The Free Thinker

Ostracism is the Least We Can Do to Stop Aggression

From Foreign Policy:

[W]ith Russia, too, Obama will inherit a strategy that he’s likely to continue, simply because it’s better than the alternatives. It seeks neither to isolate Russia (which is impossible) nor to give Russia the blank check it wants in its old imperial stomping grounds (which is irresponsible). Rather, this policy seeks to balance cooperation with Russia on many shared interests with competition when interests diverge. Maybe this balance could have been struck better on issues such as Kosovo or missile defense, but that doesn’t signal the need for a new policy, just a recalibration of the current one. And if anything, the Georgia war showed that, if the United States wants Russia to be a responsible stakeholder, encouragement won’t be enough.

Why is it "impossible" to isolate Russia?  Because appeasement-minded Europeans, especially the Germans, won't go along with it?  Because we-- somehow-- need ties with Russia?  (But why? Economically? Their oil will get onto world markets somehow, however bad our relations with them.)  Because ordinary Russians would suffer?

If "isolate Russia" means "cut all ties," then sure, it's impossible.  But Russia has already painted itself into a corner of considerable diplomatic isolation.  The US should work to increase that isolation; and no foreign policy objective is more important than this.  Russia is probably the only sovereign state in the world at the present time which has engaged in unambiguous, naked aggression in the recent past.  What happened on August 7th is still disputed, but ultimately it doesn't matter much, for there is no question that Russian-backed separatists were attacking Georgian forces before August 7th, or that the territories in question are sovereign territory of Georgia.  Even if everything Russia claims about the crisis is true, Russia's actions are still unambiguous aggression which the world cannot accept and must punish and reverse if the integrity of international law is to be restored.  If Russia is allowed to be a normal country enjoying normal relations with the rest of the world without withdrawing from South Ossetia and Abkhazia and entrusting them to appropriate international bodies, the precedent set will give a license to aggression throughout the world.

We can try to isolate the Putin regime without isolating the Russian people, who, though not innocent in the affair-- high levels of public support for Putin and the war are indicative of a national mentality which is profoundly ominous and morally culpable-- are partly excused from guilt because they are routinely lied to by the state media.  This will require creativity.  It might be worth trying to develop a cyber-war capability to crash Russian computers if they engage in any new aggression.  Russia should certainly be excluded from the WTO.  At the same time, we should open new opportunities for Russians to emigrate, both as a means of depopulating the country until such time as Russia has a government that does not menace humanity, and in order to help Russians economically and give them exposure to the West in hopes of undermining the xenophobic and paranoid attitudes (misnamed "patriotic") that the Russian regime is cultivating at home.  (Of course, it is unjust, in general, to exclude people from the West on the basis of their place of birth, so this is just an application of a broader principle.)  

Russian young men of draftable age should be specially targeted: I would recommend scholarships funded by Western taxpayers to young men who want to escape the draft, as a human-rights measure that would directly undermine the military power of the Kremlin.

Unfortunately, I don't think any such "smart soft power" measures will be pursued.  I expect the Obama administration to be feckless on Russia, with lasting and damaging consequences for world peace and security.

Postmodern Fascism

Some of Berman's analysis here may be unduly alarmist.  I don't think, for example, that pro-Moscow ethnic Russians in the Baltic republics or elsewhere, except in Ukraine, are likely to prove too serious a strain on the civil constitutions and sovereignty of the countries they reside in.  But on one point he is dead on ("The Death of 1989"):

4) The invasion of

Georgia

shines an alarming light on the nature of political thinking within the Russian leadership. The Russian leadership is conventionally seen as conforming to a nineteenth-century notion of national interests, together with a mid-twentieth-century style of ethnic solidarity. In the controversy over the separatist regions of

Georgia

,

Russia

does face a matter of national interest, if national interest is conceived in the geographical and ethnic styles of the nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. Still,

Russia

has other interests, too--regional peace and quiet, a continued healthy business atmosphere, the assurance that catastrophic events will not take place. These additional interests ought to outweigh the geographical and ethnic ones, or so you might suppose. To shake up half the world on behalf of two breakaway enclaves smaller even than Schleswig-Holstein does not appear to make sense, in a conventional calculation. And yet, the Russian leadership has decided otherwise. Why?

