The Ivanov Report

A Midnight Talk With A Murderer

As a registered Republican and a closet conservative, I shouldn't enjoy reading The New Yorker.  But I do.  I guess it's a sort of addiction to the depth and sophistication of their content, the ideology be damned.  And then, there is this language thing: when I go through the Talk-of-the-Town pieces of my favorite Hendrik Hertzberg, I often need an English dictionary -- something that I never use when reading, say, editorials and op-eds in the Washington Post.

The other thing that, to my taste, comes sometimes close to Hertzberg's opuses is Profiles: long, meticulous, and sometimes almost boring in their "attention to details", assays about public figures, often politicians -- all written by journalists who would spend months being "embedded" in the lives of their subjects.  Some of the profiles have completely changed my prior perception of a person.  The one about Al Gore, for example, helped me understand his somewhat erratic behavior during the 2000 presidential campaign.  I've got tremendous respect for Gore since reading this piece. 

It was therefore with a natural interest that I began reading Wendell Steavenson's "Marching Through Georgia" (December 15, 2008), a profile of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili.  And, boy, wasn't the beginning of the story great!  Getting straight to business, Steavenson asserts that the August war between Georgia and Russia had a profound personal component:  an open animosity between Saakashvili and Russia's prime-minister, Vladimir Putin.  Reading Steavenson, one would get the impression that Russia decided to attack Georgia because six foot four Saakashvili called five foot six Putin "Lilli-Putin."  And there is no light at the end of the tunnel in relations between Moscow and Tbilisi, because Putin promised to hang Saakashvili "by the balls."

(Putin's name seems to help selling "sophisticated" magazines as well as sex helps sell "consumer-oriented" ones.) 

The New Yorker introduces Steavenson as "a freelance journalist, [who] lived in Georgia in the late nineteen-nineties.  Her second book, "The Weight of a Mustard Seed," about an Iraqi general, comes out in March."  A Google search further identifies Steavenson as a former Time Magazine reporter and the author of the acclaimed book Stories I stole (2002) about Georgia. 

In line with the The New Yorker's demanding standards, Steavenson's piece is quite well researched: there are perhaps fewer people living in Georgia than the pundits she talked to, including such a luminary as Richard Holbrooke.

I would however challenge the academic rigor of Steavenson's claim that "South Ossetia...has been a part of Georgia for centuries."  The truth is that both Georgia and undivided Ossetia have been, for centuries, parts of the Russian Empire.  Even more relevant -- and something that Steavenson neglects to mention -- is the fact that, in 1922, Ossetia was split and its southern part was attached to Georgia by Stalin's edict. 

(Yes, this Joseph Stalin whose biographies Steavenson spotted in Saakashvili's office when both had a cozy midnight meeting with glasses of Saperavi in hands.)

There are also two notable omissions to Steavenson's narrative.  She only mentions in passing the name of Zurab Zhvania, one of the leaders, along with Saakashvili, of the Rose Revolution and former prime minister.  In 2005, Zhvania died under strange circumstances.  Although an official explanation had been that he died of accidental exposure to carbon monoxide, many Georgians, including ex-president Eduard Shevardnadze, believe that Zhvania was murdered.   More than one is convinced that the murder was ordered by Saakashvili.  

Besides, Steavenson pays unexpectedly little attention to two prominent opposition figures: Nino Burdjanadze, former speaker of the parliament, and Salome Zourabichvili, former foreign minister.  I find it surprising that a female American journalist would pass on opportunity to dwell on the important role these two remarkable women play in Georgia's politics. 

(I suspect that keeping mum on Zhvania's death and not focusing on the opposition had been part of Steavenson's deal with Saakashvili's PR team.) 

But the most troubling aspect of Steavenson's story is that while walking through minute details of Saakashvili's life, political career and personal traits -- his upbringing in a middle-class, fatherless, family  in Tbilisi, his marrying to Sandra Roelofs, a Dutch lawyer, his life and studies in the United States; his rushing through the doors of the parliament, in November 2003, with a rose in hand, interrupting Shevarnadze's speech and demanding his resignation, his election as Georgia's president, in January 2004, with 96% of the vote, his driving Georgia's defense budget to a third of all government expenditures, his sending the riot police to disperse, with tear gas and rubber bullets, a protest gathering  in November 2007, his seizing a TV station critical to his government, his paying eight hundred thousand dollars to Orion Strategies, a lobbying firm run by Randy Scheunemann, a close adviser to John McCain, his comparing himself to Obama, his penchant for expensive watches and late-night partying, his fast moving and talking, his vulgar diner-table manners -- she fails to call Saakashvili what he is: a murderer. 

A murderer who in the name of "restoring the constitutional order" had sent troops to massacre hundreds of innocent civilians.

It is not always that The New Yorker demonstrates such a restraint.  Once, without presenting a shred of evidence, it blatantly accused Putin in ordering murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko.  And here, we've got Saakashvili sitting across from Steavenson and bragging about what he had done, and all Steavenson can muster in response is to ask this "sophisticated" question: "Has Mikheil Saakashvili overreached?" 

This morning, driving to work, I entertained myself with another question: would I like Hendrik Hertzberg to write a Saakashvili profile?  The answer came immediately: NO.

