Roundtable on Illicit Trade

Helsinki Commission Chairman Senator Ben Cardin spoke with José Díaz-Balart of MSNBC following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's address to Congress. Chairman Cardin discussed U.S. support for Ukraine in providing defensive weaponry and humanitiarian assistance. "[Zelensky's] message was clear: we need staying power to isolate Russia and Mr. Putin, we need to increase the cost by increasing the sanctions, and we need to provide Ukraine with the lethal defense weapons it needs in order to protect its skies," he said.

ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — Legal troubles for the coach and others in Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s orbit could emerge in the United States even after her doping case from the Beijing Games has been resolved. Anti-doping experts say the episode falls under the scope of a recently enacted U.S. law that criminalizes doping schemes in events involving American athletes. The law calls for fines of up to $1 million and prison sentences of up to 10 years for those who participate in doping programs that influence international sports. “Doctors and coaches who give performance-enhancing drugs to athletes are directly liable” under the new law, said one of its authors, attorney Jim Walden. “They are at risk of jail, steep fines, and forfeiture. And I suspect the FBI is already hot on this trail.” On Monday, The Court of Arbitration for Sport cleared Valieva to compete in the women’s competition this week. Still unresolved is what to do about the gold medal the Russians won — with Valieva as the headliner — in last week’s mixed team competition. Because Valieva is 15, and considered a “protected person” under global anti-doping rules, the sanctions against her could be light. That does not exempt her entourage from possible anti-doping penalties beyond the possible stripping of the medal from the Russian team. Walden and others expect those same people to come under investigation by U.S. law-enforcement, as well. “The latest Russian doping scandal in Beijing is exactly why we passed the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act. Doping is corruption,” said Sen Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, who is involved in anti-doping issues. Walden represents the bill’s namesake, Grigory Rodchenkov, the Russian lab director who blew the whistle on the complex, widespread Russian doping scheme designed to help the country win medals at the 2014 Sochi Games and elsewhere. Rodchenkov now lives in hiding. The Rodchenkov Act wasn’t designed to go after athletes. It targets coaches, doctors and other members of an athlete’s entourage who are accused of arranging doping programs in any event that involves U.S. athletes, sponsors or broadcasters. The bill, supported by Walden, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and others, passed by unanimous consent through both houses of Congress and was signed into law in December 2020. It was considered a remarkable achievement considering the polarization in U.S. politics. Officials at the White House drug control office in both the Trump and Biden administrations have been critical of global anti-doping regulators. They threatened to withhold funding from the World Anti-Doping Agency, but recently paid their remaining dues despite some major concerns. The law’s first test came last month when federal officials charged a doctor of providing drugs to an “Athlete A,” who The Associated Press identified as Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare. The IOC and WADA lobbied against parts of the bill. Their main argument was that it gave U.S. law enforcement too much leverage in policing anti-doping cases that occur outside its own borders. This case — a Russian who was found to have doped on Dec. 25 at a national championship — appears, at first glance, to fit that profile. WADA said it took six weeks for officials to receive the test from a lab in Sweden because Russia’s anti-doping agency (RUSADA) failed to flag it as a priority. That Valieva was allowed to compete at the Olympics turns it into an international episode. WADA said in a statement that it was “disappointed in the ruling,” and that it, too, would “look into” Valieva’s support personnel. Russia’s anti-doping agency has also begun an investigation. But critics of WADA and the IOC argue the bill was passed because the international anti-doping system has proven it can’t police its own. They point to the sanctions handed to Russia over the past eight years as Exhibit A. Part of those sanctions resulted in years’ worth of suspensions and reforms for RUSADA, which is overseeing this case. Critics contend the case involving Valieva might not have erupted had the country — whose athletes are competing in Beijing under the banner of “Russian Olympic Committee” due to the sanctions — been penalized appropriately. “If I were a betting man, I’d say there’s a 95% chance that this is a good case for” the law, said Rob Koehler, the head of the advocacy group Global Athlete. Though there are harsh penalties under the law, it’s hard to imagine U.S. authorities would ever get their hands on Russians if they were indicted. Still, an indictment would have an impact. It could curtail their ability to travel or coach outside of Russia, since the United States has extradition deals with dozens of countries across the globe. Valieva tested positive for the banned heart medication trimetazidine. “We need more facts, but you can envision a case like this under Rodchenkov,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart said. “This drug doesn’t just show up out of nowhere. Assuming the facts play out that someone was involved in giving it to her to enhance performance, it fits like a glove.”

