January 2006 Archives

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The 'P' is for Pedant

January 29, 2006 05:43 PM

Charles P. Pierce reviews the new Carville/Begala effort in The American Prospect, and somehow manages to out-gasbag his subjects. His point seems to be that many Democrats are Catholic and too cozy with Republicans who are "bad people" and that includes Tucker Carlson but especially Bob Novak and Pericles lived in the Ozarks not Greece and Pythagoras was maybe not Catholic but abused crystal meth with Don Imus and Eric Alterman will somehow be able to explain these things to people who are too thick to understand what Charles is trying to say. (Where do I get on line?) And then there's homework:

However, you will be interested to know [from Carville/Begala], for example, that, "Many liberals share the conceit that they are intellectually superior." Really? Who? Name one.

Ooh, this is going to be tough. But I like a challenge! I guess I'll start with the folks commuting in from Bethesda with "Vote Republican: It's Easier Than Thinking" affixed to the rear bumper of their Volvo S-Series. Then I'll begin making my way west to Aspen.... Is there a prize?

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Time to build a higher fence

January 26, 2006 01:21 PM

Let's see... children's books calling for the destruction of Israel; streets named after terrorist "martyrs"; a constant flow of genocidal anti-Semitic rhetoric from the Mosques and state-controlled media.... One isn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the shock being expressed by the World Community at Hamas' landslide victory in the Palestinian elections. The AP reports that leaders are "uneasy at the prospect of a Hamas-led Palestinian government." The Washington Post writes that this "complicates" diplomacy. Sure does! It removes the small fig leaf of rationalization -- that Israel has a "partner" for peace -- that has been used to force Israel into concessions that threaten its existence. Sure, the Hamas victory may complicate "diplomacy." At least one hopes so!

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Putin Putters Out

January 21, 2006 09:28 AM

Mark Almond of Oxford University gets it exactly right in London's Guardian today.

The murky Swiss-based arrangements for divvying up the compromise price agreed between Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas company, and its Ukrainian partners cannot disguise the reality that Russia lost out in the quarrel. The EU rallied against its major energy partner, and behind Washington.

That's the bottom line. Many smart folks, including the indispensible Dan McMinn, have pored over the Swiss-brokered agreement and found areas that suggest the pact may not be terrific in the long run. Fine. But that's a game for another day. The game that was being played at the stroke of the New Year was whether Putin could isolate Ukraine and send a message to other uppity CIS nations. He lost that fight.

Where Putin might have found a bit more success was in suggesting to Ukrainians, before the March parliamentary elections, that there was a price to pay for Yushchenko's dalliances with the West (more below). Still, in the long run Russia has been exposed as a paper tiger -- unable to back up its threats with its most valuable asset. Russia needs to export its gas every bit as much as the West needs to receive it.

So, you ask, if this was such a blow to Russia, why are we having a huge constitutional crisis in Ukraine right now, premised on the notion that the Yekhanurov government failed to get a worthy agreement? Because it's election season, and cynics like Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovich will quite naturally try to get as much mileage as they can from the opening Putin provided them. And they may well succeed (though I don't think that the Rada's move to "fire" the government will survive a constitutional test). But my hunch is that Yushchenko and his party have already lost the vote of every Ukrainian who believes Ukraine future lies to the East, with Russia.

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Ukraine's Gas Pains

January 12, 2006 09:15 AM

Well, tireless (okay, tiresome) searching has failed to yield an English-language translation of Ukrainian Law 2222-IV, which amended the constitution in 2004 and appears to be at issue in the latest effort to fire the government. That being the case, I have no reliable way to judge the constitutionality of the decision, but that won't keep me from offering half-baked, semi-informed commentary!

1) There is no indication that the vote will have any practical effect before the March parliamentary elections. Government stays in place.

1) The whole scheme seems to have been cooked up by Yulia Tymoshenko, which ought to be a surprise, since last time we saw her she was angling for reappointment as prime minister. I haven't taken a full survey of the democratic world, but my metrosexual intuition tells me that destabilizing the government at a critical juncture in its modern history is the long way round to winning trust. So why, Yulia? Why? My hunch is that Tymoshenko wanted to send the message that she can muster the political resources to make life difficult for Viktor Yushchenko. She knows, among other things, that Yushchenko would not have been able to appoint Yekhanurov as PM without help from Viktor Yanukovich, the oaf who ran against him for president in 2004. She also knows there is no way Yushchenko will (consciously) put himself in a position where Yanukovich can emerge as a compromise PM after the elections. He's made his last deal with the clod. That leaves Tymoshenko, who will most likely muster the second or third largest parliamentary block after the March balloting. Yushchenko has tried to set up Yanukovich as the alternative to Yekhanurov, betting that Tymoshenko and her eponymously named party would go with Yekhanurov on that one. But this latest move by Tymoshenko shows that she's just crazy enough to bond with the Yanukovich forces when it suits her political purposes.

