Kyrgyzstan Revolution and Russia

The Kyrgyzstan revolution seems to be proceeding, although the old ruler has not bowed out. The law is still somewhat murky about which Parliament has power, the old one, or the new one, and thus about which one has the authority to appoint an interim leader. Nevertheless, if no one seriously challenges the new leader, Bakiyev, it would appear that he will stay and rule.

The LA Times had an excellent article about what the revolutions in former Soviet empire -- Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan -- mean for present day Russia. Georgia was led by former friend of the US, Shevardnadze, who had been Russian foreign minister under Gorbechev during the peaceful fall of the Soviet Union. After years in power in Georgia, he apparently went bad and was replaced by Saakashvili, who studied law at Columbia and worked for a US law firm before returning to Georgia. It sounds as if Kyrgyzstan is a somewhat similar case. The old president, Akayev, was seen as somewhat enlightened for a leader in his part of the world, but also may have gone bad by letting his relatives and cronies take too much in power and corruption. In any case, it seems that the political system in Krygyzstan was better than the current systems in its neighbors, such as Kazakhstan. So what does this overthrow mean for them?

The LA Times article says Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Moldova all appear vulnerable to revolutions. Ironically, some of the hardline dictatorships, Belarus, for example, appear less vulnerable because they are more willing to forcefully crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. The LA Times says that Russia failed to step in when it could to peacefully prevent the revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and that therefore, other former countries of the Soviet empire no longer fear Russian interference.

However, I think we have yet to see how this will develop in Russia. It depends on Putin's personality and on the influence of other Russian factors, such as the military and popular opinion. Ukraine is the biggest loss, and was handled the worst by Russia, making it the biggest blemish on Putin's record. It was part of Russia for centuries; it is big and has natural resources. If Putin believes that as a result of these three revolutions, especially Ukraine, he is perceived as too weak by the Russian people, he may feel that he has to act more strongly. On the other hand, Russia has not been able to cope with the rebel turmoil in Chechnya, which is still (much to its dismay) part of Russia. If it can't cope with this rebellion at home, how can it cope with revolutions beyond the Russian borders?

In these calculations, don't forget that Russia still has enough nuclear armed missiles to destroy most of the populated world -- Central Asia, the US, Europe, China, whatever it wants. It's not clear how useful these nuclear weapons are in the current situation, but no doubt there are some Russians thinking about how to gain advantage from them.

Newmont Mining Problems in Indonesia

The New York Times reports on the continuing problems of Newmont Mining in Indonesia. The gold mining company, based in Denver, is accused of allowing heavy metals, particularly arsenic and mercury, to pollute the bay near the company's mine near Buyat Bay. The residents claim that they have experienced a number of diseases and birth defects as a result. The Indonesian government has now brought civil and criminal cases against the company, including six executives, two of them Americans. Newmont denies the charges.

According to the article, Newmont has defenders in Indonesia, but the trials will be allowed to proceed.

Wolfowitz on His Way to World Bank

The consensus seems to be that Wolfowitz is on his way to being approved for the World Bank job, as reported in this Washington Post article. Actually I would not object to his appointment if he had not been an architect of the pre-emptive war in Iraq. Arguably there is the McNamara precedent -- the Vietnam War chief who went on to lead the World Bank. Whether McNamara was a great bank president or not is moot; he didn't destroy the institution. But the main issue is one of tone, and this is a different generation and a different war. The US more or less backed into the Vietnam war one escalation at a time at the invitation of the South Vietnamese government, which needed support to fight off the Communist north. We went full bore into Iraq for regime change, to overthrow the government, not to support an existing government. Lots of things we did in Vietnam may have been worse than things we have done in Iraq, but it was different. (I speak defensively as a Vietnam veteran.)

By invading Iraq contrary to the wishes of the world community as expressed in the UN, and for reasons that turned out to be wrong, i.e., the famous missing weapons of mass destruction, we turned the international, multilateral system on its head under Wolfowitz' leadership. Now he is off to be one of the leaders of that multilateral system. For me, that does not compute. Like Bolton at the UN, Wolfowitz will be the fox in the hen house. America is out to destroy the post-World War II system established by Roosevelt, Churchill, and company, including Stalin and Truman. Midgets are undoing the work of giants.

The US has never discussed how many Iraqis were killed, and continue to be killed, as a result of the war, but it's a lot, certainly tens of thousands, although how many tens is hard to know. In any case, Wolfowitz has a lot of blood on his hands. I thought it was interesting that when PBS had a debate about Wolfowitz' appointment, his main defender was Jewish, former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who incidentally works for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy founded by former US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, an Australian Jew like current World Bank President Wolfensohn. And today, an op-ed in the New York Times supporting Wolfowitz was written by another Jew, James Rubin, who used to be the spokesman for the State Department and whose current claim to fame is being married to CNN correspondent Christianne Amanpour. I would be more convinced of Wolfowitz' virtues if some well-known, politically moderate gentiles were to speak on his behalf, and if they were to say not just that he would not destroy the institution, but that he would actually be good for it.

Death of George Kennan

George Kennan, who passed on last night, was the proof that a Foreign Service officer can be more than just a bureaucrat. The New York Times obituary brings out, though, how at odds he was with the government and its policies after the initial success of his "long telegram" from Moscow and the Foreign Affairs X article. Interestingly, his initial success continued upon his return to Washington after World War II as the head of State Department policy planning under General George Marshall, where Kennan was one of the originators of the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe. General Marshall is another of my heroes. He and Kennan represent some of the best of America, men of high moral character who excelled in serving their country. Their policies were truly "Christian" in the sense that they embodied the ideal of loving your neighbor that is missing in current policies. I don't think either of them would necessarily like being called "Christian" today, with all the baggage that word carries. Earlier, Christian virtues of love and caring were instilled in people and became part of their world outlook without being tested by how often they went to church or whether they had "accepted Jesus as their personal savior."

The world learned that the retribution extracted from Germany after World War I did not work, and under Kennan's and Marshall's guidance a much more Christian policy of forgiveness after World War II was probably one of the most successful foreign policy strategies ever pursued.

Now, under Bush, we again have an un-Christian, World War I policy of revenge. I don't think it's going to work. Colin Powell was the leader closest to following the Kennan-Marshall policies, but he was canned by Bush because of that. Tough policies work for a while. There were about 30 years between World War I and World War II. Hitler had great success for the first decade or so of his leadership in Germany. But the post World War II regime lasted over 60 years, before it was cast aside by narrow minds and greedy leaders.