Opinion: Putin’s useful allies are throwing a wrench in the works
With these kinds of useful friends in Orban and Erdogan, Putin may be perfectly positioned to continue on his current path in Ukraine or beyond — with impunity.
A host of different ideas have emerged of how to deal with these crises that threaten to sap the ability, if not the will, to confront the Kremlin directly.
So, what to do about these toxic delays being forced by Hungary and Turkey? The answer is sadly simple — play the same game Putin’s been playing for years. When you can’t win by traditional rules, go around them.
In this case, do carve-outs. Make Orban and Erdogan irrelevant. All 26 other EU members should simply implement the oil embargo. And NATO should simply pave the way for Sweden and Finland’s accession.
Perhaps now is precisely the moment simply to stand up to these lone strongmen who have managed to burrow their way deeply into democratic institutions.
It might not be so far-fetched. “You are absolutely right to urge the EU to just forge ahead without Hungary,” Harvard Professor Robert I. Rotberg, founding director of the Intrastate Conflict program at the Kennedy School of Government, told me in an e-mail exchange.
“The ‘unanimity’ rule was foolish to begin with and now is the time to test it,” added Rotberg. Though he conceded what others have feared — that Hungary could refer the decision to the European Court of Justice — which is both bad and good.
In the meantime, if the other 26 EU member states do implement their boycott, Russia would lose a major market for its oil that could become permanent if the continent continues on its mission to wean itself from Moscow’s energy resources.
One solution to the problem posed by the leaders of Hungary and Turkey, which is being actively pursued by Rotberg together with a group consisting of some 40 former heads of state and an equal number of Nobel Prize winners, is the creation of an International Anti-Corruption Court. He noted this “would be a good place to try Erdogan, Orban, Putin, and many more. That is why it is needed. So, we are moving.”
The problem is not dissimilar to the dilemma established by America’s founding fathers in creating the Electoral College.
Its original goal was, at least in part, to persuade the smaller American states to agree to a union that they thought — quite rightly — would otherwise be dominated by a handful of larger states.
This fear and the compromise have long outlived their usefulness and are now being used to hold hostage a majority of the US population to the whims of a minority. In the case of the EU and NATO, not to mention the UN Security Council, this has truly gone amok.
Now is the time for democracies to dig in their heels and proclaim that enough is enough — that right will be forced to triumph. In the end, we will all be stronger for it.