Today, any time some large group of people behaves in a way that defies a logical calculation of potential gains and losses, the people in question are said to be reacting to "humiliation," or what used to be called "ressentiment." Humiliation, though, taken as a political experience, exists only where it has been ideologically constructed, and not otherwise.

Germany

, having been defeated in World War I, was afterwards said to be undergoing "humiliation"; and yet, after World War II, having been defeated ten times more cruelly,

Germany

was no longer said to be "humiliated." That was because the German political doctrines promoting a feeling of "humiliation" disappeared after World War II. It was the doctrines, not the experience of misfortune, that had created "humiliation."

Russia

, having been defeated in the Cold War, is said to be undergoing "humiliation." But I think mostly the Russian leaders feel something worse, which is fear. The Russian leaders picture their country in a terrifyingly vulnerable position, not unlike how

Israel

sees itself. Fear, not "humiliation," led

Russia

to invade

Georgia

--a fear of utter destruction facing their own country. Russian diplomats have expressed this fear openly during the last few months. I have heard them to do it--speaking aloud, with hot conviction, about an "existential danger" to

Russia

, posed by

Georgia

.

And yet, their fear is entirely doctrinal--which is to say, imaginary.

Russia

's situation is not, in fact, like

Israel

's. No foreign power since the end of the Cold War has entertained a plan of attacking

Russia

or destroying

Russia

's power and wealth. The Russian fear rests merely on a somewhat paranoid interpretation of world events. Fears based on paranoid interpretations cannot be assuaged. A tacit agreement by the rest of the world to allow

Russia

to conquer the breakaway regions of

Georgia

and to install a puppet regime in

Tbilisi

, and to do likewise in

Ukraine

, and so forth, will not make the Russian leaders feel any less threatened.

Why do the Russians indulge such an interpretation? It is an archaism. The mystery wrapped in an enigma is a bit of an antique. In any case, the current dominance of this kind of thinking may suggest that

Russia

is a shakier place than it appears to be. A stable

Russia

would not have felt existentially threatened by its neighbors in tiny

Georgia

, nor by NATO.

Exactly.  Russia has no legitimate fears, at any rate not of the West.  They may have legitimate fears of Islamic terrorism fused with ethnic separatists at home, and possibly, in the long run, of Chinese designs on Siberia.  If they wanted either territorial security or economic prosperity the logical path would be to seek the best possible relations with the West and join NATO.  But instead, Russian national consciousness is possessed by a sort of mass irrationality which sees the West as hostile merely because the West is more powerful and prestigious than Russia and they want "equal rights"; and this is mingled with a sort of post-socialist neo-Marxist leftism which owes a good deal, I think, to Bush Derangement Syndrome-influenced ideological evolutions within the west and the international left.

What is the link, for example, between John Kerry's characterizations of the Iraq War alliance as "the coalition of the coerced and the bribed," and the popular characterization of democratically-elected Bush ally Saakashvili as a "mercenary?"  Coincidence or direct influence?  Or co-causation?

Anyway, I think the postmodernly-fascist ideological brend in Russia which has just vomited itself into Georgia and shocked the world is more dangerous than anything else in the world today.  Old Islamist-revolutionary Iran is tired of isolation and ready to be courted out of its sullen corner.  China has little resentment; it is motivated by national interests in a substantive sense of economic prosperity, and may be inclined to engage in some resource imperialism.  Even North Korea probably only wants a nuclear umbrella to keep Kim Jong-Il's personality cult safe.

Russia, on the other hand, is driven from within by vague and fantastical ideologies which, to date, are far from drowning out reason, but which may easily do so under the influence of the evil elation of "victory" in Georgia.  It might fade, but it could very easily explode into something much worse.  We need a complete geostrategic about-face to deal with this.  Our strategy should be: appeasement on every front, in order to maximize pressure on Russia.

For starters, let's try to get a pipeline built from Iran to Europe, via Turkey, so the Western Europeans will be less dependent on Russian gas.  I'd favor energetic peacemaking on every front: in Taiwan/China; in India/Pakistan/Kashmir; in Israel/Palestine; in Armenia/Azerbaijan.  We need to strengthen the structural peace of the world to deny the Russians gaps to exploit-- or at least make every exertion to that end.

