Your humble blogger awoke this AM to an automated phone call informing me to lock all my doors and not to go outside because of, well, this. 

As I'm typing this, one of the suspected bombers is dead, and the other one is on the run and somewhere kinda close to where I lie. 

So, I've spent the AM watching cable news and checking my Twitter feed to find out everything about the suspected Boston Marathon bombers. So here are the most useful links I've seen today, beyond the excellent tick-tock on this past evening from the New York Times that was liked above):

1) The Wall Street Journal has a solid profile on the Tsarnaev brothers suspected of being the Boston Marathon bombers. And Adam Serwer at Mother Jones has some disturbing info about Tamerlan's beliefs.

2) Business Insider has some 28 Days Later-style photos of the unpopulated Boston streets right now.

3) How do you build brand loyalty? By staying open for cops during a lockdown. Dunkin Donuts for the win.

4) So, the suspected bombers are Chechen. For useful links to that conflict, check out the Council on Foreign Relations as well as The Monkey Cage and Foreign Policy. Oh, and Chechnya's leaders ain't pleased about this.

5) According to the New York Post, it sounds like these Chechens are in league with the Evil League of Evil to smite down Glenn Beck and Infowars because the latter has been hoarding Bitcoins and -- OK, I clearly need to get off the internet. 

That is all. For now.

Developing.... 

So, after reading up on the Cyprus deal from the Financial Times, the Economist, and Quartz, I think I have a pretty good idea of what happened. Tyler Cowen isn't happy with the deal, and I can see why, but I don't think that means the deal won't stabilize things for a spell. My four quick takes: 

1) I've been pretty insistent that the most surprising thing about the aftermath to the 2008 financial crisis is how much global policy norms haven't changed. By and large the major economies are still rhetorically and substantively committed to trade liberalization, foreign direct investment, and a constrained role for the state in the private sector. The one exception? Capital controls. The earth has moved here, and the fact that this deal will require fair amounts of financial repression and cross-border controls is just the latest sign of this fact. 

From a normative perspective, I can't say I'm too broken up about this. It's not that I'm a huge fan of capital controls or anything. In the various policy trilemmas or unholy trinities that Dani Rodrik and others talk about, however, it strikes me that unfettered capital mobility is the policy preference with the least upside. And Cyprus does seem to be the fifth iteration of the lesson that countries that live by large unregulated offshore finance will die by large unregulated offshore finance. 

2) If the FT's Peter Siegel and Joshua Chaffin are correct, then the political backlash in Cyprus from this deal won't be that great: 

In Nicosia, political leaders generally greeted the deal as painful but necessary.

The city streets were quiet and peaceful, with most businesses closed for a public holiday.

Even before the agreement was clinched, most Cypriots had come to grips with the fact that the offshore financial business sector that has powered the economy since the Turkish invasion in 1974 would be but a shell of its recent self.

And as the Economist explains, the current Cypriot reaction is based on the fact that the new deal is a damn sight better for them than the previous deal:

On March 16th Cyprus’s president, Nicos Anastasiades, desperate to protect Cyprus’s status as an offshore banking model for Russians, had decided to save the two biggest banks and thus to spread the pain thinly. He would have applied a hefty tax to all depositors: 9.9% for those too big to be covered by the EU-mandated €100,000 deposit guarantee, and 6.75% for the smaller depositors.

But after a week of brinkmanship—including protests by Cypriots, the extended closure of banks to avoid the outrush of money, a failed attempt by Cyprus to throw itself at Russia’s feet, an ultimatum by the European Central Bank and an eleventh-hour threat by Cyprus to leave the euro zone—a different decision was made: to apply the pain much more intensely, but on a smaller number of large depositors.

Which leads me to....

3) So much for Russia as a counterweight to the European Union. Cyprus tried to realign itself closer to Moscow, but it didn't take. Furthermore, the new deal really puts the screws on the large deposits of Russian investors that have parked their money in Nicosia. As Felix Salmon explains: 

In the Europe vs Russia poker game, the Europeans have played the most aggressive move they can, essentially forcing Russian depositors to contribute maximally to the bailout against their will. If this is how the game ends, it’s an unambiguous loss for Russia, and a win for the EU.

The Financial Times makes a similar point: 

One Moscow businessman blamed the harsher haircut on the Kremlin, which he accused of failing to protect Russia’s interests, “thereby allowing the Germans to bully Cyprus and thousands of Russian depositors”.

“As soon as the EU saw that Russia was not going to protect its citizens, the confiscation of Russian money in Cyprus was pushed by the EU. All that was necessary for Russia to do was to provide €2.5bn secured by Cyprus’s nationalised assets,” he said.

With Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow, there's been a lot of chatter about "rise of BRICS" and "Russia turns East" and "SCARY!! SCARY!!" Bear in mind, reading all of this, that Moscow couldn't budge the ostensibly enervated EU from its position on the EU member with the closest ties to Russia. 

[Can't Russia just mess with the Europeans on energy?--ed. Um... no. Sure, they could try to do that, but the long-run implications of that move for Russian exports ain't good. To paraphrase an old Woody Allen joke, Russia might find its economic relationship with the European Union to be totally frustrating and irrational and crazy and absurd... but Russia needs the eggs.]   

