The Ivanov Report

Cassandra Who Cried Wolf, Or The Ungrateful Business Of Predicting Russia’s Future

(This piece originally appeared on Russia Beyond the Headlines)

In May 2001, the Atlantic magazine went to print featuring an article soberly titled “Russia is finished.”  Summarizing his experience in living in Russia since 1993, the article’s author, Jeffrey Tayler, predicted that “[g]iven the logic and propensities of Russian history, there appears to be no end in sight to the country’s decay.”  And also: “Putin’s plans to strengthen the state…, if carried out, would amount to a national death sentence.”

There appears to be something special about Russia: tireless Cassandras of all shapes and shades are endlessly churning up gloomy, sometimes almost apocalyptic, predictions about Russia’s future.  Often, the next forecast would blatantly contradict the previous, but their originators don’t seem to care.  Thus, a prominent expert in Russian economy predicted in January 2005 that “Putin will be out of office in the near future.”  Yet in the fall of 2007, the same expert opined that the Russian president will remain in power indefinitely by "possibly following declaration of a national military emergency."  Go figure.

Combing through the Russia media coverage in 2001, it becomes clear that predicting the country’s future was as popular then as it is today.  Looking back on the prognoses of that time with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, does it seem that the gleeful prognosticators of the day shared a crystal ball with the Prophet of Troy or had more in common with the proverbial boy who cried wolf?

In August 2001, Russia’s current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – the most frequent target of all predictions – was in the 20^th month of his presidency; the current President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, served as deputy chief-of-staff of the Putin administration.  In 2001, Russia’s GDP reached $307 billion ($1.3 trillion projected for 2011) and hard-currency reserves stood at $35 billion (currently at $500 billion plus).  The BBC was about to launch the quiz show “The Weakest Link” on Russian TV, and the much despised United Russia party – can you believe this? – didn’t even exist. 

What was in the news?  At the beginning of the month, the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il traveled across Russia in an armored train (sounds familiar, does it not?).  On Aug. 12, the country commemorated the first anniversary of the Kursk nuclear submarine tragic accident.  The 10^th anniversary of the failed 1991 coup dominated the media coverage in the second half of the month.  Also in the news were intense U.S.-Russian consultations: Washington was trying to persuade Moscow to acquiesce to U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.  The American side insisted, as it does today, that the United States needed a protection from missile attacks launched by the rogue states such as North Korea and Iraq (these days, Iran replaced Iraq).  In an Aug. 14 interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Alexei Arbatov (at thet time Deputy Chairman of the Defense Committee of the State Duma) argued that the U.S. would only withdraw from the treaty when it started to actually deploy elements of a missile defense system, and this “will not happen for several years.”  Arbatov was wrong: the U.S. withdrew from the treaty in June 2002.

On Aug. 9, Russian prosecutors issued bribery charges against Ukrainian “opposition figure” Yulia Timoshenko who at the time already faced corruption charges back at home (sounds familiar, does it not?).  And in a bout of moral clarity, the New Your Times called (now jailed) oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky “…a man who…orchestrated a series of flagrant corporate abuses of minority shareholders unparalleled in the short history of modern Russian capitalism, setting…a benchmark for unacceptable behavior.”

And then, of course, there were predictions.  On Aug. 14, Sovetskaya Rossia published a letter signed by 43 prominent Russians public figures.  Titled “Stop the lethal reforms!” the letter called on President Putin and Russian security services to stop the “criminal reforms” conducted by “the amateurs [Alexei] Kudrin and [German] Gref ” (back in 2001, ministers of finance and economics and trade, respectively) who were supposedly leading the country to “the irreversible economic and social collapse.”  The inability to do so, warned the authors of the letter, carried the risk of Russia’s territorial disintegration.

To certain extent, such a grave forecast was rooted in a widespread belief that by 2001, Russia had exhausted all growth potential generated by the 1998 economic crisis and that the economy was entering a phase of “depressive stabilization.”  To many, a new economic crisis was “imminent” because of the “imminent” fall in oil prices: from $23 a barrel in 2001 to as low as $15 by 2006 (as predicted by Lehman Brothers).  This prediction didn’t hold true: the oil prices kept rising causing the unprecedented growth of the Russian economy in 1999-2008.

Talks of economic disasters inevitably transformed into predictions of political troubles.  Inostranetz, on Aug. 7, interpreted the election of the Communist candidate Gennady Khodyrev as a governor of Nizhny Novgorod as a sign of “at least a communist renaissance, if not a communist comeback.”  The publication went further arguing that “…the inevitable deterioration in the economic situation is also likely to contribute to strengthening the Communist Party.”  This prediction didn’t materialize: KPRF, the strongest Russian political party in 2001, has been steadily losing public support ever since.

On Aug. 1 and 9, Novaya Gazeta reported (referring to its “sources” in the Kremlin and the FSB) that President Putin was about to shake up his Cabinet and replace Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov with Novgorod Governor Mikhail Prusak.  Otherwise, according to the newspaper, Putin would be facing a “social upheaval.”  As the matter of fact, Kasyanov was dismissed only in February 2004, whereas Prusak held his governor position until 2007.

Then, Nezavisimaya Gazeta kicked it up a notch: apparently inspired by the 10^th anniversary of the 1991 putsch, the newspaper warned that as a result of infightings between Russian political elites, the country was up for a new coup d’état.  Moreover, then-Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov was identified as its possible leader.  Ivanov, however, chose a different career path and is currently serving as deputy prime minister in Putin’s Cabinet.

