Why Putin Can’t Solve Syria

MOSCOW - After marathon meetings with Secretary of State John Kerry here this week, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, hinted that Moscow might finally pressure President Bashir al-Assad of Syria to leave office.

“We are not interested in the fate of certain individuals,” Mr. Lavrov said at a late night news conference on Tuesday. “We are interested in the fate of the Syrian people.”

Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Kerry announced that they would host an international conference where Syrian government officials and rebels will be given a chance to name an interim government. The odds of the two sides agreeing are low but Mr. Kerry deserves credit for securing a small diplomatic step forward here.
The problem is that Mr. Lavrov and his boss, President Vladimir Putin, may be unable to deliver on Mr. Assad.

For nearly two years, Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Putin have served as the Syrian leaders’ chief diplomatic allies but Iran has provided far more military support. Russian analysts say Washington is kidding itself if it believes Mr. Putin can orchestrate a quick and easy Assad exit.

“All of this is wishful thinking,” said Sergei Strokan, a columnist for the liberal Moscow daily Kommersant. “Moscow has quite limited influence on the Syrian regime.”

Decades from now, President Barack Obama’s decision to not arm Syria’s rebels may be condemned or praised. But a visit to Moscow this week showed that it has come at an immediate price. Washington’s failure to act created a vacuum that Mr. Putin and Mr. Lavrov used to boost Russia’s global standing.

“For the last two years, Lavrov has dramatically elevated his profile on the world stage,” Susan Glasser recently wrote in Foreign Policy magazine. “He has done so by almost single-handedly defying Western attempts to force some united action to stop Syria’s deadly civil war.”

Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Putin have also used Syria to bolster their standing at home. Mr. Kerry’s widely publicized visit coincided with the one-year anniversary of disputed elections in Russia that led to Mr. Putin’s third term in office. Before meeting with Mr. Kerry, Mr. Putin fired a key lieutenant who was the architect of the system that has allowed the Russian leader to control major industries, seize most media outlets and intimidate or co-opt rivals.

With the price of oil low, Putin’s oil-dependent economy is flagging. Barring a surge in prices, massive social welfare payments are unsustainable. Corruption is endemic, consuming an estimated $300 billion a year, 16 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product. Transparency International, an anti-corruption group, named Russia the worst nation on earth in its most recent Bribe Payer’s index, which ranks firms on their likelihood to bribe.

A spate of recent laws on libel, protests, blasphemy and treason has made it more difficult to exercise basic rights, the Washington Post reported last month. Mr. Putin also recently ordered prosecutors nationwide to search for non-governmental organizations that have failed to abide by a new law requiring them to register as “foreign agents” if they receive foreign funding.

Mr. Putin is probably secure until the end of his term in 2016. But a slowing economy and public fatigue with Mr. Putin are taking a toll. In the end, the key factor may be the price of oil, the pillar of Putin’s one-dimensional economy.
“If the price of oil drops below $50 [a barrel], it is a death sentence,” said a Russian analyst who asked not to be named.

On the international stage, meanwhile, Russia is ascendant. For Mr. Putin, Mr. Kerry’s request for help marked the achievement of a decade-old goal. From the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 1999 bombing of Kosovo, to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to the 2011 U.N.-backed toppling of Muammar Gaddafi, Moscow has been largely irrelevant. Mr. Putin saw each post-Cold War American intervention as an attempt to remove opponents, not defend human rights.

“In Putin’s view, they were all victims of a cynical U.S. plot for global domination,” journalist Lucian Kim wrote last year, ”where any weapon is fair game, be it smart bomb, a pro-democracy grant or Twitter.”

Instead of being the West’s potential victim, Mr. Putin is now its vital interlocutor. Maria Lipman, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center and a leading political analyst, said Mr. Putin’s logic is simple: “You may denounce us,” she explained, “but when it comes to the most important international issue today, you come to Moscow.”

So, why is the Obama administration turning to Mr. Putin for help? The answer is simple: the White House’s deep desire to not get entangled in Syria. To American officials, a deal with Russia is a cost-free solution. The geopolitical equivalent, if you will, of a drone strike. No Americans lives will be lost. There will be little domestic political risk.

