Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a
nerve agent on March 4 on a park bench in Salisbury, England.
Skripal had been a Russian double agent, a spy who
turned over 300 names of Russian spies to British intelligence from 1995 to
2004. He was (not so surprisingly) arrested in Russia in 2004 and sentenced to
thirteen years in prison. He was released in a spy-swap in 2010, settled in the
UK and became a British citizen.
I see no reason to judge his moral character, although
some might reflect that in Kantian general terms what he did was rather bad.
(In precisely the same sense that it would be bad for a British citizen to
become a double agent for Russia.) Double agents are often punished harshly;
this is the way of the world.
Skripal posed no further threat to the Russian state.
There is at least one report that he sought to return to Russia recently. It’s
hard to comprehend why at this time Moscow would poison him and his young
daughter visiting from Russia with a nerve agent (Novichok) created in the USSR
from the 1970s but subsequently banned and destroyed under international
supervision. Cui bono? Who profits from
these poisonings?
In all the outrage, expressed in Britain and
elsewhere, about this attack, there is precious little analysis. The Russian
foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said, “This is nonsense. This has nothing to
do with us.” The group of military-grade nerve agents called Novichok have been
described in academic literature such that many different actors could produce
Novichok. The Russians say they have long since destroyed their stocks and
suggest the Czech Republic could be the source of the substance used.
But this attack on Skripal and his 33-year-old
daughter (by somebody) is highly useful to those who want to vilify Vladimir
Putin, just as the use of chemical weapons in Syria last April (by somebody)
was useful for those wanting to further vilify Bashar Assad and justify a U.S.
missile strike. Have you noticed that we live in an age of constant
disinformation, misinformation and “fake news”?
The most annoying thing is, once these unproven causal
relations are posited, embraced by cable news directors, such that they become
Truth, discussion centers solely on how the U.S. and allies should respond.
Why, pundits ask, didn’t Trump raise the issue in his last chat with Putin? Why
is Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn skeptical about the Russia link,
suggesting the Novichok could have been possessed by East European mafia? Why
isn’t everyone on board the obvious conclusion that Russia
did it?
Which would mean: Putin—facing no threat from this
traded ex-spy or his innocent daughter—ordered their killing, not because they
threatened him, but rather to manifest his deep cruelty and evil to the world
and his willingness to invite more and more sanctions against Russia. It
doesn’t make much sense.
Putin is ex-KGB. Very rational and calm. He knows all
about agents and double agents. I doubt that he is morally judgmental; he
understands why people do what Skripal did. He made a deal for the man’s
release eight years ago. His only motive to kill him at this point would be to
punish Skripal for past sins and warn others not to ever sell secrets. But why
would such a rational person incur global outrage by using a banned agent to
attempt to murder a British citizen and his Russian daughter, for no compelling
reason?
There are international legal processes for
investigating charges of use of chemical weapons. Russia has asked Britain to
observe them, providing evidence, samples, details. It urges adherence to rules
established by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
to establish the facts. But London has merely announced it knows Putin was
responsible for the state of these two on that park bench.
So the grand narrative now includes: Russian invasions
of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 (somehow becoming in the process
“adversaries” of the U.S.); alleged “threats” against the Baltic states;
multiple political assassinations; dictatorial control of the Russian polity,
economy and media; the accumulation of billions in illicit wealth. To say
nothing of his brash exposure of his naked chest to his fandom, his judo, his
hunting, his annoyingly high approval ratings.
I don’t know who attacked these two who now struggle
for their lives in hospital. But I know that the response means nothing good
for Russia, or the world. It is just another short chapter in the new Cold War,
and like the old war, basically irrational. What is Putin’s motive? Fareed
Zakaria says he’s trying to “undermine democracies” although why anyone would
want to do that in principle puzzles me. Putin is not the Heath Ledger’s Joker
in the Dark Knight Batman film, just
spreading chaos for its own sake.
Putin is not interested in heading a European movement
towards isolationist nationalisms but rather in thwarting NATO expansion plans,
which any rational Russian leader would want to do. To use the strange Skripal
incident as a rationale for further Cold War-type confrontation is more than
sad. Yet in a supposed display of solidarity with Britain, which has
kicked out Russian diplomats in response, the U.S. has suddenly expelled 60
Russian diplomats and closed down the Russian consulate in Seattle. Trump,
under constant criticism for not criticizing Putin, and not bringing up
election meddling or the Skripal affair in his recent phone call, has approved
the move without commenting on it.
If Trump planned for better relations with Russia to
be a hallmark of his presidency, he has been stymied by his foes’ insistence
that he express the traditional knee-jerk hostility. Why, they keep asking,
when he criticizes his own cabinet members, does he never say anything bad
about Putin? And from there, they proceed to the conclusion that the Russians
have stuff on Trump and are blackmailing him…into not being default-mode
hostile.
Trump is an ignorant man, uninterested in the world
intellectually, unable to invest time in reading, clueless about the historical
context of current crises. Part of his candidate persona was opposition to
recent U.S. wars (not so much because they’ve killed hundreds of thousands of
people, but because they have been expensive and not resulted in the U.S.
taking the oil). But he loves men in uniform, surrounds himself with them,
relies on them. These are men who grew up during the Cold War and can’t kick it
from their minds. Baby-sitting what they surely see (with McMaster) as a
“moron,” “idiot,” “dope,” “kindergartner” they see their minimal task the
responsibility to remind him that Russia is an adversary.
And so without even ascertaining the facts of the
Skripal incident, Washington expels all these diplomats. TV pundits applaud:
“absolutely the right thing to do, to defend western values” etc. , the system
succeeds in maintaining, even strengthening, Cold War Russophobic mentality.
The Skripal incident was a blessing to Trump’s critics, who want him with his
child-mind to embrace this mentality. We have to support Theresa May in
Britain, they told him. This was the first offensive use of a nerve agent
in Europe since World War II, they told him; very, very serious. A Russian
attack on the UK.
Whoever administered that agent triggered a wave of
sanctions on Russia, adding to those earlier imposed after the 2014 coup in
Ukraine and the Russian response. Russia will respond proportionately. Whoever
did this forces Trump to harden a political line against Russia. As his
presidency teeters in the winds of scandal, he is prone to more crazy moves
like the appointment of John Bolton. Trump’s sole saving grace in his campaign
was his advocacy of better ties with Russia. This immediately upon his election
became his chief fault. Pundits demand that he abandon any hope for
cordial relations with Putin’s Russia and properly denounce him for multiple
crimes.
Maybe that’s what’s in store. Trump’s unpredictable.
He agrees to meet Kim Jong Un then appoints Bolton (advocate of war with North
Korea, removed from negotiations with the DPRK after Pyongyang called him
“human scum”) as national security advisor. And why follow up that cordial call
to Putin with the expulsion of so many diplomats? What the hell. Doesn’t make
sense.
Had Hillary won, I would probably have found some
logic and predictability in her evil. With Trump the evil unfolds erratically.
He drops a MOAB on Afghanistan (or his generals do, without necessarily
consulting). He attacks a Syrian army base in response to an unproven sarin
attack. His cabinet members contradict him, espousing the gospel truth that
Russia and its allies such as Syria are threats to U.S. national security,
whatever that is. One feels that as his personal situation deteriorates, the
president will be more prone to lean on his generals, and listen to their
advice while also heeding the horrific Bolton. This is a very bad situation.
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