The Conflict in Georgia

Before just recently, you might not have heard much from Russia.  Our post-Cold War world had more than its share of troubles, to be sure.  But the Russians, at least, weren’t supposed to be invading neighboring states.

Oops.

As anyone who watches the news is aware, Georgia is in big trouble right now.  The truce brokered by French President Sarkozy on Tuesday (under which both sides return their forces to positions held prior to last week) apparently isn’t taken by Russia’s government to mean that its forces must cease advancing on Georgian cities.  With Wednesday’s occupation of Gori (only 40 miles from the capital city Tbilisi) which effectively cut the country in half, and President Bush’s announcement that the U.S. would begin flying humanitarian aid into the capital, the situation took on an appearance reminiscent of the Berlin Airlift.

The Berlin airlift was a multinational effort in response to the Soviet Union’s blockade of Berlin.  Oxford University fellow Robert Service, in his excellent A History of Modern Russia (2002), describes it as follows:

In the same month [June 1948] there were diplomatic clashes among the Allies when Stalin announced a blockade of Berlin.  The German capital, which lay in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany, had been divided into four areas administered separately by the USSR, the USA, Britain and France.  Stalin was responding to an American attempt to introduce the Deutschmark as the unit of currency in Berlin, an attempt he regarded as designed to encroach on the USSR’s economic prerogatives in the Soviet zone.  His blockade, he expected, would swiftly produce the requested concessions from the Western powers.  But no such thing happened.  After several weeks he had to back down because the Americans and [their] allies airlifted food supplies to their areas in the German capital.  Neither side in the dispute wished to go to war over Berlin, and tensions subsided.  (p. 310)

Today, we are faced with a strikingly similar situation.  Russia views Western ties with Georgia as meddling in its back yard.  In the eyes of Vladimir Putin & Co., NATO’s September 2006 decision to enter into a period of “intensified dialogue” with Georgia (not a guarantee of membership, but a step in that direction) is, at best, a diminution of Russian influence in the Caucuses, and, at worst, a threat to Russian security.

So Moscow seems to be pursuing a strategy that harkens back to 1948 Berlin: cut off supplies.  By isolating Tbilisi, Moscow may be trying to force its democratically elected government from power.  In response, the U.S. has demanded that “all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, roads and airports” remain open to deliveries and civilian travel.

Even in the post-Cold War era, this strategy is nothing new for the Russians. 

In January 2006, unexplained simultaneous explosions on the Russian side of Georgia’s northern border cut off energy supplies into Georgia for several days during the cold of winter.  This came during a period of tense relations between Moscow and Tbilisi.

In July 2006, as punishment for selling an important oil refinery in Lithuania to a non-Russian company, a Russian pipeline operator closed the pipeline servicing that refinery.

In July 2008, in response to the Czech Republic’s decision to allow American radar equipment within its borders as part of U.S. efforts to build a missile defense system, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev expressed his displeasure ominously: “We will not be hysterical about this, but we will think of retaliatory steps.”  Three days later, the supply of Russian oil into the Czech Republic began to dwindle.

When one takes both oil and natural gas into account, Russia is the biggest energy exporter in the world.  Bigger than Saudi Arabia.  With Soviet ideology a relic of the past, and much of Europe, including NATO members, heavily reliant on Russian energy imports, Russia’s kleptocrats are learning that international free-market capitalism may be more useful in projecting force than communism ever was.

It has been argued convincingly that in developing countries oil and democracy don’t mix.  We may now be about to witness what kind of resistance oil-addicted established democracies put up against an established, oil-producing, militarily strong state, with imperialist designs.

Fallout From Putin Affair Rumor

I stumbled across an interesting post from Sean’s Russia Blog detailing a new amendment to Russia’s media law that passed late last week that expands the ability of the Kremlin to go after media outlets. Sean writes:

the Duma passed an amendment to the mass media law that adds slander to the list of unmentionables such as revealing state secrets, supporting terrorism, advocating pornography, and promoting violence. The law doesn’t use the word “slander” but redefined it with “intentionally false information,” which, of course, is just about anything. Perhaps more important than the vague, elastic language is the fact that the amendment gives the Ministry of Justice the power to issue warnings to media outlets for publishing slanderous and libelous material. Two warnings in twelve months allows Justice to shut the media outlet down pending trial.

