I want to again reiterate what my colleague said. Engagement is critical. Russia cannot be trusted. A quote from Lenin says that you must always probe with a bayonet. That tells us that we have to do our homework as well. It's not a bad line.
In terms of human rights and corruption, those are legacy issues. They go hand in hand. The countries that were their traditional partners continue to import and export that. These are autocracies from the beginning. As for Russia, in 2013 there was an Economist article on Putin that said the Kremlin is but a facade. He surrounds himself with billionaire cronies and all dissension is criminalized.
We're seeing a bit of the movement away from kratocracies in central Asia, in Uzbekistan and in Kurdistan, where there's a devolution of presidential power to government and parliament. Is that democracy? It is a beginning.
That's why our engagements on governance issues, as well as the economy, as well as jobs, and as well as export financing, are really extremely important. If we do not engage in these regions, Russia and China will move in to fill the vacuum in countries which they believe to be theirs.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk carved up Europe, the Eastern bloc, after World War I. As for the Yalta agreement, which everybody loves, Poland hates it because it carved up Poland again. The Baltic states, like central Asia, are not all the same; they're all very different. Lithuania has a completely different history. These are regions that Russia has a continued interest in—the empire strikes back.