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Posted on by • Posted in Geopolitics, Russian foreign policy, US-Russian relations

Following is a slightly revised text of a talk I gave on March 21, 2019, at UC Berkeley for the Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies.

****

It’s a pleasure to be back at Berkeley, not far from the office that I occupied for some 25 years. I was privileged to have lived in the Bay Area, privileged to have worked at UCB, and privileged to have been part of a wonderful community of faculty and graduate students for a quarter century.

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And as it happened, my interests changed a lot over the years, both in terms of region – initially Russia, then the Caucasus, then Central Asia, and finally Ukraine – and topic, of which there were too many to name.

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In short, it was the perfect job for someone like me who likes being a jack of many trades but master of none.

My talk today reflects my focus in the last five years or so at Berkeley, which, for lack of a better term, was the geopolitics of our region in the lead up to, and wake of, the Ukraine crisis. I felt I had something to say about that dramatic turn of events, so I started a blog that I immodestly called “Eurasian Geopolitics.” And I decided the blog would be forward, not backward, looking. I’d focus less on the “how we got here” and “who is to blame” questions, and more on the “where we’re likely headed” question. The goal was to forecast, and to do so as accurately and clearly as I could.

My talk today is organized as follows. I’m going to start with some brief remarks about the “science and art” of forecasting. I’ll then discuss how Trump has made accurate forecasting about geopolitics and US-Russia relations even more difficult that it was previously. Next I’ll turn to the Kremlin’s strategic goals and how it assesses the risks and opportunities in this uncertain geopolitical moment. Finally, I’ll conclude with some thoughts about the implications for Russia if the Kremlin gets what it wants in the way a post-liberal, great-power “international order.” Continue reading →

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电脑如何使用google by • Posted in Geopolitics, Russian foreign policy, US foreign policy, US-Russian relations

The following appeared in the Newsletter of the UC Berkeley Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, Spring/Summer 2018.

Michael McFaul, President Obama’s “Russia hand” on the National Security Council from 2009 through 2011, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia from January 2012 to early 2014, has written a compelling, readable, and self-reflective memoir of his long engagement with Russia. His special focus is the failure of the policy with which he is most closely associated – the so-called “Reset” in U.S.-Russian relations from 2009-2011. As McFaul bluntly admits, that policy led not to engagement, cooperation, and even partnership, as he and his colleagues had hoped, but to today’s “hot peace.” “What went wrong?,” he asks, and more particularly, “What had I gotten wrong?” (xi).

As a comparative political scientist at Stanford with an interest in empirics and public policy, a long list of academic and non-academic publications, and years of experience in Russia, McFaul has an excellent command of the facts. His record of offering prescriptions with real-world consequences also accounts for his emphasis on contingency and uncertainty; indeed, much of the book is preoccupied with counterfactuals – the “what-might-have-beens” had different choices been made in Moscow or Washington. And he uses contingent, probabilistic language intended to persuade, not “prove.”

I agree with much of what McFaul writes, but dissent from his explanation for the failure of the Reset, the core argument of the book.

*****

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McFaul goes on to describe the origins of the “Reset” during Obama’s presidential campaign, highlighting in particular a “major working paper” that he helped write. (He had been advising Obama’s campaign team since early 2007.) He and his co-authors concluded that U.S. interests would be served by a détente with Russia, but they worried about domestic political fallout from appearing weak, especially after Russia’s invasion of Georgia. To square the circle, the Reset would be framed as serving particular American interests, not as an end in itself. As the working paper put it: “Improved relations with Russia should not be the goal of U.S. policy, but a possible strategy for achieving American security and economic objectives in dealing with Russia” (79). The strategy, in short, was to seek cooperation on issues of mutual interest while downplaying areas of disagreement, including deeply rooted ones such as NATO expansion.

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Despite these successes, McFaul makes clear that the Obama White House did not expect the Reset to lead to another U.S.-Russian “honeymoon.” Washington would work with the Russia it had, not the Russia it wanted. The relationship would be transactional – cooperate where cooperation was mutually beneficial. Meanwhile, the United States would continue to strengthen the NATO alliance, support democracy and state sovereignty throughout Europe and Eurasia, reduce Russia’s energy leverage in Europe, promote human rights and liberal democracy, and, tellingly, “reach out to the Russian people to promote our common values” (80).

