The lighter side of secessionism

There has been plenty of serious discussion from all quarters - not to mention overblown posturing from some - about Kosovo's declaration of independence. Heck, even here at Scraps of Moscow I have been unable to resist posting on the subject from time to time (though not because it should necessarily have any relevance or precedential value for the resolution of the other unresolved conflicts). But there is also a lighter side to the struggle of unrecognized states, de facto states, microstates and other secessionist entities for legitimacy.

For example, shortly after Kosovo's "UDI," snarky DC gossip site Wonkette - in a tongue-in-cheek style which was intended to ape American provincialism but really just confirms a sort of knowing indifference which may be worse than ignorance - posted a rundown of the other spots on the globe vying to be next:

The Foreigns Present: Your Guide To The Hellholes

Those crazy Kosovars! Their little declaration of independence has caused quite the shitstorm — not just among the great powers who are wrangling over whether to recognize them or not, but among the world’s other pissant quasi-countries, who are mad that they didn’t get to do it first....This week, The Foreigns will take you on a tour of the world’s saddest unrecognized not-countries.

The territories profiled were "TRANSNISTRIA: Come for the heroin, stay for the whores"; "NORTHERN CYPRUS: Maybe this 'independence' thing wasn’t such a hot idea"; "SOMALILAND: Proving that 'hellhole' is a relative term"; "ABKHAZIA AND SOUTH OSSETIA: Sometimes pawns are just happy to be in the game"; and "WESTERN SAHARA FREE ZONE: Sand, sand sand!"

The highlights of the comments section:

Bill Clinton: "Transnistria? I think I caught that from a New Orleans hooker once."

And:

"because nothing could possibly go wrong for you when your enormous neighbor is playing games with your sovereignty for its own larger geopolitical purposes!"

Huh. I have that EXACT phrase on my license plate holder.

But the real impetus for this rundown was not a month-and-a-half-old Wonkette post. No, it was my good fortune in happening upon a hilarious episode of Family Guy entitled E Peterbus Unum. Here is Wikipedia's plot synopsis:

Peter declares his house to be the new microstate of "Petoria." He spends a night in Quahog insulting Horace (at The Druken Clan) and bringing beer out into the streets, stepping on grass that can't be touched, and violating numerous laws such as littering, sexual harassment, and vandalism. He flaunts his diplomatic immunity by singing a parody of MC Hammer's song "U Can't Touch This" and mentions that he can’t be sued by Hammer.

Snubbed at the United Nations, Peter follows the advice of a diplomat from Iraq and annexes Joe's pool, calling it "Joe-hio." Days later, when Chris tries to go to school, he is turned away because the US Army surrounds and blockades the nation of Petoria with tanks and missiles as part of "Operation: Desert Clam." Further, all electricity and water has been cut and Lois home schools the kids.

Sadly, this is not one of the few Family Guy episodes that have been made available on the TV companies' new video site Hulu. But you can watch MC Hammer parody, "U Can't Touch Me," on YouTube, at least for now:

The idea of being "untouchable" - more commonly known as immunity - as well as a general bad-ass complex, seems like it could be common among the leaders of would-be states. The Family Guy parody calls to mind a story I heard from someone who'd had occasion to meet with Igor Smirnov, the de facto leader of Transnistria. Apparently Smirnov keeps a safe full of gold coins in his office, and when he wants to convince his interlocutor of the fact that he is both independent of Russia and not susceptible to Western inducements, he shows off his hoard.

The last bit of comic relief I wanted to share is about Kosovo, from a Wall Street Journal article last week:

Freedom's Ring: Kosovo Covets A Dialing Code

By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS
March 27, 2008; Page A1

Kosovo, which a month ago declared independence from Serbia, is working on a constitution. One problem: On the front page of the latest draft, the government phone number is Serbian.

....Kosovo has a problem, because it isn't a member of the U.N., and only countries that are can get their own dialing codes. So, land-line calls into Kosovo still must use the exchange, +381, of a group that many Kosovars detest: the Serbs.

"Every country's independence rests on certain pillars," says Anton Berisha, chief telecom regulator of Kosovo, a land of two million a little larger than Delaware. "One of them is a country dialing code."

Matters so mundane aren't usually considered the stuff of patriotic fervor. But in Kosovo during the past tumultuous decade, the battle for telephone autonomy has led to the ouster of the head of a telecom company, the dismantling of cell towers built by a Serbian company and two assassination attempts, one using a rocket launcher.

"I was not prepared for this kind of debate," says Mr. Berisha, the target of both attacks, which occurred last year. He now travels only with police escort.

In fact, dialing codes have figured in nationalist movements before, from the Palestinian territories and Taiwan to Catalonia and Sudan. "Even if it doesn't make sense, people are attaching more weight to having a dialing code," says Richard Hill, whose duties include distributing dialing codes as an official at a U.N. body in Geneva, the International Telecommunication Union, or ITU.

For those of a nationalistic bent, Mr. Hill says, a dialing code can be as meaningful as a flag, a national anthem or a team in the Olympics. He declines to comment on the Kosovo situation.

Without permission from the ITU, the Palestinian phone company has struck agreements with phone companies in sympathetic Arab countries to connect calls through the Palestinian company's unofficial code, +970. Previously, calls to the Palestinian territories connected only through the Israeli dialing code, +972, which is still used by callers from many Western countries.

