Russia: Other Points of View

MANAS BASE

ARTICLE CRITIQUE 

Response to Wall Street Journal "Russians Outfox U.S. in Latest Great Game" by Alan Cullison, June 11, 2009

By Gordon Hahn 

The Wall Street Journal article reviewed below attempts to tie re-authoritarianization in Kyrgyzstan with increasing Russian influence in the Central Asian country.  The real reason behind disenchantment with Bakiev’s regime expressed in the article, however, is the hapless misinterpretation by Bishkek to ostensibly ‘terminate’ the U.S. lease of Manas.  Once again the U.S. mainstream media has gotten it wrong.  Less than two weeks after this article was published, the Kyrgyz had renegotiated a new deal with the U.S. allowing the latter’s base to remain at a higher renting price.  All along it was clear that the cancellation of the lease and the Kyrgyz’s alleged decision to close down the base was in part, 1) a ploy by the Kyrgyz to get more money from Washington, and 2) in part a ploy by Moscow to gather bargaining chips in its negotiations with the new U.S. administration and to demonstrate to Washington that it can limit the U.S. presence in the region.  The Kyrgyz move was immediately interpreted in the West as induced through pressure by Moscow because it was announced following a meeting with Medvedev and the announcement of a substantial Moscow aid package for Bishkek. Moscow, it was assumed, was trying to block any and all U.S. access to Central Asia.  In a meeting with Russian ambassador to the UN Vitalii Churkin in April, just days after the announcement, I suggested to Churkin that this was really a clever bargaining maneuver by Bakiev who was seeking a much higher rental fee from the U.S. and assistance from Russia.  He agreed this interpretation was very plausible. The ostensible role of Moscow underscored both the strength of the Bishkek maneuver for Kyrgyzstan and allowed Moscow to gather bargaining chips in upcoming negotiations over various issues and the overall U.S.-Russian relationship. Again, it underscored Moscow’s potential to influence and even control U.S. access to Central Asian bases or ‘transit centers.’  In addition, under this scenario, Bishkek can play one side off against the other and get more assistance from both.  These explanations for the Manas Base cancellation were never considered in the U.S. mainstream media.  Instead, it was immediately assumed that it was simply a matter of Moscow having pressured Bishkek and having opposed and “outfoxed” Washington, as author and editors of the article under review below do.

To access the full analysis, please click here Download WSJ_Cullison_11_June_2009

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Freedom of Opinion. We hear a great deal about how Russia’s media is not free. Since the discussion is usually only about the “old media” and not about the “new media”, a distorted picture is given about citizen access to information, which is  really important. But the “old media” is dying everywhere for a variety of reasons. A recent poll (JRL/2009/21) gives some numbers on Russian access to the Internet: daily use is claimed by 22% of the population; naturally Moscow (49%) and St Petersburg (40%) are the highest. This site suggests Russian “Internet penetration” is about half the European average and about one-third of the North American average. But the main point is that the Internet is free – there is no government control and once you’re on it, you’re on it, whether you’re in Ottawa or Omsk. So assessments of Russians’ access to different opinions ought to take into account the fact that about a third of Russians say they use the Net at least once a week and that number is, of course, growing all the time.

SPINNING RUSSIA AND TELENOR

ROPV CONTRIBUTORS

By William Dunkerley 

When U.S. President Barack Obama first met President Dmitry Medvedev in April, almost two-thirds of Americans were thinking negative thoughts about Russia. Now, less than two weeks away from Obama's meeting with Medvedev in Moscow, the Kremlin is showing new concern about Russia's image abroad. Indeed, the importance of external PR has been elevated by making it a responsibility of presidential chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin.

What can Naryshkin possibly do to change the United States' negative views of Russia? Is simply putting a better spin on things really going to change anyone's mind about anything?

