The National Interest Online

A Stable Kremlin

Erin Drankoski — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:21:00 -0400

The discussion section of the Valdai Club took place this year in Yakutia (or in the indigenous language, Sakha) in eastern Siberia, mainly in cruise ships on the river Lena. This was fascinating, but I must confess that there were moments when I found myself repeating Dr. Samuel Johnson's remark about the Giant's Causeway: "Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see." Going to see Yakutia involves a six-hour flight and a six-hour time difference from Moscow, with the result that I fell fast asleep during several of the sessions.

Russia's Limousine Liberals

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:44:00 -0400

Pakistan's Passing Grade

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:25:00 -0400

On the late afternoon of Wednesday April 29, I went to interview a local leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party in Karachi, and spent a couple of hours at their headquarters. From there, I went on to Zeinab market to look for presents for my family, and spent another couple of hours haggling over textiles and looking for a new suitcase. Then back to my hotel, where I had a shower and a bite to eat, called my wife, and contemplated going out for a drink with some friends (yes, Karachi is officially dry, but you wouldn’t always know it).

Envoys to Nowhere

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:02:00 -0500

I hope with all my heart that most of what I am going to write in this article will prove mistaken. President Obama’s appointment of George Mitchell as special envoy for the Middle East peace process, and of Richard Holbrooke as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan (and de facto American broker for the Kashmir issue), are both in themselves very positive moves. The Bush administration’s neglect of these two conflicts was among its more disgraceful foreign-policy omissions. The appointment of such senior, respected and impressive

The Indispensable Ally

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:20:00 -0500

The most important questions concerning the terrorist attacks in Mumbai are also obvious ones, yet are not asked nearly often enough by Western analysts. They are: What goals did the terrorists hope to achieve by these attacks? And how to what degree did they achieve them? Regrettably, the terrorists so far seem to have achieved at least a qualified success.

A Memo for President Obama

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:53:00 -0500

In domestic policy, president-elect Obama faces the need for urgent and radical action, above all of course concerning the economy, but also on health coverage and financing social security. In foreign policy, matters are rather different. There, what he does not do will be just as important as what he does. After the hyper-activism of the Bush presidency, there is an urgent need for a long period of caution and restraint.

Military overstretch, financial constraints and cooperation with other powers to deal with the world economic crisis all make this necessary. Obama’s own admirably calm and balanced character also make such an approach seem likely. But one can never be entirely sure. The president-elect is inexperienced in international affairs, and any U.S. administration finds itself under multiple pressures for international activism and ambition from a range of lobbies, interest groups and ideological advocates. Already, his probable appointments in the field of policy towards Russia and the other countries of the former-Soviet Union inspire little confidence that the next administration will follow a more cautious policy than the last.

What the next administration does need to do in foreign and security policy is the following: First and foremost to mobilize world capitalism behind economic recovery. That is, to seek the cooperation of China, the other East Asian states and Russia, with their huge sovereign funds and currency reserves, in stimulating international economic growth.

Linked to this should be a new program of international industrial renewal and regeneration based on a shift to renewable sources of energy. Recent Chinese suggestions for technology transfers in return for caps on emission are well worth examining in this regard. This will be a painful process for the U.S. economy--but a time when the United States is already undergoing severe crisis, and previous free market certainties have been shattered, may well be the right time, or even the only time, when such a strategy can succeed.

As the world economic crisis spreads to Latin America and the Caribbean, it is likely to become more and more necessary for Washington to concentrate on stabilizing its own backyard, and finding the very large sums in aid which may be necessary to do so. Frankly, the sight in recent years of the United States fooling around in the Caucasus while Haiti starves and Mexico sinks into drug-fuelled violence has been neither morally edifying nor strategically sensible. These are areas that pose direct threats to the wellbeing of U.S. citizens--in ways that the status of South Ossetia most assuredly does not.

Partly for this reason, the next administration will need to extricate itself from both Iraq and Afghanistan with at least the appearance of dignity and success. This is not only because of the cost of these operations and the strain that they are imposing on the American military, but because Afghanistan in particular is beginning seriously to destabilize neighboring Pakistan--a country which poses vastly greater dangers than Afghanistan to the United States and the world.