Although many media outlets supported the point of view that Putin would leave the Kremlin before the end of his first presidential term, it was the weekly Versia that volunteered to identify the name of the next President of Russia: Anatoly Chubais, then the chief of Russia’s United Energy Systems.  Versia argued that by August 2001, Chubais had accumulated enough of the administrative resource -- and legislative and media support – to successfully challenge Putin, who, according to the weekly, still had no “team of his own” (sounds familiar, does it not?).  To the weekly's credit, its editors didn’t assume that Chubais would wrest the presidential power from Putin’s hands in a coup d’état.  Instead, Chubais was supposed to win the 2004 presidential election.  Now, we know that while staying active in Russian politics, Chubais never attempted to seek presidency.

Prominent Russian political scientist Alexander Tsipko had better luck predicting Putin’s future.  Writing for the Jamestown Foundation, Tsipko forecast that Putin would remain president for the second term, after which he “will probably relinquish power in exactly the same was as Yeltsin did:” by appointing a “successor.”

Those whose predictions of Russia’s future were not as good as Tsipko’s must not despair.  Russia is often said to be a country with “unpredictable past.”  Predicting its future is even tougher.   

Pending Upgrade

There is certain confusion in the heads of Russian liberals.  They seem to make no distinction between two similar, yet not identical things: being a "liberal" and being a "liberal politician."  But there is a difference.  Being a liberal means holding a set of liberal views: respect for individual liberties and private property, personal responsibility and economic self-sufficiency, support of the idea of limited government, etc.  But being a liberal politician means all of the above AND the ability to formulate and implement effective liberal policies at all levels of government.

I trust that the authors of the manifesto "The Power is Us" offered by the Right Cause party as a platform for the upcoming Duma election, are liberals.   Otherwise, how would one explain their claim that "Russia can and should become the freest country in the world?"  And: "The XXI [century] must become the century of Russian freedom."  Beyond that, there are not many liberal views expressed in the manifesto.  For example, I see nothing particularly liberal in the demand of a free universal health care.  Nor do I consider the idea of transforming the Presidential Administration into an "all-state organ for strategic planning"as something outright liberal.  Yes, limiting state ownership in mass media -- as suggested in the manifesto -- is liberal, but freezing tariffs of state monopolies for 5 years is not -- and the manifesto is suspiciously mum on the larger question of whether Russia needs state monopolies in the first place.   Equally stunning is the fact that the word "privatization" hasn't appeared in the text even in passing.

And although the authors of the manifesto still might be liberal, liberal politicians they are not: the manifesto doesn't articulate any single, coherent liberal policy the Right Cause -- or anyone, for that matter -- would implement to address the country's most pressing needs.  Sure, a two-fold reduction in the number of state bureaucrats, as the manifesto proposes, would be nice.  But before you reduce the headcount you have to reduce the number of specific activities these people perform; yet the manifesto says absolutely nothing about which government functions, which specific roles the state plays in regulating economic and social life must be cut.  Sure, a constitutional limit to the number of seats any political party can hold in the Duma (at 226) could help promote political pluralism.  (Although as a liberal myself, I'd prefer that that the composition of the parliament was determined by the political will of Russian votes expressed in free and fair elections.)  Yet at the same time, the manifesto calls for return to the Duma of 25% deputies elected in single-mandate districts.  Do the Right Cause ideologists not now that the United Russia party usually sweeps single-mandate elections?  Granted, it's a good idea to eliminate taxes on what the manifesto calls the "newly created sectors of new economy."  The question is: which sectors precisely should be tax exempt -- and how does one make sure that these tax benefits won't be highjacked by the state-owned behemoths like Gazprom and Rosneft?

There is one thing the manifesto gets right: the need to allocate more power and more money to local governments.  But it says nothing about how one ensures that this power and this money will be properly used by notoriously inefficient and corrupt local bureaucrats.  Perhaps, the Right Cause is planning to actively participate in local elections to make real changes in the regions?  Hardly.  Nothing less than the State Duma seems to be of interest to the newly-minted defenders of municipal rights. 

True, we're told that the current manifesto is only a draft, a version 1.0 of the party's electoral program and that an improved version 2.0 will soon be presented to the public.  It'd better be good: the Duma election is only 3 month away, and there will be no time for a version 3.0.

A Lesson in Arabic: Making Sense of Russia’s Middle-East Policy

(This piece originally appeared on Russia Beyond the Headlines)

The mass protests that have been rocking the Middle East and North Africa region since the beginning of the year came as a surprise to many of the world’s governments. As a result, their responses to the Arab Spring have been largely reactive and often inconsistent; it’s hard to name a country that has succeeded in designing a unified approach to the events taking place in countries as diverse as Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria. This however didn’t prevent some pundits from criticizing Russia’s Middle East policy as being particularly chaotic. Some called “Russian policy toward Libya…a study in ambivalence;” another pundit labeled Russia’s approach vis-à-vis Libya “a zigzag policy.”

Western analysts tend to ascribe every “inconsistency” in Russian foreign policy, whether real or imaginable, to disagreements between President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin; volumes have been written about a public spat between the two following Russia’s vote on U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973. Certainly, like in any country with competing business and political interests, there is a difference in opinion among Russian elites with regards to Russia’s Middle-East policy. Yet, a careful examination of Russia’s recent behavior in the regions reveals the presence of a rather consistent strategic line, an approach that is based on three general principles.

First, Moscow shows little appetite for bold solo moves in the U.N. Security Council, including using its veto power, which has been applied only four times in the past 15 years (last in 2009). These days, Russia prefers following the crowd of fellow Council members. Russia supported U.N. Security Council Resolution 1970 calling for imposing an arms embargo on Tripoli; this resolution was unanimously adopted by the Security Council. Although initially Russia opposed to follow-up Resolution 1973 because of its too “open” language, it eventually decided not to veto it and abstained instead. In so doing, Russia didn’t act alone: it joined a respected group of major international players, such as Brazil, China, Germany, and India.

