This Lilia Shevtsova column makes a claim that is not all wrong:

The key reason behind the crisis is the failure of the post-Soviet liberal project and the return to a hyper-centralised state. In order to justify the about-turn, the political elite needs an enemy.

I would not discount external challenges, whether perceived or real, as part of the cause for the turn back towards a “hyper-centralised state,” and I would certainly not lay the responsibility for the crisis in Western-Russian relations solely at the door of Russia.  The Russians did not compel us to bomb Yugoslavia, occupy Kosovo or withdraw from the ABM Treaty.  Washington did those things despite knowing how much it would disturb the Russians.  Obviously, they did not make us incorporate eastern Europe into NATO, nor did they push us into backing what are effectively puppet regimes in Georgia and Ukraine, and they also did not force us to announce the deployment of weapons systems to central Europe.  The “failure of the post-Soviet liberal project” also had something to do with the political and moral bankruptcy of said project as it was actually implemented, and since the “liberal project” was connected to the advice and assistance of Westerners it was inevitable that its failure would sour people on future Western meddling.  Further, the fact that Americans and western Europeans may not see things this way or reject this reaction as irrational is irrelevant–if this is how Russians remember and view these events, this is what matters for understanding what motivates their actions. 

Later, Shevtsova allows for some of this:

The West is also to blame for the current crisis through its failure to integrate Russia at the beginning of the 1990s. Instead, the West – mainly America – has merely presented the Russian elite with a series of pretexts to help perpetuate that “enemy image”.

Where Shevtsova’s column fails to persuade is when it retreats to the mythical realm of “values” and pretends that the West has been too generous and understanding of Moscow over the last 15 years.  The idea that Westerners need to be more united in a common front of value-exporting intrusiveness seems absurd and dangerous.  I agree that integration with Europe, to which Russia properly belongs, should be the goal, but Shevtsova insists that the terms of the integration be set in such a way as to make integrating Russia in the near future all but impossible, and here I think she makes another mistake.

Any student of the history of Russia, or indeed of almost any country, must be aware that centralisation of power is very often a response to perceived and/or real external threats, or centralisation will be justified in terms of providing the government greater ability to respond to threats in the future.  If the Russian elite did not think that the West was encroaching on its sphere of influence and attempting to encircle it, it might be less inclined to embrace this concentration of power.  In any case, the memory of domestic chaos and lawlessness is another factor behind the push for centralised control. 

It is certainly not sufficient to see this crisis in relations as the outgrowth of only one side’s attempted power grab.  If the Russian elite is making a power grab at home and in its near-abroad, the U.S. and NATO are making a power grab abroad in and around Russia.  The latter feeds the former by providing the authoritarian nationalist with a plausible foreign threat (which can then be tied together with a more generic opposition to U.S. policy elsewhere in the world, lending a different sort of respectability to Russian intransigence, which in turn has the notable effect of making Russia more respected in the world than America).  Those in the West who are most agitated by Putin’s authoritarian practices are doing their very best with all their shouting and complaining to confirm Russians’ worst suspicions about Western hostility and interference in Russian internal affairs.  Whipping up hostility towards Russia encourages nationalist, anti-American reactions there–this has been and will continue to be the end result of neoconservative, liberal and libertarian critiques of Putin.  Those in the West who are most upset by the excesses of Putin are doing their very best to ensure that the rift between Russia and the West will widen and deepen, which is in the long-term interests of neither and serves to distract us with old conflicts when we have much more pressing concerns elsewhere in the world.  These Putin critics are actually encouraging the very things they purport to despise by casting them in the ludicrous framework of a malevolent and aggressive Russia that poses a threat to its neighbours and the West.   

Our political elite has needed to find new enemies as much as the Russian elite has, and actually even more because they have that much more power and prestige bound up in the structures of U.S. hegemony.  Resuming a rivalry and renewing hostility with a state with which you have no real conflicts of interest are foolish things to be doing, unless you regard any other world power as a threat to your own predominance.  The crisis in relations stems in part from recent Russian resurgence and the Western, and specifically American, refusal to accept Russia’s attempt to once again play an active, sometimes contrary, role in world affairs.

