Thread: Russia on the march - again

Estonia and Russia make uneasy peace


07.05.2007 - 09:27 CET | By Andrew Rettman
Protests against the Estonian embassy in Moscow have died down, but Estonia and Russia continue to exchange harsh words and wider EU-Russia political relations remain fragile.

The situation in Moscow returned to normality at the weekend, after seven days of rowdy protests outside the Estonian embassy that saw diplomatic families evacuated and the EU and NATO issue formal complaints to Russia.


The events culminated on Friday in a march by hundreds of young Russian nationalists to picket the European Commission office in Moscow, voicing anger that Brussels had not criticised Tallinn's role in the dispute.

There were no further demonstrations over the weekend however, with Estonia on Friday re-opening its consular service in the Russian capital and with EU and Russian diplomats holding one of their regular, twice-yearly "human rights dialogues."

The row began when Estonia moved a Soviet-era war memorial called the Bronze Soldier away from Tallinn city centre in late April, sparking riots by ethnic Russians in the country that saw 1,100 arrests and one death.

The statue, now at the Garrison Cemetery outside the city, had rarely attracted attention in the past but has now become a tourist attraction, especially for Finnish travellers, the Baltic Times reports.

Resentment remains
But resentment between Estonia and Russia continues to bubble away, with Russia's ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, and Estonia's foreign minister Urmas Paet, each saying the other's country owes an apology.

The dispute's energy dimension has the potential to escalate, with Russian newspapers citing unnamed oil traders as saying that Russian railways are cutting oil supplies to Estonia by 2 million tonnes a month for the next few months.

On the other side, Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip's decision not to meet Gazprom negotiator and ex-German leader Gerhard Schroeder in Tallinn on 8 May could delay Estonia's approval of Russia's Baltic Sea gas pipeline.

At a popular level, Russian football fans are keeping the mood of the previous week alive, unfurling giant banners saying "Hold on, Bronze Soldier!" at a weekend championship game and promising similar action in future, Interfax reports.

Meanwhile, the EU and Russia are playing down reports by Brussels-based weekly European Voice, that the union is threatening to block Russia's WTO entry if Moscow does not stop playing trade tricks on neighbouring EU states.

EU-Russia trade gripes
The weekly quoted an internal EU document as saying that the union should "make clear [it] is ready to support an early conclusion of Russia's WTO accession, but not at any price" citing "major impediments" to the EU giving its WTO approval.

European Commission trade spokesman Peter Power confirmed the existence of the hostile EU document but said it had no official status and called European Voice's analysis of the situation "inaccurate, wrong."

Russia's lead WTO negotiator, Maxim Medvedkov, said "We're in touch with the commission every day, really...it's business as usual," The Moscow Times reports.

The WTO leak comes in the context of major Polish and Lithuanian gripes over Russian food and oil trade blockades and in the context of broader tensions over NATO expansion and the future status of Kosovo.

EUobserver.com

Better to have hostile peace than war!

A better plan for Kosovo | csmonitor.com

Originally Posted by MrFirst

And what about the Massacre of Katyn Forest?
Anything else that isn't known still?

Wikipedia is giving good information about what happened and what/when was revealed. There are no secrets except for the destroyed files on few thousand executed people....

Wikipedia is also giving SOME information about 22000 Red Army officers starved to death in winter 1920-21 by Polish Republic..... quarter of all 80,000 POWs

Beginning in the autumn of 1920 during Polish-Soviet war thousands of captured Red Army men were placed in the camp of Тuchola. These POWs lived in trenches, while famine, cold, and infectious diseases killed tens of prisoners daily. In the winter 1920/1921 POWs had a death rate of about 25%, which was attributed to malnutrition, poor sanitary conditions, lack of fuel and medicines, and physical maltreatment by the Polish supervisors.

«From the moment of opening an infirmary in February, 1921 till May, 11, 1921 there was registered epidemic diseases 6491, not epidemic 12294, 2561 deaths» («Red Army POWs in the Polish POW camps 1919-1922», p. 671).

Lieutenant Colonel I. Matuszewski, the head of the II department of the Polish Joint Staff, informed the military minister of Poland in the letter on February 1, 1922, that 22 thousand of POWs were lost in the camp of Tuchol in all time of its existence.

this is not posted here to justify massacre in Katyn!!!

Russia has no intention of leaving either Georgia or Moldova.

As for CFE the Russian propaganda machine is working overtime.

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will be reoccupied within a year as will the Ukraine after a short but brutal, bloody war.

Poland will fall within two years.

All of Europe within five years.

The Bussian Bear is about to go on a rampage the likes of which the world has never seen.

The impotent US will sit idly by as the carnage ensues.

And this is just the beginning it will get worse. Much worse.

Europe Torn Between ABM And CFE
RIA Novosti | May 8, 2007


Moscow: Europe will have to make an important decision: to accept Washington's plans of deploying missile defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic contrary to Russia's interests, or to demand that the Untied States discuss the issue with Russia first. The decision may be made within days in Brussels, where the NATO-Russia Council is scheduled to meet on May 10. ABM will most likely stand at the top of the agenda, and Russia also intends to raise the issue of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe.

NATO countries have refused to ratify the CFE treaty, demanding that Russia first withdraw from Soviet-era bases in Georgia and Moldova as stipulated by the Istanbul Agreements. Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected the argument as unsubstantiated, saying that the deployment of conventional forces in Europe is not legally connected with the Istanbul Agreements.

Russia is complying with the CFE provisions, whereas NATO countries have not even ratified it, even though they claim the treaty is the cornerstone of European security.

The planned deployment of elements of the U.S. ballistic missile system in Europe has poured more fuel onto the flames. Some time before the Council meeting, Putin proposed that Russia should unilaterally suspend the implementation of the CFE treaty.

"I propose to discuss the issue at the Russia-NATO Council, and if progress is not reached in negotiations, [we may] consider the possibility of terminating our obligations under the CFE treaty," Putin said.

Washington, Brussels and the whole of Europe apparently considered the statement as Moscow's reaction to the possible deployment of American ballistic missile defense systems close to the Russian border.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Batiste Mattei said Paris hoped the CFE and ABM issues would be discussed at the forthcoming NATO-Russia Council, and called for Russia to reconsider its decision regarding the CFE treaty.

Other European politicians expressed their views more radically.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the issue of deploying the American ballistic missile shield in Europe should be decided by Europeans, who must not give a third party the right to veto actions by a sovereign state. He also expressed disappointment over Russia's stance on the CFE treaty.

In short, opinions ahead of the NATO-Russia Council meeting vary dramatically, and the only surprising thing is the absence of statements by European politicians on the ratification of the CFE treaty, which they view as the cornerstone of European security.

Their unwillingness to meet Moscow halfway can be explained by the fact that some European countries are flagrantly violating CFE provisions, whereas Russia has fewer weapons in its treaty zone than it is allowed to have. It would make sense for European countries to heed Russia's grievances over the ABM issue.

According to the Kremlin, Washington's arguments that the missile defense system is a shield from Iran and North Korea only "camouflage the system's real goals," which are "Russia and a change of the strategic balance in favor of the Untied States." This is the opinion of General Yury Baluyevsky, Chief of Russia's General Staff, who will represent Russia at the May 10 NATO-Russia Council meeting.

The situation has become more complicated after the heads of two subcommittees in U.S. Congress criticized Washington's plans to deploy the ballistic missile defense system in Europe. Democratic Congressmen asked why the White House had discussed the issue separately with Poland and the Czech Republic instead of raising the issue in NATO, if the system was aimed at protecting Europe as a whole.

Congressmen said they respected the concern of many of their European allies over the planned deployment of the nuclear missile shield contrary to Russia's stance.

So, there are reasonable views on the ABM and CFE issues in the West. But will they be voiced at the Brussels meeting.

In both in Georgia and Moldova they would most probably leave troops stationed in rebeling provinces.... There the troops are supported by remaining local population.

Garry,

Russia would leave troops not for some altruistic reason.

She would do so because Russia is running scared at the slow creeping of the NATO border eastward!

Notice the ruckus created by Russia over the ABMs.

Certainly interesting times in middle Europe. Reminds me of the ructions in the 50 years prior to WWI.

Posted by Dimitri Simes at 05/08/2007 06:21:06 PM Comments (3)
Suspend the Demagoguery on Iraq

President George W. Bush was absolutely right to veto the Iraq funding bill. As he observed, "This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our troops." I also agree with the president’s statement that "our troops are worthy of this funding and we have a responsibility to get it to them without further delay."

The other side of the coin, however, is whether Mr. Bush is worthy of the nation’s confidence as a leader who can conduct the war in a responsible and effective manner. Public opinion polls provide a clear answer that a significant majority of Americans does not trust the president to bring the war to a successful conclusion. And that is not because the public is brainwashed by the left-wing media or is suffering, four years after the "Mission Accomplished" speech, from war fatigue.

The Bush Administration brought the United States into Iraq under false pretenses and it is disingenuous for the president and his advisors to proclaim that they, along with everybody else, were victims of faulty intelligence. First, different people drew different conclusions from the intelligence available at the time. With the notable exception of Tony Blair, not a single foreign government had the same sense of urgency to invade Iraq as the Bush Administration. Both Mohamed El Baradei’s International Atomic Energy Agency and UN inspectors in Iraq warned that there was, at a minimum, considerable uncertainty about whether Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and particularly whether he was close to obtaining nuclear weapons. It was the Bush Administration’s choice to dismiss those warnings contemptuously.

Second, the U.S. intelligence data that persuaded so many on the Hill from both parties was produced with White House guidance and sometimes outright pressure. This is not to say that analysts were instructed to fabricate facts. However, with CIA Director George Tenet fighting to keep his job, the CIA in general under attack from Donald Rumsfeld’s and Paul Wolfowtiz’s highly ideological and aggressive intelligence turf raids, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s not-so-subtle encouragement to find evidence of Saddam’s misdeeds, it is simply incredible for the administration to pretend that Bush and his associates were innocent bystanders or even victims of erroneous information they did so much to orchestrate. Finally, the President, Donald Rumsfeld and particularly Paul Wolfowitz also disregarded the advice of the professional military to use a much larger force for the initial stage of occupation and even punished those like General Eric K. Shinseki who performed their soldiers’ duty by speaking the truth to power.

Too much has happened, too many lives have been lost, too many hundreds of billions have been wasted and too much damage has been done to America’s credibility—and Mr. Bush’s personal credibility—for the President to continue to have a carte blanche from Congress and the American people. Yet the President remains commander-in-chief and the Congress has the power of the purse. If both continue playing the blame game, making unrealistic proposals and presenting exaggerated claims of each other’s culpability at the expense of American troops, American honor, and American interests, it would be a sad comment on the ability of our democratic process to do what is necessary to protect the nation. The Democrats need to abandon the notion of withdrawal deadlines that makes defeat a self-fulfilling prophecy. If that is the path they want to take, it would be much more honest to cut the funding right away, except what is necessary for the removal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Assuming that they are not prepared to make this choice for reasons of politics and national security, they should look for a solution that would at least allow the United States to try to reach some minimally acceptable outcome in Iraq.

The Republicans, on the other hand, should not insist on toothless and rather symbolic benchmarks for the Iraqi government that would allow the president to continue the war effort without any meaningful accountability. What is desperately needed is a formula that would allow continued funding, but with clear and binding guidelines that the president must observe in order to be allowed to lead the war effort. There is some truth in the Republicans’ argument that we cannot have 535 generals running the war from Capitol Hill—but at a certain point, even that unpleasant prospect should be weighted against the potential dangers of the president’s incompetent leadership. The American people and the American troops deserve for politicians in Washington—from both parties and all branches of government—to get off their white horses, suspend their demagoguery (to end it all together would be too much to ask) and to do the nation’s work at a moment of crisis.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 05/02/2007 05:54:24 PM Comments (1)
Remembering Yeltsin

President Vladimir Putin declared April 25 the National Day of Mourning for the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, who died today in Moscow. In his announcement, Putin was most positive on Yeltsin, praising him as a man who gave birth to "a new democratic Russia" and particularly praising the late president for his "massive support" from the people. If public opinion polls before Yeltsin’s death are any guidance, this is one instance where most Russians profoundly disagree with Putin, his great popularity notwithstanding. Yeltsin is widely viewed as a failed leader who pursued policies rejected by the vast majority of Russian citizens—and he pursued them by undemocratic means, including using a tank attack against the duly elected Parliament. He is also remembered as somebody who helped create the class of oligarchs—fantastically rich tycoons who emerged from nowhere primarily through the redistribution of state property, including energy resources, to the benefit of the well-connected few. And all at a time when wages and pensions were rarely paid on time and the living standards of most Russians were dramatically decreasing.

I met Yeltsin late in the 1980s when he was still an aspiring politician and was impressed with his steel will, magnetism and a willingness—in contrast to Mikhail Gorbachev—to make tough decisions and to do whatever it took to accomplish his objectives. These were the qualifications of a perfect revolutionary. But Yeltsin was no democrat. If anything, he was less devoted to democratic values than Gorbachev. My impression was that he had no real political philosophy whatsoever, just a great sense of entitlement to take over Russia. He would use this power as a building block to create a new multinational entity on the Soviet territory where most of the republics, after rejecting Soviet rule, somehow were expected to endorse Russia’s and, of course, Yeltsin’s personal predominance. That clearly was an illusion.

As with Russian czars, Yeltsin had little respect for people, including his closest associates, as long as their station in life was below his. He enjoyed dealing with Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, thinking that he was their equal, even as they—Clinton especially—were taking advantage of his ignorance, vanity and alcohol abuse to get concessions from Moscow.

It was Yeltsin who began relying on the post-KGB security services as a major instrument of running the country long before Putin came to power. Yeltsin’s respect for democratic procedure can be well-illustrated by his conversation with Richard Nixon back in April 1993 when, after meeting with Yeltsin’s opponents, Speaker of the Supreme Soviet Ruslan Khasbulatov and then–Vice President Alexander Rutskoy, Nixon shared with the Russian president that these people were professing a willingness to support pro-market reforms, as long as they would be given more voice in formulating them and there would be greater emphasis on social protection of the weak. "You really mean, Mr. President, that I should listen to these midgets?" Yeltsin asked. Earlier in 1992, Yeltsin reacted in disbelief when I told him in Nixon’s presence that there was a good possibility of Bill Clinton prevailing over George H. W. Bush for the presidency. "But I thought that Bush was popular with the U.S. ruling class. Do you really mean to say that in America it is the common rabble who determines the next president of the United States?"

Anecdotes, of course, are always selective and history will remember Yeltsin defiantly standing on the tank, heroically leading the opposition to a reactionary coup d’état in 1991. If only he had ended his career then after bringing a triumph to the anti-Communist revolution.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 04/23/2007 05:55:16 PM Comments (1)
Loyalty at What Cost? The Cost of the President's Support for Gonzalez and Wolfowitz

President George W. Bush’s “full support” of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has implications far beyond the future of the two besieged officials. Gonzalez’s explanations yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the circumstances of the firing of U.S. attorneys were clearly unpersuasive, even to a number of Republican senators. The Senate cannot remove the attorney general—only the president can—but the Senate, by expressing no confidence in Gonzalez, is certainly in a position to make it much more difficult for him to be effective in the performance of his duties, which are essential to the nation, particularly during the war against Islamist terrorists and the controversy over the immigration crisis. Similarly, even if Mr. Wolfowitz survives as president of the World Bank, will he be able to be a formidable leader? Would his anti-corruption preaching be taken literally? Would he be credible with donor nations, especially in Europe, in getting additional funding for the Bank?