Of course, Russia’s unwillingness to get isolated in the Council wasn’t the only reason for not vetoing Resolution 1973. Russia also recognized the risk of being blamed for the death of civilians should Gaddafi troops have attacked Benghazi in the absence of a no-fly zone – and such an attack looked almost inevitable on the eve of the resolution vote. In addition, by vetoing the resolution, Russia might also have alienated one of the resolution sponsors, France -- Russia’s friend and major trade partner. Russia simply didn’t have so much at stake in Libya, arms sales to the Gaddafi regime notwithstanding, to spoil its relations with France and other NATO countries in the middle of difficult negotiations over European missile defense.

Second, Moscow considers its current diplomatic activities in Libya as part of a greater effort to increase its influence in the Middle East. It therefore carefully watches the delicate balance of interests in the region. Russia’s sensitivity to regional sentiments helps explain another “inconsistency” of its Middle-East policy: its decision to abandon Gaddafi while continuing to provide diplomatic cover to the Assad regime in Syria. Russia took note of the fact that Resolution 1973 was supported by the Arab League, an organization that repeatedly condemned the Gaddafi regime for brutality. Since Gaddafi had no friends in the Arab world, why did Russia have to protect him?

Syria was a different matter as there was no regional consensus with regards to the amount of pressure to be applied on Damascus. For as long as the Assad regime enjoyed some support, however tacit, from two regional powerbrokers, the Saudi Arabia and Turkey – incidentally, the countries with which Russia has been cultivating good relations – Moscow saw no reason to do “heavy lifting” on its own in the Security Council. Yet it made it very clear that Russia’s diplomatic support for Syria isn’t unconditional: in August, Medvedev warned Assad that Russia’s approach to Syria may change if the Syrian strongman fails to implement promised reforms. Characteristically, Medvedev’s statement almost coincided with the Arab League's condemnation of Syria’s violent crackdown on protesters and Saudi Arabia recalling its ambassador to Damascus.

Third, Moscow seems to have abandoned its old habit to stick forever to “friendly” dictators; it now prefers to engage all the parties involved in a conflict. Following this newly found flexibility, Russia kept communicating with Tripoli; at the same time, Medvedev sent his special representative, Mikhail Margelov, to meet with the opposition stationed in Benghazi. After Margelov’s trip, the rebels put out the Russian flag and proclaimed Russia an “ally.”

The same approach is being applied in Syria. In June, Margelov hosted a meeting with the Syrian opposition and called for an end to "any and all forms of violence." Margelov then made it very clear ("Leaders come and go, politicians come and go, social systems come and go, but for Russia there remains a single reliable and trusted friend: the Syrian people”) that Moscow is willing to deal with any eventual winner in the Syrian conflict. Needless to say, this message was well received by Margelov’s interlocutors.

Russia’s hard core realism in the Middle East isn’t anything new: it’s a continuation of the pragmatic foreign policy Moscow has been conducting for the past 12 years. Yet, some new, surprising elements seem to emerge. When justifying Russia’s position on Libya, Medvedev accused the Gaddafi regime in the “crimes committed against its own people” and directly linked its “abhorrent behavior” to Russia’s refusal to veto Resolution 1973. In other words, by taking into account the domestic conduct of the Libyan leadership, Medvedev essentially rejected the simplicity of “realpolitik” and introduced elements of the value-based approach that until now has been completely foreign to the Kremlin.

Medvedev’s words were echoed by Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs. In a recent article discussing the situation in Libya, Kosachev argued that foreign interventions into domestic conflicts could be justified “when people’s lives are at stake.” This argument essentially rejects Russia’s long-standing position that sovereign rights of the nation trump all other considerations. Obviously, it remains to be seen whether these statements are no more than tactical one-offs or they signal a paradigm shift in the Russian foreign policy.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil. What Did The U.S. Know About Georgia’s 2008 War Plans?

(A version of this post appeared on Russia Beyond the Headlines)

On the eve of the third anniversary of the August 2008 Five-Day War between Russia and Georgia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gave an interview to Russian and Georgian journalists covering a broad range of topics was covered: from the events preceding Georgia’s assault on South Ossetia to Medvedev’s views on the future of Russian-Georgian relations.  The president also reflected on what the U.S. government did or did not know about Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili’s military plans. 

Medvedev recalled that up until July 2008, he and Saakashvili met regularly and that the latter appeared genuinely interested in finding a negotiated solution to the conflict between Tbilisi and the two breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  Everything, however, changed after then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Tbilisi: following his meeting with Rice, Saakashvili abruptly cut off all communications with Moscow.

The objectives of Rice’s July 9, 2008 trip to Georgia still remain a mystery.  The stated goal of the visit was the discussion of the prospects of Georgia joining NATO; Rice also used the opportunity to publicly call for upholding Georgia’s “territorial integrity.”  At the same time, the State Department officials insisted that privately, Price urged Saakashvili not to provoke Russia.  Really?  If so, Saakashvili’s nearly perfect English failed him miserably.

To be sure, cautious and professional Rice would have never explicitly suggested to Saakashvili bringing South Ossetia and Abkhazia back to Georgia’s fold by force.  And she didn’t have to.  All she had to do was to remind him that a country that has no control over one-fifth of its territory can’t become a NATO member; restoring Georgia’s “territorial integrity” would therefore have to become a prerequisite to joining the alliance.  The smart and attentively listening Saakashvili would guess out the rest by himself.  The Madam Secretary could have returned home and simply ignore satellite images of Georgian troops concentrating on the border with South Ossetia.  See no evil, hear no evil…   

It appears that Rice was not the only high-profiled American to huddle with Saakashvili in the run up to the August war: three days after Rice’s trip to Tbilisi, the Georgian president met with Karl Rove, a confidant of then-U.S. President George W. Bush.  This came after multiple calls of support Saakashvili received from then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain, whose foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann worked as a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government.  Are we to believe that the message that Messrs. Rove and McCain conveyed to Saakashvili was one of patience and restraint?  Or was it more along Winston Churchill’s famous line: “History is written by the victors?”