The answer is that it just might -- if it is done correctly. For many years I have studied the ups and downs of U.S. attitudes toward Russia, and what I found is that there seems to be a responsive relationship between attitudinal change and three external factors: leadership initiatives, geopolitical events and negative PR attacks.

UKRAINE: A UNION STATE WITH RUSSIA?

REPRINTS

Would the Real Ukraine Please Stand Up?

by Graham Stack, Russia Profile

The Ukrainian People May Want a Union State with Russia, but Few Russians Wish to Join the Ukraine

KIEV/ Opinion polls show that Ukraine is a Russian-leaning country, very different from the one described by Western media and the Ukrainian foreign policy elite. “If we were to fantasize, and pretend that [the Russian Prime Minister] Vladimir Putin would run for the post of Ukrainian president, then according to opinion poll results he would win right off,” sais Alexei Lyashenko, an analyst at Kiev’s Research & Branding (R&B) polling institute. “His only serious competitor would be [Russian President] Dmitry Medvedev.”

The R&B poll published on May 25 shows that for all the rhetoric about the Westward-bound Ukraine breaking free of Russia’s malignant influence and Putin’s imperialism, the reality on the ground is very different. “In fact, Vladimir Putin’s high rating in Ukraine is nothing new, but quite steady,” Lyashenko added. “It was over 50 percent even during the ‘Orange Revolution’.”

RUSSIA'S LIMOUSINE LIBERALS

REPRINTS 

By Anatol Lieven, New America Foundation

The National Interest Online | June 10, 2009

Over the last several days, two pieces attacking the realist approach to Russia were published in prominent media outlets in the United States and Russia. One, co-authored by Lev Gudkov of the Levada Center, Igor Klyamkin, vice president of the Liberal Mission Foundation, Georgy Satarov, president of the Russian NGO the Indem Foundation and Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center was was featured on the editorial page of the Washington Post. The other, by Andrei Piontkovsky, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, was released in the Moscow Times.

I read these pieces concerning the moves to improve relations between America and Russia with a profound feeling of depression. This is not just because there is something bizarre and twisted about pro-Western Russian liberals attacking the recommendations of the Hart-Hagel Commission or statesmen such as Henry Kissinger and James Baker. It is also because their criticism serves as a mouthpiece for the agendas of the most bitterly anti-Russian and geopolitically aggressive liberal interventionists and neocons who help maintain tensions between Russia and the West--and actually between the United States and the rest of the world.

FALSE CHOICES FOR RUSSIA

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Response to Washington Post "False Choices for Russia" by Lev Gudkov, Igor Klyamkin, Georgy Satarov and Lilia Shevtsova, June 9, 2009 

by Gordon Hahn

The article reviewed below is yet another in the Washington Post’s persistently one-sided coverage of Russia. It was written by Lev Gudkov (director of Levada Center, an independent polling and research organization), Igor Klyamkin (vice president of the Liberal Mission Foundation), Georgy Satarov (president of the Russian nongovernmental organization Indem Foundation and former advisor to late Russian president Boris Yeltsin), and Lilia Shevtsova (senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Moscow Center).  The article may be part of a perhaps orchestrated campaign marshaled by U.S. hawks on Russia deploying Russian liberals against those in the U.S. arguing for a more balanced approach towards Russia than that pursued by two successive American presidents.  The goal of the neo-realists is to establish a U.S.-Russian relationship that will facilitate Russian support of key American foreign policy goals.  In particular, a less aggressive Western policy in the former USSR should be exchanged for Russian assistance on non-proliferation issues, most notably the Koran and Iranian nuclear programs, and the war against jihadism, especially in Afghanistan.  Their liberal (and conservative) opponents in the U.S. propose continuation of past policies: NATO expansion into the former USSR region and an emphasis on Russia’s lack of democracy. The reader will note that the Russian liberals’ article below only mentions NATO expansion in passing and focuses instead on the Kremlin’s soft authoritarianism.

