Bret Stephens: Return Of The Neocons

Bret Stephens is always good. He's just good-er than usual this week:

... neocons are back because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il and Vladimir Putin never went away. A star may have shone in the east the day Barack Obama became president. But these three kings, at least, have yet to proffer the usual gifts of gold and incense and myrrh.

Instead, the presents have been of a different kind. North Korea claims to be in the final stages of building a uranium enrichment facility—its second route to an atomic bomb. Iran, again caught cheating on its Nonproliferation Treaty obligations, has responded by wagging a finger at the U.S. and firing a round of missiles. Syria continues to aid and abet jihadists operating in Iraq. NATO countries have generally refused to send more troops to Afghanistan, and are all the more reluctant to do so now that the administration is itself wavering on the war.

As for Russia, its ambassador to the U.N. last week bellyached that the U.S. "continues to be a rather difficult negotiating partner"—and that was after Mr. Obama cancelled the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Thus does the politics of concession meet with the logic of contempt.

All this must, at some level, come as a surprise to an administration so deeply in love with itself. "I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world," Mr. Obama told the U.N.'s General Assembly last week with his usual modesty. He added that those expectations were "rooted in hope—the hope that real change is possible, and the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change."

Yet what sounds like "hope" in, say, Toronto or Barcelona tends to come across as fecklessness in Warsaw and Jerusalem. In Moscow and Tehran, it reads like credulity—and an opportunity to exploit the U.S. at a moment of economic weakness and political self-infatuation.

For those much-scorned neocons, none of this comes as a surprise. Neoconservatives generally take the view that the internal character of a regime usually predicts the nature of its foreign policy. Governments that are answerable to their own people and accountable to a rule of law tend to respect the rights of their neighbors, honor their treaty commitments, and abide by the international rules of the road. By contrast, regimes that prey on their own citizens are likely to prey on their neighbors as well. Their word is the opposite of their bond.

That's why neocons have no faith in any deals or "grand bargains" the U.S. might sign with North Korea or Iran over their nuclear programs: Cheating is in the DNA of both regimes, and the record is there to prove it. Nor do neocons put much stock in the notion that there's a "reset" button with the Kremlin. Russia is the quintessential spoiler state, seeking its advantage in America's troubles at home and abroad. Ditto for Syria, which has perfected the art of taking credit for solving problems of its own creation.

Where neocons do put their faith is in American power, not just military or economic power but also as an instrument of moral and political suasion. Disarmament? The last dictator to relinquish his nuclear program voluntarily was Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, who did so immediately following Saddam Hussein's capture. Democratization? Contrary to current conventional wisdom, democracy is often imposed, or at least facilitated, by U.S. pressure—in the Philippines, in the Balkans and, yes, in Iraq. Human rights? Anwar Ibrahim, the beleaguered Malaysian opposition leader, told me last week that "the only country that can stand up" to abusive regimes is the United States. "If they know the administration is taking a soft stance [on human rights], they will go on a rampage."

None of this is to say that neoconservatism represents some kind of infallible doctrine—or that it's even a doctrine. Neocons have erred in overestimating the U.S. public's willingness to engage in long struggles on behalf of other people. They have erred also in overestimating the willingness of other people to fight for themselves, or for their freedom.

But as the pendulum has swung to a U.S. foreign policy based on little more than the personal attractions of the president, it's little wonder that the world is casting about for an alternative. And a view of the world that understands that American power still furnishes the margin between freedom and tyranny, and between prosperity and chaos, is starting to look better all the time. Even in France.

