Which Western leader has been best at dealing with Putin? It has not been any American or German in recent decades. In both countries bipartisan folly has abounded.
George W. Bush understood nothing, being exceedingly complimentary to Putin. In June 2001, Bush said: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy... I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”
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In September 2003, Bush claimed: “I respect President Putin’s vision for Russia: a country at peace within its borders, with its neighbors and with the world, a country in which democracy and freedom and rule of law thrive.”
Even after Putin’s famous anti-American February 2007 speech in Munich, Bush stated in July 2007: “But one thing I’ve found about Vladimir Putin is that he is consistent, transparent, honest... I know he’s always telling me the truth.”
At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, Putin had declared that Ukraine was not a country. Even so, Bush went to see Putin in Sochi in the most conciliatory fashion. Little wonder that Putin invaded Georgia four months later.
Barack Obama made the opposite mistakes. He insulted Putin publicly but did nothing to stop him.
In the presidential campaign in 2012, Obama ridiculed Mitt Romney’s claim that Russia was the United States’ principal geopolitical foe, stating that he was considerably more concerned about the threat of a terrorist nuclear bomb attack on New York.
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Putin listened and annexed Crimea in March 2014.
Obama imposed sanctions on Russia, but he said that the US was committed to the defense of its NATO allies but not to that of non-member states along Russia’s borders. He insisted: “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness.”
Obama couldn’t care less about Ukraine. He never visited it and refused to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty. Although most of his administration, including Vice President Joe Biden, asked him to send arms to Ukraine, he prohibited it. Obama appears to have been unable to understand the danger of Russia. Absurdly, he liked Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, now one of the foremost advocates of genocide in Ukraine.
The German bipartisan folly on Russia has been different, but also harmful. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder supported Putin wholeheartedly and approved of Putin’s favorite project, Nord Stream, a gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, after he had lost the elections in 2005.
A few weeks later, he became the handsomely paid chairman of the Nord Stream company board. Ever since, Schröder, as a paid Putin servant, has claimed that Putin is always right – in the wars in Georgia and Ukraine – and even being a “crystal clear democrat.” Shockingly, the German social democratic party has not expelled Schröder.
The victory of Angela Merkel and her Christian Democrats in 2005 came as a relief, but she failed to stand up to Putin. Although she grew up in East Germany and learned good Russian, she appears to have understood as little of Putin as Obama.
All along, she was afraid of “provoking” Putin, not comprehending that nothing provokes Putin as much as appeasement. She made every possible mistake, believing in the old German social democratic folly of Ostpolitik, believing that economic integration would lead to democratization of Russia.
Merkel could have stopped Schröder’s morally dubious decision to allow Nord Stream 1, but she did not. Next, she fought tooth and nail for the doubling of the gas pipeline with Nord Stream 2, mendaciously claiming that it was a purely commercial project, while Russia had designed it as a geopolitical blow against Ukraine.
At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, she and French President Nicolas Sarkozy blocked membership action plans for Ukraine and Georgia. She still defends that, although only NATO association could have salvaged these two countries from Russian aggression.
After Russia had attacked Ukraine in 2014, Obama and Merkel agreed not to allow any arms deliveries to Ukraine, because that could provoke Putin.
For years, Merkel played appeaser, insisting on meaningless Minsk negotiations with Russia about Ukraine, giving Putin respite to prepare for a bigger war. She minimized German military spending and turned the German Wehrmacht into a joke. Amazingly, Merkel claims to get upset when she realized that Putin lied to her.
What world did she live in? Don’t believe anything until the Kremlin has denied it!
Instead, Sauli Niinistö, Finland’s popular conservative president from 2012 to 2024, stands out as the wisest Western leader on Russia.
Niinistö maintained regular personal and phone contacts with Putin. He spoke his mind firmly and correctly, but privately and he made no unnecessary concessions to Putin.
In his New Year message for 2022, Niinistö opened the door for Finland’s accession to NATO, and Finland applied swiftly in May 2022 with a massive popular majority. One year later, Finland had joined NATO, ably pre-empting Russian protests.
Admittedly, Russia tried multiple provocations, from buying Finnish islands, to cutting Finnish underwater cables to flood Finland with Middle Eastern “refugees.”
These are the things Russia does, but the Finnish government understands that and acts firmly.
It prohibited Russian purchases of sensitive land and it closed all border crossings to Russia.
Unlike Germany, it has a strong defense. Finland does what Theodore Roosevelt recommended: “speak softly and carry a big stick!”
The West needs to move on from the incompetence on Russia characteristic of the US, Germany, and France, eminently depicted by Sylvie Kauffmann in her book “Les Aveuglés” (“The Blindsided”).
The size of your country does not determine the quality of your foreign policy thinking. The West would be well advised to listen to wise politicians from Finland or Estonia rather than fools in Washington, Berlin or Paris.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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