The Coronavirus Kings
July 31, 2020
Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Vladimir Putin gather via Zoom for a meeting of the Pandemic Presidents. But who's the top Corona King of them all? #PUPPETREGIME
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Was fallen U.S. Marine a victim of Russian bounty? Chris Coons on protecting US troops
July 19, 2020
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons discusses reports of a Russian plot to provide bounty to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan targeting American troops. Coons tells the story of Delaware native Christopher Slutman, a Marine Corps staff sergeant and New York City firefighter, killed in April of 2019 after a roadside bomb detonated beside his armored vehicle. U.S. officials are now investigating whether his murder was linked to the alleged Russian plot.
afghanistan
bounty arrangement
bounty briefing
bounty intelligence
bounty suspicions
chris coons
christopher slutman
coalition troops
donald trump
geopolitics
global politics
gzero world
ian bremmer
international affairs
marine crops
marine death
press accounts
putin
russian bounty
russian plot
taliban fighters
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Belarus protesters vs “Psycho 3%”
July 16, 2020
What will it take to bring change to the one European country where nothing ever changes? Alexander Lukashenko has led Belarus long enough to consider his Russian neighbor Vladimir Putin "the new guy." Since 1994, he's beaten back periodic calls for political change. That's now getting harder.
<p><strong>Years ago, Lukashenko was popular.</strong> Many Belarusians were gratified that, in the years that followed Soviet collapse, their country avoided the economic chaos of Boris Yeltsin's Russia and the political upheavals in next-door Ukraine.</p><p><strong>But over time, his popularity has withered</strong>, particularly in Minsk, the country's capital. <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/belarus-protests-lukashenko/a-54178490" target="_blank">Protesters</a>, who have gathered in city streets in recent days in historically high numbers, have dubbed their president "Psycho 3%."</p><p>The "psycho" part refers to his insistence that the coronavirus is merely a "psychosis" that can be managed with <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-belarus/nobody-will-die-from-coronavirus-in-belarus-says-president-idUSKCN21V1PK" target="_blank">saunas and vodka</a>. Lukashenko rejected calls for a COVID lockdown in his country with a warning that it would leave citizens without enough to eat. (Not a ringing self-endorsement for a man who has been in power for 26 years.)</p><p>The "3%" refers to his approval rating in a recent informal <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-endgame-for-belarus-leader-alexander-lukashenko/a-53955072" target="_blank">online poll</a>. A more <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/world/europe/belarus-lukashenko-russia.html" target="_blank">credible survey</a> from the Belarus Academy of Sciences, conducted in April and leaked to Western media, suggested that about one-third of Belarusians still trust Lukashenko, but that's not impressive in a country where the president controls nearly all traditional media. The "Psycho 3%" label has even become a <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/belarusians-poke-fun-at-president-slipping-support/30690561.html" target="_blank">fashion item</a> among protesters.</p><p><strong>Outsiders are watching.</strong> Russian officials remain interested in Lukashenko's fate because they believe Belarus remains a bulwark against the further expansion of Europe toward Russia's border. Europe takes an interest, because Belarus has often been labelled "Europe's last dictatorship" — and because Belarus has long been a transit point for Russian oil headed West.</p><p><strong>Time to vote.</strong> Lukashenko's immediate problem is a national election on August 9, and his campaign strategy might look familiar to Mr Putin. For example, Lukashenko is now a lock to win a sixth term, in part because two leading opposition figures, Valery Tsepkalo and Viktor Babariko, have been barred from running.</p><p>Babariko, the stronger of the two candidates, faces money-laundering charges that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calls "<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53411735" target="_blank">politically motivated</a>." Tsepkalo had more than half the signatures on his election petition invalidated. In Belarus, as in other authoritarian states, the law exists not to protect the people from the excesses of their leaders but the other way around.</p><p>These moves then triggered protests that quickly got the president's attention. When the Psycho 3% idea became a popular internet meme, Lukashenko shut down mobile internet connections nationwide, and his police then hit the streets of Minsk to beat some protesters and arrest others. A few journalists went to jail, too.</p><p><strong>Pointing fingers at Russia.</strong> The interesting twist on Lukashenko's new campaign messaging is that he claims his strongest rivals are agents of the Russian government — Babariko is the former head of a Russian-owned bank, and Tsepkalo has been linked to a deep-pocketed Russian oligarch.</p><p>This is the latest sign of friction in the long-complicated relationship between Minsk and Moscow. Putin has pressured Lukashenko to lead Belarus into a "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/world/europe/belarus-lukashenko-russia.html" target="_blank">Union State</a>" with Russia, while Lukashenko fears that "union" might make Belarus into a Russian province. Russia has long shipped fuel to Belarus at a discounted price that Belarus can then sell to Europeans at a markup. A lack of progress on the union project has ended that economic support, at least for now.</p><p><strong>The enemy within.</strong> But like all long-time dictators, Lukashenko's greatest challenge may be <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2020/06/25/belarus-is-no-longer-scared-of-lukashenko-europe-s-last-dictator-will-fall-view" target="_blank">demographic</a>. No Belarussian under 30 can remember life without him, and the number of older voters, his most reliable backers, is dwindling.</p><p>He also has a more immediate worry: Any dictator can rest easy if he believes that soldiers and police will follow his orders to pull the trigger. But Lukashenko can't help but notice that the Psycho 3% internet memes include photos of anonymous protesters in both <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-endgame-for-belarus-leader-alexander-lukashenko/a-53955072" target="_blank">police and army uniforms</a>.</p><p>Unfortunately for Lukashenko, not even Europe's last dictator can shut down the internet forever.</p>
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Quick Take: How Putin became Russia's "forever leader"
July 02, 2020
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Yes, still in the middle of coronavirus, but thought I'd give you a couple of my thoughts on Russia. Part of the world that I cut my teeth on as a political scientist, way back in the eighties and nineties. And now Putin is a president for life, or at least he gets to be president until 2036, gets another couple of terms. The constitutional amendments that he reluctantly allowed to be voted on across Russia, passed easily, some 76% approval. And so now both in China and in Russia, term limits get left behind all for the good of the people, of course. So that they can have the leaders that they truly deserve. Yes, I'm being a little sarcastic here. It's sad to see. It's sad to see that the Americans won the Cold War in part, not just because we had a stronger economy and a stronger military, but actually because our ideas were better.
