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There are two basic scenarios here that I see, both of them extremely bad for US national security (something I care about, and everyone reading this should too

by kposehn 13y ago

There are two basic scenarios here that I see, both of them extremely bad for US national security (something I care about, and everyone reading this should too because it is core to our safety). * 1. Obama made a huge back-channel concession to Russia to get them to deny Snowden asylum. He had to do something to get Putin to decide not to shelter Snowden, and it would likely be an extremely painful concession. Most likely something security related in eastern Europe, probably BMD. 2. Putin cannot keep Snowden from releasing information and has done what he can to bind Snowden to Moscow. By forcing Snowden to stop publishing, he can keep any revelations from being released and instead give him a thorough debriefing to gain sole access to a treasure trove of counter espionage intelligence. This is bad. Very, very bad. (*)Understand that every country spies on every other. Germany moaning about us spying is highly hypocritical because they do the same exact thing to every ally. So does France to Germany, the UK to France, so on and so forth. Hell, Israel spies on us and we spy on them. Spying is core to our safety in the modern age, and has been core to the safety of every country since the days of the roman empire.

cube13 13y ago
>1. Obama made a huge* back-channel concession to Russia to get them to deny Snowden asylum. He had to do something to get Putin to decide not to shelter Snowden, and it would likely be an extremely painful concession. Most likely something security related in eastern Europe, probably BMD. Realistically, that's not much of a concession, even though the Russians will play it up as such. It'll be a political hit for Obama from the 10 people who still care about it in the US, but in terms of international politics, it won't be all that much. Think about it this way: Russia is one of the largest oil producing nations in the world. They supply most of Europe. Why would they nuke their paying customers? The BMD interceptors that are currently planned on getting put in eastern Europe have a very questionable test record, are stupidly expensive, and, in all honesty, were a needless provocation of the Russians when they were planned during the Bush administration. Removing them would save a lot of people a lot of money and de-escalate a silly situation.
- kposehn 13y ago
  I disagree. The BMD systems are an essential way for Poland and other eastern european countries to counter Russian influence by guaranteeing a US military presence and negating the effect of short-range missile deployments. Bush started it for good reason - it is in the US' best interests to keep Russia from becoming dominant over eastern European countries. They already use natural gas as a major level over countries (remember when they switched off the gas due to a 'pricing dispute'?). We want to mitigate Russian influence in their periphery as no one in Europe or the US wants another warsaw pact. Russia wants to dominate them because their security stems from having a large buffer between them and germany (or anyone else for that matter.
  - old-gregg 13y ago
    > having a large buffer between them and germany You sound like you're stuck in 1982. The biggest geo-political headache for Putin is not maintaining a useless "buffer" with Western Europe, but the growing Chinese influence in the East. Look at the map: the soon-to-be superpower shares a fairly huge border with Russia with precedents of isolated clashes in the 60s. And there are no buffers to "dominate". Germany, on the other hand, sends their ex-chancellors to work for Russian natural gas giants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Gazprom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Gazprom
    - kposehn 13y ago
      > You sound like you're stuck in 1982 No, look at Russia's geopolitical moves since the 1800's all the way until today. They have a buffer with China already called Siberia. And yes, they are concerned about China anyway (as well they should be).
      - jacalata 13y ago
        Siberia is in the north of Russia. Are you thinking of Mongolia? There is also a direct china-Russia border on the east.
brown9-2 13y ago
The problem with #2 is that Snowden isn't publishing this stuff, the journalists that he already gave thousands of documents to are. So I wonder if this statement from Putin is either ignorant of that, or intended to sound far more beneficial than it ever could be.
- chiph 13y ago
  And also Snowden (allegedly) has poison-pill archives in place around the globe. They could surface at any time, and they're outside his control.
- embolism 13y ago
  It gives Putin a face saving way to deny Snowden asylum while making it look like it was Snowden's fault.
- kposehn 13y ago
  Good point. I wonder how much Snowden hasn't leaked - that, at least, is unknown to most at this time.
laureny 13y ago
There are plenty of other scenarios possible, including one dictated by Occam's razor: 3) No backchannel negotiation of any sort has taken place. Putin is just looking at the situation pragmatically and he understands that harboring Snowden would cause more harm than good to Russia. This reminds me of a story that happened in 2012 where thieves managed to steal the secret recipe of Coca Cola and offered to sell it to Pepsi. Pepsi immediately called the FBI and had the thieves arrested ([1]). Putin is exactly in Pepsi's situation: gaining knowledge of the confidential information that Snowden detains has very little benefit and very, very high cost. Simply not worth it. [1] http://www.uber-facts.com/2012/12/3-arrested-in-coca-cola-secret-trade-scheme/ http://www.uber-facts.com/2012/12/3-arrested-in-coca-cola-se...
- kposehn 13y ago
  Not really. Putin is former FSB and Russia's interests always are defined by having a security state. Today, during the Soviets and before with the Tsar, Russia has always used a heavily authoritarian regime to maintain security. They must in order to maintain sovereignty. While there could be simple pragmatism here, Putin does not operate as a pragmatist and it is in his direct interest to keep the leaks to a minimum so that they can be the sole ones to know of how it operates. After all, if they know how we're spying and their own adversaries don't, they're better off.
  - laureny 13y ago
    I'm having a very hard time parsing what you wrote and trying to understand how the tsar/soviet era (or anything you say in that comment) is relevant in any way to the current Snowden situation.
    - venomsnake 13y ago
      Russia has been playing the Great Game in its sleep since Peter The Great. This country is always changing and always staying the same. So while the ideology of the high command may change you always have very strong central government which is chasing Russian interests with great zeal.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
danbruc 13y ago
Understand that every country spies on every other. Germany moaning about us spying is highly hypocritical because they do the same exact thing to every ally. So does France to Germany, the UK to France, so on and so forth. Hell, Israel spies on us and we spy on them. Spying is core to our safety in the modern age, and has been core to the safety of every country since the days of the roman empire. At the risk of being proven wrong in the (near) future I challenge your statement. I doubt the German government or an intelligence agency would dare to bug an US embassy, the headquarter of one of your parties or whatever comes closest to the EU buildings supposed to be bugged. Equally I doubt they are in the business of mass surveillance. There is a huge difference between USA and Germany (and probably many other European countries) - we don't have this paranoia that everyone is against us (justified or not). People don't care about terrorism. Admittedly I have never been to the USA and can not judge how much a concern this really is in the general population but the impression that arrives on this side of the ocean is that there is a widespread fear. There are of course people dealing with terrorism - we don't simply ignore the problem - but the general population really does not care. I am also not old enough to judge if this was different when Germany experienced terror attacks, for example by the RAF from the 1970s to the 1990s. I think the USA was a very different place before 9/11. I read the recently leaked NSA IG Report and what it says about the time before 9/11 is very different from what the current situation seems to be - they are talking about what they can not do and what court orders they need and so on. But then 9/11 happens and they go completely nuts.
- javert 13y ago
  > There is a huge difference between USA and Germany (and probably many other European countries) - we don't have this paranoia that everyone is against us (justified or not). I don't think we in the USA do, either. Don't presume that the American people are "steering the ship" of the government. The government is completely out of control. We have let go of the steering wheel. Not all that surprising... the US is basically a 3rd world country, if you consider the whole population. (As a side note, that's also why something like universal health care cannot work as well here as it can in Germany.)
  - sneak 13y ago