4) What I said about Cyrprus last week still seems to hold for this week. So I guess this means Cyprus now falls under the "good enough" global governance category, with the caveat that this involves eurozone officials, so "good enough" here is defined down to mean "managed not to wreck the rest of the global financial system."

Am I missing anything? 

Your humble blogger enjoyed his time in Mexico City.  He particularly enjoyed last night's dinner, at which the most delicious margaritas he had ever consumed were served.  It is possible that he should not have enjoyed that last of his many margaritas, however, because he is now extremely cranky and waiting to board his flight back to the United States.

I bring up the crankiness because it's possible I'm overreeacting to the announcded format and topics for Monday night's foreign policy debate.  Politico's Mike Allen -- via Dylan Byers -- relays the following: 

[H]ere are the topics for the October 22 debate, not necessarily to be brought up in this order:

* America’s role in the world
* Our longest war – Afghanistan and Pakistan
* Red Lines – Israel and Iran
* The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – I
* The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – II
* The Rise of China and Tomorrow’s World...

The format calls for six 15-minute time segments, each of which will focus on one of the topics listed above. The moderator will open each segment with a question.  Each candidate will have two minutes to respond.  Following the candidates’ responses, the moderator will use the balance of the 15-minute segment to facilitate a discussion on the topic.

So two-thirds of the debate will be about the Greater Middle East.  Two-thirds.  Schieffer has generously allowed that China and Tomorrowland the entire Pacific Rim should get fifteen minutes.  Here are the following areas and topics that apparently won't be discussed: 

1)  The eurozone crisis

2)  Latin America

3)  Russia

4)  Africa

5)  Foreign economic policy

6)  India

7)  North Korea

Now I get that some of these topics won't come up in a foreign policy debate that lasts only 90 minutes.  But I'm also thinking that maybe, just maybe, it would be a better foreign policy debate if they actually talked about, you know, SOMETHING OTHER THAN THE MIDDLE EAST!!!!!!

I'm not saying the Middle East isn't important -- we have lost blood and treasure there, some of it very recently.  But I simply do not believe that the region is so important that it should occupy 66.7% of a foreign policy debate.  

That could just be the hangover talking.  But I seriously doubt it. 

Am I mising anything?  No, scratch that -- what else is Schieffer missing in his misbegotten list of foreign policy topics? 

I've received some pushback in the blogosphere in response to my last post, an effort to goad Mitt Romney into making saome substantive foreign policy critiques.  Let's talk them out. 

First, I wrote that, "relations with Pakistan, Russia, India and Canada have cooled off considerably since the Bush years."  There's been some justifiable pushback on that sentence -- but within that pushback there's some interesting things to note about the politics of perception. 

I linked to a Foreignaffairs.com essay on the Canadian-American relationship, but Roland Paris does a pretty effective job of shredding their argument, in no small part by reminding readers of the true low point in bilateral relations this century:

Between 2003 and 2005, I had the privilege of serving as an advisor on Canada-U.S. relations in the Department of Foreign Affairs and in the Privy Council Office. Relations today are no worse, and probably better, than they were then. Jean Chrétien had just declined to send Canadian troops to Iraq – the right decision, but one that nevertheless angered officials in the George W. Bush Administration, who were hoping at least for an expression of political support. (It didn’t help that Chrétien announced his decision in the House of Commons to a throng of cheering Liberal MPs.) Bush then cancelled a planned state visit to Canada....

Here is a different picture that fits better with the facts: The state of the Canada-U.S. relationship today is sound. Yes, there are irritants, but they are no more challenging than the irritants of the past. Nor does only one country – or one leader – bear the fault for these irritants.

This is a pretty powerful critique.  As someone who has too much experience in making this kind of argument, however, I fear it won't carry much weight in the American body politic.  The reason is that Paris' basic point is that, "look, things were a lot worse a little while ago."  But that's not a point that plays politically.  When talking about bilateral relations in a political context, analysts and pundits care about the trendline more than the base level.  The trendline suggests a mild cooling of a very warm and multidimensional relationship.  So people will focus on the cooling. 

Still, in linking to the article in the first place, I did perpetuate the meme.  So, apologies. 

There was also some pushback on Russia as well.  Daniel Larison notes:

One needn’t be a supporter of current Russia policy to recognize that it isn’t the complete disaster of the late Bush years. I know I’ve beaten this topic to death lately, but this claim about relations with Russia being worse than they were during “the Bush years” is simply wrong.

This may be easy to overlook at a time when U.S.-Russian relations are cooler than they were a year or two ago, but apparently it can’t be repeated too often that the Bush administration drove the U.S.-Russian relationship into the ground starting in 2002-03 and then kept going down. U.S.-Russian relations were widely recognized to be at a post-Cold War low in August 2008 and during the months that followed, and administration policies and decisions contributed significantly to that outcome. The current administration had repaired a fair amount of the damage, but quarrels in the last year have undone some of that improvement. Outgoing President Medvedev said that the last three years “have perhaps been the best three years in relations between our two countries over the last decade.” Maybe that’s damning with faint praise. Relations between the two countries from 2002 to 2012 were mostly mediocre or poor. That doesn’t make the claim any less true.

