From Russia, With Great Power Competition

People have interestingly different views of Russia policy. Eve Fairbanks, for example, is outraged by the Bush administration's coddling of Vladimir Putin. The Washington Post op-ed page has been known to express the same sentiment. Frankly, I used to say this, too. And I believe I've heard similar sentiments from friends who work on post-Soviet issues. These days, I tend to see things differently. Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal says we should return to treating Russia as an enemy of the United States. Mario Loyola agrees. And, obviously, any liberal who thinks Bush should get tougher on Putin is going to have to grapple with the fact that they find themselves agreeing with Mario Loyola . . . a pretty damning critique of any position.

In both instances, the complaints naturally blend concerns about Putin's authoritarian tendencies with complaints about his geopolitical views -- in particular, willingness to sell stuff to Iran and Venezuela and so forth. Anatol Lieven's convinced me that this needs to be put into the context of America's policy toward Russia. This started out with expansion of NATO into Central Europe. It continued with NATO expansion into the Baltics -- former Soviet Republics that have been in the Russian sphere of influence since the 18th century or some such. Then we helped sponsor the overthrow of Russia-friendly governments in Ukraine and Georgia and started talking about adding those countries to NATO.

Now I won't deny that there's something to be said on behalf of all of these policies. They do, however, come with a price. If you want to pry countries out of Russia's sphere of influence and make them formal military allies of the United States, any responsible and patriotic Russian government is going to take alarm and seek countermeasures, including an uncooperative attitude toward Iran. We're then faced with a question of priorities: Do we care more about Iran, or do we care more about Ukraine? Do we care more about nuclear proliferation, or do we care more about anti-Putin Russians? There's an obvious deal to be cut here -- NATO membership for the Baltics is a done deal, but we can return Russia's "near abroad" to Russia in exchange for Russian cooperation on Iran and North Korea, or else we can have a series of standoffs across a wide Eurasian arc. Some would call this appeasement and, frankly, the shoe fits decently. It strikes me, however, as preferable to either going to war with Iran or to having Iran build a nuclear bomb.

Comments

"Appeasement" is such a useless word. The proper term is "deal."

Posted by somecallmetim | November 28, 2006 10:14 AM

Do the short form. Our thousands of missiles, our nuclear subs and carrier groups, the permanent wartime economy that supports the longest tenures in Congress- none of this can be justified or even believed in the absence of a suitable enemy.

Naturally, being the "Enemy" of the US is pretty low on the world's list of "what I want to be when I grow up". Nobody will knowingly create a large and fixed target that our armed might can be pointed at.

Thus, by a process of elimination, Russia remains the "Enemy". If the US were a person, this would be classed as a psychotic break- simply ignore the past 15 years and pretend nothing has changed. And, really, when you're the nuclear superbully of the world, who's going to argue with you? Everyone other than the Russians will cheerfully agree with you. They may even reassure you that they would never, ever accept a gift from those nasty Russians.

The great American discovery of the 20th century was that advertising could create a market that would support mass production. It should come as no surprise to find this idea bent into a shape that will support our war industries.

Posted by serial catowner | November 28, 2006 10:23 AM

I have some broad sympathy with this, especially in that I don't care if Russia sells stuff to Iran or, especially, Venezuala. But, one problem with "returning the near abroad" to Russia is that it doesn't, and I mean really doesn't, want to be returned. If, say, you watch the news in Russia lately, on the state-run TV stations, you'll see calls for the invasion of Georgia, done _by the news casters_. It's stuff that makes Fox news on Iraq look doveish. Obviously some of our policy could have been smarter, and obviously we are not going to fight a war w/ Russia over Georgia or transdnestar. But there's a reason why the 'near abroad' doesn't want to be left to Russia, and you should take that somewhat more seriously.

Posted by Matt | November 28, 2006 10:34 AM

The question in this specific instance goes deeper than whether or not Bush should be coddling Putin. One must ask, given the administrations lack of success with its diplomatic interactions in general, whether or not they're actually going to get anything out of Putin on the Iran issue.

It doesn't just matter what the incentives are. It matters who is aware of them. Bush typically seems ignorant of these matters. We'll probably end up giving something for nothing.

