The Rebirth of President Putin

Vladimir Putin announced yesterday that he will trade places with current president Dmitry Medvedev next year, running for the presidency while Medvedev settles for the number two spot of prime minister. Under revisions to the Russian constitution, the presidency has been lengthened from a four-year to a six-year term, and presidents can run for re-election once. Twelve more years!

The announcement was hardly a surprise, of course. Despite appearances and titles, Putin has largely been running the show in Moscow even since Medvedev formally became the country’s chief executive in 2008, and virtually no one is surprised that Putin will seek to regain his formal status as president next year or that he will, in all likelihood, be elected overwhelmingly by the Russian electorate in reasonably free and open voting. Unless he either becomes ill or Russia experiences a great downturn during his first six years, he will dutifully be reelected in 2018. If all goes according to plan, Putin will remain in power until he is 72. Speculation about anything past 2024 is not worth making.

While exhibiting the beauty and inevitability of a mud slide (an analogy I crib without permission from an old University of Alabama dean), this is not particularly good news for the United States or the region, at least in term of promoting greater democratization and independence for the countries and peoples there. Russians apparently do not care terribly about such matters; what they care about is what Putin delivers.

Putin is attractive to the Russian (and especially ethnic Russian) majority in the federation. A robust and charismatic figure, Putin has three obvious sources of attraction. First, he is a dynamic and forceful leader who, particularly in the minds of Russians, projects an image of strength and importance of their country in the world. Just as we are entreated not to “mess with Texas,” the image of Vladimir Putin is that you had better not mess with Russia either.

Second, Putin is committed to restoring Russia’s place as a major power in the region and the world. This determination, which is related to the first source of his attraction, rings very much true to the Russian electorate. One of Russian history’s major themes is the quest for status as a world power. While most Russians do not look back at the old Soviet days with much poignancy, they do remember favorably the fact that the Soviet Union was an acknowledged, even feared, superpower which held sway within its region and was, for many purposes, the major peer of the United States. Russians want to return to that status; Putin, by word and deed, offers them what they believe is the best chance to do so. This perception stands in stark contrast with the image of the affable Medvedev, who appears much too bland and compliant for Russian tastes. Think Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Third, Putin is a consummate politician. His rise to power happened to coincide with Russia’s emergence as the world’s second largest exporter of oil and largest exporter of natural gas (especially to Europe, which is highyl dependent on Russian supplies), and he turned this windfall into two advantages for himself and his country. Internally, Putin has skillfullyused energy revenues essentially to “buy off” the voting public with the largesse of government disbursements that have improved the material conditions of many Russians. He became, during the 2000s wshen he was formally in the presidency, one of the two particular experts in what Thomas L. Friedman calls “petrolist” politics, using oil revenues to bolster support and, not entirely coincidentally, to erode democracy. It is a Faustian bargain of sorts, but one the Russian people have accepted as a necessary tradeoff for their own prosperity and sense of national resurgence.

Internationally, energy exports give Russia leverage they have lacked since the end of the Cold War. While Russia retains a nuclear force roughly equivalent to that of the United States, that is not enough to insure Russian prestige and acceptance as a”super” power: to many, it is still a “Third World country with nuclear weapons.” Oil and natural gas change that, since the world is hungry for energy, and especially for energy that does not come from the unstable Middle East: Russia may still be a Third World country, but energy makes them more consequential, and Putin both knows this and how to exploit it.

Will Putin return to his old ways when he returns to office? There is no reason to think he won’t. What will this mean for the United States? The answer somewhat depends on how the US government decides to treat a new Russian regime, but it will detainly dampen American enthusiasm for Russian movement toward “normal” status in the region and world and dim any hope that Russia will soon evolve into a full-scale western democracy. It will also mean a more assertive Russian stance toward the “internal abroad” (those ethnically non-Russian parts of Russia that seek autonomy or independence–think Chechnya and Dagestan) or the “near abroad” (the former Soviet republics on itrs periphery–think Georgia). Russia will almost certainly act in ways of which the United States disapproves, and the results will almost certainly return greater strain to those relations.

Russia still has its problems, which Putin cannot wish away. Russian demographics are still horrible, and population decline will continue and hamper Russia’s return to major status. The rate of exploitation of Russia’s oil reserves cannot be sustained long before they begin to become depleted. Russia needs to be looking toward new bases of influence beyond energy, and buying off the population only serves short-term, not long-term goals. These are Russian realities that face any Russian leader.