3) But, Ethan, just what are her political purposes? I just told you, dummy! But if I were forced to elaborate further, I would note that all reports to date suggest her ultimate goal is the presidency in 2008. Note that the Yushchenko/Yekhanurov deal on gas from Russia was the pretext for the rebellion in parliament. It's a two-fer: Yulia gets to play the role of economic populist, which still goes over in these parts, and she gets to beat up on Russia -- another popular trope -- which strengthens her nationalist bona fides. The bonus is that she gets to beat up on Russia while secretly thanking Putin for providing the pretext for attacks on Yushchenko, even though Yushchenko got the best bargain Ukraine could have hoped for from the gas agreement. Brilliant!

4) Do you really think she thought all that through? Yes! There are eleven dimensions of sophistication (and cynicism) in Tymoshenko's political universe. I think the Rada episode occurred in about five of them. Okay, six.

5) Do you really think it is conceivable that she would join with Yanukovich, when that would tarnish her forever as a sell-out? Well, let me ask you a question: If you were Yushchenko, would you really want to find out? Yulia is not just a politician, she is a volatile force of nature who must be harnessed for stability to be achieved. Like Jesse Jackson.

6) Why are you still answering questions about an event that has no practical relevance? Oh, but it does! If Yushchenko gets the message Tymoshenko wants him to hear, he'll tread a little more carefully around her in the run-up to the elections. I don't think you will hear any more about her "corruption" from him.

7) Did you know that Yushchenko removed his name from the infamous "Yanukovich memorandum" in the aftermath of all this? A meaningless gesture. Yushchenko will be punished by voters for signing in the first place -- not thanked for backing out once its terms were violated by Yanukovich. Yushchenko voters already knew that Yanukovich was a snake; the mystery was why Yushchenko didn't....

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Picture. Thousand Words.

January 12, 2006 08:21 AM

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"Christmas" in Malin, Ukraine

January 9, 2006 03:41 PM

When I grow older, I wanna be a murderous dictator!

All you need to know about Soviet life can be summed up in the photo above. It is a statue of V.I. Lenin himself -- albeit as a lad -- and it sits in front of the kindergarten in Malin, Ukraine, about 90 miles West of Kiev. Malin has two massive bronze statues of Lenin in the city, including one in the town square. For five-year-olds, however, the regime decided that a more age-appropriate Lenin was warranted, and so we have this version, with wavy hair and the obligatory book under the arm. How inspiring.

I just returned to Kiev after a three-day visit to Malin, where I stayed with the family of a friend. Ukrainians live quite modestly, to say the least, but their hospitality is magnificent. Anyhow, the immediate occasion for this visit was Christmas, which on the Ukrainian Orthodox calendar falls on Jan. 7. We dined on borsch, stuffed cabbage, beets, cakes and even matyas (herring). Yeah, I know you're jealous.

Malin is one of those towns that really took a beating in WWII. It stood between the Nazis and Kiev, and then stood between the Soviets and Poland when the Nazi advance was finally turned back from Russia. It was, of course, difficult to sort out the "good guys" in a war between two of the three or four bloodiest tyrants in history. My gracious hostess, Marina, told me how, during the purges, Stalinists had picked up her grandfather and sent him off to the Gulag, to a camp on the infamous Belomor Kanal. The family actually knew nothing of his whereabouts until after Stalin's death in 1953, which was about 15 years after the abduction. As Kafka would have surely scripted it, a letter arrived one day from the Soviet government saying that the grandfather had died at the camp, but that he had been judged "not guilty" of the crimes for which he was arrested. These alleged crimes were never made clear to the family, but they learned he had been denounced by two members of the community for his religious (Christian) devotion. Marina's father subsequently confronted these men, asking them why they would accuse his father. The men responded that they had been under pressure from above to provide names in order to meet a town quota for arrests from the NKVD (a KGB predecessor). If they didn't finger anyone, it was they themselves who would likely have been used to meet the quota. The silver lining (if you can call it that) to this story is that the "not guilty" verdict spared the family some torments that afflicted the families of the "guilty." Marina, for instance, was able to obtain a visa for a group trip to Paris -- a perquisite that would have been unobtainable if she had been related to an "Enemy of the State." She now teaches French at a small university in Malin.

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"Free" Failing

January 5, 2006 03:38 AM

For pure foolishness, I thought there was no way Kennedy School Russaphile Graham Allison could top his recent contribution to the Boston Globe, which I commented upon here. Allison asked "Who could have imagined" that Russia would today be doing any number of things that people might easily imagine, while never asking the most salient question of the moment: Who could have imagined that Russia would be slipping back into an aggressive authoritarianism that suppresses dissent and menaces its neighbors? Well, Allison concludes with a sigh, "there are always enough negatives to support the pessimists." Permit me to revisit that Globe piece for a minute, because it will help you understand that we were not dealing with standard-issue academic malarkey here. This was high test stuff:

In my view, Russia is still the land of the Matrushkas and Potemkin's village -- much more subtle and complex than we realize. One peels off one shell only to find another -- each layer embodying elements of truth, competing with contradictory realities both within and beyond.

