Barnett: Putin positions himself as Russia's Lee Kuan Yew

By Thomas P.M. Barnett
Sunday, October 7, 2007

One hears much about the death of democracy in Russia these days, especially as current president Vladimir Putin muses openly about slipping into the office of prime minister to sidestep constitutional term limits. As a former Sovietologist with a degree in Russian literature, I find this storyline all too familiar. But, rest assured, I likewise see America's Cold War victory remaining secure.

Russia enjoyed no real democracy in the 1990s, instead suffering an economic chaos that left society prey to all manner of gangsters. Not surprisingly, average Russians craved a return to order, which finally arrived in the political ascendancy of Putin's "siloviki," or "power guys," who spent their formative years working for the KGB.

During its final years, the dysfunctional Soviet system muddled along, thanks primarily to those who operated "on the left" (na levo), or in the black markets, and those who operated "on the right" (na pravo) or in the security services. The former kept the decrepit economy from collapsing; the latter kept the decrepit regime from collapsing.

These were the two great talent pools for post-Soviet leadership.

The "na levo" types ruled the '90s in the form of the so-called oligarchs who swindled their way to fantastic wealth, snatching up Russia's economic crown jewels for kopecks on the ruble.

Starting in 2000, that bunch was dethroned by the rising "na pravo" types, who, once in power, have likewise enriched themselves in the classic Russian style of state domination of key industries.

Putin's fantastically high approval ratings at home stem from his ability to deliver both social stability and economic growth, the latter fueled by this era's persistently high oil prices. Abroad, Putin's welcoming attitude toward foreign investment endears him to the global business community except for the energy sector, where his de facto re-nationalization of Russia's oil and gas industries sends the Kremlin back into familiar bullying mode with its neighbors.

Energy-dependent Europe grows nervous about Putin's penchant for anti-Western diatribes. But, like Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, Putin's rhetoric is primarily for domestic consumption. No great worries there because, despite the steady stream of anti-U.S. propaganda, America is still more widely admired in Russia than in Western Europe.

All posturing aside, Putin's regime seems far more interested in growing Russia's "downstream" energy sector presence (e.g., Lukoil's retail gas stations) in the West than in recreating any Cold War dynamics. Indeed, the severely shrunken Russian military has studiously avoided interventions beyond its immediate borders. As far as the global security environment goes, Putin's "bear" remains in hibernation: some growl but no bite.

What are we to make of Putin's solid grip on power?

Befitting his Soviet roots, Russia's newest czar follows Vladimir Lenin's dictum that all politics can be summed up with one question: "Kto kovo?" or "Who dominates whom?" So we shouldn't expect Putin to leave Russia's political scene anytime soon, no matter which position he next assumes.

Coming out of the seven-decade coma that was the Soviet Union, Russia rejoins the world having substantially - and painfully - reinvented itself. Whatever economic statistics say, most Russians have adopted a middle-class mindset that places a premium on state-enabled stability and income growth. In this regard,

it makes less sense to compare Putin to former Russian leaders and more sense to compare him to Singapore's founding father and long-time leader, Lee Kuan Yew, who after overtly ruling for many years, still covertly steers the country as "minister mentor" to his son the prime minister.

Putin's ruling cohort were all hand-picked by him, with the key common denominator being longtime service at his side going all the way back to his days running St. Petersburg. These are highly educated bureaucrats who, according to a recent, close-hold report by a U.S. Defense think tank, have been assembled by Putin to focus on:
a narrow agenda: economic growth,
energy exports,
national projects that improve the life of the Russian people,
internal security and the regime's long-term political continuity.

Add it all up, and this globalization expert sees a rising power joining the global economy on its own nationalistic terms, headed up by a heavy-handed, awfully clannish but still rather technocratic elite that aims to maximize its international leverage based on the country's most strategic assets.

Is that a scary package? Frankly, in this era it's the standard package.

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a visiting scholar at the University of Tennessee's Howard Baker Center and the senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC. Contact him at tom@thomaspmbarnett.com.

© 2007 Knoxville News Sentinel

Dividing Iraq to Save It
By David Ignatius
Thursday, October 4, 2007; A25

During the recent debate in Washington about what is gently termed the "soft partition" of Iraq, I have been remembering one of the macabre signature phrases of the Vietnam War: "It was necessary to destroy the town in order to save it."

I know the senators who endorsed Sen. Joe Biden's plan to devolve power in a more federal Iraq don't mean to destroy the country. They want to save it. But like the unidentified U.S. Army officer who was quoted in 1968 after the destruction of a village called Ben Tre, they are cloaking expediency in the rhetoric of salvation.

Iraq may indeed separate into three semi-autonomous cantons -- Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish -- as Biden and others recommend. Looking at the sectarian strife plaguing the country, that often seems like an inevitable outcome. But this act of national dismemberment is not something that Americans should recommend. No matter how much blood and treasure we have spent in Iraq, we remain outsiders there. It's not our call.