Shevtsova writes:

The Russian elite does not see the West as a real threat, but is deliberately describing the West as the bogeyman for its domestic needs. The Kremlin’s chest-beating and repetition of the litany of grudges towards the West has multiple purposes: it is a means to justify backtracking, a way to consolidate support around the regime, a loyalty test for the elite and a technique to conceal the true reasons behind the crisis [bold mine-DL].

Suppose for the sake of argument that this is true–what difference does this make for the Western policymaker?  Whether they are doing it to play to the crowd at home to shore up their own power or are “genuinely” worried about Western encroachment, our response should be tailored to suit the proper security interests of both countries in such a way that reduces the chance for conflict and improves mutual relations.  Our vital interests do not dictate any great concern over who rules in Kiev, for example, while the Russians are decidedly unhappy with any sign of meddling or attempts to incorporate Ukraine into Western security and political institutions.  This is because they want to dictate who governs in Kiev, and we all know that, so why needlessly agitate another major power over something that does not actually matter to us?  This is the question that the Putin and Russia critics seem to be unable to answer, because their own excessive protestations about withering Russian democracy and freedom are typically masks for their own preoccupation with justifying the policies that so disturb the Kremlin.  Even when they are themselves sincere in their motives in drawing Western attention to the internal affairs of another country (something that never ceases to puzzle and amaze me), their statements are routinely used to justify the worst courses of action against that country.    

Consider Shevtsova’s description of the rationale for the Russian elite’s complaints against the West and then compare it to our own political and media classes.  In much the same way, I could say: complaints about authoritarianism in Russia and Russian “bullying” of its neighbours have nothing to do with American security concerns, and only very rarely stem from any great concern over Russian democracy or the independence of an Estonia or Georgia.  They are used to justify continued American meddling in the region, consolidate support around our broken Russia policy, provide a loyalty test for members of the establishment and to distract observers from the real goals of that establishment in pressing for NATO expansion or democracy promotion.  All of this could be true and it would still not detract from the rhetorical and political power of the ideological arguments in favour of using American power to spread freedom and democracy, nor would it mean that the interventionists in question do not believe in certain political abstractions, just ascynical domestic political reasons for Russian complaints against Western behaviour are not necessarily separate from actual concerns about national security and nationalist resentments against perceived foreign threats. 

Ideology and the desire for consolidating power are not distinct or opposed things, but are deployed in a complementary way.  Cynical elites deploy nationalism or some other ideology to acquire and keep power, but they also develop an attachment to a certain ideology because they believe it is the best for acquiring and keeping power, which makes it appear true to the elites.  Militant democratists actually do believe in some sort of democratic politics, but the same genuine believers can also be fairly cynical hegemonists who think that promoting this kind of politics and promoting national and their own power are perfectly compatible things.  They are wrong about this latter point in practice, but we would protest in vain that they do not “really” believe in some kind of democracy.  They believe in it to the extent that they think expressing support for it will enable them to wield influence and power at home, and they are very keen to do these things, which means that they are frighteningly real believers in this kind of politics.   

This is the dangerous thing about ideologues in power and powerful people who adopt ideology: the former always find a way to justify their wielding power through some interpretation of the ideology, and the latter legitimise whatever they have done or want to do with their power by appealing to some abstract ideal.  At some point, posing as if you have a nationalist grievance and “actually” having a nationalist grievance cease to be different things.  For all intents and purposes when it comes to making policy, you are supporting certain policies as if you were a nationalist.  The nationalist is doing this to shore up your power at home, but that doesn’t mean that he does not at some level come to accept the substance of the rhetoric and the critique of foreign threat.  Furthermore, if agitating against a foreign threat is the bread and butter of the nationalist, how better to deflate the appeal of that nationalism than for Westerners to denounce the counterproductive, senseless policies that fuel resentment and suspicion (or which serve as useful pretexts for whipping up a sense of resentment and suspicion)?  Obviously, the worst response is to moan and cry about the authoritarian nationalism itself directly and repeatedly, since this serves, in this context, to confirm in the mind of many ordinary Russians that the foreign critics are actually hostile to Russia and the Russian people themselves.

