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19-10-2015, 04:30 PM
Vladimir Putin's unlikely new friends in Europe
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[img=620x0]http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/k/a/e/h/w/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gkcbbd.png/1445228318952.jpg[/img]Russian President Vladimir Putin, second from left, and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana, Kazakhstan. Alexei Nikolsky
by Anne Applebaum
The World Public Forum's "Dialogue of Civilisations" meets every year on the Greek island of Rhodes, under the patronage of its founder, Vladimir Yakunin. Until recently, Yakunin was the chairman of Russian state railways and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now he has been ejected from Putin's inner circle, but he still opened the forum in Rhodes this month.
When asked, he angrily denied rumours that a hushed-up corruption scandal had led to his fall from grace. Only an "idiot or a provocateur" could possibly say such a thing, he told a reporter from Politico. A few minutes later, he showed the same reporter his €140,000 watch. "If you want to buy something, what's wrong with that?"
The forum also continued, as in the past, to gather people willing to endorse Russian views of the world. There was Vaclav Klaus, the former Czech president, who called Putin's Syrian adventure a "logical step." There was John Laughland, political director of a Russian-backed think tank, the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, who argued that the European Union was conceived by the CIA, as part of a US plot to subjugate Europe. Plus dozens of others, from all around the world.
NO MORE 'FRONT ORGANISATIONS'
Once upon a time, we had a vocabulary to describe organisations like the forum or the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation. During the Cold War, we spoke of "front organisations," such as the World Federation of Trade Unions or even the American communist party, which were allegedly independent but secretly supported with Soviet money. Such groups were run by "agents of influence" - people who knowingly promoted the interests of the Soviet Union in the West - or "useful idiots," people who did the same thing, unconsciously, usually out of ideological naivety.
But times have changed, and direct parallels cannot be drawn. Klaus, who is not an idiot, doesn't hide his financial links to Moscow. The forum does not hide its links to Russia, either. Instead, they both seek openly to legitimise the anti-NATO, anti-European, anti-Western views of the Russian elite. In a bid for respectability, the forum's website even displays the many logos of its distinguished "partner" organisations from around the world. Not all of these partnerships are real: A spokesman for the Council on Foreign Relations, whose logo appears on the site, told me that it does not support the forum at all. But if you were just glancing, you'd never know it.
POLITICIANS SUPPORTING PUTIN
Even harder to categorise are the actions of some genuinely legitimate politicians. For example, Andrej Babis, the Czech finance minister, and Milos Zeman, the Czech president - once a regular at the forum - frequently echo or repeat Russian slogans, as occasionally does the Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico. In August and early September of 2014, all three argued against Western sanctions on Russia, using similar language. Zeman called them "ineffective," Babis called them "nonsense" and Fico called them "pointless." Later, they shifted their rhetoric, and began to point to the refugee crisis and radical Islam as the "real" threats to Europe. "The refugee crisis threatens the Czech republic more than Russia," said Babis in September. "Islamist terrorism is a greater threat to Europe than Russia," said Zeman in May.
Like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, all of these men have domestic political reasons for offering verbal support to Putin: They want to ride the anti-European Union, anti-"establishment" wave that has washed across all of Europe, and to capitalise on economic discontent. Since the E.U. began, politicians have long found it useful to blame "Brussels" for problems that they cannot fix. But there may be other motives, too. Zeman's close adviser ran the office of Lukoil, the Russian oil company. Babis, who is also one of the Czech Republic's richest men, owns companies that consume a good deal of Russian gas.
But I shouldn't unfairly single out Central Europeans, for there are many other Europeans who support Russian foreign policy with similarly mixed motives. Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi maintains both a political and a financial relationship with Putin. So does Gerhard Schroeder, the former chancellor of Germany. These men aren't idiots either - but neither are they secret agents, spies or traitors. At the same time, they are working steadily, in their own ways, to undermine Western security and support the spread of Russian authoritarianism in Eastern Europe as well as the Middle East. So what do we call them? We need a new vocabulary for a new era.
Anne Applebaum is a journalist the author of Iron Curtain: the crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956.
