Sins of Commission

I'm glad to see that I finally have some company on my critique of the controversial McFaul-Surkov Commission from a far more high-profile writer, Simon Shuster at Time magazine, who has found that the participants themselves, including Vladimir Lukin, the Russian ombudsman, were critical of what they saw as the U.S. passivity and quietude in this meeting -- and that Russian activists who managed to get in the meeting were "disappointed".

But at a briefing on June 1, the Kremlin's human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, who had been seated beside Surkov, said there had been "almost no criticism" from the Americans. Asked by TIME after the briefing what subjects had been raised, he said McFaul had tried to bring up Russia's electoral system, which has been marred by nearly constant allegations of fraud. But the American was told that "this issue had not yet matured," Lukin recalls, and the matter was dropped. (Reached by TIME, McFaul did not dispute this.

"In fact he didn't really make any criticism at all," Lukin says. He describes the rest of the meeting as one of harmless self-criticism. "What's the point of criticizing us when we criticize ourselves? We criticized ourselves a little about corruption. They criticized themselves a little about Guantanamo. It was all very friendly." Lukin adds: "Haven't you noticed? We're gradually turning into allies... Since there was no criticism towards us, we didn't criticize them."

This is why I opposed this Commission from the get-go -- because it would lead to comments like this from inside Russia, because U.S. passivity would demoralize whatever Russian liberals there are in government, and demoralize civil society activists, even worse. They would no longer see the U.S. government as an ally.

Worse, it would lead to moral equivalency, that in the end, not only downplay the grave horrors of Russia's human rights record, with the beatings and murder of journalists, human rights defenders and other members of civil society, but in the end, makes us look like we cannot tell what is good about our American system -- and can't use an appreciation of those democratic institutions to criticize ourselves compellingly when relevant -- and yet hold others to universal standards by which we should be held as well.

How could this have been fixed? Simple: putting it all on the record far, far more than it was, and especially due to the lack of Russian press freedom, a combination of official suppression of news and reporters' self-censorship, making full and robust pubilc statements for the record. AND being willing to suspend or end this "dialogue" vehicle when it becomes far too much of a gift to the Russian government's "managed democracy" plan, and hardly any comfort to the human rights community of Russia.

McFaul's biggest argument -- like the argument other officials have made to me all this year -- is that "Russian human rights activists want this, and think it's helpful." But they don't. When somebody outside of McFaul's circle asks them, it turns out they sound more frankly unimpressed.

The U.S. could also have avoided making a structure that led to moral equivalency and the undermining of human rights values by keeping official meetings -- which might contain quiet diplomacy in them -- separate from civil society meetings which should be very public.

And it's not too late to rescue this sad situation in American policy -- not isolated but a growing problem all over the world because it's a conscious Obama plan -- by dropping the Commission and focusing on making frequent and timely human rights statements, as the U.S. has done to its credit on specific incidents like the May 31 police beatings, keeping U.S. officials engaged with both Russian officials and civil society on separate tracks and even strategically discontinuing cooperation with Russians when needed to try to gain human rights concessions.

The meetings weren't on the record, the Russian independent and dependent press was limited, and the one White House statement about the Commission was very thin -- it's as if the Obama Administration's credo is "Speak softly, and carry...a very short press release that isn't even put on the whitehouse.gov website."

No doubt I've been seen as rather persistent on this subject, but I do think that if this phony Commission is to have any benefits, it has to have a public record, and a robust public record. I feel as if I'm channelling Izzy Stone here (he loved to endlessly decipher and unearth government documents -- U.S. and Soviet, for that matter, and it's quite eery to read him delving into the lack of coverage on the supposed changes in the Soviet criminal code in... May 1956.)

While there is nothing yet on the U.S. Embassy site, and nothing on the White House website (I'm told for some technical reason) about this latest round in the McFaul-Surkov Commission, by talking to a number of people in and around these meetings in both government and NGOs, I've been able (informally) to establish the following:

o the U.S. delegation supposedly tried to get Lev Ponomaryov into the meeting with Russian officials but the Russian government would not accept him for reasons they didn't state and that didn't seem clear to the Americans; they got in Svetlana Gannushkina, who works on migration, and Babushkin, who works on prisons and two Civic Chamber officials who didn't speak much.

o the U.S. officials did not visit Khodorkovsy's trial, but they met with his lawyer -- this was supposedly due to a scheduling problem and the trial not being in session right when they were available, although it has been in session daily; they later got word of a special session but couldn't make it. The fact of the meeting with Khodorkovsky was not put inthe White House press release. They also met with Magnitsky's widow; that meeting wasn't mentioned in the press release, either, although McFaul let it be known when pressed -- as proof that the meeting was substantive.

