Arranged Marriage

The next worse thing to a politician deciding for you that he's going to be your leader is your neighbor deciding who is going to be your leader.

That's the situation in Georgia, and why I think, unlike some other commentators, that Russia won't likely succeed -- now that the actual shooting has been halted -- in ousting President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Across the former Soviet Union, ordinary people don't decide who is president. Cabals of powerful people -- regional strongmen, spy agencies, billionaire businessmen, old Soviet apparachiks -- decide among themselves. They say, "Hey Dima, you be president. It's good for the gang." When the voters go to the polls, Dima magically receives 88%.

That method of selection would include Vladimir Putin, his successor Dmitri Medvedev, plus almost all the presidents of the Caucasus and Central Asia. The exception is Ukraine and the Baltics, which have reasonably authentic elections, and do kick out the rascals when so moved.

Lots of times the majority of voters actually favor the winner, but that's besides the point.

The leaders of the two breakaway regions of Georgia that are currently in the news are in power specifically because they are favored by Moscow. In other words, at home in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it's no shame to be a stooge of Moscow. It's the same in Chechnya, as we've
discussed previously on O and G -- President Ramzan Kadyrov is a delighted instrument of Russian power.

Putin tried to choose Ukraine's leader, but it backfired, which is how Viktor Yushchenko was elected. It's similar in Georgia. The contempt of the Kremlin toward Georgians is equalled by the Georgians toward the Kremlin.

So that, even if Saakashvili is despised by some other Georgian politicians, none would get anywhere near Russia. It would be the kiss of political death.

If Saakaskvili is removed prematurely, for whatever reason -- which as I say I do not expect -- look for the rise of an equally nationalist Georgian leader, perhaps quieter, less egotistical, but still anti-Russian.

Those are Georgian politics.

The Call of Past Regrets

Iraq is an interesting prism through which to look at Georgia. After the 1990 Gulf War, certain intellectual quarters in the U.S. regarded Iraq as undone business -- neo-cons and others wanted to go back and remove Saddam Hussain as a priority.

One wonders whether just this sort of thinking is at least partly a motivation for Vladimir Putin's relentless push on Georgia.

The antecedent in this case would be 1993, when Russian-backed separatists in Abkhazia seized power, and triggered a drive by other anti-government forces onto the capital of Tbilisi. I was reporting for Newsweek there when the drive was halted about an hour and a half west of Tbilisi, ironically by Russian forces sent to keep the country from outright disintegrating.

In Moscow, some may regret that moment, which saved then-President Eduard Shevardnadze. Perhaps they wish that the rebels had captured power, and installed a perhaps more pro-Russian leader.

The main thing I learned about Russia while researching Putin's Labyrinth is that, in pursuit of its aims, Russia practices a policy of bespredel, or anything goes. By way of example, one case I used was the 2006 murder of KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko with a nuclear isotope, which seemed about as stark as one might get.

But the current Russian assault is another dramatic case of bespredel. If Russia's aim were to secure the lives of repressed peoples, as Putin claims, that was accomplished early with the Georgian flight from South Ossetia.

But the Russian push out of Abkhazia and into the town of Senaki, and the reported occupation of police buildings next door in Zugdidi, demonstrates a broader objective.

The Georgians have announced that the country is effectively cut in half now; it previously had said that its troops had withdrawn to protect Tbilisi. I wonder whether all the soldiers made it since Georgian troops stationed in the West might be trapped on the other side of Gori, which is now in Russian hands.

If in fact Putin is seeking a return to unfinished business, he may be disappointed.

Georgia isn't Chechnya, where President Ramzan Kadyrov was installed by Putin and is happy to do his bidding. No Georgian politician would allow himself/herself to be injected into power; and if one did, he/she would last about five minutes. Any replacement for the reviled Mikheil Saakashvili might not be as ascerbic, but would be just as pro-Georgian and anti-Russian.

Georgian Update: A Different War

Russian envoys say that one of Russia's objectives in attacking Georgia is to remove its president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the statement in a phone conversation with Condoleeza Rice, the American secretary of state, saying that Saakashvili "must go." And Russia's envoy to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, confirmed the gist of it publicly afterward in a conversation with Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy to the U.N.

