US military will withdraw from Central Asia

The US’ last military base in Central Asia will close in July. In a move all too familiar to former residents of once-Bohemian urban neighborhoods, the Kyrgyz government raised the rent from $2 million to $200 million.

April 24: Muzzled Media: Coverage of the Financial Crisis in Russia

Panelists from Russian and US pro-democracy media outlets will discuss the state of free information in Russia next week:

In September 2008, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told Le Figaro that the economic crisis was a European and American phenomenon, adding, “We do not have it and I hope won’t have it.” Events soon proved him wrong. But with most of the country’s media outlets tightly controlled, Russians had few sources of independent information about a crisis that soon began to affect their daily lives. What have the people of Russia been told by their media about the financial crisis? What does the lack of a free press mean for Russians as they confront declining living standards after years of relative prosperity? Will the Kremlin’s model of muzzled media and managed democracy survive the crisis?

Dmitry Sidorov (Kommersant), Daniel Kimmage, Andrei Sitov (ITAR-TASS) and Brian Whitmore (RFE/RL) will discuss these questions at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Washington headquarters, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, 4th Floor from 9:30-11:00 AM on Thursday, April 30. Moderated by David Satter (Hudson Institute and SAIS). Co-sponsored by Georgetown’s Democracy and Governance program.

It should be an interesting event for anyone intrigued by Russia Today’s US-directed propaganda and “Russia Now,” RT’s periodic paid insert in the Washington Post.

Multivector foreign policies

One concern of this blog is authoritarian cooperation. This refers to the coordinated international strategies that authoritarian governments use to keep power.

This is an excellent post about an example of that. Foreign Minister Lavrov is on record speaking about Russia’s deepening ties with populist governments in Latin America. These governments are in power because their predecessors’ “neoliberal recipes” failed to deliver on popular expectations. Their relations with Russia are based on “mutual advantage,” not ideology. Yet Russia is not seeking a Latin American sphere of influence or fomenting a new Cold War. These ties are the result of a “multivector” foreign policy, which globalization makes necessary.

Putin-Chavez summits must represent just one vector.

So what is a multivector foreign policy? Apparently Kyrgyzstan has one too. Here is one definition:

Any multivector policy is always a balance, and not always simple and easy. Kyrgyz diplomats in their assignments routinely received directions to maintain good relations with one partner without sacrificing relations with others. Multivector policies imply eschewing exclusiveness and special “spheres of influence.”

According to Gregory Gleason for RFE/RL, Kyrgyzstan’s multivector foreign policy is coming apart. President Bakiev realizes that, to stay president, he has to pick one vector and abandon others:

It may be that the unraveling of Kyrgyzstan’s multivectoral policy is less a decision of choice than an act of desperation. Bakiev is facing formidable challenges as he seeks to defend his administration from internal opposition, respond to the difficulties of the global economic downturn, and secure support from the most influential foreign partner in the Eurasian region.

Facing the Democracy/Security Distinction

The conflict in Georgia returns us to the familiar topic of democracy losing out to security considerations. It is argued that Western powers—most especially the United States—lacked the will and means to defend Georgia’s fledgling democracy in its moment of peril.

The debate is not new; in a much different context, Jeane Kirkpatrick famously argued that the Carter administration erred in its focus on “human rights” at the expense of national security.

Does the democracy/security distinction remain appropriate? Robert Kagan does not think so. Kagan contends that the division between democracy promotion and national security has been erased by the shift in foreign policy demanded by the attacks of 9/11.
Read the rest of this entry »

Russia ate NATO’s carrot

With Russian troops now within 25 miles of Tbilisi, the U.S. has stepped up its tough talk on Russia.  But regardless of how the military situation plays out, the democracy agenda has been dealt a serious blow.

Press Conference

Today, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice gave a joint press conference with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.  Saakashvili decried looting and what he referred to as “ethnic cleansing” by Russian forces and irregulars.  He also made grim reference to a report released yesterday by Human Rights Watch blaming 11 civilian deaths and several injuries on the Russian use of cluster bombs, which Saakashvili called “an inhuman weapon.”  [In the interest of full disclosure, the United States does not renounce the use of cluster bombs.]

Saakashvili called the Russian invasion an effort “to kill Georgian democracy, and to end the independence of Georgia.”  He defiantly added, “Russia has lots of tanks, but no tank is enough to crush the will of a free people.”

The Response of International Institutions

For her part, Secretary Rice demanded that Russia respect the ceasefire agreement signed today, and withdraw its forces from Georgia.  (At the time, they were a mere 25 miles away.)  She also called on the international community to hurry to provide observers and a peacekeeping force, which would deny Russia an excuse to stay.  The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) began to take steps that would up its current number of observers in Georgia from 200 to 300, but this would require all 56 member-states to sign off.

Meanwhile in Washington, President Bush delivered a strong condemnation of Moscow at the White House.  In it, he said the U.S. would work with members of the G-7 to resolve the crisis, thus seemingly kicking Russia out of the G-8 club with one word.  This would follow on the heels on Monday’s conference call among foreign ministers of the G-8 sans Russia.  This kind of diplomatic response is a sure step in the right direction, but a sign that the West is nowhere near prepared to bare its teeth.  No surprise there – if it were, this would never have happened.