You will not read a more fatuous bit of analysis this year.

So what's happened since? Well, the land of the Matrushkas, led by Patrushka Putin, tried to blackmail Ukraine into paying 400% higher rates for its gas by shutting off the spigot mid-winter. That's all.

Now, many a scholar, even at the Kennedy School, would be chastened by this kind of development. After all, most scholars wait years for their repudiation, and Allison received his almost overnight! But Allison simply shifted tack. Writing in the LAT this morning, Allison shows that he is in fact concerned about creeping authoritarianism in... Italy.

You know Italy. Overbearing mother figures. Constant threat to Albania. Participant in "cold war" over lift ticket revenues with Switzerland and Austria. World capital of scooter crashes.

Allison gets worked up over suggestions -- in this case by Sens. McCain and Lieberman -- that Russia, because of its "assault on democracy and freedom," does not belong in the Group of Eight, a consortium of the world's largest economies which now includes, well, Russia, which is not one of the world's largest economies. Meanwhile, nary a word is said about the gulags of Italy, where prisoners are stuffed with manicotti, prohibited from using explanatory hand gestures and forced to watch De Sica films without the sound on.

Okay, well not exactly. The actual problem with Italy is its president, Silvio Berlusconi. You see, he's the nation's "wealthiest individual" and is putatively quite corrupt -- even by Italian standards, I suppose.

Moreover, Berlusconi effectively controls 90% of national television broadcasting. He owns three networks and has indirect control over public broadcasting through his ability to influence the choice of the management at these stations. In its 2003 freedom of the press survey, Freedom House downgraded Italy's ranking from "free" to "partly free," where it remains today. [Emphasis mine]

Wait a second. Now, I don't know much about Italian politics, but I know how to read a basic chart! Read for yourself. Unless I'm mistaken, the 2006 survey awards Italy the top score (1 in scale of 1-7) in both its categories -- political rights and civil liberties -- and the flat designation "Free." I'll take Allison at his word on what the 2003 report says. But wouldn't that mean that press freedom has actually improved under Berlusconi?

Oh, and Russia? Well, FH gives them a low-end 6 for political rights and a 5 for civil liberties. "Not Free." But, hey, it's better than Cuba and Libya!

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The Good, the Bad, and the Oil

January 3, 2006 12:29 PM

So, let's see. This morning Gazprom was squealing like a stuck pig over its contention that Ukraine had diverted gas shipments routed to other countries, leading to significant shortfalls in deliveries. Soon after, Russia agreed to resume discussions with Ukraine in the dispute. By evening, Gazprom was swearing up and down that they have "completed work" that will enable everyone to receive the full gas allotment tomorrow -- but not Ukraine, which is still under embargo. Meanwhile, gas prices climbed above $63 a barrel.

So what kind of "work" was "completed"? Well, unless Russia built a brand new pipeline through the Baltic Sea in the last day or two, the developments indicate that we are waiting for Putin to come up with a face-saving way to fold his hand. I'll let this fellow Bill O'Grady explain:

``We're up in part because of the tragi-comic events occurring between Russia and Ukraine,'' said Bill O'Grady, an analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis. ``If there are persistent natural gas shortages, the way you address the situation is burning alternate fuels. The bigger problem is that perhaps Russia is not a dependable energy supplier.'' [Emphasis mine]

Bingo.

The question before Russia is quite simple: Can it meet its obligations or not? Before this showdown with Ukraine, the answer was an unqualified yes. The spat with Ukraine, however, has revealed two ominous portents in Russia's energy situation, both of them stemming from Putin's nationalization efforts. First, the stalemate indicates that supply contracts will only mean something until Putin says they don't. So, then, what value are the supply contracts that everyone is holding? At the same time, the stalemate has shown the cynicism with which Putin plans to wield his government's new industrial controls. Western governments will gladly buy gas from Russia, but only so long as the transaction terms are limited to cash-and-carry. If the price of delivery includes bending to Russia's will, many governments will seek alternatives -- either in other, less risky suppliers, or in technologies such as nuclear power. Politicians like to stabilize energy supplies, after all, because disruptions lead to political instability.

UPDATE: As predicted. Gazprom was going to have to settle for something far short of what it was demanding, and Putin needed to save face. What we've got, basically, is a modified version of what Yushchenko has been proposing all along: a gradual phase-in of market pricing. The question now is whether Putin's maneuvers have already sown doubt in European capitals about Russia's reliability as a supplier.

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