Neither Rove nor McCain is legally obliged to disclose the content of their conversations with Saakashvili; both can claim that they spoke to him as private citizens.  But Ms. Rice can’t: she was in Tbilisi on official mission, and her conversations with Saakashvili must have been properly recorded.  If U.S. Congress is really interested in getting to the bottom of things, it would subpoena Rice to testify under the oath, adding the transcripts of her talks with Saakashvili as evidence.  In her turn, if Ms. Rice has nothing to hide, she would only welcome the opportunity to highlight the attempts of the Bush administration at preventing the August 8 bloodshed. 

Unfortunately, U.S. lawmakers have shown little interest in the facts on the ground: a resent resolution on Georgia unanimously passed by the U.S. Senate on July 29, called Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia “occupied by the Russian Federation.”  It appears that many senators sincerely believe that both territories were forcefully taken away by Russia as a result of the 2008 war.  This is simply not true: Abkhazia and South Ossetia won their de facto independence from Tbilisi in 1991-1993 following armed uprising.  The conflict that keeps burning in this part of the South Caucasus is not a conflict between Georgia and Russia, as the Western supporters of Saakashvili would like us to believe; it is a conflict between Georgia and two independent countries, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, that had refused to live under Tbilisi’s oppressive rule.   

President Medvedev’s interview was a long-awaited articulation of the Russian position vis-à-vis this conflict.  Much more needs to be said, but this was a move in the right direction.       

Will The Reset Last?

(This piece originally appeared on Russia Beyond the Headlines)

The reset in U.S.-Russia relations is going through a difficult time. A signature foreign policy achievement for both U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, it has succeeded to a large extent because of the personal rapport between the two leaders. However, from the very beginning, the reset has been hampered by a deep mutual mistrust – rooted in the days of the Cold War -- among political elites in both countries. Equally troubling, the anemic state of U.S.-Russia economic cooperation deprives the reset of a much-needed anchor in respective business communities. Consequently, the reset remains dangerously vulnerable to every negative turn in the bilateral relationship, be it a fundamental policy disagreement or a short-term setback.

The issue with the most potential for derailing the reset is the future of European missile defense. Since the Lisbon summit last fall, where Russia and NATO agreed to look for a common ground, Moscow has been actively promoting President Medvedev’s idea of a joint Russia-NATO anti-missile system with full interoperability of the Russian and NATO components. To much of the Kremlin’s disappointment, this idea was rejected – at the Jun. 9 Russia-NATO Council meeting in Brussels – in favor of an arrangement calling for two independent systems connected only by a flow of information exchange. To add insult to injury, the U.S. and its NATO allies have turned down Moscow’s request to provide legally binding guarantees that the European missile defense system will not be directed against Russia.

To its credit, Moscow wisely refrained from harsh rhetoric following these developments. In a show of goodwill, a Russian delegation, headed by the deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov and Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin, visited Washington in July to discuss the feasibility of creating joint-operating centers for missile threat assessment and information exchange. The Russians met with high-ranking officials at the White House (including National Security Advisor Tom Donilon), the State Department and the Pentagon and were invited to tour the U.S. missile defense center in Colorado Spring.

Moscow’s sober and responsible approach to the ongoing talks was mismatched by unnecessary comments made by Rogozin after his meeting with two Republican senators, Jon Kyl (Arizona) and Mark Kirk (Illinois). Having called Kyl and Kirk “monsters of the Cold War” – questionable language for a diplomat under any circumstances – Rogozin warned that U.S.-Russia relations would collapse if “radical” Republicans came to power in the United States. In Rogozin’s opinion, Moscow must take a cautious approach to its cooperation with Washington on security issues so that a “sudden change” in U.S. politics would not harm Russia’s national interest.

It was not immediately clear from Rogozin’s comments which Republican politicains he considers “radical” and what exactly “coming to power” means for the American system of split government. (Incidentally, Sen. Kyl is not seeking re-election in 2012 and therefore won’t be around in a year and a half.)  However, it's easy to imagine an uproar in Moscow if a U.S. officials stated that the future of U.S.-Russia relations depends on the outcome of parliamentary and presidential elections in Russia.

Ironically, Rogozin’s escapade brought to memory a discussion that took place in Russian analytical circles in 2008. Many pundits suggested that the election of then-Republican candidate John McCain as U.S. president would be better for Russia because Republicans, as compared to Democrat, would pay less attention to the issue of human rights in Russia. What a difference three years make! Now, Rogozin and his soul mates in Russia seem to believe that a Republican president will be a death knell to the whole body of U.S.-Russia relations.

Anti-Russian forces in the U.S. perfectly understand that for as long as presidents Obama and Medvedev remain in their offices, strategic disagreements over European missile defense have little chance of killing the reset; something more “acute” is needed. Enter the long-forgotten story of a Sept. 22, 2010 bomb explosion near U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia that suddenly made headlines in the U.S. media at the end of July. What triggered such attention was a classified report from last year that put the blame for the explosion on Russian military intelligence.  Sen. Kyl went as far as to characterize the incident as an “attempted bombing of the U.S. Embassy” and called for a halt to all joint missile defense talks.

What Sen. Kyl described in such grave terms was in fact an explosion of a tiny device that happened in a vacant lot about 200 feet outside the embassy’s wall. No one was injured and no damage to the American property occurred as a result of this brilliant “intelligence operation.” Moreover, analysts with the National Intelligence Council, the analytical arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, quietly admitted that there was “no consensus” within the intelligence community on responsibility for the explosion. In plain English, that means no evidence implicating Russian secret services ever existed.