o Ella Pamfilova, the presidential advisor on human rights and head of the Public Chamber, boycotted the meeting for reasons unknown, and the U.S. is apparently trying to find out why

o McFaul met with a number of other people besides the officials in the formal meeting and the NGOs approved and the self-organized civil society round-table: they included opposition leaders Gary Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov, Yevgeny Yasin, Vladimir Milov. But none of these meetings were mentioned in the White House press statement or apparently in press meetings.

o Vladimir Lukin was called away from the civil society roundtable to speak to Medvedev all of a sudden; he was in attendance at the formal meeting in Vladimir

o the U.S. was described as "not falling into the trap" of only talking about American problems (in fact, McFaul had agreed to these modalities and it may have even been his own idea to have each side dialogue from the perspective of primarily their own problems), yet what they raised in the meeting was primarily the U.S. problems, with the Russians not as forthcoming from this "engagement" technique

o the U.S. and the American NGOs did not give press conferences, but since they talked to Russian journalists and bloggers, they felt that was sufficient and they would cover it.

But...while there was a fairly full coverage in Nezavisimaya gazeta, a liberal newspaper with a small readership, and in Moscow Times in English, read by foreigners, there wasn't really an awful lot there. I couldn't find any bloggers, except this one, tellingly, from awhile ago:

politics_free: "Абсурдность назначения Суркова в данном случае ...

 - [ Translate this page ]Что найдут Макфолл и Сурков на переговорах в Вашингтоне? Успех этой встречи так же возможен, как вероятность найти под фонарем кошелек, потерянный в ...

politics_free.livejournal.com/2323919.html

but if you click on it, you'll see this:

Suspended

This journal/poster is suspended

Well, then.

I took a look also at the Pravda coverage. Pravda, of course, isn't quite the Pravda of yesteryear, with massive readership and the voice of the Party; today it has less mindshare. It isn't always true, as the old adage had it, "In Izvestiya there is no Pravda, and in Pravda there is no Izvestiya"; sometimes its reporting is accurate. Even so, there is a kind of Soviet ring to a lot of the stories in it.

And the Pravda take on this particular round of the Commission was that both countries had equal problems, both talked about them, and in fact America was worse. Russia has per 609 people per 100,000 incarcerated; the U.S. has per 750 100,000 incarcerated. Russia has migrants; America has even more migrants. Therefore things must be worse. The effect as you read factlet after factoid in this article is one of a kind of matter-of-fact...distraction. Because while you read lots of statistics, and NGOs speaking earnestly about those lots o' statistics, you don't get some of the main points that Nezavisimaya gazeta gives you, like the fact that... in the Russian prisons, there are more deaths; that there are types of detention in Russia that may not be recorded in the statistics of incarceration; that there are more innocent people imprisoned in Russia (and the numerous cases that have gone to the European Court of Human Rights help tell that story); that activists especially in Chechnya who try to tell this story of unlawful incarceration and torture are themselves beaten, detained or murdered.

Human Rights Watch issued a statement before the Commission meeting highlighting the case of Solokov, which was raised in the meeting, but they did not do a statement after the series of meetings -- which is a shame. They were direct participants in the meeting, and could have made up for the White House silence on some of the subjects. That would help validate some of the problems.

I'm finding, however, that those directly in or around these meetings don't share my perspective on them, and if anything, are hostile to questioning, basically coming up with the following argumentation:

o "You are incorrect, that..." or "You have factural errors..."

But...I haven't made any errors or misreported any piece of this. I said the U.S. delegation did not publicize their meetings or did not appear to have raised the hard issues -- and given the lack of press statements, they didn't.

This argumentation is particularly annoying, because there's a simple answer I have to the charge of "incorrectness": "If you didn't publicize what you said, and it looks like you only talked about U.S. prisons, as we can see from reading Pravda, or only raised one or two cases, from reading NG, and your own press release doesn't mention anything of what you raised or whom you saw outside of the approved agenda, then...how can we know? 

And we can't. If it is not public, it isn't validated. So saying "But we did meet with dissidents" or "But we did raise the hard issues" just doesn't count. The reality is what is in the public record; the public record matters.

o These are historic, ground-breaking meetings" (and this from Time) " Never before had both White House and Kremlin officials met on Russian soil specifically to discuss issues of human rights."

Well, no, actually. In the 1980s, Ambassador Richard Schifter, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights under the Reagan Administration, met regularly with his Soviet counterpart, Yuri Reshetov, specifically to talk about lists of political prisoners and refuseniks not allowed to emigrate, labour camp conditions, and other human rights issues. This bilateral vehicle which included other officials on both sides, and involved pre-meeting briefings by U.S. NGOs, was successfully used to raise issues and cases with the Soviets, and persisted into the Bush administration but was ultimately let go.