In truth, though, there is no easy way to stem the conflict in Syria, which increasingly threatens to destabilize the region. Blame is widespread. Mr. Assad, of course, is the worst culprit. His refusal to relinquish power in the face of an initially peaceful protest movement has led to the killing of an estimated 70,000 people. In Washington, Mr. Obama allowed exaggerated fears of another Iraq to paralyze his administration.

Mr. Putin, though, has arguably been the most cynical. He exaggerated his control of Mr. Assad and may also be double-dealing.

Twenty-four hours after Mr. Kerry left Moscow, the press reported that Russia was planning to sell surface-to-air missiles to Syria that would make any American intervention in the conflict vastly more difficult. The Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli officials had warned the Obama administration of Russia’s imminent sale to Syria of sophisticated S-300 missiles with a range of 125 miles.

Asked about the sale at a press conference in Rome on Thursday, Mr. Kerry said Washington would prefer that Russia not provide arms to Syria and called the missiles “potentially destabilizing” to Israel. If true, the missile sale would be a personal affront to Mr. Kerry, who lauded Mr. Putin and Mr. Lavrov in Moscow.

Sale or no sale, the proposed conference should be carried out. Both sides may miraculously agree on an interim government.

But it is more likely that the United States has lost control of the rebels, particularly the jihadists. And Russia has lost control of Mr. Assad, who retains Tehran’s backing and has killed so many people that he cannot compromise.
Syria’s downward spiral will continue.

David Rohde is a columnist for Reuters, former reporter for The New York Times and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His forthcoming book, “Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East” will be published in March 2013.

IHT Quick Read: May 11

NEWS Day after day, the grim drudgery of digging for bodies had progressed at Rana Plaza. Talk of rescuing survivors had faded. This was the recovery phase, and what was being recovered were corpses, the numbers spinning remorselessly forward: 700 dead became 800, then 900, with no end in sight. By Friday morning, the number had pushed above 1,000. And then, late in the afternoon, a soldier from the Bangladeshi Army, standing atop the rubble of the wrecked building, noticed an iron rod that seemed to be moving. There was a noise, a voice. Rescuers hurriedly carved a hole through a concrete pillar. Television stations in Bangladesh cut to the scene: a woman, gasping, was alive in the wreckage, nearly 17 full days after Rana Plaza had collapsed. A new number was announced: One. A female garment worker named Reshma. A survivor. A miracle. “Save me!” rescuers heard her shout, before they pulled her into the afternoon light, her face powdered in dust as she was placed on a stretcher. Julfikar Ali Manik reports from Dhaka, Bangladesh and Jim Yardley reports from New Delhi.

In a continent faced with an economic crisis, soaring unemployment and bursts of nationalist populism, an elementary school in eastern Slovakia is a microcosm of one of Europe’s biggest challenges: how to keep old demons of ethnic scapegoating at bay and somehow bring the Roma people into the mainstream. Many Europeans associate Roma with crime, particularly well-organized gangs of young Roma pickpockets who prey on local residents and tourists alike in the Continent’s wealthier cities. Now, an energetic band of civil rights activists is spearheading a desegregation drive in towns and villages across wide stretches of Europe that has stirred angry opposition from defenders of the status quo. Andrew Higgins reports from Sarisske Michalany, Slovakia.

Angelos Delivorrias has led the Benaki Museum in Athens for almost 40 years. Now, in the face of steep budget cuts, he is fighting to protect what he helped build. In the fat years, the museum, which is run by a board of directors that includes three descendants of the Benaki family, could rely on the Greek government to pay for most of its operating costs. But with the crisis, it has faced abrupt and steep cutbacks. Suzanne Daley reports from Athens.

ArcelorMittal on Friday reported a net loss of $345 million for the first three months of 2013, as the world’s largest steel company continues to struggle while demand for steel remains at depressed levels. The loss contrasts with a $92 million profit in the similar period of 2012. Sales for the first quarter of 2013 were down 13 percent year on year, to $19.8 billion. There were some signs that the company, which relies on demand from heavy industries like automobile manufacturing and construction, may be reaching the bottom of a several-year slide. Stanley Reed reports from London.