by kposehn 13y ago

cube13 13y ago

>1. Obama made a huge* back-channel concession to Russia to get them to deny Snowden asylum. He had to do something to get Putin to decide not to shelter Snowden, and it would likely be an extremely painful concession. Most likely something security related in eastern Europe, probably BMD. Realistically, that's not much of a concession, even though the Russians will play it up as such. It'll be a political hit for Obama from the 10 people who still care about it in the US, but in terms of international politics, it won't be all that much. Think about it this way: Russia is one of the largest oil producing nations in the world. They supply most of Europe. Why would they nuke their paying customers? The BMD interceptors that are currently planned on getting put in eastern Europe have a very questionable test record, are stupidly expensive, and, in all honesty, were a needless provocation of the Russians when they were planned during the Bush administration. Removing them would save a lot of people a lot of money and de-escalate a silly situation.

kposehn 13y ago
I disagree. The BMD systems are an essential way for Poland and other eastern european countries to counter Russian influence by guaranteeing a US military presence and negating the effect of short-range missile deployments. Bush started it for good reason - it is in the US' best interests to keep Russia from becoming dominant over eastern European countries. They already use natural gas as a major level over countries (remember when they switched off the gas due to a 'pricing dispute'?). We want to mitigate Russian influence in their periphery as no one in Europe or the US wants another warsaw pact. Russia wants to dominate them because their security stems from having a large buffer between them and germany (or anyone else for that matter.
- old-gregg 13y ago
  > having a large buffer between them and germany You sound like you're stuck in 1982. The biggest geo-political headache for Putin is not maintaining a useless "buffer" with Western Europe, but the growing Chinese influence in the East. Look at the map: the soon-to-be superpower shares a fairly huge border with Russia with precedents of isolated clashes in the 60s. And there are no buffers to "dominate". Germany, on the other hand, sends their ex-chancellors to work for Russian natural gas giants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Gazprom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Gazprom
  - kposehn 13y ago
    > You sound like you're stuck in 1982 No, look at Russia's geopolitical moves since the 1800's all the way until today. They have a buffer with China already called Siberia. And yes, they are concerned about China anyway (as well they should be).
    - jacalata 13y ago
      Siberia is in the north of Russia. Are you thinking of Mongolia? There is also a direct china-Russia border on the east.