"WTO Can Place Russia on the Right Track" (Anders Aslund, 7/31/2008)

Russia is very close to gaining admittance into the WTO, but three significant obstacles remain.

The first and most complex impediment is a bilateral agreement with Ukraine that demands months of negotiations. Each new member of the WTO has the right to ask for a bilateral protocol with applicants on market access. Recently, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Cambodia and Vietnam have done so with Russia, which has been compelled to offer each of them some benefits. The WTO is a club, and its members can demand applicants to comply with all of the rules of the club before they join.

Bilateral trade between Russia and Ukraine is huge -- nearly $30 billion a year -- and Moscow has had a habit of imposing protectionist measures on Kiev. The Ukrainians might be polite, but their trade negotiators are rather clever, as they have shown through their entry into the WTO. They will kindly request that Moscow abandons all trade barriers that do not comply with WTO rules, and Russia should meet this demand immediately. Otherwise, other new members will enter the trade group and pose new difficult demands. Like all current WTO members, Ukraine wants Russia to join the organization.

The second impediment is Georgia, which is politically more difficult. Although Russia has imposed multiple trade embargoes on the Georgians, Tbilisi has focused on one single issue -- border controls in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This may seem political and beyond the range of trade policy, but the Georgians have successfully defended their position. This issue can be resolved, and the Kremlin had better realize it is in its own interest to do so.

Sounds like it won't take any special effort to prevent Russia from joining the WTO.  The condition Russia already had to meet now seems insurmountable.  Also, isn't it an eloquent statement of the peace-promoting value of trade that the only big country in the world that is not a member of the WTO is the one big country that started a war?

As the saying goes: If goods don't cross borders, soldiers will.

MORE: Another hint of the Putin/Medvedev difference:

President Dmitry Medvedev has said good things about the WTO, while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ignored it during his last term as president. Russia's accession to the WTO could be Medvedev's signal that he is putting Russia on the right economic track again.

Medvedev may be Putin's stooge for now, but if Putin could be got out of the way, he might be civil.

Demographic War

David Cameron suggested this morning that the West might review visa regimes for Russian nationals as a way of putting pressure on Russia.  Nice to see politicians thinking outside the box.  And it's true that Russian nationals value the opportunity to go abroad and might resent the Putin administration's aggressive actions if they lost their travel opportunities as a result.  On the other hand, foreign travel is likely to help Russians to feel how much their invasion of Georgia is despised in the West and elsewhere.

The West should do the opposite.  Open the doors to Russians, and especially to Russian emigrants.  Russia already has too few people for its vast territory, and its population is declining.  Russian inflation  is in part a problem of too much money chasing too few people.  The Russian government has been trying to boost the birth rate, while many educated and middle-class Russians acquire property abroad in order to obtain the right to emigrate.

Every Russian who emigrates to Western Europe or America is one less Russian paying taxes to support the Kremlin's war machine.  Let them come!

There's one particular class of people whose emigration should be actively assisted by the West: young men of draftable age.  The Russian draft is a problem from a purely human rights point of view: young men are often brutally hazed and mistreated in the armed forces.  Now, of course, the world has seen that Russian conscripts are not just victims, but a menace to Russia's neighbors and to world peace.  A lot of young men try to evade the draft, and would go to considerable lengths to do it.

So here's what the West should do: offer scholarships for foreign study to young men of draftable age, to get them out of Russia and away from the recruiters.  I think there are a lot of Russian-speaking universities in places like Ukraine and Belarus and Kazakhstan, and maybe elsewhere in central Asia.  And we could make more.  Russian professors are ludicrously underpaid; we could hire lots of them on the cheap.  Of course, we could send over American scholars to help, too.

Emigrating from Russia at 18 years old would be a considerable personal sacrifice, but I think a lot of young Russian men would do it if they had an opportunity to study abroad with a stipend from the US government.  That's $5,000/yr or so of US taxpayer money, and one less enemy soldier.  Just one more form of smart soft power.