The American Conservative‘s Daniel Larison gets right to work, defending Moscow from these charges (because real American conservatives carry water for the Kremlin, right?). ~Daniel Halper

This is a rather dim response. First of all, I would point out that the “scoop” in question is hardly news. This information Lake reported today has been out there in one form or another for more than half a year. For what it’s worth, Jennifer Rubin has been trying to hype this for several months to no avail. What I said in my post is that I am extremely skeptical of any specific charges that the Georgian government makes about Russian covert operations, because the current government resorts to making espionage charges with incredible frequency, the government relies heavily on extracting confessions from detainees to get its “evidence,” and the judicial system of the country is structured in a way that makes it nearly impossible for an accused person to be acquitted. The most recent episode of flinging around espionage charges was the railroading of the Georgian photographers, and this appears to be a clear case of a politically-motivated prosecution against well-known journalists who made the mistake of reporting on a government crackdown. The Georgian government exploits the tensions with Russia to consolidate power at home, and it has shown that it is not above abusing its power, including the use of espionage accusations against its domestic opponents, and it obviously has something to gain by derailing good relations between the U.S. and Russia.

Joshua Foust is appropriately skeptical of Lake’s report:

There’s no way to prove any of this. And, at the end of the day, Borisov could very well be a terrorist. But the evidence Lake reports to charge Russia with bombing the U.S. embassy is terribly circumstantial and limited in sourcing: literally the people with the most to gain from blaming Russia for their own internal problems are pushing this out to journalists. When you combine that with the somewhat alarming tendency in American politics to refuse to admit that the cold war is over — McCain’s desperate quest to portray Russia as a threatening empire is only the most prominent example of this but there are others — it’s difficult to take these charges at face value. Georgia has been caught several times misleading journalists about Russia’s perfidy in the region. Do we have any reason to think this time they’re not?

Thomas de Waal has provided other examples why Georgian government claims should not be taken at face value:

The first reaction of many acquaintances in Tbilisi was to be sceptical. Pro-government media has run many stories over the last year about “Russian agents,” several of whom are actually pro-Western members of the Georgian opposition. Then there was the “War of the Worlds” incident last year when the Imedi channel broadcast reports of a Russian invasion, which turned out to be an irresponsible hoax. The most outrageous episode of this kind occurred in May 2008 during the last presidential election campaign in the village of Khurcha near the border with Abkhazia. A bus carrying voters on a soccer field was fired on and one woman was injured. Pro-government television reported it as an attack by Abkhaz or Russians. Subsequent sleuthing by a UN official found out the attack had been actually staged by Georgian security forces.

The findings on the Khurcha incident can be read here. Like de Waal, I think it is plausible that the Russians are engaged in some covert actions aimed at destabilizing Georgia. Also like de Waal, I think that such a campaign is a serious mistake. As I said in my post, “I don’t doubt that Russia is engaged in covert activity inside Georgia,” but for all of the reasons given above I don’t accept that Russians were responsible for the embassy bombing just because the Georgian government says so. In the end, that is what the “scoop” amounts to, and it isn’t very much.

Eli Lake reports whatever the Georgian government tells him:

Although the shooting war between the two countries has stopped, both sides have engaged in something of an intelligence war. Mr. Utiashvili said a recent operation uncovered a GRU-sponsored espionage ring that included the official photographers for the office of Georgian president and foreign minister.

As I have mentioned twicethis week, the alleged espionage ring in question also happens to be made up of photographers responsible for recently embarrassing the Georgian government by recording the government crackdown on opposition protesters two months ago. Indeed, one of the photographers said as much:

Shortly after his arrest Abdaladze passed a statement to a newspaper denying the accusation and saying he believed he and his colleagues had been targeted on Saakashvili’s orders for photographing the bloody aftermath of an opposition demonstration on 26 May when riot police clashed with protesters.

“Our photos travel around the whole world and the press of many countries where Mikheil Saakashvili proudly presents the image of himself as a champion of democracy,” wrote Abdaladze. “He did not forgive us that we spoiled the image.”