brown9-2 13y ago

The problem with #2 is that Snowden isn't publishing this stuff, the journalists that he already gave thousands of documents to are. So I wonder if this statement from Putin is either ignorant of that, or intended to sound far more beneficial than it ever could be.

chiph 13y ago
And also Snowden (allegedly) has poison-pill archives in place around the globe. They could surface at any time, and they're outside his control.
embolism 13y ago
It gives Putin a face saving way to deny Snowden asylum while making it look like it was Snowden's fault.
kposehn 13y ago
Good point. I wonder how much Snowden hasn't leaked - that, at least, is unknown to most at this time.

laureny 13y ago

There are plenty of other scenarios possible, including one dictated by Occam's razor: 3) No backchannel negotiation of any sort has taken place. Putin is just looking at the situation pragmatically and he understands that harboring Snowden would cause more harm than good to Russia. This reminds me of a story that happened in 2012 where thieves managed to steal the secret recipe of Coca Cola and offered to sell it to Pepsi. Pepsi immediately called the FBI and had the thieves arrested ([1]). Putin is exactly in Pepsi's situation: gaining knowledge of the confidential information that Snowden detains has very little benefit and very, very high cost. Simply not worth it. [1] http://www.uber-facts.com/2012/12/3-arrested-in-coca-cola-secret-trade-scheme/ http://www.uber-facts.com/2012/12/3-arrested-in-coca-cola-se...

kposehn 13y ago
Not really. Putin is former FSB and Russia's interests always are defined by having a security state. Today, during the Soviets and before with the Tsar, Russia has always used a heavily authoritarian regime to maintain security. They must in order to maintain sovereignty. While there could be simple pragmatism here, Putin does not operate as a pragmatist and it is in his direct interest to keep the leaks to a minimum so that they can be the sole ones to know of how it operates. After all, if they know how we're spying and their own adversaries don't, they're better off.
- laureny 13y ago
  I'm having a very hard time parsing what you wrote and trying to understand how the tsar/soviet era (or anything you say in that comment) is relevant in any way to the current Snowden situation.
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    Russia has been playing the Great Game in its sleep since Peter The Great. This country is always changing and always staying the same. So while the ideology of the high command may change you always have very strong central government which is chasing Russian interests with great zeal.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

danbruc 13y ago

Understand that every country spies on every other. Germany moaning about us spying is highly hypocritical because they do the same exact thing to every ally. So does France to Germany, the UK to France, so on and so forth. Hell, Israel spies on us and we spy on them. Spying is core to our safety in the modern age, and has been core to the safety of every country since the days of the roman empire. At the risk of being proven wrong in the (near) future I challenge your statement. I doubt the German government or an intelligence agency would dare to bug an US embassy, the headquarter of one of your parties or whatever comes closest to the EU buildings supposed to be bugged. Equally I doubt they are in the business of mass surveillance. There is a huge difference between USA and Germany (and probably many other European countries) - we don't have this paranoia that everyone is against us (justified or not). People don't care about terrorism. Admittedly I have never been to the USA and can not judge how much a concern this really is in the general population but the impression that arrives on this side of the ocean is that there is a widespread fear. There are of course people dealing with terrorism - we don't simply ignore the problem - but the general population really does not care. I am also not old enough to judge if this was different when Germany experienced terror attacks, for example by the RAF from the 1970s to the 1990s. I think the USA was a very different place before 9/11. I read the recently leaked NSA IG Report and what it says about the time before 9/11 is very different from what the current situation seems to be - they are talking about what they can not do and what court orders they need and so on. But then 9/11 happens and they go completely nuts.

javert 13y ago
> There is a huge difference between USA and Germany (and probably many other European countries) - we don't have this paranoia that everyone is against us (justified or not). I don't think we in the USA do, either. Don't presume that the American people are "steering the ship" of the government. The government is completely out of control. We have let go of the steering wheel. Not all that surprising... the US is basically a 3rd world country, if you consider the whole population. (As a side note, that's also why something like universal health care cannot work as well here as it can in Germany.)
- sneak 13y ago