The article reviewed below is part of a global debate among Russians and Russia observers that began apparently with a March 31st article in the Russian daily Kommersant by Boris Sidorov.  The campaign was carried forth in nearly identical pieces by Andrei Pitontivsky in a June 4^th Moscow Times article and the piece reviewed below.  A liberal-realist response came on June 10 from Anatol Lieven on www.nationalinterest.com.  Lieven’s response was rebutted by Paul Goble using a June 15 Grani.ru article by Russian commentator Irina Pavlova.

To access the full analysis, please click here Download WP_Shevtsova_9_June_09

JIHADISM IN RUSSIA

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Response to New York Times "Russia’s Knotty Policies on Islam, Mirrored in Trial" by Michael Schwirtz, June 3, 2009

by Gordon Hahn

The New York Times has published yet another U.S. mainstream media article on Russia’s Muslim regions that completely ignores” jihadi” violence in Russia and focuses instead on the Russian state’s violation of Muslims’ rights.  To be sure, the Russian state is not yet democratic.  Its soft authoritarian regime fairly frequently violates political, civil, and human rights of citizens, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, and the media should on occasion cover this issue.  However, since the tragic Beslan school massacre masterminded by Chechen, Ingush and Ossetian jihadists in September 2004 – nearly a full five years ago – not one U.S. mainstream media outlet has produced a single article focusing on Russia’s jihadists, their ideology, strategy, tactics, or record of violence and violations of political, civil, and human rights.  Why is this?

During the past five years period, jihadists (Ichkeria) from the ‘Chechen Republic’, who now call their movement the ‘Caucasus Emirate’, have carried out thousands of attacks and killed thousands of Russian civilians, civilian officials, and security, military, police servicemen and officers.  They have declared jihad on the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Israel and have published the vilest of anti-Semitic, anti-Western, and anti-Russian articles on their websites.  They lend moral, political, personnel, and technical support to jihadists fighting American and other Western forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Despite all this, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The Economist have totally ignored Russia's jihadi threat. As with all U.S. mainstream media articles on Russia’s Muslims and and Muslim republics, if the jihadists are mentioned at all, the present New York Times article mentions them only in passing and then quickly moves on to detail the Russian state’s less than ideal treatment of its Muslims.

To access the full analysis, please click here Download NYT_Jihadism_Schwirtz_3_June_09

RESET POLICY TOWARDS RUSSIA

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Response to Foreign Policy "Rethink Before you Reset" by Daniel Klimmage, May 26, 2009

by Gordon M Hahn 

This article is a rehashing of the view that Russia is an eternal threat to the West.  The author’s feigned academic objectivity melts away quickly with the most cursory examination of the facts.  The possibility that the U.S. may have committed mistakes in its relations with Russia since the end of the Cold War is not even entertained.  Instead of the U.S. offering to reset its relations together with Moscow, the author argues that it is in fact Moscow that has controlled and damaged the downhill direction of the relationship after the Cold War and must change policies.  Fundamental issues such as NATO expansion are ignored and dangerous policies such as building U.S. military bases in Georgia or Turkmenistan are broached.

To access the full analysis, please click here Download FP_Klimmage_May_26_09 

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armsrong

North Caucasus. Medvedev visited Makhachkala, Dagestan yesterday for a Security Council meeting and stated that “Overall, 308 crimes of a terrorist nature have been committed so far in the North Caucasus in 2009.” His solution was a combination of security activity and amelioration of “root causes” among which he named “low living standards, high unemployment and massive, horrifyingly widespread corruption.” A plan was apparently evolved at the meeting: we shall see. The question is: to what extent are the attacks on police and officials (8 in the last week!) a product of desperation and a habit of killing after all the warfare there; “normal” (in the Russian context) “bizness” disputes; or the operations of jihadists? Whatever the cause may be, and it’s likely a combination, the situation is growing slowly worse. It is a very explosive place: quick roundup at JRL/2009/109/12. Another reason, by the way, to try and keep a rein on Saakashvili’s military ambitions: the last time Georgia tried forcibly to incorporate the unwilling people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, fighters from the North Caucasus, seeking the re-creation of their “Mountaineer Republic”, fought there. They brought their fight home and, especially, to Chechnya. Chechnya attracted a professional jihadist named Khattab who was instrumental in causing the second war. Moscow does not want a repeat performance.