Clearly, at a minimum both Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Wolfowitz are guilty of very flawed judgment. The attorney general lost the trust of the U.S. Congress and the president of the World Bank that of the majority of his staff and much of his board. Mr. Bush of course is still entitled to have confidence in them, but not if he wants the rest of us to have confidence in his own ability to be a wise and effective Chief Executive. I for one am most reluctant to see the Congress trying to micromanage U.S. military activity in Iraq. I agree with Mr. Bush that 535 senators and representatives should not act as a collective commander-in-chief and that establishing public deadlines for U.S. withdrawal would encourage America’s enemies and severely undermine the morale of America’s allies, as it happened more than thirty years ago in Vietnam. And, I further agree with the president and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) that the price of defeat in Iraq in terms of American security and prestige may be huge.

But the price of not allowing the president to act as the bona fide commander-in-chief in Iraq has to be measured against his miserable record of misjudgment, misrepresentation and mismanagement of the war. If the president believes that the troop surge in Iraq is the right tactic, how can he maintain confidence in Mr. Wolfowitz, who was one of the architects of the totally different and disastrous strategy in Iraq? Had the president thought when he appointed Mr. Wolfowitz to run the World Bank that his failures at the Department of Defense were not apparent, he surely should know better by now. And as Mr. Wolfowitz demonstrates serious misjudgment again, why wouldn’t the president delicately encourage him to move on to the whole variety of high-profile and profitable pursuits that should be available to him in the private sector?

With 61 percent of Americans—according to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll—favoring immediate withdrawal or withdrawal by March 2008, and with only 30 percent being prepared to keep troops in Iraq without a timetable, the president should be well-aware that the clock is ticking. There is an invisible line in the sand beyond which Congress, and as a matter of fact the American people, will not be prepared to allow him a free hand, no matter what. Under somewhat similar circumstances near the end of his term, President Ronald Reagan cleared house, brought in new, wise and reputable people and moved on, restoring his popularity in the process and helping elect his vice president, George H.W. Bush, as the next president of the United States. But while he likes to wear the Reagan mantle, George W. Bush is no Reagan. His sharply reduced credibility notwithstanding, his stubborn refusal to acknowledge the facts and a propensity to sound like an elected monarch may define his presidency as a terrible cost to the nation.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 04/20/2007 05:32:40 PM Comments (0)
Protests in Russia: The Real Story

The heavy-handed response by Russian authorities to last weekend’s demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg is just another illustration of a tightening-up of the Russian political space. A Jeffersonian democracy Putin’s Russia is not. Just the other day the leader of the newly-created Just Russia opposition—yet pro-Putin—party, Speaker of the Council of the Federation Sergei Mironov, suggested extending Putin’s term and reminded us all that according to a recent public opinion poll, 69 percent of Russians are in favor of keeping the president in power, even if it would require changes to the constitution. Putin so far has firmly rejected this possibility, but informed sources in the Kremlin suggest that discussion of how to keep Putin as a dominant figure is growing, whether it would require amending the constitution to permit him to stay president or finding some other arrangement that would allow him to stay in charge.

It is perfectly appropriate, and indeed necessary, not to whitewash Russian domestic practices, as President George W. Bush once did. What is not appropriate, however, is to accuse Putin and his government of all kinds of terrible deeds—often providing highly misleading information in the process—just because he is supposed to be undemocratic. And that is clearly what happened with coverage of last weekend’s protests in much of the mainstream media in the United States. The Wall Street Journal editorial page—which believes that Vice President Dick Cheney is a wise statesman, John Bolton an effective diplomat and Paul Wolfowitz a model anti-corruption reformer—has predictably adopted the cause of their regular contributor, former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who was one of the leaders of the opposition marches. Mr. Kasparov was a great chess player. He is also a man of courage and determination. But anyone familiar with his career in politics, and as a matter of fact, in chess long before it, would know that he has a strong propensity for theatrics and artificial confrontation. Quoting Mr. Kasparov as a dispassionate commentator on his own struggle, as The Wall Street Journal editorial page did, is unpersuasive.

But, being persuasive is in the eyes of the beholder, and editorial pages by definition are entitled to their opinions. Not so the news pages. In the case of The Washington Post, news stories regarding the April 14 and 15 events in Moscow and St. Petersburg were written as if they were coordinated with the notoriously anti-Putin attitude of The Washington Post editorial page. In their April 18 article, " Kremlin Says Riot Police Overreacted ", by Peter Finn, both the text and the photographs present a highly misleading picture. The photographs show Garry Kasparov appealing to the menacing-looking police officers. It also shows the police in anti-riot gear overwhelming a long-haired, bespectacled young man. And talking about the organizers of the marches, Mr. Finn refers to Garry Kasparov and former–Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov—and nobody else. He does not mention at all that another organizer—and a key ally of Mr. Kasparov and Mr. Kasyanov—was Eduard Limonov, leader of the nationalist and militantly anti-American outlawed National Bolshevik Party. As the photographs accompanying this article show—and these pictures come from grani.ru , an online anti-government publication to which Mr. Limonov is a columnist—a significant, and the most assertive, part of the demonstrators marched under the Nazi-style banners of the National Bolshevik Party, where the hammer and sickle replace the swastika. And some of the demonstrators did not just march, according to the opposition paper Novaya Gazeta, where Anna Politkovskaya used to work before she was murdered last fall. In a number of instances they also attacked the police, who were trying to block their path when they took an unauthorized route.

When the Russian government was deciding how to respond to last weekend’s marches, they had to take into account what had happened at the March 3 demonstrations of the same coalition in St. Petersburg, where Mr. Limonov’s militants overran police lines and roughed up some of the officers. In Mr. Limonov’s own words on that occasion, "the activists of the National Bolshevik Party have fully justified our hopes. They really were on March 3 the avant-garde’s strike battalion, a hot shell, in all confrontations the first and most militant." Limonov added that in addition to their own flags in St. Petersburg, they were marching under the black, gold and white banners of the Russian empire, which Mr. Limonov’s party wants to recreate. He talked about the spirit of "revolution" and put Moscow authorities on notice that they better not interfere with the April 14 march if they wanted to avoid the same assault to which police were subjected in St. Petersburg on March 3. Mr. Kasyanov and Mr. Kasparov apparently came to the conclusion that almost nobody is bad enough not to be an acceptable ally against the Putin government. Traditional liberals with strong democratic credentials such as Yabloko and the Union of the Right Wing Forces (SPS) refused to cooperate with Mr. Limonov.

That still would not justify a crackdown against peaceful demonstrators and would justify even less the tendency of the Moscow city authorities to tightly control where the opposition can meet and march, often, as I have witnessed myself in the past, with transparently false excuses such as closing the street for repairs for several hours just to make an opposition march impossible. Police violence there certainly was, but to put things in perspective, Mr. Kasparov was detained and released several hours later with a fine of $40. Mr. Limonov was also detained for a number of hours, but has not been fined so far. Both he and Mr. Kasparov were summoned to appear before post-KGB Federal Security Service officials. Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov was protected against the police by his own security detail. One assumes that if detaining him would be a priority, it could somehow be arranged.

Why the police overreacted this time, as President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has acknowledged, to the relatively small demonstrations of a few thousand people at most is anybody’s guess. Perhaps it can be explained partly by a concern of how far Mr. Limonov and his militants would be prepared to go if allowed the freedom to move around Moscow. Perhaps there was a sentiment typical in Russian security agencies that not doing enough is more dangerous vis-à-vis one’s superiors than doing too much. Perhaps some in the Russian government were provoked by exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s statements on the eve of the march that he was providing funds for a revolution, which was supposed to start precisely with marches like those that Mr. Kasparov, Mr. Kasyanov and Mr. Limonov were organizing in Moscow. And quite possibly some in the Russian government saw the protests as a welcome opportunity to show that might is always right in Russia and any resistance, particularly violent resistance, is hopeless and will be crushed at the outset.

This is not a pretty picture just as the violent clashes between police and protesters in Genoa over the G-8 and in Washington at the World Bank and IMF were not pretty by most accounts. Some overreaction clearly took place, but I still wonder whether a demonstration in Berlin with neo-Nazi symbols appealing to recreate the Third Reich would generate the same kind of an outcry as in the case of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Actually, there is no need to wonder; we all know the answer.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 04/19/2007 12:24:23 PM Comments (7)
The Costs of Iraq

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials argue that defeat in Iraq would be too costly to the United States for Americans to accept. Fair enough. But the other side of the coin is the cost of continuing our very deep involvement in that country. It is more than 3,000 Americans lives, $300 billion spent and, according to a UN report, over 34,000 dead Iraqi civilians in 2006 alone. It is also more than a severe strain on the over-extended U.S. military and the hardships for families of reservists and National Guard soldiers, who face extended assignments or repeated calls to duty after a short return to civilian life.

The problem is much broader than that. Any administration has a limited attention span and limited political capital. In the United States, preoccupation with Iraq has become an organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy, a prism through which many other international issues are looked at. I have experienced this in my own conversations with administration officials; it is also evident in their public statements.

In the international arena, the American-led occupation of Iraq has considerably damaged U.S. prestige, making it more difficult for friendly governments to be of help to the United States. It has also emboldened American adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea. Those we need to persuade, like China and Russia, feel less pressure to accommodate the United States and less respect for U.S. judgment. And as the war continues and the 2008 Presidential elections draw nearer, it will become more difficult for the Bush Administration to be effective on key foreign policy issues requiring both the commitment of U.S. forces and the cooperation of other nations. Domestically, a continuing large-scale U.S. commitment will make an increasingly polarizing impact. And divided we fail—not just in Iraq, but in other foreign policy challenges as well.

On top of this, just as we have difficulty defining victory in Iraq, it is not easy to visualize a defeat. Clearly Iran is not going to take over Iraq. At best it may win a dominant influence over Shi‘a areas. Kurdish areas already enjoy great autonomy. For their part, most Sunnis, while hostile to both the Shi‘a-dominated government and the U.S. occupation, do not appear to be supporters of Al-Qaeda. Left to their own devices and with the help of such Iraqi neighbors as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other moderate Arab states, Sunni regions are unlikely to provide sanctuary for Al-Qaeda, particularly if U.S. troops are around to strike when necessary.

There is, of course, the danger of outright civil war that could develop into a regional conflict. That would be a serious threat to U.S. interests, but not necessarily a greater threat than open-ended U.S. involvement in an Iraqi civil war that the American military presence helps both to fuel and to contain.

In contrast to the war in Vietnam, there is no North Vietnamese army to take advantage of a reduced U.S. presence. Accordingly, the Bush Administration has some freedom to look for a formula that would help to avoid the worst possible scenarios in Iraq, but at the same time would lead to a reduced level of American involvement. This could liberate the United States from the straitjacket of the Iraqi quagmire. In his piece in Financial Times on January 17, Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department during the first term of this administration, talks about the need for the United States “to rebalance its foreign policy portfolio.” This is an elegant way of advocating a lower level of U.S. involvement in terms of blood, treasure, attention and prestige, both at home and abroad.

Obviously, there would be considerable costs, particularly in Iraq. But, to paraphrase an administration spokesman demanding that opponents of the surge offer credible alternatives, those who oppose reduced U.S. involvement should themselves offer meaningful alternatives in view of the demonstrable and prohibitive costs of a major open-ended engagement. They certainly need to do better than unsubstantiated hopes that the surge will somehow provide a magical solution.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 01/19/2007 12:00:53 PM Comments (2)
Don’t Compare Iraq to Vietnam

Many people are comparing Iraq and Vietnam, but there is a big difference in how the United States became involved militarily in these two countries. And there should be a difference in how we view the leadership that took us there.

In the case of South Vietnam, the Eisenhower Administration had to deal with a French withdrawal from Southeast Asia that left South Vietnam with a government of limited popularity, uncertain legitimacy and weak military capacity. But there was no question who the enemy was: it was the North Vietnamese Communist regime supported by the Soviet Union and China. At the height of the Cold War and just years after the war in Korea—during which the North Koreans got major military assistance from the Soviet Union and particularly from China—no American administration could dismiss the North Vietnamese Communist threat or the possibility of a domino-style impact in the region.

Also very important, there was no single point at which an American president made a clear-cut, conscious decision to invade South Vietnam. The escalating U.S. presence there grew step by step, often based on a desire to protect at first U.S. military advisors and later U.S. troops. And the existing South Vietnamese government fully welcomed this.

In contrast, Saddam Hussein’s government clearly did not want the American “liberation” of his country. The initial invasion was an instant success because Iraq was practically without friends—unlike North Vietnam. Iraq’s relationship with Iran was outright hostile and its ties with Syria were uneasy at best. We now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, no serious links to Al-Qaeda and a weak military. Thus it was not a major threat to the United States or even to its neighbors. Hussein was a bloody tyrant, of course, but this somehow did not stop the United States from supporting him against Iran and having a generally good relationship with him before the invasion of Kuwait—despite the well-documented gassing of the Kurds in the 1980s.

I completely agree that today a withdrawal from Iraq without some form of stabilization led by a minimally competent and credible government could lead to disastrous consequences for the United States. But this predicament is not a result of Saddam’s threat or his being used by other major powers. It is a direct outcome of an ill-conceived invasion and pathetically poor management of the invasion’s aftermath. Moreover, unlike Vietnam, it was not a gradual process over several successive administrations for which multiple presidents share responsibility. Everything happened on President George W. Bush’s watch as a direct consequence of decisions made by him, Vice President Richard Cheney, and their group of advisors, some of whom are still in the administration or maintain strong influence. That is one of the principal reasons why the administration’s surge plan has been received with such skepticism.

The administration and its supporters are right to demand that those who criticize the surge option should be required to suggest alternative approaches, but of course that was exactly what the Baker-Hamilton commission did. I personally see a number of flaws with the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations, particularly its idea for an immediate public announcement about the withdrawal of U.S. forces, something likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It also seems unrealistic to hope that the Iranians and Syrians would be prepared to negotiate on stabilizing Iraq without their other concerns, particularly regarding the security of their regimes, being addressed as well.

The bottom line is that the real problem is that there are no good options left in Iraq. At a minimum, we should be honest with ourselves in admitting that we have created an unnecessary debacle for ourselves—and that people who now expect Americans to endorse their new ideas are the very same ones who led us into the quagmire.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 01/16/2007 12:11:25 PM Comments (2)
Unfair to the Crusaders?

Critics rarely provide substantiation of one’s arguments as effectively as the American Enterprise Institute’s Reuel Gerecht did in comments on my recent article in The National Interest, “End the Crusade.” Writing on a discussion web page for the Iraq Study Group, where the piece had been posted, Mr. Gerecht said:

It would appear that Mr. Simes has a rather poor understanding of what the Crusades were for the Christian West, and how they were viewed at the time in Islamic lands. Since Mr. Simes was raised in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, his lack of appreciation is perhaps understandable, so too his animus for Latin men of the cross (1204 was perhaps worse than Manzikert). One would think, nonetheless, that he would have higher regard for the efforts of Basil II, who was trying to do what the Crusaders did later (counterattack), even if his efforts, meretorious [sic] as they might have been, ultimately weakened the empire through thinning the limes [sic]. Where is Sir Steven Runciman when we need him? R.

I argued in my piece that we did not have a serious debate over Iraq, partly because neoconservatives in and outside the Bush Administration treated the skeptics of the war as dangerous infidels rather than fellow patriots of good will who just happened to have a different point of view. So it is telling that Mr. Gerecht would explain my position, including my alleged misunderstanding of the Crusades, by the fact that I was raised in “the Eastern Orthodox tradition.”

