Non-Stop Backsliding
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Authoritarianism | Contra Tyrannum | Dictatorship | Russia | Tyranny | Vladimir Putin — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Russia's woes continue under the Putin regime:
Europe's main election monitoring group said on Friday it was scrapping plans to deploy observers to Russia's forthcoming parliamentary elections in a decision that could cast doubt on the integrity of the poll.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe claimed Moscow had imposed "unprecedented restrictions" on its activities. Russia had slashed the number of observers it would admit to the December 2 election and then repeatedly delayed issuing visas for OSCE monitors.
The move marks a new low in diplomatic relations between Russia and the west, following clashes over energy, the expansion of Nato into the former Soviet Union and US plans for missile defence bases. The west accuses Russian president Vladimir Putin of suppressing democracy while the Kremlin claims the west seeks to interfere in Russia's internal affairs.
Separately, the Russian parliament's upper house on Friday voted to support a Kremlin decision to suspend the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty - a key Soviet-era arms control pact. Russia is suspending the agreement from December 12 on the grounds that Nato states have never ratified it.
Moscow has long singled out the 56-nation OSCE for attack, claiming that, even though Russia is a member, the organisation follows a pro-west agenda.
Russia's foreign ministry on Friday accused the body of "inventing" excuses, of failing to complete visa procedures and of using its position as election monitor as "an instrument of political pressure".
Urdur Gunnarsdottir of the OSCE office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, denied the organisation's move was a political decision. "We have not received a single visa for our 70 observers."
The move could cast doubt in the west on the legitimacy of an election that has taken on increasing importance after Mr Putin said he would head the party list of the main pro- Kremlin party, United Russia.
I would think that the legitimacy of the election is already in doubt, but this only further serves to make the Putin regime look bad--not that this matters to Putin himself. One of the more surprising aspects of the current Presidential race in this country is the fact that not a single soul appears to be asking what our Russia policy should be in the next Administration. Meanwhile, the Putin regime continues to renege on any and all promises that it has made concerning the issue of democratization and Russia is returning back to the bad old days when its dealings with the West were tinged at best with suspicion and at worst with outright hostility.
If that isn't an issue for the next President of the United States to have to deal with, I don't know what is. Why is it then that no one appears to be asking any of the Presidential candidates about what is going on in Russia and what their Russia policy would be? And why is it that the Presidential candidates themselves don't appear to have much to say on the subject?
And it's not only a Russia policy that's we're talking about but also, because of the new regional bullying, an Everystan policy, a Georgia policy, a Ukraine policy, and a policy dealing with the stability of the energy supply for Europe.
You say it will make Putin look bad, but the underlying question, the crucial one, is look bad to WHOM? Not to most Russians is the depressing answer. Or at least not bad ENOUGH for our purposes.
The "problem" from the Democratic West's perspective is that even in a free and fair election Putin's puppet will be backed next year, because the Russian people generally approve of Putin and have a distrust and even disbelief in democracy, many preferring a political theory of "heirarchy" as the only option for Russia. I know there are some doubters on that count, there are some who believe that only apologists for dictators think some people don't ache for democracy, but the historical cycles of xenophobia and west-looking reform is well known in Russian history. Putin is pushing back on treaties and economic mandates from the IMF that are viewed as lopsided, kicking out pro-democracy organizations that he can frame as foreign interference (certainly the United States doesn't look happily on similar foreign interference, see the Red Scares and the view of some of AIPAC), and the wealth from petrodollars is leaving millions behind BUT Moscow and St Petersburg are pretty and on TV constantly. Russians like that, apparently. It's the same playbook in The Hugo's Republic of Chavezuela. The ads for Putin and United Russia play up all these motifs of zero-sum strength and insidious outsiders, Putin is all that's covered on the news, and "The Other Russia" faction might as well not exist. They're the parallel of the Socialist party in the United States during the Depression. Irrelevant. Most of the other parties are, of course, Putin-friendly Potemkin parties. And you know, maybe the Russian people "disapprove" of Putin's actions, but if they still prefer him over any others what sort of disapproval is that? What sort of mandate is that for international intervention agreeable to Russian citizens?
So, what sort of policy do you propose? How do you force in pro-democracy groups and ideas and spaces when the people are for whatever reason voting and supporting someone who is for a xenophobic and isolated state? Is the problem actually one of a lack of fair elections, or one caused instead by the hollow shell of democracy supporting a democratically elected autocrat? Zakaria calls them "illiberal democracies" and they're a major problem, unsolved in most democratic theory circles (see any recent issue of "Journal of Democracy"). There's no pro-active "gradualist" versus "sequentialist" type arguments in this particular realm, election monitors are actually generally a non-issue since one party is going to win regardless of fraud, etc. There's no real proactive debate because all the plans and policies are reactionary. Most plans that would be effective would be seen as interference with a sovereign state.
There's no pres. candidate discussion about the policy for Russia and other "illiberal democracies" because there's almost literally no concrete ideas to discuss yet except "we wish they'd stop crushing our guys." The debate now the interests of the WEST and how to protect OUR interests. Which is why we're having this discussion about Putin and Chavez and not Musharaff. Also, most Americans would find the discussion boring and irrelevant. Let's not forget that.
Obviously it's crucial for the world, and especially today's Latin America and Asia, to keep democracies from "hollowing out" their democratic and civil society structures as Putin's Russia has done. What's your alternative? Sanctions? Military posturing? More aid funding to attract even MORE attention to the autocrat-friendly issue of foreign interference? What policy besides "interfere with the sovereignty of a democratic state" (or rather, one with elections where the government is supported by the majority over its rivals) are there that you'd find acceptable? It's not necessarily a democracy problem, it's a people one. Autocratic populism strikes again, this time with a ballot box.