Most Americans would normally assume that espionage charges against journalists in the wake of a government crackdown are politically-motivated. It’s always possible that the Georgian government’s official photographers were actually working for Moscow, but which do you think is more likely? While I don’t doubt that Russia is engaged in covert activity inside Georgia, I am extremely skeptical of any specific espionage charges that the Georgian government brings, and that is especially true when they claim to show Russian plots against the U.S. Embassy. One need only ask who would benefit most from the appearance of a Russian-backed attack on an American installation in Georgia to appreciate why this story smells fishy. It is worth citing from this report again:

Government critics contend that the sheer volume of cases against suspected Russian agents, coupled with the fact that the evidence made available to the public is often sketchy, with strong emphasis on confessions, indicates that espionage has become the government’s idée fixe. Self-incriminating statements, critics add, can be obtained through the use of psychological pressure.

The latest instance — espionage charges brought on July 9 against three photographers — has raised concerns that Interior Ministry officials are using the accusations as a payback for the trio’s photo coverage of the bloody May 26 police crackdown on opposition protesters, an event that sparked heavy international criticism of Georgia.

Robert Farley notes that Lake’s reporting on the embassy case is based almost entirely on Georgian Interior Ministry sources, and calls Lake’s description of the 2008 war “tendentious” (and that’s being generous). Indeed, considering the incomplete reporting on the case involving the photographers, the story reads like one designed to stoke anti-Russian sentiment in the U.S.

Update: The AP reports that the photographers have been found guilty after a 15-minute trial, but then released after a plea deal:

Three Georgian photographers have been found guilty of spying for Russia but given suspended sentences and released after a 15-minute trial.

A personal photographer of the Georgian president, an employee of the European Pressphoto Agency, and a Georgian Foreign Ministry photographer who also has freelanced for The Associated Press were arrested this month.

Despite initial pleas of innocence, all three confessed to supplying Russian intelligence with sensitive information.

The defendants and the prosecutors on Friday signed a plea agreement where the prosecutors asked for suspended sentences for them, citing the value of the information they disclosed to the investigators.

The suspended sentences range from 2 to 3 years.

The arrests caused outrage in Georgia and prompted calls to declassify the case files.

Isn’t it curious that the outrage in Georgia that their arrests caused never made it into Lake’s story?

As Thomas de Waal’s recent report tells us, this catch-and-release plea bargaining is now quite customary in the Georgian judicial system:

The judicial system is currently strongly weighted against defendants. Anyone prosecuted in a criminal case in a Georgian court is highly unlikely to be acquitted. In Tbilisi City Court in 2010, the acquittal rate was 0.04 percent, or 21 acquittals out of 7,296 criminal cases heard. More than half the cases before Georgian courts are now settled by the system of plea bargaining. Defendants negotiate with the prosecutor and generally end up paying a fine in return for a reduced sentence or no sentence at all. In 2009 the fines resulting from plea bargaining amounted to more than 61 million GEL ($36.2 million). Supporters of the system say that it is efficient, saves time, and prevents even greater jail overcrowding. As Transparency International notes in a detailed report on the issue, however, “Lack of transparency regarding the calculation of the required fine and the amount of imposed and collected fines leads to widespread suspicion towards prosecutors and plea bargaining in general.

Of course, such a system could easily be abused for political ends against dissidents and/or to raise revenue for the state. That appears to what has happened in the photographers’ case.

Second Update: Paul Rimple is a Tbilisi-based journalist, and he has a short op-ed on the arrests:

Of the dozens of people who have been detained in Georgia for spying for Russia, this is the first time that local journalists have been directly implicated and is the most high-profile case since 2006, when Tbilisi arrested four Russian officers for espionage.

The first instinct is to question whether this is another attempt to intimidate free media. Abdaladze immediately went on hunger strike following his arrest, and Kurtsikidze’s employer, EPA, affirms that this is all a misunderstanding. Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders is concerned that the detentions might be some backlash to security paranoia.

