Daniel Kimmage, the senior geopolitical correspondent for Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, has written a seminal piece,Toward a New Paradigm for the Post-Soviet Petro-States. Everyone interested in the future of liberal democracy in international affairs should be reading and thinking about.
Basically, Daniel calls it clearly: the former Soviet states aren't transiting anywhere from communism: they're done now, and they've landed on the square called "authoritarianism"on the great board game of life.
Of course, those of us who used to work in these countries, long before the era of the TTD Seminars ("transition to democracy" sessions led by $500-a-day consultants in high-priced hotel rooms), have always said they weren't transiting anywhere fast because the same people tended to be in charge, and the people with whom the TTD crowd were holding their chalk talks had no intention of changing, or replacing themselves.
As Daniel acidly tells us, "democratic reform in all four countries [Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan] requires
an exceptionally powerful, and perhaps uniquely curved, magnifying
glass to be seen" -- the kind of loupe, I could add, that energy-eager Western leaders have been wearing on a golden chain around their necks these days...
Caucasian and Central Asian leaders are so confident of their new-found wealth and power, that they sneer at Western remonstrances over their less-than-stellar elections or their harsh tactics again independent media:
Kimmage quotes the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev:
"It is impossible to put pressure on us," he
said, adding, "If we didn't react to this or were silent a few years
ago, today we are no longer silent." After blasting "double standards"
in the Council of Europe, which had warned Azerbaijan a few days
earlier of "serious steps" in the event of a failure to observe
democratization obligations in the country's fall presidential
election, Aliyev closed his speech with a sarcastically veiled threat:
"I stress that when we joined international organizations, we assumed
obligations and are fulfilling them. If our membership doesn't please
someone, let them say so. What will happen if we're not members in some
international organization? Will Azerbaijan fail?"
The era when the Council of Europe was rushing to include all the FSU states under its tent seems like ancient history. The West doesn't even seem to bother to push back anymore. As Freedom House phrases it, ""Energy needs are increasingly distorting relationships between democracies that consume hydrocarbons and the authoritarian states that produce them."
Yes, Kimmage has called it so perfectly -- these post-Soviet states are emphatically authoritarian now, with elite classes that are wealthy from oil and have absolutely no intention of parting with power -- that there's a danger that no one will read the second part of his essay, out of a sense of futility.
That's the part where the West still has to figure out a policy to promote liberal democracy under these considerably more difficult conditions -- just as they have to consider this for the petro-states of the Middle East. And the view prevailing on this is the Kissinger formula -- engagement and management rather than challenge and risk -- often taken on behalf of those seeking change within these authoritarian regimes.
The diagnosis was easy, now for the hard part.
What's needed, says Daniel, rather than a core assumption that elites mean what they say when they use the rhetoric of democratic reform, is to speak past them in a sense, over their shoulder to broader publics, or those waiting in the wings. Western governments need to make ""Strong, publicly articulated arguments to explain
why democracy is a better system of government than authoritarianism --
because it calls rapacious elites to account, safeguards individual
rights, makes real change possible, and ensures an orderly transfer of
power."
He follows this task list with other recipes:
o admission of Western states' national interest in democracy as a system that most serves them, because "relations between states founded on common
values and the rule of law are stronger and more stable, and business
more easily conducted."
o change in strategies for democracy promotion that no longer make the assumption that that governments are in fact changing -- they aren't
o contingency plans for failed petro-states.
I'm going to go farther with all this because I don't think that you can separate the policy for these ex-Soviet petro-states from the same kind of states you meet in the Middle East, Africa, or Latin America. They all have their local and regional dynamics, but they all have the same problems of "resource curse" -- even if the most successful are able to keep a middle class content enough from rebelling, most haven't solved the problem of poverty or are stagnant and unable to create opportunity for the future.
So I would stress here a variety of other civic and human rights approaches:
o promoting accountability and transparency in public spending, and supporting internal and international movements for social justice around oil wealth -- the West has some leverage here through its banks and the international finance system. That's the easiest way to make common cause with the have-nots in these petro-states in ways that both promote economic welfare as well as democratic values
o setting a good example by not waging wars -- the U.S. must wind down the war in Iraq in order to shed the image it has acquired of attempting to implement democracy at the point of a gun, or being utterly hypocritical about imperfect elections and superficial bureaucratic rearrangements as a substitute for liberal democacy. As long as the U.S. remains in Iraq, it won't have credibility with these publics whom they are trying to reach beyond the petro-elites, as those elites will endlessly be able to incite propaganda against them around their war in Iraq. The West should also work very explicitly with Russia and Central Asia to stabilize Afghanistan by recognizing what they have already achieved in this regard and bolstering it.
o rethinking NATO expansion -- the war in Georgia illustrates that the West, and specifically the U.S., have absolutely no intention -- or frankly capacity -- to stand up to Russia when it uses armed aggression in its region. So it should cease to provoke both the insecure elites or hypocritcally inspire reckless would-be democrats -- the West does what is in its interests, too, and it is not in its interest to wage war on another nuclear super-power.
o don't confer legitimacy; while we're shrinking with our excessive reach here, let's consider suspending Russia from the G-8 -- the list of concerns grows, whether over the Litvinenko case, the vetoes in the Security Council on Zimbabwe, the military attack on Georgia at the opening of the Olympic games. Leave OSCE for talking to Russia. The G-8 isn't a multilateral institution; it's a gentlemen's club. Russia has to belong to a multilateral institution; it doesn't have to belong to a club.