Above all, it is essential that the administration not be led by the pursuit of a chimerical “victory” in Afghanistan into direct ground attacks over the border into Pakistan, such as occurred in August–September. Such attacks are the one thing that could provoke mutiny in the Pakistani army and destroy the Pakistani state, with all the appalling horrors and dangers that would result.

Given growing financial constraints, and the need to strengthen U.S. ground forces, it is essential that cuts be made in other parts of the U.S. military budget. A situation in which America provides half of the world’s military spending on the basis of just over a fifth of the world’s GDP is only sustainable if the U.S. population is asked for higher taxes, and domestic programs are slashed.

Neither of these things is possible. Already the emphasis on military spending has led to the gross neglect of those tools of international economic assistance which during the cold war were regarded as crucial to defeating communism. And in any case, the United States simply does not need so many aircraft carriers, fighter jets, battle tanks and nuclear weapons to deter the Chinese and Russians from doing something which they have no intention of doing anyway--namely attacking U.S. allies or vital U.S. interests (I mean real U.S. allies like Poland or Japan, not a delinquent incubus like Georgia). This is especially true since when it comes to combating Islamist extremism and (at least in the case of China) guaranteeing energy security, their vital interests in any case match those of the United States.

In policy towards China, no major change to existing policy is necessary, since this is one place where the Bush administration in recent years has pursued a generally cautious and pragmatic approach. There are certain areas, however, where a Democratic administration might be tempted to take a new approach, with extremely dangerous results. The first is obviously protectionism, spurred on by the suffering of U.S. industry. This would risk wrecking not just the relationship with China but the whole world economy.

The second would be if increased unrest in China due to economic hardship leads the American administration to launch a much more active policy (if only in rhetoric) of support for “democracy” in China. The more endangered by mass unrest the communist state feels itself to be, the more ferocious will be its response. There seems little doubt that the new administration will emphasize “democracy” in its relations with Russia and that these will suffer as a result. Presumably, this will include U.S. support for “democratic” opposition leader Garry Kasparov and his neo-fascist allies.

Unless the present Russian administration comes under serious internal threat--which still appears unlikely, though not impossible--this U.S. approach will be only an irritant. A much more serious threat to relations will be a continuation of the existing American policy of pushing for Ukrainian and Georgian NATO membership.

This is something which the Obama administration most emphatically should not do. As the events of August demonstrated, ill-considered U.S. meddling in this region can lead to actual wars, further destabilizing the world economy and imposing new financial burdens on the United States. Since Russian policy at the moment is overwhelmingly a reaction to what the West is doing, simply to put the whole NATO issue on hold (without abandoning it formally at this stage) would lead to a significant improvement in relations.

Above all, President Obama should pay the closest attention to the fact that at present the U.S. does not even have an army that it could send to defend Georgia and Ukraine, even supposing that any American president would actually contemplate such a move. And it is hard to imagine that anyone as intelligent as Mr. Obama could believe that the Europeans will be much use in this regard.

This is another thing that the Obama administration should not do: Spend any serious effort in seeking additional European military assistance in Afghanistan. It ain’t worth a hill of beans. What would be useful is if the British could pull out of Iraq and use some of the additional troops in Afghanistan. Even additional European money for Afghanistan is not necessarily a good thing, because it involves even more complicated and divided decision making processes--and it is precisely these hopelessly snarled-up and endless international negotiations which have so far helped make a rational development or political strategy for Afghanistan impossible.

A real help for Afghanistan would be U.S. détente with Iran, and the return of Iran to the role it played in Afghanistan before and in the immediate aftermath of 9/11--until Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech wrecked everything: That is to say, as a force deeply opposed to the Taliban and anxious to contribute to Afghanistan’s stability and economic development. Obviously, there are many reasons why Obama should not rush into agreements with Iran, but he does need to move with deliberate speed to start improving relations. One fruitful approach might be to start talks on the issue of the Afghan heroin trade, which poses a major threat to Iran.

