Ivan Krastev: Footnote

Do you remember the White Queen from Alice in Wonderland teaching herself to believe six impossible things before breakfast? Think of that as the closest you’ll get to the logic of European and American policymakers today. At least that’s my impression after reading Ron Asmus’s new book, A Little War that Shook the World. The book offers a sharp, controversial, and powerfully argued analysis both of the events and decisions that led to the Russo-Georgian war, and of the way it ended. It has already provoke heated debates in Europe and the US, drawing both ardent supporters and angry critics.

Asmus argues that Georgia was trapped in a war it did not provoke (readers are entitled to disagree). He is convinced that in its nature the Russo-Georgia war was the Kremlin’s rebellion against the post–Cold War European security system that Moscow sees as tilted against its interests. As Asmus puts it, “Tbilisi became the whipping boy for Russian resentment against the US and NATO.” In explaining not the whys but the hows of the actual war, Asmus asserts that the West’s push for Kosovo’s independence without a plan for mitigating the possible fallout in Georgia and the destructively ambiguous message that came from NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit (Ukraine and Georgia were promised membership but they were denied a Membership Action Plan) almost predetermined the timing of the war.

You can agree or disagree with Asmus’s conclusions—my personal interpretation differs from his—but what is striking for any reader of Asmus’s thoroughly researched analysis of the West’s reasoning before and during the war is the extent to which NATO policymakers misread the intentions of both their allies and their opponents in the region. The West bet that Moscow would back Kosovo’s independence in the UN Security Council. The expectation was that the Kremlin was planning to trade its support for some other political goodies closer to its heart. This turned out to be a false expectation. Kosovo did not matter much geopolitically for the Russians, but it was of great symbolic importance for the Kremlin, so Moscow blocked the Kosovo independence at the UN. Western policymakers were sure that Russia had no interest in conflict in the Caucasus and that the Kremlin would never recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, thus creating a precedent that could fuel Chechnya’s aspirations for independence. This judgment proved to be wrong too. By recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia the Kremlin was taking a risk, but the Russian leadership was ready to take any risk so long as they wouldn’t be seen as weak and irrelevant.

The extent to which Western policymakers misread their allies in the region was striking too. The political dynamics in the post-Soviet space cannot be reduced to a clash between democracy and authoritarianism, between pro-Western and pro-Russian forces. Calling Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili a model democrat is like calling the singer Madonna a model for the Holy Mother. The political processes in the region cannot be explained as a clash between the white knights of democracy and the dark forces of authoritarianism. State-building—not democracy-building—was the major objective in the first decades of post-Soviet transitions. The elites in these republics used all available resources—and performed unthinkable geopolitical zigzags—to survive as they consolidated their fragile states. They adopted Tito-style policies, trying to use the tensions between East and West to stabilize their countries. In this respect, the authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko is not very different from the democrat Yulia Tymoshenko. So, it should not come as a surprise that for Saakashvili regaining Georgia’s territorial integrity was the prime goal of his government, and that he was very selective in listening to Western advice.

So, why such a failure of judgment on the side of the NATO toward both Russia and Georgia?

There are three major factors explaining Brussels’ consistent misinterpretation of the intentions and the rationales of the main players in this crisis. The first has to do with the fact that Americans—and, to an even greater extent, Europeans—cannot make themselves believe that somebody can seriously consider their actions as a threat. They are so convinced of their own benevolence that any Russian claims of a security threat coming from the West are disregarded as a bluff.

The second factor is the universalization of the experience of 1990s, and particularly the universalization of the Eastern European experience. The wars in the Bulkans and the EU enlargement are the formative experiences for the current generation of Western decisionmakers, so unsurprisingly they tend to that “democratization” and “Europeanization” as the only two processes worth pursuing. As a result there are now a lot of experts on the “democratization of Georgia” who are not necessary experts on what is going on in Georgia.

The third reason is that the process of foreign policy decisionmaking in both the US and the EU creates the impression of pluralism and a diversity of views without actually delivering either. The fact that different national perspectives feed into constant consultations does not necessarily mean that what happens is not, in fact, a classic example of group think.

So, if there is one bit of advice that Western decisionmakers should heed, it is this: Get curious.