Over the longer run, the McFaul and his colleagues hoped that Russia’s objections to U.S. policies – notably NATO expansion, NATO military activities near its borders, U.S. missile defenses, and Washington’s promotion of liberal democracy, “colored revolutions,” and “regime change” in Eurasia and elsewhere, including Russia itself – would pass into history. Its political elite would realize that participation in a U.S.-led “liberal international order” was a win-win outcome that served Russia’s interests better than confrontation, suspicion, and an imagined security threat from NATO. Meanwhile, points of disagreement were “manageable hiccups, bumps in the road of cooperation” (415).

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In McFaul’s telling, the key driver for the failure of the Reset was Vladimir Putin and his return to the presidency in 2012. Putin’s decision to serve a third term, coupled with the mass demonstrations that broke out after electoral fraud in the December 2011 parliamentary elections, meant that “Putin needed the United States again as an enemy” (416). He explains:

To be elected a third time as president of Russia in 2012, [Putin] needed a new argument. In the face of growing social mobilization and protest, he revived an old Soviet-era argument as his new source of legitimacy – defense of the motherland against the evil West, and especially the imperial, conniving, threatening United States. Putin, his aides, and his media outlets accused the leaders of Russian demonstrations of being American agents, traitors from the so-called fifth column. We were no longer partners, but revolutionary fomenters, usurpers, enemies of the nation (418).

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*****

I have two main objections. First, I disagree, at least in part, with McFaul’s explanation for why Putin pivoted after 2011, and second, I think he underplays the explanatory weight of U.S. and Western policy in alienating the Russian political elite in general and Putin in particular.

As noted, McFaul’s explanation for Putin’s pivot after 2011 emphasizes perceived self-interest. In the face of the mass demonstrations of late 2011, Putin concluded he had to save his presidency by playing the nationalism card. And that meant playing up fears of an external enemy, the United States, even as he cracked down on dissent at home to prevent a “colored revolution.”

There is, however, a different explanation for Putin’s actions that I think is rather closer to the truth. I suspect that Putin’s decision to return to the presidency, as well as his 2012 policy pivot, were the product of his understanding of Russia’s — and not simply his own — interests. In my view, Putin, and indeed most of the Russian political elite, genuinely believe that the United States, and the West broadly, pose a threat to Russian political stability and security. They are convinced that Western democracy promotion, and the West’s public embrace of “universal values,” are hypocritical smokescreens masking U.S. ambitions to remain the world’s sole superpower and geopolitical hegemon. They also are convinced that the changes advocated by Western democracy promoters would produce chaos at home and weakness abroad, not prosperity and strength. And they understand the tolerance entailed in liberalism as incompatible with traditional Russian values and Russian “civilization.”

McFaul is aware of this Russian worldview, and indeed one of the many strengths of the book is his fair-minded summarizing of it (as well as the views of critics of the Reset at home). Nonetheless, his explanation for the failure of the Reset attaches no obvious weight to Russian beliefs. Instead, the argument is that Putin pivoted toward illiberalism, authoritarianism, and confrontation with West simply to preserve his own power.

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Moreover, explaining the pivot as a product of Putin’s self-interest risks misleading Western policy-makers into assuming that Russia’s challenge to the West comes from Putin and Putin alone, not from Russia’s political elite broadly (and, less clearly, from the Russian public). Were Putin to pass from the scene, it’s very unlikely that we would see a return to the policies of the Medvedev era, let alone rapid liberalization, democratization, and partnership with the West. Russian decision-makers see the world, and Russian interests, very differently, and that they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

My second objection is that McFaul underweights the role of Western policy in producing the “hot peace.” He argues that “American foreign policy decisions, both real and perceived, cannot be cited as the source of our current conflict with Russia for one major reason – the successful cooperation between Russia and the United States during the Reset, from 2009 to 2011” (414). He goes on to claim that U.S. policies pursued during the Reset to which Moscow objected – the Magnitsky Act, U.S. missile defense deployments in Europe and elsewhere, the “mission creep” of the U.S.-led intervention in Libya, and U.S. criticism of Russia’s “antidemocratic behavior (415) – were not determinative, and were instead the “bumps in the road of cooperation” noted above.