Second, Edwards exudes a deep distrust of Washington that can sound almost Reaganesque. “Nothing is going to change if we replace one group of Washington insiders for another group of Washington insiders,” he declares. ~David Brooks

Fred wants to make the same kind of argument, though he has put in a lot more time as a lawyer and lobbyist in D.C., while Edwards might still be able to sell the “outsider” image he has been cultivating for the last three years.  The trouble with Edwards, as always, is that he seems fake even when he’s being genuine, or at least you assume that he is a fake because of his profession.  Also, I second this point about characterising Edwards as “culturally conservative.”

“We [the GOP] were founded as a reformist party,” he [Rove] said in our conversation this week, “not to be against something, but to help the little guy get ahead.” ~Michael Gerson

Er, actually, the party of “free labor, free soil, free men” was very much founded in direct ideological opposition to slavery and self-interested economic opposition to the low-tariff-supported agricultural interests of the South.  The GOP never had any interest in helping the “little guy” as such, and remained from its earliest days largely the protector of business and corporate interests through support for an impressively high import tariff, and then when multinationals needed lower tariffs the GOP dutifully became the party of “free trade.”  (Yes, there were also progressive Republicans who challenged some of the excesses of corporate power, but they did not define the party for most of its existence.)  This just might be why the “little guys” over the decades have tended to vote Democratic, and why it has only been a very recent development that the GOP has been winning over any of these voters thanks to nationalist, culturally populist and socially conservative appeals.  These voters come to support the GOP in spite of its continued privileging of the interests of corporations.  Perhaps someone could pen an argument in defense of this longstanding support for corporate interests (in which the words growth, progress, technology and modernisation would probably figure prominently), and make the case why it is better to put the government at the disposal of these interests for some greater good, but to describe the primary vehicle of corporations’ political influence as an organisation founded for the sake of helping the “little guy get ahead” is just appalling revisionism (even by the very, very low standards of Karl Rove).    

Update: Incidentally, it used to be an old stand-by of Republican rhetoric that it was not the proper role of government to “help the little guy get ahead.”  Instead, the goal was to remove the burden of government to allow citizens to flourish.

Via Yglesias, I see that Fred Kaplan is appropriately horrified by Rudy Giuliani’s Foreign Affairs essay, but Kaplan’s reaction suggests that the essay reveals a policy view markedly worse than other major candidates’ views.  In fact, while his essay is a more undiluted form of neocon madness, his proposals are not really that much more unrealistic and arrogant than what we’ve heard from Obama, Romney or Fred in recent months.   

Edwards’ essay, which was paired with that of Giuliani in this issue, is no prize, either.  Apart from a few points about the effects of the “war on terror,” with which I basically agree, I find the essay unnerving and worrisome.  Consider this line from Edwards:

We need to reach out to ordinary men and women from Egypt to Indonesia and convince them, once again, that the United States is a force to be admired [bold mine-DL].

But you don’t admire a force.  I think we should persuade other nations that we are a nation to be admired, and we should try to make sure that our government acts admirably, or at least justly, in the world to that end.  To cast “reengagement” in the way that Edwards does confirms for me that he is not in the least concerned with the excessive overreach and abusive relationship that a hegemon has with the rest of the world, but rather that he wants to find a way to perpetuate hegemony through more subtle means.  What he says later makes this clear:

Iran has been emboldened by the Bush administration’s ineffective policies and has announced plans to expand its nuclear program. Meanwhile, other powers are benefiting, too. China is capitalizing on the United States’ current unpopularity to project its own “soft power.” And Russia is bullying its neighbors while openly defying the United States and Europe. 

That last bit is amusing, as if the U.S. and Europe are Russia’s masters that the latter should be obeying and Russia’s neighbours are our protectorates to be guarded against so-called Russian “bullying.”  This comes in a paragraph that refers to what “our enemies” are doing.  In Edwards’ eyes, not only Iran and China, but even Russia is an enemy.  As he sees it, Russia is not a potential enemy or rival, but already an enemy right now.  This will be popular with Cathy Young and The Wall Street Journal, as these already regard Russia as an enemy of our country.  They seem eager to encourage anti-Russian sentiments whenever possible to make supporting policies of renewed hostility between our two countries a more popular and politically viable option.