ARTS The auction sales this week of Impressionist and Modern art forcefully brought out the dangers that arise in the market when the sense of aesthetic hierarchy vanishes because relevant points of comparison become too scarce. In seeming paradox, Sotheby’s sales on Tuesday and Wednesday â€" which represented a time capsule and briefly created the illusion that abundance was back â€" illustrated the erratic price patterns that develop when buyers lack perspective. Souren Melikian reports.

SPORTS The death of a leading British sailor, the Olympic champion Andrew Simpson, shows how technology and modern danger have found their way into the America’s Cup. Sailors, even weathered veterans, have been genuinely on edge even as they embrace the new thrill of the new-age boats for the Cup. On Thursday Artemis’s AC72 capsized in San Francisco Bay while bearing away, or turning from the wind, during a training exercise. Christopher Clarey reports.

An Open Letter to ‘The Elders’

Excellencies,

Your low profile in Dublin this week â€" during your biannual strategy session â€" stood in stark contrast to your vaulting ambition. You are probably the world’s most eminent pensioners, 10 retired statesmen and women who aspire to be “a fiercely independent and robust force for good,” as Nelson Mandela, an “honorary” absentee Elder put it. But as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, your chairman of six years, said of you as he stepped down this week, “We are still learning how to Elder.”

Exactly what The Elders should do has proved hard to determine, a consequence no doubt of your luminous but varied interests and reputations. Four of you are Nobel peace laureates: Martti Ahtisaari, former president of Finland; Kofi Annan, former United Nations secretary general; Jimmy Carter, the ex-president; and Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town. Another, Lakhdar Brahimi, former Algerian revolutionary-turned-foreign minister, is currently deployed as chief mediator for the United Nations and Arab League in Syria.

In contrast to the shuttle diplomacy and grand mediation of old-fashioned statecraft, however, you harbor a fondness for grassroots activism and popular protest. After all, you include, Ela Bhatt, India’s “gentle revolutionary” and founder of its million-strong Self-Employed Women’s Association (as well as Graca Machel, former first lady in both Mozambique and South Africa; Gro Harlem Brundtland and Mary Robinson, respectively the first women presidents of Norway and Ireland; a former Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso, an authority in development economics.)

Between you, you have survived civil wars, dictatorships and democracy. You have brokered peace treaties, embraced enemies, navigated boom and bust. Now that the day jobs of your previous careers are done, you have toured the world - from Egypt to the Korean peninsula to Sri Lanka - in search of causes to support. A campaign to end girl marriage, a fresh stop in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, help for refugees in Sudan and a better deal for youth everywhere top your long list of priorities.

This is a mistake. By rallying to causes that almost everyone in the liberal world can readily support, your last political capital is being squandered. By spreading your efforts wide, and thinly, your public statements often slip into the clichés of development-speak. “Giving up just isn’t in their vocabulary,” wrote Lesley Ann-Knight, the new CEO of The Elders, in a recent message to supporters. In a steady stream of articles, blogs and press conferences, you urge “global leadership,” sustainable development, and - just this week - “a stronger role for Europe in Syria”.

“The most important question is where can The Elders make a real difference?” observed Ms. Knight, “As I asked each Elder when I met with them recently, why does the world need The Elders?” One difficulty is that a self-appointed panel of good Samaritans has no mandate. Another is that celebrity endorsement of worthy causes has become a crowded field. When you adopt mainstream causes, you add nothing to existing consensus. Without anything new to say, that fate is better left to real celebrities.

The ongoing catastrophe in Syria is a test of your seriousness. U.N. sources report that Mr. Brahimi is “itching to resign” from his role as mediator, like Mr. Annan before him, in frustration at his lack of progress.The 79 year-old Algerian has failed to convince Russia, Iran or China to join his mediation effort. Without their commitment, foreign mediators cannot exert the judicious mix of coercion and reassurance - of stick and carrot - that might compel Syria’s Alawite minority regime to share power.

The deadlock in Syria could be the trigger for a Damascene conversion among The Elders. Now is the moment to refuse the usual diplomatic charade: another show of regret, praise for the best efforts of a colleague, followed by fresh calls for another United Nations mission. Far better to seize the moment. Speak plainly: admit the loss of Western influence, tell the United Nations that an alternative forum is needed to halt the unfolding slaughter - in Moscow, if necessary.