Indeed, in a related post, Dan Nexon notes the benefits of the "reset" relationship with Russia:

The basic theory behind the Obama Administration's "Reset" policy was that US-Russian relations could be disaggregated: that it is possible for two countries to disagree on a range of issues and still cooperate on matters of common interest. That bet looks to be correct; despite a significant deterioration in relations between Washington and Moscow, the pursuit of common interests persists.

The Russian government has given approval for the United States and its NATO allies to use a Russian air base in the Volga city of Ulyanovsk as a hub for transits to and from Afghanistan....

Unfortunately, too many pundits and policymakers continue to reduce US bilateral relations with other countries to single "barometers."

Again, this is factually correct, but to go all emo on Larison and Nexon, it "feels" wrong somehow.  Why?  I think it's based on some combination of the following: 

1) The arms control dimension of the "reset" took much longer to play out than anyone expected -- including Obama administration officials.  Everything eventually got signed and ratified, but Russia's prickliness during the whole episode seemed to baffle American officials. 

2) Russian rhetoric towards the United States continues to be quite hostile -- and has become even more hostile since large-scale protests began in December of last year.  Vladimir Putin isn't fond of Michael McFaul, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama -- so even cooperative moves are obfuscated by bellicose rhetoric. 

3)  Syria. 

Nexon is correct to observe that there are key dimensions on which cooperation has been significant.  I do wonder, however, if too many Americans have imbibed the simple Schmittian  dichotomy of friend and enemy to view other countries.  We're unpracticed as a country in dealing with the category of "rival" -- or, in the case of Russia, "demographically crippled rival." 

Finally, the very smart Will Winecoff responds with a curiously lazy post.  The key points:

At some point Romney will be asked direct questions about foreign policy. When he asked those questions he will say things like "I will get tough with China to make sure they play by the rules and stop stealing American jobs" and "I will not let terrorists kill American citizens, and I will do whatever is necessary to keep Americans safe" and "I will keep America strong by not cutting our military budget" and "Screw Russia". He will not say whether he favors neoconservatism or realpolitik because he does not know what those things are. Neither does any of the people who will be asking him questions (unless Fareed Zakaria gets a crack, which he won't), nor will 99.9% of the people who will hear his answers.

His actual foreign policy will be run by the bureaucracy, which will be highly constrained by structural factors, and will be reactive to events yet to occur.

A few responses: 

1)  Mitt Romney is many things, but he's not an idiot.  He knows perfectly well what realpolitik and neoconservatism are. 

2)  I don't want Romney to talk about foreign policy because it will provide a sneak peek into what he'll actually do.  I want him to talk about it as a way of A) demonstrating leadership over how own friggin' campaign machine; and B) demonstrating the necessary background knowledge to reassure people like me that he can handle a foreign policy crisis.  By not talking about it, all he's doing is encouraging his own loyalists to leak like crazy.  And by repeatedly ghosting God-awful op-eds, he's sowing doubts that he has any kind of game plan about how to be proactive about foreign policy.  Oh, and that reminds me...

3)  Winecoff's structuralist view of foreign policy might be true in the long run.  Presidents who deviate away from the foreign policy "mainstream" for too long usually have to reverse course.  The notion that any president's foreign policy is "will be run by the bureaucracy," however, vastly underestimates the president's short-term flexibility.  So it does kinda matter who's working in the Oval Office come January 21st, 2013. 

ABC News reports on a "hot mic" moment between President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: 

At the tail end of his 90 minute meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev Monday, President Obama said that he would have “more flexibility” to deal with controversial issues such as missile defense, but incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to give him “space.”

The exchange was picked up by microphones as reporters were let into the room for remarks by the two leaders.

The exchange:

President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.

President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

Now, compared to past "hot mic" moments, this certainly seems less, well, profane.   Nevertheless, it has gotten the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin all hot and bothered about the hidden Obama that will emerge in 2013:

It’s helpful to have a vivid illustration of this, but is there anyone who thinks Obama, should he get a second term, wouldn’t run wild with policies and positions that the majority of the electorate oppose? Otherwise, he’d roll them out now, of course....

Elections are taken as mandates by elected officials and the media (even if the message is less clear than the winner would have us believe).

In sum, the election is not simply a referendum on President Obama’s actions to date; it’s essentially a blank check for the president’s second term. Romney should be asking wary independent and moderates: Is there a scintilla of a chance that Obama would be less liberal in a second term?

Rubin's logic seems pretty clear:  Obama is really a liberal, and free of political constraint -- particularly on the foreign policy remit -- he'll revert to type.  There's just one problem:  based on recent evidence, there's an excellent chance Obama will be less liberal in the second term. 

Consider the last three two-term presidents:  Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 43.  I'll grant this is a very small sample, but bear with me.  Did their second-term policies look different from their first-term? 

