I had a comment on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's blogs this week re-posted as a guest blog, and while people are apparently too chicken to respond to it, it's getting some talk. I know exactly *all the arguments* that people mount at objections like mine to these sorts of softy hybrid government commissions involving moral equivalence on the Russians -- I've been around through several waves of these pendulum swings. They go like this:
1. "We Must Have Dialogue".
Well, um, sure. But...you don't have to dumb down your agenda to have a dialogue. I don't think we've seen any actual evidence that the Russians have rejected certain topics as "impermissible," have we? Let's find out. Did the Russians say that we can't talk about prisoners or Chechnya or Art. 31 of the Russian Constitution? Or did Americans, in the zeal to be good hosts and move the project along nerf their own agenda accordingly? If the Russians did veto certain topics, say, we can always just *not have the dialogue*. It's not like the Russians are going to fire a nuke at us because we refused -- goddamit! -- to talk about...children. Okay? And let's remember that we did used to talk about very frank subjects like "political prisoners" and "Crimean Tatars" and "Art. 6 of the Soviet Constitution" with the unctuous Yury Reshetov of the Soviet Foreign Ministry. He didn't flinch, and he didn't demand that we talk about...uh...transparency and corruption.
2. "We Cannot Return to the Cold War".
First, let's just back up a minute here. Why was the Cold War a bad thing again? I mean, isn't it appropriate to be a little chilly to leaders like Stalin who were mass murderers? Why would that be some "stereotype" that we must not become "mired" in? If this Cold War stereotype, as the revisionsists would have us believe, led us to situations where, say, the CIA overestimated the Soviet threat and we increased our arms, then the Soviets ratcheted up their side of the arms race in a mirror image job, well, remember what started the chill? Mass murder. Ok? It's not like it was merely love of shiny weapons. Let's look at "root causes," shall we? I think we can all agree that the "root causes" of the Cold War are not imperialism, and the West sending "27 armies" to Arkhangelskaya oblast, but...again, murderous, murderous policies that murdered lots and lots of people. Chilly is ok on things like that. Today, a little chill is ok when it comes to things like the murder of the lawyer Stanislav Markov and journalist Anastasia Baburova. It's because of cases like that we should not be warming to such commissions in the first place.
3. "Russian Human Rights Activists Themselves Join Such Commissions"
This is where the argument gets very cunning, basically relying on a form of emotional blackmail. You are criticizing government commissions because you think they do damage to the cause of human rights? Well, the very beneficiaries of your cause think otherwise, pal. They go on those commissions because they are for dialogue and progress. You must be hopelessly mired in Cold War categories. Um, well, ok. But...let's parse this a bit. Somebody like Ludmila Alexeyeva is such a figure of integrity and accomplishment in her more than 50 years in the human rights movement, that commissions morph around her, not visa versa. Governments fight to get her as a jewel in their commission crown because she signifies "credibility". And she knows her own worth. And she keeps her credibility fresh by demonstrating againt bad policies and even getting arrested.
Do you?
Ok, then. Don't tell me that I have to trim my sail by what degree of safety or risk a Russian wishes to make. If they find that *not* joining a commission puts them in jeopardy and makes them obsolete, they'll do what they have to do. I don't have that threat though, do I, in America. If they find that it's beneficial to get on government commissions just to have an organized way to meet, that's their call. I'm not required to be joined to them at the hip. They might be wrong -- and may not have the ability to tell anymore if they are under terrible pressure.
And it's not about loyalty tests. The strength of the human rights movement has always been in the ability to enables lots and lots of people to pick the level of their involvement, whether just putting a candle in their window in solidarity, or putting their hands out to be cuffed at a demonstration. It's all good. And I want participation to be meanginful, and I feel it is not right for me to join such commissions, or approve them, and I'd like to draw that line in the sand.
4. "But by telling NGOs they can't join these commission, you imply those that do are compromised, and you set up an integrity test. McCarthyism!"
Yes, I do. But, no, it's not McCarthyism. It's just called "having a conscience". It's important not only that groups chose to be on these commissions and have "freedom of choice" but that groups chose *not* to and *also* have freedom of choice and have a debate. That's why I want to force this conversation. The policies of human rights groups are almost never debated out loud. They are always made in secret, influenced by boards and foundations and internal politics, and policy gets formulated by a kind of wave of conformism where people adjust themselves to a few powerful voices and keep dissent silent. It's not just big organizations with the cost of dissent in them, it's smaller ones and even those with the "NGO halo effect".