One thing is clear: No amount of 'Hope' & 'Change' & 'Blame George W. Bush' can make Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, &c., go away.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

More Change You Can Believe In: Obama Capitulates To The Russians

Former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton to Rich Lowry:

"This is just pre-emptive capitulation, although like everything else, the rhetoric is that we're doing the opposite." It doesn't make sense that we should only be concerned with the short-and-medium-range threat and not also with "the long-range threat 2 or 3 years from now." And our intelligence on Iran is manifestly "inadequate." I wouldn't "bet a lot of money on it being right," and in any case, "there's this concept called 'break-out,'" where they achieve a quantum leap in their capability. It's a "bet against the future" that leaves "us and the Europeans in a more risky situation." All the talk of the intelligence changing and an enhanced short-and-medium-range capability is "blue smoke and mirrors" because they never believed in missile defense. "It's a convenient smoke-screen to do what they wanted to do anyway, which is to give up on missile defense in the hope the Russians will be nice to us." Secretary Gates’s comments were the "most disingenuous." Yes, we want a defense against the short-and-medium-range threat, but the whole idea of missile defense is based on a "layered defense." "Gates was a problem in the Bush administration on missile defense. He was always weak on this."

My man Mitt Romney is very sharp on this issue as well:

* The administration believes that by giving such a gesture of goodwill to the Russians, they will be more willing to give in to our request that they join in sanctions against Iran. Here, the president’s lack of negotiation experience may have come in to play. Yes, sometimes in a negotiation you give up something that is important to you, but you do that only when the other party has agreed to give you something you want even more. You don’t give before you get. But here it’s even worse than that: The president has taught Putin that when he blusters and threatens, America caves.

* The administration is also teaching our friends some very unfortunate lessons; the Eastern Europeans who have stood so valiantly with America and who took political heat for backing the missile-defense system have simply been brushed aside. They have to wonder why America is treating its foes better than it is treating its friends. It’s a question that also is surely being asked in Israel and Honduras.

* The administration’s discounting of Iran’s nuclear progress tells Israel that if it is to stop what its own intelligence may believe is an imminent threat, it may have to act alone — and precipitously.

Then, from Drudge, Analysis: Demise of U.S. shield may embolden Russia hawks and Barack Obama surrenders to Russia on Missile Defence.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Gordon Brown Does the Right Thing

Responding the only way they could, yesterday Britain expelled 4 Russian diplomats. Read press reports at the BBC and Sky News.

A quick primer for those not familiar with the case:

Last fall, frequent Vladimir Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko was killed by a heavy dose of Polonium 210. Polonium is a highly refined nuclear material to which few governments have access. British law enforcement followed the clues to Andrei Lugovoi who many suspect has ties to current Russian intelligence organizations and even to Mr. Putin. In typical Soviet-Cold War fashion, the Russian government has refused to cooperate with the investigation and thrown up a number of conspiracy theories to distract attention. The British government finally lost its patience and expelled the Russian "diplomats."

We put "diplomats" in quotation marks because in these instances, the first ones expelled are those suspected of being intelligence officers and usually carry titles like, "agricultural advisor." Those of you who frequent this blog know that we regularly attend the Intel Seminar at the University of Cambridge. Disclosure rules of Chatham House Rules being what they are, we can't reveal the source, but we've been told on a number of occasions by current and former British Intel officers that the number of foreign operatives and scope of spying by Russia and China is as high now as it ever was during the Cold War.

This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Vladimir Putin was a colonel in the KGB. He was a thug then and remains a thug now. We posted a revealing interview from the Wall Street Journal with Garry Kasparov earlier in the year. Russia under Putin has been dismantling the early democratic gains and is progressively becoming a fitting thugocracy under Putin. Dissidents, political opponents, the free press both at home (and, in the case of Litvenenko) abroad are being jailed or silenced--permanently.

Russia responded to the expulsion with a predictable amount of bluster and bloviation, calling the British move "immoral." Watch for Russia to follow suit on these expulsions with a few of their own expulsions.

But Russia isn't just killing their own. They are actively undermining US interests everywhere from Iraq and Iran to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Africa, Cuba, North Korea, the UN--anywhere they can try to make themselves a relevant world player. Putin's recent complaints about US missile defense are part of a larger strategy of bullying Eastern Europe and the rest of the EU. In this game Russia holds a strong trump card in the form of oil access which runs from Russia to the rest of Europe. We hope Europe will follow Britain's strong example rather than kow towing to Putin and his cronies.


