Category Archives: Russia

Russia is so Discounted that Putin Re-Takes the Prez & No One Cares…

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Medvedev channels Donald Trump – ‘You’re Fired!’ – and fails

 

 

If you haven’t seen this, watch it. Jump to 2:20 for the fireworks. President Medvedev fires his finance minister, on live TV no less. But even more over-the-top, and a super clue to Russia’s parlous state today, is Kudrin’s ‘you’re not in command’ response. Even after Medvedev lectures him about the constitution and governing in accord with it, Kudrin replies that he won’t resign until the prime minister (Putin) tells him to. Hah! In the clash of Russian bureaucratic machismo, the head of state loses! That had me laughing even more than Medvedev’s preening about Russia’s commitment to democratic rule and the constitution, as well as his control-freak, Al Haig ‘I’m in charge here,’ firing of a minister on TV. Those three things together in just 3 minutes make US tea party-driven political dysfunction look normal. If we’re in decline, at least the Russians are declining faster.

This vid is pretty much ‘smoking gun’ evidence that the real power in Russia is Putin, and that its ‘institutions’ are a joke. Medvedev took a huge chance axing a finance minister (normally one of the most important positions in a cabinet) in such a public venue. It all but invited pushback if Medvedev is just a figurehead.(Maybe that’s why Medvedev did it; just to see if his suspicions were true.) Kudrin probably figured he had nothing to lose, so why not go to mattresses by invoking the godfather? I imagine Putin was livid when Kudrin let the cat out of the bag so publicly – although actually, maybe Putin just doesn’t give a d— anymore. We all strongly suspected it was a faux-constitutional charade with Medvedev anyway, but this is probably the most public sign from within the government that Putin reigns.

In any reasonably normal presidential system, the cabinet, including the PM, serves at the president’s discretion. If you get fired, you go.  And if you get axed on TV no less, then it’s just about your national duty to immediately say ok and then apologize in shame. Instead Kudrin humiliated Medvedev and revealed to all the sham authority of his faux-presidency. In fact, Medvedev should be so embarrassed that I wonder why he would want to stay on as PM when Putin re-takes the presidency next year. He just looks like a lackey. He could actually be a decent contender for the presidency in a post-Putin Russia if he can avoid the taint. Too bad, because he genuinely seems to want to change Russia for the better.

If this wasn’t enough, did anyone notice how little outrage or even comment followed Putin’s announcement he would ‘run for’ (i.e., assume) the presidency again in 2012? I get a whole bunch of daily news feeds – Foreign Policy, the Council of Foreign Relations, the New York Times, Slate, the Financial Times, etc. – and there was barely a peep from them. No outraged articles claiming that Putin has just proven Russian democracy to be a sham; no op-eds from Russia hands calling him the ‘new czar;’ no retrospective time-lines on the decline of Russian democracy from Yeltsin through today’s rigged kleptocracy. I did like this, but I really didn’t see much else from the usual suspects. Even the Economist, which I think has been (wonderfully) relentless in exposing the fraudulent, sivoliki non-democracy of the Kremlin, didn’t cough up a top-line cover story on its webpage. (Read this and this, for the minimalist, we-all-knew-this-was-coming-so-what’s-the-point-in-covering-it-that-much-anymore Economist coverage.) Like the Economist, the National Interest (which writes a lot and well on Russia, IMO) didn’t even bother with outrage or dirges for Russian democracy; instead it was just corruption-as-usual.

As with Kudrin’s insolent response to his nominal boss, this journalistic silence says a lot actually. We all have such low expectations of Russia now, that this sort of constitutional gimmickry – which would produce global headlines if it happened in a real democracy – is just written off as more of the same. We discount Russia so much, we so expect fatuous nationalist posturing and neoczarism, that no one even bothers to care. Russians should take note of this. The Kremlin is desperate for global attention and status recognition. Yet the clownish ‘bromance’ and secrecy at the top tells everyone its just more buffonery; what investor will take her cash to Russia when even the president can side-step the constitution? Russia is astonishly badly governed. Everyone knows it desperately needs to clean government, a circulation of elites, real elections, and economic diversification. This has just been delayed by another 8 years of strut, posturing, corruption, and foreign policy hijinks.

I say this with some sympathy too. I studied Russian for several years and completed summer language programs there. I had a great time, and Russia clearly has deep human capital resources from a very serious education system. But this is being squandered, and Putin has just guaranteed yet another rough, stagnant, erratic 12 years (!) for Russian consumers and foreign partners. Russia will fall further behind China; Americans will remain hostile; the much-sought visa-free travel for Russians to the EU won’t materialize. Russia’s position in the BRICS will be less and less tenable as Russia emerges more fully as a ‘oil-rentier state with nukes.’ (Helmust Schmidt once famously described the Soviet Union as ‘Upper Volta with missiles.’) This is why I scarcely even write about Russia; there’s just not that much to be said. Too bad.