5. "You can't isolate the middle and have only extremes, the conservative goverments and the radical demonstrators."
Er, why would I let a conservative government decide where the middle is? The middle is not on that commission. The middle is in reading or writing a blog and asking where the hell Novaya gazeta is, not joining a commission. Again, let's be clear here. The middle may be timid, or the middle may even be turning fascistic, but it's not a middle to be defined by Lavrov or Surkov
6. "Such commissions can solve individual cases".
I wish I had a dollar for every single person of power and wealth and stature during the Soviet era who went over to the Soviet Union thinking he or she alone was saving dissidents by their special quiet diplomacy with their hook-up in Moscow. Commissions solve individual cases when people can publicize them and show why they are important. If they solve them, good, they are doing what they are supposed to do, and shouldn't be overly fanned for it. And there are other ways besides actually joining the commission to achieve progress.
Again, my point about all this dialoguing and voguing in poses of progressivity is that you don't have to join a commission, go overseas, or enter into some bad-faith position to have a discussion with a government. You can write them a letter and publish it? One of the great things about the UN, for example, is that all the countries are there, and they even have helpful desks with their name plates on them so you can go around and find them without spending airfare.
7. By attacking this commission, you are joining with Republicans." Yes, Congressmen got pretty torqued about this. So, nu? I'm a registered Democrat who voted for Obama. Surely the First Community Organizer, if he hasn't completely lost touch with his, er, "roots," would realize that you wouldn't join fake human rights commissions of certain cities at certain times when it would demonstrate bad faith with minority constituents.
I'm trying to think of what could be the equivalent of such a commission in our setting. And I have trouble doing this because the situations are NOT equivalent. Would Michael Moore join a commission in which David Brooks was the head? No wait, that's just not equivalent, because David Brooks is a Republican but he isn't an architect of an increasingly oppressive regime but merely a thoughtful critic. Hmmm. Can you think of an American figure with the lack of integrity of Moore, but on the right, waving the human rights banner? OK, I'll leave it to your imagination.
8. "Republicans only use this issue of human rights dear to your heart as a wedge to advance other political issues". So, nu! Here's what Zlobin tells us -- surprise, surprise!
Zlobin said the letter would serve to rally members of Congress against Obama, adding that they were trying to use human rights ill as a bludgeon to get their way on issues such as nuclear non-proliferation and trade. "Whatever is said about Russia is not about their policy towards Russia per se, but towards their internal political interests," Zlobin said.
Well, wait just a second here, comrades. Why is it that Republicans are able to distrust Russians on matters of nuclear affairs? Is it merely because they are all evil patrons of the military-industrial complex with their pockets full of weapons-manufacturer campaign loot? I'm sure if you think that, it will be hard to dissuade you otherwise, but let's look at why Republican *voters* or members of the Facebook "Buyer's Remorse Club for Obama" can tell you about this matter:
It's very hard to trust in nuclear matters people who won't do anything about the rampant murder of journalists in their country, who close media and suppress criticism and do lots and lots of other bad things (Chechnya) at home and abroad. That's all there is to it. That's why human rights matter. This is the old story of Sakharov's "indissoluble link" between "Peace, Progress, and Human Rights".
This link really is indissoluble and in fact very deep and invisible. You can't persuade people untrusting of the Russians to become more cooperative on arms control or conceding a security conference in Europe -- again -- when the human rights situation *is so bad* and new outrages occur daily.
9. "If you don't applaud this commission and concede that human rights groups should join it and dialogue with it, you strengthen the hand of hawks in Russia".
Oh, dear. More cunning emotional blackmail, comrades! This is the sort of argument made here:
"Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, said it played into a "hysterical" policy towards Russia, and this 'hysteria' was convenient for hawkish elements in Russia's security services."
I fail to see why it's "hysterical" to know my own mind and for others to know their own mind, and not applaud a flawed commission that dumbs down the serious human rights agenda and substitutes appearance and superficiality for action. Kirill Kabanov knows full well that the hawks in his country exist regardless of what McFaul does or does not do. It's quite simply too much ascribing of power to Obama and his aides to assume that they make the hawks of Russia rise or fall by their action. And there isn't some international hydraulic system winched up across the sea that pours water on the mill of the American hawks each time the Russian hawks lose. Their fates are determined largely internally. They might invoke external issues, but what of it? I can't be too concerned about what hawk may or may not find comfort in the fact that I have stood up for principles, universal in nature.
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