Realpolitik in the 21st Century

Part I

When al Qaeda attacked the U.S. in 2001, very few Westerners had ever heard of Jihad, Islamic extremists etc. but most Americans supported President Bush's strong military response--very similar to the support given to President Roosevelt after the bombing of Pear Harbour in 1941. Then events took a strange twist. America invaded Iraq presumably because it harbored al Qaeda terrorists and had "weapons of mass destruction". The W.M.D.  turned out to be fiction and al Qaeda, like whack-a-mole, popped up elsewhere. But, beamed President Bush, we brought down a dictator. Great--another 20 dictators to go and the world will be safe for democracy. (Why U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair supported the invasion remains a deep mystery and what really happened to Dr. Kelly?)

Then into Afghanistan--surely al Qaeda lives here and if not, at least their brothers the Taliban. Ten years on and America leaves, like Britain 1880 and Russia in 1989. What happens now in Afghanistan is open to speculation but the experience had such a profound effect on American public opinion that U.S. foreign policy turned 180 degrees.

During the first Obama term as President, polls overwhelmingly showed that Americans were tired of spending billions on war and losing their warriors--for what? The media called it the fatigue syndrome. President Obama responded to this phenomenon by steering American foreign policy from "leading from the front" to working in concert with other nations and international institutions like the United Nations. Cooperation, reason and mutual respect replaced the days when an American president in Berlin ordered the Soviet leader to "tear down the wall".

Part II

Standing in the wings, vigilantly observing the last 20 years, waiting patiently to spring his own agenda was Vladimir Putin. Putin, a former KGB officer in East Germany, now leader of Russia, a man who deeply regretted the collapse of the Soviet Empire and despised the Americans who made it happen. Putin, a ruthless man who understands "realpolitik". His first test of Mr. Obama's resolve came with the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons to kill its own citizens. Most foreign governments expected the American president to bomb Assad's airfields in reprisal but Vladimir Putin had different plans. He proposed to form a partnership that would remove all of Syria's chemical weapons. In the spirit of cooperation, Mr Obama agreed. The result? No one knows about the weapons, but 6 months later, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea. So much for the partnership.

At first, the invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign country, appeared to be an overt act of aggression by a foreign power. Nations around the world condemned it. But then reports trickled in, particularly from BBC World Service, that the majority of the people in Crimea supported annexation. Soon it became clear that those reports were correct. How, after 60 years of being part of Ukraine, could the majority favour Russia? Very difficult to answer but in my country Canada, after 147 years of unity, the province of Quebec could elect a separatist government in the next election and leave the federation. Vladimir Putin picked a soft target--after all the majority rules that's democracy!

Where we go from here depends on Mr. Putin. He seems to have all the aces at the moment: oil and natural gas exported to energy--hungry Europe, an American President who understands compromise and cooperation but not realpolitik and an American public tired of war. In Warsaw (March 17, 2014) vice President Joseph Biden said Putin's seizure of Crimea was "flawed logic". Really? Try to sell that philosophical principle to the people of Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Czech who lived under the cold hand of the Soviet Empire. Now that was realpolitik.