Turkey’s ‘neo-Ottoman’ Rise (3): Why I am Wrong…

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This is the continuation of a Wikistrat (where I consult a bit) game scenario on Turkey’s economic and possibly military rise. Readers are counseled to start with parts one and two.

The following are responses to criticism, mostly that I didn’t flesh out the reasons why Turkey is likely to hold broadly western course:

1. Turkey’s rise unbalances the region more than I admit, and I don’t muster enough evidence.

My sense is that Turkey’s growth is pretty good, but I don’t see any particular reason that it should be labeled stratospheric or ‘neo-Ottoman’ or something like that. By the standards of a dysfunctional region – Greece, Iran, Syria, Egypt – it is great. But compared to the old and new cores, or even other middle powers, it is a middle power. Even compared to tiny Israel, Turkey is probably a generation behind in state-development, the translation of economic power into military capability, functional political parties, trustworthy courts, and the many other attributes of thick, cohesive, functional state-ness. The CIA lists Turkey’s growth in 2008 at 0.7%; 2009 at (negative) -4.7%; and 2010 at 7.3%. The IMF’s numbers are 2010: 7.8%; 2011: 3.6%. I don’t see that as revolutionary, nor justifying big rhetoric. However, if the argument is more limited, that Turkey will play a greater role in the Middle East and central Asia, I agree. The big losers will be Greece (further unbalanced competition), Israel (yet another headache) and Egypt and Iran (lost prestige as potential regional leaders).

Turkey faces tough structural constraints that do not really mark it out from other second-world risers. No talks about major Brazilian or South African shockwaves, so why is Turkey’s fairly standard modernization-developmentalist growth arc that much different? I am open-minded about this. My thinking is hardly set. I guess I am just not convinced yet.

Finally, my sense is that the tectonic plates of international politics move terribly slowly. Hence I note the stability of Turkey’s foreign policy. Really deep shifts take a long time, like East Asia’s rise, so I am not convinced that a decade or so of choppy albeit healthy growth, coupled pushy, semi-Islamist rhetoric is enough.

2. “The demographic growth in Turkey is all in populations less likely to be EU/West friendly, i.e, the eastern, more rural hinterlands. What’s Turkey’s motivation?”

I think the motivation is primarily economic. A significant turn from the West would reduce critical inward foreign direct investment flows and tourism dollars, and damage links that military and business cherish (easier visa rules; access to Wall Street, western universities, and the international financial institutions; etc.). Turkish elites are aware of this. Like most late, second world developers, Turkey needs continued access to old (West) & new (East Asia) Core dollars, markets, and technologies. This is why I originally said ‘neo-Ottoman’ rhetoric might be more justified in 20 years. For a comparison, look at Indonesia or Malaysia. They too have populations that rankle at Western dominance, want more international stature and maneuvering room, and have populist, entrepreneurial, Islamist politicians. But these tendencies have been held in check by the huge economic incentive of continuing, decent relations with OECD states. I see this in Turkey too – hence my list of institutions and relationships Turkey has retained.

Populism may work for electoral reasons, but does Turkey want to become Venezuela? Perhaps the the AKP (Justice and Welfare Party) really wants to push in this direction, but resistance from the revenue-generating (western and westernized) parts of the country would be strong. This is the counter to the eastern demographic growth you mention. Perhaps this is why Huntington referred to Turkey years ago as a ‘torn’ country. I did not think so much about the demographic evolution though. Point taken.

A second motive is national security. If Turkey drifts from the West, to whom will it go – Iran and Syria? If so, it faces balancing and isolation by some combination of Israel, the US and the EU, and possible exclusion from NATO and the WTO. I suppose Russia is a possible patron/ally/friend, but what does Russia gain? The reset is important for Russia, as well as WTO entry, and, most importantly, being perceived as a great power by the West. Siding with a semi-islamized, somewhat unpredictable ‘new Turkey’ might be useful to poke the West in the eye – certainly a Putin proclivity – but how much does it advance Russia’s great power pretension? Not much I think, but I admit this question requires more research. Next, Turkey might reach to Central Asia – hence the neo-Ottoman moniker I think. But again, how much is there to gain? Those regimes are terribly poor, with weak state apparatuses, and repressions that have alienated investors. The cost-benefit analysis of the ‘stans vs the core is quite one-sided IMO.

The best chances for a real turn would be some kind of alignment with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) against the West. This would effectively split the new core, between China and the Asian democratic periphery. In so far as China has propped up some nasty regimes for the last decade or so, a genuinely independent Turkish line that alienated the old core could still find some succor with Sino-Russian assistance. This SCO strategy strikes me as far more viable than reaching out to local ME nasties like Iran or Syria. I will admit that I haven’t thought through this likelihood, but the SCO doesn’t seem so much like a club or alliance, but just a gang united by ‘anti-hegmonism.’ I am not sure if it represents a coherent enough alternative. But this too requires more scenario thinking.