Posted by Michael Johnston | November 28, 2006 10:43 AM

The problem is that without the Ukraine and Georgia, Moscow views itself as vulnerable and always has.

I think we don't appreciate just how threatened they are by these losses, let alone the presence of foreign and potentially hostile powers withing a few hundred miles of them. These states have always been seen by Russia as a buffer zone.

Another issue, the time could be coming when Gazprom or another cash-rich state russian co is in the market to buy one of the under-invested western oil companies. That will be interesting, since the re-nationalization of resource companies seems to be Putin's main project. I've even seen it suggested that the west might renationalize before that happens.

Posted by Chris | November 28, 2006 11:11 AM

Putin is not a pleasant fellow, and he has made Russia a much worse place, politically. But he's popular there for his success in getting the economy moving and improving everyday life.

Matt is right that we're not omnipotent, we can't just lecture Putin and get everything we want, and that cooperation on proliferation is the most important thing. But Russia just isn't that strong a country. We should be willing to throw them a few bones, but I don't know that we have to include, say, a puppet regime in Ukraine as one of the bones.

Mario Loyola is not worth setting your anti-moral compass by. Rush Limbaugh, maybe, but not Loyola.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | November 28, 2006 11:17 AM

I believe the chief concerns re: Russia are the destabilization of the state by its restive Muslim minority in the south, as well as contributions to the Iranian nuclear program. How more democracy would help either of these things is beyond me.

Posted by Linus | November 28, 2006 11:19 AM

I'm pretty disturbed that they radiologically assassinated a defector and there will be no repercussions. I'm generally more pro-Russia and anti-Putin and his bizarre stomach kissing tendencies, but this cannot be borne!

Posted by MNPundit | November 28, 2006 11:21 AM

...we can return Russia's "near abroad" to Russia in exchange for Russian cooperation on Iran and North Korea...

This is the sort of comment that comes back to haunt journalists.

I think your argument is generally correct on the merits, but you're simply begging to get tarred and feathered when you formulate it in this way. While your attempts to defend "appeasement" are cleverly contrarian, you're eliding the essential distinction between diplomacy and capitulation. It's fine for Western leaders to allow Russia to crack down within its own borders and maintain an informal sphere of influence, in order to get meaningful support on our own security issues. It would be another matter entirely to wink at a full-fledged Anschluss in the Ukraine during cocktails at the G-8 meeting. It isn't clear from this post where you're willing to draw the line.

Ukraine and the other former Soviet states do not belong to either NATO or Russia, therefore they cannot be "returned" to Russia. The US should not sanction any attempt to rebuild the Soviet Union by force. Furthermore, Putin's recent actions are appalling, and he needs to get the message that KGB assassinations on NATO soil are dealbreakers. We must be willing to make concessions in exchange for assistance on proliferation, but we are dealing from a position of strength and there are some concessions that it is neither in our political nor ethical interest to make.

The crime at Munich was not that Chamberlain give Hitler what he wanted in exchange for security. The crime was that Chamberlain sacrificed other people's lives and freedom in exchange for empty promises. While nine tenths of the bandwidth spilled on this analogy amount to little more than of stupid and pointless hawkery, there really is a lesson to be learned from the incident.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | November 28, 2006 11:25 AM

Of course Bush like's Putin and is going to continue to play nice (not go back the old days)- lets not forget the whole "get a sense of his soul" thing - not only do they share authoritarian tendancies, but Bush doesn't really like to admit he was wrong especially when he was using his gut to "get a sense of his [Putin's] soul"

Posted by ET | November 28, 2006 11:43 AM

In discussing whether these eastern states should be part of NATO, or under the influence of Russia, aren't we kind of leaving out the opinions of the states' themselves?

Posted by DRR | November 28, 2006 12:23 PM

LaFollette:

Ukraine and Georgia certainly do not belong to either NATO or Russia, and the US could not literally "return" them to Russia. But it is well within the US's ability to not offer NATO membership to these states, or even to reject them if they apply. That would essetially "return" them to the Russian sphere of influence (in much the same sense that Mexico is in the US sphere of influence even though its not a NATO member). I think that's what Matt is talking about, not blithe support for Russian tanks in Kiev.

