A few months ago I blogged about how the Putin-Medvedev two-step caused some grumbling among Russian elites.  Russian parliamentary elections were held over the weekend, and as it turns out there was some grumbling among the public as well: 

Russians voting in parliamentary elections apparently turned against the ruling United Russia party in large numbers Sunday, exit polls and early results suggested, to the great benefit of the Communist Party.

In what only months ago would have been a nearly unimaginable scenario, the party dominated by Vladimir Putin was predicted to get less than 50 percent of the vote, while polling organizations put the Communists at about 20 percent, nearly double their count in the last election.

Not long ago, anything under the 64.3 percent that United Russia won in 2007 would have been seen as unacceptable failure for the party and Putin, who has relied on its control of government and bureaucrats across the country to deliver ever more votes and entrench his authority.

But now its aura of invincibility is badly dented, and opponents may begin to sense an opportunity. If United Russia falls short of 50 percent of the seats in the lower house of parliament, it will turn to the nationalist Liberal Democrats, or even the Communists, for support. Those parties have been pliable up to now — Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democrats never vote against the government — but could start testing the limits of their power, given a chance.

Well.... that's the odd thing about how this plays out in Russia.  On the one hand, elections like these do matter, because they dent the veneer of an effective authoritarian being in control.  Despite rigging the game, it appears that Putin and his loyalists couldn't secure the desired result.  Any time an authoritarian aparatus demonstrates fallibility is not a good day for the authoritarian apparatus. 

On the other hand.... Putin and his cronies have two to three serious advantages going into the presidential elections.  First, they can use this election as a wake-up call.  By turning up the public spending taps (which high oil prices will allow them to do) they can probably buy some more loyalty.  Second, they can be more ruthless in rigging the electoral game to ensure Putin's victory.  In trading off the international legitimacy of elections vs. winning, I suspect Putin will opt for winning. 

Third, and most important, Russia is not like the Middle East, in which a grass-roots organization has been waiting in the wings to challenge the corrupt authoritarian state.  I suspect that what will save Putin is the existing alternatives to Putin -- namely, the communists and nationalists.  Russians might not like the status quo, but it's not like the opposition has covered itself in glory either.  The Liberal Democrats have done no real governing, and the Communists have done way too much governing in its past.  These are not really desirable alternatives. 

Unless a genuine grass-roots democracy movement sprouts up in the Russian tundra, I suspect Putin and his allies will muddle through the presidential elections.  What's more interesting is whether this event triggers some longer-term planning on the part of Putin or his opposition. 

What do you think? 

With all the press leaks about covert operatives, high-level defections, and behind-the-scenes negotiations with top Khaddafi aides, I think it's safe to say that the United States is running quite the little psy-ops campaign on the Libyan dictator [Are you trying to spell his name a different way in each frakkin' post?!--ed.  Er, yes.  Oh.  Ok, then--ed.]  That's not to say that these things are only being done to psych out Khaddafi, but I'm assuming that's a large component of what's going on. 

In many ways, however, I think the news coming out of the Ivory Coast might be the most effective psychological pressure on the Libyan strongman.  The Financial Times' William Wallis reports on the current state of play:

The battle for Ivory Coast’s presidency has reached a critical phase as forces allied to Alassane Ouattara, president-elect, have advanced into the commercial capital Abidjan after a lightning offensive from the north designed to oust incumbent Laurent Gbagbo.

Mr Gbagbo, who refuses to concede defeat in last November’s polls despite near universal recognition of his rival’s victory, looks increasingly isolated as the noose tightens around the city of 4m people.

Reuters quoted a military source in Mr Gbagbo’s camp on Friday confirming an attack overnight on Mr Gbagbo’s residence in Abidjan but said that pro-Gbagbo forces were still putting up resistance at state broadcaster, RTI....

South Africa’s foreign ministry reported that Mr Gbagbo’s army commander and personal friend, General Phillippe Mangou, had fled with his family to the residence of the South African ambassador. In another blow, the head of the gendarmerie reportedly defected to the president’s rival.

Choi Young-jin, the UN envoy to the country, said the police had defected as well. Reuters reported early on Friday that Mr Ouattara’s forces had taken control of the state television station, which then ceased broadcasting, and were attacking Mr Gbagbo’s residence.

There are many ways in which the Ivory Coast is not like Libya, but there are some striking similarities.  Like Libya, the Ivory Coast is a single-commodity export economy, making sanctions relatively easy to implement.  Like Khaddafi, Gbagbo became an international pariah after rejecting the November election results (well, a pariah to everyone but Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma).  The UN and the relevant regional bodies acted swiftly to put Gbagbo under mulilateral economic sanctions.  Gbagbo, like Khaddafi, refused to see the handwriting on the wall and took every coercive action possible to maintain his hold on power. 