Finally, I would say that my argument flows directly from Barnett’s general core-gap analysis. I believe it fits rather well actually. Late developers’ future is with the core. The gap represents what they are leaving behind, and what they so very often, so desperately don’t want to be perceived as in the eyes of global public opinion – backward, third-world, irrelevant. Maintaining those newly emergent links to the core – its money, trade, professionalism, geopolitical clout, and general seriousness – weighs heavily in the cost-benefit analysis and motivates important domestic actors – youth, business, military – who will resist populism.

BONUS: Here is the Wall Street Journal on ‘neo-Ottomanism,’ including Erdogan’s appalling refusal to support a no fly-zone over Libya.

2011 Asia Predictions (2): Middle East, South Asia, Russia

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Russia to the World – Bite me!

 

For my 2011 East Asia predictions (predictions 1-3), try here.

Last year, I put up 2010 predictions for Asia and Korea. Last week, I evaluated those predictions. This week come my 2011 predictions. It’s a fun exercise, if only to see how bad you blow it 12 months from now…

4. The Middle East peace process will go nowhere.

Why: Ok, this is not a particularly challenging prediction. Yet, we can always hope, but my guess is our hopes will once again be dashed. There are no elections coming up which might open possible policy shifts, and none of the big players seem to be rethinking much. Indeed, everyone seems fairly comfortable with the status quo, the current mix of intransigence and inaction. Particularly the Israelis seem to be fairly comfortable with the drifting-toward-apartheid status quo. And Obama, like so many POTUS before him, seems burned out with trying to resolve this tangle. So I don’t see anything suggesting real movement by anybody. Indeed, I increasing think that the two-state solution is pretty much gone; as Pillar says, wth are the Israelis thinking? So the status quo is pretty much the future: stasis.

5. India will back off on Afghanistan to give some room for US success and less Pakistani paranoia.

Why: This prediction is a little gutsier. If India continues to intervene in Afghanistan to encircle Pakistan, then Pakistan will never properly democratize, nation-build itself, or repress its Islamist-Taliban buddies, because they will remain a tool to use against India and to control Afghanistan after we leave. My sense is that there is growing recognition of this ‘AfPak’ logic. Increasingly it is clear that the Afghan war is irresolvable without some kind of Indo-Pakistan rapprochement. That is not likely and not my prediction, but I do increasingly see the Indians talking as if they are already a great power. If so, then Pakistan isn’t that important anymore. If India is just a regional power, then Pakistan is big trouble. But if India is a great power, then Pakistan is just a sideshow. So if India is growing up as a great power – they got Obama to support a UNSC seat for them last year – then Pakistan is the past. Far more important for India is the relationship with China and America, and Indian moves to encircle Pakistan in Afghanistan ultimately harm the US and aid China (by pushing Pakistan toward China) – exactly the opposite of its preferred outcome if it is a global power. Yes, India wants to reduce and humiliate Pakistan as it has Bangladesh, but I reckon the Indians increasingly see the costs of such pointless ideological satisfactions. India cannot retake Pakistan. Even without Pakistan’s nukes in the way, an Indian reabsorption would be colossal expensive and permanently delegitimize it as a great power. In short, global India has increasingly little to gain by provoking regional Pakistan. Even Kashmir isn’t really worth it: poverty, mountains, and fanatics – why bother? India has already won the Indo-Pak competition, as just about everyone knows. Pakistan is a paranoid faux-democracy riven by militarism, religious fanaticism, and terrorism. India is none of those things, so it can just savor Pakistan’s implosion and move on. Pakistan to India today is less like East Germany to West Germany, and more like Mexico to the US.

6. Russia will stay a Corrupt Mess, and Putin will genuinely reemerge.

Why: For several years now we have all been hoping that Putin might actually recede from the spotlight, that Medvedev might actually become a meaningful figure, that law might slowly push back corruption there, etc. All this was captured by the Obama administration expression ‘the reset.’ By 2011, it is time to admit this is over. The signal moment for me last year was the open farce of the Khodorkovsky trial – rather than the various gas tricks with Eastern Europe, stomping on local NGOs, or journalist murders (awful as all that is) – because ending ‘legal nihilism’ (ie, corruption) was Medvedev’s signal political promise. Well here was the big chance to show that with just a bit of movement on the biggest court case in Russia in a decade, one the world was watching. A little restraint might have convinced people that Medvedev wasn’t wholly a marionette of the old man. Instead, as Ioffe notes, Putin didn’t even both trying to cover up the sham. If I were an investor, I’d dump my rubles today. Putin just gave Wall Street (and the West) the finger. So I predict in 2011, that it will become widely acknowledged that Putin is still the chief, that he will be yet more public in preparation for reassuming the Russian presidency in 2012, that Russo-US cooperation will therefore slide, and that Russia’s political economy will stay a black market nightmare. To be sure, these aren’t exactly gutsy predictions, but it does seem to me that 2010 was an important year regarding the direction of the Putin-Medvedev tag-team, and the year’s events clearly downgraded the latter for all the world to see. We now know that Medvedev is a joke. So in 2011, given the looming presidential election and Putin’s consequent need to reassert himself for it, Medvedev will fade to black.

