I wrote back in June about the shameful silence of the Obama administration during the mass street protests that greeted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent re-election victory as President of Iran. As White House spokesman Robert Gibbs ludicrously put it, the administration was “impressed by the vigorous debate and enthusiasm this election generated.” Or in Vice President Joe Biden’s words on NBC’s Meet the Press, describing Ahmadinejad’s victory – “we’re going to withhold comment… I mean we’re just waiting to see.”
Embarrassingly for Washington, even many European leaders showed more backbone in condemning the Iranian regime’s brutal suppression of protesters, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton humiliatingly outflanked by her French and German counterparts, who had no qualms about speaking out swiftly and firmly against the election result and the actions of the Iranian government.
In the six months that have followed, Barack Obama’s high-risk engagement strategy has simply encouraged more repression from the Mullahs, as well as ever greater levels of defiance over Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. As Con Coughlin noted in an excellent piece for The Wall Street Journal last month, Obama’s Iran diplomacy isn’t working:
Iranian human-rights groups say that since the government crackdown began in late June, at least 400 demonstrators have been killed while another 56 are unaccounted, which is several times higher than the official figures. The regime has established a chain of unofficial, makeshift prisons to deal with the protesters, where torture and rape are said to be commonplace. In Tehran alone, 37 young Iranian men and women are reported to have been raped by their captors.
Now once again huge street protests have flared up on the streets of Tehran and a number of other major cities, with several protesters shot dead this weekend by the security forces and Revolutionary Guards, reportedly including the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and dozens seriously injured. And again there is deafening silence from the Commander-in-Chief as well as his Secretary of State. And where is the president? On vacation in Hawaii, no doubt recuperating from his exertions driving forward the monstrous health care reform bill against the overwhelming will of the American public and without a shred of bipartisan support.
This is not however a time for fence-sitting by the leader of the free world. The president should be leading international condemnation of the suppression of pro-democracy protesters, and calling on the Iranian dictatorship to free the thousands of political dissidents held in its torture chambers. Just as Ronald Reagan confronted the evils of Soviet Communism, Barack Obama should support the aspirations of the Iranian people to be free. The United States has a major role to play in inspiring and advancing freedom in Iran, and the president should make it clear that the American people are on the side of those brave Iranians who are laying down their lives for liberty in the face of tyranny.
Have Russia’s oil and gas replaced Cossack squadrons and tank divisions as the means to intimidate Europe? Will pipeline routes create new dependencies in the 21st century which may force the NATO alliance come apart at the seams?
Nord Stream is a gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, with spurs to Germany’s neighbors. It will bypass Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and Poland – the traditional transit countries. Leaders from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) worry that this pipeline will allow Russia to cut off the gas to the “problem” countries, while keeping it flowing to its more affluent customers in Western Europe. This worry is particularly poignant given that Ukraine is set for presidential elections in January — and Russia has been slowly stepping up the pressure. Eastern and Central Europe has a lot of reasons to worry.
These fears are founded on historical experiences of Russian, Prussian and Austro-Hungarian conspiracies to carve up Poland; Nazi and Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia (1938 and 1968 respectively); and the brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956.
The recent television interview by President Dmitry Medvedev, where he spoke of Russian zone of “privileged interests” did not help. Eastern Europeans believe that the Kremlin uses its neighbors’ energy dependency as a foreign policy instrument to pressure states to adopt policies which comply with Russian national interests.
These concerns are growing by the prospect as the Nord Stream pipeline, which will snake along the Baltic Sea bottom, becoming a reality. Central and Eastern European (CEE) states believe will make them more vulnerable to Russia’s influence and leverage and decrease security of their energy supply.
To many in the CEE, therefore, Nord Stream is about much more than energy. As the Germans and other Western Europeans become more dependent on Russian gas, foreign policies or “national interests” grow more aligned with Russia. Significantly, Radek Sikorski, Polish foreign minister, once compared Nord Stream to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Russia and Germany, a treaty which contained a secret protocol which carved Poland into spheres of German and Soviet influence.
More recently, influential CEE politicians and intellectuals have voiced concerns about America’s commitment to the region in the open letter to President Obama, saying that Russia continues to use energy blackmail and other means to challenge their state sovereignty.
Unfortunately, Ukraine, the Baltic, Central and Western European countries have neglected measures to increase diversity of supply and internal energy efficiency, which could have reduced their vulnerabilities. Europe must step up to the plate and get its energy house in order based on free market principles.
Europe will depend on the Russian energy only if it stands disunited and allows Moscow to call the shots. The price of freedom is vigilance, always, everywhere — even in Europe.