As for Taiwan, as it emerged as an economic power in the 1980s, it began using an unassigned calling code, +886. Taiwan, too, persuaded some foreign phone companies to send along calls with the number it preferred. The move defied China, which has long claimed Taiwan and had assigned it a regional phone prefix as a Chinese province. After years of negotiations, the ITU in 2006 officially assigned the +886 exchange to Taiwan, while still listing the island as part of China.

Foreign Exchange

Dialing codes carried little of this political baggage in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they first grew in use and became standardized, according to Mark Cuccia, a retired library worker in Lafayette, La., who tracks phone numbers as a hobby. Creating a single list of dialing codes made it easier for international operators to connect calls, since countries often had unique phone systems.

In the 1990s, political events turned dialing codes "into a big phenomenon," Mr. Cuccia says.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early '90s led to a scramble for dialing codes by new states eager to underscore their independence. Tiny European states like Andorra and Liechtenstein, which had long shared the dialing codes of their bigger neighbors, felt compelled to get their own codes, too. Just last year, Montenegro, a former Yugoslav republic that's now independent, was granted +382.

The struggle for a Kosovo dialing code dates to as early as 1999. Bombing led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had just expelled Serb forces from Kosovo -- then a Serbian province -- and placed Kosovo under U.N. supervision.

The U.N. mission ousted the head of the Kosovo telecom operator after he bitterly opposed awarding a mobile-phone license to Monaco Telecom. His problem: Although the Monaco company had essential international roaming agreements, using the company would mean using Monaco's dialing code.

The disgruntled chief of the local telecom operator, which is called PTK, had wanted a bidder with no dialing code, so he could agitate for Kosovo's own code. But, a U.N. official told reporters at the time, PTK needed a solution that "would actually allow people to make phone calls."

Monaco Telecom began to charge PTK tens of millions of dollars in annual fees to handle Kosovar wireless calls. The deal meant that people abroad who called a cellphone user in Kosovo had to use Monaco's +377 exchange.

But that was still better than using a Serbian carrier, in the eyes of many ethnic Albanians, who are about 90% of Kosovo's population. Ethnic Serbs in Kosovo, most of whom live near the border with Serbia, can pick up signals from a Serbian carrier.

In 2005, a Kosovar delegation visited the ITU in Geneva to argue that Kosovo should get its own code, says Etrur Rrustemaj, a PTK official in the delegation who later served as chief executive officer of PTK.

Unsuccessful, Mr. Rrustemaj turned his attention instead to dismantling antennas installed by a Serbian wireless carrier in the Kosovo capital of Pristina, including one atop a PTK building.

He was careful not to destroy the antennas, just unplug them. "If I took them down, I'd be in jail for attacking minorities," he says.

In February of last year, after a muddled bidding process for Kosovo's second mobile-phone license, Kosovo declared the winner to be Slovenia Telekom. Mr. Berisha, the telecom regulator who oversaw the auction, had to consider foreign bidders, since Kosovo doesn't have its own dialing code.

Bullets Fly

One morning later that month, Mr. Berisha was riding in a car to work with his aunt and her daughter when gunmen emerged from the side of the road and opened fire on their car. No one was injured.

Just six weeks later, Mr. Berisha, by then commuting in a police vehicle with two armed officers, was attacked again. This time, one of the gunmen launched a rocket at the car. It didn't explode properly, and injured only the driver, he says.

One of the alleged attackers, later arrested, turned out to be an official of PTK, the local telecom operator. Mr. Berisha believes his attackers were upset that he had awarded a mobile-phone license to a Slovenian operator and at the prospect of new competition.

The solution, for nationalists who yearn for a Kosovo dialing code, would be U.N. recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation. But while the U.S. and more than 30 other countries recognize Kosovo's newly declared independence, U.N. membership is far from assured. Russia, which has a veto as a permanent Security Council member, has vowed to block it.

"We are forced to work with these mixed country codes, which has made our lives more difficult," says Mr. Berisha.

The Russophobia Scarecrow

My comments on a commentary piece from today's Moscow Times:

The Russophobia Card
by Andrei Tsygankov
Moscow Times, April 3, 2008

The U.S. presidential candidates are increasingly playing the Russophobia card in their campaigns. In addressing Russia, Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton have resorted to insulting President Vladimir Putin as a KGB spy who has no soul.

The first mistake in the column is an understandable but important one - substituting Putin for Russia. As Anders Aslund has recently noted, taking a dim view of the former does not have to mean one has given up hope for the latter.

After all, the harsh criticism to which Tsygankov refers has been chiefly of Putin and his signature style - and is it really surprising that individuals who are vying for the votes of American citizens would criticize someone who has sought to score political points internationally and at home by employing anti-American rhetoric? Furthermore, while McCain's criticism of Russia has been something of a minor campaign theme, one can discount this at least a bit if one recalls that one of McCain's main goals at this stage is to differentiate his approach to the world from George Bush's in the eyes of the voters. As for the implication that Hillary has been "increasingly" talking about Russia in any way whatsoever, I believe that's simply not the case.

Ironically, Tsygankov actually seems to be accusing McCain and Clinton of filching a page from Putin's campaign playbook. In making the largely unsupportable statement that "[t]he U.S. presidential candidates are increasingly playing the Russophobia card in their campaigns," he seems to be suggesting an atmosphere which is the mirror image of the crescendo of anti-Americanism which accompanied Russia's recent Duma and Presidential elections.