How much of this is likely? Eight years in Washington left me with considerable pessimism about the capability of the U.S. policy elites--Democrat as well as Republican--to carry out radical changes in policy if these required real civic courage and challenges to powerful domestic constituencies or dominant national myths. On the other hand, if the worst economic crisis for seventy years isn’t the right moment for radical new thought, then there never will be a right time.

Capital in the Capitol

Cecille Isidro — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:40:00 -0400

If anyone doubts the increasing importance of finance as a tool of foreign policy, one need look no further than Iceland, a NATO member, which this past week announced that it is in negotiations for a 4 billion euro bailout from Russia. Iceland's prime minister was blunt: "We have not received the kind of support that we were requesting from our friends, so in a situation like that one has to look for new friends."

While denied by the Icelandic government, there have been suggestions that one area of discussion is the possible use by Russia of a former--NATO military base on its soil. Others suggest that Iceland may be prone to more favorable consideration of future Russian claims to the resource-rich arctic. Regardless of how this turns out, the use of financial resources to achieve international goals is the latest example of a rising trend that we call the financialization of foreign policy. The United States government is woefully unprepared for this convergence.

Perhaps the current financial crisis could serve as a much needed wake-up call to Washington that it needs to better understand and integrate financial thinking into its overall policymaking apparatus. Current events have already jolted policymakers into acknowledging that the federal government can no longer operate business (or politics) as usual. Treasury's role as a $700 billion portfolio manager is only one aspect of what ought to be a wholesale rethink of our government's understanding of finance. At a minimum, there must be significantly greater cooperation between the Treasury and State Departments, and the national security apparatus. Foreign policy separate from financial policy is no longer an option.

An important lesson learned over the past several weeks is that U.S. strategic thinking about the foreign-policy considerations and consequences of finance and market issues has been inadequate. The current crisis presents an opportunity for the United States to reshape how our government responds to these new economic realities.

Upon taking office, the next president will confront a world far different from that of his predecessors. The new administration will face a more complex global landscape, where American financial pre-eminence is no longer taken for granted and where other nations use their own increased financial resources to further their national interests. The United States will certainly remain a major center of global finance, but has been weakened. The so-called "exorbitant privilege" of the United States to print the world's de facto reserve currency--and thus operate beyond the financial constraints that apply to other nations-- may have become a bit less exorbitant.

Today, the United States is no longer capital rich. Rather, America is a significant international debtor with a sizeable portion of that debt held by central banks in China, Japan, Russia and the Gulf states. This wealth transfer from the United States to other nations is significant and appears likely to continue. The current banking crisis demonstrates that American financial institutions are becoming increasingly dependent on capital from foreign sources, such as central banks and sovereign wealth funds. One of the probable outcomes of the current crisis is the acceleration of the development of alternatives to American financial markets, capital and currency.

While the future course of how these issues will develop remains uncertain, the strategic considerations that they raise are likely to be permanent features of the global political, financial and national security landscape. Earlier this year, for the first time, the director of national intelligence's annual threat assessment included financial issues as one of the leading security threats facing this country. Director McConnell cited "concerns about the financial capabilities of Russia, China, and OPEC countries and the potential use of their market access to exert financial leverage to achieve political ends." That was well before the current financial upheaval.

Issues of this magnitude require more than operational tweaks--they compel a fundamental structural overhaul of the way our government integrates financial issues into its foreign-policy thinking.

The need to modify the organizational structure of the White House and executive branch to integrate financial policy considerations in the shaping of foreign policy has been undertaken at key turning points in the last half-century. In 1945, recognizing that the world had fundamentally changed after the Second World War, the Truman Administration retooled the federal government and created the National Security Council and other new structures to address the challenges of the Soviet Union, the spread of communism, decolonization and the new map of post-war Europe. This period saw the creation of the Bretton Woods system, the Marshall Plan and the establishment of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Similarly, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the onset of globalization, the Clinton Administration established the National Economic Council (NEC) as a counterpart to the National Security Council. The creation of the NEC was a positive step. But it has not proven able to confront the economic issues facing our country today.