To start with, Mr. Gerecht clearly knows nothing about my background. I was raised in a family of Westernized Jewish intellectuals in Moscow and my high school teachers and Moscow State University professors advocated atheism rather than Russian Orthodoxy or any other religion. But more to the point, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Gerecht feels free to comment regularly on the affairs of Islam without having been raised in that tradition. Would he advise his Jewish colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute that their background disqualifies them from commenting on the Arab Middle East or on Christian civilization? Even assuming that Mr. Gerecht’s comment was half-humorous, it clearly smacks of not-so-soft bigotry that he and his fellow neoconservatives would quickly denounce if they felt it were directed at them. But as we all know, their inherent goodness and noble aims mean that they should not be held to the same standards.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 01/08/2007 05:59:21 PM Comments (4)
Litvinenko: Kremlin Conspiracy or Blofeld Set-Up?

The radioactive poisoning of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko raises many disturbing questions. And, as British Home Secretary John Reid said, the investigation should not make any premature assumptions and should be prepared to go in every possible direction. The Putin government, assuming it has nothing to hide, should cooperate with the British. The Kremlin’s own self-interest requires nothing less than clearly addressing Western suspicions about its possible role in the assassination.

When a vitriolic critic of President Vladimir Putin is poisoned with a nuclear isotope, questions about Moscow’s involvement are inevitable and appropriate. What is not appropriate is the highly simplistic and sometimes even misleading coverage of the affair in some Western media. Consider a December 5 story in The Washington Post, “British Police Take Poisoning Inquiry to Moscow,” by Mary Jordan and Peter Finn. It starts by referring to Litvinenko as “a former Russian spy.” But there is no record that Litvinenko ever served with Russian foreign intelligence, either in the post-KGB foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, or military intelligence, known as the GRU. On the contrary, after junior assignments in FSB counterintelligence, the post-KGB internal security agency, Litvinenko built a name for himself in its organized crime department. According to a remarkably insightful story in The New York Times (“Russian Ex-Spy Lived in a World of Deceptions,” by Alan Cowell, December 3), in that capacity Litvinenko developed a relationship with leading Russian oligarch Boris Berzovsky as early as 1994. During that period of free fall after the collapse of Soviet institutions, Berezovsky openly mixed his senior positions in the Russian government with aggressive privatization of state assets for his own benefit. And Litvinenko’s department in the FSB was frequently viewed not so much as a law enforcement agency, but as a part of organized crime itself.

Worse, The Washington Post misleadingly describes Berezovsky as “a billionaire now living in self-imposed exile in London” who “was a friend of Litvinenko’s.” Anyone who read Paul Klebnikov’s Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia would know that Litvinenko’s “friend” was much more than an anti-Putin business leader. He was a master of Kremlin intrigue, widely reputed in numerous, and now public, accounts of bribing and corrupting everything and everyone around him, including members of Boris Yeltsin’s family. And Berezovsky does not just oppose Putin’s rule—he has said on several occasions that he is actively pursuing regime change in Russia using his base in London and his business and political contacts from Ukraine to Georgia.

In the first days after Litvinenko’s illness became known to the public, the primary source of information about what had happened and Litvinenko’s suspicions of Putin was Alex Goldfarb, who The Washington Post and others describe as “a friend of Litvinenko’s” or a “friend of the family.” Goldfarb certainly was a friend and could probably even be considered a member of the family—in the same way that Tom Hagen was a key member of the Godfather’s family in the famous movie. Goldfarb—officially the director of Berezovsky’s Foundation for Civil Liberties—is one of Berezovsky’s close associates. Interestingly, despite being known as a relentless publicity seeker, Berezovsky has sought to downplay his role and that of his organization in this instance. Based on his past conduct, one would have expected at a minimum that Berezovsky would attempt to use the Litvinenko matter to pursue his stated objective of discrediting and undermining Putin.

At present, there are three main theories of Litvinenko’s killing. One is the Kremlin plot that Goldfarb described when quoting what Litvinenko allegedly dictated on his deathbed. This requires one of two assumptions. The first—that the leader of a major nuclear power is dangerously devoid of basic common sense and any instinct for self-preservation—defies our previous experience with Putin. Killing a fairly insignificant political opponent in a key European capital with a highly traceable material would demonstrate an appalling lack of judgment in an area where most of Putin’s critics see sinister genius rather than Yeltsin-style bumbling.

But this logic holds only if Litvinenko was nothing more than an extremely harsh Putin critic, someone who accused the pesident of being a pedophile on a Chechen website and blamed him for bombings in Moscow and even in London, but ultimately did little to endanger Putin’s or Russia’s security in a serious way. The alternative assumption is that the Kremlin saw Litvinenko as a real threat, perhaps because of his Chechen links. It is clear that Litvinenko was quite close to at least some Chechen rebels, like exiled separatist spokesman Akhmed Zakayev, whom he saw on November 1, the day he was reportedly poisoned. If Litvinenko had been actively involved with Chechen insurgents, Moscow’s calculations could have been quite different. After all, it is widely believed, and even privately admitted in Moscow government circles, that the Kremlin authorized the killing of former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiev in 2004. And the Duma recently passed a law authorizing the assassination of suspected terrorists outside Russian borders. So, before dismissing the Kremlin connection, it is essential to establish what exactly Mr. Litvinenko—a recent convert to Islam—was involved in and to examine any involvement he could have had with Islamic extremist organizations that might be interested in polonium-210 for dirty bombs or other uses.

The second theory of Litvinenko’s poisoning comes straight from the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice. In the film, the head of SPECTRE, Ernst Blofeld, seeks to provoke a U.S.-Soviet confrontation by creating a false impression that they are seizing each other’s spacecraft. In this instance, Berezovsky would be the mastermind of an effort to set Britain and the West against Putin. He would have both a motive and the capability to use the Litvinenko assassination to frame the Russian leader. And anyone familiar with Berezovsky’s activities in Russia would have to entertain the possibility that he would have the combination of imagination, resources and utter ruthlessness to sacrifice his former protégé to advance his anti-Putin designs.

A new book published in Moscow by Alexander Khinshtein, a pro-Kremlin journalist and Duma member, provides a detailed account (with transcripts of Berezovsky’s phone conversations in July 1996), demonstrating Berezovsky’s key role in creating quite “a performance” to let Yeltsin think that his security chiefs were involved in a conspiracy against the Russian president (Yeltsin. Kreml. Istoriya bolezni, Alexander Khinshtein, 2006). The purpose was to remove from Yeltsin’s entourage those who were an obstacle to Berezovsky’s influence. In 1999, according to the memoirs of former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, Berezovsky again fed false information to Yeltsin and his family to create an impression that they were threatened by Primakov’s anti-corruption investigations. Later, Berezovsky used his control of TV channel ORT to launch a vicious and highly misleading campaign against Primakov on behalf of the new Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, whom he helped come to power. With Putin at first refusing to follow Berezovsky’s guidance and then strongly moving against the oligarch, Berezovsky made it his mission in life to have a regime change in Moscow.

What speaks against this scenario is the terrible personal risk Berezovsky would be taking in the process. He would have to anticipate that while he and his allies could influence Western opinion, they would be in a much weaker position to manipulate a professional investigation by Scotland Yard or by Russian security services determined to demonstrate that Moscow was not to blame. With his obvious connection to Litvinenko and his reputation as an unscrupulous intriguer, Berezovsky would have to know that he himself would become a target of any serious investigation.

Andrey Lugovoi, another former FSB officer now identified as a prime suspect in some news reports, could have been a key player in either the Kremlin or the Berezovsky scenarios. Lugovoi met with Litvinenko on November 1 and was on one of the British Airways flights contaminated by polonium-210. And he has both an obvious FSB connection as well as a less-discussed Berezovsky connection: while still with the FSB in the 1990s, Lugovoi was simultaneously a security officer at the Russian television channel ORT, then controlled by Berezovsky. In 2001-02, he spent time in the infamous Lefortovo prison for helping another Berezovsky associate, Nikolai Glushkov, to escape from detention. His loyalty in this instance is unclear, and Moscow should provide Scotland Yard with direct access to him.

The third and final theory relates to Litvinenko’s personal pursuits rather than his struggle against Putin or his affiliation with Berezovsky. A Russian academic in England recently claimed that Litvinenko was thinking about making money by blackmailing Russian businessmen. Should that be true, a number of individuals and groups could have had a motive to kill him. Suspicions that groups of current and former FSB officers are responsible for killing Litvinenko fit right into this theory.

While the Litvinenko mystery is right out of a spy movie, the stakes in real life—including for the West’s relationship with Russia—are very high. If the evidence does indeed lead to the Kremlin, whitewashing it is not an option. But what is not in the West’s interest is to allow Putin’s political enemies at home and abroad to bring both him and the West into a confrontation based on a set-up, or at least on false information.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 12/06/2006 02:36:14 PM Comments (10)
Who Will Laugh Last in Georgia?

The West has responded to South Ossetia’s referendum on independence from Georgia with a mixture of contempt and anger—anger that the tiny enclave is not accommodating the preferences of the United States, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in settling for autonomy instead, and contempt that these obviously backward-thinking people would believe that their opinion matters.

Still, it is the U.S. and European response, rather than the impulse for independence, that is misguided. First, if Georgia had the right to leave the Soviet Union, why don’t South Ossetia and Abkhazia have the right to leave Georgia? No one denies that the vast majority of their populations do not want to be a part of Georgia. And they were only a part of Georgia because Soviet leaders in Moscow incorporated their territory and their differing cultures and traditions into the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. More recently, Georgia’s first post-Soviet leader, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, gave most of the impetus to the Abkhaz and South Ossetian desire for independence by denying the two regions any meaningful autonomy.

Looking at the rest of Europe, it is unclear why the West would be prepared to grant independence to Kosovo—even over Serbian opposition and possibly without a UN mandate—without thinking that the citizens of Abkhazia and South Ossetia would feel entitled to similar treatment. Some may feel that Washington and Brussels are seeking to assume the prerogatives of the Soviet empire in the Caucasus and the Habsburg Empire in the Balkans and can draw and re-draw the borders of subject nations.

There is an argument, with some validity, that a vote in Abkhazia would not be legitimate without the participation of ethnic Georgians expelled from the territory. (This is less relevant in South Ossetia, where most Georgians remain but chose not to take part in the balloting.) But that ignores the fact that it was Gamsakhurdia’s heated nationalist rhetoric and intransigence that provoked the civil war. More broadly, after fifteen years of Abkhazian de facto independence, it is difficult to see why the situation of Georgian refugees is so different from that of Palestinians, whom no one would seriously propose as voters in Israel.

Ultimately, Western contempt for the South Ossetian referendum is most misplaced because it is simply out of touch with reality. Whether one likes it or not, the referendum confirmed something already increasingly clear, namely that South Ossetia and Abkhazia will not be integrated into Georgia. The failure of other states to recognize their independence is largely irrelevant and may ultimately prove counterproductive.

While South Ossetians voted for independence, what they really want is unification with Russia. The vast majority of residents of South Ossetia have Russian passports, which they can use for travel to Russia and elsewhere. As a result, there can be no meaningful sanctions against them without Russian cooperation—which is very unlikely to materialize.

In fact, by refusing to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states and even trying to isolate them, the West could unwittingly push the two regions closer to Russia and accelerate their initial association and ultimate integration into it. Russia’s official position today is to protect Abkhazia and South Ossetia against forcible takeover by Tbilisi, but to neither recognize their independence nor to more closely integrate either with Russia. However, as with many of President Vladimir Putin’s statements, one should make a distinction between tactical calculations and strategic design. Tactically, Russia does not need additional problems with the United States or Europe while it concludes its negotiations with the World Trade Organization. And there is no immediate danger of a Georgian invasion of the two enclaves because of Bush Administration efforts to restrain President Mikheil Saakashvili and clear Russian warnings that Moscow would unleash its own military against Georgia, and not just on the ground in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but quite possibly in Georgia proper.

Thus, given the current status quo—which includes free movement across the Russian border with the two areas—Moscow is in no hurry. Once the WTO issue is resolved one way or the other, however, the Kremlin is likely to move toward a closer relationship with the two unrecognized republics. Chances are this will happen after Kosovo’s independence is announced, something Vladimir Putin said on a number of occasions will set a precedent for the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. U.S. and European arguments about Kosovo’s uniqueness have little impact in Moscow or the two enclaves, where they are essentially viewed as legal technicalities concocted to provide justification for something otherwise supported only by the principle that might makes right. That approach worked well with Boris Yeltsin, but generally provokes a tougher line from Mr. Putin.

Once Kosovo becomes independent, the Kremlin will be bombarded with requests from the South Ossetian and Abkhazian regional governments and parliaments. Leaders of several regions inside the Russian Federation—most notably North Ossetia, where many Ossetian families have relatives on both sides of the border—will join them. And strong voices in Russia’s parliament and media will urge Mr. Putin to do something for the “compatriots abroad.” Some of these appeals will be spontaneous, and many will be carefully orchestrated by the Putin Administration. But they will all contribute to a climate in which it will be next to impossible to imagine the return of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to Georgia, no matter what Washington or Brussels have to say.

A different outcome was possible, though still not easy to produce, when Saakashvili came to power in 2004 and successfully (with the help of Russian mediation) reestablished control over Ajaria. At that time, Saakasvili could have developed a plan for peaceful reintegration of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This would have required: high‑profile efforts to provide Ajaria with meaningful autonomy; trade and other overtures to Abkhazia and South Ossetia to create incentives to move closer to Tbilisi; and last but not least building a modicum of trust with Putin—something Saakashvili had promised to do.

Instead, Saakashvili chose to use threats and intimidation in dealing with the Abkhaz and South Ossetians, provoking rather than reassuring them in the process. At the same time, he decided to accelerate and emphasize Georgia’s “Euro-Atlantic” direction, including NATO membership. And, with encouragement from the Bush Administration, the Georgian president became a cheerleader of the so-called “color revolutions,” which had clear anti‑Putin connotations in the former Soviet space.

Of course, the Georgian government was entitled to make its own foreign policy choices. Likewise, Moscow has neither the right nor the capability to block NATO membership for Georgia—or at least the part of it that the Saakashvili regime currently controls. But moving full‑speed into NATO and bringing Abkhazia and South Ossetia back into Georgia was trying to do too much too fast. It could not work, it hasn’t, and it won’t.

The only plausible scenario for returning Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgia is through the departure of Mr. Saakashvili. Saakashvili himself has told American officials that he thinks this is Putin’s intent. But Moscow does not seem to have either the levers or the sophistication to change the regime in Georgia. After all, removing Saakashvili alone is hardly guaranteed to deliver a government friendly to the Kremlin. The alternative, a defeat of Saakashvili and his allies in the polls followed by the emergence of a new leadership genuinely prepared to seek common ground with Moscow, also does not seem to be in the cards in the foreseeable future. By the time such a change could take place, if it could at all, Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s association with Russia would probably have gone too far to be reversed.

In 1990 and 1991, Boris Yeltsin and his government were instrumental in both breaking up the Soviet Union and preventing Kremlin hardliners from using real force against Georgia or other republics seeking independence. Today, guaranteeing Georgia’s Soviet-era borders against the wishes of local populations is impossible without Russian acquiescence—yet no one in the West seems to have a serious proposal to obtain that acquiescence, through either coercion or accommodation, in an area that Russia considers vital to its interests. No wonder South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity seems convinced that it is he who will have the last laugh.


Dimitri K. Simes is president of the Nixon Center.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 11/14/2006 01:23:36 PM Comments (4)
Disaster in the Making?

The icon of Russian arts, theater director Konstantin Stanislavsky, stated about a century ago that the theater starts with the cloakroom. What he meant was that there are no unimportant details. Everything at the theater should be part of the same artistic miracle and the first impression of the cloakroom may influence the audience’s perception of the performance. For many Americans and others traveling to Russia, the country starts with Aeroflot, the Russian government-controlled airline, and the experience is quite troubling.