And NGOs have done this, of course. The International Helsinki Federation, of which I was a member, met with Soviet officials from all the relevant ministries for the first time in 1989 in the Gorbachev era, and we demonstratively brought with us Sergei Kovalev and Lev Timofeyev, former political prisoners and human rights group leaders, in to a meeting with Fyodor Burlatsky, who headed the government's human rights commission of that era, also attacked as ineffective and a distraction from real issues.

The International Foundation for the Survival of Humanity combined U.S. and Soviet officials and U.S. and Russian civic leaders including Andrei Sakharov, and other human rights activists, and met in Moscow and Washington repeatedly in the late 1980s to discuss nuclear disarmament as well as human rights.

And if you mean *Russia* -- when Russia, too, gained its independence -- there were groups of U.S. NGO activists who worked closely with Sergei Kovalev when he was ombudsman, and met regularly with him and other Russian officials. The U.S. met regularly in Moscow with Russian counterparts, with NGOs at the table on various topics, including prisons, but I have to say, this was not systematically developed, which is one reason why it is so difficult and confounding today.

o "These were all useful meetings and the U.S. said everything that needed to be said in them."

But the Time magazine account of this by Simon Shuster is quite different, directly interviewing the Russian participants. They were disappointed. And Lukin goes further as we see. I'm given to understand that there were indeed some "very sensitive" issues raised, even Chechnya. Yet...it isn't on the record; it's not even on a Russian blog.

o "It would not accomplish anything to close the Commission and not help imprisoned human rights defender Sokolov and others".

Hardly. It would be a very good signal to send that while this commission has had its fits and starts and "removal of stereotypes" and "mutual understanding," the human rights picture in Russia has worsened, and therefore the meeting has to be called off -- at least temporarily.

Lukin set the tone here, by announcing that after the brutal treatment of demonstrators on May 31 by police, he was suspending cooperation with the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) although he has a memorandum of understanding with them.

And that's what McFaul should do -- you only get to boycott something you've made once, and "suspending" temporarily wouldn't likely work -- but I think, given all the brutal beatings of journalists and demonstrators; the failure to make any progress on any murder cases; the lack of improvement in Khodorkovsky's case; the failure to get the "Red Cross Rules" of being able to see prisoners on inspections without guards present in the new law; the NGO criticism of the way the prison reform is going -- well, a postponement is in order. The Russians are supposed to come over later this month and have another round, with 10 sub groups and 'business as usual". Why?

o "This helped the local NGOs  and good Russian officials like Lukin and was worth doing".

Let me tell you something. Each one of these local NGOs put into the meeting, and Lukin and others who do manage to do good in that often terrible situation, do this all on their own, without any Americans. So the old idea that weak and persecuted local groups need Americans to shore them up by intervening on their behalf with abusive officials doesn't quite work, given how Gannushkina faced down Medvedev on Kadyrov, Lukin faced down Medvedev on abuse of prison rights and deaths in prison; Ponomaryov and Alexeyeva spoke out repeatedly in the press at home and abroad about the failures of prison reforms.

But what these people *do* need is *solidarity*. Simple *human solidarity*. And while you in one sense give them that by visiting them quietly and letting them know you care, if you can't see fit to publicize this fact, you don't gain the benefit of the protection afforded by such validation. And, I could add, you haven't refashioned American foreign policy such as to sustain democracy and democrats in a convincing, public and universalist fashion.

o And here's what I found the most surprising retort to me in all my discussions on this Commission -- "Spend less attention on the Surkov commission and more attention on actually trying to help real people do real things in Russia".

I had to blink in amazement on that one. It's something that I think I can...reroute right back to the participants in this fandango themselves. I don't see how it is "helping real people do real things in Russia". Of course, I feel as if much of my life I've been doing real things to help real people in Russia, and shouldn't have to blow my own horn on this -- perhaps I'll have to do this in a separate post.

It's disturbing to see in this entire construct an unwillingness to declare a failed policy a failure -- even a stubborness. In an interview with Time, McFaul insists that by meeting separately with activists, he is accomplishing the human rights missions:

McFaul says he came away with a different impression. First off, one of the crucial elements of U.S. human rights policy is interacting directly with activists and opposition figures, he says, and that was done in Moscow the previous day. Several of them were even invited to the meeting in Vladimir and given a rare chance to make their case for reforms in front of a senior Kremlin official. "There was a frank exchange of views at the meeting, oftentimes a heated exchange of views on controversial issues, such as what happened to Magnitsky," he says, pointing out that a bill is being considered in Russia to prevent pre-trial detention for charges like the ones Magnitsky was facing. "In my personal interactions with Surkov," he adds, "including private ones, there is no issue that I don't discuss with him."

