Showing why linkage is important in U.S. foreign policy, 71-year-old Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met today with 72-year-old Portuguese U.N. Secretary-General Antonia Guterres to -convene the Mideast Quartet, involving the U.S., U.N, European Union [EU] and Russia to resolve the latest Mideast war. Lavrov’s suggestion to revive the Quartet was welcomed relief with Guterres who’s agonizing over the death and destruction happening between Hamas and Israel. Hamas started shooting rockets at Israel in response to Israel’s plans to evict East Jerusalem residents from their homes due to a longstanding court case involving a property dispute. Instead of looking at the facts of the case, Hamas started shooting rockets, seeing the evictions as more Israeli bullying tactics, seen for years in the West Bank, the so-called occupied territories since the 1967 Six Day War.
Watching Guterres welcome Lavrov’s input caused ripples through the Biden White House, where 58-year-old Secretary of State Tony Blinken has helped sour U.S.-Russian relations. When 78-year-old President Joe Biden called Putin as “soulless killer” March 16, that pretty much killed U.S.-Russian diplomacy. Putin came back March 18 suggesting that he and Biden hold a live Internet press conference to hash out any differences. While that never happened, Biden and Blinken have continued to slam Putin for placing some 50,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, serving notice that he won’t let Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invite NATO to defend Ukraine from its conflict with Russia. Biden was still holding grudges against Putin for the alleged meddling in the 2016 and 2020 presidential election and more recent hacking of SolarWinds network management software.
Now that war broke out between Hamas and Israel, Biden must recalculate his anti-Putting rhetoric, especially because he’s a major player in world events from the Mideast to Asia. Alienating Putin hurts U.S. national security by reducing leverage in hot spots around the globe. Biden and Blinker have done the same thing with China, where, at any moment, a crisis could break out needing the help of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Convening the quartet presents PR problems for Biden and Blinken, looking to Russia for help to resolve an escalating Mideast crisis. Convening the Quartet provides at least a first step to help stop the latest skirmish with Hamas from going the same direction as the 2014 Hamas-Israeli war that caused thousands of casualties and cost billions in destruction to Gaza. If the current crisis escalates, it’s going have the same outcome as 2014.
Meeting with Guterres, Lavrov shows, at least as far as the U.N. is concerned, Russia still has clout with the global body. Biden and Blinken have tried to sideline Russia, claiming that it’s become a pariah state, with all the accusations of meddling in U.S. democracy. U.S. and EU officials slapped the Russian Federation April 16 with new economic sanctions, largely due to Putin’s treatment of 44-year-old Russian dissident Alexi Navalny, now serving out a two-year-eight-month prison sentence in a Russian penal colony. U.S. and European press have kept Navalny in the news, monitoring his treatment by prison officials, with Navalny claiming he hasn’t received adequate medical services. U.S. and EU officials accuse Putin of poisoning Navalny Aug. 24, 2020 with Novichok, a banned Soviet-era nerve agent, violating the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.
Biden and Blinken have learned quickly that when it comes to foreign policy, nothing is perfect. No country can be expected to measure up the U.S. when it comes to human rights. But, at the same time, condemning countries like Russia and China because they don’t live up to U.S. standards isn’t practical. When Blinken and 44-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan hosted China in Anchorage Alaska March 18, they slammed senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi, accuing Beijing of “genocide” against the Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang province. Whatever Blinken or Sullivan think privately of China’s treatment of Uyghurs, pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong or Taiwan, ripping China for human rights abuses backfired. Now that Lavrov’s involved in helping defuse the latest Mideast crisis, Biden and Blinken should welcome any international help.
Showing that Russia takes its work on the U.N. Security Council seriously, Lavrov met with Guterres today to announce they would reconvene the Quartet to find a way out of the current Mideast crisis. No matter how many problems the Biden White House finds with Putin, they must pay more respect to linkage when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. “We are totally committed to promote all forms of dialogue by the parties and by other key actors that can be supportive of all the measures necessary for the de-escalation but also for the revitalization of the peace process that has been dormant for too much time,” Guterres said. Whatever peace process was tried by 74-year-old former President Donald Trump, it prompted Ramallah-based Mahmoud Abbas to break off any talks. With a new administration, there’s a chance they can end current hostilities and get back to Mideast diplomacy,