Aeroflot’s recently released profit information suggests an unqualified success. During the first six months of 2006, Aeroflot’s net profits grew by 78.7 percent, despite major increases in fuel costs. Part of this was accomplished by raising fares. For instance, after eliminating first class on the New York to Moscow route, Aeroflot reconfigured the business class cabin. It now charges for business class almost what it only recently charged for first class. It still may be a bargain in comparison with the only other non-stop carrier from New York to Moscow, Delta, but Delta’s cabin, while not up to British Airways’ or Lufthansa’s standards, is clearly superior to that of Aeroflot.

But the subject of real concern is that higher profits were accomplished by a 9 percent cut in spending on technical services. On a flight I took two weeks ago from New York to Moscow, the results of these cuts were much on display: two seats were broken and could not be used; some electrical lights were functioning only periodically, suggesting the problem was not with the bulbs but with the central electric control; and several TV screens were not functioning. On the return flight, on a different plane, two seats were broken and one TV screen was not working. Aeroflot’s personnel claim that these shortcomings have nothing to do with flight safety, and indeed neither of the three disasters with Russian airlines this year involved an Aeroflot flight. And, Aeroflot is the only Russian airline that operates a flight school for its pilots to ensure a required level of competence. But after talking to several Aeroflot employees I am afraid that Aeroflot’s recent catastrophe avoidance was more than anything pure luck. Flight safety cannot be hermetically isolated from a systemic failure at Aeroflot to provide decent service to its passengers.

In addition to cutting the technical costs, Aeroflot also reduced its administrative expenses by 4.2 percent and operational rent by 9.4 percent. These savings come at the expense of Aeroflot making adequate arrangements at foreign airports such as Kennedy and adequate supervision of Aeroflot personnel, including in the crucial security area. At Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport, security screeners working in cooperation with Aeroflot staff were unaware of the change in TSA regulations allowing travel-size toiletries (up to three ounces) in a zip-top bag. But the only ones who could be caught were those who, like me, followed the rules, putting the bag in a highly visible area so it could be easily noticed and examined by the screeners. Otherwise, Sheremetyevo airport people were opening literally every bag, but in such a pro forma way that a terrorist or anyone with something to hide would have little difficulty remaining undiscovered. We all know that the TSA screeners in the United States are hardly a model of perfection, but in comparison with their colleagues in Moscow, they look like top-notch professionals.

Another revealing thing about Aeroflot is the return of the Soviet era rubric where junior government clerks or sales people could not resist the temptation to demonstrate their authority to the rest of the public. On a flight to Moscow the flight attendant responsible for duty-free sales, annoyed that she had to look for some items for me that she could not easily find on her cart, asked me not to speak loudly since she was not deaf. Actually, I was almost whispering. And, on both flights the best seats were reserved for the pilots to assure that they would be able to rest in comfort.

To be fair, I was able to take my cologne and deodorant on the airplane flight, but that was only after I refused to surrender them and told the Aeroflot supervisor that I would make alternative flight arrangements. And I was able to get my duty-free items after complaining to the purser. For somebody like me, born in the Soviet Union, there is a certain sense of déjà vu with almost an entertaining element of traveling back to the past, but that would be true only if fundamental security and technical issues were not at stake. Prosecutor General Yury Chaika stated two weeks ago that “Flight security is extremely poor.” He added that “The aircraft accidents, which have lately become increasingly frequent, engender fears in our society and distrust of the Russian air carriers. They greatly impair the country’s prestige too.” But given the way Russia functions today, not much is likely to change without President Vladimir Putin’s personal involvement. It would be important for him to take personal charge of the problem before an Aeroflot flight is added to the disaster list.


Posted by Dimitri Simes at 10/17/2006 05:24:12 PM Comments (2)
Living Dangerously, Georgian Style

A confrontation with Russia over Georgia is hardly a part of the Bush Administration’s strategic design—U.S. priorities include major issues like Iran, where the U.S. wants Russian cooperation, and Russia’s WTO accession, which many hope may open the way to significant U.S. investment in Russia’s energy sector as well as helping to arrest a wider decline in bilateral ties. But when the White House initiated a phone call between Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin on those topics, Mr. Putin insisted on devoting a considerable part of the conversation to the Russian-Georgian dispute. And it was apparent that the Russian leader felt quite strongly about perceived U.S. encouragement of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to pursue a hard line toward Moscow. Moreover, while Putin did not suggest any explicit linkage between the U.S. support of Georgia and Russia’s response to Iran, there is clearly an implicit linkage. The bottom line is that just as Moscow’s position on Iran’s nuclear program is becoming a defining issue in U.S. policy toward Russia, so is U.S. involvement with Georgia becoming a defining consideration in Moscow’s willingness to satisfy American concerns.

Russia announced sanctions against Georgia after Moscow was reliably informed by the U.S. government that Russian officers detained on spying charges would be returned home through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This was after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice personally called Saakashvili—at Russia’s request—and persuaded him to send the arrested Russian officers to Moscow promptly. So the Putin government’s decision to introduce sanctions against Georgia was clearly not the constructive response Washington hoped for after its private diplomacy.

On top of this, the Russian government seems once again to be offering highly unpersuasive explanations of its actions. Instead of simply stating that Moscow saw the Georgian public handling of the arrests—especially the television coverage—as a clear attempt to humiliate Russia and pressure Russian officers remaining in Georgia and Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, the Russian Minister of Transportation and Communications claimed that the suspension of transportation and mail links was due to criminal activity, unpaid bills, and other problems. This is about as easy to believe as Moscow’s statements that environmental violations are the reason that licenses for the massive Sakhalin II energy project may be cancelled when everyone assumes that the real motivations are financial disagreements and Gazprom’s interest in being dealt into the venture. The Russian government does not enhance its credibility with these weak explanations or with actions that look more like “special operations” than legitimate, if tough, diplomacy.

The problem, of course, is that while Putin’s Russia is not an easy partner for the United States, and our leverage over the Kremlin is limited, Russian cooperation on non-proliferation and counter-terrorism is very important in achieving key U.S. foreign policy objectives. So here is the question: setting aside Russia’s disingenuous response, why do we allow and sometimes even encourage Georgia to continue provoking Moscow at our expense?

Saakashvili is treating Russia the same way that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is treating the United States. He did not quite call Putin “the devil,” as Chavez referred to Bush at the UN General Assembly, but Saakashvili rarely misses an opportunity to remind Russia that it is no longer a superpower—unlike his main patron, the United States. The message is surely popular inside Georgia, something to remember in light of nationwide municipal elections on October 5.

Saakashvili’s ministers also enjoy prodding the Russian bear. In response to Moscow’s ban on the sale of Georgian wine and mineral water, Georgia’s Minister of Defense stated, “you can sell even fecal mass on the Russian market,” apparently implying that Russians’ taste was too poor to appreciate Georgian products. On another occasion, he promised that Georgian troops would celebrate the New Year’s Day in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Taking into account that the only way he could do it would be to send Georgian tanks and troops right through the units of Russian peacekeepers, and that the majority of South Ossetians are Russian citizens, by all accounts quite voluntarily, such rhetoric is very provocative. If a Russian client state acted in a similar fashion in the America’s backyard, it would create appropriate indignation across the political spectrum.

I have no way of knowing whether the Russian officers arrested in Georgia were indeed guilty of spying. It would be quite natural for Russia to collect intelligence in Georgia, particularly as Georgia is quickly modernizing its armed forces and making threats against South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Detaining alleged spies and expelling them promptly would be perfectly legitimate—and perhaps better than creating great drama, much less seeking deliberately to humiliate the Russian government. This was especially unhelpful in the aftermath of Saakashvili’s visit to New York, where he was promised accelerated discussions on NATO membership. It was a no-brainer to predict that an action against Russian officers just after the discussions with NATO—where the United States was Georgia’s champion—would create an impression in Moscow that Saakashvili was acting on U.S. guidance. That, however, was not the case.

I visited Georgia with former President Richard Nixon in March 1991, when Nixon met with another Georgian firebrand, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sought to discourage the trip, because Gamsakhurdia was pressing for independence from the USSR, a cause Nixon supported and to which he wanted to offer moral support. Nevertheless, when Gamsakhurdia told Nixon that he could be helpful to the United States, that Russia was weak and he could give it an extra push, Nixon drew the line. He told Gamsakhurdia that there were two kinds of people in America, the kind who would tell him what he wanted to hear and the kind who would tell him what he needed to hear. Many Americans might not mind making life more difficult for Moscow, Nixon continued, but Gamsakhurdia needed to hear that Russia was “a big enchilada” and that the United States would not go to war with Moscow to defend Tblisi.

That level of U.S. commitment to Georgia was not in the cards in 1991 and it does not exist today. Nor will the United States act to return Abkhazia or South Ossetia to Georgia by force. The Bush administration wants Georgia in NATO, and it wants a new pipeline through Georgia to bring oil from the Caspian Basin to Turkey and Europe without going through Russia, but it does not want a new Cold War with Russia because of Saakashvili’s theatrics. Unfortunately, there are influential voices in the United States, both Republicans and Democrats, who give Saakashvili the impression that standing tough against Moscow is the way to win America’s favor.

Sympathy toward Saakashvili is not a substitute for facts, however. Georgia can join NATO whether Russia likes it or not, but Georgia cannot gain control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia without Russian acquiescence. That acquiescence becomes harder and harder to imagine as tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi continue to grow. And America’s ability to help win Russian cooperation on the issue declines the more closely Washington is identified with Saakashvili. So, will the United States and NATO want to make the fate of Abkhazia and South Ossetia a key issue in their relationships with Moscow? Even if they do, the territories still would not go back to Georgia without Russian agreement. But Washington’s ability to work constructively with Russia would suffer a devastating blow.


Posted by Dimitri Simes at 10/03/2006 06:00:40 PM Comments (4)
Protecting Kosovo at the Expense of New York

President Bill Clinton lost control of not only his temper during his interview with FOX News’ Chris Wallace, but also some facts about American national security.

The former President was right to criticize the Bush Administration for paying considerable attention to Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan and the war against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups. Yet, Mr. Clinton was wrong to claim that he gave the struggle against al Qaeda and the Taliban sufficient priority during his own tenure.

One of Mr. Clinton’s most striking claims was only indirectly related to the war on terror, in his comment contrasting his years in the White House with his current role. Discussing the differences, he argued that as the president he could “simultaneously be trying to stop a genocide in Kosovo and, you know, make peace in the Middle East, pass a budget.” As far as the Middle East is concerned, Mr. Clinton indeed made a valiant, if unsuccessful, effort to reach a major Israeli-Palestinian accord. But that was about diplomacy, of course, not waging a war. And in dealing with the Taliban and al Qaeda, it is now clear that Kosovo proved to be a serious and perhaps a fatal distraction.

But first, Mr. Clinton should not try to rewrite history. There was no genocide in Kosovo at the time that his administration orchestrated the NATO attack against Yugoslavia. There was a rebellion by Kosovar Albanians, who were clearly inspired by NATO’s intervention in Bosnia against the Serbs. On the ground, the Kosovo Liberation Army regularly attacked Yugoslav police units and civilian officials. Unsurprisingly, the Milosevic regime responded with particular ruthlessness, often not hesitating in launching indiscriminate attacks on villages where KLA elements were hiding and had considerable support.

There was much to criticize in Milosevic’s answer to the Albanian uprising in Kosovo. But if it was genocide, then the Israelis in Lebanon—and, conceivably, U.S. troops in Iraq—could be vulnerable to similar charges. Yugoslav forces began their “ethnic cleansing” only after NATO decided to attack Yugoslavia. Thus, Mr. Clinton notwithstanding, there was no moral imperative for the United States to go to war when even some masterminds of the operation, including Richard Holbrooke, later acknowledged that it was a technical violation of international law. Kosovo was clearly a war of choice, and even more so than Iraq because Yugoslavia was not an enemy of the United States, had not been accused of harboring international terrorists, and was not suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction.

Yet, just like the Bush Administration’s preoccupation with Iraq, the Clinton Administration decision to focus on Yugoslavia had a heavy price for U.S. national security.

In his interview with Chris Wallace, Mr. Clinton excused his administration’s inability to mount major operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban by saying that the United States “needed basing rights in Uzbekistan, which we got after 9/11.” This implies that it would not have been possible to obtain access to bases before the September 11 attacks rallied global sympathy for the U.S. and opened new doors. But America had a real chance to get bases in Uzbekistan, or at least a military presence, much earlier.

As I have written in The National Interest, then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed U.S.-Russian cooperation against the Taliban and al Qaeda in 1999. Frustrated with Moscow’s opposition to the NATO attack on Yugoslavia earlier that year—and, more generally, increasingly concerned by Russia’s newly assertive foreign policy—the Clinton Administration dismissed Mr. Putin’s overtures out of fear that cooperation with the Kremlin would legitimize Russia’s own presence in Central Asia. So, even after the al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, the Clinton team’s focus was on containing Russia, not on working with Moscow against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Even the 2000 al Qaeda bombing of the U.S.S. Cole did not persuade Mr. Clinton or his advisors that working with Russia in defeating the common threat was more important than curbing Russian influence in Central Asia. By that time, Russia was explicitly suggesting using its links to the Northern Alliance in order to defeat the Taliban. Later, President Putin acknowledged in an interview with Barbara Walters that he did not “know whether it would have been possible to prevent these strikes on the United States by the terrorists,” but added that “at that time, we certainly were counting on more active cooperation in combating international terrorism.” Both U.S. and Russian sources confirm that Russian approaches to the United States on joint counter-terrorism action in Afghanistan were largely ignored by the Clinton Administration.

Cooperation with China was also a casualty of the U.S.-led attack against Yugoslavia. Milosevic led the last self-proclaimed socialist regime in Europe and the Chinese leadership could not be expected to approve an attack on Yugoslavia any more than the United States would have been expected to endorse a Chinese attack on some democratic state, even one that had committed human rights violations in the course of a civil war. The accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade did not help either, since Beijing took the view that even if it was accidental, it occurred during a bombing campaign that was both bad policy and, because it had not been approved by the United Nations Security Council, in violation of international law. China was another key player in central and south Asia and had considerable influence over Afghanistan’s neighbor Pakistan.

If Russia and China were in America’s corner in 1999 and 2000, the U.S. could have taken action against the Taliban and either driven them from power or at least severed their links to al Qaeda. This would have made the September 11 attacks much more difficult to organize.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 09/26/2006 05:35:10 PM Comments (4)
Guest Post: Lessons from the Chavez Controversy

Statements by top Democrats chastising clownish Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for his outrageous attacks on President Bush—whom he called variously “the devil,” an “ex-alcoholic,” and a “sick” and “very dangerous” man—were necessary and appropriate and deserve praise. Whatever his complaints about U.S. policy in the world, Chavez was way out of line, especially in making some of the comments during his address to the United Nations General Assembly. Still, there may be some broader lessons in this otherwise insignificant drama on the margins of the annual UN meeting.

Charles Rangel, New York’s senior House Democrat, had perhaps the most interesting response to Chavez, who continued his bizarre grandstanding in Harlem, a portion of Rangel’s district. Rangel said the following:

“I just want to make it abundantly clear to Hugo Chavez or any other president: Don't come to the United States and think, because we have problems with our president, that any foreigner can come to our country and not think that Americans do not feel offended when you offend our chief of state.”

He was more concise in a second comment: “You don’t come into my country; you don’t come into my congressional district and you don’t condemn my president.” And likewise on his web site: “George Bush is the President of the United States and represents the entire country. Any demeaning public attack against him is viewed by Republicans and Democrats, and all Americans, as an attack on all of us.”

