Russia and what democracy is not

The New York Times, among other news outlets, reports that, shockingly, Vladimir Putin's "United Russia" party swept elections yesterday. These are not elections in the sense that we talk about in true democracies. Putin and the Kremlin bureaucracy worked very efficiently to hobble the opposition parties, denying them access to media, and arresting the odd challenger. While Putin has declared the elections a vote of support for him and his policies, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, limited to 330 election monitors (for the largest state by land mass in the world) to cover 100,000 polling stations by Kremlin stonewalling, has characterized the elections as deeply flawed. From the BBC:

The election "was not fair and failed to meet many OSCE and Council of Europe commitments and standards for democratic elections," the observers from the OSCE's Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly told a news conference in Moscow.

The statement criticised "abuse of administrative resources" and "media coverage strongly in favour of the ruling party".

The polls "took place in an atmosphere which seriously limited political competition" and "there was not a level political playing field", it said.

Why does this matter? Putin says democracy, Europe and the US say not. The operation of democracy is dependent on the cultural norms and practices of any given country. So maybe Russian democracy looks fundamentally different than European democracy? This type of argument cannot fly, and here is why. While it is true that the nature of democracy does vary from country to country, there must be a core aspect of the definition that needs to be defended, and publicly. There are two reasons for this:

First, democracy is a concept that has meaning. When the US or the United Kingdom or France or the UN praises the development of democracy in some country, that praise needs to have meaning. Putin, by appealing to the standard of democracy, is showing that the concept has normative power. Leaders who want to be seen as responsible and legitimate claim democratic mandate. Leaders who are clearly not part of a democratic system are delegitimized in the international system. Obviously, this is a matter of degree depending on other issues (country x has a lot of oil, therefore we care a little bit less about their democratic credentials). If we allow the concept of democracy to become so wide that almost anything that vaguely looks like an election in to the democratic club, the concept loses its normative power.

Second, identity is important. It acts a signaling mechanism to other states regarding the basic rules that a given state plays by. The labels we use...democracy, communist, totalitarian, fascist, etc, are important for communicating a set of assumptions about behavior and values. The international system is a social system, not a physical system (e.g. electrons in orbit around an atom nucleus), and these assumptions about behavior and norms are important. The leader of one state cannot know the thoughts of another leader on any given issue, and the fundamental assumptions that leaders have when they view their mutual relationship is incredibly important. It can even be so simple as predisposing a leader to think the other side will be reasonable or not, and that has significant ramifications for cooperation and conflict.

So, we should neither believe Mr. Putin's claims of democratic legitimacy nor allow them go unchallenged. Europe, India, Brazil, Argentina, the US, and the whole club of democratic nations should clearly articulate the position that the Russian elections so not represent an act of democracy, and Russia will not be recognized as a democracy. All it takes is a few pretenders to spoil the democratic party, and leaders and their citizenry need to be vigilant against those who would seek to crash the party.

Thomas Friedman has lost his mind

That's right. The venerable New York Times columnist has lost his mind. That's the only way you can explain his advice to Barak Obama to "channel Dick Cheney." I provide the relevant quote:

There is a cold war in the Middle East today between America and Iran, and until and unless it gets resolved, I see Iran using its proxies, its chess pieces — Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and the Shiite militias in Iraq — to stymie America and its allies across the region.

And that brings me back to the Obama-Cheney ticket: When it comes to how best to deal with Iran, each has half a policy — but if you actually put them together, they’d add up to an ideal U.S. strategy for Iran. Dare I say, they complete each other.

Vice President Cheney is the hawk-eating hawk, who regularly swoops down and declares that the U.S. will not permit Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Trust me, the Iranians take his threats seriously.

...

“For coercive diplomacy to work you need to be able to threaten what the regime values most — its own survival,” said the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Robert Litwak, author of the book “Regime Change.” “But for coercive diplomacy to work, you also need to be ready to take yes for an answer.”

Mr. Obama, by contrast, has “yes” down pat. As he said on “Meet the Press” last week: “I would meet directly with the leadership in Iran. I believe that we have not exhausted the diplomatic efforts that could be required to resolve some of these problems — them developing nuclear weapons, them supporting terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas.”

...

But Mr. Obama’s stress on engaging Iran, while a useful antidote to the Bush boycott policy, is not sufficient. Mr. Obama evinces little feel for generating the leverage you’d need to make such diplomacy work. When negotiating with murderous regimes like Iran’s or Syria’s, you want Tony Soprano by your side, not Big Bird. Mr. Obama’s gift for outreach would be so much more effective with a Dick Cheney standing over his right shoulder, quietly pounding a baseball bat into his palm.