In the week of the Icelandic ash I found myself stuck in St. Petersburg. Being a volcano exile in Russia proved to be an enlightening experience—my local Russian contacts were friendly, but little capable of dealing with the extraordinary situation. And no wonder—their transportation system was pure hell. When I figured out that I could fly from St. Petersburg to Sofia via Moscow, I was shocked to learn that in the era of electronic air-ticketing it was impossible to get my Moscow-Sofia ticket at the airport in St. Petersburg—I had to purchase it at the Sheremetjevo airport in Moscow, with the risk of missing the only connection that could bring me home.

What was even more surprising was that Russians themselves were not scandalized by the unfriendliness and inefficiency of their transportation system. They seemed rather used to it. Here came my enlightenment—it struck me that if we can understand why Russians were not outraged, why they do nothing to change the existing rules of transportation, which make them waste their time in senseless queues, we can gain insight into the sources of the stability of Putin’s regime.

Almost 40 years ago the economist Albert Hirschman (one of my intellectual heroes) in his little and brilliant book Exit, Voice and Loyalty explained why Nigerian railways had performed so poorly in the face of competition from trucks and buses. In his interpretation,

The presence of a ready alternative to rail transport makes it less, rather than more, likely that the weaknesses of the railways will be fought rather than indulged. With truck and bus transportation available, a deterioration in the truck service is not so serious a matter as if the railways held a monopoly for long distance transport­—it can be lived with for a long time without arousing strong public pressures for . . . reforms in administration and management that are required. This may be the reason public enterprise has strangely been at its weakest in sectors such as transport and education where it is a subject of competition: instead of stimulating improved performance, the presence of ready and satisfactory substitutes for the services public enterprise offers merely deprives it of a precious feedback mechanism that operates at its best when the customers are securely locked in. For the management of the public enterprise, always fairly confident that it will not be let down by the national treasury, may be less sensitive to the loss of revenue due to the switch of customers to a competing mode than to the protests of an aroused public that has a vital stake in the service, has no alternative, and will therefore “raise hell.”

Hirschman’s explanation for why Nigerian railways had performed so poorly in the face of competition from trucks and buses made me understand the failure of reforms and the resulting loss of reform spirit in Russia. Paradoxically, it is the opening of the borders and the opportunity to live and work abroad that has led to the decline of political reformism.

People who are most concerned about the decline of the quality of governance in Russia are the ones who are most ready to leave the country. For them, changing the country in which they live is easier than reforming it. Why try to turn Russia into Germany, when firstly there is no guarantee that a lifetime is enough for that mission, and moreover, you can simply move to work in Germany. The opinion polls demonstrate that Russia’s middle class prefers to work abroad and to come to Russia during the holidays to see their friends and relatives.

Comparing the outburst of reformist energy in the 1980s with the lack of such energy now makes me believe that while it was the sealing of the borders that destroyed Soviet communism, it is the openness of its borders that helps the new Russian authoritarianism to survive. The Soviet system locked its citizens in—changing the system was the only way to change your life. Today’s Russia very much resembles the Nigerian railways—it will remain inefficient as long as there is enough oil money to compensate for the inefficiency. And the major reason why people there do not protest is not fear, it is the fact that the people who cared most have already left the country or have decided to do that in the near future, so there is no critical mass of people demanding change.

Today, both Russia and Poland are colored by tragedy. At the end of March, a terrorist bombing in the Moscow metro killed 39 innocent people and injured many more. At the beginning of April—the first Sunday after Easter—a plane crash killed the cream of the Polish political elite: President Lech Kaczynski, the chief of the general staff, senior members of the government, members of Parliament, generals, intellectuals. The president’s delegation was travelling to Katyn, where, 70 years ago, Stalin massacred more than 20,000 of Poland’s best and brightest officers, professors, and doctors in an attempt to break the Polish nation. The plane crash in Smolensk is one of those events that is best reported by poets, not by journalists.

The difference in the public response to the two tragedies, however, stands as a strong narrative on the state of the two nations: The reaction of the Russians showed that Russia is a society shaped by mistrust and lack of solidarity; the reaction in Poland was the triumph of national unity.

