<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbVisiting Russia in the 1990s after its humiliation in the cold war, I found it a sad and dangerous place, not unlike Germany after its defeat in 1918. Yet it was as if no western diplomat had read the Treaty of Versailles, or noted Keynes’ warning of the consequences. Much was done to build economic ties between west and east. Energy, investment and contacts flowed back and forth. Western companies cavorted with oligarchs and kleptocrats. Money stolen from the Russian people gushed into the wildcat banks of Cyprus and London and into the Swiss and British property markets. London must rank as the greatest receiver of stolen goods of all time.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbSo far, so good. But at the same time, Nato and the EU rolled forward over eastern Europe to the Russian frontier, as if aiming its guns at the gates of Moscow to taunt Russia for its defeat. Nato apologists argued that any country, be it Latvia, Georgia or Ukraine, should be free to join whichever club it liked (albeit objecting when Crimeans voted the other way). Yet only fools can ignore the fact of Russian pride and fear of encirclement. The post-cold war provocation of Putin was good public relations, but it was rotten history.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbWe are told that east Ukraine is one of many potential explosions that Putin could trigger along the Russian border, from the Baltic to the Caucasus. Everywhere are Russian minorities (or majorities) that could clash with local non-Russians. Europe’s leaders have no conceivable interest in stirring up such conflicts and yet that was precisely what they sought to do in Georgia and Ukraine.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbFor Britain or America to try and lay down the law along Russia’s extensive borders is barking mad; to use a tragic plane accident as casus belli equally so. It is nothing but breast-beating machismo. Yet again we lurch towards the woolly-headed daftness of economic sanctions. It is beyond hypocrisy for the west to demand sanctions against Moscow when it happily buys Russian gas and sells Russia guns, ships, Knightsbridge flats and places at Eton. These double-standards are of our hand. According to the commons committee on arms exports, Britain currently sells arms worth \u00a312bn to 27 countries listed by the Foreign Office as of human rights concern. It cannot enhance world peace to make Europe’s energy more expensive, Russian loans harder to get or Harrods less accessible to Putin’s cronies. Putin could not care less.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbEconomic sanctions are to modern statecraft what mounted lancers were to war in the trenches: magnificent but useless. Their continued deployment defies study after study showing them as cosmetic, cruel or counterproductive. Yet how many times has Cameron emerged from his Cobra bunker to threaten tighter economic sanctions against some rogue regime, to absolutely no effect? The rhetoric is always the same, to send a message, show resolve, impose a price, not to let wrongdoing go unpunished. It is as if Britain were some superannuated school prefect.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThe emergence in Moscow in the 1990s of a tough, philistine nationalist like Putin was a near certainty. He may be a nasty piece of work but he runs what it is still a powerful nation. Mocking his pride and testing his paranoia is for fools. The one country that knows this and can keep a sane head on its shoulders is run by Angela Merkel. Thank goodness for Germany.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 26 juillet 2014 \u00e0 14H03<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sur la Russie, sagesse-Syst\u00e8me et n\u00e9anmoins britannique M\u00eame s’il a certaines vertus d’un esprit ind\u00e9pendant, Simon Jenkins, le chroniqueur du Guardian, reste profond\u00e9ment britannique. Ses jugements, qui prennent beaucoup de libert\u00e9 vis-\u00e0-vis de la ligne du Parti, n’en sont pas moins attentifs aux int\u00e9r\u00eats de son pays, ils montrent un esprit de solidarit\u00e9 du type-bloc… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[8113,4954,916,2730,1296],"class_list":["post-75426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breves-de-crise","tag-arrangement","tag-jenkins","tag-poutine","tag-russie","tag-ukraine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}