The Washington Post
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[img=620x0]http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/k/a/e/h/w/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gkcbbd.png/1445228318952.jpg[/img]Russian President Vladimir Putin, second from left, and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana, Kazakhstan. Alexei Nikolsky
by Anne Applebaum
The World Public Forum's "Dialogue of Civilisations" meets every year on the Greek island of Rhodes, under the patronage of its founder, Vladimir Yakunin. Until recently, Yakunin was the chairman of Russian state railways and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now he has been ejected from Putin's inner circle, but he still opened the forum in Rhodes this month.
When asked, he angrily denied rumours that a hushed-up corruption scandal had led to his fall from grace. Only an "idiot or a provocateur" could possibly say such a thing, he told a reporter from Politico. A few minutes later, he showed the same reporter his €140,000 watch. "If you want to buy something, what's wrong with that?"
The forum also continued, as in the past, to gather people willing to endorse Russian views of the world. There was Vaclav Klaus, the former Czech president, who called Putin's Syrian adventure a "logical step." There was John Laughland, political director of a Russian-backed think tank, the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, who argued that the European Union was conceived by the CIA, as part of a US plot to subjugate Europe. Plus dozens of others, from all around the world.
NO MORE 'FRONT ORGANISATIONS'
Once upon a time, we had a vocabulary to describe organisations like the forum or the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation. During the Cold War, we spoke of "front organisations," such as the World Federation of Trade Unions or even the American communist party, which were allegedly independent but secretly supported with Soviet money. Such groups were run by "agents of influence" - people who knowingly promoted the interests of the Soviet Union in the West - or "useful idiots," people who did the same thing, unconsciously, usually out of ideological naivety.
But times have changed, and direct parallels cannot be drawn. Klaus, who is not an idiot, doesn't hide his financial links to Moscow. The forum does not hide its links to Russia, either. Instead, they both seek openly to legitimise the anti-NATO, anti-European, anti-Western views of the Russian elite. In a bid for respectability, the forum's website even displays the many logos of its distinguished "partner" organisations from around the world. Not all of these partnerships are real: A spokesman for the Council on Foreign Relations, whose logo appears on the site, told me that it does not support the forum at all. But if you were just glancing, you'd never know it.
POLITICIANS SUPPORTING PUTIN
Even harder to categorise are the actions of some genuinely legitimate politicians. For example, Andrej Babis, the Czech finance minister, and Milos Zeman, the Czech president - once a regular at the forum - frequently echo or repeat Russian slogans, as occasionally does the Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico. In August and early September of 2014, all three argued against Western sanctions on Russia, using similar language. Zeman called them "ineffective," Babis called them "nonsense" and Fico called them "pointless." Later, they shifted their rhetoric, and began to point to the refugee crisis and radical Islam as the "real" threats to Europe. "The refugee crisis threatens the Czech republic more than Russia," said Babis in September. "Islamist terrorism is a greater threat to Europe than Russia," said Zeman in May.
Like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, all of these men have domestic political reasons for offering verbal support to Putin: They want to ride the anti-European Union, anti-"establishment" wave that has washed across all of Europe, and to capitalise on economic discontent. Since the E.U. began, politicians have long found it useful to blame "Brussels" for problems that they cannot fix. But there may be other motives, too. Zeman's close adviser ran the office of Lukoil, the Russian oil company. Babis, who is also one of the Czech Republic's richest men, owns companies that consume a good deal of Russian gas.
But I shouldn't unfairly single out Central Europeans, for there are many other Europeans who support Russian foreign policy with similarly mixed motives. Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi maintains both a political and a financial relationship with Putin. So does Gerhard Schroeder, the former chancellor of Germany. These men aren't idiots either - but neither are they secret agents, spies or traitors. At the same time, they are working steadily, in their own ways, to undermine Western security and support the spread of Russian authoritarianism in Eastern Europe as well as the Middle East. So what do we call them? We need a new vocabulary for a new era.
Anne Applebaum is a journalist the author of Iron Curtain: the crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956.
The Washington Post