If you have tips, questions, comments, suggestions, or requests for subscription only articles, email us at lybberty@gmail.com.

The Other Russia

Garry Kasparov

By Melanie Kirkpatrick

NEW YORK -- As the longtime world chess champion, Garry Kasparov was a famously aggressive player. His latest game is politics, and his style is equally aggressive. "Our goal is to dismantle the regime," he says, speaking of the political coalition he leads to bring down Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Kasparov's Putin antipathy is well known to readers of this newspaper, of which he is a contributing editor. "I Was Wrong About Putin," was the headline on his Jan. 9, 2001, op-ed article for this page. One year into Mr. Putin's presidency, Mr. Kasparov sounded an early warning about a man whose "KGB roots have informed a style of governance that is neither reformist nor particularly democratic." Since then, Mr. Kasparov has scarcely let up, retiring from chess in March 2005 in part to devote himself to politics.

Mr. Kasparov's new occupation is not without its perils -- a thought that occurred to me as we arranged to meet earlier this month at his newly refurbished apartment in an art deco building on a smart street in Midtown Manhattan. It's a neighborhood replete with sushi bars -- of the sort that bring to mind, ghoulishly, the late Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with polonium 210.

The doorman announces me, and Mr. Kasparov greets me at the door. We are old interlocutors -- I was present at his first meeting with the editorial board in March 1990 and was his editor at the Journal for years. So we kiss -- twice, once on each cheek, not three times, as is the custom in Moscow. After his wife serves tea -- in bone-china English cups, not à la Russe, in glasses -- I ask Mr. Kasparov about the risks: "Look," he says, "there are certain moments in your life when you should forget calculations and do what you believe is your moral duty. I knew that the choice would be dangerous. That's why our baby was born here. I'm prepared to take all the risk, but if I can avoid some, I do." The Kasparovs have a three-month-old daughter.

"The Other Russia" is the name of the unlikely left-right coalition conceived by Mr. Kasparov in 2005 and founded last year. It is composed of groups that would normally be at political odds -- democrats like Mr. Kasparov, nationalists, socialists, even Bolsheviks. Mr. Kasparov predicts that the Communist Party will join up before the end of the year. "There's still a lot of distrust," he says, with more than a modicum of understatement. "It's a problem, but I don't think it's insurmountable. The big advantage of the Other Russia, and I think it's our biggest accomplishment, is that we've established the principle of compromise, which was not yet seen in Russian politics. It was always confrontation. It was a mentality of a civil war. We eliminated it."

A declaration at the time of the Other Russia's organizing conference last summer reads, "We are gathering together because we are united in our disagreement with the current political course of the Kremlin and united in our alarm for the present and future of our country." The group's sole objective is to find a candidate to run -- and win -- in the March 2008 presidential elections. Or as Mr. Kasparov puts it with characteristic bluntness: "When a liberal democracy is re-established, everybody goes his or her way."

The Russian Constitution forbids Mr. Putin from running for a third term -- though that doesn't quell widespread speculation that the president will ignore the rule of law and do so anyway. He "has the administrative resources" to do so, Mr. Kasparov agrees, but it would be at the price of his legitimacy -- both in the West and at home. "I don't think Putin wants to take such a chance."

Mr. Kasparov believes Mr. Putin's "mentality is just to run away -- with all the Russian billionaires. This is the richest ruling elite in the world. They are way ahead of the Saudi princes. They are mega-rich. When you're so rich, you have to make sure that your funds are safe." But "if Putin goes, then who will be in charge? That's a big problem. Then it's instability. An authoritarian regime cannot have a successor while the big name [Mr. Putin] is still alive, much less well, young and strong."

As the new year unfolds, Mr. Kasparov predicts "a political crisis" in Mr. Putin's government, along with "less stability, more uncertainty." That's the opening for the Other Russia. "We should keep our group together, close to the wall, to get into the hall when it's broken. But not too close to be buried under the debris." And then? "If the Other Russia wins, who cares? The victory of the Other Russia candidate destroys the legacy of any institution built under Putin. You have to start from scratch. You have to call new [parliamentary] elections. You have to introduce new laws. You have to undergo judicial reform. You have to destroy censorship." In short, you have to start over, back to where Russia was before Mr. Putin took over, building democracy, block by block.