As Sean also notes, this come on the heels of a recent newspaper being shut down for publishing a story detailing an alleged affair between Putin and a former Russian Olympic Gymnast turned Duma MP. Putin denied the probably false rumor, but the newspaper was shut down days later because of “funding problems.” It is not hard to imagine that this amendment may even be in response to the irresponsible story of a single paper, but I guess the Duma has a duty to protect the integrity of the state Putin.

While Russia has had loose “libel laws” that allowed individuals to sue media organizations for what they print, this is a marked step in a direction towards legalized state coercion of the media – although they already own (partially or in full) most of the television and radio outlets.

This event also dovetails nicely with Freedom House’s recent annual report of Global Press Freedom in the World. Freedom House found, unsurprisingly, that the freedom of the Russian press had declined. (The draft text, maps and pretty charts are available here.)

This report was drafted before this amendment was passed. Putin’s Russia is surely in a sad state when a Freedom House report is out of date before it’s even off the presses.

Kremlin Rules

Finally a large, U.S. newspaper is doing a detailed series on Putin’s regime and the manner in which it operates to preserve itself.  I don’t have a lot of time right now, but I recommend everyone read this good piece by Clifford Levy. Too often the articles on Russia and Putin’s growing authoritarian control focus on a single narrow topic like civil society or journalists.  Get a cup of hot coffee and settle in to read this.

Kremlin Revives KGB Tactics to Subvert Civil Society

The use of security and intelligence services to monitor domestic populations is always a tricky issue for a democracy. In recent months, we in the U.S. have been wrestling with the degree to which the government can enlist the intelligence services to monitor domestic communications.

This week a bombshell was dropped in the Russian media. Alexander Novikov, a activist in the United Civil Front civil society group which opposes the authoritarian policies of Putin’s government, revealed that he was an informant for the FSB (formerly the KGB in the Soviet Union). According to his statements, he has been providing information to the FSB for more than two years regarding the planned activities and inner workings of the United Civil Front.

If these claims are true, the FSB would have clearly broken at 1995 law that forbids domestic intelligence services to spy domestic civil society organization that are not illegal. According to Mr. Novikov, he was paid approximately $200 per month to provide regular reports regarding the groups activities and insight into the leadership structure of the organization.

Apparently Mr. Novikov decided go public because he began to sympathize with the United Civil Front and their struggle against the Kremlin:

Gradually, Novikov began to sympathize with the opposition activists he was spying on, which sparked arguments with his FSB handlers, who called the activists “sick people” and “idiots,” he said. “I told them, ‘If these people are sick, why do you beat them? Why do you attack them with clubs?’” Novikov recalled.

Although I doubt this story will get much additional coverage in the Russian media besides the initial story in Novaya Gazeta, events like this should demonstrate to the Russian people that the Janus-faced Putin regime is hollowing out the soul of their society. Stability and freedom are not mutually exclusive. Russians can have their rights protected and succeed economically. The false strength provided by high-energy prices can not last. At some point, as the energy prices fall, so to will the scales from the Russia’s eyes as they realize the new monster they’ve helped to create by their acquiescence.

OSCE Will Not Monitor Russian Vote – Again

The OSCE has again pulled out of monitoring elections in Russia. During partliamentary elections in December, the OSCE refused to send monitors because the Russian government place too many restrictions and did not process visa requests in a timely manner to make observation meaningful. The OSCE announced today that they will not monitor again, because of similar restrictions.

This is a good move by the OSCE, as it was back in December. Any type of half-ass monitoring that the Kremlin could strong arm the OSCE into carrying out would only add legitimacy to the process. Now, the OSCE needs to work with the European parliaments to make sure they do not send their own observation team of “notables.” This undermined the “Western” boycott of election monitoring. Furthermore, the OSCE needs to work hard to publicize instances of alleged election fraud in the international arena when brought by the domestic civil society groups. Just because they aren’t able to work fully on the ground, doesn’t mean the OSCE can’t serve a constructive role in the process.

I Didn’t Vote!

A fascinating movement has grown in small Ingushetia, a small autonomous republic within the Russian Federation. In the recent parliamentary elections, local officials claimed that more than 98.35% of the registered voters turned out and98.72% of those supported Putin’s United Russia.

These figures are blatantly false and a local movement has started to gather signatures of people officially stating “I Did Not Vote!” Paul Goble, who runs a great blog on Eurasia, has been following the movement. His latest post details that the movement has gathered signed statements from a stunning 54.5% of registered voters indicating that they did not submit ballots.