Russophobia is truly back into fashion, as Senator Joseph Biden admitted last week in a comment published in The Wall Street Journal.

That is an interesting gloss on Biden's column, which actually observed that "[b]y suppressing dissent, fueling suspicion of the West, and bullying smaller neighbors, the Putin administration has managed to undermine Moscow's prestige and bring Russophobia back into fashion." Far from being the reluctant admission of Russophobia implied by Tsygankov, Biden's column was at least the second in the last month to appear in a major American newspaper with proposals on how to improve the bilateral relationship - and, more importantly, acknowledging that "[w]hatever the American strategy has been, it clearly isn't working." This suggests that – rather than the environment of rampant Russophobia implied by Tsygankov – the American establishment’s thinking on Russia can be characterized by a growing recognition that each side bears some of the blame for the dysfunctional relationship and that a search for new solutions is necessary, but that an optimistic approach to the future is still possible.

The attacks on Putin and President-elect Dmitry Medvedev are widely supported in mainstream U.S. media. This demagoguery also extends to scholarly publications, such as "The New Cold War" by Edward Lucas, who claims that "Russia's vengeful, xenophobic and ruthless rulers have turned the sick man of Europe into a menacing bully." Just published, the book is getting a lot of publicity and is treated as a serious treatise by influential organizations, such as the Council on Foreign Relations.

I think it's more accurate to say that Lucas's book is being received as what it is - long-form journalism with elements of contemporary history and analysis, an editorial slant that's easy to oversimplify, and footnotes. Here is what Lucas himself said about his book:

"I'm absolutely not saying that the old Cold War is coming back. That had three dimensions. You mentioned military, ideology -- and it was global confrontation -- this one isn't -- and the Soviet Union then was a closed society. Russia is now very well integrated inter -- both world diplomatic structures and of course the economy and constant human contact. I'm absolutely not making that argument nor am I saying that Putin is a new Stalin. That would be grotesquely exaggerated.

But what I am saying is that we have been much too complacent, for a start, about both where Russia is -- has already got to and what the trajectory is -- that it sort of creeps up on us and things that seemed unimaginable then became isolated exceptions, then become -- happening rather more often and then suddenly become part of everyday life in Putin's Russia, and this has really been extremely troubling and so one thing I want to do is just give a wakeup call."

To be fair, I have heard Lucas compare Putin's rule to that of Hitler. But consider that in the Anglo-American world it is people like Lucas who make such statements about Russia, whereas in the Russian-speaking world it is people like Putin and members of his administration who make similar statements about America (this is, of course, in addition to the gaggle of reflexively anti-American commentators who receive top billing in the Russian media). And in his column about the supposed rise of American Russophobia, Tsygankov neglects to mention the fact that Lucas, um, isn't American.

Despite the anti-Russia rhetoric, many U.S. politicians feel that Russia doesn't matter in the global arena. Instead, they are preoccupied with other international issues, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. But Russia should matter, particularly in a world of new security threats and growing energy competition. The attitude of ignorance and self-righteousness toward Russia tells us volumes about the U.S. unpreparedness for the central challenges of the 21st century.

Tsygankov criticizes American political and media elites for their ignorant and arrogant approach to Russia. I don’t disagree with his assertions in this regard, but I don’t understand how Americans applying an approach to Russia which is sadly typical of the American approach to all foreign lands adds up to "Russophobia." Unfortunately, it has often seemed that simple neglect and short-sightedness have been to blame for America’s policy missteps with regard to Russia, rather than the sort of anti-Russian conspiracy suggested by Tsygankov. And when Russia's head of state goes out of his way to be stridently anti-American in his public statements, is it any wonder that Americans who are not specialists in foreign relations – and even some who are – fail to see how the U.S.-Russian relationship could actually be a fruitful one for both sides?

Then Tsygankov ranges dangerously close to the realm of unhinged conspiracy theorists:

Russophobia's revival is indicative of the fear shared by some U.S. and European politicians that their grand plans to control the world's most precious resources and geostrategic sites may not succeed if Russia's economic and political recovery continues.

I never know how to respond to statements like this. It's like trying to convince a small child that there aren't any monsters under the bed. If someone really believes this sort of thing, they won't be convinced otherwise.

One Russophobic group, exemplified by McCain, includes military hawks or advocates of U.S. hegemony who fought the Cold War not to contain the Soviet enemy but to destroy it by all means available.

This comment at Russia Blog suggests that more sensible responses to McCain's Russia policy are possible than simply waving in the direction of his team's Cold War vintage.

The second group is made up of "liberal hawks" who have gotten comfortable with the weakened and submissive Russia of the 1990s. They have an agenda of promoting U.S.-style democracy and market economy. The fact that the Soviet threat no longer exists has only strengthened their sense of superiority.

To be honest, I don't relish the idea of the McCainiac approach to Russia becoming U.S. policy, and I have concerns about the potential for a "back to the future" scenario under Obama (advised on Russia by Michael McFaul, who can sort of be seen as an embodiment of America's 1990s approach to Russia) or Clinton (the name says it all). But does Tsygankov really think that Obama himself, for example, really noticed or "got[] comfortable with" a weak and submissive Russia in the 1990s, before he was even in the Senate?