Because when those living in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Block looked at the West, and looked at the United States, they saw that our liberties, they saw that our economy, was something that they aspired to and was actually a much better way of giving opportunities to the average citizen, than their own system afforded. And that helped them to rise up against it.
<p>That's what led to the collapse. That's why the West won the Cold War. And yet now, the Russians are now being governed by a leader who has fewer checks on his power internally, frankly, than Khrushchev or Brezhnev did in the Soviet days. And who is strongly opposed to the United States, to the transatlantic Alliance, and is doing everything he can to try to take advantage of divisions. Both inside those societies and across the West in general. First of all, I mean, do I accept that the Russian people actually want Putin? No, not really. Independent election institutions there said that the elections themselves, this referendum was rigged. It wasn't free and fair. There is of course, virtually no open media in Russia. The only opposition political parties are those that are allowed by the Kremlin to exist. So it's functionally a one party state. Also, in a number of regions, you had local authorities that were offering prizes to get people to go and vote.</p><p>I mean, the whole thing was kind of a charade. It's interesting that Putin thinks you need to even bother with a vote. Because I mean, it's not as if he actually, in any way, is accountable to his people. But he does think that the rubber stamp provides some level of legitimacy. It was like the show trials, in the old Soviet days. You wanted to pretend that people were getting a trial, because it shows that the people do indeed claim that this is their leader. And so you don't have a chance to do anything about it because of course, yeah, you went out and voted for Putin, didn't you, didn't you? But I mean, I think the more depressing thing is that the fact that the West had opportunities when the Soviet Union collapsed, you had president Yeltsin and a cabinet that really wanted to work with the West and the United States.</p><p>They were interested in joining NATO. They were interested in a Western free market. And rather than the United States, and the West providing the kind of economic benefits that would have allowed them to more functionally stand up their economy, we instead gave them some advice on shock therapy that they weren't ready for. And so anyone that was attached to power was facilitated in basically stripping clean, any capital inputs that existed in the country, to taking them out or keeping them for themselves.</p><p>You also had NATO enlargement that went right up to Russia's borders, but the NATO Russia Council that was established to give the Russians an opportunity to see what Russian membership would be like, was a worthless and weak organization. And there was never any intention of really allowing the Russians, and even the Ukrainians and Georgians, given candidates status. You had talk of multiple pipelines and integrating the Russian economy, but what the Americans really did was Baku-Ceyhan and worked very hard to build pipelines to the Caucasus, to central Asia, across the Caspian that would bring that energy to the West and bypass the Russians.</p><p>You had European Union enlargement, and an unwillingness to allow the Ukrainians, for example, to be in both the Eurasian economic union and to have candidate status in the European union. It was forced to be either one or the other. That was something demanded by Poland, went along by the Germans and the French, and made it an awful lot harder for the Ukrainians to get their economy in order. All of those things, making the Russians feel like the West was interested in much more influence in the former Russian sphere of influence, but wasn't really very interested in bringing the Russians along themselves at all. Now, I don't think this was done intentionally. I don't think the Americans wanted the Russians to be in permanent decline. I don't think they were trying to rub their nose in ignominy and defeat. Rather, I think the Americans didn't care.</p><p>I think the level of interest in helping to rebuild the Russians was pretty low. This was already a country that had forgotten World War Two. This was not a country that was interested in providing lots of cash for defeated enemies. Instead, it was looking for a peace dividend. That's the way it was discussed under Clinton. You're not fighting the Cold War, that money can go to the United States, and you don't have to think longterm about the benefits you might have from having a more integrated global order. Well, either way, I mean yeah, look. It wasn't just the Americans fault, of course. Russia was badly governed. Yeltsin turned out to be a drunkard, who towards the end, barely showed up to make decisions. A lot of people around him were ineffective and there were lots of claims of corruption. And when Putin shows up to take over, and he's seen as somebody who's both like a nationalist and a patriot, but also had worked with Sobchak when he was back in not pre-Petersburg, Leningrad as a deputy mayor.</p><p>So maybe he'd do a little bit of both. Everyone came on board and said, "Hey, he's not the guy that we'd love, but he's good enough." And in fact, back then, I even wrote a piece with Boris Nemtsov, who was later assassinated outside the Kremlin, just a few years ago saying, "Well, Putin is not the guy that we'd love, but given the situation we're in right now, probably the best we can do." But that's kind of a sad story. The pragmatism that's required when you make mistakes and when opportunities aren't taken on and instead they're lost. And here we are in 2020, we have President Trump in the United States. We have an election that also will be claimed to be rigged by an awful lot of people. We have American institutions that are no longer seen as exemplars for many other democracies around the world, not to mention an authoritarian state like Russia.</p> The average Russian citizen may not be happy about Putin for life, but they don't feel like they have anyone else to look to either, that would be a better model for them. I mean, yeah, sure. Maybe Canada, but it's not exactly a big enough and powerful enough to move the needle. So just worth talking about that as we think back to 1991, and Soviet collapse and we look ahead to what's happening. Just today as Putin is leader forever. See how we got here, and a little bit of why humanity should be doing better.