Again, there is another possibility that is consistent with the facts and probably closer to the truth. This is not the place to rehash debates over NATO expansion and U.S. unilateralism since the end of the Cold War, but suffice it to say that the Russian political elite, including those few who are still relatively well-disposed toward liberal democracy, have cause to believe that while the United States insists that other states comply with the rules of the “liberal international order,” it acts as if it, and it alone, has the right to violate those rules. Most are likewise unconvinced by Western arguments about NATO expansion, U.S. military exercises near Russia’s border’s, and U.S. force posture. For them, these are not benign efforts to promote stability and democracy in Central Europe or ensure American security. Rather, they are directed at containing Russia, subverting Russian interests, and projecting American power. And they are a threat to Russian national security.

For these and other reasons, by the time the Obama White House launched the Reset, not just Putin but most of the Russian political elite were deeply suspicious of Western intentions. Support in Moscow for the Reset was accordingly very thin, as McFaul himself suggests. He may have hoped that Russia would follow the path advocated by Medvedev, but he was well aware that Putin was the power behind the throne. And while Putin was willing, up to a point, to let Medvedev preside over the Reset, he was also very skeptical that it served Russian interests. McFaul writes, “[H]ardliners in Moscow – the silovikias they are called in Russia – were not very present in most of our meetings with Medvedev. As we would later learn, they were watching carefully their new young president as he embraced our new young president, and they are doing so not with enthusiasm but anxiety” (204).

If so, it is very possible that U.S. and Western actions during the Reset had a tipping effect on the Reset’s failure, analogous to the tipping effect that Russian meddling may have had on the U.S. presidential elections in 2016. That is, U.S. and Western actions from 2009 to 2011 may have been necessary though not sufficient conditions for today’s “hot peace.”

McFaul’s narrative lends support to this interpretation. He characterizes, for example, the Arab Spring and the civil war in Libya as marking “the beginning of the end of the Reset.” Putin and the bulk of Russia’s political elite were convinced that Western democracy promotion helped account for the revolutionary upheavals that shook the Arab world beginning in 2011. And they felt vindicated when their warnings about the consequences of political destabilization and colored revolutions were followed by disastrous civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and the failure of “democratic breakthroughs” most everywhere else.

The most important precipitant of the Reset’s failure, however, was probably the U.S.-led military intervention in Libya in 2011. As McFaul makes clear, Medvedev took a considerable political risk when he decided that Russia would abstain from a U.N. Security Council Resolution authorizing the use force to prevent a bloody assault by Qaddafi’s forces on opposition-controlled Benghazi. Since Soviet times, Moscow had objected to the use of force against sovereign states for humanitarian purposes. McFaul recalls that some of his White House colleagues felt Russia’s abstention “marked a major turning point in the evolution of national security norms and institutions” (224). But Putin publicly criticized the intervention, and by implication Medvedev for ordering Russia’s UNSCR abstention, referring to the operation as “a crusade.” (225) Medvedev responded, also in public, that it is “inadmissible to say anything that could lead to a clash of civilizations, talk of ‘crusades,’ and so on.” (225). McFaul recalls that he found this “public sparring” shocking, and that he “worried that Putin’s comments signaled an end to his patience with Medvedev” (226).

The Putin-Medvedev exchange took place shortly after the Security Council’s use of force authorization. The political costs to Medvedev would increase dramatically after the intervention went well beyond the letter of the Security Council’s mandate. A sustained air campaign led not to stabilization but to a prolonged civil war, regime change, and the death of Qaddafi at the hands of a mob — this despite the fact that Obama had assured Medvedev that the United States would not use Security Council authorization to bring about regime change. McFaul doesn’t explain how this “mission creep” happened or how he felt about it, but he does make clear that Medvedev felt betrayed by Obama. When Medvedev met Obama on the sidelines of a G-20 summit that May, McFaul writes that he had “never seen him [Medvedev] so upset.” And he speculates, in something of an understatement, that Medvedev “may have felt that his special relationship with Obama was not longer an asset but a liability” (227).

McFaul continues:

In retrospect, U.S.-Russian cooperation on Libya may have been both the height of cooperation in the Reset era, as well as the beginning of the end of the Reset. Years later, in defending his annexation of Crimea, Putin said as much, arguing, ‘You know, it’s not that it [the Reset] has ended over Crimea. I think it ended even earlier, right after the events in Libya.’ U.S. military intervention in Libya, which helped topple Gadhafi [sic], also inadvertently might have helped remove Medvedev from power in Russia (227).