Finally there are lobbyists representing East European nationalists who have worked in concert with ruling elites of East and Central European nations to oppose Russia's state consolidation of power as well as promote NATO expansion, deployment of elements of a U.S. missile-defense system in Poland and Czech Republic, and energy pipelines circumventing Russia. These groups have diverse but compatible objectives of isolating Russia from European and U.S. institutions. Because of a lack of commitment to a strong relationship with Russia in the White House, a largely uninformed public and the absence of a Russian lobby within the United States, the influence that these groups exert on policymaking has been notable.

All that's missing is a mention of the Captive Nations Committee, a favorite bugbear of those who believe Russia is forever being needlessly maligned by malevolent busybodies of East European ethnicity based in Washington. Actually, snarkiness aside, I tend to agree with Tsygankov that the relatively rapid NATO expansion of the 1990s and since represented a triumph of interest group politics over what should have been seen as one of the U.S.'s overriding national interests - a cordial relationship with Russia.

Interestingly, Tsygankov laments the lack of a Russia lobby in the U.S. but does not note the cause. In Alexei Pankin's words, "People inside the Russian president’s administration or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose professional duty makes them responsible for shaping Russia’s image" display "the distinctive characteristic of the current regime’s mentality, utterly suspicious of independent initiatives and those who are not asking for money but offering all kinds of opportunities. It freely allocates funds as a form of reward for some sort of service to the administration, but not a means to achieve a goal." The ineffectual attempts to create a Russia lobby showcase the downside of having the unbridled accumulation of personal wealth as a substitute for a national idea.

Russophobia is not in U.S. national interests and is not supported by the American public. Various polls demonstrate that Americans do not agree with the assessment that Russia is a threat to the United States' values and interests. A recent BBC World Service poll revealed, for example, that 45 percent of Americans have a mainly positive attitude regarding Russia's influence in the world, compared with 36 percent who have a mainly negative attitude.

I couldn't agree more. This suggests, though, that Tsygankov's concern may be misplaced and that Americans don't actually listen too closely to what our presidential candidates say about issues like Russia policy. And why should we? It's not as though most Americans decide who to vote for based on foreign policy issues, with the notable exception of Iraq.

Yet Russophobia-driven groups have generally succeeded in feeding the media an image of Russia as an increasingly dangerous regime.

I can imagine which groups Tsygankov has in mind; still, this sentence might have been more convincing if he had named some of them. More likely, he didn't name them because - in any context other than a column in a Moscow newspaper read by people whose interests center on Russia - suggesting that groups with worldwide activities like Freedom House, RFE/RL, Reporters Without Borders, CEIP, and Heritage, all of which are sometimes accused of fanning the flames of Russophobia, are motivated in large part by an irrational fear of Russia (which is, after all, what "Russophobia" means) would be ludicrous.

Thousands of reports in the mainstream U.S. media implicate the Kremlin and Putin personally in murdering opposition journalists and defected spies. Only a handful of reports in less prominent outlets question such interpretations.

"Thousands"? That is an assertion that cries out for substantiation. Reports offering a more positive take on the Putin years - or at least a sober explanation of his popularity - only appear in "less prominent outlets"? That must be news to the New York Times.

Although it matters greatly which candidate will enter the White House in November, the more important issue is whether there will be a fundamental psychological adjustment in Washington away from Russophobia.

To be sure, the healing of the U.S. Russophobic mindframe is going to require a lot of time. Winston Churchill once commented that U.S. politicians "always do the right thing in the end. They just like to exhaust all the alternatives first." If this indeed is the case, we will not see a framework for meaningful cooperation with Russia any time soon.

Here, our columnist quite simply has things backwards. No matter who is elected president, "Russophobia" will not be a major plank in their campaign platform, nor is it quite the major element of the DC zeitgeist that Tsygankov suggests. Even McCain could be expected, optimistically, to allow cooler heads to prevail and avoid sudden moves. Anti-Americanism in Russia, on the other hand, is a defining characteristic of the country's foreign policy and was a key element of Putin's campaign appearances on behalf of United Russia. So, assuming Tsygankov is talking about what matters for the U.S.-Russia relationship, healing would seem to be more urgently needed in Moscow than in Washington.

I found this column disturbing enough to be worthy of such a lengthy response because it appears in the Moscow Times at a moment when the bilateral relationship appears to be at a fork in the road, and some in Moscow may believe that Tsygankov's kaleidoscope - in which isolated critical comments about Putin by McCain and Clinton are multiplied by reflection into a full-blown campaign of "increasing" Russophobia - is a valid lens through which to view the American political and media scene, which could bolster the arguments of those in Russia who would prefer to prolong the nostalgia-inducing atmosphere of Cold-War-style posturing which has gone on for too long already.

As a linguistic aside, it is interesting to note the origin of the phrase chosen for the title of this column (whether by its author or by the MT opinion-page editor). According to Wikipedia, "In the first, and more common context," an accusation of "playing the race card" "alleges that someone has falsely accused another person of being a racist in order to gain some sort of advantage." Since accusations of Russophobia are often trotted out in an effort to deflect attention from legitimate criticism of Russian policies, the title seems unintentionally apt.

Breaking News: The Cold War Is Over!