Japan is an EU Country Trapped in Asia

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The Council of Foreign Relations blog, Asia Unbound, is quite good. If you don’t read it, you probably should before you read my stuff. To be sure, CFR is establishment; indeed, it is the very definition of the foreign policy establishment in the US. So it is not exactly the font of challenging new ideas. But still, they are linked into power in way that lonely academic bloggers will never be. And this week’s bit on Japan really got me thinking about how Japan is basically stuck with the American alliance indefinitely, whether they like it or not.

Recall a year ago when the LDP got whipped in the election, that there was lots of talk about how Hatoyama was going to create distance between Japan and the US, how this was a new dawn in the relationship, how the Japanese left would be so much more prickly with the US than the old boys network of the LDP. I was fairly skeptical of this at the time, and I think the recent flap with China over the islands has done a lot to confirm that skepticism.

Japan really has nowhere else to go but the US. It is stuck with us, primarily because it is geographically fixed in a neighborhood where it has no friends. And this opens all sorts of room for the US to push and bully Japan, which leads to regular Japanese outbursts that Japan needs to be independent of the US. (For the most famous, read this.) In fact, Japan is like a post-modern EU country in the wrong place. It should be comfortably ensconced in a post-national intergovernmental framework like the EU, where it could promptly forget about history and defense spending, and worry about how to care for its rapidly aging population – like Germany is morphing into ‘Greater Switzerland.’ But it’s not. Instead, Japan is trapped in modernist-nationalist-historical Asia, surrounded by states that don’t trust it and who want a lot from it that it doesn’t really want to give (historical apologies, imports, engagement, development aid, territorial compromises).

Consider that Japan, like China or Russia, has no friends or allies (save the US), and lots of semi-hostile neighbors:

Russia: Neither side has much interest in the other. There is an island dispute that has blocked normalization for decades. And, of course, Russia has been an erratic partner for just about everyone, not just Japan, since the end of the Cold War. So there is nothing to gain there.

Korea: There is also an island dispute with South Korea, over which even North Korea (!) has supported the SK position. NK kidnapped Japanese citizens in the 70s, and this has remained a permanent fixture in Japanese politics. For the North, Japan is high-up on the hit list; the North has launched missiles over it. Relations with the South are possibly even worse. S Koreans are intensely japanophic. The island dispute (Dokdo) rouses extraordinary passions here. Finally, of course, both Koreas are furious with Japan over its invasion and colonization from 1910-1945 and feel that Japan has never properly apologized.  Given how much S Korea and Japan share – democracy, concern over China’s rise, a US alliance, fear of NK, Confucian-Buddhist culture – they should should be natural allies, but Koreans will tell you with a straight face that Japan wants to invade it again. So forget that.

China: Yet another island dispute plagues the relationship from the start. And like Korea, so does history. The Japanese were even harsher in China than they were in Korea. The Rape of Nanking was brutality on par with the Nazis, and the Japanese used biological warfare against the Chinese as well. As the CFR post linked above notes, anti-Japanese street protests are becoming a regular part of Chinese politics now. A Sino-Japanese reconciliation would require astonishing, Willy Brandt-style statesmanship that the immobilist Japanese political system is wholly incapable of delivering.

Southeast Asia/India: Things get a little easier here, if only because it is further afield. But the ASEAN states too suffered under Japan in WWII, and like China and Korea, don’t feel that Japan has engaged in the appropriate historical reckoning. Only India is a possible serious Asian ally of the future because of mutual concern for China and the lack of historical-territorial problems.

Bonus problem – Economic Decline: As if this unhappy neighborhood weren’t trouble enough, add in Japan’s bizarre economic malaise. When China, Korea and the Soviet Union/Russia were a mess a generation ago, Japan could strut in Asia, but now these competitors are closing the gap while Japan stagnates. That just makes all the frictions that much harder to manage. China is so big, it can afford to miff the neighbors, but Japan no longer has this luxury.

In short, a weakening Japan so infuriates it neighborhood, that the US is all its got left. Given Japan’s paucity of options, the US has lots of room to bully and push Japan. But it must ultimately give in, because it’s position in Asia alone would be terrible – isolated, suspected, friendless. So bad is Japan’s position, that the US could effectively bring down the Hatoyama administration over something as minor as Futenma.

This is not meant to be an endorsement of US wedge politics against Japan. But it should certainly explain why its 20-year old complaint about US dominance has led to nothing, just like Gaulle’s petulant withdrawal from NATO ended in ignominy when the French finally gave up on ‘expectionalism’ and rejoined last year. It’s nice to be two oceans away from the competitions of Eurasia…

The Six-Party Talks as a Game Theoretic ‘Stag-Hunt’ (2): China Likes the Rabbit Too Much

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hackaert-stag-hunt-forest-NG829-fm

Part one of this post is here.