If these reports are accurate, then Gbagbo is on his way out, and the end will not be pretty.  That will likely spook those loyal to Khaddafi.  True, the Libyan leader controls greater resources, but then again, the Ivory Coast doesn't have NATO getting up in its grill. 

This is not the best outcome for the Ivory Coast -- obviously, it would have been better if Gbagbo had acknowledged the election results and set an example for the rest of Africa.  Given how things played out, however, Gbagbo's departure from power will be an affirmation of the ways in which multilateral pressure can affect change.  

The Ivory Coast is also a reminder that multilateral efforts at coercion -- whether military or economic -- often look ineffective or flawed right up until the moment that they actually work.  Which is to say, for all the carping, whinging, bitching and moaning going on about how the Obama administration is handling Libya, none of it will matter if Khaddafi eventually leaves.  And the fall of Gbagbo will be one more data point to freak him and his supporters out. 

In Sayf-Al-Islam's rambling speech last night on Libyan State television, he blamed the current unpleasantness in his country on, as near as I can determine, crazed African LSD addicts. 

This isn't going down as well as Sayf had intended, and Libya seems less stable than 24 hours earlier.  Indeed, Sayf's off-the-cuff remarks managed to make Hosni Mubarak's three speeches seem like a model of professionalism, which I would not have thought was possible a week ago.  

Indeed, it is striking how utterly incompetent leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have been at managing their media message.  Speeches are announced, then never delivered on time, and then delivered with production values that woulds embarrass a public access channel in the U.S.  It's like political leaders in the region have discovered blogs just as the young people has moved on to Twitter or something.  [Er, no, that's the United States--ed.]  Oh, right. 

Having just finished a week of intense media whoring, methinks that one problem is that most of these leaders have simply fallen out of practice (if they were ever in practice) at personally using the media to assuage discontent.  I've been on enough shows on enough different media platforms to appreciate that there is an art, or at least a tradecraft, to presenting a convincing message in the mediasphere.  Authoritarian leaders in the Middle East are quite adept at playing internal factions off one another.  That's a different skill set than trying to craft a coherent and compelling media message to calm street protestors no longer intimidated by internal security forces. 

Indeed, as I argued in Theories of International Politics and Zombies, bureaucratic first responses to novel situations are almost uniformly bad.  Sayf pretty much admitted this last night, as he acknowledged that the Libyan armed forces were not trained to deal with street protestors.  I suspect the same is true with the state media outlets -- they excel at producing tame, regime-friendly pablum during quiescent periods, but now they're operating in unknown territory. 

I also argued that bureaucracies should be able to adapt their organizational routines over time, if a regime's domestic support does not evaporate.  Readers are encouraged to predict which regimes under threat in the Middle East are the most likely to be able to adapt.  My money is on Iran -- not because that regime is more popular, but simply because Iran's leaders have had eighteen months to adapt and they are therefore further down the learning curve. 

Developing....

I see that The Powers That Be at FP are highlighting my foolhardy unconventional wisdom about China's rise on their splash page.

Given the Hu-Obama summit and subsequent flurry of China commentary this week, it's worth highlighting the most absurd data point I cited in that article -- Forbes' magazine's decision to name Chinese President Hu Jintao the world's most powerful individual. Their explanation:

Paramount political leader of more people than anyone else on the planet; exercises near dictatorial control over 1.3 billion people, one-fifth of world's population. Unlike Western counterparts, Hu can divert rivers, build cities, jail dissidents and censor Internet without meddling from pesky bureaucrats, courts.

With these two sentences, the editors at Forbes managed to demonstrate an even shallower analysis of domestic politics than their Dinesh D'Souza cover story on Obama, which I didn't think was possible.

Let's review just a smattering of coverage about Hu Jintao's current ability to exercise iron-willed control over the Chinese bureaucracy, shall we? First, Gordon Chang in The New Republic:

Hu is sometimes called the world's most powerful person -- Forbes magazine gave him that accolade in November -- but he is a weak leader back home. Just how weak was revealed in two startling incidents within the past three weeks. On Tuesday, after the state-run Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute performed the first flight test of the J-20 stealth fighter -- an unmistakable slap in the face of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was visiting Beijing at the time -- Hu professed not to know that the test had occurred....