While these Soviet-style elites still send their children abroad to study in the West, and have vacation homes in the West, they aren't prepared to adapt the Western values that created those goods like "a liberal education" or "a free real estate market". That doesn't mean they should be accepted into the gentleman's club. The G-8 seems like a good place to start, as it was a prestige Russians wanted badly. Even merely having a debate about this (it's not likely to change) will be a useful exercise. McMain has supported it; Obama advisors have ripped it. What's a much more dangerous provocation is trying to put states within Russia's orbit into NATO. If McCain is *still* for NATO expansion to make Georgia a member, is he really prepared to go to its military defense when attacked by Russia? How?
o and don't give up on OSCE. Kimmage seems to declare an end to the Helsinki era, but it's actually no different than when the era began, having to deal with a Soviet Union that cared only about setting borders and security, not about human rights and civil society. OSCE is the favourite whipping boy for sophisticates who aren't prepared to say the UN is the worst system (except for all the others) and who see the venality of the softspoken approach needed to survive in these host countries as a huge impediment. Speak softly, and carry a big democracy budget, and spend it in lots of little ways, buying air tickets for people to go abroad.
o The most bitter lesson we have to face is that the groups or movements we might chose to support in these countries are not going to be like Vaclav Havel and sustain a liberal vision or actually be in a position to take over their countries; they're not even going to get into parliament; in many places, they aren't even going to get on the op-ed page. We must continue to support them out of solidarity, out of humankindness, while recognizing that their cause is hopeless in the short term, and possible in the long term only if other kinds of people -- not themselves -- are able to move the ideas of liberal democracy forward. We will have to add other kinds of programs, whether broad educational exchanges, science conferences, cooperative work on international issues like climate change or perhaps a project of mutual interest like stabilization of Afghanistan. This doesn't mean betrayal of the dissidents, as the rhetoric and rituals of human rights condemnation should not cease (as in Kissinger's plan), i.e. the willingness to visit dissenters on state trips or hold events in U.S. embassies or fight for the return of the British cultural centers and so on. Putin refrained from changing the constitution and giving himself a longer term precisely because of public opinion, upheld by the prospect of Western censure, about such a radical departure from a supposedly democratic and constitutional state.
So instead of a reduced TTD budget, we need a bigger -- and better-funded -- global governance portfolio -- and one managed by people with a really seasoned sense of the insincerity of these regimes, and with a magnifying glass not for their lame reform efforts, but for opportunities to be seized to reach more people in a position to change things incrementally.
o The seminarocracy has to change first and foremost. That means not holding a "TTD special" with only government ministries, state-sponsored research institutes, presidential programs, and GONGOs in attendance, which only solidifies the whole bad-faithed pretense that democracy is coming. Instead, invite such officials abroad judiciously to conferences where they can see more authentic counterparts -- and invite dissidents in exile as well, or at least experts who can get to the second round with them beyond their initial propaganda claims. Hold more regional conferences, taking advantage of some of the countries being more free than others to up the ante. Rather than showcase seminars and conferences, work more quietly to implementing actual projects on the ground with specific officials in a practical way.
o Re-engage and work in multilateral institutions -- the post-Soviet states respect these institutions to the extent that they work vigorously within them to use their levers to prevail with their will and vision. The U.S. should stop leaving the playing field to bad actors and emphatically re-engage with the U.N., signing the treaties yet unsigned for human rights (CEDAW) and joining even the much-maligned Human Rights Committee. 90 percent of life is about showing up, as Woody Allen phrased it. The Community of Democracies, or McCain's reinvention of a League of Democracies, have little chance of success, as these democracies will not be able to agree on their greatest challenges: a) the right mix of socialism and capitalism b) how to deal with Russia, China, and other great powers influencing their regions (Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil). The U.S. is not in a position alone to create an institution of the influence and power of the Group of 77 or the OIC, in UN terms, so it needs to upgrade its perception of the UN and join the EU and the new democracies of Latin America and Africa.
For years, the West used a combination of sustaining dissidents, broadcasting the real news, and menacing with military might to scare bad actors off stage. The problem is that the dissidents were in no position to occupy that empty stage credibly, if the message was that Star Wars, and not Sakharov or the Helsinki groups or Poland's Solidarity, made it possible for a Gorbachev to emerge and reform himself out of office. The Western-sustained "colour revolutions" never touched Russia, which could only tell Europeans dependent on oil and gas to "put on an orange scarf" if they cared about Ukraine.
We're going to need much more sophisticated arguments and programs now and a more credible posture ourselves on the world stage to make a convincing case.
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