Snowden fracas becomes another political football

Edward Snowden file photo

(Business New Europe – bne.eu – June 28, 2013) The case of NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden, who is holed up in a secret location in the transit lounge of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, has become the latest political football.

It has become a regular fixture in domestic tournaments between opposing political parties around the world. Domestic poltiicians pick up the ball and play an aggressive game against their domestic opponents with a Russia-related issue.

In the UK it was the case of Litvienko, the one time KGB spy turned MI5 informer, who died after drinking radioactive tea at a London hotel.

The rules are: say anything you irrespective of the evidence, blame the Kremlin for everything, dismiss anything the Kremlin says as KGB-style disinformation.

This time it is America’s turn to play. US Sen. Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican from South Carolina said he is preparing a package of measures to pressure Russia into extraditing former CIA employee Snowden.

“We are exploring what are the leverage points. I’m trying to put together a package to let the Russians know how serious we are,” Graham told the US news website in an interview published Thursday. “We have to respond, this is a defining moment in the relationship.”

All very tough sounding and shows the American people who strong the Republican party, which is still smarting after losing the last presidential elections to Barak Obama despite and all out attempt to oust him, when it comes to dealing with “America’s number one geopolitical enemy,” says Mitt Romney, the US presidential candidate for the Republics, famously said.

Except there are no “leverage points” nor is there legally anything America can do to force Russia to extradite Snowden. The US doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Russia full stop and without one there is almost no chance that the Kremlin will send Snowden home. Especially when there are several other fights on extraditions on-going where the US is sticking its heels in.

Graham declined to say specifically what measures he and fellow US lawmakers might pursue and instead waffled on in general terms about how Russia ignores the rule of law both domestically and abroad, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “trying to recreate the old Soviet Union attitude and image.” More empty rhetoric that cast Russia in the stereotype of the evil empire that Graham hopes will play well to the gallery.

Russia has become a favourite whipping boy for politicians who are suffering at the domestic polls. When Gordon Brown took over as prime minister he also went in hard on Russia in hope of burnishing his image.

The calculation all these politicians make is: “We have no real trade of investment ties with Russia (its oil is a commodity and so anonymously available on international markets), Russia is weak and unimportant since the fall of the Soviet Union, relations are terrible anyway so there is no political cost to us, and its comic book-like evil enemy profile is a PR gift to make me looks like the shiny superhero saviour in contrast.”

The trouble is that several of these assumptions are not true as Russia is clearly the rising power in Europe, thanks to the relevancy of its Soviet legacy on the international stage and its growing importance as a market in Europe.

Everyone, but particularly opposition politicians, are quick to jump on the bandwagon once an opportunity presents itself. Several members of the US Congress, but especially Republicans, have voiced “outrage” this week over Russian authorities’ refusal to act on America’s behalf. They argue there are “clear legal grounds” to send him back to the US, when clearly there are none.

In situation where the only hope of getting their hands on Snowden would be to cajole a friendly power to do them a favour and there presidents of countries extraditing criminals to the US where no extradition treaty exists they have chosen to be bellicose. You don’t have to be an expert on foreign policy to see that given the obvious prickly nature of the Kremlin (quiet apart from the current poor state of relations between the two powers) is guaranteed to cause a sharp and negative response from the Kremlin. In other words there is no serious intention to do anything to force Russia to help and there will be no legislative action beyond possibly a non-binding bill that “condemns” Russia for not being more helpful.

The pointlessness of all this hot air is painfully apparent from the empty rhetoric coming out of the Senate: “Snowden has overstayed his welcome at the Moscow airport,” Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, said in a statement. “I call on the Russian government, in the interest of justice, as well as US-Russian relations, to release him into the custody of the US Government today.”

Happily Obama, who actually has to manage the relation with Russia, has taken a much more pragmatic line. While he can’t shut the Republicans up or even prevent them from passing relation-damaging laws like the Magnitsky act, he does his best to contain the damage. Obama said Thursday he would not engage in “wheeling and dealing” to win the extradition of Snowden and basically admitted the US was powerless to do anything.

“I have not called President Xi personally or President Putin personally andthe reason is number one, I shouldn’t have to,” Obama told reporters during his trip to Africa this week.

“Number two, we’ve got awhole lot ofbusiness that we do with China andRussia, andI’m not going tohave one case ofa suspect who we’re trying toextradite suddenly being elevated tothe point where I’ve got tostart doing wheeling anddealing andtrading ona whole host ofother issues,” Obama said.

Likewise, following the passage of the so-called Magnitsky act last year that bans Russian officials accused of human rights abuses from entering the US and seizes there assets there (if any) the key to the legislation was who would be on the list of names. There were reports of over 200 senior Russian officials but in the end only 18 were included, all relatively minor officials and almost all directly connected to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who worked for investment fund Hermitage Capital, after whom the law was named.

Obama “gets it” when it comes to the increasingly obvious need to attempt to build some sort of pragmatic working relation with Russia which is reasserting itself steadily on the international stage. The showdown over Syria another football issue that has eagerly been picked up by politicians everywhere has shown the international community really does need Russia’s help to resolve that problem. (And China too, although given the wests intoxication with China it is never included in the football games).

The Europeans have come to this realisation a lot sooner although their opposition leaders are also prone to kicking the Russians football about. The touch bearer for improving relations with Russia was former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who facilitated a huge amount of direct investment as well as the Nord Stream gas pipeline line linking the two countries and building real and geopolitically significant ties between the two countries. His successor Angela Merkel, who was in St Petersburg last week, has somewhat reluctantly continued the policy simply because German investors are making so much money and German has a key supply of energy from Russia.

Other leaders have been a bit later into the game. Italy’s former PM Silvio Berlusconi was also a friend of Putin’s, who daughters regularly holidayed with the Italian leader. France “got it” a bit later, but towards the end of Christine Legarde tenure as France’s foreign minister she was in Moscow every three months or so pushing for closer ties; France’s investment and trade doubled as a result.

Even British prime minister David Cameron has belatedly started to make the effort to mend the fences with a trip to Moscow last year and hosting Putin for talks on Syria last month.

The point is that these politicians can already see there are definite economic benefits to better ties with Russia, but they are also starting to see that the football players’ assumption that there is no political cost to being rude to Russia is not true. The Syrian issue has already made that plain, but more worryingly the on going Russia bashing of the last decade has clearly convinced Putin that the west, Russia’s “natural ally”, is never going to be a true friend so he has launched a hugely expensive programme to rearm the Russian army and the prospects of a new Cold War in Europe are more than looming. The western politicians need to tone down their rhetoric and become more realistic in their attitude to Russia else all they will do is score an own goal.

Comment