As yesterday’s indicates, Valdimir Putin is back. He never really went away, but in March, the Russian public will put him back in the driver’s seat, while his understudy, Dmitry Medvedev, will be consigned to the rumble seat. It is not particularly good news, but there is not a whole lot that can be done about it.

Bush’s Missile Defense, One More Time

President Obama is in Moscow meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, with the shadow Vladimir Putin not far from their sight. The highlight of the talks, which are aimed at improving relations with Russia typically soured by the Bush administration, center on nuclear arms agreements, which were at the heart of Cold War negotiations and were one the areas that led to ending the Cold War confrontation. As usual, missile defenses (in this case Bush’s proposed “light” defense in Poland and the Czech Republic) are the centerpiece of these discussions.

A point of honesty is due here. I have been a consistent opponent of missile defenses since the 1960s, when they were first proposed. My opposition has four bases that I can rattle off easily. First, they are expensive; President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), pegged at a helf-trillion or so (when a trillion dollars seemed like a lot) was the mother lode of this expense. Second, they do not work–or at least we have never built one that does against a real live attack seeking to overcome them. This, of course, makes their expense more dubious. Third, even if they were to work, they are easy to overcome, simply by building enough extra offensive systems (which are invariably cheaper than the defenses) to overwhelm them. This problem is progressive, meaning that an arms spiral of offense-defense will always favor the offense. Fourth, they are provocative and destabilizing; if they actually can be made to work, they would effectively disarm the offensive capabilities of the side at which they are aimed. That sounds like a much better idea on the surface than it really is. All the arguments for defenses deny these points, add the sentimental argument that we have to try to save the “women and chill’uns” (a task best accomplished by avoiding war altogether), and are, in my judgment, wrong.

Back to Moscow. The talks there are focused on two matters. One is the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). That agreement (START I) was negotiated in 1991 and will run out in December of this year. Everyone agrees it is in our interest to keep START going and to reach a new agreement that will reduce nuclear arsenals more; the only disagreement is the levels at which reductions will occur (the Russians want a lower bottom line than do the Americans). The Russians, who have always opposed missile defenses, argue that progress on START requires doing something about the Bush missile defense plan: no BMD agreement, no START.

Should the Obama administration bow to Russian pressure and cancel the Polish-Czech system? A positive answer includes the argument that the system is basically worthless (meaning we don’t give up much) and is aimed at a threat (Iran) that does not exist. From a national security vantage point, not much is being sacrificed. Proponents of the Bush plan suggest that the screen could work and that buckling in to the Russian demands is less than macho. These proponents, mostly Republicans, could make life miserable for Obama were he to accede to Russian demands.

Is there a compromise? Yes. There are two possiblities on the table. One is to move the system: radars in Turkey, launchers in Romania. The Russians are no more enthused about this than they are the Czech-Polish deployment plan. The other is to base the system on American Aegis ships, which are developing a theater missile defense system scheduled for deployment in 2015. The Russians do not object to this possibility, and it poses no additional national defense peril, since the Iranians cannot possibly have a deployable system before then (if they ever do). Declaring a deployment pause until 2015 thus seems a reasonable compromise.

The missile defense issue does not rise to the level of national security concern that, say, Iraq and Agfhanistan do, but improving U.S.-Russian relations may, so the visit is not inconsequential. It would, of course, be much simpler were it not for the persistent missile defense issue, which seems never to go away, no matter how badly one might wish it would. Support of missile defenses has been a nagging thorn in the national security debate for over 40 years now, and it has reared its head one more time. Let’s hope for a quiet burial this time!

Russia’s Afghan Valentine Present

The McClatcheyNewspaper group released a story on February 14 (Jonathan Landay, “Is U.S. Repeating Mistakes Soviet Regime Made in Afghanistan?”) based on recently declassified Soviet documents regarding why Mikhail Gorbachev decided the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan was doomed to failure and thus concluded the need to withdraw. The reasons are eerily similar to the problems the Obama administration faces 20 years after the Soviet withdrawal. It is quite a Valentine’s Day present.

The report admits, of course, that the reasons for the Soviet and American interventions in Afghanistan were different. The Soviets invaded in December 1979 to try to prop up a communist regime theyhad helped install, whereas the United States intervened initially because of the Taliban’s refusal to turn over Al Qaeda after 9/11. In the process, the United States assisted in the rise to power of the Hamid Karzai regime, which faces reelection later this year.

There are chilling points of comparability in the 1989 and 2009 situations that should give the Obama administration pause as it contemplates its next moves in Afghanistan. In the Soviet case, these factors led the leadership to conclude their mission was futile and had to be terminated. Should the Obama administration reach the same conclusions?