Third Update: Yes, Lake’s story was on the bombings. He relies heavily on Georgian government sources about them, and he relies entirely on Georgian government sources regarding the photographers’ case. The point is that the story uncritically relays the official government line on all of these cases as if there were no reason for doubt. As I tried to make clear here, there are many reasons to doubt the Georgian government’s claims when it comes to charges of Russian espionage. If the charges against the photographers seem suspicious and motivated by political factors, that undermines the government’s credibility.

Fourth Update: The BBC reports on the photographers’ release:

The BBC’s Damien McGuinness in Tbilisi says plea bargaining is a widespread practice in Georgia, but also a controversial one.

Human rights groups say the practice enables the authorities to strike deals behind closed doors.

In this case such a bargain means that the full evidence of why the photographers were arrested will now not be heard in a proper court hearing.

Our correspondent says the deal may mean freedom for the photographers, but it will further fuel the fears of some journalists, who say the government can use the threat of prison to force admissions of guilt.

Fifth Update: Lake complains some more:

And Larison wrote about a graf at the end of the story and said nothing about the bombing of the embassy, which is what it was abt

Of course, it’s not true that I said nothing about the bombing of the embassy. As anyone can see, I wrote this:

While I don’t doubt that Russia is engaged in covert activity inside Georgia, I am extremely skeptical of any specific espionage charges that the Georgian government brings, and that is especially true when they claim to show Russian plots against the U.S. Embassy. One need only ask who would benefit most from the appearance of a Russian-backed attack on an American installation in Georgia to appreciate why this story smells fishy.

I was using Lake’s reference to the photographers’ case near the end of the story to illustrate the problem with uncritically citing Georgian government allegations about these sorts of cases. The photographers’ case is a very suspicious one. It has provoked outrage among Georgian journalists, and it stinks of political repression. That doesn’t come across at all in the Times story. That’s a serious oversight, it is relevant for assessing the merits of the embassy bombing claims, because the story relies almost entirely on what the Georgian government says. We are expected to take the Georgian government’s accusations seriously, so it matters that their credibility is not so great when it comes to making espionage-related charges.

Follow-up posts here and here.

Via Andrew, David Bosco correctly observes that the administration is not going to make a big push for salvaging the Doha round of global trade talks:

The chances that a Democratic administration facing an election will make a significant effort to save the Doha Round would appear to be just about nil.

There is no doubt that Obama doesn’t want to antagonize unions any more than he already has going into an election year. The general public is also skeptical of new free trade agreements, so there would be no political incentive for a president of either party to pursue the completion of Doha. Another reason for not taking political risks on this issue is that completing the Doha round won’t make that much of a difference to the global economy. Homi Kharas discussed the Doha round last month. Kharas emphasized the benefits to developing economies from completing the Doha round, but then said this:

From a developing country perspective, completion of the Doha round is far more important than from the perspective of advanced countries. The actual computed static benefits of completing Doha are actually quite small, perhaps yielding an extra one-one thousandth of global GDP each year [bold mine-DL].

That’s not nothing, but in terms of overall global GDP it is not very much. It wouldn’t be enough for this or any other administration to make a major effort on behalf of this round of trade talks.

The good news is that there is doctrine that fits the U.S.’s circumstances. It is one that judges the world to be relatively nonthreatening and makes the most of this situation. The goal would be to rebalance the resources devoted to domestic challenges, as opposed to international ones, in favor of the former. Doing so would not only address critical domestic needs but also rebuild the foundation of this country’s strength so it would be in a better position to stave off potential strategic challengers or be better prepared should they emerge all the same.

My term for such a doctrine is restoration: a U.S. foreign policy based on restoring this country’s strength and replenishing its resources—economic, human and physical. ~Richard Haass

After distracting the reader with a paragraph on why this isn’t isolationism, Haass goes on to lay out what this restoration doctrine would involve. I say that the paragraph on isolationism is distracting mostly because it is unnecessary. If the president of the Council on Foreign Relations can’t write a foreign policy opinion piece without having to explain that what he is saying is not isolationist, no one can. Haass still rehearses why an obviously non-isolationist doctrine isn’t isolationist. Except maybe in debates over trade, I cannot think of any other policy debate where this habit is so ingrained.