He’s right, of course—but how many members of Congress would apply the same criteria when they travel abroad? In fact, how many would travel to countries like China or Russia without simultaneous sharp criticism of their leaders to reassure important domestic constituencies? Do they think that citizens in other countries welcome their comments or that they also see such remarks “an attack on all of us”?

Rangel does not at all acknowledge this problem, though he does take the opportunity to go after the Bush Administration in a written press statement, where he says (after noting that Venezuela has “won many friends in poor communities” for distributing discounted heating oil and taking a jab at U.S. energy companies) that “it was not helpful when President Bush referred to certain nations as an ‘axis of evil’.” He’s probably right about the “axis of evil,” though Rangel—who is also chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—was clearly playing politics in saying it. As he was likely playing politics to some extent in his whole reaction to Chavez by seeking to avoid giving Congressional Republicans any opportunity to link him or his party’s leadership to the Venezuelan leader before the November elections. And artfully including the phrase “we have problems with our president” in his first comment above.

Also important is that Chavez was highly personal in his attacks, rather than focusing strictly on his policy complaints, and that’s how he went so far out of bounds. On the contrary, U.S. officials and legislators are rarely so personal. But even when they are, such comments are usually not made on the soil of the country in question. In this instance, Chavez is in his own category; even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad limited his fiery outbursts to policy issues. Chavez is clearly an over-the-top populist who likes to exploit resentment of the United States and the Bush Administration wherever he can—so there can be no excuses, no apologies, and no real comparisons with anyone else.

Still, the episode, including Mr. Rangel’s response, should make us think about America’s own approach to the rest of the world. The problem is that even comments without a personal dimension can do damage disproportionate to their benefits. Notwithstanding our low opinions of particular leaders or regimes—opinions that may even be shared widely by others—ordinary citizens and even opposition figures in those countries may not appreciate harsh criticism of their governments by a foreign power they view as domineering. And this is true not only in Western-style democracies, where leaders can have additional legitimacy after having been selected through open, participatory, and rule-based procedures. Monarchs and other dynastic leaders often also engender this kind of broad-based national pride, as do authoritarian leaders who are sufficiently successful in promoting and sharing economic growth. The bottom line is that people in most other countries are not so different from Americans in their reactions to external criticism.

This point also has an important corollary: namely, that if we need or want important things from other governments—including governments that we don’t like—publicly attacking their leaders is probably not the way to go. No one could reasonably expect that it would help us work with the leaders themselves, but we should recognize that potential affronts to national pride will not necessarily advance our cause with even their foes.

In this context, members of Congress would do well to control their instincts to deflect political pressure by mandating ever more State Department reports about this or that practice by foreign governments. Forcing the United States Government into the role of a 24-hour-a-day commentator on virtually every topic for which there is an American domestic constituency is dangerous.

None of this should be interpreted to mean that truly despicable foreign leaders should be immune from criticism—those who launch wars, conduct or condone genocide, or foment violent extremism should not get a free ride. Alternatively, if we are planning to go to war with another country, its domestic reaction to our statements is secondary and harsh attacks may be appropriate to mobilize support. But in most other situations, when diplomacy matters, American interests should drive our rhetoric, not competition to satisfy domestic interest groups or an emotional need to “say something.” As should the Golden Rule.

Paul J. Saunders is the Publisher of National Interest online and Executive Director of The Nixon Center.

Posted by Dimitri Simes at 05/08/2007 06:21:06 PM Comments (3)
Suspend the Demagoguery on Iraq

President George W. Bush was absolutely right to veto the Iraq funding bill. As he observed, "This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our troops." I also agree with the president’s statement that "our troops are worthy of this funding and we have a responsibility to get it to them without further delay."

The other side of the coin, however, is whether Mr. Bush is worthy of the nation’s confidence as a leader who can conduct the war in a responsible and effective manner. Public opinion polls provide a clear answer that a significant majority of Americans does not trust the president to bring the war to a successful conclusion. And that is not because the public is brainwashed by the left-wing media or is suffering, four years after the "Mission Accomplished" speech, from war fatigue.

The Bush Administration brought the United States into Iraq under false pretenses and it is disingenuous for the president and his advisors to proclaim that they, along with everybody else, were victims of faulty intelligence. First, different people drew different conclusions from the intelligence available at the time. With the notable exception of Tony Blair, not a single foreign government had the same sense of urgency to invade Iraq as the Bush Administration. Both Mohamed El Baradei’s International Atomic Energy Agency and UN inspectors in Iraq warned that there was, at a minimum, considerable uncertainty about whether Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and particularly whether he was close to obtaining nuclear weapons. It was the Bush Administration’s choice to dismiss those warnings contemptuously.

Second, the U.S. intelligence data that persuaded so many on the Hill from both parties was produced with White House guidance and sometimes outright pressure. This is not to say that analysts were instructed to fabricate facts. However, with CIA Director George Tenet fighting to keep his job, the CIA in general under attack from Donald Rumsfeld’s and Paul Wolfowtiz’s highly ideological and aggressive intelligence turf raids, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s not-so-subtle encouragement to find evidence of Saddam’s misdeeds, it is simply incredible for the administration to pretend that Bush and his associates were innocent bystanders or even victims of erroneous information they did so much to orchestrate. Finally, the President, Donald Rumsfeld and particularly Paul Wolfowitz also disregarded the advice of the professional military to use a much larger force for the initial stage of occupation and even punished those like General Eric K. Shinseki who performed their soldiers’ duty by speaking the truth to power.

Too much has happened, too many lives have been lost, too many hundreds of billions have been wasted and too much damage has been done to America’s credibility—and Mr. Bush’s personal credibility—for the President to continue to have a carte blanche from Congress and the American people. Yet the President remains commander-in-chief and the Congress has the power of the purse. If both continue playing the blame game, making unrealistic proposals and presenting exaggerated claims of each other’s culpability at the expense of American troops, American honor, and American interests, it would be a sad comment on the ability of our democratic process to do what is necessary to protect the nation. The Democrats need to abandon the notion of withdrawal deadlines that makes defeat a self-fulfilling prophecy. If that is the path they want to take, it would be much more honest to cut the funding right away, except what is necessary for the removal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Assuming that they are not prepared to make this choice for reasons of politics and national security, they should look for a solution that would at least allow the United States to try to reach some minimally acceptable outcome in Iraq.

The Republicans, on the other hand, should not insist on toothless and rather symbolic benchmarks for the Iraqi government that would allow the president to continue the war effort without any meaningful accountability. What is desperately needed is a formula that would allow continued funding, but with clear and binding guidelines that the president must observe in order to be allowed to lead the war effort. There is some truth in the Republicans’ argument that we cannot have 535 generals running the war from Capitol Hill—but at a certain point, even that unpleasant prospect should be weighted against the potential dangers of the president’s incompetent leadership. The American people and the American troops deserve for politicians in Washington—from both parties and all branches of government—to get off their white horses, suspend their demagoguery (to end it all together would be too much to ask) and to do the nation’s work at a moment of crisis.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 05/02/2007 05:54:24 PM Comments (1)
Remembering Yeltsin

President Vladimir Putin declared April 25 the National Day of Mourning for the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, who died today in Moscow. In his announcement, Putin was most positive on Yeltsin, praising him as a man who gave birth to "a new democratic Russia" and particularly praising the late president for his "massive support" from the people. If public opinion polls before Yeltsin’s death are any guidance, this is one instance where most Russians profoundly disagree with Putin, his great popularity notwithstanding. Yeltsin is widely viewed as a failed leader who pursued policies rejected by the vast majority of Russian citizens—and he pursued them by undemocratic means, including using a tank attack against the duly elected Parliament. He is also remembered as somebody who helped create the class of oligarchs—fantastically rich tycoons who emerged from nowhere primarily through the redistribution of state property, including energy resources, to the benefit of the well-connected few. And all at a time when wages and pensions were rarely paid on time and the living standards of most Russians were dramatically decreasing.

I met Yeltsin late in the 1980s when he was still an aspiring politician and was impressed with his steel will, magnetism and a willingness—in contrast to Mikhail Gorbachev—to make tough decisions and to do whatever it took to accomplish his objectives. These were the qualifications of a perfect revolutionary. But Yeltsin was no democrat. If anything, he was less devoted to democratic values than Gorbachev. My impression was that he had no real political philosophy whatsoever, just a great sense of entitlement to take over Russia. He would use this power as a building block to create a new multinational entity on the Soviet territory where most of the republics, after rejecting Soviet rule, somehow were expected to endorse Russia’s and, of course, Yeltsin’s personal predominance. That clearly was an illusion.

As with Russian czars, Yeltsin had little respect for people, including his closest associates, as long as their station in life was below his. He enjoyed dealing with Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, thinking that he was their equal, even as they—Clinton especially—were taking advantage of his ignorance, vanity and alcohol abuse to get concessions from Moscow.

It was Yeltsin who began relying on the post-KGB security services as a major instrument of running the country long before Putin came to power. Yeltsin’s respect for democratic procedure can be well-illustrated by his conversation with Richard Nixon back in April 1993 when, after meeting with Yeltsin’s opponents, Speaker of the Supreme Soviet Ruslan Khasbulatov and then–Vice President Alexander Rutskoy, Nixon shared with the Russian president that these people were professing a willingness to support pro-market reforms, as long as they would be given more voice in formulating them and there would be greater emphasis on social protection of the weak. "You really mean, Mr. President, that I should listen to these midgets?" Yeltsin asked. Earlier in 1992, Yeltsin reacted in disbelief when I told him in Nixon’s presence that there was a good possibility of Bill Clinton prevailing over George H. W. Bush for the presidency. "But I thought that Bush was popular with the U.S. ruling class. Do you really mean to say that in America it is the common rabble who determines the next president of the United States?"

Anecdotes, of course, are always selective and history will remember Yeltsin defiantly standing on the tank, heroically leading the opposition to a reactionary coup d’état in 1991. If only he had ended his career then after bringing a triumph to the anti-Communist revolution.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 04/23/2007 05:55:16 PM Comments (1)
Loyalty at What Cost? The Cost of the President's Support for Gonzalez and Wolfowitz

President George W. Bush’s “full support” of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has implications far beyond the future of the two besieged officials. Gonzalez’s explanations yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the circumstances of the firing of U.S. attorneys were clearly unpersuasive, even to a number of Republican senators. The Senate cannot remove the attorney general—only the president can—but the Senate, by expressing no confidence in Gonzalez, is certainly in a position to make it much more difficult for him to be effective in the performance of his duties, which are essential to the nation, particularly during the war against Islamist terrorists and the controversy over the immigration crisis. Similarly, even if Mr. Wolfowitz survives as president of the World Bank, will he be able to be a formidable leader? Would his anti-corruption preaching be taken literally? Would he be credible with donor nations, especially in Europe, in getting additional funding for the Bank?

Clearly, at a minimum both Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Wolfowitz are guilty of very flawed judgment. The attorney general lost the trust of the U.S. Congress and the president of the World Bank that of the majority of his staff and much of his board. Mr. Bush of course is still entitled to have confidence in them, but not if he wants the rest of us to have confidence in his own ability to be a wise and effective Chief Executive. I for one am most reluctant to see the Congress trying to micromanage U.S. military activity in Iraq. I agree with Mr. Bush that 535 senators and representatives should not act as a collective commander-in-chief and that establishing public deadlines for U.S. withdrawal would encourage America’s enemies and severely undermine the morale of America’s allies, as it happened more than thirty years ago in Vietnam. And, I further agree with the president and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) that the price of defeat in Iraq in terms of American security and prestige may be huge.

But the price of not allowing the president to act as the bona fide commander-in-chief in Iraq has to be measured against his miserable record of misjudgment, misrepresentation and mismanagement of the war. If the president believes that the troop surge in Iraq is the right tactic, how can he maintain confidence in Mr. Wolfowitz, who was one of the architects of the totally different and disastrous strategy in Iraq? Had the president thought when he appointed Mr. Wolfowitz to run the World Bank that his failures at the Department of Defense were not apparent, he surely should know better by now. And as Mr. Wolfowitz demonstrates serious misjudgment again, why wouldn’t the president delicately encourage him to move on to the whole variety of high-profile and profitable pursuits that should be available to him in the private sector?

With 61 percent of Americans—according to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll—favoring immediate withdrawal or withdrawal by March 2008, and with only 30 percent being prepared to keep troops in Iraq without a timetable, the president should be well-aware that the clock is ticking. There is an invisible line in the sand beyond which Congress, and as a matter of fact the American people, will not be prepared to allow him a free hand, no matter what. Under somewhat similar circumstances near the end of his term, President Ronald Reagan cleared house, brought in new, wise and reputable people and moved on, restoring his popularity in the process and helping elect his vice president, George H.W. Bush, as the next president of the United States. But while he likes to wear the Reagan mantle, George W. Bush is no Reagan. His sharply reduced credibility notwithstanding, his stubborn refusal to acknowledge the facts and a propensity to sound like an elected monarch may define his presidency as a terrible cost to the nation.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 04/20/2007 05:32:40 PM Comments (0)
Protests in Russia: The Real Story

The heavy-handed response by Russian authorities to last weekend’s demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg is just another illustration of a tightening-up of the Russian political space. A Jeffersonian democracy Putin’s Russia is not. Just the other day the leader of the newly-created Just Russia opposition—yet pro-Putin—party, Speaker of the Council of the Federation Sergei Mironov, suggested extending Putin’s term and reminded us all that according to a recent public opinion poll, 69 percent of Russians are in favor of keeping the president in power, even if it would require changes to the constitution. Putin so far has firmly rejected this possibility, but informed sources in the Kremlin suggest that discussion of how to keep Putin as a dominant figure is growing, whether it would require amending the constitution to permit him to stay president or finding some other arrangement that would allow him to stay in charge.

It is perfectly appropriate, and indeed necessary, not to whitewash Russian domestic practices, as President George W. Bush once did. What is not appropriate, however, is to accuse Putin and his government of all kinds of terrible deeds—often providing highly misleading information in the process—just because he is supposed to be undemocratic. And that is clearly what happened with coverage of last weekend’s protests in much of the mainstream media in the United States. The Wall Street Journal editorial page—which believes that Vice President Dick Cheney is a wise statesman, John Bolton an effective diplomat and Paul Wolfowitz a model anti-corruption reformer—has predictably adopted the cause of their regular contributor, former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who was one of the leaders of the opposition marches. Mr. Kasparov was a great chess player. He is also a man of courage and determination. But anyone familiar with his career in politics, and as a matter of fact, in chess long before it, would know that he has a strong propensity for theatrics and artificial confrontation. Quoting Mr. Kasparov as a dispassionate commentator on his own struggle, as The Wall Street Journal editorial page did, is unpersuasive.

But, being persuasive is in the eyes of the beholder, and editorial pages by definition are entitled to their opinions. Not so the news pages. In the case of The Washington Post, news stories regarding the April 14 and 15 events in Moscow and St. Petersburg were written as if they were coordinated with the notoriously anti-Putin attitude of The Washington Post editorial page. In their April 18 article, " Kremlin Says Riot Police Overreacted ", by Peter Finn, both the text and the photographs present a highly misleading picture. The photographs show Garry Kasparov appealing to the menacing-looking police officers. It also shows the police in anti-riot gear overwhelming a long-haired, bespectacled young man. And talking about the organizers of the marches, Mr. Finn refers to Garry Kasparov and former–Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov—and nobody else. He does not mention at all that another organizer—and a key ally of Mr. Kasparov and Mr. Kasyanov—was Eduard Limonov, leader of the nationalist and militantly anti-American outlawed National Bolshevik Party. As the photographs accompanying this article show—and these pictures come from grani.ru , an online anti-government publication to which Mr. Limonov is a columnist—a significant, and the most assertive, part of the demonstrators marched under the Nazi-style banners of the National Bolshevik Party, where the hammer and sickle replace the swastika. And some of the demonstrators did not just march, according to the opposition paper Novaya Gazeta, where Anna Politkovskaya used to work before she was murdered last fall. In a number of instances they also attacked the police, who were trying to block their path when they took an unauthorized route.