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If so, then the Reset failed before the Putin-Medvedev castling and before the mass demonstrations of late 2011 and 2012. The key precipitant was not the oppositional mobilization of late 2011 and 2012. Rather, it was the Arab Spring and Libya, which served as final nails in the coffin of Putin’s willingness to tolerate Medvedev’s efforts to seek cooperation with the West. And I suspect that Russia’s mass oppositional demonstrations later that year only reinforced his conviction that the West was simply incapable of refraining from destabilizing non-democratic regimes, and that Russia, sooner-or-later, would be in its crosshairs. That in turn suggests why Putin would then authorize a concerted Russian assault on Western democracy, a risky project that goes well beyond demonizing the United States and its allies at home. For Putin, Russia is simply doing to the West what the West has been doing to it. And he intends to win the “meddling war.”

*****

In writing this, I should make clear that I do not share Putin’s understanding of Western motivations, even if I believe many Russian grievances and criticisms are credible and understandable. Even less do I agree with Putin’s understanding of Russian interests or his policies at home and abroad. Rather, the point is to get Putin, and Russian decision-making, right. And that, in my view, means not turning them into straw men. It also means a frank and clear-headed assessment of how U.S. and Western policies have contributed to today’s “hot peace.”

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电脑如何使用google by • Posted in Ukraine crisis

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One notable aspect of the Syria drama is the imbalance in fear levels between the United States and Russia. The Russian media has been full of warnings about a US-Russian military clash and the impending outbreak of World War III. Russian professional analysts have likewise been very alarmist. To cite but one example: Dmitri Trenin, a prominent Russian foreign policy specialist and director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote a piece for the Foreign Policy website subtitled, “Trump’s latest airstrikes are a new U.S.-Russian missile crisis that risks devastating escalation.”

By contrast, I don’t remember a single reference to World War III on American television, or even to the possibility that Syria could lead to a major conventional or nuclear war with Russia. American specialist and security officials are rather more alarmed, but as Trenin suggests, most still appear confident that the risk of a major U.S.-Russia war breaking out in Syria is low because the United States and its allies have such a preponderance of force in the eastern Mediterranean.

My take is the same as it has been for some time with respect to the risks of war between Russia and the United States: a significant risk of something catastrophic is worth worrying about, and it would be a terrible error to sleepwalk into disaster. But the point I want to make here is that I have the impression that the fear level about Syria in the American public is quite low. It seems to be somewhat higher in the U.K., France, and other European countries, but still much less than in Russia. Continue reading →

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Posted on by • Posted in Geopolitics, Russian foreign policy, Syria conflict, US foreign policy, 怎么在电脑上用谷歌 • 1 Comment

1. It’s not over

The Trump administration has made clear that Friday’s strike was a one-off intended to (1) degrade the ability of Damascus to produce high-quality chemical weapons and (2) deter the regime from the further use of chemical weapons.

I’ll discuss whether these objectives were achieved below, but an initial point is that “degrading” is not “destroying” – hence the ongoing need for deterrence. That in turn implies a U.S. willingness to launch additional strikes should Damascus again use chemical weapons. Which is what U.S. and allied officials are saying – there will be more strikes if Damascus doesn’t get the message.

There is, however, an important ambiguity about the deterrence signal sent yesterday (more on this below). It’s not clear if the redline for the U.S. and its allies is the use of any chemical agent specifically banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention (notably the nerve agent Sarin) or the use of any chemical weapon covered by the Treaty’s general prohibition (notably chlorine). Continue reading →

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国内电脑怎么上google by • Posted in Illiberalism and populism

[A note to readers: I was going to post this on Facebook, where I share my thoughts on U.S. domestic politics, but I decided to post it here because it’s relevant to a longer post I’ve been working on comparing drivers of, and obstacles to, change in the late USSR with drivers and obstacles in Russia today.]

I just finished reading Kurt Anderson’s terrific and unnerving book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire (A 500-Year History). I highly recommend it, although you can get the gist of his argument in his December article in 电脑google用什么翻墙, “How America Went Haywire” here.

Anderson describes himself as “a liberal atheist” – which is to say, his faith is in reason. His core argument is that Americans have had a long-standing and widespread (and among advanced liberal democracies, uniquely widespread) commitment to unreason, and that the American cult of unreason, which today is mostly a pathology of the right but has plenty of adherents on the left, has spun out of control. He makes the case for two big drivers taking the U.S. down the rabbit hole: (1) a “profound shift in thinking that swelled up in the 1960s, whereby Americans ever since have had a new rule set in their mental operating systems, even if they’re certain they possess the real truth: do your own thing, find your own reality, do your own thing”; and (2) the Internet, where “believers in anything and everything can find thousands of fellow fantasists who share their beliefs…”

I don’t think Anderson’s explanatory claims are particularly interesting, novel, or compelling – they are part of the story, but only part. And while I suspect it’s true that the U.S. is exceptional among the major advanced liberal democracies in its enthusiasm for unreason (consider that Americans score much higher on religiosity), he doesn’t actually look at other countries – my guess is that the closer you look, the more unreason you’ll find. But what is interesting and convincing are his arguments about the prominence of “fantasy” in American history, and the extent to which we have gone full “fantasyland” in recent decades.