The passage of the Biden resolution on Sept. 26 has already had one good consequence: It has made Iraqis angry and brought a rare moment of unity. Many of the leading Arab political parties in Iraq signed a joint statement denouncing what they called "the proposal for the U.S. government to adopt a policy to divide Iraq." The statement allied the backers of radical Shiite Moqtada al-Sadr with those of secular Shiite Ayad Allawi -- now there's progress! Absent were only the Kurdish parties, which want as much autonomy as possible from an Arab Iraq, and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (formerly known as SCIRI), which wants a Shiite ministate in the south.

Biden has been scrambling to clarify that he doesn't want the dissolution of the Iraqi state but more of the federalism that's in the new Iraqi constitution. And to be fair to Biden, he is one of the few political figures in either party who have tried to think of creative alternatives to the Bush administration's failing policy. But he has now encountered strong pushback from Iraqis, and he should understand better than most that this is a welcome development. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad wisely stressed that the Senate resolution was nonbinding and didn't represent official U.S. policy.

"Don't be afraid of Iraqi sovereignty, even when it's expressed in ways you don't like." Gen. John Abizaid, the former head of U.S. Central Command, used to make that point to his commanders on every stop in the war zone. And that's the right prism for viewing the partition debate: When Iraqis get angry at congressional resolutions to divide their country, that's good; when they denounce trigger-happy Blackwater security contractors, that's good. When they propose a formal status-of-forces agreement limiting how and where U.S. forces will operate in their country, that's good. They are exercising Iraqi sovereignty.

One of America's mistakes in Iraq has been an easy contempt for that nation and its history. People often spoke of Iraq as an artificial construct of British imperialism and suggested that things would go better if, like the former Yugoslavia, it dissolved along its ethnic boundaries. Israeli analysts certainly encouraged that view. I wrote 25 years ago about an enthusiastic proposal by an Israeli academic in the journal Kivunim to dissolve Iraq into three enclaves. But such analyses overlooked the surprisingly durable Iraqi identity, which has persisted for centuries.

Historically, this was the land between two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, a fertile crescent stretching from the mountains in the north to the warm waters of the Persian Gulf. There was a land of Iraq in 539 B.C., when the Persian emperor Cyrus captured Babylon and proposed to make it his capital. In his book "Understanding Iraq," the historian William R. Polk reminds us the name actually comes from the Persian "eragh," which means "the lowlands."

Certainly there was an Iraq in A.D. 680, when the prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein was lured to what is now Karbala and was murdered. And that Iraqi Arab identity survived through the Ottoman centuries, when this land was administered in the three provinces that the British fused in 1920 to form the modern Iraq.

The Iraqis and their Arab neighbors will have a hard time forgiving America for the human suffering that has accompanied the destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime. But if that story ends in the destruction of the Iraqi state, it will open a wound that may not be healed a century from now. Iraqis may ultimately decide they want a "soft partition." But until they do, we should not be in the business of dismembering a state.

The writer is co-host ofPostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

IPOA Endorsement of H.R. 2740 “MEJA Expansion and Enforcement Act of 2007”
3 October 2007

The International Peace Operations Association (IPOA) formally endorses H.R. 2740, the “MEJA Expansion and Enforcement Act of 2007,” a bill spearheaded by Congressman David Price of North Carolina.

IPOA has long supported effective oversight and accountability for the Peace and Stability Operations Industry. We believe that H.R. 2740 provides important improvements to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act which will enhance accountability for contractors working in support of U.S. efforts abroad.

The contractor force has been an invaluable element providing capacity, expertise and cost effectiveness in support of U.S. diplomatic and military efforts throughout the world. Effective legal structures are necessary to ensure ethical operations in the field, and are not just valued by clients and local populations, but are also viewed as being in the long-term interest of our industry. IPOA member companies fully understand the importance that effective legal accountability brings to the larger mission as well as to their commercial and ethical reputations.

Our industry specializes at operating in areas of weak and failed states where effective legal structures are the exception rather than the rule. MEJA is a groundbreaking law and Congressman Price’s steadfast efforts to enhance and improve the Act are welcomed by all who believe that peace and stability operations can and should be performed at the highest professional and ethical standards.

Inquiries can be directed to: Doug Brooks President, International Peace Operations Association dbrooks@ipoaonline.org +1 202-464-072

October 5, 2007
Iraqi Judge Says Maliki’s Government Shields Officials Accused of Corruption

By REUTERS
WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 (Reuters) — Widespread corruption in Iraq stretches into the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, an Iraqi investigating judge told United States lawmakers on Thursday, and an American official said that efforts by the United States to combat the problem were inadequate.

Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, who was named by the United States in 2004 to lead the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, said his agency estimated that corruption had cost the Iraqi government up to $18 billion.

Mr. Maliki has shielded relatives from investigation and allowed government ministers to protect implicated employees, said the judge, who left Iraq in August after threats against him. Speaking at a hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Judge Radhi said that 31 employees of his agency had been killed.

He said that he did not have evidence against Mr. Maliki personally, but that the prime minister had “protected some of his relatives that were involved in corruption.”