Pikalyovo. The transcript of Putin’s meeting in the town is worth reading as an illustration of many of Russia’s problems “in the weeds”: a Soviet-era unified plant complex was broken up in the privatisations; maybe there was some ripping off; as the sole employer, it had large responsibilities for the town’s social welfare system; the world economy reduced demand for its products; the workers exhausted normal channels and only got attention after blocking the highway; the issue required the personal intervention of A Boss. It is also an example of Putin’s style and authority. By the way, he did not call Deripaska a “cockroach” as has been sloppily  reported (see the end of the transcript). This is not the first time Putin has been wilfully misquoted – see, for example “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” which  is  endlessly  recycled to  prove his  evil.

GEORGIA'S INVASION IGNORED AGAIN BY THE WASHINGTON POST

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Response to Washington Post Editorial "Another Summer in Georgia", June 4, 2009

by Gordon Hahn

The article reviewed herein is a standard, one-sided Washington Post presentation replete with inaccurate, unsupported and false claims.  It is distorted by the gross omission of key facts in order to whitewash Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and blame all problems in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Georgia itself on Moscow.  The article reads as if Saakashvili himself or one of his PR agents had written it. It is particularly pernicious in repeating without qualification the highly questionable Georgian claim that Russian forces began the August 2008 war by invading Georgia on August 7 when existing evidence suggests quite the opposite: that Russian forces entered South Ossetia on August 8 after Saakashvili gave an order on August 7 to invade South Ossetia and Georgian forces began an indiscriminate artillery assault on civilians and Russian and Ossetian peacekeeping forces in Tskhinvali. 

To access the full analysis, please click here Download WP_Georgia_4_June_09

MUTINY AGAINST GEORGIAN PRESIDENT SAAKASHVILI

Russia Media Watch Comparative Media Analysis

The general assumption in the West, or certainly in the United States, is that U.S. mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, being free of government control, provide readers with accurate and unbiased coverage of foreign and domestic politics.  Russia Media Watch’s (RMW) writ is to reveal the continuous biases and inaccuracies in U.S. mainstream media reporting on Russia. 

One of the exaggerations that U.S. mainstream media purvey is that Russian media are completely controlled by the government – or at least that Russians do not have access to independent objective news reporting and analysis.  This point is usually made by referring to the federal government’s control of all nationwide television channels.  However, as RMW has repeatedly pointed out, Russians have access to objective and/or independent radio stations (for example, Ekho Moskvy or Echo of Moscow), newspapers, and Internet. 

To underscore this point, we offer two articles – one by the U.S. mainstream New York Times and another from the Russian newspaper Kommersant – covering the alleged mutiny against Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili at a Georgian military base on May 5. 

UKRAINE ON THE BRINK

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Response to Foreign Policy "Ukraine on the Brink. All eyes on the reset button, Washington has failed to notice Russia's meddling in a crisis next door" by David J.Kramer and Damon Wilson, May 28, 2009

by Gordon Hahn

The ForeignPolicy.com article reviewed below reflects the “Washington consensus” extant in the U.S. capitol after Vladimir Putin rose to power in 1999.  It is authored by David J. Kramer, senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and former Assistant Secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor and a Deputy Assistant Secretary responsible for Ukraine from 2005 to 2008, and Damon Wilson, Director of the International Security Program at the Atlantic Council and former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council from 2007 to 2009.  The Atlantic Council is a pro-NATO organization that has strenuously backed NATO expansion to Russia’s borders.  Kramer and Wilson understand that Washington must have relations with both Moscow and Kiev; however, their logic is weakened by ignoring the fundamental issue of NATO expansion from Russia’s security perspective. Further their assumptions contain many of the key clichés proselytized by the Washington consensus (both old and new), which ignores serious security differences between the U.S. and Russia.  