By its reliance on classified reports leaked by unidentified intelligence officials, the Tbilisi bombing case looks like a sequel to the last summer's “Russian spy ring” thriller. What is lacking this time around is a media buzz caused by the intriguing personalities of the suspected Russian spies.  With no real victims of the Tbilisi blast in place – and with no evidence that the femme fatale Anna Chapman was involved -- the “attempted bombing of the U.S. Embassy” won’t fly with the American public.

In the meantime, the continuing back-and-forth over the so-called Magnitsky list has a potential to damage the reset in a way that the Tbilisi bombing can’t. Last week, in a shrewd attempt at persuading Congress to abandon the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act (a.k.a. the Cardin-McGovern bill), the Department of State announced that it had put a number of Russian officials allegedly involved in the Magnitsky death on a U.S. visa blacklist. As reported by the Washington Post, this list include fewer names than appear on the Cardin-McGovern bill and, more importantly, doesn’t call for any financial sactions against listed individuals. Moreover, citing the confidential character of the visa application process, DOS officials didn’t disclose the specific names of individuals placed on the list.

Moscow’s reaction to this development was as harsh as Russophobes in Washington must have hoped it would be. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a stern statement promising “adequate measures” in response, while President Medvedev ordered to compose an “anti-Magnitsky” list of sorts, a reciprocal list of U.S. officials whose travel in Russia will be banned. Yet, fortunately, Medvedev didn’t listen to some "advisors" who wanted to “punish” Washington by curtailing Russian cooperation with the U.S. on Afghanistan and Iran.

The Kremlin has obviously overreacted. Denying U.S. visas to Russian citizens is nothing new: the current U.S. visa blacklist includes, among others, a top Russian business tycoon and a prominent member of the Duma. There is no need for Russia to fuel the controversy by composing any special lists. Rather, should a Russian official be denied U.S. visa in the future, Moscow can always respond in kind by denying entry to Russia to the next “available” member of U.S. political establishment.

Will the reset last? It will for as long as the leaders of both countries remain realistic with regards to what the other side can or can’t deliver given the domestic constraints. It will last if the supporters of the reset protect it from hardliners by constantly reminding the public of the tangible fruits of the reset, however modest. The reset will last if, in the heat of election battles, politicians in both countries will resist using the reset to score cheap points over their opponents.

There is one more thing Russia can do to help the reset succeed: to begin actively lobbying its interests in the U.S.

Nostalgic For The Cold War? Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's Crusade Against Reset

As I predicted last December (and then discussed again recently), a noisy anti-Russian corner has emerged in the U.S. House of Representatives, thanks to the ascension of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen(R-FL) to the position of Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  On July 7, Ros-Lehtinen presided over the hearings intriguingly titled "Time to Pause the Reset?: Defending U.S. Interests in the Face of Russian Aggression."  Ros-Lehtinen's opening statement presents us with a useful opportunity to review her foreign-policy credentials.

The key point that Ros-Lehtinen is trying to make is that as a result of the policy of reset toward Russia, the Obama administration has made a number of unnecessary concessions to Moscow.  Among these "concessions" Ros-Lehtinen counts the civil nuclear cooperation agreement ("a gift, pure and simple") and U.S. support for Russia's entry into the WTO.  And what did the U.S. get in return?  Nothing, according to the vigilant Chairwoman.  In particular, "Russia's approach to Iran remains essentially unchanged," argues Ros-Lehtinen, conveniently forgetting Russia's ban to sell the S-300 air-defense systems and other military equipment to Tehran.  Ros-Lehtinen also charges that "Russia is...committed to stopping U.S. missile defense efforts."  Stopping?  The last time I checked, there were ongoing talks between the two countries about cooperation on missile defense.

Yet, even as blinded by the Russophobia as she is, Ros-Lehtinen must sense that bilateral disagreements on specific policy issues can't be automatically qualified as Russian aggression.  So she feels the needs to come up with examples of such, and her choices are hardly original.  It's the same list of the usual suspects: gas disputes with Ukraine and the 2008 war with Georgia.  I leave aside Ros-Lehtinen's apparent inability to apprehend the complexity of the events she's talking about.  What surprises me is her "liberal" treatment of the timing:  most of the events she mentioned took place before Obama became president and certainly before the policy of reset was announced (in spring of 2009).

 As if sensing that her body of evidence suffers from anorexia, Ros-Lehtinen adds:

"There are many other areas in which Russia still targets U.S. interests...but the list is too long to go into here."

Nice!  Almost like a prosecutor who would address the jury in court with the following:

"There are many facts pointing to the defendant's guilt, but the list is too long to go into here."

Naturally, Ros-Lehtinen couldn't ignore "the Russian government's abuses of human rights."  To highlight those, she comes up with this outstanding statement:

"And in yet another effort to prevent the democratic opposition from participating in the upcoming parliamentary elections, the Kremlin has banned Boris Nemtsov, one of Russia's most prominent democratic leaders whom I met with last year, from leaving Russia again should he return from his current visit to France."

Will someone please explain me -- in plain English -- what Ros-Lehtinen meant to say here?  What do Nemtsov's ability to travel abroad and the December Duma elections have in common?  Does Ros-Lehtinen suggest that Nemtsov should leave Russia to take part in the elections?  (Does Ros-Lehtinen have a staff that proofreads her statements before she articulates them in public?)

As a supporter of reset, I ought to feel good that its opponents have nothing of substance to say.  However, as an American taxpayer, I'm deeply troubled by the inability of a high-ranked congressional leader to put together an intelligible, if not intelligent, two-page statement.  I know, I know: the House Foreign Affairs Committee is not a place where U.S. foreign policy is being drawn and conducted.  And yet, this show of sheer professional incompetence questions the very system of seniority by which members of Congress, including Ros-Lehtinen, get their chairmanships in the House committees.  Isn't it time to replace it with something more meritocratic?