One of these was a former minister of transportation, Judge Radhi said. The American official who testified, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said he also saw a “rising tide of corruption in Iraq.” He said American efforts to combat it were “disappointing,” lacking funding and focus.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who heads the panel, questioned whether the Maliki government was “too corrupt to succeed,” and contended that American efforts to address the problem were in “complete disarray.”

He criticized what he said was State Department resistance to the panel’s investigation. Larry Butler, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, declined to answer questions publicly about whether Mr. Maliki had obstructed corruption investigations, saying he could respond only in a closed session.

Mr. Waxman called that condition “absurd,” but the State Department defended Mr. Butler’s position. Sean McCormack, the department’s spokesman, said that in corruption investigations it was best to handle matters privately at first to protect the rights of those under suspicion.

Judge Radhi said he did not return to Iraq because of threats to his security, but he also suggested that Mr. Maliki was behind efforts to prosecute him if he went back.

In his statement, he said that 31 of his co-workers and 12 of their relatives had been killed because of their work. “This includes my staff member, Mohammed Abd Salif, who was gunned down with his seven-month-pregnant wife,” he said.

The body of the father of another worker was found on a meat hook, he said.

Judge Radhi also said it had been impossible for the commission to investigate oil corruption adequately, contending that it was because Sunni and Shiite militias had control of the distribution of Iraqi oil.

October 5, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The Republican Collapse

By DAVID BROOKS
Modern conservatism begins with Edmund Burke. What Burke articulated was not an ideology or a creed, but a disposition, a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change.

When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market conservatives built a creed around freedom and capitalism. Religious conservatives built a creed around their conception of a transcendent order. Neoconservatives and others built a creed around the words of Lincoln and the founders.

Over the years, the voice of Burke has been submerged beneath the clamoring creeds. In fact, over the past few decades the conservative ideologies have been magnified, while the temperamental conservatism of Burke has been abandoned.

Over the past six years, the Republican Party has championed the spread of democracy in the Middle East. But the temperamental conservative is suspicious of rapid reform, believing that efforts to quickly transform anything will have, as Burke wrote “pleasing commencements” but “lamentable conclusions.”

The world is too complex, the Burkean conservative believes, for rapid reform. Existing arrangements contain latent functions that can be neither seen nor replaced by the reformer. The temperamental conservative prizes epistemological modesty, the awareness of the limitations on what we do and can know, what we can and cannot plan.

Over the past six years, the Bush administration has operated on the assumption that if you change the political institutions in Iraq, the society will follow. But the Burkean conservative believes that society is an organism; that custom, tradition and habit are the prime movers of that organism; and that successful government institutions grow gradually from each nation’s unique network of moral and social restraints.

Over the past few years, the vice president and the former attorney general have sought to expand executive power as much as possible in the name of protecting Americans from terror. But the temperamental conservative believes that power must always be clothed in constitutionalism. The dispositional conservative is often more interested in means than ends (the reverse of President Bush) and asks how power is divided before asking for what purpose it is used.

Over the past decade, religious conservatives within the G.O.P. have argued that social policies should be guided by the eternal truths of natural law and that questions about stem cell research and euthanasia should reflect the immutable sacredness of human life.

But temperamental conservatives are suspicious of the idea of settling issues on the basis of abstract truth. These kinds of conservatives hold that moral laws emerge through deliberation and practice and that if legislation is going to be passed that slows medical progress, it shouldn’t be on the basis of abstract theological orthodoxy.

Over the past four decades, free market conservatives within the Republican Party have put freedom at the center of their political philosophy. But the dispositional conservative puts legitimate authority at the center. So while recent conservative ideology sees government as a threat to freedom, the temperamental conservative believes government is like fire — useful when used legitimately, but dangerous when not.

Over the past few decades, the Republican Party has championed a series of reforms designed to devolve power to the individual, through tax cuts, private pensions and medical accounts. The temperamental conservative does not see a nation composed of individuals who should be given maximum liberty to make choices. Instead, the individual is a part of a social organism and thrives only within the attachments to family, community and nation that precede choice.

Therefore, the temperamental conservative values social cohesion alongside individual freedom and worries that too much individualism, too much segmentation, too much tension between races and groups will tear the underlying unity on which all else depends. Without unity, the police are regarded as alien powers, the country will fracture under the strain of war and the economy will be undermined by lack of social trust.

To put it bluntly, over the past several years, the G.O.P. has made ideological choices that offend conservatism’s Burkean roots. This may seem like an airy-fairy thing that does nothing more than provoke a few dissenting columns from William F. Buckley, George F. Will and Andrew Sullivan. But suburban, Midwestern and many business voters are dispositional conservatives more than creedal conservatives. They care about order, prudence and balanced budgets more than transformational leadership and perpetual tax cuts. It is among these groups that G.O.P. support is collapsing.

American conservatism will never be just dispositional conservatism. America is a creedal nation. But American conservatism is only successful when it’s in tension — when the ambition of its creeds is retrained by the caution of its Burkean roots.