You bectha.  Reagan tacked in a decidedly liberal direction with respect to the Soviet Union, switching from rhetoric about the "evil empre" to  cutting substantive arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.  Clinton, on the other hand, tacked in a more conservative direction.  After being enamored of multilateralism and leery of using fore in his first term, he became more comfortable with using force and using it outside of UN strictures in his second term.  Finally, Bush 43's second terms was decidedly more liberal.  In his first term, he declared an "Axis of Evil" and invaded Iraq without UN support.  In his second term, however, the Bush administration was decidedly more dovish, working through the UN on both Iran and North Korea, demonstrating a willingness to directly negotiate with the Iranians, and refusing to use force in Syria.  This, by the way, is why claiming a continuity between Bush 43 and Obamas is not quite as much of a political jab as people like to claim.  The dfifferences between Bush in 2003 and Bush in 2008 were massive. 

Now, these narratives are not really as clean as the last paragraph suggests.  Reagan also embraced Iran/Contra in his second term.  In Clinton's second term he pushed hard to address US arrears to the UN.  And Bush had some elements of compasionate conservatism liberalism in his first term, what with PEPFAR and a refusal to declare a clash of civilizations following the 9/11 attacks. 

What's striking, however, is that recent second-termers have not reverted to their ideological bliss point -- if anything it's been the reverse, they've tacked away from their starting point.  Part of this is circumstances.  Reagan had, in Gorbachev, a real negotiating partner in his second term.  Bush had to be more circumspect on Iran and North Korea after the cost and constraint of military operatons in Iraq and Afghanistan.  All three presidents had less favorable legislatures in their second term than their first.

Still, it's not all about circumstances.  What gives?  I'd argue that precisely because presidents have fewer foreign policy constraints than dometic ones, they feel free to pursue their preferred set of policies from day one.  Reality, however, quickly determines which ideas are working and which do  not have any staying power.  Over time, therefore, presidents change tack until they hit on a more successful formula.  This usually means overcoming one's personal ideology and embracing new ideas. 

I've argued that this is exactly what Obama has done in his first term -- and I'm hardly the only one.  And, so, yes, contra Rubin, I think the notion that a second-term of President Obama will be the second coming of the Kellogg-Briand Treaty requires a willful misreading of Obama's first term of foreign policy -- as well as ignorance of the last thirty years of American foreign policy. 

Am I missing anything? 

As both the unrest and crackdown in Syria continue to get worse, Russia has steadfastly stood by the side of the Assad regime. Matters are coming to a head in Turtle Bay, however, as James Blitz and Roula Khalaf and Charles Clover report for the Financial Times:

Britain, France and the US will be making their most forceful push yet for a political transition in Syria at the UN Security Council this week, lending support to an Arab plan that they hope will overcome Russian opposition....

Paris and London said on Monday that they had the support of 10 out 15 Security Council members, which would mean a resolution can be put to a vote. But it remains unclear how Russia, which last year vetoed a much milder resolution, will vote....

French and British diplomats argue that Russia can no longer block a UN resolution. “We’re trying to convince the Russians that they can’t stay in their posture of opposition to a resolution while there is this much killing on the ground,” said a French official.

The State Department said Hillary Clinton had been trying to call Sergei Lavrov, Russian foreign minister, for the past 24 hours to discuss Syria, but he had been “unavailable.” The Syrian regime in recent days had “just let loose in horrific ways against innocents," said Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the State Department (emphasis added).

This is a serious humanitarian crisis and a brewing confrontation between permanent members U.N. Security Council…and yet, there's something I find very amusing about Lavrov's efforts to duck Clinton's calls. In the old days of the 20th century, one could imagine this kind of lying low gambit being easier to pull this off. Not any more.

Still, in honor of Lavrov's efforts to play hide and seek, your humble blogger suggests a contest for readers: Proffer your own version of Lavrov's outgoing voicemail message. If you're Lavrov, representing the interests of the Russian Federation, what would you want Hillary Clinton to listen to as she tried to reach you? Could the outgoing message itself constitute part of Lavrov's pushback?

To get the ball rolling, here's my effort:

Hello, you've reached Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of the Russian Federation. I'm away from my phone right now, coordinating an investigation into serious human rights abuses that have occurred in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia over the past year. If you wait for the "reset" beep and leave me your name and number, however, I'll be sure to get back to you about how this stuff might need to be raised at the next U.N. Security Council meeting.

Try it yourself -- it's easy and fun!

Let's consider and contrast American foreign policy towards Russia and China over the past few years.

With Russia, the Obama administration announced a much-ballyhooed "reset" with the goal of improving bilateral relations.  In an effort to advance that goal, the administration reworked missile defense system plans in eastern Europe, creating political headaches for governments in the region to make Moscow happy.  The administration took great pains to endorse a Russian proposal on Iran's nuclear program.  The administration signed a fresh new arms control treaty and then expended a decent amount of political capital to get NewSTART ratified.  Washington conducted some serious behind-the-scenes diplomacy to get Russia into into the WTO.  Most recently, the administration appointed a chief architect of the "reset" policy as ambassador to Russia.   