That type of organization is pretty impressive. Paul indicates that other groups may seek to replicate it elsewhere, but I doubt that will be feasible. This movement is finally being picked up by the domestic and international media.

Money quote:

The signed declarations have been put into 290 volumes that are now in the hands of Moscow lawyers who plan to transmit them to the Procurator General of the Russian Federation with a request that the election results from Ingushetia at least be reviewed and possibly overturned.

Reporting of this kind is the reason for the continuing efforts by Zyazikov and Moscow to close down the independent-minded Ingushetia.ru site. Having failed to do so through pressure on the local ISP provider, redirection of visitors to porno sites, and threats on the life of the site owner’s father, this week the authorities did something new.

They overloaded the site’s popular forums with material so radical that its posting would certainly subject the site’s current owners to charges of extremism and thus forced them to restrict access to the forums to registered users lest such posts become the basis for officials to shut down the site itself.

The state is clearing feeling the heat of this grassroots movement. In a country where the central government has such firm control over many of the levers of power, I believe one of the best tactics to undermine it is to do exactly this. Gather irrefutable evidence and throw yourself with it at the corrupt gears of the state and demand a response. Every time the Russian government fails to act on something this blatant, they hurt their international credibility and domestic legitimacy as proving for the “rule of law.”

Putinism As Ideology

Two interesting posts today regarding the development as Putinism as an ideology.

First, Prespectives on the New Russia has a post on the development of a Putin Museum and the establishment of Putin Studies. Money quote:

This ideology seems to be developing into a strange blend of continued capitalist reforms, Eurasianist ideology (Dugin, the Eurasianist thinker is now featured prominently in Kremlin propaganda and espouses similar ideas regarding Russia’s use of landpower and what he calls a “conservative revolution” – one that seemingly preserves traditional Russian institutions while also brings about needed change), anti-Americanism (see Nashi’s frequent attacks on America and on opposition politicians as being American), and good ole fashioned nationalism (this is mainly manifested through spending oil money on the army and “national projects”, though here, there is a difficult struggle going on between those who are more and less willing to flirt with anti-immigration and racism in Russia as another plank in the Putin coalition).

A few months back, I wrote about the commissioning of new Russian history books.  La Russophobe has an update regarding the project today. Money quote:

Here’s a few lessons from a textbook called Russian History from 1945—2007:

1. The abolition of directly elected regional governors was a good thing because Russians cannot govern themselves.

2. The re-privatization of Yukos means Russia no longer has oligarchs.

3. Georgia gave up its independence in 2004 with its presidential elections and is now illegitimate.

4. Stalin was an “effective manager,” taking Russia from the plow to the atomic bomb in just a few years. His repressions were necessary to mobilize for war and industrialize Russia so quickly. Same goes for Brezhnev. Krushchev, Yeltsin and Gorbachev on the other hand were bad because they were weak.

Brilliant.

At least they vote on weekends

Kyrgyzstan had a fraudulent parliamentary election on Sunday, according to the OSCE. As in Russia, the strongman’s party won a lion’s share of seats under a new list PR system (5% threshold).

Russia dumped its mixed system for list PR before elections earlier this month. Kyrgyzstan recently passed constitutional amendments, one of which abolished a single-member district plurality system.

Like Russia, Kyrgyzstan also made it harder for small parties to get on the ballot.

Unlike in Russia, the supreme court is reviewing changes to the electoral law.

Kasparov can’t contest Russian presidency

Steven Taylor blogs an AP report that Garry Kasparov can’t run for president. Other Russia can’t find a place to hold a nominating convention. Because Kasparov isn’t a registered party member, under Russian law, he has to be nominated in person.

So, no space for a meeting, no meeting. No meeting, no nominee.

Kasparov spent five days in jail last month for campaigning.

Russia is voting

And nobody’s watching. Well, almost. See this BBC report.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has abandoned its plans to send a big team of election observers to Russia after accusing the Russian government of imposing unacceptable restrictions and of deliberately delaying the issuing of visas. Russia has denied the claims.

Only a much smaller group of MPs from the OSCE’s parliamentary assembly will be in attendance.

That means just 400 foreign monitors will cover 95,000 polling stations.

Apparently Other Russia is not on the ballot.