As I went through the book, I couldn’t stop thinking about the contrast between Anderson’s argument and the major theme of Steven Pinker’s new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. I haven’t read it, I confess, but I’ve read plenty of reviews, including a number of highly critical ones. I also read his previous and related book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. So I’m comfortable asserting that Pinker’s core argument is that, by almost any objective measure, humanity is much better off today than is generally appreciated. He points to increased life expectancy, declining violent crime, declining numbers of people being killed by famine or war (in absolute and especially per capita terms), rising global incomes and wealth, the over-fulfillment of the eight Millennial Development Goals, and so on. Accordingly, the confidence in “progress” that characterized the Enlightenment was, and is, essentially correct, despite all the handwringing and angst. And this progress is largely thanks to the turn to reason and scientific thinking that defined the Age of Reason. Continue reading →

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Posted on by • Posted in Geopolitics, 国内电脑怎么上google, Russian foreign policy, US-Russian relations

On the investigation

It is looking increasingly likely that the “novichok” nerve agent used in the assassination attempt was delivered, doubtless unwittingly, by Yulia Skripal, Sergei Skripal’s daughter. Yulia was picked up at Heathrow on Saturday afternoon, the day before Skripal and Yulia fell ill, by a friend of Skripal’s in an Isuzu pick-up truck. The truck was impounded by British authorities on Monday, the implication being that investigators are looking for traces of nerve agent in the truck. Also noteworthy is the fact that over two weeks have passed since the incident, and British authorities have yet to identify any suspects by name or ask for information based on physical descriptions. So they don’t appear to have anyone on CCTV who might have dispersed the agent. Continue reading →

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Posted on by 电脑国内google加速软件 Posted in 怎么在电脑上用谷歌, Russian foreign policy

After chairing a meeting of the U.K.’s national security council earlier today, British Prime Theresa May read a prepared statement to the House of Commons in which she stated the following:

Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world-leading experts at Porton Down, our knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so, Russia’s record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations, and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations, the government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal…

Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others…

Should there be no credible response [from Russian authorities within 48 hours], we will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom, and I will come back to this House and set out the full range of measures we will take in response…

With that as backdrop, my take on where we’re headed with the Skripal incident is as follows. Continue reading →

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Posted on by • Posted in Ukraine crisis

This is the third of three memos (posts) from an imagined Putin advisor to the Russian president on policy after he returns to office for his fourth term. This memo deals with foreign and security policy, and like the others it’s broad purpose is to show why I think it’s unlikely that we’ll see significant changes in Russia policy for at least the next several years (which is about as far as forecasters should try to forecast). As with the previous two memos, I make no fact claims in what follows that are deliberately false, although many facts are left out, and despite the fact that I disagree with some of the interpretations and conclusions.

My next post will summarize my own take on the three posts.

******

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Mr. President, our foreign and domestic critics frequently claim that you’re a masterful foreign policy tactician but lack strategic vision. That is wrong. On the contrary, you have a clearly articulated and longstanding strategic goal, which is to restore Russia to its rightful place as a great power, equal to the United States and China on the world stage. And you have been resolute, and remarkably successful, in implementing that vision.

In your early years as president, you attempted to work with the United States to realize this broad strategic goal. By around 2003 or 2004, however, you had concluded that Washington was intent on preserving its dominance and entirely unwilling to accept a balanced international system. Moreover, as the Iraq War made clear, the United States insisted that, while all other states had to abide by rules that it had largely written, it alone had the right to violate those rules, and it could and would do so at its discretion.

It was also clear that the United States, assisted by its mostly subservient Western allies, was intent on remaking the world in its own image, a utopian and revolutionary project promoting “liberalism” and “democratization” that was in fact destabilizing and immiserating large parts of the world. This is precisely what happened in Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, and Ukraine in 2004: Western-instigated “colored revolutions” brought down governments while producing only chaos, social disorder, and economic hardship.