HEY!  Who ate our carrot?

Which leaves one questioning the relevance of NATO.  Before the Russian invasion, Georgia was actively trying to join NATO.  The U.S. was pressing other members on its behalf, without success.  In a world where Russia is expected to keep quietly to itself, the U.S. could offer the prospect of NATO membership as an inducement to states to implement democratic reforms.  Reforms would gradually take place, and the entire eastern European neighborhood would benefit from having more democratically inclined neighbors in it. 

But now the calculus is quite different.  With the real Russia unmasked for all the world to see, joining NATO becomes much more serious business for all parties concerned, for several reasons.  First, with the United States tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, an American promise to come to the aid of aggrieved European allies looks – for the foreseeable future – a lot like an empty threat.  This means that even as countries like Georgia and Ukraine want NATO membership with increasing urgency, it stands to do them less and less good.  They could bend over backwards to implement reforms – right up until the Russians marched in.

Second, even if we had a free hand, our security policy would likely trump our democracy policy, as it has many times before.  In a rush to extend NATO membership, the United States would be willing to overlook democratic gains – or lack thereof.

Third, even if we had a free hand and prospective members suddenly became advanced consolidated democracies, a Russian menace decreases the likelihood that any of our other NATO partners want to risk war with Russia by entering into an alliance.

All of this spells trouble for the democracy agenda.  

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.

Breaking: Zimbabwe sanctions vetoed

The BBC reports that Russia and China, among others, have voted against Zimbabwe sanctions in the UN’s Security Council. There’s probably no surprise here: the vote gives both countries the chance to exert their power in opposition to the hopes of their western opponents, the US and the UK. It also undermines calls within the UN for (1) restraint to political violence by the Zanu PF, and (2) respect for democratic outcomes. As powers that regularly undermine democratic processes, Russia and China gain much by casting doubt over the primacy of democratic governance in the lofty forum that the Sec Council affords.

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.

Annual PREEA Conference: Medvedev’s Russia

Another upcoming event of interest, courtesy of our friends at Georgetown U’s Professionals in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Affairs:

Medvedev’s Russia: Political and Economic Perspectives Under The New Administration will be held on Wed. April 9th, from 11-1pm at the Copley Formal Lounge on campus. This is a very timely event, with president-elect Dmitry Medvedev slated to be inaugurated on May 7th.

The conference panel includes Andrei Illarionov of the Cato Institute, former chief economic adviser to Vladimir Putin (2000-2005); Trevor Gunn, SFS Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University; Edward D. Lozansky, President, American University in Moscow; and Andrei A. Piontkovsky of the Hudson Institute, Washington, DC and Executive Director, Strategic Studies Center, Moscow.

For those at the low end of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, lunch will be provided. Please RSVP with your name and organization to rsvp@preea.org.

In-depth Russia Coverage the New Cool

I am truly spoiled this week by a glut of in-depth Russia coverage by major U.S. daily newspapers.

Earlier I posted about about the series that the NYTimes started this week. It really must be my lucky week; the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) is also starting a series on “The Putin Generation.” The series is examining the lives, views, and involvement of the youth generation that grew up after the fall of the Soviet Union. Some of their earliest memories have been shaped not by the horrors of the Soviet regime, but the chaotic decade under Yeltsin that was plagued by economic turmoil and deteriorating standards of living and Russian standing in the world. There is a great slide show that accompanies this article.

As I mentioned before, to understand why and how the Putin appeal is at the heart of this experience. The Kremlin harnessed this appeal to mobilize youth both within the United Russia party and as a phalanx of foot soldiers to counter opposition groups.

The first CSM piece is really insightful. It is based largely on the reporters interviews with Kirill Shchitov, one of the young, ardent supports of Putin. Their discussions are telling. Money quote:

“We support the political course that Putin started,” says Shchitov, an avid reader who draws inspiration from Peter the Great – “a real example of being proud of your country.” He also likes Stalin, a ruler who could solve any problem – including the defeat of Hitler – “by strict measures.” And he admires Franklin D. Roosevelt for, he says, making the United States a strong nation. And now, Putin.

The perceived humiliation of the Russian population has been used by the Kremlin to stoke a resurgent nationalism. In doing so, the Kremlin has referenced the challenges that the Soviet Union / Russia overcame in World War II. Part of this process has involved rewriting Russian history and partial rehabilitating Stalin’s rule as a period of “principled focus and determination” with some unfortunate zealousness.

Relying on youth organizations to protect and further a movement can have benefits, but also large potential pitfalls. Youths, caught up in the rhetoric and promises of a wooing leader, can become disillusioned when the promised future doesn’t materialize. It’s a risky strategy, but so far it has appeared to be effective, when coupled with the blatent abuse of administrative state resources, for the Kremlin in terms of stamping out opposition movements. I hope they realize that they are playing with fire – once started it can be an effective tool for many goals, but it can also burn you out of house and home.