The next step for the Other Russia, Mr. Kasparov says, is to come up with a platform and work out the rules for selecting a presidential candidate, tasks that are on the agenda for a conference planned for April. The candidate will likely be chosen in another conference in September or October, Mr. Kasparov explains. At the moment Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister, "looks most prominent."

And what about Garry Kasparov? Is he a candidate? It's the only time in 15 years of conversations with Mr. Kasparov that I've known him to be less than confident in a reply. "So far . . .," he says -- note the "so far" -- "so far, I don't think my personal participation helps the coalition because so far" -- another one! -- "I keep the position of moderator. . . . I keep balance of different forces. If I step into the game, that might jeopardize the whole coalition."

In the course of our discussion, Mr. Kasparov refers often to the lack of a free press in Russia. So how, then, will the Other Russia get its message across? "The role of Internet is growing," he says. "Mobile telephones are not unique anymore, not even in rural villages." But -- and the master chess player may have too much confidence in the analytic abilities of ordinary Russians here -- "more important is growing malcontent. People are getting really unhappy. And if they're unhappy, they'll listen."

Mr. Kasparov is far more worried about money, which is short; but "I think in 2007 we will see a major influx of our financial support from within Russia because people can see that the ground is shaky." The Other Russia won't touch "politically exposed money," he says -- and emphatically denies that exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky is a donor. But in the end, he says, "You know, you can't buy political support. Either you are the right man at the right place at the right time or no money helps you." More political naïveté?

Our hour nearly at an end, conversation drifts back to the early '90s and the discussions we used to have about Russia and its future. Is there something the U.S. might have done differently back then, I ask, that would have helped keep Russia on the path to democracy?

Mr. Kasparov gives a wry smile. "I think the best thing [the U.S.] could have done was to get Saddam [Hussein] 15 years earlier," he says. "By going after Saddam in 1991, I think we could have saved Yugoslavia from a civil war and could have sent a message, a very powerful message, to many dictators. . . . In 1991, the United States was much stronger and everybody else was much weaker."

The decision to let Saddam stay in power happened under the watch of President George H.W. Bush, whom Mr. Kasparov isn't shy about criticizing. But he's far more scathing about President Bill Clinton. "During the Clinton years, the United States did virtually nothing in the international arena. . . . There were a lot of activities, but when you look at the core events, I think the influence was irrelevant. . . . Leadership. There was no leadership. . . . There was a big window of opportunity to show leadership, in 1992-93. In those years the whole world was in an ambiguous state after the Cold War. It was a new world, and it required leadership. The way Winston Churchill and [Harry] Truman showed it in World War II. . . . Missing this chance and playing sporadically -- you know, boom, boom, you play one move here, one move there. The United States was asleep."

What advice does he have for George W. Bush about helping Russian democracy today? "Stay neutral," comes the swift reply. The "worst thing" that happened to the democracy movement, he says, was the inclusion of Russia in the Group of 7 democracies, now the G-8, a designation he can't bring himself to utter. Now, Washington should take that position that "there must be an election under the Russian constitution. Putin must go, and elections should be held. Period. That's enough. There's no double standard. Obey the Constitution. That's it."

In addition to his work with the Other Russia, Mr. Kasparov continues to write books about chess -- he's up to Volume Six in a series about his great predecessors -- and he has a mass-market book coming out this year called "How Life Imitates Chess," about the decision-making process in chess, business, politics and history. But at least for now, politics has taken the place of chess as the big game in his life: "I just don't see any other choice for me," he says. "As I used to say for 25 years, I am defending the colors of my country. I'm still doing the same, just not at the chessboard. At a much larger board."

Ms. Kirkpatrick is a deputy editorial page editor at The Wall Street Journal.


If you have tips, questions, comments, suggestions, or requests for subscription only articles, email us at lybberty@gmail.com.