I knew there had to be some reason I was channel-surfing at 1:30am on a school night. Now I know the reason - it was my destiny to be one of the few East-Coast viewers to see President Bush's speech from Bucharest live (on MSNBC, which seemed to be the only channel to carry it) and to receive this "breaking news":


To be fair to Bush, he delivered the line about the Cold War being over and Russia no longer being our enemy in the manner of one stating the obvious, and its appearance under the "BREAKING NEWS" tagline is the result of MSNBC's laziness with on-screen graphics. What's sad is that in some circles, thanks to the industriousness of the "New Cold War" school of thought, the reminder that the Cold War ended nearly 20 years ago might actually seem like news.

Bush also reiterated his support for NATO Membership Action Plans for Georgia and Ukraine (predictably, the immediate mainstream Russian media reaction seems to be headlining this aspect of the speech). This not exactly breaking news, either - some of the opposition to Bush's stance from our European allies is discussed in this NPR piece, and Matt Rojansky of PSA posted an interesting and thoughtful piece yesterday about NATO expansion, concluding with an April 1st take on Bush's remarks in Kiev:

If I had the President’s ear today, I would advise him to place a call to Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s incoming successor. He should tell the Russian leaders that this morning’s tough talk about cutting Russia out of the NATO expansion dialogue was just a very poor April Fool’s Day joke. The US-Russia relationship is of great importance to us, and we respect Russia’s legitimate security concerns. It is because we recognize that the Cold War is long over that we want to give Russia a real seat at NATO’s collective security table.

[The rest of the post is worth reading as well, for its look back at NATO expansion rounds past.]


Actually, Bush's Bucharest speech tried to have it both ways, suggesting that NATO should expand but at the same time trying to reassure Moscow that this would not be directed against Russia, and that his pet project white elephant European missile defense system is also not designed to counter Russia's arsenal. Interestingly, RIA Novosti is headlining its initial story on the Bush speech "Bush Calls on Russia to Combat Missile Threat Together," playing up Bush's call for US-Russian cooperation (of course, RIAN also posted, 20 minutes later, an atypically short one-sentence "article" headlined "Kremlin Seriously Considers Recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia")


It seems like a difficult needle to thread - promoting NATO's expansion as a way of cementing Ukraine and Georgia's "independence" (that's Bush's word choice, and he is not alone in believing that their independence is imperiled), meanwhile arguing that Russia is not seen as a threat.

The Russian government, though, has its own needle to thread. Although its opposition to NATO expansion into Russia's underbelly is understandable and genuine (NATO expansionists who argue that Russia will eventually fold or that it has little real leverage are in effect advocating a game of chicken with Russia on the issue), it seems unlikely that Russia really wants to make good in the short term on its explicit threats to recognize Abkhazia's independence if Georgia is accepted into the MAP program. It will be very interesting to see what Putin says in his public statements while at the NATO summit. One issue appears to be that he may not get the chance to publicly address the summit - the Russian press is displaying its world-class talent for taking umbrage at imagined national slights.

In any event, it's difficult to imagine that Bush plans to have a positive and productive meeting with Putin later this week if Ukraine and Georgia get MAPs in Bucharest. So perhaps they will get nicely worded statements about cooperation and partnership with NATO but no actual MAPs, and the story of Bush's transatlantic trip will turn out to be the return to a realistic approach - if not an actual rapprochement - with Russia which a number of pundits have advocated of late. I wouldn't want to make any predictions, though, other than the obvious one - that this is going to be an interesting week.

Here's a bonus bit on the idea of a changing US approach to Russia (not immediately relevant, but I've been meaning to post this for a while) from Stephen Sestanovich of CFR, from an event in late February:

I think the phase of, sort of, Western commentary on Russian democratic progress and human rights performance is, sort of, over. The phase that we began at the end -- toward the end of the Cold War has, kind of, played out. And the idea that there's a lot of influence, just in moral opprobrium, is -- that one is not going to work for us as it has. And it -- you know, we might as well think of something, of something new.

If we're going to think of something new, the one thought I would suggest, as this, sort of, starting point for anything, is that it can't be an American attack on, you know, Russia's -- you know, the degree of Russian democratic virtue. It has to be something more broadly agreed among democratic states, and particularly the United States and Europe.

I would say that the administration, in general, has been weak in trying to develop a consensus with Europe about how to deal with Russia -- across the board, whether it's security issues, economic issues, political issues, democracy. And that is now, I think, recognized by the Europeans as something that really does need to be on the agenda of the -- for the U.S. and the Europeans if they want to have any influence in the future.

More on the power of two

[image source]

The cover of the latest issue of the New Times calls the current (and perhaps future?) period "Междуцарствие" - which I might translate as something like "interkingdom" or "interregency," although that doesn't really capture it which means "interregnum" - and, rephrasing Snoop's classic query, has several articles on the general theme of the subhead on the cover: "Whose chair is tougher."

And in an intriguing development which suggests that finely honed Russia-watcher skills might soon become transferable to US politics, a recent article in e-magazine Slate discusses how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "could run together and take turns being president" for the next 16 years by "creatively using the constitutional rules created by" the little-known 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.

Tandemocracy, DIMAcracy, and other neologisms for a new era

Note the presence of "Iron Felix" in the background.
[Image source]

Tandemocracy (which I first saw as the headline of this Kommersant-Vlast' cover story, "Тандемократия") - this is certainly a more warm-and-fuzzy term than the archaic-sounding двоевластие (usually translated into English as the even more archaic-sounding "dyarchy").