Posted by Rich C | November 28, 2006 1:26 PM

Rich C is correct. The US should not "return" the ex-Soviet states to Russia, but for the last 15 years the US has been actively trying to decouple these states from Russia, and in the case of Ukraine the US is arguably supporting political groups that are far more antagonistic to Russia than is the general Ukrainian population. It would not really be appeasement for the US to simply stop trying to undermine Russian foreign policy at every step.

Posted by vanya | November 28, 2006 2:01 PM

Re MNPundit's comment above that "I'm pretty disturbed that they radiologically assassinated a defector and there will be no repercussions."
---------
This ,of course, is hurting Britain's relationship with Russia.
But it may not have been Putin.

There are several interesting aspects to the recent death --by poisoning with radioactive Polonium 210 isotope --of the former KGB official in Britain. One is that the news media appears to be misleading the public.

One thing that is not being reported is that Polonium 210 has a very short half-life --about 138 days. It quickly decays into other elements. Investigators should be able to establish the date when the Polonium 210 was created --but it was probably within the past 6 months.

Which makes it unlikely that the Polonium 210 used to kill Livinenko was acquired on the black market from stuff stolen years ago during the turmoil of the Soviet collapse.

The Polonium 210 may have been created on orders from Putin. Or it may have been acquired by corrupt officials with ties to the Russian mafia who wanted Livinenko shut up.

But the question arises: WHY? The KGB and its successor -- and the Russian Mafia for that matter -- have never been ignorant of how to kill people and make it look like an accident. Why use a method so technically demanding and exotic that it points a strong finger at Putin? It would have been more easy for Putin to have simply had Livinenko run over by a car. Or killed by a mugging.

Answer: The Polonium 210 poison makes more sense if Livinenko's killing was done by a THIRD country. Done in order to make Putin look like a psychopath, with the objective being to sabotage Russia's energy deals and other business with the UK and Europe. As well as alienate Russia from the West.

Any candidates? China? Iran?

Cheney?

PS The Polonium 210 has another message for people in the know.

Polonium was used in the early atomic fission bombs to
INITIATE the chain reaction. When the shock wave from a conventional high explosive crushed a Polonium hollow sphere around a marble-sized sphere of beryllium, the intense alpha radiation of the Polonium caused the beryllium to emit neutrons.

The neutrons then split plutonium atoms with a release of energy, the splitting caused more neutrons to be emitted which caused more plutonium atoms to be split releasing still more energy etc etc.

Posted by Don Williams | November 28, 2006 2:31 PM

Rich and Vanya- I think you're probably right about what Matt meant. But he didn't make that explicitly clear, and it won't necessarily require tanks rolling into Kiev and Tbilisi for Putin to install puppet regimes there. The KGB is now openly assassinating dissidents abroad, and the strong-arm tactics are growing bolder by the day.

Ending NATO expansion to the East would be a fair trade-off for Russian cooperation on Iran. Looking the other way while the Kremlin orchestrates a wave of coups, assassinations, and coercive annexations would be a different story entirely.

Don Williams- You're overthinking this. It's intimidation, pure and simple. The message of the poisoning is that they will kill you with impunity even if you run and hide. Making it look like an accident would reduce the deterrent value.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | November 28, 2006 4:28 PM

OK, I'll be the first to admit to being pro-Putin. I see him as a guy who has pulled his country back together and helped his people regain national control over what was a just a few years ago a dangerously disintegrating, crime-ridden and terrorism-ridden Russian state. The disintegration was helped along by fanatical, unreconstructed Cold Warriors with lots of money at their disposal, and by western governments who appeared to be bent on dismantling Russia completely and selling it for parts, and were willing to turn Russia into little more than a mafia gangland battleground to do it.

So in my book, Putin is the Eliot Ness to Berezovsky's Al Capone. In this contemporary reworking of the story, Capone
has stables of mainstream western journalists in his pocket, along with a small army of lawyers and a few alleged "human rights" organizations. He is assisted by western governments and their intelligence agencies, who were and are eager to help the oligarchs shovel money out of Russia and use it to fund who knows what, and who still aim at a takeover of Russia's state-dominated energy industry by "private" interests allied with western governments. He is also assisted by the usual naive crowd of ingenuous liberal patsies in the west, who honestly believe all the crap about color-coded revolutions and whatnot.