 

Party Crashers

(This piece originally appeared on Russia Beyond the Headlines)

The refusal by the Russian Ministry of Justice to register an opposition People’s Freedom Party, known as PARNAS, didn’t come as a surprise.  Everyone, including the party’s four co-chairmen – Mikhail Kasyanov, Vladimir Milov, Boris Nemtsov, and Vladimir Ryzhkov – called this decision “expected.”  And expected it was indeed: the current law on political parties makes it virtually impossible for any new entity to get registered without explicit support from the Kremlin.  Since 2009, only one political party, the authority-friendly Right Cause, has managed to win registration; applications by seven others have been denied by the Ministry of Justice.

Of all registration requirements, the most draconian is the one establishing a 45,000-member threshold.  In today’s Russia, the demand for political parties is completely saturated, and no party, except for those already represented in the Duma, can muster this number of cardholders.  It's possible to successfully run an unofficial political movement with 10,000-20,000 core activists, but when such a movement decides to register as a party, it faces a daunting challenge of swelling the membership numbers to the magic 45,000.  Enter the "signature collectors," a peculiar breed of political technologists whose job is to find ordinary citizens who would allow their names and personal data to be included in party lists.  Naturally, the collectors are being paid for their services: according to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a collector receives between 70 and 100 rubles ($2.50-$3.50) for each signature.  They regularly cheat on their clients by filling signature lists with faked names (taken, for example, from different databases).

This is exactly what happened to the PARNAS list after collectors got their hands on it: a “random” check conducted by the Ministry of Justice has revealed that 82 signatures on the list belonged to deceased people, minors and even inmates.  (The PARNAS leaders immediately suggested that unqualified signatures had appeared on the list as a result of a deliberate provocation by the Russian security services.)  Another problem in the registration papers pointed out by the ministry officials was with the party’s charter that allegedly didn’t allow for rotation of its leadership – in violation with the federal law on political parties.  These two factors – unqualified signatures and faulty charter -- were quoted by the Ministry as reasons for the registration denial. 

The legal basis for such a decision isn’t clear, to say the very least.  The original PARNAS list included 46,148 signatures.  However damaging to the credibility of the party the 82 unqualified signatures might be, they don’t necessarily prove that the party has indeed failed to overcome the 45,000 member threshold.  A “random” check is an indicator, not a proof.  And something is outright fishy with the charter claim: Articles 26 and 34 of the PARNAS charter posted to the party’s website clearly spell out annual rotation of the federal and regional political councils.  Either officials from the Ministry of Justice who reviewed the application can’t read basic Russian, or – for those with an eye for conspiracy -- these articles were modified on-line after the original application had been submitted.

It appears that the decision not to register the party was not only “expected” by the PARNAS leadership; it was actually their desired outcome.  Ignoring demands by the regional party activists to continue the fight, The Magnificent Four have flatly refused to appeal the decision in court or reapply for registration.  (“It is impossible to try to work with this regime within the bounds of the law,” said Ryzhkov.)  Instead, they promised to “move their actions onto the streets” and called for the boycott of the December Duma elections, which, two months before their official announcement, Ryzhkov & Co. already call “illegitimate.”

If somewhat awkwardly, President Medvedev tried to extend a helping hand to the “united liberals” by suggesting that the party could eventually be registered if it got rid of the “dead souls.”  This suggestion didn’t go well with the defenders of people’s freedom: Ryzhkov called Medvedev’s advice “sophisticated mockery and farce” and pointed out that if the president cared about PARNAS, he could simply “call the Minister of Justice, Mr. Konovalov, and instruct him to register our party.” 

What a remarkable statement!  After years of professing passion for Russia's need to combat lawlessness, Ryzhkov turns out to have no problem with the president executing the notorious “telephone law”-- if the outcome of this call suits Ryzhkov’s interests.  

The position of the PARNAS leadership is blessed with certain logic: they might have failed to draw a roadmap to success, but they have succeeded in developing a strategy for failure.  As it happened with virtually every “united liberal” project before, PARNAS is already being shaken by internal squabbles.  The animosity between Milov and Nemtsov over who would be a better candidate for the 2012 presidential election has broken into the open; sensing tensions at the federal level, regional party activists begin heading to the exit.  The party registration would not have prevented its inevitable collapse.  In contrast, the denial of registration may speed up the party’s degradation in the regions, but it will also give its leaders a new lease on life by solidifying their status as political martyrs in the West.  Worse, the decision not to register PARNAS will be met with joy by the Russophobes all over the world -- as a new incentive to trash President Medvedev’s modernization agenda.

The consensus among the “opposition” is that the campaign against PARNAS was orchestrated by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an attempt to reduce the “electoral risks” for his United Russia party.  This is ridiculous.  United Russia’s voters and potential voters for PARNAS live in completely different universes and would never consider voting “across.”  The only real beneficiary of eliminating PARNAS from the electoral field is the Right Cause, a rising star in the perennially boring Russian political galaxy.  The lavish attention that President Medvedev showered on the party's newly minted leader, Mikhail Prokhorov, implies that the Kremlin has some long-term interest in having the Right Cause enter the Duma in December.

If the decision to block PARNAS’ registration was made on the assumption that this will help the Right Cause, then the Kremlin has made a mistake.  Prokhorov is a big boy and can stand up for himself.  It would be much better for the credibility of Right Cause and Prokhorov personally – and for the future of true liberalism in Russia, for that matter – if the party won Duma seats by competing with PARNAS in the elections.  Using a metaphor befitting the owner of the New Jersey Nets, Prokhorov could finish up the game by a winning three-pointer.  Instead, with PARNAS removed from the court, he can now impress the crowd only by an unopposed dunk.    

A Swap: Replacing Jackson-Vanik With Magnitsky?