Here is the problem. First, if you are going to threaten to use violence, you have to be ready to follow through on it. I'm not a firearm owner, but I've been told that if you point a weapon at another person, you must be prepared to use it should the situation require it. As I discussed previously, there is no circumstance under which the use of military force against Iran would produce a positive result for the United States. So to continue the metaphor of a firearm, informed policy makers are unwilling to use the weapon (and therefore should not point it) and those willing to use the weapon will have it blow up in their face. Second, coercive diplomacy also requires that there is a point, as the 'thumb screw' of pressure induced by increasinly urgent threats of military violence, at which the target policy makers will capitulate rather than face war. But in Iran, the leadership is strengthened by external threats of violence, not weakened. Ahmadinejad and his government knows that a full on invasion is impossible, so they do not fear for their own survival or for the survival for their state (even if they did, the example st by Iraq is probably strong enough to salve those fears). Any damage done by military strikes would be superficial, easily paid for at today's high oil prices, and would serve to rally a public that would otherwise be critical of the government behind their leaders. In this situation, coercive diplomacy would fail. Either the US will have to back down, offering a domestic coup for Ahmadinejad and further damaging US standing internationally by making it look like a bully. And Ahmadinejad would continue to do as he liked. The only way to deal with Iran is to bring international pressure to bear. That Friedman doesn't understand this, after his own mistakes in judgment in the run up to the Iraq war, is a shame. The public needs educated, thoughtful commentary on foreign issues, and there are many cases where Friedman does this, but here he is egregiously wrong.

A quote appropriate for the times: Gustave Gilbert's Nuremberg Diary

From Gilbert's Nuremberg Diary page 278 (emphasis mine):

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them to war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Changing the world with Sarah McLachlan

I thought I would mix things up a bit and have a bit of fun. As a constructivist, I believe that the world can change, for good or for bad. The system we face everyday is in fact perpetuated by us as we act within that system. To paraphrase Alex Wendt, the international system is what we make of it. In the spirit of changing the world, here is Sarah McLachlan. Enjoy!

Identity and peace in Iraq

Once again, I had planned to talk about what is happening in Pakistan, but my lovely wife is coming back from New York in quite early tomorrow morning necessitating an early rise on my part, and a fellowship application has taken up all my time today, so another abbreviated post is the order of the day. The New York Times has run a story on a neighborhood, Bab al Sheik, in Baghdad that has been spared the violence that has torn the rest of the country apart. What makes this neighborhood unique?

“All of these people grew up here together,” said Monther, a suitcase seller here. “From the time of our grandfathers, same place, same food, same everything.”

The people in Bab al Sheik have a shared identity. The know each other, have intermarried, and identify with each other. There are no 'others,' only reflections of the self. It is telling that the dynamic of Bab al Sheik has been repeated, albeit with less success, across Baghdad:

Much of today’s Baghdad sprang into existence in the 1970s, when oil nationalization drew Iraqis from all over the country to work. The city’s population more than tripled over the course of 20 years, and new neighborhoods sprawled east and west. The war and civil conflict have seemed to take a heavier toll in those areas than in some of the older neighborhoods.

In one neighborhood, Dora,

residents were from all over. That never seemed to matter until the basic rules of society fell away after the American occupation began. The only bulwark left against complete chaos was trust between families, and in Dora there was not enough.

Bab al Sheik is also characterized by moderate religious views. I suspect that there is a direct relationship between the communal identity and the moderation of religious views. It is telling that when outside extremist religious actors, both Sunni and Shia attempted to make inroads in the neighborhood, the residents threw them out. Unfortunately, moderation is not the currency of choice in Iraq, and the neighborhood stands neglected by the various parties that control the flow of money. The mosque where moderation is preached is falling into disrepair. What could the US do differently? It is too late now, but the neighborhood approach might have served the US well when it still controlled the country. By allocating resources to neighborhoods and encouraging identities tied to neighborhoods, the US may have built stronger ties between individuals and pre-emptively emphasized that aspect of their identity to head off more divisive identifications. A side benefit to this approach is that, often, as James Scott argues in Seeing Like State, it is locals who are have the on the ground knowledge to put resources to best use or know how day-to-day operations really play out. That means that reconstruction efforts may very well have, well, reconstructed, instead of the current debacle.

Thomas Friedman on Democracy and diversity

I was going to post on the situation in Pakistan, but I spent most of my time trying to get the new background graphic just right. Fortunately, Thomas Friedman has done most of my work for me. Friedman discusses the connection between social diversity and successful democracy. I provide the key quote here:

A senior French official suggested to me that maybe we in the West, rather than trying to promote democracy in the Middle East — a notion tainted by its association with the very Western powers that once colonized the region — should be focusing on promoting diversity, which has historical roots in the area.