A place among The Elders can be a last chance to dissent. From the moment any political leader takes office, the scope for originality, creative thinking and free protest begins to erode. This is the moment to set yourselves free. Draw on the hard-headed cunning of your often radical pasts. Get personal. Pester your juniors in political office, before it is too late. Harass the global institutions which their governments, like you, have failed to reform. Senior citizens are allowed to be grumpy.

If You Knew Then What You Know Now

When you live in a foreign country, a lot more than you might have expected can be foreign.

When I first learned I would be moving to France, a colleague whose move preceded mine offered a lot of good advice, most of which I followed. But there was one thing on his list that I didn’t get around to until I’d been living in Paris for more than a year. It was to read a book called “Bloom Where You’re Planted: How to Live in France.”

The Women of the American Church have been pooling their knowledge, compiling it and selling the handbook at the church on the Quai d’Orsay since 1970. The book, bound with wire rings, as homey as a garden club cookbook, was in its 40th edition when I got my hands on it.

Had I read that book before I moved, I would have spared myself a lot of bumbling. I would have known, for example, never to use non-French light bulbs. (“If you do, your lamp will likely be ruined, or in the worst case cause a fire because of overheating.”)

I would have had a handy guide to French vocabulary essential for situations like the post office and the pharmacy, two places where English is often not spoken. I would have known the locations and days of the week of the city’s open-air markets. I would have had a conversion table for weights and volumes for recipes. My trips to the butcher would have been demystified with drawings of various animals with cuts of meat labeled in both English and French. The confounding paperwork required for residency cards would have been less confounding.

There are pages of books, from novels to maps to advice books, well tested by the women of the American Church and their families. There is a tipping guide.

But here is the information I was most gratified to learn from “Bloom Where You’re Planted”:

Due to the stress of relocation and/or the hardness of Paris water, you may experience a change in the condition of your nails.

Aha.

Nails that were once strong can become brittle, and many people here find their nails peeling, breaking and splitting.

I was one.

I wasn’t suffering from a disease, or age, or a vitamin deficiency. The only thing wrong with my fingernails was that they had moved to Paris. They eventually adjusted.

Eleanor Miller, a colleague in Hong Kong, reports that she wished she’d known about mold. Investing in a dehumidifier was crucial, she learned â€" but not until after a three weeks of relentless rain. If she had pored over the Hong Kong Community Advice Bureau’s Web site, she might have understood the urgency.

Julie Dolan, a friend and one of the Satellite Sisters, lived with her family for a few years in Bangkok. She blew up a coffee maker and iron before someone advised her to give up on electrical converters. She found that the Australian-New Zealand Women’s Group Bangkok Guide had answers to so many of her questions â€" including information on schools for her two sons and how to communicate with a tailor â€" that she kept one copy in the car and another at home.

Tell us your experiences with life abroad. Was there one piece of advice you wished you had had before you moved? Is there one invaluable source of information about your adopted city or country that you would recommend?

In Brussels, Private Art Collections With Open Doors

When you walk into the 1920s-era converted warehouse in central Brussels, you’re confronted with an out-of-the-ordinary greeting: a five-meter-wide red sign stabbed through with knives whose handles spell out “Run Like Hell.”

If you don’t heed that warning, you’ll discover that the artwork by the Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri is an appropriate introduction to “Sympathy for the Devil,” the second group exhibition at the Vanhaerents Art Collection, a body of contemporary art collected by the Belgian construction tycoon Walter Vanhaerents during the past 40 years.

Mr. Vanhaerents oversaw every detail of the exhibition, spending more than a year selecting the art and setting up the show alongside the curator Pierre-Olivier Rolland. Sculptures, videos, paintings and photography â€" all chosen to reflect themes in the Rolling Stones’ song that gave the exhibition its title â€" fill the 3,500-square-meter, or about 38,000-square-foot, space. He plans to leave the show on display for as long as three years.