To access the full analysis, please click here Download FP_Kramer_Ukraine_May_09

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

By Patrick Armstrong

The Duumvirate. A thoughtful piece by Igor Yurgens discusses the political power situation. "It is very unusual that there are two very respected and influential people who are friendly and share a single ideology, but occupy two different, powerful positions. For the first time, our country literally reflects our coat of arms, with the two-headed eagle. Some people get confused, especially political experts. In business, there is more common sense, though.” I have come to believe that Putin’s decision to become PM was a step towards political pluralism and that he and Medvedev operate as heads of a team (and have done so for some years.) I agree that many political commentators are confused. One of the bigger problems in Russia coverage is what I call neo-Kremlinology: the assumption that Russia only has a dozen or so actors and the story is their interaction and (presumed) power struggles. For my money, this is usually wrong-headed and a waste of time. I have also been struck for some years how differently businessmen see things, probably because they spend so much time away from the hothouse atmosphere in Moscow. The duumvirate is a peculiar situation, quite new to Russia and uncommon elsewhere: it deserves careful thought and observation rather than the Procrustean approach. Yurgens also points out that it is misleading to focus on the principals: “there is no duumvirate, there is a collective of people who have decided to deal with this situation as a team”.

FALSIFYING RUSSIAN HISTORY

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Response to Associated Press "Russian Commission to Guard Against False History" by Steve Gutterman, May 19, 2009 

by Gordon Hahn

The Associated Press article provides a very one-sided view of the contending claims between Russians and Eastern Europeans regarding Soviet and World War II history.  It, therefore, does the work of the Ukrainian and Polish nationalists who seek to portray the 1930s famine and Katyn massacre, respectively, as attempts at genocide.  This falsification of history is ignored, while the Russians are criticized for trying to address the problem, in its often, albeit clumsy way.

To view the full analysis, please click here  Download AP_Gutterman_May09

THE AMERICAN MISSION AND THE “EVIL EMPIRE”

David Foglesong's speech at Stanford University, May 19, 2009

I would like to begin by saying a few words about how I came to write The American Mission and the “Evil Empire” and what I was trying to do in that book.

When I was a graduate student at Berkeley twenty years ago I was trained in traditional diplomatic history.  My dissertation generally reflected that approach, with its emphasis on the narrative details of how Americans sought in limited, indirect, and secretive ways to help non-Bolshevik Russians retake power after the revolution of October 1917. 

As I was turning the dissertation into my first book in the early 1990s, much of the American public discussion of Russia centered on how the revolution of 1991 had opened the way for the rapid transformation of Russia into a democratic, capitalist, and Christian country.  Since that conception seemed to me to parallel the euphoric American misinterpretation of the revolution of February 1917 , I became interested in examining the origins of an American messianic drive to liberate and remake Russia that I believed had distorted American perspectives on Russia before, during, and after the Cold War.  So, in the project I started when I was a fellow at the Hoover Institution in 1995, one of my ambitions was to challenge the obsessive conventional focus on “the Cold War” of 1945-1989 as a unique and discrete epoch. 

To access the full text, please click here Download David_Foglesong_Stanford_Lecture_May_19_2009

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Budget priorities. On Monday Medvedev outlined the budget priorities for 2010-2012 to the government. He listed ten: maintain social spending; reduce budget deficit; cut costs; support the industrial and financial sectors; improve the quality of public services; improve the public procurement system; set an “economically justified tax burden”; make authorities responsible for effective spending; establish a “reliable and balanced pension system”; put in place “a barrier-free environment for people with disabilities”. Nothing on defence.