It’s a valid point. The very essence of democracy is peaceful rotations of power, no matter whose party or tribe is in or out. But that ethic does not apply in most of the Arab-Muslim world today, where the political ethos remains “Rule or Die.” Either my group is in power or I’m dead, in prison, in exile or lying very low. But democracy is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights. If there is no culture of not simply tolerating minorities, but actually treating them with equal rights, real democracy can’t take root.

But respect for diversity is something that has to emerge from within a culture.

Friedman has a point here. The norms that underpin democracy are critical to it's successful function. The institutions we observe in a democracy are the physical manifestations of the underlying norms, and at the same time they reinforce the norms by structuring society in ways that encourage the observation of norms. The relationship between actors (individuals in society who chose to observe democratic norms) and structure (democratic institutions that inculcate and reward the observance of said norms) is what Anthony Giddens called structuration. It forms the basis of most constructivist approaches in the study of international relations. But I digress. Back to Friedman's point. What he neglects is that it is not diversity per say that inspires the requisite democratic norms. There are plenty of countries that have very limited diversity that are successful democracies (Japan, South Korea) and others that have loads of diversity but democracy is tough to come by (Russia comes to mind). What is critical is the development and acceptance, society-wide, of the norms of non-violent conflict resolution, minority rights (this might be expanded to include a basic set of human rights), transparency, and rule of law and the integration of these norms into the political structures of the state. Attempting to establish the political structures without the norms is bound to fail. the foundation is simply not there. Establishing the norms without the institutions is more likely to be successful (e.g. Gandhi), but without the establishment of supportive institutions, the norms will dies out, starved of structural support. What Friedman perhaps gets at is that pluralism of thought is required. His examples certainly seem to indicate that is his bigger point:

"The Muslim Emperor Akbar, who ruled India in the 16th century at the pinnacle of the Mughal Empire, had Christians, Hindus, Jain and Zoroastrians in his court. Many of his senior officials were Hindus. On his deathbed, Jesuit priests tried to convert him, but he refused. Here was a man who knew who he was, yet he had respect for all religions. Nehru, a Hindu and India’s first prime minister, was a great admirer of Akbar."

Akbar wasn’t just tolerant. He was embracing of other faiths and ideas, which is why his empire was probably the most powerful in Indian history. Pakistan, which has as much human talent as India, could use an Akbar. Ditto the Arab world.

The key here is intellectual diversity. The seems to be a need for an broader identity that sits over more parochial identities. A national identity that corresponds to the state would fit the bill. That national identity would facilitate the incorporation of a democratic identity. Not only does this allow individuals to see others in society as fellow democrats, abiding by the same rules, and fundamentally similar to the self, it may very well facilitate the democratic peace, but that is a topic for another day...

US military loses track of weapons in Iraq

A report today in the New York Times details the problems in the weapons supply chain in Iraq. The end result is that thousands of weapons went are unaccounted for. Probably a bad thing in a country with a violence problem.

International Relations resource of the day

In what I hope to be an ongoing project to popularize the world of online international relations resources, I give you the granddaddy of them all:

The CIA World Factbook

Developed as a resource for State Department and CIA, there is an overview of every country in here, along with pertinent economic, political, and geographic data. Not terribly useful as a citation, but great if you want to know about a country I or someone else refers to that you may not know much about.

Redacted by Brian De Palma in Theaters

What looks to be a very powerful film is out in theaters in the US on November 16th. If I was there, I would be in line to see it. I'm sure going to make a point of seeing it when I get back.

PBS Frontline on Extraordinary Rendition

The excellent PBS investigative series Frontline has a story on the extraordinary rendition program. Towards the end of the piece you'll see a former FBI official making the same point I made regarding the problems of poor prisoner treatment.

American Torture

Today's Washington Post includes a report of testimony by a former Navy survival instructor that waterboarding is torture with a long history of use by unsavory regimes, including Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, North Korea, and the Soviet Union. The article marks another salvo in the debate over the definition of torture and whether the US practices it. Some, as a friend of mine recently argued, hold that liberals and Democrats have lowered the torture benchmark to ridiculous levels. Concerns on the other side of the spectrum led to Michael Murkasey receiving the lowest successful confirmation vote in fifty years after he failed to indicate that waterboarding is torture.