Accordingly, you concluded that Washington would have to be forced to accept a new, multipolar order, one in which its imperialistic ambitions would be contained by counter-balancing power. That order would be based on three key principles: (1) non-interference in the internal affairs of at least the three dominant powers; (2) reciprocal recognition of respective spheres of influence; and (3) disproportionate weight in decision-making in international institutions – disproportionate with respect to others, but equal among Russia, China, and the United States. Continue reading →

Why Putin is unlikely to change course after March 18 (Part 2: Domestic politics and regime stability)

Posted on by • Posted in 国内电脑怎么上google, Russia domestic politics

This is the second of two memos (posts) to Putin from an imagined advisor on strategic planning for his next six-year term as president.

A reminder that this is my take on how an advisor might think, and what he might tell Putin. It is not necessarily what I think myself. Also, the facts adduced are not “fake,” at least not deliberately so, but many facts are left out.

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Mr. President, you are certain to be reelected on March 18. What is uncertain is by what margin of victory and with what turnout. In effect, the election is between you and everything else – other candidates, none-of-the-above, and those who chose not to vote. The media has claimed that our goals are 70/70 – 70 percent for you, and 70 percent turnout.

Our campaign strategy has been, as in the past, to position you as the indispensable servant of the Russian state and the Russian people.

VTSIOM polling data: Putin at 73.2% among likely voters

You in effect stand above politics, which is why you’re running this time as an independent, not as head of United Russia. It’s also why you’ve done almost no campaigning, and why you’ve put forward almost nothing in the way of a program.

We are reasonably confident that you’ll win at least 70 percent of the vote in March. The challenge is turnout: your share of the votes will go up with lower turnout, but low turnout – say under 60 percent – would undermine your authority. Turnout that is well below expectations – say, 55 percent or lower – might delegitimize your reelection, both at home and abroad, and increase the risk of political instability going forward. Continue reading →

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Note to readers: I plan to start blogging again, having recently retired from UC Berkeley and relocated to New York City. I will start with an exercise in empathy (which is different from sympathy), or if you prefer, red teaming or devil’s advocating (to coin a term). Specifically, I will try to imagine how a Putin advisor would likely assess Russia’s economic, political, and foreign/security circumstances on the eve of Putin’s all-but-certain reelection on March 18.

The main point of the exercise is to try to mitigate my own confirmation and preference biases, as well as those of other Western Russia watchers, many of whom suffer, in my view, from wishful thinking.

To be clear, I doubt some of the imagined advisor’s sanguine assessments, particularly on the foreign policy/security front. But I suspect it is the way that Putin and his kommanda see things. And it is why I think the Kremlin is unlikely to change course significantly, if at all, after March.

The advice takes the form of three memos (posts) from this advisor to Putin. I begin with a post on the economy. The next post will address domestic politics and regime stability. The final post will take up foreign and security policy.

None of the facts adduced in the series is intentionally inaccurate, although a great many facts are left out.

***

Our economy is recovering after two years of contraction following the oil price and sanctions shocks of 2014. After declines of 2.8 percent and 0.2 percent in 2015 and 2016, respectively, growth should come in at about 1.7 percent in 2017, or perhaps a little higher. The economy is expected to pick up this year, with most forecasts predicting growth of 1.5 percent to two percent, and then a little over two percent over the next several years. There is a reasonable chance that the economy will do better than consensus forecasts. A November 2017 analysis from Goldman Sachs predicted the economy would grow at 3.3 percent in 2018 and 2.9 percent in 2019. Continue reading →

Liberalism: What it is and what it’s not

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Following is a presentation I gave at a two-day symposium, “Beyond Dichotomies: Rethinking the Liberal Agenda,” at The Central European University on March 28, 2017. The day the symposium began the University was informed of government-sponsored legislation that, if adopted, would effectively shut down CEU. The legislation passed yesterday, April 4, and is currently pending signature by Hungary’s president. For background, see New law imperils Central European University’s future in Hungary,Inside Higher Education, April 5, 2017.

*******

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To that end, I asked a Berkeley PhD candidate in political science, Melissa Samarin, to do a literature review for me and put together a sample of treatments of the concept by authoritative authors, as well as a smaller sample of definitions of those other related terms, which I’ll put up on blog as a PDF if anyone is interested. [Link: Samarin: Liberalism and related concepts.]