Of Iran, Edwards says:

Iran cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons.

To speak of allowing or disallowing is to claim the power and right to control something, and even Edwards must know that Iran’s nuclear program is beyond the control of the U.S. and the “international community.”  In any case, what does he propose to do about it?  He says:

For example, right now we must do everything we can to isolate Iran’s leader from the moderate forces within the country. We need to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions through diplomatic measures that will, over time, force Iran to finally understand that the international community will not allow it to possess nuclear weapons. Every major U.S. ally agrees that the advent of a nuclear Iran would be a threat to global security. We should continue to work with other great powers to offer Tehran economic incentives for good behavior. At the same time, we must use much more serious economic sanctions to deter Ahmadinejad’s government when it refuses to cooperate.

Which leader?  Does Edwards think Ahmadinejad is “the leader” in Iran?  That is incorrect, and it is unfortunate enough that he does not even understand this much about a country he is willing to attack.  How would additional sanctions on Iran help to separate “the leader” from “moderate forces,” when sanctions inevitably strengthen the hand of hard-liners and despots?  How does Edwards think that “the leader” can be undermined by challenging the Iranian government over the development of nuclear technology, when this is something that most Iranians believe they have a legal right to develop?  How does he propose to prevent the Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons?  He remains open to starting a war with Iran–and he is allegedly the progressive “peace” candidate!  What a joke.

What of the other major candidates?  Over the years, McCain has been the neocons’ favourite and, as we all know, holds comparably dangerous views.  HRC is still supportive of the activist, aggressive foreign policy of the DLC/PPI, which is consistent with how her husband governed.  We can look forward to essays from McCain and Clinton in the future, and I expect that both of them will be filled with much of the same dreary excess and bombast. 

I would be willing to grant that Giuliani is the most dangerous out of seven dangerous candidates, but this is a matter of a few degrees and not a massive difference in substance.

I neglected to note earlier this week that Tommy Thompson, whose run never seemed likely to succeed, dropped out in the wake of his weak showing at the Ames straw poll.  There really must be something wrong with a process for selecting a President that so quickly forces out candidates who have executive experience while retaining so many who have none, or at least none that is really relevant.  Then again, if Mr. Bush’s tenure has taught us anything, it is that having experience as a governor is no indication that you have any idea how to govern at all well.   

As we all know, U.S. Senators have not won many nominations in modern times (Senators have been nominated only four six times since 1900), and they have won even fewer elections (2), yet we are inundated with them and members of the House this time and we are losing more and more of the governors.  Only three former or current governors remain, and none of them actually seems likely to be nominated.  It will be interesting to see whether the “curse” can hold up under such difficult conditions. 

Update: Thompson’s departure makes the ’08 cycle less like one past open election, namely 1928, when the incumbent party nominated a member of the outgoing administration’s Cabinet.  As the only former Cabinet member to have served under Bush in the presidential field, Thompson ’08 would have matched up nicely with the Hoover ’28 run.  The predominance of Senators in the non-incumbent party’s field makes a comparison between 2008 and 1920, when a non-incumbent Senator won, slightly more interesting.

The notion that this kind of politics has no victims, has not led to evil, has not at times led to absolute insanity (like Prohibition), and is not still a constant threat – is preposterously complacent. ~Andrew Sullivan

Sullivan is replying to Ross, who obviously never said any of the things being attributed to him in this sentence and who adds his rebuttal here.  Ross also made the best point of this exchange so far in noting that the description of Mother Theresa’s original quote as “vulgar but legitimate” displays “snobbish overtones and arm’s-length distaste for Mother Teresa (!)”. 

Since Sam Brownback, Dangerous Christianist, started all of this, perhaps he can have something to say in making certain basic but necessary points:

The separation of church and state does not mean the removal of faith from the public square.  I think you should have a robust public square that celebrates faith, that draws faith into it.