While the debate is an important one, from an international relations perspective, it is pointless. By quibbling the fine points of torture, the big picture regarding the impact on US efforts to deal with terrorism, and operate in the international system more generally, is lost. From the outside, poor treatment of prisoners, regardless of whether it is torture or not, is bad enough to stain the image of the United States as the standard bearer of human and civil rights. The counterargument is that the US is engaged in a 'War on Terror' and unpleasant things happen in war. There are a number of objections to this rationalization. The one I want to focus on leads us to the importance of ideas in conflict, and how they are critical to success. While unpleasant things do happen in war, that rationalization is generally applied to events that take place in the heat of battle, not behavior of the field in detention centers. In those circumstances, the fog of war is missing as is the surge of emotion that impairs judgment in battle. Those who see themselves at war with the US, and would seek to convert others to the same perspective, are able to use this distinction to great effect. The poor treatment of prisoners in US custody is a result of policy, not circumstance. What do I mean by poor treatment? Treatment in violation of the rights the US has traditionally espoused: rule of law, habeas corpus, humane treatment, human rights. By treating prisoners in contrast with these values, the US empowers the ideological stand of those who would seek to do it harm.

Critics would argue that this is a war, and our top priority should be killing the enemy, not worrying about whether our treatment of prisoners degrades the idea of the United States. Plainly put, the critics are wrong. Since the end of end of feudalism and the rise of nationalism, ideas have been critically important for success in war. The nation-state that soldiers fight and die for is an idea. Sure, there are physical manifestations of the state, but as Benedict Anderson argues, fundamentally the nation-state is a figment of our collective imagination. It is an idea. The wars that dominated Europe did not die until, confronted by the horrors of modern warfare, political leaders refashioned their national identities in ways that made their mutual existence compatible. Rather than seeing each other as enemies, they came to see each other as part of a larger self, united by a common set of ideas. I will go so far as to argue that no military conflict in the last 100 years, and quite possibly longer, has been resolved by military force alone. The Cold War? Robert English's outstanding work on the collapse of the Cold War shows the power of the idea of the West. It was this idea, not the military force of NATO, that convinced Gorbachev to the implement reforms that would eventually spin out his control. Not surprisingly, George Kennan's anticipated the importance of ideas when he argued for containment, over rollback, in his 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" Vietnam? The US lost not due to military inferiority, but instead its inability to give the South Vietnamese a idea of the world that they could buy into. No doubt this had something to do with US support for oppressive South Vietnamese leaders. The current situation in Iraq is directly attributable to the failure of the United States to demonstrate that the worldview it offered was superior to that presented by sectarian groups. It may very well be that the task was impossible, in no small part due to the power of religious, rather than national, identity, but the chaos and negligence that accompanied the US invasion marred the idea of democracy the US was trying to sell.

Back to terrorism. Killing all the terrorists is impossible. No doubt that military, or at least police action, is a necessary component of the solution to terrorism, but it is at best coequal with ideas. Unless the US can sell the idea of America (not to be confused with selling US policies, which is simply propaganda) the US is bound to fail in its efforts to deal with terrorism. Terrorism is fundamentally grounded in the idea that the world status quo is unfair and oppressive, and the only way to remedy this is violence. To use a popular culture reference, Christian Bale (as Batman) in Batman Begins reminds us that ideas cannot be killed. The poor treatment of prisoners diminishes the power of the American idea, and it is only the American idea that can assault the terrorism idea. In effect, the US is taking its most powerful weapons against terrorists off the battlefield, or even turning them against itself. Sacrificing the ideals that define America on the alter of the 'War of Terrorism' only assures that the battle will be lost.

What to do? The answer is really quite simple: treat prisoners of war as prisoners of war. Afford them their due rights, including an open, fair trial. Return to the ideals of fair, humane treatment and rule of law that the US has championed. There are examples of this approach working. Indonesia, an overwhelmingly Muslim country, has had tremendous success with public trials of terrorists. More importantly, it shows that the the ideals of the US are stronger than the ideals of terrorism. Fair treatment of prisoners in line with existing laws and conventions will serve to enhance the only real weapon we have that can stop terrorism. Debates over what constitutes torture distract us from the bigger picture and undermine the American ideal.

Iran and Nuclear Weapons

I thought, for my first post in the Blogosphere, I would tackle the crisis du jour, the conflict with Iran over its possible development of nuclear weapons. That NBC (Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical, not the television network) weapons proliferation is not a great idea is a well established concept. While some, notably Kenneth Waltz, argue that more nuclear weapons would make the world more stable (since no one would want to start a war that might escalate), the work by Scott Sagan at Stanford on the difficulties of controlling nuclear weapons, including preventing accidents, outweighs any possible peaceful stabilizing effects. So, we arrive at the somewhat commonsensical conclusion that the spread of nuclear weapons is a bad thing, hence the uproar over Iran's nuclear weapons.