The McClatchey reports lists four similarities that are worth noting. The first was the failure of the government being propped up by the intervening power to achieve legitimacy. The communist government supported by the Soviets never had any real support, and a combination of ineptitude and corruption has largely created the same problem for Karzai. Although the study does not add this dynamic, the fact that both regimes could be portrayed by their opponents as puppets of the unwanted interveners did not help their popularity. Both the Soviets then and the Americans now backed popular losers.

Second, thecounterinsurgency is not working. The McClatchey report quotes the late Soviet Armychief of Staff, Sergei Akhromeyev, on this point: “After seven years in Afghanistan, there is not one square killometer untouched by a boot of a Soviet soldier. But as soon as they leave a place, the enemy returns and restores it all back the way it used to be.” This, of course, is the classic dilemma of the counterinsurgent: providing security in hostile territory. The problem is that security is only possible if one is physically present to enforce it. That requires a very large force in a place the size of Texas (Afghanistan). The Soviets could not do it with 150,000 troops. If current proposals are implemented, NATO (2/3 American) forces will number about 90,000. Need more be said?

Third, part of the Soviet problem was the inability to seal the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Taliban fighters ignored the border and went back and forth with impunity. As noted earlier in this space, they still do, since both sides of the border are Pashtun lands and the bulk of the Taliban are Pashtun. As the United States found after evicting the Taliban from power, chasing them out of the country is not the same thing as defeating them.

Fourth, the loss of goodwill between the occupiers and the population is the inevitable outcome of a prolonged occupation. Eduard Shevardnadze, then Soviet foreign minister (later president of Georgia), put it then, “Very little is left of the friendly feelings toward the Soviet people, which exised for decades.Very man people have died, and not all of them were bandits (guerrillas). Not a single problem was solved in favor of the peasants. In essence, we waged war against the peeasants.” Recent polls show that favorable opinions of Americans among Afghans is less than one-half, compared to two-thirds in 2007.   

These factors, along with a failing political system and economy, caused the Soviets to leave Afghanistan two decades ago. In essence, the Soviets concluded their quest was quixotic and unsustainable given their own national miseries. Is the situation really so different today?

Two Wars in Afghanistan?

When political and military historians look back at the protracted U.S. military effort in Afghanistan since 2001, they are unlikely to be impressed with it, either conceptually or operationally. The problem they are most likely to identify is that the enterprise has become rudderless: it is not clear what the United States is doing in Afghanistan, why it is doing it, or how (or whether) whatever we are trying to do can succeed. General David McKiernan, the U.S. commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF, the official name of the enterprise), has only exacerbated the muddle with his recent comments on the subject, intended to reassure the American public but accomplishing quite the opposite.

The basic problem is that the United Sates is attempting to do two things in Afghanistan: eradicate Al Qaeda (or eliminate its leadership) and stabilize Afghanistan as a country. Smashing Al Qaeda was, of course, the original purpose, and the goal that Americans supported, and continue to support, and that is clearly an American interest sufficiently important to justify continuing American military action of one sort or another. Stabilizing Afghanistan is a derivative objective that arose because it appeared the only way to get at Al Qaeda was to sweep aside the Taliban regime that protected them. That tactical decision, however, morphed into an objective to support and sustain the Karzai government we helped put in power to succeed the Taliban. It is not at all clear that this objective is attainable or is in the best American interests. Why do we care who rules Afghanistan?

The official answer, to the extent it is expressed explicitly, is that a stable Afghanistan will be a bulwark against the return of the Taliban and the possible return of Al Qaeda to a new sanctuary state. The question is whether attempting to preclude this possibility is worth the effort that is being expended in its name.

No one argues with an effort aimed at eliminating Al Qaeda . There are two questions about that effort that tend to get lost in the ongoing discussion of Afghanistan, a debate that is really directed at the second, and more questionable goal, of securing the Afghan state. The first question is what kind of effort is likely to achieve the goal: should it be an effort grounded in more or less conventional warfare–or counter insurgency–doctrine? And should a military effort in Afghanistan be its focal point? The answer to neither question is overwhelmingly obvious. A case can be made, for instance, that covert action by small, lethal paramilitary units against Al Qaeda operating in both Afghanistan and Pakistan would be more likely to succeed in the long run than what is being done now, and that the current effort is largely irrelevant to this purpose. To the extent that the current effort galvanizes Afghan resistance to intrusive outsiders (in this case us), it may actually be counterproductive.