If they are representing Moscow's true intentions -- they could simply be floating a trial balloon, or engaging in traditional local bombast -- the West is facing an entirely different foreign policy crisis. That is, the forcible change of a Western-backed, democratically elected leader hosting highly strategic Western economic assets.

Other reports: The New York Times reports that Russian ground troops have left South Ossetia proper, and are marching on the Georgian-held town of Gori. Another (Russian language) report is that -- in the western part of the country near Abkhazia, Georgia has agreed to allow Russian peacekeepers to conduct joint patrols with the United Nations and Georgia of the town of Zugdidi. Both reports also suggest an important shift in this two-day old conflict.

Huffing and Puffing in Georgia

With so much hyperbole flowing in the conflict in Georgia -- on numbers of casualties, on the aims of the opposing sides -- where should one focus one's attention?

I remain tuned to Georgia proper, and not South Ossetia itself, or even the town of Gori to the south that has been bombed by Russian jets.

Specifically, Georgia claims that Russian naval carriers are in position off Georgia's Black Sea coast, and are readying to offload troops. If accurate -- I've seen no confirmation -- and these troops do occupy ground in Georgia itself, and not simply within the pro-Moscow separatist enclave of Abkhazia, this will be a different war. This would be Russia declaring who is in charge, a message that would be intended not just for Georgia, but for the West, which has been considering absorbing Georgia into NATO.

It would be the same were the scores of Russian troop carriers reported to have poured into South Ossetia to cross into Georgia proper.

A far more remote possibility would be Russian bombing of the trans-Georgian oil or natural gas pipelines. Georgia claims that Russia has already targeted -- but missed hitting -- the 1,000-mile Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, but I doubt the account. Such an attack would be regarded in the West as a direct assault on Western interests.

As long as the conflict remains in and around South Ossetia, the fighting can be seen as a bloody uptick in the Caucasus version of huffing and puffing. But it is containable.

A Precedent for Real Elections

Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili appears to have won his big gamble today. An exit poll shows him winning re-election as president and averting a runoff with 53% of the vote, according to Bloomberg's Seb Alison.

Saakashvili stepped down as president when opposition protesters poured into the streets, demanding his resignation. He had been roundly criticized by the West for sending forces into the street to thump heads.

But if the results are confirmed in the actual count, it will validate a strategy that we've seen in no other country in the twelve members of the Commonwealth of Independent States save Ukraine.

That is -- a president who has stepped down and put himself to the voters in a more or less contested election.

I won't hold my breath waiting for others to follow, but Saakashvili has made a gratifying precedent.

Photo: AudreyH
Rights: Creative Commons

What it Takes in the Former Soviet Union: Assassination, Theft, Corruption

I've seen multiple references in recent weeks to Richard Ben Cramer's classic account of the 1988 presidential campaign, What It Takes. Inveterate footnote-and-index readers such as myself miss having neither, yet it is a wonderful read, all 1,051 pages of it, narrating in colorful detail what campaign shenanigans were required to win that year. Cramer's descriptions of George H.W. Bush are particularly unforgettable.

Cramer comes to mind because of the latest news out of the former Soviet Union: Another apparent assassination plot, this time between presidential campaigns in Georgia; another stolen election by Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan; and a report that the good times attributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin may in fact not be as advertised.

Georgia: In a story published yesterday by The Sunday Times in the U.K., David Leppard, Anna Mikhailova and Mark Franchetti report on a possible assassination plot against Boris Berezovsky's former business partner, Badri Patarkatsishvili. The news peg is a 14-minute audio tape that's surfaced in which a Georgian Interior Ministry official apparently attempts to hire a Chechen killer to off Patarkatsishvili. The killer, according to the paper, is Uvais Akhmadov, "a member of a notorious gang of Chechen brothers who specialised in kidnapping and murder," as the writers put it. There's a snap presidential campaign under way at the moment, and Patarkatsishvili is challenging former president Mikheil Saakashvili. Only, Patarkatsishvili is doing so from London, where he says he fears for his life if he goes home. The thing is, we need not sympathize with Patarkatsishvili as a sort of Goldilocks -- he is a tough businessman with a long career of dealing with some of the former Soviet Union's most unsavory sorts. The important point here is what the report might imply about Saakashvili, Georgia's Columbia University-trained former leader. What has his campaign got up to in order to win election Jan. 5th?