In the formal language of game theory (GT), here is the pay-off matrix for the hunters (SK, PRC, Japan, Russia, US) if they capture the stag (NK’s better behavior in the region):

1. SK: SK is the most obvious winner from taking the stag because NK is an existential threat to the South – both physically and constitutionally.

2. Japan: Japan is the second big winner, because the NK nuclear and missile program increasingly represent a major physical threat to its cities, and perhaps even an existential threat if the North can put enough nukes on missiles.

3. US: The US is a weaker winner, because it is far less threatened by the North directly. The big pay-off from NK change (the stag) would be the reduction in troops and other expense from keeping USFK in Korea. Another benefit would be the reduction in the post-9/11 concern for proliferation of missile and WMD technology to terrorists and rogue states. But this is still far less critical than SK and Japan’s benefit. To the US, NK is more a troublesome, throwback-from-the-Cold-War headache when it would rather concentrate on salafism and the rise China.

4. Russia: Russia has essentially no stake in Northeast Asian security, given that it has basically retrenched from the region to focus on Central Asia and Eastern Europe. However, the Six Party talks are a prestige-generator for a country desperate to still look like a great power even as its lineaments erode. So Russia doesn’t get much from the stag.

5. China: The PRC’s portion of the stag is the smallest, while its rabbit is the biggest. A more docile NK would almost certainly fall heavily under the influence of its southern twin. The more ‘southernized’ NK becomes, the less sinified it will be. (This of course is the whole point from the Korean perspective – reunification.) And the PRC almost certainly reads greater southern influence in the North as greater American influence. So the Chinese rabbit is the long-term survival of a separate NK state to act as a buffer against the democracy, American influence, liberalism, and Korean nationalism that would all flood into NK were an inter-Korean settlement (the stag) finally struck. (A friend at the Renmin University of Beijing all but says this here, and I generally find Chinese scholars will openly tell you why the PRC props up the DRPK even though the PRC’s official policy is reunification.)

What to do then? How do the other hunters get China to stop defecting and start cooperating? The most obvious way is to equalize the pay-offs more, i.e., make it more valuable for China to coordinate by increasing China’s portion of the stag. Here is where strategic restraint on the Cheonan sinking may be useful. If SK holds its fire over the incident, it may be able to ‘sell’ this restraint to China as a hitherto unrecognized benefit. The SK claim to China would be:

See how small your rabbit really is? NK is so unpredictable, so erratic, so uncontrollable, that the stag is more beneficial than you think. Without a long-term settlement, NK’s erratic behavior could eventually generate a crisis the SK population will no longer choose to overlook. Next time this happens, SK government may be forced by popular outrage into coercive retaliation that could pull everyone in northeast Asia into the vortex.

Recall in early 1991 that Israel demonstrated similar strategic restraint as Saddam Hussein shelled it with Scuds before Desert Storm. This helped convince Saddam’s Arab neighbors that Saddam really was a danger to everyone. SK might be able to do the same here.

However, this is unlikely to be enough. China will probably as for a higher concession – a promise for the removal of USFK after unification. It is not clear to me if a unified Korea would need USFK, so this may be an option to explore.

Russian Imperial Paranoia Update – Putin Thinks He’s Rambo!

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Ah, the entertaining hysteria of Russian imperial decline. A few months ago, it was Stalin battling aliens to save the world. Today, it is another machoismo photo-op by the Pootie-Poot (George W Bush’s nickname for Putin). Now he’s shirtless in Siberia. Cuttin’ brush just like W! I bet the ladies just love this sorta stuff…

I’ve written before about the psychology of resentful post-imperial Russia. Vice-President Biden basically nailed it this summer when he said the Russians were suffering from a severe postimperial “hangover,” and Philip Stevens at the FT gets it right too, that endless, tiresome Russian bitterness has made it friendless. Another FT op-ed basically tells you why 20 years after the USSR, eastern Europeans still want NATO as a bulwark against Russian neo-imperialism.

Old glories die hard – although ‘glory’ hardly defines gray, dingy Soviet imperialism – and in Russia’s case the ‘hangover’ has been more severe than normal because the fall from imperial greatness happened so fast – less than 5 years. This rapid fall followed by a consequently more extreme nationalist reaction characterized Weimar Germany too, so this is pretty worrisome actually. At least Britain had a long time to retrench from empire, so Britain’s public and elites could slowly adjust to its declining power. Even Enoch Powell, who loathed the Americans during WWII for their secret intention to break up the Empire by releasing India, came to advocate no further British commitments east of the Suez.