Mr. Vanhaerents’s collection offers fans of Contemporary art a chance to see a broader, more international selection of works than they might find in a big museum or gallery; he’s among a growing group of Belgian collectors who are sharing their artworks with the public, and a part of a booming art market in Belgium.

“Here, there is a lack of funds for museums, and they usually show local and unidirectional art,” Mr. Vanhaerents said. “We open our collections for the public to have access to international collections.”

Mr. Vanhaerents bought the space in 2000, at a time when the Brussels neighborhood of Dansaert was still “a difficult neighborhood,” he said. “It was a risk at the time, now a lot of galleries and artists’ studios have moved here.”

In the beginning, all he was looking for was a storage space. Then, he stumbled on this “too-good-to-just-be-storage” warehouse. “It was selfish at first, I wanted a space where I could see my collection, for me and my friends,” he said. But he decided that the art should be shared. After extensive renovations, the building opened as a public art space in 2007.

Like Mr. Vanhaerents, Mark Vanmoerkerke has created a public venue for his private collection. It occupies two industrial buildings where he also keeps his offices in Ostend. Mr. Vanmoerkerke, a private equity and real-estate investor, said he was inspired by an earlier generation of Belgian art collectors â€" the entrepreneurs and businessmen who rose to prominence as Belgium’s economy industrialized in the 1960s.

That generation of collectors “saw art as a way to show their economic, intellectual and cultural emancipation,” said Mr. Vanmoerkerke, who began his collection in 1998.

In Mr. Vanmoerkerke’s view, opening his collection to the public in 2008 was a natural extension of the ideal. “You want to share with others what you have assembled; it is our responsibility to share the art we have,” he said.

“Anyone is welcome to come and ring the bell,” he said about the Vanmoerkerke Collection.

Every six months Mr. Vanmoerkerke asks a different curator to put together a show from his collection of more than 1,000 pieces of contemporary art. “I give complete freedom to the curator, I love to discover new dialogues between my art pieces,” he said. “I learn a lot from it.”

“A Voyage on the North Sea,” the show currently on view, is the seventh in the series. Curated by Joost Declercq and on display until September, the show is named for a Marcel Broodthaer video piece that intertwines images of a 19th-century oil painting of a ship with a 20th-century photograph of a pleasure boat against a backdrop of skyscrapers. Mr. Declercq chose the piece as an allegory of the artists’ and collectors’ journeys through the world of art.

La Maison Particulière takes the idea of making private collections public a step further. It’s a non-profit collective for collectors, housed in an airy and elegant townhouse in Brussels. The non-profit organizes shows around a theme â€" currently it’s “Inner Journeys” through June 30 â€" and invites five or six collectors to show works that exemplify it.

In June of this year, Anton and Annick Herbert will open an exhibition space for their large collection of Contemporary art to the public in Ghent. Last year, they sold part of their collection for more than $7 million at Christie’s in New York to help finance the creation of their foundation and of the new space.

Should Governments Cash In on Smokers?

LONDON â€" Governments have an ambivalent attitude about tobacco, on the one hand lecturing smokers at every turn to abandon nicotine, while with the other hand raking in cigarette sales taxes to finance their treasuries.

The anomaly was underlined on Friday with a reported agreement by French authorities and tobacco manufacturers to delay a scheduled price increase for three months because too many smokers have quit.

In the first quarter of 2013, for the first time in 10 years, French tobacco sales fell. Cigarette sales were down by 9 percent compared with the same period last year.

Until now, manufacturers have been able to protect their bottom line in a dwindling market by raising prices when the government has hiked tobacco taxes.

The next price and tax increases were due in July, but the makers have agreed to take a short-term hit by delaying an estimated 5 percent price increase until October, according Les Echos, the French business daily.

“Neither the manufacturers nor the finance ministry has an interest in seeing the volume of sales continue to fall,” Les Echos wrote.

Government policy is based on moderate and progressive price rises to encourage smokers to give up, without precipitating a fall in the value of tobacco sales that would also hit tax revenues, according to the newspaper.

The reported decision to shelve the July hike follows a campaign on behalf of France’s 27,500 tobacco store operators â€" buralistes â€" for a price freeze for the whole of 2013 in the face of declining business. They are planning to press their case at a mass rally in Toulouse this month.