The government must undertake a realistic appraisal of the global economy, noting the strengths and weaknesses of America's role in that economy and how other nations may seek to gain advantage through the financial tools increasingly at their disposal. In our relationships with international allies, competitors and potential adversaries, financial and economic components must be an integral part of our strategic and conceptual thinking.

To that end, we believe that the State Department and National Security Council need to be far more engaged in the world of international finance and economics--a competence which has, until now, been ancillary to its core capability. But, perhaps equally important is an enhanced strategic role for the Treasury Department.

At the State Department, the Office of Policy Planning (OPP) reserves a hallowed space where policymakers from across disciplines come together to "anticipate the emerging form of things to come, to reappraise policies which had acquired their own momentum and went on after the reasons for them had ceased, and to stimulate and, when necessary, to devise basic policies crucial to the conduct of our foreign affairs." Members of the OPP act as a liaison with those outside of the government.

The Treasury Department has no such space. Treasury's OPP, which currently functions as part of its office of communications, should be upgraded, refocused and should engage in a formal working relationship with the State Department's OPP to provide input on the long-term strategic implications of shifts in power in the world's financial system. The office should be structured to reach beyond Washington to serve as a liaison with market participants in the global financial system on matters relevant to U.S. foreign and domestic policy, including other states' use of capital to achieve political goals, the dollar's strategic role as a reserve currency and the America's role in the international financial system.

For the two departments to operate more cooperatively, it is important that each have the requisite level of cross-disciplinary expertise to pursue new avenues in international affairs. To that end, senior officials should have experience and training in both foreign policy and finance.

Twenty-five years ago, trade in goods and services accounted for roughly 90 percent of all cross border financial activity. Things have changed. Today, financial flows unrelated to trade now account for over 90 percent of cross-border activity--an astounding inversion. Investment flows not only dwarf trade flows--they continue to grow almost twice as fast. While trade remains a significant component of the world's financial system, international investment is much more substantial. For example, in 2006 foreign purchases of long-term securities from American residents totaled $52 trillion compared to $3.6 trillion in U.S. exports of goods and services.

Given the enormity of this shift, hiring individuals with solely trade, as contrasted with broader financial, backgrounds is not ideal. For example, three out of four national security advisers for international economic affairs in the current administration were previously trade lawyers. In the next administration, relevant positions should be filled by individuals with not just trade experience, but with international investment or economics experience as well.

Specific recommendations for bureaucratic reform are only meaningful if there is a broader commitment and investment in the underlying framework behind it. U.S. financial dominance was a key aspect of the global balance of power until just a few years ago. The shift of global capital away from its dependence on the United States has already altered the position of the United States vis-à-vis allies and adversaries. The current financial crisis has only accelerated this trend. Some of these shifts may be zero-sum, but others are not. Unless the organizational structures and the placement of key officials and advisers are both reconfigured, these questions are not likely to be properly addressed and policy will suffer as result. From crisis, we must seek opportunity. Today's financial upheaval provides an opportunity for the next administration to use innovation and creativity to think anew about structures and systems that have been in place for more than sixty years.

United Moscow

Cecille Isidro — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:31:00 -0400

In the course of the Valdai conference in Russia from September 7–14 we met with President Dmitri Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Deputy Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Nogovitsyn. There was no significant difference between them in what they said about Russian policy and Russian views. Nor have such differences appeared outside the conference.

Of course, it is possible that they exist in private and have so far been kept under wraps by strict discipline; but it is very important to note that there is no actual evidence for this. From the point of view of shaping Western policy towards Russia, it would therefore be wise to proceed from the assumption that what we are facing is a very united and determined Russian approach which is strongly supported by the entire top leadership. Indeed, to judge from the ordinary Russians I talked with during our stay, the government line on the need to fight in South Ossetia also appears to be supported by the overwhelming majority of the population.

