America's Deal in Europe

I've been critical of the West's decision to allow Kazakhstan to chair Europe's chief political watchdog in the former Soviet bloc. I've puzzled over why Europe and the U.S. would choose to be led by a country that's never run a free election.

The issue is important because the group we're talking about, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, is the face of Western credibility on a number of issues. Compromise the name, compromise the credibility.

For the last few days, I've exchanged messages with people knowledgeable about the talks over the OSCE leadership. They've told me the political calculus -- at least within Washington -- in consenting.

And it's all about Russia, and the dealmaking-within-dealmaking that characterizes the most skillfully conducted diplomacy.

Here it is: Kazakhstan, its name tarnished because of a huge U.S. corruption case known as Kazakhgate, has been trying for years to polish its public image through a bid to chair the OSCE. But it was making little headway -- until, that is, Russia got behind it.

Why did Russia's Vladimir Putin back Kazakhstan? Because the assertive leader has his own political aims in Europe, one of which is to halt the West's presumption of the right to judge Russian human rights practices. (Putin has one point -- it's humiliating for a foreign power to slam your elections. But he could easily get around that by running a fair election.)

Specifically, Putin proposed to weaken the power of the OSCE's election observation arm, which has condemned about every single former Soviet election since the 1991 breakup. And, for cover, Putin got Kazakhstan to help spearhead the Russian proposal.

So what you had when the OSCE met in Madrid at the end of last month were two proposals on the table -- Kazakhstan's petition to chair the group, and Russia's to weaken its powers. And once Russia's lobbying was over, almost all the OSCE's 56 members were backing Kazakhstan to chair the OSCE in 2009.

So the U.S. did a deal. It got Kazakhstan to reverse itself on Russia's proposal and become effectively the leading opponent to weakening the OSCE's election activities. In exchange, Kazakhstan got the chair -- but a year later than it wanted, in 2010.

There's much bureaucratic gibberish on Kazakhstan's pledges to reform its election practices, meaningless clauses unless one believes that there's a chance that anyone apart from Nursultan Nazarbayev can be president and control Parliament.

In a nutshell, Europe caved to Russia on Kazakhstan, but not on the election watchdog issue.

That's a perilous calculus, but it reveals the reality of influence in Europe -- Russia's is growing, and Washington's shrinking.

Photo: MyBoyDodger
Rights: Creative Commons

How to Tarnish A Hard-Won Reputation

It's not a household name in the United States, but in the former Soviet Union the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is a source both of irritation and solace. The distinction depends on whether you are one of the region's autocrats or one of its independent thinkers.

Whichever the case, the OSCE -- financed in large part by the U.S. -- has played a hard-fought, 16-year role as Europe's official conscience.

Until now. The OSCE has bafflingly jeopardized its reputation as Europe's premier human rights watchdog in order to satisfy an understandable if misguided campaign by Kazakhstan for the prized chair of the organization.

Last Friday, the OSCE for publicly unknown reasons succumbed to Kazakhstan's full-court press on the issue, and announced that the Central Asian republic will take over the one-year chair a little over two years from now, in 2010.

Kazakhstan is hardly the region's worst human-rights violator. But neither is its record worthy of holding up as an example, which is what the chair represents. This is a country that has never held a fair election; although President Nursultan Nazarbayev has led the country since 1989, there's no way to know for sure that he actually ever won a contested election.

Nazarbayev has never permitted a genuine opponent to run against him, and like his neighbor to the north, Vladimir Putin, he has routinely beefed up the election results to show swelled support. He recently signed a law allowing him to serve as president for life. And there's no evidence that, short of his own death, Nazarbayev will ever agree to give up the post; to the contrary, the probability is that he'll stay on the job for years to come.

If the OSCE states wished an example from the former Soviet Union, why not choose Ukraine? For all its flaws, it has been holding truly competitive presidential elections for some 13 years. Or better yet, how about Georgia? There, Mikheil Saakashvili has actually stepped down from the presidency in order to run in a snap election next month.

Kazakhstan ran its OSCE campaign through its own offices and the paid help of lobbying groups like APCO in Washington. It's not clear to me what precisely turned the tide, but the OSCE decision is appalling, in my opinion. It will be hard-pressed to recover its reputation.

Georgia and Russia: The Bigger Battle to Come

The Economist is in a snit that the OSCE white-washed over Georgia's missile row with Russia. A studiously neutralist RFE/RL interview with the author of the offending OSCE report ends up making the Vienna-based mini-U.N. organization look egregiously non-judgemental.

The pieces are must-reading. Edward Lucas, the author of the Economist piece, is legitimately outraged. But the OSCE -- the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe -- was right to punt. The incessant friction between Russia and Georgia over border incursions is a diversion from the main issue, which is getting Georgia ready for full NATO membership.

The two neighbors are not going to become friends any time soon. The Kremlin's loyal spokesmen say that the Georgians' main foreign policy is irritating their northern neighbor. The Georgians in turn ascribe most of their ills to malign conspiracies from Moscow.

These competing claims informed their most recent series of disputes, in which Georgia accused Russian military jets of illegally penetrating Georgian airspace, and firing a missile that allegedly missed its intended target, a radar installation. In the most recent flare-up, Georgia said it had possibly shot down an invading Russian jet.

The record in general supports Georgia's assertions. Since the 1991 Soviet breakup, Georgia has been the victim of repeated aggressive acts from the north -- the dismemberment of the country through military support of Abkhazia; the severing of natural gas and electricity supplies; and the cutoff of trade and air service between the countries.

Yet Russia and Georgia themselves have seemed to try to cool the flareup. Neither has raised the issue of the apparent crash of the errant jet recently, for instance. That is wise from Georgia's standpoint when it has much work to do to achieve its ultimate foreign policy aim, which is tying itself formally to the West through NATO and EU membership.

The West has a long-standing interest in making Georgia's NATO membership happen; the EU portion will happen far down the road if at all.

Here is where it makes sense not to get too involved in these predictable sibling squabbles. Russia will accuse NATO of encirclement. The West will have to forcefully argue that it has a legitimate interest in Georgia's independence and stability. That will be a battle writ large.