I'm liberal, but not "progressive" -- and there's a reason.
And that's because I often feel that many of the positions "progressives" take (I always put the term in scare quotes because I don't think it's a valid description) are antithetical to universality and human rights. It's usually about a certain kind of myopia and selectivity -- a propensity to take out the magnifying glass for the sins of America or Israel, yet not find a thing to say about Palestinian or Taliban terror, even if provided with a telescope. And telescopes are what they do use to look for some problems, and not others, far away -- the killing by American troops of civilians in Afghanistan, but never the killings by the Taliban, which make up now 85 percent of the civilian deaths. "Progressives" cheer Egyptian democracy demonstrators, even if they throw rocks; they look fearfully around and ask questions about one broken door caused by provocateurs in Belarus the night 600 people were arrested, many beaten brutally by police. Or maybe they've never heard of Belarus...
With the exception of Israel, nowhere do you see the gap in the "progressive" conscience, that can plead for justice and human rights and dignity in so many places, than on Russia. On Russia, the "progressives" can be as horribly indifferent to massive human rights problems as the Kremlin itself, and worse, justify them. They can advocate Realpolitik like the Nixon administration and Kissinger; they can back the "reset" without a single question about press freedom or the North Caucasus. Is this just a harkening back to the old Moscow line of the socialist movements of the 1960s and 1980s that always shielded Moscow from criticism? Or is it a more modern form of OstPolitik that imagines that the statecraft of foreign policy -- one controlled by proper liberals, of course -- will do best if it doesn't antagonize another great power? What is this really all about?
Today's cunningly and misleadingly titled essay by Samuel Charap at the Center for American Progress, Congress Deserves a Voice on Human Rights in Russia, therefore comes as no surprise -- and should be exposed for the gap in liberal morality that one always finds in progressives. Charap is the director for Russia and Eurasia at Center for American Progress and comes credentialed from working at the Center for Stategic and International Studies (the think-tank that was willing to take funding from the government of Kazakhstan while Kazakhstan was chair-in-office of the OSCE) and of course has consulted for Eurasia Group and Oxford Analytica, who have to remain chummy to Eurasian regimes to get intel. Understood! Dialogue is all -- but I would imagine the line of morality would be drawn somewhere above where Russian officials and propagandists place it on the case of Sergei Magnitsky -- a case the Kremlin's myrmidons tell you to shut up about, because you're ruining the reset (and I've had personal experience with this.) Why the need to put up a high-profile piece at the Center for American Progress to bang on a seemingly non-controversial human rights-motivated piece of legislation, admittedly likely not to have much effect? Says Charap:
The death of the young lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in pre-trial detention in a Moscow prison in November 2009 was a horrific crime, with serious implications for the development of the rule of law in post-Soviet Russia. Congress is right to be concerned.
Yet counterintuitvely, this seemingly thoughtful liberal tells us this:
But the legislation recently introduced to address the Magnitsky case neither furthers the cause of democratic development in Russia nor provides justice for his apparent murder.
And it would be a mistake, as some have suggested, to use it as a "replacement" if and when Congress does graduate Russia from the provisions of the Jackson-Vanik amendment.
As I've explained myself on Jackson-Vanik, I'm definitely not for repealing the legislation itself, so as not to hand the Kremlin any undeserved moral victory, and to keep it available for countries particularly in the post-Soviet space that don't have market economies and restrict emigration -- like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan which still maintain exit visa systems or arbitrary blacklists. There's no reason why you have to get rid of the law, which would be very difficult to put into place again, just because Russia has graduated out of the terms of Jackson-Vanik that apply to it (we didn't do this for Ukraine or China when they graduated). In the same way a permanent waiver could be granted to Russia. The notion that "if Jackson-Vanik stays on the books, the US will be in violation of WTO rules and American firms would stand to lose big" certainly is debatable. Again, you don't need to dismantle Jackson-Vanik to have a Congressional and/or presidential permanent waiver for Russia on the grounds that it is more or less now a market economy and no longer restricts departures. As for "losing big," there should be a little more analysis there of just how much trade is really benefiting America there, but even so, this could be worked out.