As is his wont, Vladimir Putin used somewhat harsher tones about Western policy than President Medvedev, but Medvedev was also absolutely categorical that the decision to fight against “Georgian aggression” was unavoidable. He emphasised that he would have taken exactly the same decision even if Georgia had previously received a NATO Membership Action Plan, “and then we would have had a much more serious crisis.”

Medvedev also said, like Putin, that while he took the steep decline in the Russian stock market and reduction of foreign investment seriously, and while he himself had had “more important things to do” in August than fight a war,

when it comes to choosing between protecting people's lives and protecting the economy, you can understand why we made the choice we did. Almost every state would have reacted in this way if a situation of the kind that presented itself in August had occurred. That is how we reacted. I have specifically said and I reiterate it for my audience here: protecting the lives and the dignity of Russian citizens, wherever they are, is the raison d’etre of the Russian state.

Medvedev’s ostensibly calm public response to the stock market crisis echoes Putin’s:

I believe that the resources available to our companies to restore the values of Russian stock indicators is huge. There are two reasons for this: the first is that until now Russian blue chip stocks, the most attractive Russian companies, have still not reached their peak: their worth has not yet been fully appreciated. They are still undervalued. And the second reason is that, given that our market is still growing, still evolving, in this sense it is more risky than traditional markets, and this makes for all the variability in the markets, or as economists say, all the market volatility. There is nothing to be frightened of. We simply need to take a deep breath and calmly continue to pursue developing the economy, as a matter of fact to go on doing what we have been doing.

This may of course be purely for public consumption; the word from Russian businessmen is very much grimmer. It does however once again indicate what is for the moment at least a united administration line.

On relations with the West, all the Russian leaders said that they have no desire for a new cold war, since as Putin stressed, “we have many common problems that we can only solve together: terrorism, global warming, infectious disease, regional crises.” Lavrov emphasized Russia’s desire to help the NATO operation in Afghanistan, and that it was the United States. which had rejected Russian offers of assistance.

In response to a question from an Israeli participant, Medvedev went out of his way to say that Russia would not follow the Soviet Union’s strategy in the Middle East, that it was committed to the Arab-Israeli peace process, and that a conference provisionally scheduled to be held in Moscow is a continuation of the one held under U.S. auspices at Annapolis.

All, however, attacked the West over its support for Georgia, and stressed the breakdown of the U.S-led unipolar world order. In Medvedev’s words,

Did the unipolar system work [over the Georgian crisis]? No, on the contrary, everyone froze in a loss as to what to do next. I think therefore that military analysts, politicians, and you too, as specialists in this area, will be analysing the lessons of the Caucasus crisis for some time to come. As I said, for me personally and for a large part of the Russian public, this crisis has meant an end to the last illusions about the current security system’s ability to function reliably. We simply have to create a new security system, otherwise there will be no guarantees that some other Saakashvili could blow his top and do something like what happened in August, and we would again have to pay a high price.

One possible area of new agreement was suggested by Sergei Lavrov in answer to a question, when he acknowledged a legal and political parallel between Abkhazia and South Ossetia on the one hand and Kosovo on the other--thereby opening the possibility of a future deal on mutual recognition, if the West ever takes this up.

All of the leaders took a hard line against NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia, describing it as a threat to vital Russian interests; but all also said that in the absence of such a threat, they had no intention of undermining Ukraine or challenging Ukrainian territorial integrity. Putin declared that “all this talk about Crimea is a provocation. Is there really anything in common between Crimea and South Ossetia? In Georgia, there were civil wars and international peacekeepers. There is none of that in Ukraine, thank God.” All emphasized Russia’s interest in a stable and prosperous Ukraine, given Russia’s deep economic, cultural and human stake in that country. Putin spoke at length of the fact that a large majority of the Ukrainian population opposes NATO membership, and that a move in this direction will therefore itself cause damaging internal divisions.

