8 Responses to “Not What He’s Cracked Up To Be”

1. John42, on September 4th, 2007 at 5:27 pm Said:

   I’ve been meaning to ask this for a while now. What do you read that keeps you up to date on on random international people like Saakashvili? And my curiousity gets a little broader than that - In a given week, what do you read? How many books, magazines etc.? I would be fascinated to know.
   Also, it would be fun for the rest of us if you went out and bought Ledeen’s new book, The Iranian Time Bomb — The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction, and periodically mocked excerpts of it here, at a rate of about once a week or something like that.

2. tcowan, on September 4th, 2007 at 6:40 pm Said:

   You ought to see the new Presidential Palace he is building on a river-front bluff in Tbilisi–looks like a miniature US Capital, but with a fiberglass dome.

3. tcowan, on September 4th, 2007 at 6:44 pm Said:

   You ought to see the Presidential Palace he is building on a riverfront bluff in Tbilisi–looks like a miniature US Capitol, but with a clear, fiberglass dome.

4. Daniel Larison, on September 4th, 2007 at 7:00 pm Said:

   Between my teaching work and dissertation research, personal reading has fallen by the wayside for the most part, I’m afraid. I have started Brian Linn’s The Philippine War as part of my delayed promise to learn more about our campaign in the Philippines. Most recently, I have been reading modern Greek history books for my course on modern Greek history, and I have also been reading an 11th century monothelete Arabic treatise (translated into French) for my dissertation. Since my qualifying exams, I have generally done less reading than I used to do.

   I regularly read four magazines, to which I subscribe–Chronicles, American Conservative, The Spectator and The Economist. I check Antiwar for news updates, plus Google News, BBC, the Telegraph, NYT, the Post and WSJ. I occasionally will pick up a copy of Foreign Policy, and sometimes I will read Foreign Affairs online. RealClearPolitics is a good clearinghouse for political commentary. Otherwise, I track things down by search engines based on topics. I also follow some areas more closely than others. The Caucasus is a region I am very interested in, so I make a point of following what goes on there. If you were to press me about the latest developments in, say, Cameroon, I would probably be stumped.

   Mocking Ledeen would be fun, but it might be all together too easy.

5. Grumpy Old Man, on September 5th, 2007 at 6:26 am Said:

   Why so hard on Saakashvili and not so hard on Putin?

   Is it your contrarian streak or do you see a difference? My impression (and it’s only that) is that they are both nationalists who value a strong centralized state in the face of a society disintegrated by too many years of Bolshevism.

   Am I missing something?

6. Daniel Larison, on September 5th, 2007 at 2:11 pm Said:

   I suppose it is a kind of contrarianism, in that most Western observers make it their business to hate Putin and admire Saakashvili and the like. No one I know of in the West idolises Putin or thinks that he is some clear-eyed reforming leader of a democratic revolution. Obviously, he isn’t, and neither is Saakashvili. However, many, many people think this of Saakashvili and treat the “Rose Revolution” as something genuine and legitimate. They think this in no small part simply because Saakashvili is anti-Russian and therefore a “democrat,” while Putin is a Russian nationalist and therefore obviously the next coming of Stalin. Saakashvili is a pliable ruler of a pro-American satellite government, and is therefore high-minded and good, while Putin is being cast as our enemy. There is a double standard being applied out there, but I don’t think I’m the one who’s been applying it.

   The anti-Putin hysteria in this country is such that I try to offer balancing arguments to keep things in perspective, because the consequences of galloping Russophobia are far worse for us and the Russians. In many respects, they are very much alike (both play to the crowds nostalgic for the Soviet past and the “good old days” of Comrade Stalin while simultaneously deploying symbolism of their countries’ medieval and Orthodox heritages), and I have previously condemned Putin for his stupid, destructive treatment of Georgians living in Russia during the spat with Saakashvili last year. I have never made any attempt to deny the authoritarian “neo-KGB” state that Putin is building; I have taken issue with one-sided portrayals of Ukrainian and Georgian “democracy” standing up heroically to Muscovite tyrants. I have questioned the obsession of some in the media with the internal affairs of Russia, since I don’t think it is our concern and I see it as a not-so-subtle attempt to wage a PR war against Russia as a way of preparing the public for increasingly confrontational policies. We have seen it before.

   Russia has an illiberal nationalist regime with many of the institutional and procedural elements of democracy, just like Ukraine and Georgia. The difference is that Westerners ignore the illiberal, nationalist elements in the latter two countries and ignore the democratic elements in the former because it suits prejudices about the kinds of people who are “pro-American.” Ukrainian and Georgian pro-Americanism, such as it is, is largely tactical and does not represent some fundamental change in the political culture of either country. I see a thoroughgoing bias against Russia designed to feed the worst tendencies in our foreign policy establishment, and it is redolent of a kind of anti-Orthodox neo-Orientalism that we last saw deployed against the Serbs. Nonetheless, I agree that Putin and Saakashvili do tend to mirror each other in the way that they rule. Saakashvili can do less because his government is much less powerful, but he is not the reforming pro-Western hero that some want to make him out to be. (Incidentally, McCain’s love of Georgian authoritarians goes back to Shevardnadze’s days, and is clearly aimed at using Georgia as a cat’s paw against Russia, which I think is very bad for Georgia and Russia and for us.)

   My concern about Russia policy is that this anti-Putin hysteria will contribute to bad policy choices based out of a kind of reflexive hostility to anything Russian. Promoting Georgian membership in NATO, which Saakashvili is keen on doing and some in Washington are keen on encouraging, is just the sort of provocative, stupid policy towards Russia that needs to be fought, so glowing and positive appraisals of Saakashvili (which also happen to be false) are actually much more dangerous than attempts to try to understand Moscow’s perspective on U.S.-Russian relations.

7. Grumpy Old Man, on September 5th, 2007 at 5:05 pm Said:

   A very balanced view.

   Both Presidents are post-socialist authoritarians, and Putin is also a centralizer, which is understandable given the weak institutions and the fissiparous multi-ethnic nature of the vast Russian Federation, but not especially desirable.

   The strategic implications of admitting Georgia to NATO boggle the mind. How receptive is Turkey going to be to the Sixth Fleet transiting the straits to defend Orthodox Georgia? Hardly more so than she was to allowing a US invasion of northern Iraq from Inçirlik, I would think. How then would NATO defend its new member? A nuclear umbrella over Tbilisi?

   Even the allure of a non-Russian pipeline from Kazakhstan seems not worth that risk.

   I appreciate Georgian polyphonic choral singing, their impossibly consonantal language, and if I experienced it, I suspect I would also appreciate their food, wine and hospitality. However, if food, wine, music and language ruled geopolitics, there’d still be an Italian Empire.

8. Eunomia » Georgia, on August 8th, 2008 at 10:51 am Said:

   [...] Posting will be light today, but James has updates on the very important story coming out of the Caucasus.  For as long as I can remember, I have warned that Saakashvili was reckless and dangerous, and with his bid to force re-integration of South Ossetia he provoked the inevitable Russian backlash.  You would think that someone who has been complaining for years that Russia is using the separatist states as nothing more than proxies would not then go ahead and launch an attack on one of the proxies!  But that is exactly what he did, and everyone should remember that it was Saakashvili who created the current crisis.    [...]

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