With China, the Obama administration (after some idle G-2 talk) has been far more aggressive.  The administration has "pivoted" it's foreign policy resources toward the Pacific Rim, with the not-so-subtle signal that China is the focus of this pivot.  Washington has poked its nose into the South China Sea dispute, and recently announced a decision to station troops in Australia.  It pushed forward a framework trade agreement that pointedly does not include China, while simultaneously calling on that country to let its currency appreciate.  The State Department has reached out to one of China's longstanding allies in an effort to coax the nascent democratization in that country into something more long-lasting.  This is simply part of a larger theme in which Washington is seemingly bear-hugging any significant country that is concerned about Beijing.  The U.S. ambassador to China, when not becoming an online sensation among ordinary Chinese, is busy criticizing Beijing's human rights record. 

So, to sum up:  the Obama administration has made it something of a priority to improve relations with Russia, while at the same time investing serious amounts of diplomatic capital into various frameworks and initiatives that hedge against a rising China. 

Now compare and contrast how Moscow and Beijing are thinking about Washington this week.  In Beijing: 

China and the United States should cooperate more closely to defuse international crises and ensure friction does not overwhelm shared interests, China's likely next president, Xi Jinping, said on Monday, setting an upbeat tone for his impending visit to Washington.

"No matter what changes affect the international situation, our commitment to developing the Sino-U.S. cooperative partnership should never waver in the face of passing developments," Vice President Xi told a meeting in Beijing.

"In dealing with major and sensitive issues that concern each side's core interests, we must certainly abide by a spirit of mutual respect and handle them prudently, and by no means can we let relations again suffer major interference and ructions."

Xi's mood-setting speech did not unveil new policies or give the precise date for his U.S. visit. But he stressed Beijing's desire for steady relations for his visit and his accession to running the world's second biggest economy after America's.

And now Moscow:

Russia's foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, warned Wednesday that outside encouragement of antigovernment uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa could lead to “a very big war that will cause suffering not only to countries in the region, but also to states far beyond its boundaries.”

Mr. Lavrov’s annual news conference was largely devoted to a critique of Western policies in Iran and Syria, which he said could lead to a spiral of violence.

His remarks came on the heels of a report on state-controlled television that accused the American ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, who has been in Moscow for less than a week, of working to provoke a revolution here. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, at an impromptu meeting with prominent editors, also unleashed an attack on the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy, which he said was serving American interests.

Now, it's possible to find other news stories that suggest China might not be handling all aspects of the bilateral relationship with equal aplomb, and its possible that these Russian statements contain more bluster than bite.  Still, stepping back, the larger narrative does seem to be that Russia has adopted an angrier and more belligerent posture toward American foreign policy in recent months, while China has responded with more aplomb. 

Why?  I don't know if there's an easy and accurate explanation.  Some neoconservatives might proffer that authoritarians only respond positively to strength, and therefore Russia feels more emboldened than China.  I seriously doubt that this is about bandwagoning.  Similarly, it could be argued that Russia is more domestically insecure than China, what with the recent protests and all.  Again, I seriously doubt this, as it's not like China hasn't experienced some domestic hiccups as well this year.

There are two more compelling explanations, but I honestly don't know if they work either.  The first is that Russia and China have different diplomatic styles.  Russian diplomats are far more comfortable with being blunt in their assessments of American intentions and actions, whereas Chinese diplomats are more comfortable laying low and not making as much of a public fuss.  Furthermore, China has moved down the learning curve, recognizing that its 2009-10 policy of "pissing off as many countries as possible" didn't turn out so well.  It's possible that the substance of both countries' approaches toward the United States are not that different -- they just go about it in ways that play very differently in the media. 

The second, more realpolitik explanation is that China and Russia are looking into the future, and Beijing is far more sanguine than Moscow.  Russia is suffering from institutional dysfunction and demographic decay.  It's only great power assets are bountiful natural resources, a huge land mass, and nuclear weapons.  China will encounter difficulties in the future, but does not have nearly the same kind of structural stresses as Russia.  Beijing is therefore simply less anxious than Moscow about U.S. policy, because it has more hard and soft power resources. 

To be honest, I'm not thrilled with either of these explanations. So, dear readers, I put it to you: why is Russia acting more bellicose toward an accommodating policy from the United States, whereas China is reacting calmly toward a more aggressive United States? 

Developing ...

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 doings in the Middle East, it's easy to miss developments elsewhere.  Let's take a look at Eastern Europe, shall we?  Like Belarus, in which the latest developments suggest a uniquely Belarusian path to misery. 

The Financial Times' Jan Cienski notes that Greece and Portugal aren't the only European countries looking for a bailout: 

Away from frantic negotiations over how to save Portugal and Greece, another peripheral European country is scrambling for a bail-out. But Belarus is looking not to the European Union or the International Monetary Fund but to a grouping of ex-Soviet republics led by Russia.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, flew to Minsk on Thursday to offer Belarus about $3bn in loans over three years from the Eurasian Economic Community, in return for undertaking economic reforms and privatising state companies – which could see Russia take controlling stakes in strategic assets such as oil refineries and pipelines.

“It will help to improve investor sentiment,” said Anastasiya Golovach, an analyst with Renaissance Capital. “But Belarus will definitely have to pay something for this and Beltransgaz [operator of the east-west pipeline shipping Russian natural gas to the EU] will be the price.”

