Not What He’s Cracked Up To Be

Between my teaching work and dissertation research, personal reading has fallen by the wayside for the most part, I’m afraid. I have started Brian Linn’s The Philippine War as part of my delayed promise to learn more about our campaign in the Philippines. Most recently, I have been reading modern Greek history books for my course on modern Greek history, and I have also been reading an 11th century monothelete Arabic treatise (translated into French) for my dissertation. Since my qualifying exams, I have generally done less reading than I used to do.

I regularly read four magazines, to which I subscribe–Chronicles, American Conservative, The Spectator and The Economist. I check Antiwar for news updates, plus Google News, BBC, the Telegraph, NYT, the Post and WSJ. I occasionally will pick up a copy of Foreign Policy, and sometimes I will read Foreign Affairs online. RealClearPolitics is a good clearinghouse for political commentary. Otherwise, I track things down by search engines based on topics. I also follow some areas more closely than others. The Caucasus is a region I am very interested in, so I make a point of following what goes on there. If you were to press me about the latest developments in, say, Cameroon, I would probably be stumped.

Mocking Ledeen would be fun, but it might be all together too easy.

I suppose it is a kind of contrarianism, in that most Western observers make it their business to hate Putin and admire Saakashvili and the like. No one I know of in the West idolises Putin or thinks that he is some clear-eyed reforming leader of a democratic revolution. Obviously, he isn’t, and neither is Saakashvili. However, many, many people think this of Saakashvili and treat the “Rose Revolution” as something genuine and legitimate. They think this in no small part simply because Saakashvili is anti-Russian and therefore a “democrat,” while Putin is a Russian nationalist and therefore obviously the next coming of Stalin. Saakashvili is a pliable ruler of a pro-American satellite government, and is therefore high-minded and good, while Putin is being cast as our enemy. There is a double standard being applied out there, but I don’t think I’m the one who’s been applying it.

The anti-Putin hysteria in this country is such that I try to offer balancing arguments to keep things in perspective, because the consequences of galloping Russophobia are far worse for us and the Russians. In many respects, they are very much alike (both play to the crowds nostalgic for the Soviet past and the “good old days” of Comrade Stalin while simultaneously deploying symbolism of their countries’ medieval and Orthodox heritages), and I have previously condemned Putin for his stupid, destructive treatment of Georgians living in Russia during the spat with Saakashvili last year. I have never made any attempt to deny the authoritarian “neo-KGB” state that Putin is building; I have taken issue with one-sided portrayals of Ukrainian and Georgian “democracy” standing up heroically to Muscovite tyrants. I have questioned the obsession of some in the media with the internal affairs of Russia, since I don’t think it is our concern and I see it as a not-so-subtle attempt to wage a PR war against Russia as a way of preparing the public for increasingly confrontational policies. We have seen it before.

Russia has an illiberal nationalist regime with many of the institutional and procedural elements of democracy, just like Ukraine and Georgia. The difference is that Westerners ignore the illiberal, nationalist elements in the latter two countries and ignore the democratic elements in the former because it suits prejudices about the kinds of people who are “pro-American.” Ukrainian and Georgian pro-Americanism, such as it is, is largely tactical and does not represent some fundamental change in the political culture of either country. I see a thoroughgoing bias against Russia designed to feed the worst tendencies in our foreign policy establishment, and it is redolent of a kind of anti-Orthodox neo-Orientalism that we last saw deployed against the Serbs. Nonetheless, I agree that Putin and Saakashvili do tend to mirror each other in the way that they rule. Saakashvili can do less because his government is much less powerful, but he is not the reforming pro-Western hero that some want to make him out to be. (Incidentally, McCain’s love of Georgian authoritarians goes back to Shevardnadze’s days, and is clearly aimed at using Georgia as a cat’s paw against Russia, which I think is very bad for Georgia and Russia and for us.)

My concern about Russia policy is that this anti-Putin hysteria will contribute to bad policy choices based out of a kind of reflexive hostility to anything Russian. Promoting Georgian membership in NATO, which Saakashvili is keen on doing and some in Washington are keen on encouraging, is just the sort of provocative, stupid policy towards Russia that needs to be fought, so glowing and positive appraisals of Saakashvili (which also happen to be false) are actually much more dangerous than attempts to try to understand Moscow’s perspective on U.S.-Russian relations.