The Magnitsky bill is valid in its own right, and not merely absorbing the burden of having to substitute for Jackson-Vanik if that legislation is repealed. Jackson-Vanik was only about emigration and not about the overall human rights conditions in a country, although it served as a hook to hold hearings on those issues back in the day, and the Magnitsky bill could possibly do the same thing -- but it can surely stand on its own. Magnitsky's case isn't an isolated one; it is an atrocity in its own right, given the numerous *deliberately cruel* facets of the system it exposes, but abusive pre-trial conditions and unfair trials -- these are the norm for many people in Russia and for business people, it should stand as a huge warning.
And here's where the progressive mind stumbles so visibly -- on the notion of universality -- tripped up by one case from applying what should be universal values of due process:
First, while Jackson-Vanik dealt with a universal right on a global scale, this bill is targeted at one individual's case in a single country. While the U.S. government is in a position to make a judgment about another government's implementation of the freedom to emigrate, it cannot possibly make definitive public judgments - nor should it - about the guilt of individuals for a specific crime committed in a foreign country.
Wait -- the US government can't make a judgement about a man dying in pre-trial detention?! Or is Charap unconsciously giving away the store here, implying that he thinks that people who die in pre-trial detention over a tax case aren't valid? No one should die in pre-trial detention -- and that means yes, there are guards and officials who are specifically guilty of a crime here -- although I suspect that's not what Charap was implying -- he means the tax case.
Jackson-Vanik dealt with the universal right to leave and return to one's country (this became reduced to the one-way concern of emigration in the case of the Soviet Union).
The Magnitsky bill doesn't just deal with one person's set of circumstances -- or the guilt of the Hermitage firm or those like Magnitsky who defended it. That's appalling, putting the case in those terms -- implying that you get to die in pre-trial detention if your taxes aren't in order.
In fact, if you read the elements of the case of Magnitsky, of course you see that it is not only about the outrageous arbitrariness of state power, bearing down on private companies and manipulating the facts; it's about the injustice of mistreatment in detention -- Russia's prisons remain among the most abusive of the world -- and the idea that you punish white-collar economic crimes with imprisonment even before trial, let alone after trial. I think what many people trying to compare these types of cases in Russia and the US can't grasp is that it's not only that a case like Hermitage, if it were to occur in the US, would lead at worse to fines or suspensions of licenses if found guilty (and there is no evidence that it *is* guilty); the type of situation where the government could re-route your tax payments and lie about it and brutally cover it up would have a much harder time occurring in the US with a free press, an independent bar, democratically-elected Congress people, and numerous civic groups.
These things matter, and the Magnitsky case exemplifies the absence or great weakness of all of these factors in Russia. We should all get behind calls for investigation of this private firm's claims of financial machinations not only for the sake of this one firm, but because it's typical of so many other cases -- even law firms and accounting firms buckle under Kremlin pressure -- the Khodorkovsky case also exemplifies all the issues of state manipulation as well, and there are many more.
Indeed, it is through the cases of individuals that you can witness how much of a static autocracy Russia remains -- and it is only through individual cases that you illustrate principles that "progressives" prefer to keep abstract and thematic and discount any individual illustrations as aberrations when it suits. If Russia is *not* a static autocracy, why are none of the liberal parties that could at least win five percent in fair elections in the parliament? Why are the cases of journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists injured or killed never prosecuted? How could the awful violence that has maimed journalists' lives around the Khimki forest cause ever be allowed to continue -- who is backing those who launch such outrages? Why does the obviously politically-motivated case of Khodorkovsky and colleagues continue -- even Amnesty International, so "progressive" and so illiberal these days, has been forced to concede that he is a prisoner of conscience. These cases aren't rare exceptions; they're all too common and illustrate the enormous arbitrary power of a state that will not succumb to the rule of law. That's what it's all about.
Charap is entitled to his opinion but, as they say, he's not entitled to his facts -- and the facts aren't available to back up the claim that that Russia's legal system "has undergone significant changes since Magnitsky's death to strengthen anti-corruption mechanisms and prevent pre-trial detention for all economic crimes." Huh? Why would President Dmitry Medvedev's proclaimed intentions about these things be taken for reality? And wouldn't the place to begin showing good will about such changes, if made, be the second round of charges against Khodorkovsky, and the new sentence -- and prosecution of Magnitsky's tormentors?
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