When the Russian government was deciding how to respond to last weekend’s marches, they had to take into account what had happened at the March 3 demonstrations of the same coalition in St. Petersburg, where Mr. Limonov’s militants overran police lines and roughed up some of the officers. In Mr. Limonov’s own words on that occasion, "the activists of the National Bolshevik Party have fully justified our hopes. They really were on March 3 the avant-garde’s strike battalion, a hot shell, in all confrontations the first and most militant." Limonov added that in addition to their own flags in St. Petersburg, they were marching under the black, gold and white banners of the Russian empire, which Mr. Limonov’s party wants to recreate. He talked about the spirit of "revolution" and put Moscow authorities on notice that they better not interfere with the April 14 march if they wanted to avoid the same assault to which police were subjected in St. Petersburg on March 3. Mr. Kasyanov and Mr. Kasparov apparently came to the conclusion that almost nobody is bad enough not to be an acceptable ally against the Putin government. Traditional liberals with strong democratic credentials such as Yabloko and the Union of the Right Wing Forces (SPS) refused to cooperate with Mr. Limonov.

That still would not justify a crackdown against peaceful demonstrators and would justify even less the tendency of the Moscow city authorities to tightly control where the opposition can meet and march, often, as I have witnessed myself in the past, with transparently false excuses such as closing the street for repairs for several hours just to make an opposition march impossible. Police violence there certainly was, but to put things in perspective, Mr. Kasparov was detained and released several hours later with a fine of $40. Mr. Limonov was also detained for a number of hours, but has not been fined so far. Both he and Mr. Kasparov were summoned to appear before post-KGB Federal Security Service officials. Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov was protected against the police by his own security detail. One assumes that if detaining him would be a priority, it could somehow be arranged.

Why the police overreacted this time, as President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has acknowledged, to the relatively small demonstrations of a few thousand people at most is anybody’s guess. Perhaps it can be explained partly by a concern of how far Mr. Limonov and his militants would be prepared to go if allowed the freedom to move around Moscow. Perhaps there was a sentiment typical in Russian security agencies that not doing enough is more dangerous vis-à-vis one’s superiors than doing too much. Perhaps some in the Russian government were provoked by exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s statements on the eve of the march that he was providing funds for a revolution, which was supposed to start precisely with marches like those that Mr. Kasparov, Mr. Kasyanov and Mr. Limonov were organizing in Moscow. And quite possibly some in the Russian government saw the protests as a welcome opportunity to show that might is always right in Russia and any resistance, particularly violent resistance, is hopeless and will be crushed at the outset.

This is not a pretty picture just as the violent clashes between police and protesters in Genoa over the G-8 and in Washington at the World Bank and IMF were not pretty by most accounts. Some overreaction clearly took place, but I still wonder whether a demonstration in Berlin with neo-Nazi symbols appealing to recreate the Third Reich would generate the same kind of an outcry as in the case of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Actually, there is no need to wonder; we all know the answer.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 04/19/2007 12:24:23 PM Comments (7)
The Costs of Iraq

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials argue that defeat in Iraq would be too costly to the United States for Americans to accept. Fair enough. But the other side of the coin is the cost of continuing our very deep involvement in that country. It is more than 3,000 Americans lives, $300 billion spent and, according to a UN report, over 34,000 dead Iraqi civilians in 2006 alone. It is also more than a severe strain on the over-extended U.S. military and the hardships for families of reservists and National Guard soldiers, who face extended assignments or repeated calls to duty after a short return to civilian life.

The problem is much broader than that. Any administration has a limited attention span and limited political capital. In the United States, preoccupation with Iraq has become an organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy, a prism through which many other international issues are looked at. I have experienced this in my own conversations with administration officials; it is also evident in their public statements.

In the international arena, the American-led occupation of Iraq has considerably damaged U.S. prestige, making it more difficult for friendly governments to be of help to the United States. It has also emboldened American adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea. Those we need to persuade, like China and Russia, feel less pressure to accommodate the United States and less respect for U.S. judgment. And as the war continues and the 2008 Presidential elections draw nearer, it will become more difficult for the Bush Administration to be effective on key foreign policy issues requiring both the commitment of U.S. forces and the cooperation of other nations. Domestically, a continuing large-scale U.S. commitment will make an increasingly polarizing impact. And divided we fail—not just in Iraq, but in other foreign policy challenges as well.

On top of this, just as we have difficulty defining victory in Iraq, it is not easy to visualize a defeat. Clearly Iran is not going to take over Iraq. At best it may win a dominant influence over Shi‘a areas. Kurdish areas already enjoy great autonomy. For their part, most Sunnis, while hostile to both the Shi‘a-dominated government and the U.S. occupation, do not appear to be supporters of Al-Qaeda. Left to their own devices and with the help of such Iraqi neighbors as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other moderate Arab states, Sunni regions are unlikely to provide sanctuary for Al-Qaeda, particularly if U.S. troops are around to strike when necessary.

There is, of course, the danger of outright civil war that could develop into a regional conflict. That would be a serious threat to U.S. interests, but not necessarily a greater threat than open-ended U.S. involvement in an Iraqi civil war that the American military presence helps both to fuel and to contain.

In contrast to the war in Vietnam, there is no North Vietnamese army to take advantage of a reduced U.S. presence. Accordingly, the Bush Administration has some freedom to look for a formula that would help to avoid the worst possible scenarios in Iraq, but at the same time would lead to a reduced level of American involvement. This could liberate the United States from the straitjacket of the Iraqi quagmire. In his piece in Financial Times on January 17, Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department during the first term of this administration, talks about the need for the United States “to rebalance its foreign policy portfolio.” This is an elegant way of advocating a lower level of U.S. involvement in terms of blood, treasure, attention and prestige, both at home and abroad.

Obviously, there would be considerable costs, particularly in Iraq. But, to paraphrase an administration spokesman demanding that opponents of the surge offer credible alternatives, those who oppose reduced U.S. involvement should themselves offer meaningful alternatives in view of the demonstrable and prohibitive costs of a major open-ended engagement. They certainly need to do better than unsubstantiated hopes that the surge will somehow provide a magical solution.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 01/19/2007 12:00:53 PM Comments (2)
Don’t Compare Iraq to Vietnam

Many people are comparing Iraq and Vietnam, but there is a big difference in how the United States became involved militarily in these two countries. And there should be a difference in how we view the leadership that took us there.

In the case of South Vietnam, the Eisenhower Administration had to deal with a French withdrawal from Southeast Asia that left South Vietnam with a government of limited popularity, uncertain legitimacy and weak military capacity. But there was no question who the enemy was: it was the North Vietnamese Communist regime supported by the Soviet Union and China. At the height of the Cold War and just years after the war in Korea—during which the North Koreans got major military assistance from the Soviet Union and particularly from China—no American administration could dismiss the North Vietnamese Communist threat or the possibility of a domino-style impact in the region.

Also very important, there was no single point at which an American president made a clear-cut, conscious decision to invade South Vietnam. The escalating U.S. presence there grew step by step, often based on a desire to protect at first U.S. military advisors and later U.S. troops. And the existing South Vietnamese government fully welcomed this.

In contrast, Saddam Hussein’s government clearly did not want the American “liberation” of his country. The initial invasion was an instant success because Iraq was practically without friends—unlike North Vietnam. Iraq’s relationship with Iran was outright hostile and its ties with Syria were uneasy at best. We now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, no serious links to Al-Qaeda and a weak military. Thus it was not a major threat to the United States or even to its neighbors. Hussein was a bloody tyrant, of course, but this somehow did not stop the United States from supporting him against Iran and having a generally good relationship with him before the invasion of Kuwait—despite the well-documented gassing of the Kurds in the 1980s.

I completely agree that today a withdrawal from Iraq without some form of stabilization led by a minimally competent and credible government could lead to disastrous consequences for the United States. But this predicament is not a result of Saddam’s threat or his being used by other major powers. It is a direct outcome of an ill-conceived invasion and pathetically poor management of the invasion’s aftermath. Moreover, unlike Vietnam, it was not a gradual process over several successive administrations for which multiple presidents share responsibility. Everything happened on President George W. Bush’s watch as a direct consequence of decisions made by him, Vice President Richard Cheney, and their group of advisors, some of whom are still in the administration or maintain strong influence. That is one of the principal reasons why the administration’s surge plan has been received with such skepticism.

The administration and its supporters are right to demand that those who criticize the surge option should be required to suggest alternative approaches, but of course that was exactly what the Baker-Hamilton commission did. I personally see a number of flaws with the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations, particularly its idea for an immediate public announcement about the withdrawal of U.S. forces, something likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It also seems unrealistic to hope that the Iranians and Syrians would be prepared to negotiate on stabilizing Iraq without their other concerns, particularly regarding the security of their regimes, being addressed as well.

The bottom line is that the real problem is that there are no good options left in Iraq. At a minimum, we should be honest with ourselves in admitting that we have created an unnecessary debacle for ourselves—and that people who now expect Americans to endorse their new ideas are the very same ones who led us into the quagmire.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 01/16/2007 12:11:25 PM Comments (2)
Unfair to the Crusaders?

Critics rarely provide substantiation of one’s arguments as effectively as the American Enterprise Institute’s Reuel Gerecht did in comments on my recent article in The National Interest, “End the Crusade.” Writing on a discussion web page for the Iraq Study Group, where the piece had been posted, Mr. Gerecht said:

It would appear that Mr. Simes has a rather poor understanding of what the Crusades were for the Christian West, and how they were viewed at the time in Islamic lands. Since Mr. Simes was raised in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, his lack of appreciation is perhaps understandable, so too his animus for Latin men of the cross (1204 was perhaps worse than Manzikert). One would think, nonetheless, that he would have higher regard for the efforts of Basil II, who was trying to do what the Crusaders did later (counterattack), even if his efforts, meretorious [sic] as they might have been, ultimately weakened the empire through thinning the limes [sic]. Where is Sir Steven Runciman when we need him? R.

I argued in my piece that we did not have a serious debate over Iraq, partly because neoconservatives in and outside the Bush Administration treated the skeptics of the war as dangerous infidels rather than fellow patriots of good will who just happened to have a different point of view. So it is telling that Mr. Gerecht would explain my position, including my alleged misunderstanding of the Crusades, by the fact that I was raised in “the Eastern Orthodox tradition.”

To start with, Mr. Gerecht clearly knows nothing about my background. I was raised in a family of Westernized Jewish intellectuals in Moscow and my high school teachers and Moscow State University professors advocated atheism rather than Russian Orthodoxy or any other religion. But more to the point, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Gerecht feels free to comment regularly on the affairs of Islam without having been raised in that tradition. Would he advise his Jewish colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute that their background disqualifies them from commenting on the Arab Middle East or on Christian civilization? Even assuming that Mr. Gerecht’s comment was half-humorous, it clearly smacks of not-so-soft bigotry that he and his fellow neoconservatives would quickly denounce if they felt it were directed at them. But as we all know, their inherent goodness and noble aims mean that they should not be held to the same standards.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 01/08/2007 05:59:21 PM Comments (4)
Litvinenko: Kremlin Conspiracy or Blofeld Set-Up?

The radioactive poisoning of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko raises many disturbing questions. And, as British Home Secretary John Reid said, the investigation should not make any premature assumptions and should be prepared to go in every possible direction. The Putin government, assuming it has nothing to hide, should cooperate with the British. The Kremlin’s own self-interest requires nothing less than clearly addressing Western suspicions about its possible role in the assassination.

When a vitriolic critic of President Vladimir Putin is poisoned with a nuclear isotope, questions about Moscow’s involvement are inevitable and appropriate. What is not appropriate is the highly simplistic and sometimes even misleading coverage of the affair in some Western media. Consider a December 5 story in The Washington Post, “British Police Take Poisoning Inquiry to Moscow,” by Mary Jordan and Peter Finn. It starts by referring to Litvinenko as “a former Russian spy.” But there is no record that Litvinenko ever served with Russian foreign intelligence, either in the post-KGB foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, or military intelligence, known as the GRU. On the contrary, after junior assignments in FSB counterintelligence, the post-KGB internal security agency, Litvinenko built a name for himself in its organized crime department. According to a remarkably insightful story in The New York Times (“Russian Ex-Spy Lived in a World of Deceptions,” by Alan Cowell, December 3), in that capacity Litvinenko developed a relationship with leading Russian oligarch Boris Berzovsky as early as 1994. During that period of free fall after the collapse of Soviet institutions, Berezovsky openly mixed his senior positions in the Russian government with aggressive privatization of state assets for his own benefit. And Litvinenko’s department in the FSB was frequently viewed not so much as a law enforcement agency, but as a part of organized crime itself.

Worse, The Washington Post misleadingly describes Berezovsky as “a billionaire now living in self-imposed exile in London” who “was a friend of Litvinenko’s.” Anyone who read Paul Klebnikov’s Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia would know that Litvinenko’s “friend” was much more than an anti-Putin business leader. He was a master of Kremlin intrigue, widely reputed in numerous, and now public, accounts of bribing and corrupting everything and everyone around him, including members of Boris Yeltsin’s family. And Berezovsky does not just oppose Putin’s rule—he has said on several occasions that he is actively pursuing regime change in Russia using his base in London and his business and political contacts from Ukraine to Georgia.

In the first days after Litvinenko’s illness became known to the public, the primary source of information about what had happened and Litvinenko’s suspicions of Putin was Alex Goldfarb, who The Washington Post and others describe as “a friend of Litvinenko’s” or a “friend of the family.” Goldfarb certainly was a friend and could probably even be considered a member of the family—in the same way that Tom Hagen was a key member of the Godfather’s family in the famous movie. Goldfarb—officially the director of Berezovsky’s Foundation for Civil Liberties—is one of Berezovsky’s close associates. Interestingly, despite being known as a relentless publicity seeker, Berezovsky has sought to downplay his role and that of his organization in this instance. Based on his past conduct, one would have expected at a minimum that Berezovsky would attempt to use the Litvinenko matter to pursue his stated objective of discrediting and undermining Putin.

At present, there are three main theories of Litvinenko’s killing. One is the Kremlin plot that Goldfarb described when quoting what Litvinenko allegedly dictated on his deathbed. This requires one of two assumptions. The first—that the leader of a major nuclear power is dangerously devoid of basic common sense and any instinct for self-preservation—defies our previous experience with Putin. Killing a fairly insignificant political opponent in a key European capital with a highly traceable material would demonstrate an appalling lack of judgment in an area where most of Putin’s critics see sinister genius rather than Yeltsin-style bumbling.

But this logic holds only if Litvinenko was nothing more than an extremely harsh Putin critic, someone who accused the pesident of being a pedophile on a Chechen website and blamed him for bombings in Moscow and even in London, but ultimately did little to endanger Putin’s or Russia’s security in a serious way. The alternative assumption is that the Kremlin saw Litvinenko as a real threat, perhaps because of his Chechen links. It is clear that Litvinenko was quite close to at least some Chechen rebels, like exiled separatist spokesman Akhmed Zakayev, whom he saw on November 1, the day he was reportedly poisoned. If Litvinenko had been actively involved with Chechen insurgents, Moscow’s calculations could have been quite different. After all, it is widely believed, and even privately admitted in Moscow government circles, that the Kremlin authorized the killing of former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiev in 2004. And the Duma recently passed a law authorizing the assassination of suspected terrorists outside Russian borders. So, before dismissing the Kremlin connection, it is essential to establish what exactly Mr. Litvinenko—a recent convert to Islam—was involved in and to examine any involvement he could have had with Islamic extremist organizations that might be interested in polonium-210 for dirty bombs or other uses.