If the Chinese leader was telling the truth, the test flight reveals a remarkable defiance of civilian authority by the flag officers of the People's Liberation Army, an obvious attempt to undermine the military cooperation Hu said he wanted to foster. Or if, as is more likely, Hu did in fact know about the timing of the test, he nonetheless said something that made himself appear inept. One has to wonder about a political system that creates incentives for its top leader to publicly imply that he is both ignorant and weak.

Either way, the unmistakable impression is that Hu seems to have much less influence than is often assumed. This could be due to the fact that China is in the middle of a transition to the next generation of political leaders -- led by Xi Jinping -- who are gaining in power as Hu loses his in the long run up to the actual handover.

Next, the Economist:

China's new raw-knuckle diplomacy is partly the consequence of a rowdy debate raging inside China about how the country should exercise its new-found power. The liberal, internationalist wing of the establishment, always small, has been drowned out by a nativist movement, fanned by the internet, which mistrusts an American-led international order.

Then there's Drew Thompson in -- hey, it's FP!!

China's national security decision-making process is opaque, and so this worrisome disconnect -- who knew what when -- is difficult to ascertain with certainty. It is highly improbable that Hu was unaware of the development of this major military advancement. His role as chairman of the Central Military Commission ensures that he is well briefed about major programs, and he doubtlessly approves their large budgets. What is not known is how much oversight and control the central government leadership in Beijing had over the PLA's decision-making process that lead to highly visible tests at the Chengdu air base just as Gates was visiting China.

And, finally, David Sanger and Michael Wines in the New York Times:

China is far wealthier and more influential, but Mr. Hu also may be the weakest leader of the Communist era. He is less able to project authority than his predecessors were -- and perhaps less able to keep relations between the world's two largest economies from becoming more adversarial.

Mr. Hu's strange encounter with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates here last week -- in which he was apparently unaware that his own air force had just test-flown China's first stealth fighter -- was only the latest case suggesting that he has been boxed in or circumvented by rival power centers....

President Obama's top advisers have concluded that Mr. Hu is often at the mercy of a diffuse ruling party in which generals, ministers and big corporate interests have more clout, and less deference, than they did in the days of Mao or Deng Xiaoping, who commanded basically unquestioned authority....

"There is a remarkable amount of chaos in the system, more than you ever saw dealing with the Chinese 20 years ago," Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser and Mr. Gates's mentor, said Saturday. "The military doesn't participate in the system the way it once did. They are more autonomous -- and so are a lot of others."

Now, to be fair, it's possible that China is learning how to play the authoritarian equivalent of the two-level game. Even if that's true, however, China is playing that game very badly -- and they're playing it in policy arenas that are guaranteed to trigger a balancing coalition rather than accommodation.

There are a lot of other areas where your replacement-level American commentator is vastly exaggerating China's power. But Forbes' editors easily win the... the....

OK, contest for readers -- name the award that I want to give to writers who vastly exaggerate China's rise!

I was wondering how the Leveretts would respond to the Ashura protests from last month.  Now I have my answer:  an op-ed in the New York Times in which they argue "The Islamic Republic of Iran is not about to implode. Nevertheless, the misguided idea that it may do so is becoming enshrined as conventional wisdom in Washington." 

Their op-ed is worth a good hard look, precisely because it does push back against the conentional wisdom in Washington.  It's not the popular thing to say that the Obama administration should double down on engagement, and I respect that they're willing to make the exact same arguments for engagement that they did before the June protests. 

However, it is also worth remembering Drezner's Eleventh Commandment for Policy Wonks:  just because you're going against the conventional wisdom doesn't mean you're right. 

As the Leveretts note on their blog site, "It is hard to do serious political analysis of a contested political environment when one is, in effect, 'rooting' for one of the contestants."  So true* -- but scanning their op-ed, the Leveretts appear to have their own rooting interest.  Consider these two paragraphs:

[A]ssertions that the Islamic Republic is now imploding in the fashion of the shah’s regime in 1979 do not hold up to even the most minimal scrutiny. Antigovernment Iranian Web sites claim there were “tens of thousands” of Ashura protesters; others in Iran say there were 2,000 to 4,000. Whichever estimate is more accurate, one thing we do know is that much of Iranian society was upset by the protesters using a sacred day to make a political statement.

Vastly more Iranians took to the streets on Dec. 30, in demonstrations organized by the government to show support for the Islamic Republic (one Web site that opposed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in June estimated the crowds at one million people). Photographs and video clips lend considerable plausibility to this estimate — meaning this was possibly the largest crowd in the streets of Tehran since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s funeral in 1989. In its wake, even President Ahmadinejad’s principal challenger in last June’s presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, felt compelled to acknowledge the “unacceptable radicalism” of some Ashura protesters.