DIMAcracy (or ДИМАкратия, which I first saw mentioned on Veronica Khokhlova's blog as "DIMAkratiya") - this is a witty pun on the nickname of the new president, but we'll have to see if it remains popular - as of now, Yandex blog search provides a number of results for the term but nevertheless comments, "Typo? You may have meant 'democracy'."

Putvedev - this is a nice way to refer to Russia's two leaders with a single term. The term occurred to me - and no doubt to many others - in February, but I believe the first use of it in the English-language press was in a Guardian column on March 3rd (translated into Russian by InoSmi under the headline "All Power to Putvedev"), followed closely by Sean Guillory's Pajamas Media piece the next day; and Lenta.ru headlined its March 3 roundup of Western press coverage of the Russian elections "The New Russian Putvedev."

Since people have started referring to the dyarchs - sorry, the tandemocratic leaders; tandemocrats, if you will - collectively as Putvedev, there is at least some possibility that if the tag-team arrangement continues and things happen to go south in the new era, it could come to be known as the time of Путведевщина.

[image source]

[update 3/19] - I realized that I omitted a few good ones.


ДАМ - The new president's initials, which turn out to be very punnable. The three-letter word formed by them is the genetive case of the word for "ladies"; it's also the first-person singular, future tense, of the verb "to give." For example, blogger kotoeb complained that the traditional Women's Day toast "за дам!" ("to the ladies") became "100% political as of March 2nd." And a witty commenter on the NYT's LiveJournal community suggested that the new "Damskaya" vodka (intended for ladies) is just a rebranding of Putinka vodka.

Диммовочка (so far this has not come into wide usage) - this is a play on the word "дюймовочка," which is what Thumbelina is called in Russian, and the new president's nickname"Dima" (для тех, кто не в курсе, it's also a reference to his height).

МДА - The new president's initials, arranged in a more traditional Russian order (ФИО, or last name, first name, patronymic). As it turns out, this is also a commonly used word in Russian internet-speak, meaning something like "uh, yeah" (to the extent such things can even be translated, and of course the meaning in any given case is highly dependent on context and inflection - you can read inflection on a computer screen, right?). Anyway, it seems like it's often used in online discussions to express skepticism or weariness. Here's where I saw it used in reference to Medvedev:

Некоторые думали он ДАМ (свободу дам, тв дам, оттепель дам),
а он просто МДА

The world of black and white, as described by yellow journalists

Evropa Publishing House came out with a book last year called "Putin's Enemies" by Pavel Danilin (he's listed as the main author on Evropa's website), a veteran of Pavlovsky's Fond Effektivnoi Politiki who blogs prolifically and whose writing frequently appears in online publications like Vzglyad. A couple of years ago, he wrote an interesting book on Russian youth politics, also published by Evropa.

Danilin has become one of the official chroniclers of "sovereign democracy," having written the chapter on that sacred topic in the controversial Kremlin-commissioned history textbook that came out last summer. He is also sometimes a real class act - for instance, in a recent post on the occasion of Boris Yeltsin's birthday, he wrote that the former president was "a piece of shit" who "should burn in hell, along with all of his supporters" (a commenter with a good sense of humor then posted a couple of Putin quotes in which VVP was full of praise for the man who put him in power).

But what I wanted to post was Evropa's English-language capsule summary of this book, the title of which they translate as "Putin's Opponents" (emphasis added):

Russia has only two friends: its army and navy. The enemies of Russia have always been innumerable. Recently we are seeing the enemies of Russia raise their ugly heads within the country with increasing impertinence. Their aim is to tear Russia apart and make it bleed to death. Their hate is aimed at the head of state, Vladimir Putin. They are confident that attacking Putin they are dealing successful blows to the country. Glancing above the ragtag up front we can see a number of grim figures who are the real enemies of Vladimir Putun [sic]. What binds them together is their shared hatred of the president for having cut short their murky dealings done at the expense of the entire Russian society. This is precisely why these people are the enemies of Russia.

This would appear to sum up the Kremlin's view of political opposition - or at least, the view that existed during the 2007-08 election cycle. If you don't support Putin's Plan, whatever it may be, you must be either an "enemy of Russia" or bankrolled by someone who is. Now that the election - or, as some prefer to call it, the "voting" - is over, perhaps there will be more official tolerance for at least a Kremlin-organized, vetted "loyal opposition." But, given the combined effects of the Kremlin's coordinated efforts at discrediting the very idea of opposition and the opposition's own self-discreditation (with its fragmentation and general incompetence), it's difficult to imagine there will be much more.

More recently, Evropa has published a collection of Dmitry Medvedev's articles and speeches, titled "National Priorities." Here is the English-language capsule summary of that book from the publisher's website, with an amusing contrast in tone to the blurb quoted above:

The collection includes articles, interviews and addresses made by Dmitry Medvedev at the time when he was supervising over realization of priority national projects. It was in those years that the First Deputy Chairman of the Russian government became a politician on a national level, known throughout the country. The high evaluation of his work by the society, political and government circles led Dmitry Medvedev to a crucial moment in his life, when President Vladimir Putin, the author of the strategy of priority national projects, which he put forward in the autumn of 2005, two years later, prior to the United Russia congress, said that his associate deserved holding the country’s highest executive position, being the President of Russia.