Haass’ restoration doctrine would still have the U.S. engaged in an “active foreign policy,” but with “fewer wars of choice” and it “would limit foreign policy to what matters most.” There are parts of this that I can’t fully endorse. For example, Haass says towards the end that “there would still be elements of democracy promotion, counterterrorism and humanitarianism as either opportunities or exigencies arose,” and I fail to see why democracy promotion or humanitarianism (here meaning humanitarian interventions) should still be included. Haass has set much more demanding standards for humanitarian intervention, but I don’t see how this is consistent with his overall doctrine. Nonetheless, on the whole Haass’ proposal is startlingly reasonable and long overdue.

Jonathan Tobin agrees with Rubin on the importance of Mongolia, but worries about the Mongolian enthusiasm for Genghis Khan:

While we can sympathize with Mongolia’s troubles in the last century, any country that accords Genghis Khan–one of history’s great mass-murdering conquerors–the status of founding father, undermines its stance as a lonely democracy fighting for independence against authoritarian bullies.

Seriously? Yes, Genghis Khan was a brutal conqueror and empire-builder, and contemporary Mongolian attitudes towards him rely on greatly minimizing all of the destruction that went into building the beginning of the Mongol world empire, but it is really quite silly to hold this against them. Nations that have regained real political independence only in very recent times are understandably going to look back to moments in the past when their nation was independent, influential and powerful, and they are going to celebrate the famous leaders in their national history. Genghis Khan was undeniably the founder of the most organized political structure in Mongolian history up to that point, and it was because of his wars and the wars of his successors that the Mongols briefly dominated much of Eurasia. Good luck cultivating friendship with Mongolia by disparaging their most famous leader. By the same token, the enduring popular admiration for Stalin in the “fledgling democracy” of Georgia ought to discredit its stance as well.

One important difference between Georgia and Mongolia is that Mongolia has done a reasonably good job of building a functioning democratic state, and Georgia has stagnated as a semi-authoritarian or “hybrid” state. Freedom House rates Mongolia as free with civil liberties and political rights scores that are better than Georgia’s. According to Freedom House, Georgia is “not an electoral democracy” by their standards, and rates as only partly free. The Economist Intelligent Unit’s Democracy Index ranks Mongolia 64th in the world and considers it a “flawed democracy.” By comparison, the EIU report counts Georgia as a “hybrid” regime and ranks it 103rd between Bhutan and Pakistan. Mongolia matched or outperformed Georgia in every category that the EIU uses. That doesn’t mean that the U.S. should repeat its Georgian mistake in Mongolia, but it should tell us that the admiration Mongols have for Genghis Khan has no relevance for how Mongolia governs itself today.

There has been little attention paid to it here in the U.S., but the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal now appears to be in some greater trouble in India. Rajeev Sharma writes at The Diplomat‘s Indian Decade? blog:

Indian concerns about the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group’s recent hardening of Enrichment and Reprocessing technology transfer terms remained unaddressed, while Clinton instead conveyed Washington’s annoyance over Indian nuclear liability laws, which make it possible to seek compensation from suppliers, and asked the UPA government to tweak them further to conform with international liability norms. She also asked India to negotiate with the International Atomic Energy Agency on the legislation, even though there’s no international legal requirement to do so. Finally, she spoke of some ‘remaining issues’ that need to be tackled to enable full implementation of the Indo-US civilian nuclear energy cooperation agreement.

What Clinton didn’t say directly, but what she likely meant, was that unless India dilutes its nuclear liability laws, full implementation of the deal will remain a mirage. It’s clear that although officially the United States is insisting that it will fully implement the nuclear deal, the agreement faces yet another phase of diplomatic rough and tumble.

The UPA government can’t contemplate diluting the liability laws due to massive domestic pressure. Virtually the entire opposition, from left to right, has pressured Prime Minister Manmohan Singh into hardening liability legislation. Tinkering with this now would therefore be political suicide for his government. [bold mine-DL]

For all of the AmericancommentaryonClinton’s visit to India, Sharma’s analysis is the first detailed analysis of the political obstacles blocking implementation of the nuclear deal that I have seen so far. Sharma concludes:

Clearly, Clinton has stepped on a political landmine in India. Expect more political parties to pile on over this issue.