On the day of the blast in Moscow, Prime Minister Putin and the Russian patriarch denounced the taxi drivers who were cashing in on human grief. “I have just been told,” said the patriarch, “that taxi drivers have raised their prices several times just because people are unable to use the metro. This money will not make you any good.” In the day after the tragedy in Smolensk, Poland proved to be a nation of solidarity. While President Kaczynski was a divisive figure in Polish politics when he was alive, at the moment his plane crashed, the nation united and mourned. It was the eternal Poland that filled the streets of Warsaw to greet Kaczynski’s coffin.

It is now difficult to predict what effect the president’s death will have on Polish politics and on Polish-Russian relations. The symbolism of this death is so big that conspiracy theories are doomed to flourish. One of Russia’s sharpest critics and his most able generals died at the very place where the Polish elite was slaughtered 70 years ago. The KGB looms in Polish public imagination, and it will be difficult to bury the suspicions. But not every tragedy is a crime, and not every death is a murder.

The tragedy in Smolensk is a great opportunity for Russia and Poland to start at the beginning and strive for a genuine and deep reconciliation. It is one of those pivotal moments that can bring out the best or worst in a national leader.

Two people today can make Russian-Polish reconciliation a reality—Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (the ex-KGB colonel who should not only find the courage to tell the whole truth about Katyn, but should also apologize to the Polish people) and Joroslaw Kaczynski (the brother of the perished president and his political successor who should find the wisdom to accept the apology). Russian-Polish relations can be saved or buried in Katyn—it is up to these two men to decide.

One cannot easily imagine Putin playing the role that Willy Brandt played in the post-war reconciliation of Europe, but now is his moment to try.     

The critique of Obama always has been that he is soft. He smiles to the Russians, bows to the Japanese, agrees with the Chinese, and even wants to talk to the Iranians. Many Republicans started asking themselves: Is something wrong with the President, does he know that international politics is not a global cocktail party? And suddenly Obama “toughened.” He played tough in winning his health care reform, and then he played tough against Israel after the humiliation of Vice President Joe Biden’s response to the Israeli government’s housing development in East Jerusalem. Obama’s exercise of toughness was in the best tradition of “know your place” politics that Republicans are so fond of. Here is how the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph described Obama’s exercise of “tough love” for Israeli government.   

"Benjamin Netanyahu was left to stew in a White House meeting room for over an hour after President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of tense talks to have supper with his family, it emerged on Thursday. … (Mr. Obama) immediately presented Mr. Netanyahu with a list of 13 demands designed both to end the feud with his administration and to build Palestinian confidence ahead of the resumption of peace talks. Key among those demands was a previously-made call to halt all new settlement construction in East Jerusalem.

When the Israeli prime minister stalled, Mr. Obama rose from his seat declaring: 'I’m going to the residential wing to have dinner with Michelle and the girls.' As he left, Mr. Netanyahu was told to consider the error of his ways. 'I’m still around,' Mr. Obama was quoted by Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper to have said. 'Let me know if there is anything new.'"

It was power politics at its best: Cold, humiliating, threatening, and leaving the other side to face the consequences of defying American interests and policies. It is not by accident that in the Middle East the common wisdom is that Americans make you an offer you cannot refuse, while Europeans make you an offer you cannot understand.

So, now Obama’s Republican critics should feel better. The American president has demonstrated that he can be tough, arrogant, and uncompromising when it is needed. No one would dare to humiliate an American vice president without paying a high price for it any more. Obama’s Republican critics, however, did not feel that way. On the contrary, among conservatives, Obama’s treatment of Netanyahu fueled almost as much anti-Obama sentiment as his “socialist” health care reform did.

But why are the Republicans angry when the American president has demonstrated that nobody should mess with America?

It is easy to say that the Republicans’ attack on Obama simply reflects policy differences. There are differences in politics for sure, but Joe Klein from Time magazine is right when he writes:

“the anti-Israel activity by the Obama administration is merely an insistence that Israel comply with conditions that the entire world, including the administration of George W. Bush, has assumed were mandatory before peace talks begin.”

It is also easy to say that since the emergence of the Tea Party movement Republicans are permanently angry. The recently discovered property of “tea” to provoke anger and resentment on the right can be compared only with the effect of LSD on the imagination of the American far left in the 1960s. Tea and policies aside, there is a fundamental difference in the meaning of toughness that separates Republicans and Democrats.