I found the contrast between the verbal beat-down of the first and the gentle fawning of the second quite striking, though of course not surprising.

Citizen journalism in the post-Soviet space

"Web based think tank" Eurasia21 has published an interesting paper about citizen journalism in Central Asia, including some interesting sections comparing government responses throughout the region with the situation in neighboring countries like China and Iran.

Here's a recent discussion of similar issues by Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman, and here's a reassuring report from RIA Novosti suggesting that internet censorship is not going to be an issue in Russia...

Colbert: One dead Russian journalist = $571.43

American comedian Stephen Colbert had this reaction to a viewer informing him that his picture is being used on a billboard in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk:

“Russians, you may not use my image until you have paid my fee - $20,000.
Which, I believe, in Russian currency, is 35 dead journalists.”

Looks like the country's image may need a little more "burnishing."

More video clips from Colbert Reports past involving Russia.

"Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law"

Nikolai Zlobin is a Russian analyst who has been based in DC for some time - I'm not sure if it's that exposure that makes him generally sound more sensible than the average pundit, or something else. He also has a blog, the insights of which I wish I had been reading last fall when I was pontificating and speculating in this space about the fate of the Russian throne presidency. The article below is from the newspaper Vremia Novostei, and there's a slightly longer version on his blog.

Anyway, although I don't agree with everything in this article, I enjoyed the blend of an "outside-the-box" approach to international law with a pragmatic assessment of why things went down as they did in this case, so I decided to translate it for the edification of anyone who is fascinated or frustrated with the idea of a "Kosovo precedent" - and where it might lead - but doesn't read Russian.

Kosovo will not return to Serbia, just as Abkhazia will not return to Georgia

Nikolai Zlobin, Vremia Novostei, Feb, 29, 2008

In international law there are two principles – the right of nationalities to self-determination and territorial integrity of states – that at first glance appear to contradict each other. But if an ethnic group wants to break away and create its own state, it has the right to do so. The right of an ethnic group is superior to the right of a state. But if another state seeks to annex a part of the territory of a neighboring country, then the principle of territorial integrity applies, and the international community must ensure that it is observed.

In other words, if Russia wants to annex Abkhazia, that would be a violation of international law. But if Abkhazia wants to secede from Georgia and create an independent state, then its people have the full right to do so. There have been similar cases since 1945. This is the case in Kosovo as well, which is not becoming part of another state but is trying to create its own state. Moreover, a prohibition against becoming part of another state was a condition of Kosovo’s independence. Therefore, there is no basis for comparing the situation in Kosovo with the “Munich Agreement” which gave Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Germany in 1938.

International law inevitably changes. The foundations of the current system were formed in the first years following World War II. This was the international law of the Cold War period, and it does not adequately reflect contemporary realities and requires serious changes. Russia should become one of the leaders in the creation of a new system of international law, which would take into account the processes of globalization and technological developments. The way to do this is to avoid clinging to the norms and procedures of the past, whatever their benefits were in their day, and to shape the future based on the realities of the present.

The UN system, created in 1946, is in need of modification. It has long since ceased to be a politically effective international organization, has turned into a humanitarian organization and has not been in a position to solve a single significant international problem for years. In addition to Kosovo, one can point to the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many other things taking place which conflict with the letter of international law. We need new organizations which are capable of placing the world’s development within a manageable framework, so that events will not be left to their natural course as is the case today. Russia can and should play a large role in the creation of this new system, in cooperation with the EU, the USA, China, the Arab world, and other interested parties.

The principal complaint against supporters of Kosovo’s independence is that they have violated UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of June 10, 1999. But it’s not all that simple. That resolution concerned the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which ceased to exist a few years later. Serbia is not mentioned once in the resolution. The document does not require a UN Security Council resolution to approve further changes to Kosovo’s status, and supporters of the region’s independence took advantage of this.

I consider what happened in Serbia to have been a huge and primarily human tragedy. It happened, though, not on February 17, when Kosovo declared independence; it has been going on for quite some time already. In recent months, Russia’s representatives at meetings in Washington and Brussels made terrible threats, but then on the sidelines said, “Don’t worry, Moscow won’t do anything in response.” Serbian politicians constantly took a ambiguous position, sent unclear signals, and tried to sit not just on two, but on three or four chairs at once. As a result, it was they who lost Kosovo. The task became to make sure that this tragedy didn’t become a larger tragedy, that it didn’t lead to another war in the Balkans. Between a very bad option and a very, very bad one, the former was chosen.

Kosovo won’t return to Serbia, just as Abkhazia won’t return to Georgia – no matter what they are promised, no matter how high a level of autonomy is offered, no matter what position the UN Security Council takes. At some point in the negotiations, it became clear that Kosovo and Serbia would never come to an agreement. The EU and the US decided to be realistic and take responsibility for the situation. They decided that maintaining the status quo in Kosovo would be more dangerous than disrupting it.

Serbia wants to become an EU member and to join NATO as soon as possible. Kosovo and the other Balkan states want the same things. Adherence to European norms is a powerful motivation and sets the standard of behavior for the region’s politicians. Each country wants to enjoy a quality of life such that no one would want to secede from it. Serbia was unable to achieve this. It’s essential to create a country which attracts everyone to join it and not one which makes entire regions want to break away. President Putin had good reason to speak about the importance of making Russia an attractive country. This is a more effective method of combating separatism than appeals to other states whose own problems will always be more important to them.