Update: This editorial from The Hindu makes the same arguments against diluting the liability laws:

However, Parliament, and ultimately the government, were unwilling to waive the normal operation of tort law and accordingly incorporated two provisions that might expose suppliers to damage claims if a nuclear accident is traced to defective equipment. Against the backdrop of public outrage over the scandalous denouement of the Bhopal gas disaster cases, it is a miracle that the law is not tougher.

The U.S. believes these provisions are incompatible with the CSC and hopes the implementation rules being drawn up will firmly shut the door on supplier liability. Even if such a thing were legally possible — which it isn’t, since rules cannot upend the basic intent of a law — Dr. Singh can ill afford the political firestorm that any dilution of the liability Act would set off. During her visit, Ms Clinton also encouraged India to consult the International Atomic Energy Agency on the compatibility of its law with the CSC — an absurd suggestion since the IAEA has no locus. At a time when the whole world is still digesting the environmental and financial consequences of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear calamity, Washington must reconcile itself to the fact that the Indian body politic will not accept any dilution in existing liability provisions. Rather than exerting political pressure, U.S. vendors should bite the bullet and accept this as the price they will have to pay to win a share of the lucrative Indian nuclear power industry. If insurance costs lead to higher reactor prices, so be it. It is better to know the true cost of nuclear energy before buying thousands of megawatts worth of reactor equipment than pay for a multi-billion dollar cleanup the way Japanese taxpayers are now being forced to do.

Seth Mandel skewers Tim Pawlenty’s new plan to pretend that he is the scrappy underdog in the presidential race:

Running as the underdog in a campaign is a last resort. Billing yourself as the mainstream candidate and then switching to the underdog before the primaries have even begun is a sign of desperation. Looking desperate for six months before voters have the chance to cast a ballot will cement that image in their minds. And voters don’t ask that guy to be the leader of the free world.

More to the point, Pawlenty’s reinvention of himself less than two months since he formally announced his candidacy confirms Sean Scallon’s critique of Pawlenty as a hopelessly inauthentic politician. Running to be the default anti-Romney, Pawlenty has achieved what no one thought possible a few months ago: he has made Romney seem reliable and steady by comparison. Mandel is right that Pawlenty is likely hastening his political demise by changing plans, but the decision to do so is something that reveals more than mere desperation. Rather than an abandonment of the reason for his candidacy, it is an admission that his candidacy never had a rationale. Pawlenty is confirming that the candidate he was pretending to be for the last several months (or years, depending on when we start counting) was little more than an act. Worse still, Pawlenty’s act was based on the belief that all that he needed to do was check off all the right ideological boxes to satisfy the “three legs of the stool” and the voters would gravitate towards him as a matter of course. To defeat Romney in 2012, Pawlenty has run the equivalent of another Romney 2008 campaign, but this time he has tried doing it without very much money. In that way, he has managed to combine the major flaws of both Romney and Huckabee without the advantages of either one.

What realists fail to realize when they make dispassionate cost and benefit calculations, is that there is an intrinsic benefit to friendship and alliance, but that such a benefit cannot be realized if the United States fails to embrace friendship for friendship’s sake. What may appear inconvenient now may become a critical asset down the road, if only the American foreign policy elite would be farsighted. ~Michael Rubin

The friendship and alliance to which Rubin refers in this case is the one with…Mongolia. Rubin writes:

The Mongolian government is actively reaching out for friends who might respect its independence as both its neighbors play hardball. It has courted both Australia and South Korea. Alas, while Mongolians are friendly and pro-American, they recognize they cannot rely on the United States as a friend.