Moscow is relishing Alexander Lukashenko’s discomfort, as the authoritarian leader of Belarus, who has long had a prickly relationship with Russia, endeavours to calm the growing panic surrounding the Belarusian economy.

Belarus has plunged into a balance of payments crisis, with the current account deficit soaring to 16 per cent of gross domestic product and currency reserves dwindling to a month of import cover. The central bank has introduced multiple exchange rates, seeing a collapse in the rouble’s black market rate....

The outlook is gloomy. “We are heading in the direction of Zimbabwe here,” said a foreign diplomat stationed in Minsk.

Note to the Belarusian government:  anytime your country is compared to Zimbabwe, you are in Very Big Trouble. 

As the article notes, Lukashenko has managed to box himself into a corner.  After flirting with the West for a time, a domestic crackdown that intensified in December of last year alienated Germany and the United States, leaving Russia as Lukashenko's only lifeline. 

Russia is, not surprisingly, exploiting the situation in a manner remarkably consistent with trends I wrote about in The Sanctions Paradox oh so many years ago.  As a scholar, it's always nice to see a model demonstrate its durability.  In this case, there's the added frisson of seeing Russia tell others to enact policies that Moscow steadfastly rejected about a decade ago in order to advance Russian interests.  And there's something oddly comforting about watching Belarus continue to make policy misstep after policy misstep -- it's the IR equivalent of rooting for the San Diego Clippers. 

The downsides are that it prolongs Belarusian misery -- and makes the Visegrad states  just a wee bit more jittery. 

Developing....

Gideon Rachman correctly points out the Wikileaks cables do reveal some interesting stuff. One of the oddities that intrigues him:

The sheer bleakness of America's view of Russia -- and this despite all the happy talk of improved relations and a "reset." It is also interesting that the Americans seem to semi-endorse the popular theory that Putin is personally very wealthy, and even name the oil-trading company that could be being used as a siphon.

Yeah, if Wikileaks reveals that the U.S. thinks Russia is such a kleptocratic basket case, why is the Obama administration so intent on resetting the relationship?

Well, first, you could have divined the administration's opinion of Russia without needing Wikileaks.

Second, I suspect the reset was chosen precisely because Russia is such a kleptocratic basket case. For once, I'm ahead of the curve, as I made this point in a paper for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences earlier this year. The key section:

I characterize current U.S. policy toward the Russian Federation as a form of "realist internationalism," By realist internationalism, I am referring to the kind of foreign policy doctrine espoused during the George H.W. Bush administration. This approach recognizes Russia's great-power status and the utility of a great-power concert in dealing with global trouble spots. Rather than prioritizing human rights, democratization, or even economic interests in the bilateral relationship, this policy position prioritizes great-power cooperation on matters of high politics, such as nuclear nonproliferation and the containment of rogue states that transgress global norms....

Russia's demographic situation is a nightmare: the country's population has been shrinking since 1992. The country has experienced positive economic growth over the past decade, but it has been due almost entirely to the run-up in energy prices. The price spike also had a "Dutch Disease" effect on the Russian economy, with an ever greater share devoted to natural resource extraction in general and oil and natural gas in particular. Over the past year, President Medvedev has lamented multiple times that "trading gas and oil is our drug." Russia's other great-power capability is its nuclear arsenal, but because it has failed to modernize the arsenal that is also a deteriorating asset....

At present, Russia's geography, natural resources nuclear stockpile and global governance prerogatives mean that Moscow is still a great power. Compared to the other BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) economies, however, Russia's future trajectory is far from promising. This assessment appears to reflect the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community as well.

Given this state of play, it is not surprising that U.S. foreign policy has reverted to the "equilibrium position" of realist internationalism; over time, the distribution of power between Russia and the United States will trend in America's direction. A pragmatic approach that alleviates Russian concerns about its relative decline echoes the George H.W. Bush administration's approach to a fading Soviet Union.

I'd be happy to hear alternative explanations for the reset in the comments section.

The only thing I dislike more than admitting I'm wrong is admitting that Spencer Ackerman was kinda sorta right.

Cautiously in March and then more confidently in July, I predicted that new START was going to be ratified.  Right now, however, Josh Rogin reports that the odds don't look so hot:

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the key Republican vote in the drive to ratify the New START treaty, said Tuesday he doesn't believe the treaty should be voted on this year.

"When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame duck session, I replied I did not think so given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization," Kyl said in a statement. "I appreciate the recent effort by the Administration to address some of the issues that we have raised and I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Kerry, DOD, and DOE officials." ?

Kyl spoke with Defense Secretary Robert Gates about it last week. A possible meeting between Kyl, Biden, Gates, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in the works and could happen on Wednesday. The treaty was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 14 to 4 on Sept. 16, and is awaiting a vote on the Senate floor.

The Washington Post reported that the White House is offering an additional $4.1 billion for nuclear facilities. This latest offer comes on top of the other promises related to nuclear modernization, which have a price tag totaling over $80 billion, that the administration has offered in an effort to win over Senate Republicans.

I thought Kyl was making some not unreasonable requests back in the summer, but as near as I can read the Obama administration had pretty much given him what he wanted. 