Litvinenko was a nutcase conspiracy monger at best, and more likely a lying Berezovky tool. I strongly suspect Berezovsky has his own guy wacked in order to reap the propaganda benefit. But if it was the Russians who did it, I sincerely doubt it was because Litvinenko was simply a "critic" of Putin, since any fool knows that a high profile assasination would attract way more international criticism than the critic himself could generate. It is more likely Litvinenko was actively involved in espionage, criminal conspiracy and subversion on behalf of the Berezovky mob/government in exile - in which case he had it coming.

Posted by Dan Kervick | November 28, 2006 5:46 PM

Just a question - what is CIA standard procedure regarding rogue agents?

Posted by Danny | November 28, 2006 5:48 PM

Re Danny's question "what is CIA standard procedure regarding rogue agents?"

First, a matter of definitions. "Agents" are foreigners who are enticed to betray their countries and spy for the USA. Rogue agents can be dealt with by threatening to expose their treason to the native government. (Legend has it that the KGB once fed a traitor into a furnace feet first.)

US citizens who work for the CIA are called case officers. I assume your question refers to rogue case officers.

It depends. Obviously, they can be fired. When people with SCI clearances are debriefed on dismissal, they are reminded that their security contract requires them to protect the classified information that they have received and that they can be prosecuted if they release that information. Plus, the contract says the government can confiscate any royalties from books written by former cleared personnel if the personnel publish without getting approval from the security review board.

Needless to say, the government has extensive business ties with US corporations and can blackball a problem employee from future employment to some extent.

Does it go beyond that? It's interesting to look at what happened to rogue CIA officer Edward Lee Howard. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lee_Howard

heh heh heh

Posted by Don Williams | November 28, 2006 6:35 PM

There's an assumption here that Russia could "deliver" a solution to either the Iranian or the North Korean nuclear weapons problems. I don't see that it can. (China might be able to deliver the North Koreans, but I don't think anyone can deliver the Iranians.) Russia can agree to abstain on UN resolutions it might have vetoed, but those still have to be backed up with real power and will in Europe and the US. And if the power and will is there, the UN resolutions aren't that necessary. I don't think they have anything to offer us that would justify us trading much of anything in their near abroad.

Posted by rd | November 28, 2006 7:25 PM

"And, obviously, any liberal who thinks Bush should get tougher on Putin is going to have to grapple with the fact that they find themselves agreeing with Mario Loyola . . . a pretty damning critique of any position."

And if Loyola likes puppies, we should be in favor of putting all the puppies in the world to sleep?

This particular logical fallacy has become a regular feature of Matt's blogging of late.

Posted by Petey | November 29, 2006 7:48 AM

I would say the premise is false. It doesn't really matter if the Russians co-operate on Iran or not -- Iran will have their bomb, sooner or later, and will press on regardless of what Russia does. And I'm not sure what MY thinks Russia is going to do with respect to North Korea--if China can't induce the North Koreans to co-operate, the Russians certainly can't. So, there is really no upside to selling out the people of Ukraine and Georgia (for us, let alone them). It would only serve to show that the U.S. can't be trusted.

Posted by Slocum | November 29, 2006 7:57 AM

Petey,
There is an implied assumption that the postion has to do with politics and that the options are devisive. And it is a joke. Lighten up Francis Gump.

Posted by theCoach | November 29, 2006 10:21 AM

This is a brilliant idea! Why hasn't anybody suggested this before? Giving parts of Eastern Europe to Russia has worked so spectacularly so many times! And they always, always stick to their deals, especially secret ones.

If you are going to promote disgusting ideas, it may be better to at least stick to subjects you know something about. Because if you think "returning" Ukraine to Russia will accomplish the goals you describe, this is clearly not one of those subjects.

Posted by vadim | November 29, 2006 12:18 PM

Ah yes. This idea worked like a charm last time. Not only were the Eastern Europeans greatly grateful but the Russians provided us with vital support in our invasion of Japan.
Somehow this reminds me of Milton Friedman's insight that one tends to spend other people's money unwisely.

Posted by radek | November 29, 2006 9:32 PM

Isn't it awfully high-handed, Matthew, to suggest that the Russians and us trade nations like baseball cards? The Ukraine isn't "ours" to give away, you know.

Posted by Dave Reese | December 2, 2006 1:23 AM