Russia-EU Summit. The summit was held in Khabarovsk (Moscow wanted to show the Europeans just how big Russia is) last week. As is normal with such meetings, the results will only become clear after time. It seems to me that Europe is more open to Russia – I still maintain that the August war was a reality check for most Europeans about the nature of Saakashvili’s regime and the way events were drifting. Perhaps a first sign is the Italian Foreign Minister’s saying that the EU should “enhance strategic relations” with Russia. The summit discussed security (with at least rhetorical openness to Medvedev’s proposals about a new security structure), energy (see Ukraine entry below – another reality check for Europe that perhaps the gas supply problem does not begin and end in Moscow). Press conference is avaialable here.

AIRBRUSHING HISTORY

by Patrick Armstrong

“Other countries could blame Russia for their lost decades; Russia, having no one to blame, couldn't face its history” This piece of rhetorical puffery appeared about two years ago as an explanation for Russia’s alleged “de-democratization”. Not only does it ignore such things as the abortive trial of the CPSU in May 1992 and the Butovo Memorial, but it has a serious blind spot: the former communist countries have not come to terms with the fact that many of their people eagerly participated in the Bolshevik experiment and that they have a share of responsibility in the disaster. Bolshevism was not a purely “Russian” phenomenon.

A Latvian government commission has been working away to produce a monetary figure to put on the losses suffered by Latvia as a result of its incorporation into the USSR from 1940 to 1990. It has not finished its calculations yet, and may never, but the numbers that are bruited about are in the many billions. When it completes its work, the final number will be as accurate or as inaccurate as such numbers will always be.

RUSSIA'S NEW SECURITY POLICY

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

by Gordon Hahn

Although the article reviewed here is hardly the most egregious example of media bias in the U.S. mainstream media’s reporting on Russia. It is actually instructive regarding some of the techniques used to get a more sensational story than one which actually exists.  In this Time article, mistranslation and reordering phrases are used to give Russia's mid-May "National Security Strategy to 2020" a more sinister edge than it in fact has.  At times, the article contradicts itself in order to maintain the sensational at the expense of the more mundane and accurate.

To access the full analysis, please click here Download Time_Wendle_May_09

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Demographics. Medvedev gave an interview the other day, in which he spoke about what the government was doing about Russia’s demographic problems. The problem has two “ends”: too few births and too many early deaths and the government has put effort into both ends. A number of specialist cardiovascular centres (he visited one today) are being created around Russia “we know that cardiovascular disease is the biggest cause of death here” and the program to encourage births is having its effect as well: “The number of childbirths has increased by almost 7 percent over the last year… At the same time, there has been a decrease in infant mortality….” RosStat’s figures show that these programs are starting to bite. While Russia is still losing population, the net loss has been reduced by about 300,000 since 2006 (2006 – 637,200 net loss; 2007 – 442,700; 2008 – 337,300). 2009’s figures show continuing progress. 2006-2008 saw births up by about 200,000 and deaths down by about 90,000. In short, alarmist pieces about Russia’s demographic collapse are starting to look outdated. Added to which, Russia is not the only country with a shrinking population.

RUSSIA, U.S.: START TALKS BEGIN

REPRINTS

Stratfor.com

U.S. and Russian negotiators began a three-day meeting in Moscow on May 19 to work out a replacement for the 1991 START I treaty, which expires at the end of 2009. START is the document governing strategic nuclear weapons in the two countries, and the nuclear parity the treaty legally establishes serves as the cornerstone of the broader U.S.-Russian relationship.

Normally, nuclear arms talks are tedious affairs that require years to negotiate. They involve representatives from both states' intelligence, military and diplomatic communities and necessitate seemingly endless discussion of painstaking details about weapon systems, delivery methods, timetables and inspection regimes.

Ironically, this time the devil may not be in the details.

It appears this time around that all of the technical details already have been broadly agreed to and the militaries have either signed off or been sidelined. The instruction from the political leadership on both sides seems to be to get a deal done as soon as possible - probably within mere weeks.