So let me start with a few general points about liberalism the concept. Continue reading →

Risk, uncertainty, and black swans: Why Soviet socialism was forever until it was no more

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Talk given at the Annual Berkeley-Stanford Conference

UC Berkeley, March 3, 2017

A few words to begin with about the title.

Many of you probably recognize the reference to Alexei’s terrific and influential book about late socialism, “Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More.” The book is framed around a particular observation, which is that in the late Soviet period Soviet citizens assumed that Soviet socialism would last forever, but after the fact they looked back and saw all sorts of reasons why it had to collapse.

It wasn’t just Soviet citizens who felt that way, however – outside observers did as well. Indeed there has been a great deal of criticism of academic specialists, and perhaps more importantly of the U.S. and Western intelligence communities, for having assumed that “everything was forever” and for failing to predict the collapse of communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. In fact, just yesterday I read a piece in Foreign Policy claiming that Kremlinologists are “ haunted” by their “fabled inability to foresee one of the most significant geopolitical events of the 20th century — the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union.”

My argument that if indeed they are haunted – which I don’t think is true, at least I’m not – they shouldn’t be. On the contrary, the early assumption of both Soviet citizens and outside observers that “everything was forever” was entirely reasonable, and ex-post claims that what happened was predictable are not only wrong but reflect a typical cognitive bias highlighted in some of the research in psychology and behavioral economics on cognition and irrationality in decision-making.

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A few general points before diving in. Continue reading →

Putin’s dilemma: Why pushing back against NATO “encroachment” makes Russia’s NATO problem worse

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That Russian officials and the Russian public think this would be dangerous under the best of circumstances. Russia, after all, is a nuclear superpower with a large and very capable conventional military. What makes it particularly dangerous is the fact that the Kremlin’s security problems with NATO are not only getting worse but are likely to continue to do so for years to come. Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, its role in destabilizing the Donbas, and its intervention in Syria have been very popular domestically, at least to date. But they have also produced an American military “repivot” to Europe, a steady but significant increase in NATO hard power capabilities close to Russian borders, and a surge in military spending by most of Russia’s increasingly worried neighbors. Continue reading →

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I’ve been asked to attend a workshop next month that will “take stock of the economic, political and foreign policy developments in Russia and their implications for the United States.” In preparation, I’m going to post a long analysis of where I think U.S.-Russian relations are headed, but for now let me summarize my take as follows.

  1. The already dangerous U.S./NATO-Russian military relationship is getting more dangerous.
  2. A continuation or further deterioration of the West’s security relationship with Russia is not in the interest of the United States or its allies.
  3. Russia’s security problems with the West are not going to be solved by undermining the European Union, by promoting divisions within the West, or by improving ties to China.
  4. Russia’s security problems with the West are not going to be solved by turning Ukraine or Georgia into permanent political or economic basket cases.
  5. Russian military operations in Syria have added to tensions with the West and have increased the risk of a military clash with NATO.
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  7. It is unlikely that Western economic sanctions on Russia will be lifted even partially in this year, and Crimea makes it highly unlikely that they will be lifted in full for years to come.
  8. Making Russia’s security relationship with the West less dangerous is going to require direct negotiations between Russia and the United States.
  9. Those negotiations should focus initially on arms control and security-related confidence building measures, and they should be comprehensive and include not just negotiations on strategic (START) weapons but also on theater nuclear weapons (INF), on ballistic missile defenses (BMD), and most importantly on conventional forces dispositions (CFE).
  10. Progress on arms control can make the NATO-Russia military balance less dangerous and contribute to a gradual normalization of political relations (a détente)—way down the road it might even give Ukraine and Russia the space needed to negotiate some kind of status compromise over Crimea (but don’t hold your breath).

US options in responding to Russia’s military intervention in Syria

Posted on by • Posted in Geopolitics, NATO, Russian foreign policy, Syria conflict, US foreign policy, US-Russian relations • 电脑如何使用google

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I’m going to double down on my Chicken Little-ism today and make three points about Russia’s military intervention in Syria: (1) the immediate effect of the intervention is to increase the risk of a military clash between Russia and the United States or one of its allies; (2) it is very unlikely that Russia’s intervention will lead to a genuine “grand coalition” against ISIS or “terrorism”; and (3) there are no good options for Washington in Syria in general, and no good options in responding to Russia’s intervention in particular. Continue reading →

Nine points about Ukraine’s prospects for Euro-Atlantic integration

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Summary

  1. There is a distinction between “accession integration” and “becoming European,” and Kyiv should treat accession integration as a possible means for becoming European, not as an end in itself.
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  3. The European project is in crisis, which not only makes accession integration all the more difficult for Ukraine but also reduces its benefits.
  4. It is unrealistic for Ukraine to expect to join the EU anytime soon.
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  6. NATO already has a serious security problem with Russia, and it is not going to want to make that problem worse by offering membership to Ukraine.
  7. It is unrealistic for Ukraine to expect to join NATO anytime soon.
  8. Joining NATO is not a necessary condition for deterring further Russian aggression.
  9. To become European, Ukraine is eventually going to have to improve relations with Russia.