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President Trump is in a(nother) Russia bind
July 02, 2020
It's been a bad week at the office for President Trump. Not only have coronavirus cases in the US been soaring, but The New York Times' bombshell report alleging that Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan has continued to make headlines. While details about the extent of the Russian bounty program — and how long it's been going on for — remain murky, President Trump now finds himself in a massive bind on this issue.
Here are three key questions to consider.
<p><strong>First, what did he know and when did he know it? </strong>The media has been abuzz with competing narratives of what briefings President Trump received from the intelligence community, and when he received them. </p><p>Some reports say that presidential aides <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/trump-intel-briefings-russia/index.html" target="_blank">opted </a>not to brief President Trump on the Russian bounties, knowing Trump's propensity to rebuff intelligence that implicates President Putin, with whom he's famously tried to cultivate close ties. </p><p>Other reports claim that President Trump <em>was</em> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/30/politics/white-house-russia-afghanistan-bounties-intelligence-2019/index.html" target="_blank">briefed </a>on the matter as far back as 2019, but forgot about it, or worse, that he chose to do nothing and gave the Kremlin carte blanche to continue its activities in Afghanistan. </p><p>Either way, it's a very bad look for a president who has <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-american-veterans-amvets-75th-national-convention-louisville-ky/" target="_blank">painted himself </a>as <em>the </em>ally of the military community, a pillar of the Republican base. </p><p><strong>Second, what might the American response be?</strong> The alleged Russian bounty scheme follows a precedent of the Kremlin flouting international norms and human rights — and bating the United States to respond. Less than five months out from November's election, this latest crisis presents a Catch-22 for President Trump: If he does something merely symbolic to push back against Russia, he could walk away looking weak and ineffectual at a time when a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/05/21/americans-give-higher-ratings-to-south-korea-and-germany-than-u-s-for-dealing-with-coronavirus/" target="_blank">majority </a>of Americans say that the President's handling of the global health crisis has been…weak and ineffectual. </p><p>But if Trump goes big to prove to his detractors that he's not in Putin's pocket — say through serious sanctions, a cyber-response, or even something on the ground in Afghanistan — he risks significant escalation with Moscow at a time when relations between the two countries are at their lowest point since the Cold War. (Consider that the US and Russia, who together possess 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, are currently haggling over how, and if, to extend the<a href="https://www.gzeromedia.com/the-start-of-the-end-for-arms-control" target="_self"> New START treaty</a>, set to expire in February, which<a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/NewSTART" target="_blank"> limits</a> the number of long-range nuclear weapons that each side can deploy.) </p><p>Indeed, no one knows how the White House will respond, but if President Trump's <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1278299171523637254" target="_blank">twitter </a>feed offers some <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1278284552679624705" target="_blank">insight</a> into his thinking — he's called the allegations a politically-motivated "hoax" — he seems reluctant to respond forcefully. </p><p><strong>Third, what will the political fallout for President Trump be? </strong>This crisis comes at a time when the national security establishment, traditionally removed from everyday politics, has expressed increasing <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/mattis-trump-protests-military-generals-george-floyd-lafayette-park.html" target="_blank">discontent </a>with the Trump presidency. Meanwhile, the episode could also be straining Trump's ties with the <a href="https://www.pilotonline.com/military/vp-nw-trump-bounties-military-community-20200701-bfbzuzrhirarnbfmdzeq4knm2i-story.html" target="_blank">military community, </a>many of whom are stalwart Republicans. It's too early to say what things will look like by November, but any erosion of support from veterans, particularly in crucial swing states where they live in large numbers (think Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina) could be bad news for President Trump. </p><p>Still, President Trump has wriggled out of countless scandals, including ones that seemed to position him uncomfortably close to Russia. Can he pull it off again? </p>
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