By writing my previous post, I didn't want to create an impression that anti-Russian forces in the United States have suddenly disappeared -- or switched gears to establishing a Society of Russian-American Fraternal Love.  What I meant was that in the absence of open conflicts between Moscow and Washington -- and lacking major newsworthy "disasters" in Russia -- it's not easy for the members of anti-Russian lobby to continuously perpetuate Russia's negative image in the U.S.  They have to wait until something "bad" happens -- or at least until something they can call "bad."

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (I discussed her anti-Russian "credentials" before), had her "aha" moment last week: on Friday, she issued a statement condemning the deal that would sell French-made Mistral assault ships to Russia.  Here is an excerpt:

"It is deeply troubling that France, a NATO ally, has decided to ignore the clear danger of selling advanced warships to Russia even as Moscow is taking an increasingly hostile approach toward the U.S....and Europe itself."

One could endlessly debate with Ros-Lehtinen on how clear the "danger" of selling Mistrals to Russia is, but her assertion that Russia's attitude toward the U.S. and Europe is increasingly hostile borders on delusional.  I suspect that 20 years ago, when Ros-Lehtinen was first elected to Congress, she created a template for all Russia-related statements -- and has never updated it since.  It is also interesting that while criticizing France, Ros-Lehtinen seems to have no problem with Israel selling unmanned spy drones to Russia. 

The same day, the Washington Post published an op-ed penned by the Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan.  Kagan hasn't written about Russia in a long time, and in order to compensate for lost opportunities, used quite strong language -- like "corrupt, authoritarian mafia state" and "czarist dictatorship" -- to describe the subject of his piece.  Kagan, too, sees negative trends in Russia's development, but in contrast to Ros-Lehtinen, he's unhappy with "Russia's increasingly authoritarian domestic policies."  To show his grasp for the latter, he writes:

"A new political party led by respected Russian political figures Boris Nemtsov, Mikhail Kasyanov, Vladimir Milov and Vladimir Ryzhkov applied last month to register to run in the December elections."

(I like this "respected."  Respected by whom?  Certainly not by normal Russians.)  Kagan is wrong here.  The "new political party" he's talking about has only applied for registration with the Ministry of Justice, which is not the same as to register for parliamentary elections (not yet announced, by the way).  Not a big deal, of course, but one could expect more knowledge of the Russian law from a man with such a passion for it.  

Not surprisingly, Kagan demonstrates better command of American politics.  He props a recent persistent rumor that the so-called Magnitsky bill sponsored by Sen. Cardin (D-MD) may eventually "replace" the notorious Jackson-Vanik amendment.  A Jun. 19 Post's editorial suggests that Congress passed the bill before repealing the amendment, which would allow keeping "outside pressure" on Russia.  This is a remarkable slip of the tongue: in essence the Post admits that the Magnitsky bill is not about human rights in Russia -- as the Jackson-Vanik wasn't about Jewish immigration; it's all about applying "outside pressure" on Russia.

Kagan also informs us that:

"Sens. Joe Lieberman and John McCain will soon introduce a resolution calling on Russia to register opposition political parties, allow free media, respect freedom of assembly, and permit international and domestic monitors for the coming elections."

Nice!  The only thing that the future resolution is missing is obliging President Medvedev to have all his orders and decrees first approved by the Lieberman's and McCain's offices.

By their detachment from reality, the Lieberman-McCain tandem reminds me of the Soviet Politburo.  In this setting, overly ideological yet competent Lieberman could be considered as Mikhail Suslov whereas the old and gaffe-prone McCain would have to assume the role of Leonid Brezhnev. 

For Russia, No News Is Good News

(This piece originally appeared on Russia Beyond the Headlines)

Russia seems to be losing its status as a major newsmaker in the U.S. media.  Take, for instance, the influential Washington Post.  Since the beginning of June, the newspaper has published only three Russia-related articles: covering the murder of the former army colonel Yuri Budanov, an anti-hero of the second Chechen war; the 20^th anniversary of Boris Yeltsin’s election as president of Russia; and a Russian-American theater project.  Compare that to June 2010: the famous spy scandal had just erupted, and in a couple of days, the Post responded with seven exciting “spy” stories (coming atop of 17 articles and editorials published earlier in the month on different topics).  A whopping 19 followed in the first two weeks of July.  Almost each of these articles featured the Mata-Hari-of-Manhattan, Anna Chapman, a woman “with a head for business…and a body for sin,” as the Post described her at the time.  

It's possible to argue, of course, that, perhaps, there are no more “unauthorized foreign agents” of Russian origin left in the U.S.  But the enigmatic Ms. Chapman is still alive and well in Russia, beautiful and…eh…enigmatic as ever – hosting her own TV show and planning a career in politics.  Yet for whatever reason, her image does not inspire American journalists anymore.

Or consider forest fires in Russia that in late July 2010 replaced the spy scandal as the news du jour.    Kremlin critics both in Russia and the U.S. immediately put the blame for the crisis on the shoulders of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.  Somewhat paradoxically, though, the very same people interpreted Putin's behavior during the crisis as a sure sign of his intension to run for presidency in 2012.  This summer, forest fires are ravaging Russia in full force again, but the U.S. media do not find this event newsworthy.  Is it because the ongoing severe fires in Arizona make it brazenly clear that natural disasters, be it in Russia or the United States, can’t be accounted for by the malice of a single official, even as supposedly evil as Putin? Or is it because American journalists have collected so many rock-solid signs of Putin’s desire to return to presidency that they simply do not need pictures of him extinguishing fires?      

U.S. officials do not pay much attention to Russia, either.  In his farewell public address, the outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates assaulted the governments of NATO countries for insufficient – and still decreasing -- defense spending.  NATO military operations in Afghanistan and Libya were invoked in this context, but a military threat from Russia was not.  Nor was Russia even mentioned during the Senate confirmation hearings of Leon Panetta, who has been nominated to succeed Gates as the Pentagon chief.