Putin, Medvedev and Shuvalov all spoke of the need to push ahead with economic reforms, with Putin talking of Russia being “on the threshold of a new breakthrough” in this regard. In keeping with his past statements, however, Medvedev spoke at much greater length about property rights and the rule of law. Indeed, in this regard his remarks echo those of Russia’s Western critics:

I have already been obliged to hold forth on the value of property rights. I believe that due to a number of factors in Russia for almost the entire twentieth century there was no real idea of property in the ordinary sense. And our task is to create it, to give it our full-fledged guidance and protection. This is perhaps the cornerstone of a normal investment and business climate. Nothing else means much in this regard, not even military developments, as paradoxical as that might sound, because problems of a military kind can be resolved, whereas economic development and social development never stop. . . . My deep conviction is that in Russia unfortunately there is no real understanding of the value of law. I have engaged with these issues for a long time, both in theory and in practice. Unfortunately this manifests itself everywhere, including in everyday matters, everyday issues: at the domestic level, the level of business, the level of civil servants and even the state as a whole. And so for us it's obvious, at least for me as head of state at any rate, that if we don't change in this regard we will never be accepted as equal partners.

This and Medvedev’s youth (he is thirteen years younger than Putin) made me think that if we are lucky, and either personality clashes or economic crises do not drive them apart, the following may be a possible scenario for Russia: a natural and positive historical progression from a Putin generation dedicated to the restoration of order and state authority as the basis for economic progress to a Medvedev generation anxious to use the new order as the basis for the development of a law-based state and economy: a Rechtstaat, in the German phrase, even though probably not a fully-fledged democracy, whatever that is. You could say, the transition from Caesar the conqueror to Augustus the consolidator and administrator.

This was very much the dream of the great Russian reformers of the nineteenth century. But as with them, it would be the gravest mistake to think that Medvedev and other Russian state liberals of today are not at the same time passionately dedicated to the defense of Russian interests and Russian honor. A Western strategy that departs from the belief that the only legitimate Russian government is one that bows to Western commands will destroy every hope of international cooperation with Russia, and perhaps every hope of Russian domestic progress as well.

Gracious Grozny

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:53:00 -0400

In a way, Chechnya, which we visited in the course of the Valdai Club discussions in Russia last week, can stand as a more savage version of the Putin era in Russia as a whole: namely the successful restoration of order and progress, by methods which were often extremely ugly, but which may have been the only ones available under the circumstances.

Grozny, which I last saw as an immense heap of rubble, is now a truly impressive sight, with fine modern apartment blocks and a beautiful Turkish-built mosque, modeled on the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, towering over the main square. Opposite, on the site of the old Soviet-era republican council which General Dudayev used as his headquarters before the war of 1994, there is now a garden with a statue of the previous pro-Russian President of Chechnya, Ahmed Kadyrov, assassinated by a bomb in 1994. Walls in the centre were festooned with huge pictures of his son Ramzan, the present president (often accompanied by ones of Vladimir Putin), and slogans like “Ramzan, you were president for only one year and our city rose from the ashes.”

So totally has the center changed that it was difficult for a while to remember where things used to be. In fact, Grozny as it now stands is a vast improvement on the city as it stood before the war of 1994, when it was a dirty, run-down Soviet industrial city with grim, shabby architecture, very few amenities--and no visible mosques at all. As a British journalist friend who has visited both places muttered, “We could learn something from this about how to rebuild Kabul and Baghdad.”

It may, however, have been a help in the reconstruction that the current population of 228,000 is less than half of that recorded in the last Soviet census. Most of the losses come from the fact that Grozny was historically a mainly Russian-inhabited city, and the great bulk of the Russian population had fled even before 1994, driven out by the collapse of law and order and the special vulnerability of Russians to Chechen criminal attack. On the other hand, looking at the gleaming new buildings, I could not help also reflecting that no-one will ever know how many former inhabitants of the city now lie buried beneath their foundations. This left me with an eerie impression, as if the ghosts of the old buildings and the old people were staring out from between the ribs of the new.

We drove out of Grozny to visit Chechnya’s president, Ramzan Kadyrov, in his compound in the hills to the east. Security, though visible, was not heavy, suggesting that things really have become much more peaceful in Chechnya. Certainly the presidential houses, with their expanses of glass windows, would not be a good place to be in during a bombardment.

