CSM: What Russia needs most: Civil society engagement, not appeasement
2010 February 28
by Jeremy
Christian Science Monitor
What Russia needs most: Civil society engagement, not appeasement
Ignoring the worst abuses and empowering authoritarians means betraying our
friends in Russia – and undermining US leadership around the world.
By Ariel Cohen / February 10, 2010
Washington
The Obama administration’s Russian “reset button” continues to malfunction.
The latest ignominy was a meeting last month between Russia and the United
States designed by presidents of both countries to reset relations and explore
new opportunities for partnership. Two days after the US-Russia Bilateral
Presidential Commission’s Civil Society Working Group’s ineffective meeting,
Moscow police dispersed a demonstration to support the right of assembly
provided by the Russian Constitution and arrested one-third of the participants.
The US State Department issued a feeble “concern.”
Ignoring the worst abuses and empowering authoritarians means betraying our
friends in Russia – and undermining US leadership around the world. Human rights
and civil society have to remain part of the bilateral relationship.
Last summer, the Kremlin and the White House created the Commission to expand
bilateral cooperation. Two government officials co-chair the Civil Society group
(nongovernmental organizations are not members). At its first meeting, it tamely
discussed child abuse, corruption “in the US and Russia,” and “fighting mutual
stereotypes.”
The American co-chair, Michael McFaul, senior director at the National Security
Council, is a Stanford professor and a democracy expert. Mr. McFaul knows Moscow
and its democracy movement better than anyone in the Obama administration.
He also knows what Prime Minister Putin, and the Medvedev administration, are
doing to that movement. But the White House went out of its way to make the
Russians feel welcome – and feel welcome they did. The Moscow media hailed the
meeting as a “dialogue of the equals.”
But it can’t be so: Russia is at the bottom of the Transparency International
corruption index. Russia is also classified as a “mostly unfree” economy: the
143rd on The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal’s “Index of Economic
Freedom,” above Vietnam but behind Haiti. Yet the discussion focused equally on
corruption there and in the US. Conservative estimates put the number of
Russia’s homeless children at over 2 million. Yet the group spent time
discussing child abuse, which is on the decline, in America.
Indeed, anti-Americanism seems to be Russia’s state policy, as the Kremlin pays
for movies, TV shows, books, articles, and blogs lambasting America.
Even more important were things absent on the group’s agenda. Absent from
discussion were the murders of journalists and human rights activists such as
Anna Politkovskaya of the Novaya Gazeta; barriers to political party activities;
and pervasive censorship in the media.
Also off the menu: a political diktat in courts, which Medvedev denounced;
out-of-control police who shoot innocent civilians weekly, according to Russian
human rights organizations and the media; the interrogators who tortured and
murdered Sergey Magnitsky and a lawyer for the British firm Hermitage Capital in
the infamous Butyrki jail. The list is long, the omissions deliberate to make
Russia comfortable.
As the famous Russian prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky said, “Where will Russia be
heading in the next decade? Certainly, a political economy based upon the export
of raw materials and corruption can enjoy a certain longevity, so long as there
is stable demand for both.”
Mr. Khodorkovsky’s plight symbolizes what’s wrong with Russia’s necrotic
“justice” system. Once the founder of the most transparent oil company,
Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years for alleged tax evasion, and his
company taken away by the state. Today, he’s facing what the majority of Russian
and Western legal experts consider a kangaroo court on trumped-up charges.
Khodorkovsky has become one of the many proverbial canaries in the Russian coal
mine of legal abuse.
Adding Russian insult to American injury was the Jan. 31 demonstration by 300
democratic activists on the Triumphalny Square in the center of Moscow. Their
aim: to uphold Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees freedom
of assembly.
The Moscow police detained and brutally beat the demonstrators – sending a
message that to some siloviki (men of power), the civil society dialogue with
the US means nothing. Among those detained: the former First Deputy Prime
Minister Boris Nemtsov; the Sakharov Prize laureate and the head of Memorial
human rights organization, Oleg Orlov; and many others. A month earlier, the
hallowed Lyudmila Alexeeva, the 82-year-old leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group,
was similarly detained.
Granted, the Obama administration is facing a challenging relationship vis-а-vis
Moscow, which includes negotiating the START Treaty, Afghanistan resupply
transit problems, and UN sanctions against Iran, to name a few.
Yet, the US has to develop and implement an engagement strategy promoting
freedom and human rights in Russia.
We should use every tool in our public diplomacy toolbox, such as international
broadcasting, including creating a new satellite TV channel. Social media and
revamped exchange programs should be a part of such as strategy. And US and
European counterparts should stress engagement with the Russian civil society,
including NGOs and political forces supporting transparency, markets, the rule
of law, and political pluralism.