The possibility of a backlash to the Ashura protests is certainly an interesting one, and should be explored further.  I want to focus on the numbers bandied about in these two paragraphs, however.  The first graph suggests that the number of protestors on Ashura ranged from 2,000 to "tens of thousands," placing those as the acceptable bounds.  OK, but multiple news outlets, including the New York Times, have mentioned "hundreds of thousands of Iranians" out on the streets on that day.  It seems a bit odd to cap the upper bound at "tens of thousands."

The second paragraph suggests a million supporters came out on December 30th in Tehran to support the government, citing one website.  OK, but there are other press reports that suggested a much lower number -- "tens of thousands," according to the Los Angeles Times.  Again, it seems odd not to suggest the range of estimates. 

[UPDATE:  as Andrew Sullivan,  Scott Lucas, and several commenter have observed, a distinction should be made between government workers told to march without repercussions, and the hundred of thousands risking their lives challenge the Khamenei regime.]

Again, I'm not saying that there were more Ashura protestors than government protestors -- I too would like to see the data on this question presented in an objective manner.  I am saying that the Leveretts seem to be cherry-picking their protest numbers -- which makes me seriously doubt the objectivity of the rest of their analysis. 

UPDATE:  I see that my FP overlords FP's editors have the good sense to publish Hooman Majd's assessment of the situation in Iran, which is well worth reading -- as is Robin Wright's analysis of recent opposition manifestos in the Los Angeles Times. 

 ANOTHER UPDATE:  Kevin Sullivan at RealClear World is correct to point out that the Leveretts are asking the right analytical questions in their op-ed -- questions others have also been asking.  Based on the way they've skewed framed their data, however,  I simply don't put much faith in their answers. 

LAST UPDATE:  The Leveretts respond in the comments section -- and be sure to check out the follow-ups as well. 

*And I should now fully disclose that I've received funding and/or affiliation and/or membership from at least six seven eight of the organizations now blacklisted by Iran's Ministry of Intelligence (hat tip:  Steve Clemons, whose New America Foundation received the double-dip, along with the International Republican Institute). 

Laura Secor writes in the New Yorker about the bass-ackward effects of the Iranian government's decision to televise the show trials.  I think she misses a key point, however: 

Since the disputed Presidential elections of June 12th, about a hundred reformist politicians, journalists, student activists, and other dissidents have been accused of colluding with Western powers to overthrow the Islamic Republic. This month, a number of the accused have made videotaped confessions. But the spectacle has found a subversive afterlife on the Internet. One image that has gone viral is a split frame showing two photographs of former Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi. Before his arrest, on June 16th, he is a rotund, smiling cleric; in court on August 1st, he is drawn and sweat-soaked, his face a mask of apprehension. The juxtaposition belies the courtroom video, making the point that the only genuine thing about Abtahi’s confession is that it was coerced through torture.

Show trials have been staged before, most notably in Moscow in the nineteen-thirties. Typically, such rituals purge élites and scare the populace. They are the prelude to submission. Iran’s show trials, so far, have failed to accrue this fearsome power. In part, this is because the accused are connected to a mass movement: Iranians whose democratic aspirations have evolved organically within the culture of the Islamic Republic. It is one thing to persuade citizens that a narrow band of apparatchiks are enemies of the state. It is quite another to claim that a political agenda with broad support—for popular sovereignty, human rights, due process, freedom of speech—has been covertly planted by foreigners.

I don't doubt that the broad-based nature of support for change is one reason the show trials have rung hollow.  Still, isn't this a case where the medium is the message? 

Stalin's show trials were not broadcast on television -- they were reported in state-run newspapers or aired, edited, over state-run radio.  This gives the state much greater editorial powers than a live television transmission.  Furthermore, as Secor's first paragraph suggests, it's the non-verbal cues that come from television that completely undermine the intended effect of the spectacle. 

It is possible that, in the future, more sophisticated CGI effects will allow governments the capacity to digitally edit these images, a la The Running Man, to maximize the desired effect (i.e., making Abtahi look as healthy as he did pre-incarceration).  For now, however, such efforts would only look like bad plastic surgery.  No, I don't think televised show trials really work at all. 

Beyond Iran, have show trials ever worked in the television era?  This is a real question, readers.  About the only modern example I can think of where a televised trial of a political leader has broken the back of a movement was Turkey's capture and trial of Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK) leader Abdullah (“Apo”) Öcalan.  Öcalan's complete about-face and rejection of violence during his trial had an effect on the PKK. 

I'm not sure the parallel holds up, since most Turks held genuine antipathy for Öcalan and the Kurds.  So, the question remains open -- can show trials ever cement an authoritarian government's legitimacy?