In the spring of 2007, I interviewed Václav Havel on a bench in the garden of Prague’s Czernin Palace. The playwright and former Czech president discussed his shifting views on the war in Iraq, the role of art in unfree states, the dangers of political obsession and indifference — and his yearning, 11 years after he had quit smoking, for a cigarette.
We also spoke about the importance of truth, particularly in matters of international diplomacy. “I think we can talk to every ruler but first of all it is necessary to tell the truth,” Havel said. Turning to Vladimir Putin — or “Ras-Putin,” as he called him — he added: “With me, he gets more and more suspicious. We have to tell him plainly what we think of his behavior.”
Havel’s comment — which followed the murders of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the prominent critic Alexander Litvinenko but preceded Russia’s invasion of Georgia, its seizure of Crimea, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the poisoning, imprisoning and death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the massacre at Bucha and the obliteration of Mariupol — comes to mind after the single most shameful vote ever cast by the United States at the United Nations.
On Monday, for the third anniversary of Russia’s brutal lunge toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian government put forward a resolution in the General Assembly demanding Russia’s withdrawal of its forces and accountability for its war crimes as the basis of a “comprehensive, lasting and just peace.” Ninety-three countries supported the resolution; 65 abstained, including China. Among the 18 who opposed it were Russia, North Korea, Nicaragua, Belarus, Equatorial Guinea and, vomitously, Israel and the United States.
Later, the United States won a wan 10-0 approval for a Security Council resolution (with five abstentions, including from Britain and France) that called for an end to the war without mentioning who started it. This is supposed to be a mark of realism, on the view that scolding Moscow for its sins will do nothing to advance a diplomatic end to the war.
On a broader level, it’s also meant as one in a series of moves to woo Putin back toward the West and away from his partnership (as the junior member) with China’s Xi Jinping — what foreign-policy pundits are calling a “Reverse Nixon,” in contrast to the 37th president’s efforts to detach China from the Soviet orbit.