It's possible that the treaty will be ratified in the next Congress, though that's a tougher road, and there's now some bad blood between Kyl and the administration to work away. 

Substantively, the treaty itself is not a nothingburger, but it's not that big a deal either.  There are two implications that flow from Kyl's decision, however.  First, he's given the Russians a great excuse to become even more obsteperous.  As Bob Kagan pointed out earlier this month:

Few men are more cynical players than Vladimir Putin. One can well imagine Putin exploiting the failure of New START internally and externally. He will use it to stir more anti-Western nationalism, further weakening an already weak Medvedev and anyone else who stands for a more pro-Western approach. He will use it as an excuse to end further cooperation on Iran. He will certainly use it to win concessions from Europeans who already pander to him, charging that the Americans have destroyed the transatlantic rapprochement with Russia and that more concessions to Moscow will be necessary to repair the damage. There's no getting around it: Failure to pass START will help empower Putin.

Second, even if START passes eventually, this little episode, combined with the endless ongoing negotiations over KORUS, are highlighting the massive transaction costs involved with trying to negotiate any hard law arrangement with the United States.  The rest of the world is now recalculating the cost-benefit ratio of doing business with the U.S. government. 

Anyway, the real point of this post is that I was wrong... again.  Let the pillorying in the comments section begin. 

I see that while I was away my esteemed co-bloggers Stephen Walt and Marc Lynch have been evaluating Barack Obama's foreign policy performance -- start here, then go here and here. 

I'm still getting all the cotton out of my head from my Israel sojourn, but what I find striking about the debate is how Middle-East-focused it is.  Walt focuses on four key areas:  Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel/Palestine.  All important hot spots, to be sure -- but shouldn't a good realist be concerned about great power politics?  (to be fair, Walt does link to Thomas Wright's intriguing essay in The Diplomat about how the Obama administration is rethinking its China policy). 

As a global political economy person with a strong realpoliitik streak, here are the four issues I think should be given the largest weighting in any grading of Obama: 

1)  Great power politics:  This is where Obama deserves his best marks, despite some occasional rocky patches.  It's safe to say that relations with Russia have been on the mend for quite some time.  Wright is correct to point out the ups and downs with China, but the administration has reacted quite adroitly to China's renewed confidence on the regional and global stage.  U.S. relations with key Pacific Rim allies -- South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, India, and even Vietnam if you want to go that far -- have all been trending upwards.  China now has to process these events, and whether its desire to throw its weigtht around is worth the price of a balancing strategy.  This wasn't how Obama planned things to go with China, but given Beijing's behavior, I think they improvised and adapted quite well in this sphere.  GRADE:  A-

2)  Correcting imbalances in the global economy:  The last G-20 summit in Toronto demonstrated how poorly the Obama administration has done on this front.  The administration went into that summit arguing that some countries need to continue priming the fiscal pump.  The resulting communique did not reflect that assessment.  Deficit hawks have won the war of ideas here -- which would be fine if surplus countries like Germany and China balanced that approach by consuming more.  They ain't going in that direction, however.  There's been minimal progress on yuan revaluation, and real foot-dragging in the Eurozone about fixing what ails that region.  Given the high hopes Obama administration put on the G-20, this has been a thoroughly disapponting performance to date:  GRADE:  D 

3)  Trade:  Blech.  Let me repeat that -- blech.  I understand that the administration is on barren political terrain when dealing with this issue.  Still, the phrase "Obama administration's trade agenda" is pretty much a contradiction in terms at this point.  The Doha round is dead, and the only trade issue that has the support of policy principals is the National Export Initiative -- and you know what I think about that.  Unlike the other three issues, the administration hasn't even bothered to put much effort onto this one -- though the recent pledge to get the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) ratified is promising.  GRADE:  F

4)  Nuclear nonproliferation:  Even an IPE guy like myself appreciates the virtues of a world in which nuclear weapons are heavily regulated.  The Obama administration's performance in this area has been mixed.  START has been negotiated but not ratified, and the Nuclear Safety Summit seems like it was a success.  Iran and North Korea seem unbowed, but at the same time the Obama administration has reinforced the multilateral arrangements designed to contain both countries (though this is interesting).  At the same time, you can't just grade for effort at this level, and the results have been disappointing with both countries.  There is also something of a strategic mismatch between the Obama administration's nuclwar ambitions and grand strategy ambitions.  GRADE:  B-

All grades are incomplete at this stage, but looking above, I'm more than a bit troubled.  I don't see the rebalancing or trade grades impriving anytime soon.  If Obamas was one of my advisees, I'd probably have him stop by my office hours for a friendly but firm chat at this juncture.

Question to readers:  what important issues did Walt, Lynch, and I overlook ? And how would you grade Obama?

Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post earlier this week calling the New START Treaty Obama's "worst foreign policy mistake yet."  This prompted a fair amount of blowback.  The New York Times' Peter Baker and Slate's Fred Kaplan tore Romney a new one dissected the substance of Romney's argument and found it wanting.  Senator John Kerry wrote a WaPo op-ed the next day that had a pretty contemptuous conclusion: 

I have nothing against Massachusetts politicians running for president. But the world's most important elected office carries responsibilities, including the duty to check your facts even if you're in a footrace to the right against Sarah Palin. More than that, you need to understand that when it comes to nuclear danger, the nation's security is more important than scoring cheap political points.