The second theory of Litvinenko’s poisoning comes straight from the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice. In the film, the head of SPECTRE, Ernst Blofeld, seeks to provoke a U.S.-Soviet confrontation by creating a false impression that they are seizing each other’s spacecraft. In this instance, Berezovsky would be the mastermind of an effort to set Britain and the West against Putin. He would have both a motive and the capability to use the Litvinenko assassination to frame the Russian leader. And anyone familiar with Berezovsky’s activities in Russia would have to entertain the possibility that he would have the combination of imagination, resources and utter ruthlessness to sacrifice his former protégé to advance his anti-Putin designs.

A new book published in Moscow by Alexander Khinshtein, a pro-Kremlin journalist and Duma member, provides a detailed account (with transcripts of Berezovsky’s phone conversations in July 1996), demonstrating Berezovsky’s key role in creating quite “a performance” to let Yeltsin think that his security chiefs were involved in a conspiracy against the Russian president (Yeltsin. Kreml. Istoriya bolezni, Alexander Khinshtein, 2006). The purpose was to remove from Yeltsin’s entourage those who were an obstacle to Berezovsky’s influence. In 1999, according to the memoirs of former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, Berezovsky again fed false information to Yeltsin and his family to create an impression that they were threatened by Primakov’s anti-corruption investigations. Later, Berezovsky used his control of TV channel ORT to launch a vicious and highly misleading campaign against Primakov on behalf of the new Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, whom he helped come to power. With Putin at first refusing to follow Berezovsky’s guidance and then strongly moving against the oligarch, Berezovsky made it his mission in life to have a regime change in Moscow.

What speaks against this scenario is the terrible personal risk Berezovsky would be taking in the process. He would have to anticipate that while he and his allies could influence Western opinion, they would be in a much weaker position to manipulate a professional investigation by Scotland Yard or by Russian security services determined to demonstrate that Moscow was not to blame. With his obvious connection to Litvinenko and his reputation as an unscrupulous intriguer, Berezovsky would have to know that he himself would become a target of any serious investigation.

Andrey Lugovoi, another former FSB officer now identified as a prime suspect in some news reports, could have been a key player in either the Kremlin or the Berezovsky scenarios. Lugovoi met with Litvinenko on November 1 and was on one of the British Airways flights contaminated by polonium-210. And he has both an obvious FSB connection as well as a less-discussed Berezovsky connection: while still with the FSB in the 1990s, Lugovoi was simultaneously a security officer at the Russian television channel ORT, then controlled by Berezovsky. In 2001-02, he spent time in the infamous Lefortovo prison for helping another Berezovsky associate, Nikolai Glushkov, to escape from detention. His loyalty in this instance is unclear, and Moscow should provide Scotland Yard with direct access to him.

The third and final theory relates to Litvinenko’s personal pursuits rather than his struggle against Putin or his affiliation with Berezovsky. A Russian academic in England recently claimed that Litvinenko was thinking about making money by blackmailing Russian businessmen. Should that be true, a number of individuals and groups could have had a motive to kill him. Suspicions that groups of current and former FSB officers are responsible for killing Litvinenko fit right into this theory.

While the Litvinenko mystery is right out of a spy movie, the stakes in real life—including for the West’s relationship with Russia—are very high. If the evidence does indeed lead to the Kremlin, whitewashing it is not an option. But what is not in the West’s interest is to allow Putin’s political enemies at home and abroad to bring both him and the West into a confrontation based on a set-up, or at least on false information.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 12/06/2006 02:36:14 PM Comments (10)
Who Will Laugh Last in Georgia?

The West has responded to South Ossetia’s referendum on independence from Georgia with a mixture of contempt and anger—anger that the tiny enclave is not accommodating the preferences of the United States, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in settling for autonomy instead, and contempt that these obviously backward-thinking people would believe that their opinion matters.

Still, it is the U.S. and European response, rather than the impulse for independence, that is misguided. First, if Georgia had the right to leave the Soviet Union, why don’t South Ossetia and Abkhazia have the right to leave Georgia? No one denies that the vast majority of their populations do not want to be a part of Georgia. And they were only a part of Georgia because Soviet leaders in Moscow incorporated their territory and their differing cultures and traditions into the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. More recently, Georgia’s first post-Soviet leader, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, gave most of the impetus to the Abkhaz and South Ossetian desire for independence by denying the two regions any meaningful autonomy.

Looking at the rest of Europe, it is unclear why the West would be prepared to grant independence to Kosovo—even over Serbian opposition and possibly without a UN mandate—without thinking that the citizens of Abkhazia and South Ossetia would feel entitled to similar treatment. Some may feel that Washington and Brussels are seeking to assume the prerogatives of the Soviet empire in the Caucasus and the Habsburg Empire in the Balkans and can draw and re-draw the borders of subject nations.

There is an argument, with some validity, that a vote in Abkhazia would not be legitimate without the participation of ethnic Georgians expelled from the territory. (This is less relevant in South Ossetia, where most Georgians remain but chose not to take part in the balloting.) But that ignores the fact that it was Gamsakhurdia’s heated nationalist rhetoric and intransigence that provoked the civil war. More broadly, after fifteen years of Abkhazian de facto independence, it is difficult to see why the situation of Georgian refugees is so different from that of Palestinians, whom no one would seriously propose as voters in Israel.

Ultimately, Western contempt for the South Ossetian referendum is most misplaced because it is simply out of touch with reality. Whether one likes it or not, the referendum confirmed something already increasingly clear, namely that South Ossetia and Abkhazia will not be integrated into Georgia. The failure of other states to recognize their independence is largely irrelevant and may ultimately prove counterproductive.

While South Ossetians voted for independence, what they really want is unification with Russia. The vast majority of residents of South Ossetia have Russian passports, which they can use for travel to Russia and elsewhere. As a result, there can be no meaningful sanctions against them without Russian cooperation—which is very unlikely to materialize.

In fact, by refusing to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states and even trying to isolate them, the West could unwittingly push the two regions closer to Russia and accelerate their initial association and ultimate integration into it. Russia’s official position today is to protect Abkhazia and South Ossetia against forcible takeover by Tbilisi, but to neither recognize their independence nor to more closely integrate either with Russia. However, as with many of President Vladimir Putin’s statements, one should make a distinction between tactical calculations and strategic design. Tactically, Russia does not need additional problems with the United States or Europe while it concludes its negotiations with the World Trade Organization. And there is no immediate danger of a Georgian invasion of the two enclaves because of Bush Administration efforts to restrain President Mikheil Saakashvili and clear Russian warnings that Moscow would unleash its own military against Georgia, and not just on the ground in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but quite possibly in Georgia proper.

Thus, given the current status quo—which includes free movement across the Russian border with the two areas—Moscow is in no hurry. Once the WTO issue is resolved one way or the other, however, the Kremlin is likely to move toward a closer relationship with the two unrecognized republics. Chances are this will happen after Kosovo’s independence is announced, something Vladimir Putin said on a number of occasions will set a precedent for the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. U.S. and European arguments about Kosovo’s uniqueness have little impact in Moscow or the two enclaves, where they are essentially viewed as legal technicalities concocted to provide justification for something otherwise supported only by the principle that might makes right. That approach worked well with Boris Yeltsin, but generally provokes a tougher line from Mr. Putin.

Once Kosovo becomes independent, the Kremlin will be bombarded with requests from the South Ossetian and Abkhazian regional governments and parliaments. Leaders of several regions inside the Russian Federation—most notably North Ossetia, where many Ossetian families have relatives on both sides of the border—will join them. And strong voices in Russia’s parliament and media will urge Mr. Putin to do something for the “compatriots abroad.” Some of these appeals will be spontaneous, and many will be carefully orchestrated by the Putin Administration. But they will all contribute to a climate in which it will be next to impossible to imagine the return of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to Georgia, no matter what Washington or Brussels have to say.

A different outcome was possible, though still not easy to produce, when Saakashvili came to power in 2004 and successfully (with the help of Russian mediation) reestablished control over Ajaria. At that time, Saakasvili could have developed a plan for peaceful reintegration of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This would have required: high‑profile efforts to provide Ajaria with meaningful autonomy; trade and other overtures to Abkhazia and South Ossetia to create incentives to move closer to Tbilisi; and last but not least building a modicum of trust with Putin—something Saakashvili had promised to do.

Instead, Saakashvili chose to use threats and intimidation in dealing with the Abkhaz and South Ossetians, provoking rather than reassuring them in the process. At the same time, he decided to accelerate and emphasize Georgia’s “Euro-Atlantic” direction, including NATO membership. And, with encouragement from the Bush Administration, the Georgian president became a cheerleader of the so-called “color revolutions,” which had clear anti‑Putin connotations in the former Soviet space.

Of course, the Georgian government was entitled to make its own foreign policy choices. Likewise, Moscow has neither the right nor the capability to block NATO membership for Georgia—or at least the part of it that the Saakashvili regime currently controls. But moving full‑speed into NATO and bringing Abkhazia and South Ossetia back into Georgia was trying to do too much too fast. It could not work, it hasn’t, and it won’t.

The only plausible scenario for returning Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgia is through the departure of Mr. Saakashvili. Saakashvili himself has told American officials that he thinks this is Putin’s intent. But Moscow does not seem to have either the levers or the sophistication to change the regime in Georgia. After all, removing Saakashvili alone is hardly guaranteed to deliver a government friendly to the Kremlin. The alternative, a defeat of Saakashvili and his allies in the polls followed by the emergence of a new leadership genuinely prepared to seek common ground with Moscow, also does not seem to be in the cards in the foreseeable future. By the time such a change could take place, if it could at all, Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s association with Russia would probably have gone too far to be reversed.

In 1990 and 1991, Boris Yeltsin and his government were instrumental in both breaking up the Soviet Union and preventing Kremlin hardliners from using real force against Georgia or other republics seeking independence. Today, guaranteeing Georgia’s Soviet-era borders against the wishes of local populations is impossible without Russian acquiescence—yet no one in the West seems to have a serious proposal to obtain that acquiescence, through either coercion or accommodation, in an area that Russia considers vital to its interests. No wonder South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity seems convinced that it is he who will have the last laugh.


Dimitri K. Simes is president of the Nixon Center.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 11/14/2006 01:23:36 PM Comments (4)
Disaster in the Making?

The icon of Russian arts, theater director Konstantin Stanislavsky, stated about a century ago that the theater starts with the cloakroom. What he meant was that there are no unimportant details. Everything at the theater should be part of the same artistic miracle and the first impression of the cloakroom may influence the audience’s perception of the performance. For many Americans and others traveling to Russia, the country starts with Aeroflot, the Russian government-controlled airline, and the experience is quite troubling.

Aeroflot’s recently released profit information suggests an unqualified success. During the first six months of 2006, Aeroflot’s net profits grew by 78.7 percent, despite major increases in fuel costs. Part of this was accomplished by raising fares. For instance, after eliminating first class on the New York to Moscow route, Aeroflot reconfigured the business class cabin. It now charges for business class almost what it only recently charged for first class. It still may be a bargain in comparison with the only other non-stop carrier from New York to Moscow, Delta, but Delta’s cabin, while not up to British Airways’ or Lufthansa’s standards, is clearly superior to that of Aeroflot.

But the subject of real concern is that higher profits were accomplished by a 9 percent cut in spending on technical services. On a flight I took two weeks ago from New York to Moscow, the results of these cuts were much on display: two seats were broken and could not be used; some electrical lights were functioning only periodically, suggesting the problem was not with the bulbs but with the central electric control; and several TV screens were not functioning. On the return flight, on a different plane, two seats were broken and one TV screen was not working. Aeroflot’s personnel claim that these shortcomings have nothing to do with flight safety, and indeed neither of the three disasters with Russian airlines this year involved an Aeroflot flight. And, Aeroflot is the only Russian airline that operates a flight school for its pilots to ensure a required level of competence. But after talking to several Aeroflot employees I am afraid that Aeroflot’s recent catastrophe avoidance was more than anything pure luck. Flight safety cannot be hermetically isolated from a systemic failure at Aeroflot to provide decent service to its passengers.

In addition to cutting the technical costs, Aeroflot also reduced its administrative expenses by 4.2 percent and operational rent by 9.4 percent. These savings come at the expense of Aeroflot making adequate arrangements at foreign airports such as Kennedy and adequate supervision of Aeroflot personnel, including in the crucial security area. At Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport, security screeners working in cooperation with Aeroflot staff were unaware of the change in TSA regulations allowing travel-size toiletries (up to three ounces) in a zip-top bag. But the only ones who could be caught were those who, like me, followed the rules, putting the bag in a highly visible area so it could be easily noticed and examined by the screeners. Otherwise, Sheremetyevo airport people were opening literally every bag, but in such a pro forma way that a terrorist or anyone with something to hide would have little difficulty remaining undiscovered. We all know that the TSA screeners in the United States are hardly a model of perfection, but in comparison with their colleagues in Moscow, they look like top-notch professionals.

Another revealing thing about Aeroflot is the return of the Soviet era rubric where junior government clerks or sales people could not resist the temptation to demonstrate their authority to the rest of the public. On a flight to Moscow the flight attendant responsible for duty-free sales, annoyed that she had to look for some items for me that she could not easily find on her cart, asked me not to speak loudly since she was not deaf. Actually, I was almost whispering. And, on both flights the best seats were reserved for the pilots to assure that they would be able to rest in comfort.

To be fair, I was able to take my cologne and deodorant on the airplane flight, but that was only after I refused to surrender them and told the Aeroflot supervisor that I would make alternative flight arrangements. And I was able to get my duty-free items after complaining to the purser. For somebody like me, born in the Soviet Union, there is a certain sense of déjà vu with almost an entertaining element of traveling back to the past, but that would be true only if fundamental security and technical issues were not at stake. Prosecutor General Yury Chaika stated two weeks ago that “Flight security is extremely poor.” He added that “The aircraft accidents, which have lately become increasingly frequent, engender fears in our society and distrust of the Russian air carriers. They greatly impair the country’s prestige too.” But given the way Russia functions today, not much is likely to change without President Vladimir Putin’s personal involvement. It would be important for him to take personal charge of the problem before an Aeroflot flight is added to the disaster list.


Posted by Dimitri Simes at 10/17/2006 05:24:12 PM Comments (2)
Living Dangerously, Georgian Style

A confrontation with Russia over Georgia is hardly a part of the Bush Administration’s strategic design—U.S. priorities include major issues like Iran, where the U.S. wants Russian cooperation, and Russia’s WTO accession, which many hope may open the way to significant U.S. investment in Russia’s energy sector as well as helping to arrest a wider decline in bilateral ties. But when the White House initiated a phone call between Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin on those topics, Mr. Putin insisted on devoting a considerable part of the conversation to the Russian-Georgian dispute. And it was apparent that the Russian leader felt quite strongly about perceived U.S. encouragement of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to pursue a hard line toward Moscow. Moreover, while Putin did not suggest any explicit linkage between the U.S. support of Georgia and Russia’s response to Iran, there is clearly an implicit linkage. The bottom line is that just as Moscow’s position on Iran’s nuclear program is becoming a defining issue in U.S. policy toward Russia, so is U.S. involvement with Georgia becoming a defining consideration in Moscow’s willingness to satisfy American concerns.

Russia announced sanctions against Georgia after Moscow was reliably informed by the U.S. government that Russian officers detained on spying charges would be returned home through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This was after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice personally called Saakashvili—at Russia’s request—and persuaded him to send the arrested Russian officers to Moscow promptly. So the Putin government’s decision to introduce sanctions against Georgia was clearly not the constructive response Washington hoped for after its private diplomacy.