It may already sound as a cliché, but the reset in U.S.-Russian relations did change the tone of the dialogue between the two countries.  It is becoming increasingly difficult to constantly portrait Russia as perennially hostile to U.S. interests and values.  True, the negative image of Russia in the U.S. is not a consequence of “bad” news; instead, this image is being purposefully and relentlessly created in the media by numerous anti-Russian interests.  Yet, the principal objective of the media is to sell “news,” and lacking major conflicts between Moscow and Washington – and major “disasters” (both natural and man-made) in Russia, which American journalists are so good in describing – there is not much left to cover.  After all, how many articles per month can a major American newspaper publish about Mikhail Khodorkovsky?   

In all fairness, it has been difficult to create “bad news” out of Russia's recent moves.  Moscow’s decision not to veto the United Nation Security Council Resolution 1973 on Libya has shifted the responsibility for the situation there to the capitals where it truly belongs: Paris, London, and Washington.  Otherwise, Russia would have been inevitably blamed for all civilian deaths that occurred had Gaddafi troops attacked Benghazi in the absence of a no-fly zone.

Moscow also wisely refrained from harsh rhetoric following NATO’s refusal to accept its proposals on joint missile defense in Europe during the Russian-NATO Council meeting in Brussels on Jun. 9.  While Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov explicitly expressed Russia’s disappointment with NATO’s unwillingness to properly address its strategic concerns, he nevertheless insisted that the both sides “trust each other” and that future negotiation “might turn out to be successful."

Of course, don't harbor any illusions: Russia’s thoughtful and flexible foreign policy – and any liberalization of its domestic one – will not automatically create a positive image of the country in the West.  But the number of “horror” stories will inevitably go down, even if at the price of reduced coverage.

How do they say it: no news is good news?  It certainly is for Russia.  

Presumption of Failure

(This piece originally appeared on Russia Beyond the Headlines)

What was Russian President Dmitry Medvedev thinking when he decided to make judicial reform and the fight against corruption signature issues of his first presidential term?  He could have chosen something more abstract, say, doubling the country’s GDP -- a topic few in Russia understand and even fewer care about.  Instead the brave, but reckless Medvedev plunged into the area where things are so bad that no real change can be expected any time soon, certainly not in four quick years.  It's no wonder that the prevailing opinion in Russia is that Medvedev’s reforms are failing. 

Not helping the president is the culture of “legal nihilism,” one of Medvedev's own favorite terms.  The seriousness of this phenomenon should not be underestimated.  According to public polls, more than 60 percent of Russians are convinced that the courts will not protect them from the abuse of the state.  Consequently, even if they believe that their rights were violated they would not go to court to sue a policeman (54 percent), criminal investigator (59 percent), or state official (58 percent). 

But here is an interesting twist: just a meager six percent of adult Russians have ever asked the courts to protect their constitutional rights.  And what would happen if they did?  According to a recent Vedomosti editorial, the results are not what a dedicated “legal nihilist” would predict.  In 2009-2010, there were 5,500 reported cases of citizens going to courts to ask for compensation due to unlawful actions of policemen, investigators or prosecutors.  And guess what?  The courts agreed with the citizens in 70 percent (3,800) of the cases.   Out of the 65,000 court cases in which state officials were sued for unlawful behavior, the courts sided with plaintiffs in 67 percent (46,500) of the cases.  And when the citizens sued individual, lower-ranked bureaucrats, courts ruled in their favor in 54 percent of the time (69,000 out of 127,000 cases).  The rate of success was even higher in trade disputes: consumers won 80 percent of courts cases against retailers and 90 percent of cases against creditors.  

What these data show is that despite the widespread perception that “there is no rule of law in Russia,” Russian courts protect the rights of ordinary Russians much more consistently that the public opinion is willing to give them credit for.  Indeed, many lawyers argue that in cases that are not politically motivated or involve big money, citizens have a decent chance of winning. 

Naturally, this assumes that citizens are fully aware of their constitutional rights.  But here is another twist: according to the above-mentioned polls, 80 percent of Russians know very little or nothing about their legal rights (worse yet, 60 percent are not interested in such a topic at all) and 70 percent believe that they have no access to relevant legal information.   In other words, in Russia disdain for the law (“legal nihilism”) walks hand-in-hand with ignorance for the law (“legal illiteracy”). 

On May 4, Medvedev signed a document awkwardly titled “The Fundamentals of State Policy on Developing Legal Awareness and Culture of the Citizens.”  One of the stated goals of this document is to educate Russian citizens about their legal rights.  An important part of the project will be creating a system of legal assistance, including free legal services.

The “Fundamentals” go to the heart of the problem by attacking both “legal illiteracy” (by educating Russians about their rights) and “legal nihilism” (by helping them execute these rights).  Unfortunately, this project suffers from the same problem as many of Medvedev’s other judicial reform initiatives: it is a long-term endeavor whose benefits will become apparent only in the future, after a lengthy and almost inevitably sloppy process of implementation.

The fact that the president’s legal crusade does not elicit enthusiastic support from Russian bureaucracy is hardly surprising.  More surprising -- and depressing -- is the fact that Medvedev’s reforms are often ridiculed by the country's liberal intelligentsia, which prefers to accuse the president of “talking the talk, but not walking the walk.”  What exactly the president is supposed to do to prove that he is “walking the walk,” is not clear.  One frequent suggestion is to fire Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or one or two of the supposedly corrupt members of his cabinet; the legal grounds for such an action, however, are never articulated.

For many Medvedev’s critics, the real situation in Russian courts appears to be completely inconsequential: the only legal issue that matters to them is the guilty verdict in the second Khodorkovsky-Lebedev trial.  Their approach to establishing the rule of law in Russia is quite peculiar: on the one hand, they call on the president to ensure the independents of courts; on the other, they criticize Medvedev for not preventing the guilty verdict by the Khamovnichesky Court.  How can Medvedev win?