Continue reading →

Why the West should be pushing for a stable cold war with Russia

Posted on by 怎么在电脑上用谷歌 Posted in 电脑google用什么翻墙, Geopolitics, NATO, 电脑google用什么翻墙, Syria conflict, Ukraine crisis, 电脑国内google加速软件, US foreign policy, 国内电脑怎么上google • 2 Comments

[Following is an expanded version of a talk I gave at UC Berkeley on Monday, November 23, 2015.]

Much has been written recently about whether the United States and Russia are once again in a “Cold War.” Somewhat more optimistically, the question is often rendered as “Can the United States and Russia avoid another Cold War?”

I suppose one could treat these as invitations to make a purely historical comparison between the current US-Russian relationship and the US-Soviet relationship during “The Cold War”? But I don’t think that is what most people have in mind when they raise the issue. Rather, I suspect that what most people want to know is how adversarial are U.S-Russian relations today, how dangerous is the relationship, is the high level of tension between the two countries likely to last, and what are the costs of hostility going to be over the long run?

It therefore strikes me that to answer the implied questions, one needs to break the problem up into at least four parts, as follows.

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(2) Are we already in a cold war with Russia? (This is a descriptive or empirical problem about whether the current relationship meets the definitional criteria.)

(3) How is the US-Russian relationship likely to evolve over, say, the next two years? (This is a predictive problem that will likely produce different answers depending on the forecast period – say five years instead of two.)

(4) Is there a way to return to a genuinely cooperative relationship in the foreseeable future? (This is a prescriptive problem in which it is perfectly possible to argue that such and such should be done but it is very unlikely that it will be.) Continue reading →

A few more observations about France’s invocation of the Lisbon Treaty’s mutual defense clause

Posted on by • Posted in European Union, 电脑google用什么翻墙, NATO • 1 Comment

The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) has a useful “explainer” on Article 42.7 and the reasons why France invoked it, which can be found here.

To my mind, the section at the end of the ECFR’s article, which is entitled “How have other member states [of the EU] responded?,” highlights a point made in my previous post about the disconnect between the security needs and obligations of the EU member states on the one hand, and the EU’s institutional and hard power capabilities on the other hand.

There is, however, one point made in the ECFR article that warrants close attention, and which I was unaware of when I wrote my earlier post. Continue reading →

On the implications of France’s decision to invoke the EU’s mutual defense clause

Posted on by • Posted in European Union, Geopolitics, NATO, Russian foreign policy, Syria conflict, Ukraine crisis, 怎么在电脑上用谷歌, US-Russian relations • 1 Comment

Yesterday, France announced that it had invoked the EU’s collective defense clause in response to Friday’s terrorist attacks. This was the first time an EU member has invoked Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty, which states that EU countries have “an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power” to any fellow member that is the victim of an armed attack.

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It is not entirely clear why France made this particular decision, which for reasons I will set out below may have important long-term consequences that the French leadership hasn’t anticipated. Continue reading →

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Late last week representatives from 17 countries – including Saudi Arabia and Iran – plus the UN and EU (so no representatives from either the Assad government or the anti-Assad opposition) met in Vienna to discuss the Syrian civil war. The outcome was a “Final Declaration” on basic principles, which the media generally interpreted as a hopeful sign that the “international community” was moving toward some kind of consensus on how to end the Syrian civil war.

I don’t agree. My take is that at best – and even this is very unlikely – the Vienna Declaration will prove a first step toward getting key external actors – notably Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, Turkey, Russia, and the United States – to limit their direct or indirect involvement in the war, including the delivery of weapons. That might at least ameliorate the scale of violence in the country. But in my view the Vienna participants cannot end the war or pave the way toward a political settlement for months if not years. And unfortunately almost none of the provisions in the Vienna Declaration will be implemented (more on this in a moment). Continue reading →