It has become an implicit part of the Afghanistan debate that countering the insurgency is intimately related to the Al Qaeda mission. There is very littile direct discussion of the Al Qaeda problem, as McKiernan’s recent defenses suggest. When McKiernan says, as he did in yesterday’s New York Times, “We are not losing in Afghanistan. We have insufficient security forces here to adequately provide for the security of the people of Afghanistan,” he is not talking about eradicating Al Qaeda. Rather, he is talking about the second war: the effort to gain control of Afghanistan. And that is a dubious goal and prospect. 

What is the problem with a war to “liberate” Afghanistan? First, it is not clear what liberation means or that what we define as liberation matches what the Afghans want. Afghan history, as noted in the last posting, suggests that what they primarily want is to be free of outside interference and presence. When McKiernan says “I do believe that the people of Afghanistan will win in this country,” he may be right, but their definition of victory may be diametrically different than ours. What this suggests is that “victory” in the sense of attaining the political objective of a stable, pro-western Afghanisan under Karzai or a surrogate may simply be unattainable. Second, it is not clear why we care who rules Afgganistan. After we helped the Afghans (including the Taliban and the predecessors of Al Qaeda) kick the Soviets out in the 1980s, we dropped Afghanistan like a rock. Why? Because we had no interests there other than denying control to Russia. Has that changed? If the United States can eliminate Al Qaeda without “liberating” Afghanistan, would it matter what kind of government there was in Kabul afterward? History says no!

There is currently great controversy and grwoing pessimism about the prospects in Afghanistan, the response to which is to call for a bigger effort. The problem is that the pessimism is directed at the second war rather than the first–eliminating Al Qaeda. That has not gone well, but there may be other approaches that are more likely to succeed–turning the military effort covert, engaging in greater political efforts with Pakistan, for instance. Calls to ratchet up the action in Afghanistan do not address this problem, which is the first and real reason for war in Afghanistan. Instead, they speak to the second war, which is going badly because that is basically all it can do. Once again, it represents the American penchant not to learn from or to forget the lessons of previous engagements. Destroying Al Qaeda is not concpdetually like Vietnam, but the second war in Afghanistan may be. The second war broke the Soviet Union, and now it is testing us. You are right, General McKiernan, “the people of Afghanistan will win” the second war, but it may be by beating us.

“NATO Not Losing Afghan War, Commander Says.” New York Times (online), October 12, 2008 (story provided by Reuters).

Palin’s ABC Interview: Flunking Foreign Policy

Republican  Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave her first unscripted interview yesterday to ABC’s Charlie Gibson. The major topic of questions was the Governor’s preparation for dealing with foreign and national security policy. Based on her public responses, she could scarcely have failed more miserably.

Palin’s responses were revealing in two ways. The first was that they displayed her virtually pristine lack of knowledge of foreign affairs and U.S.policy toward the world. She clearly has never heard of the Bush doctrine, which has been the guiding “principle” of U.S. policy since 2001 (she described it as Bush’s “worldview”: that would get you one or two points for a nice try on a ten-point scale in one of my classes). She blithely replied that the Russian invasion was totally unprovoked. Whether it as justified is one thing; that the Georgians did nothing to provoke the Russians is simply not true. She came out in favor on Georgian and Ukrainian membership in NATO, including acceptance of the commitment to defend them militarily if they were made members. She accepted the prospect of war with Russia arising from these acts as essentially no big deal. And here most of us thought the purpose of the Cold War was to avoid just that outcome.

In some ways, the more frghtening aspect of her performance was its embrace of neo-conservative doctrine about the world. This was particularly obvious in her bellicose remarks about encircling Russia with NATO and closely reflects similar attitudes expressed by John McCain. Most Americans have repudiated the neo-conservative creed which, among other things, provided the rationale for Iraq, raised the utopian goal of global democratization to a central place in U.S. policy, and has militarized much of America’s stance in the world. With the possible exception of the Likud faction in Israel, no one outside the United States endorses this world view. Four more years?

Demonstrating that the election campaign is about electing politicians and not debating public policy, the GOP has gone on the counteroffensive. Palin is qualified as commander-in-cchief because she commands the Alaska National Guard (although not when it is engaged in military operations), can see Russian soil from one of the Alaskan islands, has traveled overseas once, and knows something about energy policy (extrapolated to energy security). Joe Biden, on the other hand, has the skinny resume of being chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Quite a comparison.

One may choose to vote for McCain-Palin for a variety of reasons, but please do not insult our intelligence by saying that preparation for the role of head of state and commander-in-chief is among them, at least not in the case of Sarah Palin. She must not have taken a course in American Foreign Policy while she was getting her political science degree from the University of Idaho, or if she did, she must not have passed it.