By contrast no figure in Russian political life speaks this way. It is competitive, macho, one-upsmanship in foreign policy. Bullying and bitterness are the order of the day, and national ideology is Weimar-esque resentment. Even as Russia is depopulating, the strut and overconfidence insecure powers require in IR now dominates Russian foreign policy. This is the route to national suicide, and given how unhelpful Russia has been for 15 years on everything from NK to Chechnya to Iran, I guess we should be ‘happy’ they’re on this kamikaze course. Still, they are one of the great cultures on the planet, having produced Dostoyevsky, Shostakovich and the rest, so it is disturbing and tragic to watch them destroy themselves. Sad…

Theorizing Russian Decline (Reviewing an IR paper for a Journal)

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A lot of what we do in IR is peer review of others work. This is a useful exercise and displaying an anonymous one on a blog is a good glimpse into what we do. This paper was written about Russian foreign policy toward Korea. For my collected thoughts on Russia, try here.

“1. The English is excellent. Most of the suggestions I made are stylistic not grammatical. Well done. I recommend however, that you follow my edits before you submit. They will make it easier for anglophone reviewers to read. Also, I think the paper is far too long for most journals. Finally, it is unclear to what kind of journal you want to submit this. It feels like you are aiming for a policy journal like the Far East Economic Review, but it is too long for that.

2. I think the paper lacks a concrete thesis to tie it together. It seemed more like a history of Russian SK foreign policy from Gorby to Putin. You introduced realism and IR theory early in the paper, but they never came back. I didn’t find much theoretical connective tissue between the sections, especially between the presidencies, nor any theoretical wrap-up at the end of the paper. I think you need to tell me a theoretical story that all this data about Russian-Korean interaction can explain. For example, the shift in Russian foreign policy toward SK from ideological opposition to pragmatic realism could illustrate the ‘normalization’ of Russian foreign policy. Most states pursue an interest-based foreign policy, but the USSR allowed ideology to dictate alliance picks. By the mid-80s that was no longer sustainable; the percent of global GDP of the Soviet alliance network was half that of the US network. The USSR was losing the Cold War. So a good IR theory story here is the corrosive effects of great power politics on foreign policy ideology. Or you could tell a story about post-imperial foreign policy. How do former empires or superpowers try to restore their influence , respect, or likeability, especially among wary neighbors? Yeltsin tried to be nice to the neighbors after 75 years of belligerence. Putin decided Yeltsin was a wimp, so he has bullied in Eastern Europe (gas-shut offs, Georgia) and spoiled in East Asia (trouble-making in the 6-party process through an informal tilt toward the North).

3. I think you are far too generous and political in your interpretation of Putin’s behavior. Putin has claimed the collapse of the USSR was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th C and that Russia needs to be a respected ‘player’ again, complete with a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and its ‘near abroad.’ This is why EE and former Soviet republics all want to join NATO. I recommend you look at the mainstream western foreign policy literature, like Foreign Affairs, the Economist, Foreign Policy, International Security, or Security Studies. I think you dramatically underrate the strategic value of Russia’s energy diplomacy, the importance of Kremlin control of Russian energy firms, the wariness of states to become Russian energy clients after Georgia, and NK’s extremely erratic behavior (and so the low likelihood of energy or rail projects involving the DPRK). Finally, you didn’t even mention the Georgian invasion. This was the first move the Russian army outside its established borders since the Afghan invasion in 1979. Then as now, the invasion has shifted western attitudes (which means SK and Japan will reconsider too). Putin looks a lot more like a revisionist with semi-hegemonic Russian nationalist aspirations in EE and Central Asia, than a pragmatist looking for investment. How much has the Russian stock market dropped since Georgia?

4. I think your evidence of Putin’s SK diplomacy is weak. Most of the projects in energy and rail you discuss are speculative, not actual, nor do you calculate the impact of the Georgian war on SK’s likelihood to proceed, nor do you account for NK’s behavior on any trans-Korean projects. Also, you don’t provide SK FDI data for the Far East region, which is purportedly the reason that Russia is reaching out to SK. Is there a huge boom of SK investment in Vladivostok or Sakhalin? I don’t believe so. SK-Russian air traffic does not reflect a huge investment boom. My understanding is that most of the investment in Russia’s maritime provinces has been under western oil company and World Bank auspices. The Russian-SK space cooperation is nice, but hardly crucial. Worse, Russian visits to NK have propped up the regime’s international profile, probably making it harder to push for a final status deal with the North. This is not mediating tension, but enabling bad behavior. Russia helped block further UN sanction after the recent missile launch. That is not mediating either, but spoiling. Informal tolerance of NK by Russia (and China) helps NK wriggle free from the punishment of UNSC sanctions, cheat on agreements like the Kaesong deal (now NK wants to change the land rents), etc. Unless the other 5 parties to the 6 party talks close ranks, NK will continue to play one off the other for a better deal. Putin is doing this for the obvious reason that he wants to make life hard for the US, which he sees as a hegemon intent on blocking Russian aspirations. So clouding the issue in Korea is useful way to needle the US and keep it off balance. I don’t believe Putin cares one bit about K unification. The DPRK is a wedge against the US, and SK is a hoped-for investor.”