Europe begins the new year on the brink of major war. Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops and heavy equipment along Ukraine’s border and issued an ultimatum to the West demanding it trade Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for its peace. Such demands are a strategic nonstarter, but the seriousness of the Kremlin’s threats appear all too real. To stop this war before it begins, muddling through is not an option; this demands immediate and bold action. Russia claims its 100,000-plus troops at Ukraine’s doorstep is a response to NATO enlargement and its infrastructure in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. These arguments are unconvincing. The Kremlin has used NATO as a straw man for its grievances, yet Russian disquiet has little to do with NATO itself, which has no immediate plans to expand anywhere near Russia and would not threaten Russia if it did. Although the United States and its European partners have provided material and technical military assistance to Ukraine, it has not changed the region’s balance of power. Instead, Russia’s demands evince anxiety over global status and the possibility that its borderlands may be able to escape from its grip. In particular, Ukraine has the size and industrial capacity to make it a credible economic and military power regardless of whether it joins NATO. For Russia, a strong and hostile Ukraine is intolerable, even though Russian aggression husbanded Ukraine’s pro-West turn. By supporting Donbass separatism and annexing Crimea, the Kremlin stoked patriotism in Ukraine, lanced Ukraine’s most Russia-friendly population, and earned Kyiv’s hostility. Ukraine is not the only country for which this applies, but it may be the most significant given its size, geography, and symbolic position in official Russian neoimperial mythology. War should be avoided at all reasonable costs. Another invasion would risk tens of millions of lives and further undermine Europe’s increasingly fragile security. The United States and Europe should be willing to negotiate in good faith to avoid wider conflict—so long as Ukraine, Georgia, and Eastern Europe’s sovereignty are preserved. However, acceding to Russia’s maximalist demands would strip Ukraine of its already battered sovereignty and invite a new Iron Curtain over Europe—consigning many millions of people to generations of domination and conflict. History and international relations theory may offer some guidance in this crisis. In the runup to the Peloponnesian War between the sprawling Athenian league and Sparta’s opposing empire, Athens faced a dilemma between its ally Corcyra and Corinth, a powerful member of the Spartan alliance. As chronicled by classical historian Donald Kagan in his On the Origins of War: And the Preservation of Peace, Corcyra called on Athens for protection, but Athens was anxious to intervene lest it precipitate a ruinous great-power war with Sparta, which was increasingly fearful that Athens, the rising force in Greece, would eclipse Spartan power. Yet Athens worried that abandoning Corcyra would undermine its alliances and invite Spartan aggression. As a compromise, Athens deployed a mere 10 ships out of its vast 400-ship fleet to join the Corcyraeans in the hopes that it would be enough to deter Corinth’s advancing 150-ship armada. However, as Kagan notes, Athens’s symbolic deployment was not strong enough to deter Corinth—much less defeat it—but too aggressive to completely assuage Spartan fears about Athenian ambitions. In the ensuing Battle of Sybota, the Corinthian armada destroyed the combined Corcyraean-Athenian fleet, launching a spiral of events that led to the devastating Peloponnesian War. As the United States deliberates with its partners and allies to craft countermeasures against Kremlin aggression, the West should avoid its own 10-ship trap. In some ways, NATO’s 2008 Bucharest summit decision is an example, where the alliance promised eventual membership to Georgia and Ukraine without a concrete pathway. This compromise left Georgia and Ukraine vulnerable while stoking the Kremlin’s strategic anxieties. The recently departed Columbia University political scientist Robert Jervis considered such problems in his international relations theory classic Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Jervis weighed deterrence against a “spiral” model, which posited that counterescalating in response to perceived escalation could provoke the opposite of the intended response. An attempt at deterrence could instead be viewed as further provocation. While deterrence preaches strength and resolution, the spiral model generally counsels conciliation. However, Jervis theorized that while the deterrence and spiral models are often presented as opposing, generalizable theories, their usefulness varies with the circumstances. He surmised that deterrence is applicable between two powers with genuinely incompatible positions, and the spiral model best applies to disputes