What a contrast to Lukin's and Gannushkina's characterization of the meeting as Time has relayed it -- despite McFaul pointing precisely to them as justification for the success of this Commission vehicle.

As I noted in originally discussing this venue, either you have to insist that everyone is at the table who is relevant -- "nothing about us without us" -- and publicize the record *or* meet with them separately if you cannot get them in and *publicize what they say, with your amplification*. Neither of this was done in Moscow by the U.S.

And "several of them were invited" isn't enough, when the main spokespersons on this issue like Ponomaryov are left out, and when mysteriously, Pamfilova boycotts it.

A bill being considered? So what? When it's passed and enforced, then you can talk about progress.

I suppose it's a good thing that a U.S. official from the National Security Council talks privately about "anything" with the Karl Rove of the Kremlin, as Surkov has been called. *But it does not count for human rights if it is quiet*.

In an interview earlier this year with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

McFaul argued that the first step toward rectifying the situation was to "have a real bilateral agenda" with Russia, so Moscow felt it has "a stake [in the relationship] and feel like [it's] doing things with the United States. But in parallel to that, you're much more proactive about these normative things" like human rights and democracy.
 
"If you had a more interesting agenda on reducing nuclear weapons, and if you engage the Russians on those kind of classic realist issues, that would actually make it easier to help the Garry Kasparovs of the world," McFaul said.

I don't see that they are being helped. At this point, it has been a year since the flawed Cairo speech of President Obama, in which he rolled out this dubious idea of listening and never advocating for human rights, except as it applies to ourselves. The policy is already being declared a failure in the Middle East, where Arabs haven't bought the rhetoric.

And I think we have to declare it as a failure in Eurasia, too.

Back in October 2009, we saw it spelled out very clearly, in keeping with the Cairo speech's categories, that the U.S. would no longer raise publicly the human rights menu with Russia:

Clinton's visit comes amid reports that the White House had agreed it would no longer publicly criticise Russia's democratic failings. According to today's Kommersant newspaper, the US administration has rejected the critical stance of the Bush administration in favour of a new approach.

Obama's reported plan to scale back criticism of Russia's human rights record is likely to dismay international rights groups and Russia's opposition. His predecessors Bill Clinton and George Bush regularly criticised the Kremlin for its war in Chechnya and the rollback of democracy under the former president Vladimir Putin.

The Bush administration frequently complained about rights abuses in Russia, a source of irritation to the Kremlin. According to Kommersant, McFaul indicated that the Obama White House would no longer lecture Russia's leadership or question its "sovereign" version of democracy. It would restrict dialogue with Russia on human rights to intergovernmental forums, the paper said.

The worst thing about this entire strange machine of the Surkov Commission is that it was concoctedi n the belief that if only the U.S. segregated human rights out of the dialogue with Russia, and made unilateral gestures on nuclear arms, they would get *more* cooperation on nuclear weapons; they would help dissidents *and* they would get Russia to do more on Iran.

It didn't work.

Said Fyodor Lukhanyov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs to the Guardian in October 2009:

"I think they [Putin and Medvedev] … really believe Obama wants improved relations. After Obama's move on missile defence, Russia's leadership felt obliged to respond. This change of sentiment wasn't because Russia suddenly realised there was an [Iranian] threat."

"I'm not sure it will work indefinitely. So far we have exchanged non-existing US installations in eastern Europe for not really existing Russian influence over Iran." Russia might be prepared to back "symbolic" sanctions against Tehran but wasn't likely to halt its military co-operation with Iran's leadership, he said.

Indeed.

Added the Guardian back in October 2009:

Today's apparent climbdown on human rights suggests that Obama has pragmatically retreated from the aggressive democracy promotion of the Bush era. The White House is apparently prepared to compromise on the issue to secure Russia's co-operation over its more pressing strategic concerns: Iran's nuclear programme and the worsening situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I think it's one of the fallacies of the leftist press, especially in Europe, that Bush "aggressively" promoted democracy. That's not quite the case, as aid was slashed to democracy groups in Eurasia under Bush, whatever the hysteria the Russians constantly kick up about "colour revolutions"; the Bush administration never spoke out on human rights, with very rare exceptions; and the invocation of "democracy" as a reason to be in Iraq can't be confused as really "promotion" in any sense.

But one thing is clear -- Obama has revived -- and McFaul has developed -- an idea very common in the peace and "progressive" movements of the 1980s, ideas he absorbed on college campuses and working as a community organizer: that you hold back on criticizing human rights until you achieve peace and the reduction of nuclear weapons.

This goes squarely against the ideas for which Andrei Sakharov was awarded his Nobel Prize -- that you need to pursue both disarmament and human rights as intimately linked, and idea that McFaul himself echoes in his paper regarding authoritarianism.