Let gods remain gods.  Otherwise, what will be left for me?  The Weekly Standard? 

In Change We Trust

The reaction in Russia to Barack Obama's announcement of his future national security team has been a net positive, if not somewhat guarded.  Having mentally prepared for the horrors of the McCain administration, Moscow definitely considers the Clinton-Gates tandem as a lesser of two evils.

The pro-government Izvestiya approvingly noted that Obama prefers "pragmatists over ideologists" and pointed to the non-partisan character of the nominations.  Izvestiya was especially complimentary of the future National Security Adviser, Jim Jones, praising his diplomatic skills and fluency in French.

The Kommersant quoted Federation Council Foreign Committee Chairman, Mikhail Margelov, who believes that Clinton's tenure at the State Department is likely to improve U.S.-Russia relations.  Although Margelov anticipates Clinton paying close attention to the issues of humans rights and democracy, Margelov nevertheless expects "softening" of the unipolar character of the American foreign policy. 

Margelov's Duma counterpart, Konstantin Kosachev, however, disagrees.  He is concerned that the appointment of both Clinton and Gates -- whom Kosachev calls "the steady proponents of the idea of American domination in global affairs" -- signifies the continuation, rather than reformation, of the White House foreign policy.  In contrast to Izvestiya, Kosachev is not impressed with the nomination of Jim Jones as NSA:

"One can hardly expect him [Jones] to put forward bold initiatives that would dramatically contradict current policies."

It is not clear what kind of "bold initiatives" Kosachev has in mind.  Did he hope that a new NSA would call for the disbanding of NATO ? Or would suggest sending a battalion of marines to Tbilisi to overthrow the Saakashvili government?  

Kosachev's position highlights, yet again, the major drawback of Russia's policy vis-a-vis the United States: its perpetual lack of pro-activeness.  Moscow prefers to sit back and complain at the lack of "bold initiatives" emanating from Washington, but proposes no bold initiatives of its own.

Besides, Russia's foreign policy could use a bit of change, too, by bringing new faces to the Smolensky Square.  As I argued before, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has been on the job since 2004 and shows signs of exhaustion.  It's time for President Medvedev to replace him.

In the spirit of reciprocity, won't the appointment of Valentina Matvienko (former deputy prime minister and ambassador to Malta and Greece and current governor of St. Petersburg) as the new Foreign Minister be a great idea? 

What Does Hillary Want?

On June 3, after losing the Democratic presidential primaries to Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton gave what was supposed to be, but wasn't, her concession speech, in which she coquettishly asked:

"What does Hillary want?"

Yesterday, president-elect Barack Obama nominated Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in his administration.  Yet the same question -- what does Hillary want? -- still lingers.

There is little doubt that Hillary hasn't given up her desire to become president, but the path to the presidency has gotten more complicated.  She could serve as Senator for as long as she wants -- certainly until 2016, the year Clinton can realistically run again.  However, her continued presence in the U.S. Senate -- while adding up to an often controversial voting record -- may turn from an asset to a liability. 

The 2008 presidential election was unusual in the sense that both major candidates happened to be Senators (and the one with a shorter record won).  This may not repeat in 2016, as a cohort of young, ambitious, Republican governors -- Sarah Palin of Alaska, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota -- have already begun flexing their political muscles.  (And let's not discount the old guard of the "formers": Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.)

Clinton must stop, once and for all, talk about her lack of executive experience.  To this end, she could potentially run, in 2010, for governor of New York, but this would be considered a "step down", giving her stature.  The position of Secretary of State gives her exactly what she now needs: executive experience, permanent visibility, and a solid addition to her national security credentials. 

In the past two administrations, each of the four Secretaries of State (Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright,  Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice) had served only one four-year term.  Should the Obama administration follow the same pattern, Clinton's tenure will be up in January 2013.  A passionate supporter of conspiracy theories could then argue that a deal has been struck between Clinton and Obama: if Hillary acts as a "team player" (and Bill behaves), in the 2012 election, Hillary will replace Joe Biden as the vice-presidential candidate.  Should the Obama-Clinton ticket win, Hillary will return to domestic issues and use her vice-presidency as a springboard to launch her presidential campaign in 2016.

First and foremost, Obama is a "domestic" president, and his decision to appoint Clinton was primarily "domestic" -- aimed at healing the unity of the Democratic party fractured by contentious primaries.  Besides, during the presidential campaign, Obama has adopted a left-of-center position on a number of important national security issues, such as the Iraq war and Iran.  As Secretary of State, Clinton, who is much more hawkish than Obama on both issues, will help him move back to the center without alienating the Democratic party base.

As far as relations with Russia are concerned, much will depend on the first "official" meeting between Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.  Hopefully, the summit will pave way to negotiations on renewing the START-I treaty which expires on December 5, 2009.  In this regard, teaming up Clinton with Robert Gates, whom Obama has persuaded to stay on the job as Secretary of Defense, may be very productive.  Gates, a Russia-expert, has recent practical experience working with Moscow on security issues.  Clinton, a current member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, will be instrumental in navigating the future agreement through the Senate.

It remains to be seen who'll be handling Russia in the State Department and the National Security Council.  Until then, it's too early to say whether the rest of the troubled relations will be blessed by a "change."