On top of this, the Russian government seems once again to be offering highly unpersuasive explanations of its actions. Instead of simply stating that Moscow saw the Georgian public handling of the arrests—especially the television coverage—as a clear attempt to humiliate Russia and pressure Russian officers remaining in Georgia and Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, the Russian Minister of Transportation and Communications claimed that the suspension of transportation and mail links was due to criminal activity, unpaid bills, and other problems. This is about as easy to believe as Moscow’s statements that environmental violations are the reason that licenses for the massive Sakhalin II energy project may be cancelled when everyone assumes that the real motivations are financial disagreements and Gazprom’s interest in being dealt into the venture. The Russian government does not enhance its credibility with these weak explanations or with actions that look more like “special operations” than legitimate, if tough, diplomacy.

The problem, of course, is that while Putin’s Russia is not an easy partner for the United States, and our leverage over the Kremlin is limited, Russian cooperation on non-proliferation and counter-terrorism is very important in achieving key U.S. foreign policy objectives. So here is the question: setting aside Russia’s disingenuous response, why do we allow and sometimes even encourage Georgia to continue provoking Moscow at our expense?

Saakashvili is treating Russia the same way that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is treating the United States. He did not quite call Putin “the devil,” as Chavez referred to Bush at the UN General Assembly, but Saakashvili rarely misses an opportunity to remind Russia that it is no longer a superpower—unlike his main patron, the United States. The message is surely popular inside Georgia, something to remember in light of nationwide municipal elections on October 5.

Saakashvili’s ministers also enjoy prodding the Russian bear. In response to Moscow’s ban on the sale of Georgian wine and mineral water, Georgia’s Minister of Defense stated, “you can sell even fecal mass on the Russian market,” apparently implying that Russians’ taste was too poor to appreciate Georgian products. On another occasion, he promised that Georgian troops would celebrate the New Year’s Day in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. Taking into account that the only way he could do it would be to send Georgian tanks and troops right through the units of Russian peacekeepers, and that the majority of South Ossetians are Russian citizens, by all accounts quite voluntarily, such rhetoric is very provocative. If a Russian client state acted in a similar fashion in the America’s backyard, it would create appropriate indignation across the political spectrum.

I have no way of knowing whether the Russian officers arrested in Georgia were indeed guilty of spying. It would be quite natural for Russia to collect intelligence in Georgia, particularly as Georgia is quickly modernizing its armed forces and making threats against South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Detaining alleged spies and expelling them promptly would be perfectly legitimate—and perhaps better than creating great drama, much less seeking deliberately to humiliate the Russian government. This was especially unhelpful in the aftermath of Saakashvili’s visit to New York, where he was promised accelerated discussions on NATO membership. It was a no-brainer to predict that an action against Russian officers just after the discussions with NATO—where the United States was Georgia’s champion—would create an impression in Moscow that Saakashvili was acting on U.S. guidance. That, however, was not the case.

I visited Georgia with former President Richard Nixon in March 1991, when Nixon met with another Georgian firebrand, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sought to discourage the trip, because Gamsakhurdia was pressing for independence from the USSR, a cause Nixon supported and to which he wanted to offer moral support. Nevertheless, when Gamsakhurdia told Nixon that he could be helpful to the United States, that Russia was weak and he could give it an extra push, Nixon drew the line. He told Gamsakhurdia that there were two kinds of people in America, the kind who would tell him what he wanted to hear and the kind who would tell him what he needed to hear. Many Americans might not mind making life more difficult for Moscow, Nixon continued, but Gamsakhurdia needed to hear that Russia was “a big enchilada” and that the United States would not go to war with Moscow to defend Tblisi.

That level of U.S. commitment to Georgia was not in the cards in 1991 and it does not exist today. Nor will the United States act to return Abkhazia or South Ossetia to Georgia by force. The Bush administration wants Georgia in NATO, and it wants a new pipeline through Georgia to bring oil from the Caspian Basin to Turkey and Europe without going through Russia, but it does not want a new Cold War with Russia because of Saakashvili’s theatrics. Unfortunately, there are influential voices in the United States, both Republicans and Democrats, who give Saakashvili the impression that standing tough against Moscow is the way to win America’s favor.

Sympathy toward Saakashvili is not a substitute for facts, however. Georgia can join NATO whether Russia likes it or not, but Georgia cannot gain control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia without Russian acquiescence. That acquiescence becomes harder and harder to imagine as tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi continue to grow. And America’s ability to help win Russian cooperation on the issue declines the more closely Washington is identified with Saakashvili. So, will the United States and NATO want to make the fate of Abkhazia and South Ossetia a key issue in their relationships with Moscow? Even if they do, the territories still would not go back to Georgia without Russian agreement. But Washington’s ability to work constructively with Russia would suffer a devastating blow.


Posted by Dimitri Simes at 10/03/2006 06:00:40 PM Comments (4)
Protecting Kosovo at the Expense of New York

President Bill Clinton lost control of not only his temper during his interview with FOX News’ Chris Wallace, but also some facts about American national security.

The former President was right to criticize the Bush Administration for paying considerable attention to Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan and the war against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups. Yet, Mr. Clinton was wrong to claim that he gave the struggle against al Qaeda and the Taliban sufficient priority during his own tenure.

One of Mr. Clinton’s most striking claims was only indirectly related to the war on terror, in his comment contrasting his years in the White House with his current role. Discussing the differences, he argued that as the president he could “simultaneously be trying to stop a genocide in Kosovo and, you know, make peace in the Middle East, pass a budget.” As far as the Middle East is concerned, Mr. Clinton indeed made a valiant, if unsuccessful, effort to reach a major Israeli-Palestinian accord. But that was about diplomacy, of course, not waging a war. And in dealing with the Taliban and al Qaeda, it is now clear that Kosovo proved to be a serious and perhaps a fatal distraction.

But first, Mr. Clinton should not try to rewrite history. There was no genocide in Kosovo at the time that his administration orchestrated the NATO attack against Yugoslavia. There was a rebellion by Kosovar Albanians, who were clearly inspired by NATO’s intervention in Bosnia against the Serbs. On the ground, the Kosovo Liberation Army regularly attacked Yugoslav police units and civilian officials. Unsurprisingly, the Milosevic regime responded with particular ruthlessness, often not hesitating in launching indiscriminate attacks on villages where KLA elements were hiding and had considerable support.

There was much to criticize in Milosevic’s answer to the Albanian uprising in Kosovo. But if it was genocide, then the Israelis in Lebanon—and, conceivably, U.S. troops in Iraq—could be vulnerable to similar charges. Yugoslav forces began their “ethnic cleansing” only after NATO decided to attack Yugoslavia. Thus, Mr. Clinton notwithstanding, there was no moral imperative for the United States to go to war when even some masterminds of the operation, including Richard Holbrooke, later acknowledged that it was a technical violation of international law. Kosovo was clearly a war of choice, and even more so than Iraq because Yugoslavia was not an enemy of the United States, had not been accused of harboring international terrorists, and was not suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction.

Yet, just like the Bush Administration’s preoccupation with Iraq, the Clinton Administration decision to focus on Yugoslavia had a heavy price for U.S. national security.

In his interview with Chris Wallace, Mr. Clinton excused his administration’s inability to mount major operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban by saying that the United States “needed basing rights in Uzbekistan, which we got after 9/11.” This implies that it would not have been possible to obtain access to bases before the September 11 attacks rallied global sympathy for the U.S. and opened new doors. But America had a real chance to get bases in Uzbekistan, or at least a military presence, much earlier.

As I have written in The National Interest, then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed U.S.-Russian cooperation against the Taliban and al Qaeda in 1999. Frustrated with Moscow’s opposition to the NATO attack on Yugoslavia earlier that year—and, more generally, increasingly concerned by Russia’s newly assertive foreign policy—the Clinton Administration dismissed Mr. Putin’s overtures out of fear that cooperation with the Kremlin would legitimize Russia’s own presence in Central Asia. So, even after the al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, the Clinton team’s focus was on containing Russia, not on working with Moscow against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Even the 2000 al Qaeda bombing of the U.S.S. Cole did not persuade Mr. Clinton or his advisors that working with Russia in defeating the common threat was more important than curbing Russian influence in Central Asia. By that time, Russia was explicitly suggesting using its links to the Northern Alliance in order to defeat the Taliban. Later, President Putin acknowledged in an interview with Barbara Walters that he did not “know whether it would have been possible to prevent these strikes on the United States by the terrorists,” but added that “at that time, we certainly were counting on more active cooperation in combating international terrorism.” Both U.S. and Russian sources confirm that Russian approaches to the United States on joint counter-terrorism action in Afghanistan were largely ignored by the Clinton Administration.

Cooperation with China was also a casualty of the U.S.-led attack against Yugoslavia. Milosevic led the last self-proclaimed socialist regime in Europe and the Chinese leadership could not be expected to approve an attack on Yugoslavia any more than the United States would have been expected to endorse a Chinese attack on some democratic state, even one that had committed human rights violations in the course of a civil war. The accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade did not help either, since Beijing took the view that even if it was accidental, it occurred during a bombing campaign that was both bad policy and, because it had not been approved by the United Nations Security Council, in violation of international law. China was another key player in central and south Asia and had considerable influence over Afghanistan’s neighbor Pakistan.

If Russia and China were in America’s corner in 1999 and 2000, the U.S. could have taken action against the Taliban and either driven them from power or at least severed their links to al Qaeda. This would have made the September 11 attacks much more difficult to organize.
Posted by Dimitri Simes at 09/26/2006 05:35:10 PM Comments (4)
Guest Post: Lessons from the Chavez Controversy

Statements by top Democrats chastising clownish Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for his outrageous attacks on President Bush—whom he called variously “the devil,” an “ex-alcoholic,” and a “sick” and “very dangerous” man—were necessary and appropriate and deserve praise. Whatever his complaints about U.S. policy in the world, Chavez was way out of line, especially in making some of the comments during his address to the United Nations General Assembly. Still, there may be some broader lessons in this otherwise insignificant drama on the margins of the annual UN meeting.

Charles Rangel, New York’s senior House Democrat, had perhaps the most interesting response to Chavez, who continued his bizarre grandstanding in Harlem, a portion of Rangel’s district. Rangel said the following:

“I just want to make it abundantly clear to Hugo Chavez or any other president: Don't come to the United States and think, because we have problems with our president, that any foreigner can come to our country and not think that Americans do not feel offended when you offend our chief of state.”

He was more concise in a second comment: “You don’t come into my country; you don’t come into my congressional district and you don’t condemn my president.” And likewise on his web site: “George Bush is the President of the United States and represents the entire country. Any demeaning public attack against him is viewed by Republicans and Democrats, and all Americans, as an attack on all of us.”

He’s right, of course—but how many members of Congress would apply the same criteria when they travel abroad? In fact, how many would travel to countries like China or Russia without simultaneous sharp criticism of their leaders to reassure important domestic constituencies? Do they think that citizens in other countries welcome their comments or that they also see such remarks “an attack on all of us”?

Rangel does not at all acknowledge this problem, though he does take the opportunity to go after the Bush Administration in a written press statement, where he says (after noting that Venezuela has “won many friends in poor communities” for distributing discounted heating oil and taking a jab at U.S. energy companies) that “it was not helpful when President Bush referred to certain nations as an ‘axis of evil’.” He’s probably right about the “axis of evil,” though Rangel—who is also chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—was clearly playing politics in saying it. As he was likely playing politics to some extent in his whole reaction to Chavez by seeking to avoid giving Congressional Republicans any opportunity to link him or his party’s leadership to the Venezuelan leader before the November elections. And artfully including the phrase “we have problems with our president” in his first comment above.

Also important is that Chavez was highly personal in his attacks, rather than focusing strictly on his policy complaints, and that’s how he went so far out of bounds. On the contrary, U.S. officials and legislators are rarely so personal. But even when they are, such comments are usually not made on the soil of the country in question. In this instance, Chavez is in his own category; even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad limited his fiery outbursts to policy issues. Chavez is clearly an over-the-top populist who likes to exploit resentment of the United States and the Bush Administration wherever he can—so there can be no excuses, no apologies, and no real comparisons with anyone else.

Still, the episode, including Mr. Rangel’s response, should make us think about America’s own approach to the rest of the world. The problem is that even comments without a personal dimension can do damage disproportionate to their benefits. Notwithstanding our low opinions of particular leaders or regimes—opinions that may even be shared widely by others—ordinary citizens and even opposition figures in those countries may not appreciate harsh criticism of their governments by a foreign power they view as domineering. And this is true not only in Western-style democracies, where leaders can have additional legitimacy after having been selected through open, participatory, and rule-based procedures. Monarchs and other dynastic leaders often also engender this kind of broad-based national pride, as do authoritarian leaders who are sufficiently successful in promoting and sharing economic growth. The bottom line is that people in most other countries are not so different from Americans in their reactions to external criticism.

This point also has an important corollary: namely, that if we need or want important things from other governments—including governments that we don’t like—publicly attacking their leaders is probably not the way to go. No one could reasonably expect that it would help us work with the leaders themselves, but we should recognize that potential affronts to national pride will not necessarily advance our cause with even their foes.

In this context, members of Congress would do well to control their instincts to deflect political pressure by mandating ever more State Department reports about this or that practice by foreign governments. Forcing the United States Government into the role of a 24-hour-a-day commentator on virtually every topic for which there is an American domestic constituency is dangerous.

None of this should be interpreted to mean that truly despicable foreign leaders should be immune from criticism—those who launch wars, conduct or condone genocide, or foment violent extremism should not get a free ride. Alternatively, if we are planning to go to war with another country, its domestic reaction to our statements is secondary and harsh attacks may be appropriate to mobilize support. But in most other situations, when diplomacy matters, American interests should drive our rhetoric, not competition to satisfy domestic interest groups or an emotional need to “say something.” As should the Golden Rule.

Paul J. Saunders is the Publisher of National Interest online and Executive Director of The Nixon Center.

The National Interest

Originally Posted by Parihaka

Certainly interesting times in middle Europe. Reminds me of the ructions in the 50 years prior to WWI.

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Sometimes it more reminds 5 years before WWII .

Originally Posted by braindead

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Sometimes it more reminds 5 years before WWII .

Yep, that too.

Originally Posted by rickusn

Russia has no intention of leaving either Georgia or Moldova.

As for CFE the Russian propaganda machine is working overtime.

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will be reoccupied within a year as will the Ukraine after a short but brutal, bloody war.

Poland will fall within two years.

All of Europe within five years.

The Bussian Bear is about to go on a rampage the likes of which the world has never seen.

The impotent US will sit idly by as the carnage ensues.

And this is just the beginning it will get worse. Much worse.

The Russians can't defeat a ragtag bunch of separatists in Chechnya over the course of a decade, but they will somehow roll over Western Europe in five years? Color me skeptical.

The other problem is that the Russian population is starting to slide. How many Russian parents are going to sacrifice their (usually only) sons' lives for a Putin crusade? We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dead. My feeling is that the moment Putin puts together the draft that will be necessary for an invasion, Russians will send their sons abroad to evade it.

Who's going to be left to guard Russia's border with China? I don't think China will stand idly by as Russia grabs Western Europe. It will either make its own land grab or mass its forces on the Russian border to cramp Putin's style. China's not Putin's lapdog. It will do what is good for China. And a Western Europe in Russian hands wouldn't be good for China - it would mean the effective closure of the region to Chinese imports.

Originally Posted by braindead

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Sometimes it more reminds 5 years before WWII .

What do you mean? Europe is going to invade Russia again? Like it has happened in WWII?