it and more: it had shared intelligence, given the Americans overflight rights, and encouraged its allies to provide basing facilities. But what had it gotten in return? … NATO enlargement was continuing apace and would soon reach Russia’s borders; and Russia’s concerns about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which were shared by many of America’s own allies, had been summarily dismissed.”

On March 20, 2003, the United States and its allies, Australia, the United Kingdom and, symbolically, Poland – the “Coalition of the Willing” – invaded Iraq. Putin was absolutely right and the result would be “catastrophic”. For example, the Islamists took the opportunity to kill thousands of Iraqi Christians and burn their churches. Half a million Iraqi Christians fled the country. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 4,431 U.S. soldiers were killed and 31,994 more were wounded in combat during the Iraq war.

Instead of the promised democracy, the U.S.-led invasion destroyed Iraq, its people and its culture. The removal of dictator Saddam Hussein created a power vacuum that intensified sectarian tensions and led to civil war. In Iraq, Assyrian Christians are among the last to pray in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. However, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime by the U.S.-led coalition, at least two-thirds of the Assyrian population fled the country due to “intense violence by Islamist extremists and common criminals, acting with impunity and specifically targeting Christians.”

Between 2005 and 2008, when some 100,000 U.S. troops were still occupying Iraq, the local Christian community suffered horrific persecution. When 20,000 Christian families were being violently expelled from Baghdad in 2006-07, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that the U.S. government could not take effective measures to protect them from being killed and kidnapped because it did not want U.S. policy to be seen as “sectarian.”

Between 2003 and 2021, at least 7,966 conflict events were recorded across Iraq. The number of internally displaced persons went from zero recorded in 2003 to 2.6 million in 2007. By the time the U.S. announced the end of its combat operation, more than 2.3 million Iraqis had fled the country, millions of Iraqis had become refugees, and at least 210,090 civilians had been killed. The highest annual death toll was in 2006, when some 30,000 civilians were killed.

Failure to protect Christians in the Middle East

On January 20, 2005, at the beginning of his second term, President Bush declared that henceforth “U.S. policy is to seek and support the growth of democratic movements in all nations and cultures.” Putin thought this was not necessarily a good idea. Democracy, he said, “is not a commodity that can simply be exported from one country to another…. It is a product of the internal development of society.” The Soviet Union, Putin recalled, had tried to export its own ideology. If others were now to try to export their version of a better society, “the world would embark on a very dangerous and slippery path.”
According to Putin, President Bush’s call for Americans to take the lead in the fight against tyranny sounded very much like blatant hypocrisy. After all, the United States has a long history of supporting undemocratic regimes as long as they support its economic and military interests.

Indeed, the United States continues to support theocratic regimes in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, whose spread of Wahhabi fundamentalism is one of the main sources of global terrorism. Saudi Arabia defines itself as an Islamic state. Saudi Arabians are required by law to be Muslims. Christians living in this country cannot practice their religion in public and do not have the right to hold meetings even in the privacy of their homes. Christians who are caught practicing their faith in public are very likely to be beheaded.

In Saudi mosques, speakers continue to pray for the death of Christians and Jews, even in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, where they serve under King Abdullah. An official eighth-grade textbook used in public schools teaches children that “the Monkeys are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Pigs are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians.”
Despite this severe religious persecution, Saudi Arabia is America’s largest foreign military customer and second largest trading partner. Especially under the first administration of President Donald Trump, a very strong military and economic relationship was cemented between these two countries.

Trump even threatened to veto any measure passed by Congress if it attempted to end U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen. Relations between the two nations were so strong that the Saudi newspaper, Al-Youm, ran headlines like this one, “U.S.-Saudi relations strengthen politically and strategically.” Religious freedom, of course, is the cornerstone on which the U.S. was founded, so why has Washington been so indifferent, sometimes even complicit, in the face of all these egregious human rights violations in the Middle East? The answer lies, at least in part, in the strong economic ties between these Western elites and the Saudi theocratic rulers, as Paul Marshall points out.

With Saudi Arabia supplying a quarter of the world’s oil, the United States and other governments have been reluctant to press harder for an end to its demonization and incitement to violence against Christians, both within the kingdom and throughout the Islamic world. This reluctance exists despite the financial and other support for terrorism emanating from the kingdom, terrorism that is based on doctrines of religious hatred and jihad.

As for the global threat of terrorism, Putin believes that Chechnya is but a fragment of a broader Islamist struggle to conquer the world. He believes that jihad in Chechnya is part of a global threat that endangers the entire world. “Not only are we disappointed with the Western stance, but we believe it is in the national interest of Western countries to support Russia in its fight against international terrorism,” he says.

Of course, if the United States and its allies were sincere in their fight against terrorism, they would have supported Russia in Chechnya on the front where the Russians were fighting alone. Instead, Western special services continue to maintain close contacts with Chechen jihad leaders, both inside Chechnya and in Dubai. The United States and the United Kingdom have even granted political asylum to Islamic terrorists from Chechnya.

There is now compelling evidence that the U.S. government, under President Barack Obama, aided and abetted terrorist groups in their quest to expand the reach of Islamic fundamentalism. The “Arab Spring” was a series of anti-government protests and army uprisings that in the early 2010s spread across the Middle East and North Africa. During this period, the U.S. government and its agents did more than any religious extremist group “to permanently enshrine Sharia as the constitutional law of the land throughout the Muslim world.” In Egypt, for example, the so-called “Arab Spring” empowered Muslim extremists to initiate a bloody persecution that has led hundreds of thousands of Christian Copts to flee the nation. Egyptian political scientist Samuel Tadros writes, “Copts can only wonder today whether, after 2,000 years, the time has come for them to pack up their belongings and leave, as Egypt seems less hospitable to them than ever.”