The architecture of the compound varies from Italianate to nineteenth century Russian to modern to generic “Islamic,” with the conference centre apparently modeled on the Soviet-era Great Hall of the People in the Kremlin. In the middle is an artificial lake with an artificial hill seemingly made out of greenish playdough, perched on which are four enormous eagle statues. Peacocks strolled in the gardens. The whole effect might be called Houphouet-Bongiesque, after the French-backed former dictator of the Ivory Coast. There is also a small zoo with tigers and other animals, which we did not see. President Kadyrov said that he goes to talk to them and stroke them when he wants to relax.

Kadyrov himself is a strikingly young man, having inherited the position when his father was killed. With his jutting reddish beard, engaging grin and rolling walk, he looks like a child’s idea of a genial pirate, though much of his record is hardly fit for children’s ears. His staff are dressed in what I have come to think of as Caucasus-official mafia style: dark suits with unbuttoned shirt collars and loosened dark ties; and scattered among the gunmen are a number of young educated looking types. Not exactly what I’d have chosen myself to run a country, but better than the mixture of brigands and fanatics I met around previous leaders of Chechnya.

The meeting with Kadyrov took place in a partitioned section of the conference centre--only about a third of the total space, but still so large that we looked at people on the other side of the round table across an immense expanse of floor.

At first, I was astonished that no food or tea was served, since this is the Caucasus and such hospitality is just as much de rigeur as in Pakistan. Then I remembered that of course this was during Ramadan, and Kadyrov’s father was after all the Grand Mufti of Chechnya, who fought against Russia in the war of 1994–96. He broke with President Maskhadov and went over to the Russian side in the late 1990s after he and his followers came under attack from the international radical Islamist group headed by Khattab and their local Chechen allies. These groups had moved to adopt the Wahabi theology of international radical Islamism, and were trying to destroy Chechnya’s own Sufi Muslim traditions, represented by Kadyrov. The President mentioned that the present Mufti of Chechnya had recently visited the Middle East to visit religious leaders, seek support and exchange views and information on extremism.

It is said that Kadyrov, having been brought up in Chechnya in the 1990s, did not even speak Russian till his father went over to Moscow in 1998, but he now speaks it well, though with a marked Chechen accent. His remarks were well-prepared for effect, with much emphasis on how Chechnya, like Afghanistan, had previously become a magnet for “terrorists from all over the world,” and how Russian help was necessary to defeat this.

Kadyrov also stressed his desire for Chechens to return from abroad, and remarked that several supporters of President Maskhadov had done so. He invited Ahmed Zakayev, the former Chechen foreign minister now in London, to join them, although the Russian government has accused him of being a terrorist and sought his extradition (admittedly, Kadyrov did this in ironic tones, with several references to Zakayev’s former profession as an actor who continued to play-act--“I have rebuilt the Grozny drama theatre specially for him”). The president also said that former separatist fighters--“misguided people”-- had been pardoned and were now serving in his forces.

His remarks, though urbane, contained the occasional flash of the old Chechen spirit. One was when he said that the death of terrorist leader Shamil Basayev had been “the happiest day of my life”, but that “I was also sorry, because I wanted to kill him myself.” Another was when he said that Chechens had gone to fight against Georgia in the latest war--“of course, because we are the best fighters.”

Apart from terrorism and extremism, Kadyrov’s chief accusation against the separatist Chechen governments was that “they wanted Chechen independence, but they had no idea what to do with it.” Instead of a successful modern state, “they created a mafia racket.” By contrast, Kadyrov stressed his own government’s achievements in reconstruction of every kind, including not only buildings, but schools, hospitals and industry.

Kadyrov naturally declared Chechnya’s absolute adherence to the Russian Federation, and conviction that its future depended wholly on union with Russia. Having met him though, I would not be surprised if, should Moscow’s rule ever collapse again, Kadyrov himself would be the next leader to try to take his people to independence. On the other hand, he seems intelligent enough to see that this is not at all likely to happen for a long while to come.

