If Putin can do it . . .
Vladimir Putin recently had a birthday.
To celebrate, the Russian president played hockey. Unlike with other sports, this time Putin kept his shirt on. In a game televised live on Russian television, Putin took to the ice in the Olympic city of Sochi — and proceeded to score seven goals. If you don’t know hockey, well, that’s a lot.
On Putin’s team were two Russian-born legends from the National Hockey League — Vyacheslav Fetisov won back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Detroit Red Wings and Pavel Bure three times led the league in scoring. Somehow, though, Putin managed to outscore both of these Hockey Hall of Famers as he led his pick-up team to a 15-10 victory.
Perhaps it was because the other team included Putin’s defense minister and two of the so-called oligarchs — Russian billionaires who owe their fortunes to the Kremlin. Perhaps this was not a fair contest? Body check Putin too hard and you might wind up in the penalty box — or the gulag. Take your pick, comrade.
In any case, the victorious Putin was given a giant trophy — the Stanley Cup might seem small next to it in the pictures we’ve seen — as well as a medal for his “services to ice hockey.”
Can you imagine an American network broadcasting a pick-up basketball game with President Obama — say, Obama and Michael Jordan and Larry Bird going three-on-three against the secretary of defense and two big campaign contributors?
That is one difference between the two countries.
Here are some others:
Putin is invariably caricatured two ways in the editorial cartoons we see — shirtless and strong. That’s especially so now that he’s sent Russian forces, guns a-blazing, into Syria on behalf of the embattled Bashir Assad.
The United States has been bombing the Islamic State for more than a year now, but President Obama is invariably portrayed as weak, confused and timid. Putin does essentially the same thing and some Americans go swooning for his machismo. He may be wrong about backing Assad, but you have to admit, the man looks confident.
President Obama blustered about Syria crossing a “red line” with chemical weapons, then decided against bombing. Putin holds to the advice that the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov once laid down: “If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act.” Otherwise, why is it there?
Putin has taken down Chekhov’s pistol and fired it, so to speak. He has certainly acted boldly. Whether he’s acted smartly is another matter. We have several decades worth of intervention in the Middle East behind us now that suggests what feels like decisive action today might really be the prelude to a quagmire tomorrow.
One key difference that may or may not matter: The United States has usually been on the side of regime change — in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya. The Soviets, er, the Russians are intervening on the side of keeping their favored regime in place.
Historically, going back to the time of the czars, Russia has been a country that has craved order and stability; Americans, a people descended from pilgrims and pioneers, have always been more accepting of a certain amount of unpredictability.
Putin summed up this difference at the United Nations recently, when he blasted the United States and others in the West for supporting the so-called Arab Spring: “Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares about human rights, including the right to life. I cannot help asking those who have forced this situation, do you realize what you have done?”
Putin, regime stabilizer. Putin, clear-eyed and cold-hearted.
Those are not the only differences between how Russia and the United States have acted in multi-sided fights over who controls Syria (and Iraq). There’s this: Before Putin intervened in Syria, his parliament voted to approve the military action. Yes, yes, it’s a rubber-stamp parliament, every bit as rigged as that hockey game. Still, he at least went through the motions of that constitutional nicety.
The United States Congress still refuses to vote to authorize (or, for that matter, de-authorize) our military action against the Islamic State. For more than a year, we’ve been carrying out an undeclared war and Congress, which otherwise rails against the president for taking unilateral action by executive order on other issues, seems not to care.
The only member of Congress who seems to care is Virginia’s own Sen. Tim Kaine — who has managed to discomfit both parties by insisting Congress do its duty under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the constitution, namely, “The Congress shall have power . . . to declare war.”
When Putin started bombing in Syria, Kaine tried again to make his point, issuing this statement worth reprinting in full:
“While President Putin’s actual intent under a rubberstamp of support from Russia’s Federation Council is questionable, the fact that he sought and received authorization from his legislature to use military force in Syria — a process that has yet to occur in the U.S. Congress with respect to our mission against ISIL [one of several acronyms for the Islamic State] — is also extremely disconcerting. Putin is claiming that the United States has violated international law for the actions we are undertaking in Syria. The fact that we have given a leader as morally compromised as Putin any opening at all to criticize the United States should galvanize my Congressional colleagues to take immediate action on an Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIL.
“More than a year into this fight, the fact that Congress has not yet debated and voted on U.S. military action against ISIL, including the defense of U.S.-trained Syrian forces in the region, is appalling. It’s well past time for Congress to properly authorize this mission by passing a new AUMF.”
Kaine is right and the rest of Congress is wrong. Putin’s not the only one skating on thin ice.