What is it that they are relying on these “friends” to do? Rubin says that it is “strategic blindness” to neglect Mongolia, but at no point does he explain how greater American friendliness would change the reality that Mongolia is a poor country dependent on its larger neighbors for energy. Neither does he explain why the U.S. should increase ties with a landlocked state wedged in between two of the world’s major powers, or how Mongolia would ever be a “critical asset” for the United States. If the advantages of a closer relationship are unclear, the downside is obvious. It would revive Russian fears of U.S. encroachment into Russia’s “near abroad” and alarm China at the same time. In addition to creating a new irritant in the relationship with both governments, it could stoke tensions between Mongolia and its neighbors. That would hardly serve the interests of Mongolia, and it isn’t clear that it would help the U.S. in any concrete way.

Rubin is also mistaken if he thinks that the U.S. has stopped paying attention to Mongolia. J. Berkshire Miller described the state of U.S.-Mongolian relations earlier this year:

Either way, Mongolia has been developing increasingly close security ties with the United States. Through the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, Mongolia contributed about 150 soldiers from the elite Mongolian Expeditionary Task Force (METF)—a sizeable number considering the country’s population—to help train the Afghan National Army in mobile field artillery techniques.

While nearly two-thirds of the METF in Afghanistan have now returned home, such moves have bolstered the broader relationship with both NATO and the United States. This deployment has also built on the US goodwill Mongolia secured through its troop contributions to the Iraq War, which prompted visits by then US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then President George W. Bush—the first sitting US president to visit the nation.

And the Obama administration has indicated that it intends to build on this progress. Last August, the Mongolian Armed Forces (MAF) and the US Pacific Command conducted its annual joint-training exercise, ‘Khaan Quest,’ which was first undertaken in 2004 and is aimed at further enhancing the MAF’s expertise in peacekeeping and counterterrorism. Khaan Quest continues to attract observer and participating nations from across the globe, with South Korea, Thailand, Canada, India, Japan, and Fiji all in attendance recently.

This has not gone unnoticed by China, and intensifying military cooperation with Mongolia in the future could come to be seen as unacceptable. This 2009 analysis by Wang Peiran explains:

If the American military presence in Mongolia becomes too influential, from China’s point of view, it essentially means being encircled by the United States. Although Beijing has not directly publicized its stance on military cooperation between Mongolia and the United States, Russia and other countries, there still exists a relatively clear “red line”, namely that the current composition of Northeast Asian security cannot be dismantled, and even more, the situation cannot take a turn in a direction that is detrimental to China.

Mongolia seems to be sensitive to Beijing’s concerns, and as a result, after the US president visited Mongolia, the Mongolian president immediately paid a visit to China. During the trip, a joint communiqué was released stating that both sides agreed not to enter into any military or political alliances directed at the other. The two nations’ cooperation and exchange on security and defense are also progressing step by step. Since 2004, China and Mongolia have conducted three consultations on security and defense. These exchanges have been helpful in increasing understanding between the two sides, raising the level of trust and at the same time strengthening China’s influence in Mongolia.

If Mongolia isn’t going to enter into any alliances aimed at China, which is what any alliance with the U.S. would be whether we admit it publicly or not, that would seem to render the issue moot. It is not the business of the U.S. to be more pro-Mongolian than the Mongolian government.

Well, so much for Blue Labour:

Blue Labour, the informal Labour policy group established by Ed Miliband advisor Maurice Glasman, is to be effectively disbanded.

Ed West comments:

Lord Glasman has since apologised for overstepping the mark in an email to Hodges, but it’s curious that, even if they were not prepared to go as far as him, not a single Labour figure as yet can be found to even criticise their party’s attachment to mass immigration. Yet, as I (and many others) have pointed out, mass immigration harms Labour’s traditional supporters the most. Note that Glasman is not hostile to elite migration, an altogether different thing; when Painter talks about “world-class universities” and “highly-qualified staff”, does he not realise that Britain exports more graduates than it imports, with an overall loss of roughly 200,000 people?

I suppose there was never much chance that Glasman’s ideas would be well-received, especially when it comes to immigration. After all, Gordon Brown’s contempt for Labour voters’ immigration concerns wasn’t something unique to him. It is a widely-shared contempt that members of political classes in much of the “Anglosphere” have.