For a leader of “Christianists,” Brownback says the strangest things in this video.  Indeed, if I were someone who believed that Christianists existed and that they were infiltrating and destroying our public life with insidious references to Jesus, I would still not spend a lot of time vilifying Sam Brownback.  The original context of the quote “All for Jesus” had Brownback making the point that it was “faith that powered her [Mother Theresa] to help millions.”  This is pretty banal and garden-variety “faith makes us better people” banter.  Presumably what Mother Theresa did falls under Sullivan’s arbitrary category of “good Christianism,” but Brownback’s reference to her statement about living for Christ is an example of the “bad Christianism.”  In Sullivan’s world, Mother Theresa could have said these words to a U.S. Senator and it was legitimate, but Brownback could not repeat them in an anecdote while running for President.  When Brownback repeats the “vulgar but legitimate” phrase, it becomes toxic.  This wouldn’t even make sense if Brownback were not one of the most reformist Catholic conservative politicians who has made prison reform, anti-poverty, “comprehensive immigration reform” and Darfur into his signature issues outside of his pro-life work.  I happen to think that his policy views and priorities here are mostly mistaken on the merits, but of all the politicians to attack with this line of criticism I can hardly think of one less appropriate than Brownback.  Sullivan seems to be channeling Marcotte.

Sullivan’s argument depends on simultaneously holding the view that introducing unduly “sectarian” religious language into political discourse (i.e., mentioning Jesus in a speech in a positive way) is a “toxin” while also holding that it is the purpose for which the Name of Christ is invoked that ultimately matters.  Thus he can speak about the “good” Christianism, which also happens to be the kind that is more in line with his general political views, and deplore the “bad” Christianism, which is not.  Sullivan does not deplore the latter because it is bringing Christianity or sectarianism or religion into politics, but because it does not interpret and practice Christianity in the way that Sullivan thinks that it should be practiced.  A liberal Christianity that does not bother itself too much with talking explicitly about Christ is acceptable in his scheme and can play a role in political reform, especially if it waters down the religious inspiration behind the reform drive and reduces it to platitudes about human rights, while any traditional Christianity that cannot conceive of speaking about moral or spiritual truths without referring to the Lord must keep out of politics.  Any attempt to rectify this arbitrary and one-sided arrangement by speaking forthrightly about Christ in a political context is supposedly an attempt to inaugurate sectarian bloodletting and to want to reenact the sack of Magdeburg.  That is Sullivan’s view, as his own words make clear.

The cult of Petraeus exists not because the general has figured out the war but because hiding behind the general allows the Bush administration to postpone the day when it must reckon with the consequences of its abject failure in Iraq. ~Prof. Andrew Bacevich

In a religious context, it is a vulgar but completely legitimate expression of faith. In a political context in a secular society, it is a toxin that will eventually corrode civil discourse into sectarian warfare. Which is, of course, what the Christianists want. They have the biggest sect, after all. ~Andrew Sullivan

If they existed, Christianists would be interesting people.  They would have to believe at one and the same time that they must make God’s will into the law of the land and enforce Christian doctrine throughout society and be convinced that the best instrument for this goal was the utterly secular, Mammon-serving Republican Party.  They would have to be completely fanatical and at the same time completely indifferent that their chosen vehicle of political power was basically hostile to everything they sought to achieve (which is one of the reasons why, despite decades of trying, they have achieved next to nothing).  They would have to be able to turn their fanaticism on and off with a readily available switch, which makes them rather less worrisome as the founders of the future theocratic nightmare to come.    

Sullivan’s larger point is worth keeping in mind: so long as it remains nicely separated from anything involving real life, confined to an irrelevant private sphere of “religion” that need never include venturing outside beyond the front door, religious faith is fine, albeit a bit crude for the high-minded doubt-filled pundit, but once it moves into the public sphere it is poisonous and vile.  Devotion to the Lord, once it escapes the safe environs of the closet, becomes an acid that destroys the bonds of the political community.  That is what Sullivan and other such “skeptical” conservatives believe about religion.  Religious conservatives would do well to remember this whenever they are tempted to entertain sympathy for the appeals of the “skeptics” to reason and moderation.

Faith is a good thing, not a bad thing. ~Sen. Sam Brownback

Andrew Sullivan disagrees.