The buralistes have argued that they provide a valuable public service by selling bread and newspapers and running bars, as well as selling tobacco, and that, in some rural areas, they are the last retail businesses still operating.

Gérard Maury, a local head of the tobacco retailers’ union in southwestern France, complained this week that the high value of cigarettes was an invitation to burglars. “It’s like having gold bars in the shop,” he said, as he called on the government to provide video surveillance outside stores, just as it did at banks.

The retailers have also argued that further price increases would only encourage vacationing French smokers to stock up elsewhere, given the wide differences in tobacco pricing across Europe.

Within the 27-member European Union, the price of a pack of 20 varies between a cough-inducing $14 in Ireland to just $3.70 in Romania.

The price differentials have encouraged tobacco tourism by smokers in high-priced markets, as well as boosting smuggling and cheap Internet sales at the expense of national treasuries.

Ash, a British health charity that campaigns for measures to reduce smoking, said smuggling still accounted for 10 percent of the British market in 2010 despite a decade of efforts to curb it.

Annual revenues from tobacco duties are counted in the billions of dollars. In Britain, the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association says the industry handed over the equivalent of more than $18.5 billion to the government in 2011-12.

Responding to a claim that the government could raise a further $770 million by capping tobacco company profits while continuing to raise taxes, the makers argued that taxes already made up 90 percent of the price of some popular brands.

They said tobacco was a legitimate industry that supported more than 70,000 British jobs.

What do you think? Should governments continue to depend so heavily on tobacco revenues at the same time as preaching abstinence from smoking? Or should they bring in tax hikes big enough to price cigarettes out of the market?

IHT Quick Read: May 10

NEWS As the Syrian civil war rages into its third year, it is taking a wide and disastrous toll on the country’s young people. Nearly one-third of the population of 22 million inside Syria needs humanitarian help, and 1.4 million have fled their homeland altogether. Of about 500,000 seeking shelter in Jordan, about 55 percent are under 18. Jodi Rudoren reports from Sabha, Jordan.

Investigators in three countries continued unraveling the plot behind a brazen $50 million diamond robbery in Belgium, focusing Thursday on a Swiss lawyer, a real estate businessman and a French luxury car exporter with a prison record for fraud. Doreen Carvajal reports from Paris.

An elementary school in eastern Slovakia is a microcosm of one of Europe’s biggest challenges: how to bring its most disadvantaged minority, the Roma, into the mainstream. Andrew Higgins reports from Sarisske Michalany, Slovakia.

The two companies that make vaccines against cervical cancer announced Thursday that they would cut their prices to the world’s poorest countries below $5 per dose, eventually making it possible for millions of girls to be protected against a major deadly cancer. Donald G. McNeil Jr. reports.

Memorials to victims of drug violence are ubiquitous in Culiacán, Mexico, but officials are slowly asking families’ permission to replace them with discreet marble plaques. Karla Zabludovsky reports from Culiácan, Mexico.

Just in time for Richard Wagner’s bicentennial this month, a controversy has erupted over a new production of the opera “Tannhäuser” in Düsseldorf because of violent depictions of a Nazi concentration camp in its staging. Nicholas Kulish reports from Berlin.

A group of investors plans to file an unusual lawsuit against the Bank of Spain, accusing the central bank of failing to warn investors of the problems at Bankia, a giant mortgage lender whose downfall helped set off a banking crisis that obliged Spain to seek a bailout from Europe. Raphael Minder reports from Madrid.

ARTS With the National Art Museum of China, also known as Namoc, planning to open in a new building in Beijing in 2017, and Hong Kong projected to open its M+ museum in a new cultural district about the same time, the cities could emerge as twin titans of contemporary Chinese culture. Kevin Holden Platt reports from Beijing.

Frieze New York, which opens its second edition Friday in Randall’s Island Park in Manhattan, remains a daring move and a gamble for the London art show and its organizers. Roslyn Sulcas reports from London.

SPORTS The man chosen to follow Alex Ferguson as Manchester United manager is described as loyal, dependable, full of integrity. The fact that United, probably the biggest brand in global soccer, handed David Moyes a six-year contract makes its own statement. Rob Hughes writes from London.