Now reading through all of this, it seems pretty clear that Romney's substantive critique is weak tea.  Objecting to the content of a treaty preamble is pretty silly.  Claiming that the Russians could put ICBMs on their bombers because of the treaty indicates Romney's ghost-writer doesn't know the first thing about the history of nuclear weapons some holes in the research effort. 

Putting the substantive objections aside, there are some interesting implications to draw from this kerfuffle.  First, START will be an easy test of the remaining power of the foreign policy mandarins.  As Time's Michael Crowley points out, START has the support of former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James Baker, former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, former National Security Advisers Brent Scowcroft and Stephen Hadley, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Senator Richard Lugar. 

If the Obama administration can't get Senate ratification of START despite the bipartisan support of the foreign policy community, well, it suggests that the foreign policy community doesn't have the political capital it once did.  I posited earlier this year that START would pass because it was pretty unobtrusive and wouldn't play a big role in political campaigns.  If GOP senators think differently, however, then you can kiss any foreign policy initiative that requires congressional approval bye-bye. 

This could seriously hamper U.S. foreign policy.  Politically, Romney was wise to pick on START, because its importance is not in the arms control.  Boosters like Kerry will talk about START like its the greatest thing since sliced bread, when in point of fact it's a modest treaty that yields modest gains on the arms control front.  No, START matters because its a signal of better and more stable relations with Moscow (much in the same way that NAFTA was not about trade so much as about ending a century-long contentious relationship with Mexico). 

So even if Romney gets chewed up and spit out by the foreign policy mandarins, there's a way in which he'll win no matter what.  By belittling the treaty, Romney will get its defenders to inflate its positive attributes.  This will force analysts to say that "both sides have exaggerated their claims," putting Romney on par with the foreign policy mandarins. 

Developing... in a bad way for the mandarins. 

UPDATE:  Barron YoungSmith makes a similar point over at TNR.  He's even more pessimistic than I am: 

[T]he responsible Republican foreign policy establishment is not coming back. Mandarins like George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and James Baker, who have all testified or written on behalf of the START treaty—calling it an integral, uncontroversial way of repairing the bipartisan arms-control legacy that sustained American foreign policy all the way up until the George W. Bush administration—are going to be dead soon (or they've drifted into the service of Democrats). The people who will take their place will be from a generation of superhawks, like John Bolton, Liz Cheney, and Robert Joseph, who are virulently opposed to the practice of negotiated arms control. Mitt Romney, though a moderate from Michigan, is not going to be the second coming of Gerald Ford.

Well.... this might be true, if you think Mitt Romney has his finger on the pulse of the GOP voter.  Based on past experience, however, Mitt Romney has never been able to find that pulse. 

Still developing....

There are many things that confuse me in life -- Manhattan parking rituals, the proliferation of rotaries in Massachusetts, the appeal of most reality television, and so forth.  I think I'm going to have to add the Russian spy ring to this list.   

Less than a week after Russian President Dmitri Medevedev's burger date with U.S. President Barack Obama, the U.S. Justice Department has busted eight Russkies in an espionage ring so heinous, they've been charged with....  "conspiracy to act as unregistered agents of a foreign government." 

Um.... so, in other words, the Russians are accused of some combination of illegal immigration and impersonating Jack Abramoff? 

Seriously, this story is the most bizarre foreign policy/international relations episode I've seen since the Sandy-Berger-let's-stuff--classified-documents-down-my-pants episode. 

Here are the list of things that confuse me about this case:

1)  What, exactly, were the Russian agents allegedly trying to do?  According to the New York Times: 

The suspects were directed to gather information on nuclear weapons, American policy toward Iran, C.I.A. leadership, Congressional politics and many other topics, prosecutors say. The Russian spies made contact with a former high-ranking American national security official and a nuclear weapons researcher, among others. But the charges did not include espionage, and it was unclear what secrets the suspected spy ring — which included five couples — actually managed to collect.

Let's ask a more basic question -- is there anything that the Russians gathered from this enterprise that a well-trained analyst couldn't have picked up by trolling the interwebs? 

2)  Why were the arrests made now?  Back to the Times:

After years of F.B.I. surveillance, investigators decided to make the arrests last weekend, just days after an upbeat visit to President Obama by the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, one administration official said. Mr. Obama was not happy about the timing, but investigators feared some of their targets might flee, the official said.

Based on the actual charges, there's no justification for the timing -- this is chump change.  One is forced to assume that the FBI and DOJ know that other stuff is going on but can't prove it.   Which is fine if you're willing to make that assumption. 

I normally think the Russians are being paranoid when they start devising conspiracies, but in this case, I have at least some sympathy. 

3.  Anyone else gonna re-watch No Way Out?  Because this sounds like a low-rent, more boring version of that movie. 

Seriously, I call on informed readers of this blog to offer some enlightenment on this episode, because it makes almost no sense to me. 

Developing....