The Republicans are of the opinion that “toughness” is for the enemy. A strong leader is the one who would take the side of his boy right or wrong. Being tough on your friends is a sign of weakness, and it only means you are pleasing your adversaries.

Obama is of the opinion that really tough guys are tough on themselves and their friends first. It is the only way to gain the respect of the opponent. The Western narrative is replaced with a Romantic one.

For Republicans, “pressing” your allies is a sign of weakness.  For Obama, “pressing” Israel is a sign of the ultimate strength, keeping in mind the public’s pro-Israeli sentiments.

The Republicans’ anger is best captured in the latest issue of The Weekly Standard in which William Kristol writes: “Obama aspires to be a leader of humanity, not merely a President of a single state.” But the logical question is: Can a country whose president aspires to be merely president of the state, be a global leader?  

The second Russia-Georgia war that President Saakashvili lost lasted only 30 minutes and allegedly took only two victims (both died of heart attacks). What was destroyed this time was not Georgia’s infrastructure, but the political credibility of its government.

The facts on the ground are not contested. On March 13, the staunchly pro-government Imedi television channel aired a fake news report claiming that Russian tanks had crossed into Georgia and were headed toward Tbilisi. The “report” also said that Saakashvili had been killed and that some opposition leaders—including former parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze and former Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli—had betrayed their country and sided with Moscow. The report, which aimed to discredit the opposition two months ahead of the regional elections, caused widespread panic in Georgia, still jittery less than two years after Russian forces staged a real invasion of the country in August 2008. Cell-phone networks were overloaded as nervous residents attempted to reach family, and emergency services reported a rise in heart attacks. Sensing the public anger, most Georgian government officials have sharply criticized the Imedi program. But few doubted that it was President Saakashvili—and not Orson Welles—who was the inspiration behind it. Imedi television is owned by Saakashvili’s former economic minister and close ally, Giorgi Arveladze—and those knowledgeable about how government media relations work in Georgia today find it unthinkable that the president was not warned in advance about the release of a program of such political importance. The president’s opponents go as far as to assert that the very idea of the program is a product of Saakashvili’s “dark imagination.”

Unsurprisingly, Imedi officials declared themselves innocent, insisting that what they wanted was to show Georgians what “the worst day in their history would look like.” Instead, Georgians saw how manipulative their government was. Rather than helping those in power, the program hurt them.

Russia seized the opportunity and accused Tbilisi for an attempt to de-stabilize the region. Western ambassadors officially protested against the fact that their statements have been used in the program out of context. The opposition called for protests and impeachment of the president. The public was angry. The “invasion hoax” confirmed the worst fears that many Western politicians held against the Georgian leader and his version of democratic governance.

In portraying the opposition leaders (his former allies from the days of the Rose Revolution) as a bunch of Russian agents, whose only dream is to betray their country, Saakashvili does not look any different than his arch-enemy, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who, on the eve of the last parliamentary elections, accused Russia’s democratic opposition of being paid by Western embassies. It is sad to observe that while the protagonists of the democratic Rose Revolution are still in power in Tbilisi, Georgia’s democracy looks today even grimmer than Ukraine’s, where the Orange forces lost the presidential elections.

The West now is seriously concerned that in his ambition to reverse the outcomes of the 2008 war and to prevent the final loss of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, President Saakashvili is looking for a new crisis that can provoke a clash between Russia and the West in the Caucasus. Fear of normalization is becoming a major characteristic of Saakashvili’s politics, and many friends of Georgia are starting to worry that the trust of the West in the Georgian leadership has reached its lowest point.

A week after Imedi’s invasion report broadcasted, Saakashvili looks exactly as Moscow has always wanted him to look: ruthless, irresponsible, and paranoid. Not a Commander in Chief, but a Gambler in Chief.

And after March 13, there are fewer and fewer reasons for the West to continue working with Saakashvili, the primary one being to spoil Putin’s pleasure to have him “hanged by his balls.”

So, here is a lesson for the Gambler in Chief: While sometimes it makes sense to raise the stakes, never overplay your hand!