Lunch with Putin

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:13:00 -0400

There were moments during the week I spent in Russia for the Valdai Discussion Club when I felt as if the world had begun to rotate backward. Chiefly, this was the result of having spent the previous six weeks in Pakistan, half of them based in Peshawar near the frontier with Afghanistan.

During my stay the bloody mayhem in Afghanistan continued unabated, with a French unit cut to pieces near Kabul. President Musharraf of Pakistan was forced to resign and was replaced by Asif Zardari, a man widely accused of corruption on a kleptocratic scale and hated by much of the country’s population. The Pakistani military began extensive campaigns against pro-Taliban insurgents to the north and west of Peshawar. Several bombs exploded in Peshawar itself, killing dozens of police, soldiers and ordinary people. And the United States began for the first time not only to launch missile attacks on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Pakistani territory, but to conduct raids on the ground, leading to a terrifying risk of direct clashes with the Pakistani military, and of Pakistani units mutinying in order to fight on the side of the Taliban. Senior officers and officials in Washington are talking of the possibility of a full-scale U.S. invasion of the Pakistani tribal areas--something which could well lead to Islamist revolt throughout much of Pakistan.

And with this in mind, I had to listen to discussions on the questions of whether there is an existential clash of systems between Russia and the West. Whether NATO should provoke a crisis, and quite possibly a major war with Russia by extending membership to Georgia and Ukraine, and rearm Georgia so that it can make another attempt at the re-conquest of its lost territories--in the process cutting NATO communications to Afghanistan from the north just as they are endangered in the south. And whether (and in what ways) the West should punish Russia for its “aggression” against Georgia. With the West’s own financial structures under frightening pressure, some Western analysts have actually welcomed the drastic fall in Moscow’s stock market as a way of weakening Russia. Not that these views were supported by the vast majority of the Western participants of the Valdai Club, but they provided the context for our meeting; and it was a context which could have been drawn up by Mullah Omar himself, or possibly Ayman al-Zawahiri, since he is much more of a thinker.

But there was another way in which the world seemed to revolve backward during the Valdai, which was if anything even more disturbing. During two lunches over the course of the conference, the president and prime minister of Russia spoke with us for a total of almost seven hours, answering unscripted questions without the help of aides. The foreign minister, deputy prime minister and deputy chief of the general staff spoke with us for several more hours. The chances of this happening in George Bush’s Washington, or indeed most other Western capitals, are zero.

On the other hand, I was told, several U.S. experts who had been invited refused to come because they were afraid that to be seen to talk with Russian leaders would hurt their chances of being selected for jobs in the next U.S. administration, or even their candidate’s chances of being elected president. In particular, they were afraid of attending a conference including meetings with the presidents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia--even though they had the option of not attending them. The idea that it was their duty as analysts to find out what these people are thinking evidently did not occur to them.

In the course of the discussions, we heard a great deal from Russian participants about Russian national interests, and about international peace, stability and cooperation against global threats; but not one word of ideology. The tone was sometimes harsh, but entirely pragmatic. On the other hand, from the U.S. administration and presidential candidates we’ve heard a flood of ideological clichés from the cold war about defending democracy and spreading freedom--platitudes with absolutely no relevance to the reasons for or the circumstances surrounding the war over South Ossetia.

Of course, taken as a whole, U.S. society is much more open and democratic than Russian society; but this is no longer necessarily true of American politicians or Washington elites when it comes to key issues of foreign policy. As for most of the U.S. media, its response to the war over South Ossetia demonstrated that it can on occasion be every bit as hysterically one-sided and willfully inaccurate as the Russian one. Indeed, in this case it was parts of the U.S. media which told by far the biggest single lie--namely the outrageous suggestion, in the face of all the known facts, that it was Russia and not Georgia that started this latest war.

Over the course of our lunch in Sochi, Vladimir Putin congratulated the U.S. media ironically on this performance--they acted “as if they had been given an order.” This raises the interesting question of what is in fact better: authoritarian control from above or mass hysteria from below. The way things are going, we will get plenty of opportunities to study this question in the years to come.