Remember the Russians on D-Day

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Every five years, D-Day celebrations unnerve me a bit. The heroism and gallantry are unquestioned, but the historical significance for the course of WWII and scale of sacrifice are always exaggerated. I feel like we overcelebreate this war, because we are somewhat uncomfortable with the morality of so many others we have fought – not just Vietnam of course, but the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, or Iraq 2. Indeed I bet Americans know more about Hitler than George III. For a good examination, try here. Consider also:

1. The staggering size of the Eastern Front is too often overlooked by Americans. Estimates vary, but somewhere around 20 million Soviet citizens died fighting (or otherwise being butchered by) the Nazis. That is about 14% of the Soviet population of the time. By contrast about 200 thousand Americans died in Europe, about .15% of the US population at the time. That means 100 times as many Soviets died fighting the Nazis as Americans. Something like 70 thousand Soviet villages were torched or otherwise eradicated as the Nazis conquered around 20% of the Soviet land mass. Consider that in a one month battle at Kiev in 1941, over 600,000 Soviet soldiers were killed or captured; had anything like this happened to American ground forces in North Africa or Western Europe, the domestic cry for a separate peace would have been irresistible. Conflict on a such as scale hadn’t been seen since the high days of the Golden Horde, and the US was a late and minor participant. It dwarfs even the one US experience of massive combat on US territory – the civil war.

2. The USSR had essentially stopped the Nazi drive by the fall of 1943. Stalingrad, the turning point, was over by February of 1943 (as was El Alamein, a British victory, in late 1942). The last major German offensive around Kursk in the summer of 1943 was halted. The enormous Soviet offensive of 1944 dwarfed anything the Western allies could put on the continent that same year. This event would have proceeded without the Allied invasion. To be sure, an unknown counterfactual is how the USSR would have fared if the Wehrmacht had not been forced to prepare for a western landing. Furthermore, allied bombing obviously took its toll. But nonetheless, the FDR administration was quite content to allow the Nazi and Soviet totalitarians to exhaust each other.

3. The anglophone leadership (Canada, Britain and the US) realized by 1943, that this war, as Stalin famously said, was unlike any other in that the victor’s political ideology would imposed as far as his tanks could get. Patton knew this, which is why he wanted to drive on Berlin in 1945 and agitated to provoke a postwar conflict with the USSR while it was still exhausted. Hence, the allies waited to land. Stalin wanted a second front as early as 1942, but the English-speaking powers were content to play off-shore balancer – allowing the USSR to exhaust itself (so its postwar power would be that much weaker) and the Nazis to exhaust themselves too (so that the eventual Allied landing and eastward push would be that much easier).

This was excellent strategy. It husbanded Allied resources and allowed to two potential opponents to weaken each other. Churchill, Ike, Bradley and others were under no illusions about the brutality of Soviet governance and were willing to allow the Nazis to bleed the Soviets white. It also kept American casualties low, insuring a continued US domestic consensus to stay in the war. But this intelligent realpolitik clashes badly with the moral imperative of fighting fascism and the overtly moral way we celebrate US involvement against the Nazis. Watch Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan, and contrast that with the strategic logic of waiting to land until mid-1944 so that the western land war war would be easier and Stalin wouldn’t be able to march to the Atlantic.

4. I didn’t really realize this much until I went to Russia to learn the language and travelled around. The legacy of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ is everywhere. Everyone lost someone, and frequently in brutal circumstances Americans can’t imagine. Every Russian guide you get will tell you how Americans don’t know much about war, because we were never invaded, occupied, and exterminated. The first time I heard that, I just didn’t know what to say. You can only listen in silent horror as the guides tell you about how the SS massacred everyone with more than a grammar school degree in some village you never heard of before, or how tens of thousands of those Kiev PoWs starved or froze to death because the Wehrmacht was unprepared for such numbers and the Nazi leadership just didn’t care. Just because Stalin was awful, that does not mitigate the enormity of Soviet suffering or their contribution. Remember that the next time you hear about how America saved Europe from itself, or watch some movie lionizing the average GI, or play a video game depicting the relatively minor Battle of the Bulge as a turning point. If Speilberg really wants to make a great WWII epic, how about one about the eastern front?

“Paris would not support Tibetan independence,” or the Importance of Self-Importance in IR

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Pity Sarkozy. He leads a former great power slowly sliding into second tier status. France is stuck with: a small population, normal economy (ie, ok, but not drawing any particular positive excitement or attention), seemingly immovably high unemployment for an OECD country, a seemingly permanent domestic ‘social fracture’ of reinforcing race and class cleavages which damage France’s reputation, a tepid, inward-looking Germany that simultaneously outweighs and burdens it, a constant struggle with Amero-philic Britain and Eastern Europe, and the long shadow of the French military’s dismal record in the last 100 years. In short, outside of Europe and its near periphery, why would anyone give a d— what Sarkozy thinks?

