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| America joins its allies in protest |
IT IS one thing to stand defiant and aloof on the world stage, another to be a pariah. That is the message that Western governments hope President Vladimir Putin will absorb as he digests the co-ordinated expulsion of over 130 Russian diplomats by more than two dozen countries, in response to a nerve-agent attack in Britain. America’s decision to throw out 60 Russian officials accused of spying under diplomatic cover was that country’s largest such action, exceeding even expulsions in the chilliest years of the cold war. President Donald Trump’s government also ordered the Russian consulate in Seattle to close, citing its proximity to a nuclear submarine base and to the headquarters of Boeing, an aircraft maker.
Foreign leaders, notably those from Britain, France and Germany, used a European Union summit and a flurry of telephone diplomacy to urge allies to act in concert. Suspected spooks were given their marching orders from Oslo to Ottawa, and from Copenhagen to Canberra. New Zealand shyly admitted it knew of no undeclared Russian agents on its soil, and so could not join the effort. The NATO military alliance asked seven Russians to leave and ordered Russia’s mission at its Brussels headquarters to shrink by a third.
Western leaders took care to explain that their confrontation is with Mr Putin and his cronies. A Trump aide’s briefing on the expulsions on March 26th began with an expression of condolences for scores of children and adults killed in a fire in a Siberian entertainment complex. The blaze in the city of Kemerovo inspired public protests after investigators said a fire alarm had been switched off and exits blocked. America draws “a distinction between the Russian people and the actions of their government”, the Trump aide said.
The same White House briefing called the expulsion of 60 alleged spooks, including 12 at the UN in New York, an act of solidarity with America’s closest ally after “a reckless attempt by the [Russian] government to murder a British citizen and his daughter on British soil with a military-grade nerve agent”.
Mr Trump himself did not announce or explain the expulsions on March 26th. His thumbs were busy in the days after Britain said Russia’s government used a nerve agent, Novichok, in the streets of an English cathedral city in a bid to kill a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia. Trump tweets condemned a terrorist attack in France and denied that he is struggling to recruit good lawyers. The president tweeted that he would win a fight with the former vice-president, Joe Biden, who would “go down fast and hard, crying all the way”. But his Twitter account was silent as 60 Russians were ordered out of his country. Indeed, Mr Trump has never breathed a word of criticism of Mr Putin. The most benign account, from Mr Trump’s defenders, is that he takes a monarchical view of geopolitics, seeking respectful relations with leaders who impress him, even as underlings scrap. Others have less flattering explanations.
Russia’s state media and proxies denied Russia’s involvement in the Skripal poisoning and offered some fanciful alternative theories. They claimed that America invented Novichok, that Britain carried out the poison attack to frame Russia or accidentally allowed nerve agents to leak from a chemical-weapons-research facility, that Ukraine is behind the whole thing and that defectors are prone to suicide.
To Russian propagandists, confusion is a friend. Their aim is to not to convince but to foment cynicism, apathy and a sense that believing official accounts is for chumps. Russia also likes to divide Europe. Austria, Greece, Cyprus and Portugal declined to expel Russians. In Italy and the Czech Republic pro-Putin nationalist politicians questioned the expulsions.
Still, Russia’s brazenness is raising the costs of being a Putin apologist. Brexit Britain and Mr Trump’s America are re-learning the power of alliances such as the EU and NATO. Isolation has its downsides.
Source: TheEconomist
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