Kosovo independence is one of very few foreign policy issues on which the Bush Administration has followed President Clinton's line. The genuine feeling in Washington is that stability in the Balkans depends in large part on whether Serbia can become a truly democratic country which fully shares Western values. But this can't possibly happen as long as Serbia has the colossal problem of Kosovo weighing it down.

In Washington, they say that the independence of Kosovo will help Serbia to become a successful state.

Serbia's reputation in American political circles has been ruined over the course of the past decade. Many American politicians see Serbia as the main threat to European security. This is why American policy on this issue was openly anti-Serbian from the beginning and continues to be so. Unfortunately, neither Russia nor Serbia itself will be able to quickly change this situation. This situation, though, makes Washington's stance even more intransigent and increases its impatience and willingness to take drastic measures without listening to its opponents. And not only on the issue of Kosovo.

I would take issue with a couple of the points here – first, the idea of self-determination under international law is not generally considered to be the unfettered right implied by Zlobin's description. The self-determination he suggests is so broad that it sounds almost like Lenin's idea of self-determination inevitably involving a separate state. In fact, I believe the current state of international law (for whatever it's worth) is that the general right of self-determination refers first of all to the right of nations to enjoy their national language, traditions, etc., within the confines of the state they happen to find themselves in through representation in that state's government; and secession, also known as "external self-determination," is considered a remedy of last resort.

Moreover, in the case of Abkhazia, there is a fairly compelling argument to be made that the conflict was not the sort of national self-determination which the international community should seek to promote or reward by recognizing. The Abkhaz, who constituted 17% of the population of the region in 1989, managed to drive out well over 200,000 ethnic Georgians – nearly a majority of the region’s population – during the fighting in 1992-93, and even then did not become a plurality in the region.

But perhaps I’m simply falling victim to the “old thinking” that Zlobin would like to move beyond. In all seriousness, I too have found the existing international law framework to be insufficient to deal with or even at times to describe some of the aspects of the unresolved conflicts in the post-Soviet space. In any event, international law is at least to some extent based on state practice, so perhaps another Oliver Wendell Holmes quote (in addition to the one used in the title) might be applied to the situation surrounding Kosovo: “It is the merit [sic] of the common law that it decides the case first and determines the principle afterwards.”

It's interesting that as Zlobin proposes an innovative, cooperative role for Russia in formulating new international law norms, at least one other commentator is observing that Russia's use of international law is stuck in the past.

Also interesting are some - though by no means all - of the articles that made up the avalanche of commentary which followed Kosovo's declaration of independence. Here is a random selection of ones I enjoyed reading:

Christopher Borgen, the lead author of the definitive legal analysis of Transdniester's attempt at secession from Moldova, runs through the legal analysis of Kosovo independence and concludes that it is "a quintessential 'tough case,' demonstrating the ways in which political interests of states affect how the international law is given effect." Borgen rightly points out the importance of the facts of a potentially precedential case (and how narrowly they are interpreted) in drawing broader legal lessons, but he concludes that

Despite the declarations and best intentions, just saying something is "unique" may not be enough. States and commentators may need to ask why one claim of independence is purportedly unique and then consider its downstream political and legal effects. In the end, we need to keep in mind that sometimes the most effective law in politically-charged situations may be the law of unintended consequences.

Moldovan analyst Dumitru Minzarari believes there is now a "Kosovo precedent," and that it represents "a triumph of the law of the fist over international law." He also points readers of his blog to Charles Kupchan's article on the Foreign Affairs website and discusses that article at length.

Slate's Christopher Hitchens, with his usual acerbic tone, lays the blame for the ultimate outcome at the feet of Serbia:

Of course, one ought to acknowledge that this is a calamity for the Serbs and indeed an injustice in the sense of an insult to their pride and history. But the injustice was self-inflicted. I remember seeing, in Kosovo, the "settlements" for Serbs that the Milosevic regime was building in a vain effort to alter the demography. And who were the bedraggled "settlers"? The luckless Serbian civilians who had been living in the Krajina area of Croatia until their fearless leader's war of conquest for "Greater Serbia" had brought general disaster and seen them finally evicted from farms and homesteads they had garrisoned for centuries. Promised new land on colonized Albanian territory, they had been uprooted and evicted once again. Where are they now, I wonder? Perhaps stupidly stoning the McDonald's in Belgrade, and vowing fervently never to forget the lost glories of 1389, and maybe occasionally wondering where they made their original mistake.

Oh, and in lieu of tracking down a pretty picture for this post, I'll simply point out that you can track which countries have recognized Kosovo's independence here.

It's funny because it's true...

This video has over half a million views on YouTube (is that a lot? I confess I don't know...but it seems like a lot, so I apologize if this post is the equivalent of an email forwarding you a joke you've seen five times already) and has been up since last month, but I first saw it today thanks to someone emailing me the link. It is by a KVN team from the city of Perm'.



So basically, a bunch of guys in Perm' got together and - using a comedy skit uploaded to YouTube - did a pretty good job of making the same basic point as Human Rights Watch did in its 2008 World Report about the problem of a "democracy charade" in many countries (see also here for a discussion putting Russia in the context of that report).