The United States, in the form of is principle foreign policy maker President George Bush, has warned of dire consequences if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, including World War III. To this end the Bush Administration has taken a very aggressive stance towards Iran, its rhetoric increasing volatile. Is this likely to be a fruitful approach? IAEA Director ElBaradei has expressed reservations with the belligerent approach. His caution is well placed. The aggression of the Bush Administration is unlikely to produce an Iran amenable to discussing the issue, much less providing greater cooperation. Why? Lets start with the Iranian national identity as the lens through which it views the world. Today, over fifty years after the US and British governments helped overthrow Iran's rightfully elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and installed a fairly repressive leader in the figure of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian public carries a very strong resentment of the United States. There is, justifiably, a sense that Iran has historically been a victim of Western powers. No doubt this ties in strongly to the victimization theme in Shi'a Islam. The Iranian government has fostered this 'us versus the world' mentality and the demonization of the West in particular that it requires. The most obvious sign of this policy is the inclusion of "death to America" in the weekly Friday prayers. Politically, the current Iranian government has grown to rely on the victim identity in Iranian society for its legitimacy. With respect to the standard foundations of governing legitimacy like economic performance, provision of services, and in general being agreeable to society's needs, the government is in a weak position. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done a fairly poor job managing Iran's economy, and the crackdown on social liberties under his regime has not gone down well with the large under 30 population. To support itself, the government must rely on an external enemy to key into the victim identity and justify its continued hold on power. Viewed from this perspective, the belligerence of the Bush Administration will only serve to reinforce the government and its nuclear policy. By offering itself up as a the bogeyman on the nuclear issue, the United States virtually guarantees an end result that no one finds beneficial. Indeed, from a domestic political point of view, Ahmadinejad has no choice but to continue, and even escalate, the confrontation. If he doesn't, odds are someone will be elected who will. Backing Iran into a corner will not work.

What are our options? The foreign policy crowd that sees military options as preferable are agitating for a military strike in the form of bombing known Iranian nuclear facilities. This is so unlikely to be successful as to beggar the imagination. First, the known sites may not be the extent of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Second, the nuclear genie is out of the bottle in Iran. The knowledge of how to produce the nuclear cycle to this point is already known, and bombing will do nothing to destroy that. Advocates for the military option argue it will buy the world time to figure out a solution to the crisis. They are wrong. Bombing the facilities may buy time, but doing so will ensure that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon. Bombing the facilities will empower Ahmadinejad and like-minded politicians, who will build their political credibility on standing up to Western, read US, bullies and developing nuclear weapons will serve as proof that Iran cannot be bullied and a source of pride as Iran joins the international 'big boys' and sticks it to the West. Ahmadinejad and those like him are what Jacques Hymans calls oppositional nationalists. These leaders see themselves as equal or superior to relevant ‘others’ (pride) and see the relationship as zero sum, us against them (fear). This combination drives these leaders to develop nuclear weapons capabilities. The threat posed by relevant others makes the weapons necessary while the pride of nationalism leads these leaders to believe the weapons can be controlled (contra Sagan’s organizational arguments that weapons are difficult to control) and that the ramifications of obtaining the bomb can be managed.

What can be done? The only option open to the US is unconditional talks with Ahmadinejad. Conditional talks can be played domestically as further efforts to bully Iran, and Ahmadinejad will reject them, as he has to this point. The US will have to be clear, offering Iran a path into the mainstream of the international system: normalized relations with the US, security guarantees, and possible membership in the WTO. In return, the US asks for concessions on the nuclear program and security guarantees vis-a-vis Israel. The US is going to have to act as though it is not in a position of power, because it isn't. Iran will have to be treated as an equal in private, but especially in public, if the victim identity and political power it provides to Ahmadinejad is to be disarmed. For the morality play aspect of the story, it should be noted that the US was in a position of power (soft and hard) in the aftermath of the September 11th, 2001 attacks. As Frontline reports, for the first time since the 1979 revolution, the 'death to America' message at Friday prayers was suspended. Iran actively helped the US in Afghanistan, both in overthrowing the Taliban and in getting Afghan president Hamid Karzai elected. In the immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion, the reformist government submitted a deal to the US, trading nuclear program openness for security guarantees. It was essentially everything the US now wants from Iran. In its post-invasion hubris, the Bush Administration never even responded to the offer. The reformists lost power, Ahmadinejad moved in, and now we have the Iran nuclear crisis, one of our own making...