between status quo powers where their perceived incompatibility is mostly illusory. One exercise Jervis suggests is to interrogate evidence that the second power is not engaged in revisionist aggression. In this case, a charitable reading of Russian actions suggests that Russia’s grievances are oriented to the security situation on its borders—the “belt of Russia’s vital interests.” In this interpretation, Russia’s historical influence along its borders need not be a cause for alarm on its own, much less for war. Indeed, if arms limitations and codes of conduct represent an acceptable compromise to defuse the present crisis without sacrificing the freedom or sovereignty of the states on Russia’s border, this is worth pursuing. However, which vital interests necessitate Russian dominion over its periphery? Although Russia’s perceptions of insecurity may be real, it is demonstrably not materially insecure, with a large, full-spectrum, and sophisticated military that is arguably the most powerful in Europe. Russia’s neighbors are far weaker, Western states largely disarmed after the Soviet Union’s dissolution, and remnant Allied forces remained in Western Europe in compliance with the NATO-Russia Founding Act, even as Russia has significantly militarized. And Russia’s economic fortunes are far better served by peace and integration with the West, not conflict. However, the stability and integrity of European security architecture as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act remain fundamental to U.S. national security. Any countenance of the Kremlin’s broader abrogation of that framework and the restoration of a new Yalta Conference would reverse decades of peace and prosperity—and likely drive continental militarization that would only compound Russian security anxieties and conflict. It appears the West and the Russian regime’s positions are indeed incompatible. In response, the United States and its allies must be wary of the 10-ship trap. Although caution is often a virtue in national security and foreign policymaking, a moderate response to the enormity and notoriety of Russia’s belligerence would likely neither protect Ukraine nor satisfy Russian imperial appetites. Broad economic sanctions on their own are likely to be sufficient to forestall an invasion; and token, light deployments behind NATO’s high walls while Ukraine burns will inflame Kremlin paranoia without arresting or appreciably punishing Russian militarism. Negotiations and diplomacy should be given the time to work, and any kind of durable solution is unlikely to completely satisfy either party. However, the United States and its allies should undergird these talks with serious and significant measures to prevent another, greater war in Ukraine before it begins. As in Corcyra, half measures are unlikely to ameliorate the crisis and may only exacerbate them. What, then, do full measures look like? The critical factors here are speed and plausibility: steps that not only can be taken quickly but that Russia will believe Washington will carry through. Although economic sanctions have been broadly regarded as useful tools in this regard, most measures being envisioned are likely already baked into Russian calculations or may not have an immediate effect. In addition, the United States—and Europe, if it is willing—should significantly curtail Russian energy imports and aim to wean Russian hydrocarbons from European markets entirely—perhaps even going so far as to employ Defense Production Act authorities to stockpile and potentially surge liquefied natural gas and other fuel alternatives to Central and Eastern Europe. Boosting other energy sources on a strategic scale could also accompany this approach. Moscow must be convinced that military aggression will only dramatically increase and complicate what it believes are its existing security vulnerabilities. Toward that end, the United States and Europe could begin studying withdrawal from the NATO-Russia Founding Act, and planning can begin in earnest for repositioning heavy forces in Europe in the event of a wider Russian war. NATO can signal that new European applications for NATO membership would be welcomed and expediently ratified (perhaps even pre-ratified in some form), particularly from Sweden and Finland, should Russia go through with its militaristic gambit. Washington could also consider scenarios to provide aspirants—Ukraine, Georgia, and potentially the Nordics—with bilateral treaty guarantees prior to NATO accession. In Corcyra, the compromise of 10 Athenian ships only served to anger Corinth and Sparta as well as fed beliefs that war was not only necessary but an urgent enterprise. Against the colossal coercive symbolism and military reality posed by the Russian buildup—and the even greater weight of the Kremlin’s demands—the United States and Europe should prepare responses to match the moment. Michael Hikari Cecire is a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Helsinki Commission.