Category: Editorial

IT’S EASY to conclude that Vladi­mir Putin’s passionate defense of Russia’s takeover of Crimea “just didn’t jibe with reality,” as Secretary of State John F. Kerry put it. In a speech on Tuesday, the Russian ruler repeated mendacious charges that the Ukrainian government had been hijacked by “nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites”; voiced his paranoid conspiracy theory about supposed Western sponsorship of popular revolutions, including the Arab Spring; and brazenly compared Russia’s abrupt annexation of Ukraine with the reunification of Germany.

It’s necessary, however, to take some of what Mr. Putin said seriously, because of the implicit threat it poses to European and global security. Mr. Putin advanced a radical and dangerous argument: that the collapse of the Soviet Union left “the Russian nation” as “one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.” That, he suggested, gave Moscow the right to intervene in Crimea, and, by extension, anywhere it considers ethnic Russians or their culture to be threatened.

Mr. Putin’s doctrine would justify Russian meddling not just in other parts of Ukraine — he claimed that “large sections of the historical south of Russia” now “form the southeast of Ukraine” — but also in other former Soviet republics with substantial populations of ethnic Russians.

Western officials seem to be betting that Mr. Putin won’t dare to extend his aggression beyond Crimea. But then, just last week they were saying they did not expect Moscow to move quickly on Crimean annexation. The Obama administration and its European allies have been too slow to grasp that Mr. Putin is bent on upending the post-Cold War order in Europe and reversing Russia’s loss of dominion over Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Worse, some in and outside of Western governments may be feeding Mr. Putin’s imperialism by rushing to concede “Russian interests” in Eurasia. President Obama and Mr. Kerry are among those who have said they recognize such “interests” in Ukraine. But the fact that there are ethnic Russians in a country should not give Mr. Putin’s regime a privileged say in its affairs. The idea that areas populated by Russians must be ruled or protected by Moscow is less the ideology of the 19th century, as Mr. Kerry would have it, than of the 1930s.

Mr. Putin’s claim that Russia should have a say in the political orientation of its neighbors, and whether they join alliances such as the European Union or NATO, is equally unacceptable. (Mr. Kerry recently renounced, gratuitously, any such U.S. claim on Latin American states, several of which have close military ties with Russia.) Perversely, some in the West are echoing Mr. Putin’s argument that his aggression is an understandable response to Western encouragement of the former Soviet Bloc states that embraced democracy and free markets and sought NATO and European Union membership.

The two countries that Mr. Putin has invaded since 2008, Ukraine and Georgia, were rejected for NATO membership action plans that year. Can it be argued seriously that Estonia and Latvia, with their large Russian minorities, now would be less vulnerable to Russian aggression had they had not joined NATO? The crisis in Europe has come about not because Western institutions expanded, but because they did not fulfill their post-Cold War promise of “a Europe whole and free.”

– Washington Post

The technical business of managing Internet addresses and domain names has often taken on geopolitical overtones. About a year ago, some countries including Russia and China tried to pressure the United States into relinquishing management and coordination of web addresses to the telecommunications arm of the United Nations.

The Internet’s domain name system, which provides unique identifiers to websites, has served the world well. It has made it possible for people to find sites no matter where they are. That is why efforts to change the system — managed by a nonprofit organization under a contract from the Department of Commerce — should be viewed skeptically, particularly when they come from governments that do not respect the freedom of expression.

To critics of the United States, American oversight of the system has become a pretext to demand change, and even more so in light of Edward Snowden’s revelations about government surveillance. But many of the ideas proposed by other countries are potentially troubling. Handing control of the system to the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, as China and Russia proposed in late 2012, could create an opening for countries to try and squelch speech by, for example, demanding that dissident websites not be allowed to register domain names.

In an effort to ensure that the administration of Internet addresses is never politicized in that way, the Commerce Department last week said that, starting in September 2015, it would hand oversight of the domain name system to a global community of businesses, public interest groups, academics, businesses and governments. It has not said how this large, and potentially unwieldy, group would conduct its activities. But department officials have said that they intend to make sure that no harm comes to the openness, security and stability that are essential to the functioning of the Internet.

Details of the change will be worked out in the coming months in discussions convened by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the contractor that manages the address system for the Commerce Department. The first meeting is scheduled to take place in Singapore next week. The department has said it will not support any change that would replace the current system with a government-led or intergovernmental body.

From its early days as a network built and used by American government and university scientists, the Internet has evolved into a vital utility used by billions of people around the world. What’s needed now is a clear examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the current system of Internet addresses and how it can be made better.

– New York Times

•State chief executives are increasingly in the line of fire

One of the more unfortunate side-effects of the calamitous decline in national security during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan has been the increasing frequency and impunity with which armed groups have targeted state governors.

The governors of Benue, Borno and Yobe states have all come under fire from well-armed groups which have demonstrated a troublingly competent deployment of intelligence and tactics. Usually, the attacks are launched at governors’ convoys while they are in transit and often involve sustained gun battles. The most recent case involved the Adamawa State governor, Murtala Nyako, although the army has explained that its soldiers had been mistaken for Boko Haram insurgents.

It appears that many of these onslaughts can be traced to the Boko Haram insurgency in north-eastern Nigeria, as well as state-specific crises, such as the ongoing indigene-settler conflicts in states like Plateau and Benue. The mayhem occasioned by the breakdown in law and order appears to have made politicians and public office holders legitimate targets.

Even when it is considered within the context of the steep increase in violence that has been witnessed across the country, these attacks are indicative of a particularly disturbing trend. What was formerly a rare occurrence which manifested itself mainly during military coups has now become far more commonplace. It is all the more surprising, given the intimidating security detail that is a ubiquitous feature of governors’ convoys in the country.

These attacks seem to signal the injection of even more viciousness into the political process; the normal cut-and-thrust of partisan politics is being replaced by a lack of regard for public-office holders that is so profound that it is now being manifested in carefully-organised attempts on their lives.

Such assassination attempts not only further taint the integrity of the political process and procedures of governance; they also raise the stakes in the worst manner possible. A governor who sees himself as being under threat is very likely to respond to perceived opponents in kind, using the full machinery of the state at his disposal. That sort of response can only lead to an ever-increasing rise in the violence and thuggery which already plague the country.

In the specific case of Benue State, it appears that the attack on Governor Gabriel Suswam is related to the long-running conflict between the state’s indigenes and Fulani herdsmen. However, the sophistication of the attack seems to belie sole Fulani involvement, and it points to an escalation that the Federal Government and its security apparatus would do well not to ignore. It would be fatal if this crisis were to be aggravated by the increased focus on the Boko Haram insurgency.

Those who would go to the extent of attacking such formidable targets in spite of the obvious risks involved are obviously not doing it for fun. It is clear that they have certain expectations which the achievement of their diabolical aims would fulfill. However, regardless of what those considerations may be, the assassination of a state governor will throw a state into turmoil, and the consequent implications for national security are grave indeed. Nigeria cannot afford to have a situation in which its public office holders are compelled to do their jobs in fear of their lives.

Rather than resort to the usual underhand tactic of blaming such security challenges on sundry political opponents, the Jonathan administration must seek to apprehend those who are behind them. It is particularly important to consider the possibility of a so-called “third force,” unlinked to organised political parties, who may be seeking to unravel the national fabric in pursuance of their own aims. Nigeria must come to grips with its dire security situation once and for all.