As I was reading about Sarkozy’s embarrassing effort to get China to pretend it cares what he thinks about Tibet, it made me think about how frustrating it must be for former great powers to live with their declining relevance. Someone really needs to write this dissertation, because you could argue that French foreign policy since WWII or Russia’s since the Cold War has been primarily focused on trying to get others to take them seriously – to listen to them and accord them ‘weight’ as a ‘player.’ National glory, or rather its recognition by others, not national interest is the foremost driver of these resentful former great powers’ foreign policy. The psychology here is fascinating, because the deep aching for peer recognition, for ‘respect,’ is so obvious. I recall reading some article about how Spain, another middle power with a burden of past imperial greatness, was so desperate to get invited to the G-20 – to make the global top 20 cut – that Zapatero actually begged G Brown for an invitation.

I am trying to imagine Hu Jintao wondering why he is even listening to the French at all on East Asian questions. Who gives a hoot out here what the EU or its member states think? Honestly, no one.

It seems to me there are at least 2 good strategies to make others think you matter when you really don’t.

1. French: Bluff.

Act like you still matter and maybe you will. DeGaulle, Chirac, and Sarkozy were masters of this. Act with all the obnoxious swagger of a viceroy of New Spain or the British Raj. Go to general conferences, but have side conferences with others and make ostentatiously sure that the non-invited know you are having a meeting and they weren’t invited. Give press conferences talking about ‘core players’, ‘contact groups,’ ‘main actors,’ ‘critical relationships,’ etc. Obscure worsening power balances behind a cloud of pop-IR jargon about ‘new structures,’ ‘changing regional orders,’ ‘a revised international architecture,’ ‘dynamic forces of globalization,’ etc. When desperate, pull a Chirac and just tell rising powers to shut up.

2. Russia: Make as Much Trouble as You Can.

Crises you help keep boiling will always ensure your ‘relevance.’ Putin is a master at this. Putin’s goal is restoration not growth. Once Gorby and Yeltsin became collaborative, Russia’s ‘relevance’ declined, even as its ‘normality’ rose – a rich irony. Russian cooperation helped make Eastern Europe a happier, freer place, isolate the DPRK, tame Saddam, open Central Asia to gas export and growth, pacify the Balkans. But this Russian good behavior threatened to make Russia into something like Germany, France or Japan – a power of moderate strength with a limited ‘greatness,’ generally cooperating in liberal-minded efforts led by the US. This is what Russia should be for awhile, and it’s not so bad to be normal.

Ironically, such cooperation is in Russia’s national interest, traditionally defined. A wealthier, unified Korea might trade more with Russia (especially its backward Far East), as E Europe now can. A quieter Middle East would certainly relieve secessionist fears in Russia’s Muslim fringe. A nuclear-armed Iran is hardly in Russia’s interest, nor is a bizarre, erratic DPRK.

However, by stirring up trouble, obfuscating issues, and obstructing progress and breakthroughs, Russia maintains its importance.If Korea or Iran were solved, everyone else would promptly forget about Russian opinion. That is ultimately the great fear of the Kremlin. Russia doesn’t care a shred for about Korean unification or the Shiite awakening. Rather, as long as these issues remain unresolved, Russians will get invited to important conferences, can posture in front of TV cameras at the UN, issue foreign policy statements about Russia’s importance that will get western attention, etc. Take the Balkan example of the 1990s. Russia had no national interest at stake in the Balkan wars. There was no critical national resource or long-standing Russian interest. Nothing was going to return the Serbs, much less the other Yugoslav ethnic groups to a Russian sphere of influence. (They’d left under Tito long ago.) Russian backing of Serbia was solely to defend Russian relevance for its own sake. Orthodoxy was not the issue, but Russia’s right to be called up – to have the ‘red phone’ on its desk ring too – when the big boys work out problems. As long as the Balkans was a mess and Russia had influence with some of the actors, then the west worried about Russian opinion.

In IR we usually worry about managing rising powers. How do we integrate China, perhaps later, India and Brazil, into global rules? But the converse is pretty interesting too. How do former imperial or great powers learn to live with their diminished importance? Germany and Japan required cataclysmic defeats and humiliation to become good global citizens living within their means. But not even the full awfulness of Stalinism seems to have convinced Russia that the rest of the world would like it to play a less obstructive, tedious role.

Russian Paranoia Update: Stalin Saved the Earth from Alien Invasion

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This video takes the cake for sheer goofiness and bizarreness as a cultural marker of Russia’s decline from superpowerdom to paranoia and dysfunction. Sure American videogames have used the USSR in similarly ridiculous ways (especially the uber-campy Red Alert series), but Russia is a far more controlled society than the US. It seems reasonable to assume that video games, as media, are informally censored along with the serious press. So why not make a video game lionizing Stalin!

Just make sure you watch the trailer. Watching Stalin dance to vanilla techno will be the surreal moment of your day. Enjoy!