Uzbekistan: My former Baku roommate David Stern at The New York Times reports that Karimov won yesterday's election with a reported 88.1% of the vote. Some people are calling it fraudulent since Karimov shouldn't be running -- he was constitutionally forbidden to seek a new term -- and he allowed no real opponents. In addition, there are the usual forebodings that Uzbekistan is headed for instability either during Karimov's continued rule or after he dies (the only way these fellows leave). I personally have sympathy for the stolen election crowd, but have my doubts on the instability part. Equally undemocratic Turkmenistan, for instance, just went through a transition after a presidential death without a hiccup. There's an argument that Uzbekistan isn't Turkmenistan, meaning that it already has produced a home-grown rebellion based in the Fergana Valley. I personally adhere to the muddle-along theory, meaning that even the apparently least likely states tend to muddle along.

Russia: My former Washington Post colleague Fred Hiatt weighs in today with a tart salvo at Time magazine's selection of Putin as its Person of the Year. Against Putin's unwillingness to face serious electoral competition, Hiatt writes: "Why would a leader of such steely confidence, heroic achievement and massive popularity be so afraid of political competition? Perhaps he will explain at Time's awards banquet." Hahaha, Fred. But Hiatt's central argument is serious, based on paraphrases from a must-read report in the new Foreign Affairs by my former colleagues at Stanford University's Institute for International Studies, Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. This report challenges the prevailing wisdom that, under Putin, crime has fallen, economic activity has improved and corruption lessened. McFaul and Stoner-Weiss detail at length how in fact the opposite is true in all three cases and that, specifically, Russia's economic growth is near the bottom of the 15 former Soviet states. "Whatever the apparent gains of Russia under Putin, they gains would have been greater if democracy had survived," they write.

Photo of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics: pingnews.com
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.

Rivalry of Dictators

No world leader, genuinely elected or not, is wholly free of self-proclaimed omniscience, but it's an especially interesting time to observe the autocrats afflicted with this delusion.

They are playing a strong hand, and it's not at all clear that their ostensibly democratic opponents have right on their side.

In Pakistan, it's now two decades since the first time Benazir Bhutto treated us to the spectacle of her massive popularity -- supporters lining the streets in Lahore, Karachi and elsewhere as she decries military dictators.

Only now we have the benefit of her decade of active politics (1989-1999). Bhutto is no democrat. As prime minister and out-of-power opposition leader, she compiled a record of intolerance of dissent, failure to attack the tax-free land-owning feudalism that's Pakistan's core problem, and pocket-lining corruption.

What's really going on in Pakistan is a contest between two dictators. In my view, Pervez Musharraf is more likable if only because he at least doesn't pretend interest in sharing power. He's a man who, though he came to power in a coup, is under fire by people claiming surprise by his declaration of emergency rule on the eve of a possible Supreme Court decision invalidating his right to remain president another five years.

In Georgia, which actually is a comparative democracy, Mikheil Saakashvili has out-smarted street-bound opponents by declaring a snap presidential election in January. These suspicious demonstrations, financed by Boris Berezovsky's former business partner, Badri Patarkatsishvili, now must turn to straight-forward campaigning.

While I was in California on my book tour the last two days, academic experts told me that Saakashvili's reaction to the demonstrations -- sending out police with batons and tear gas -- has ruined Georgia's chances to join NATO and the European Union.

But I think that case is premature. Saakashvili has chipped away at the opprobrium by inviting as many election monitors as anyone wishes to send.

If Saakashvili were more mature and less imperious, he would have avoided this crisis entirely by courting opponents.

But -- like autocratic brethren from Russia to Azerbaijan, from Kazakhstan to Pakistan, and Armenia to Uzbekistan -- Saakashvili isn't an intellectually modest man.

On the plus side, all these countries actually do have a deep bench of politicians, technocrats and businessmen entirely qualified to step into the executive chair. If the autocrats were truly wise, they would court and cultivate them.

Photo: Maulleigh
Rights: Creative Commons