Ariel Cohen, PhD, is a senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies
and International Energy Policy at the Katherine and Shelby Cullom Davis
Institute for International Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
CSM: What Russia needs most: Civil society engagement, not appeasement
Christian Science Monitor
What Russia needs most: Civil society engagement, not appeasement
Ignoring the worst abuses and empowering authoritarians means betraying our
friends in Russia – and undermining US leadership around the world.
By Ariel Cohen / February 10, 2010
Washington
The Obama administration’s Russian “reset button” continues to malfunction.
The latest ignominy was a meeting last month between Russia and the United
States designed by presidents of both countries to reset relations and explore
new opportunities for partnership. Two days after the US-Russia Bilateral
Presidential Commission’s Civil Society Working Group’s ineffective meeting,
Moscow police dispersed a demonstration to support the right of assembly
provided by the Russian Constitution and arrested one-third of the participants.
The US State Department issued a feeble “concern.”
Ignoring the worst abuses and empowering authoritarians means betraying our
friends in Russia – and undermining US leadership around the world. Human rights
and civil society have to remain part of the bilateral relationship.
Last summer, the Kremlin and the White House created the Commission to expand
bilateral cooperation. Two government officials co-chair the Civil Society group
(nongovernmental organizations are not members). At its first meeting, it tamely
discussed child abuse, corruption “in the US and Russia,” and “fighting mutual
stereotypes.”
The American co-chair, Michael McFaul, senior director at the National Security
Council, is a Stanford professor and a democracy expert. Mr. McFaul knows Moscow
and its democracy movement better than anyone in the Obama administration.
He also knows what Prime Minister Putin, and the Medvedev administration, are
doing to that movement. But the White House went out of its way to make the
Russians feel welcome – and feel welcome they did. The Moscow media hailed the
meeting as a “dialogue of the equals.”
But it can’t be so: Russia is at the bottom of the Transparency International
corruption index. Russia is also classified as a “mostly unfree” economy: the
143rd on The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal’s “Index of Economic
Freedom,” above Vietnam but behind Haiti. Yet the discussion focused equally on
corruption there and in the US. Conservative estimates put the number of
Russia’s homeless children at over 2 million. Yet the group spent time
discussing child abuse, which is on the decline, in America.
Indeed, anti-Americanism seems to be Russia’s state policy, as the Kremlin pays
for movies, TV shows, books, articles, and blogs lambasting America.
Even more important were things absent on the group’s agenda. Absent from
discussion were the murders of journalists and human rights activists such as
Anna Politkovskaya of the Novaya Gazeta; barriers to political party activities;
and pervasive censorship in the media.
Also off the menu: a political diktat in courts, which Medvedev denounced;
out-of-control police who shoot innocent civilians weekly, according to Russian
human rights organizations and the media; the interrogators who tortured and
murdered Sergey Magnitsky and a lawyer for the British firm Hermitage Capital in
the infamous Butyrki jail. The list is long, the omissions deliberate to make
Russia comfortable.
As the famous Russian prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky said, “Where will Russia be
heading in the next decade? Certainly, a political economy based upon the export
of raw materials and corruption can enjoy a certain longevity, so long as there
is stable demand for both.”
Mr. Khodorkovsky’s plight symbolizes what’s wrong with Russia’s necrotic
“justice” system. Once the founder of the most transparent oil company,
Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years for alleged tax evasion, and his
company taken away by the state. Today, he’s facing what the majority of Russian
and Western legal experts consider a kangaroo court on trumped-up charges.
Khodorkovsky has become one of the many proverbial canaries in the Russian coal
mine of legal abuse.
Adding Russian insult to American injury was the Jan. 31 demonstration by 300
democratic activists on the Triumphalny Square in the center of Moscow. Their
aim: to uphold Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees freedom
of assembly.
The Moscow police detained and brutally beat the demonstrators – sending a
message that to some siloviki (men of power), the civil society dialogue with
the US means nothing. Among those detained: the former First Deputy Prime
Minister Boris Nemtsov; the Sakharov Prize laureate and the head of Memorial
human rights organization, Oleg Orlov; and many others. A month earlier, the
hallowed Lyudmila Alexeeva, the 82-year-old leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group,
was similarly detained.
Granted, the Obama administration is facing a challenging relationship vis-а-vis
Moscow, which includes negotiating the START Treaty, Afghanistan resupply
transit problems, and UN sanctions against Iran, to name a few.
Yet, the US has to develop and implement an engagement strategy promoting
freedom and human rights in Russia.
We should use every tool in our public diplomacy toolbox, such as international
broadcasting, including creating a new satellite TV channel. Social media and
revamped exchange programs should be a part of such as strategy. And US and
European counterparts should stress engagement with the Russian civil society,
including NGOs and political forces supporting transparency, markets, the rule
of law, and political pluralism.
Ariel Cohen, PhD, is a senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies
and International Energy Policy at the Katherine and Shelby Cullom Davis
Institute for International Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
from → Commentary