At the moment, Iran’s opposition is far less unified in its goals than the Egyptian opposition was during its protests. Some factions want only to reform Iran’s theocracy, while others (particularly the younger activists) want to dismantle supreme clerical rule altogether and establish a parliamentary democracy. The West’s endorsement of the movement could strengthen Iran’s opposition as a whole but only as long as Washington does not talk of trying to supplant the regime with a Western-style democracy. ~Geneive Abdo

I don’t find Abdo’s arguments for Western support of the Green movement all that convincing, but that is nothing new. Abdo does make the point here that I have been trying to make in the pastweek, which is that the Iranian opposition is not united around a single set of objectives. Since there is even greater ambiguity about what Western governments would be supporting by supporting the Green movement than there has been in supporting Egyptian protests, that would seem to be another reason not to express public support for the movement.

Abdo’s next point is very strange:

Washington’s public support, moreover, would deprive the Iranian regime of one of its weapons: anti-Americanism. For example, the Iranian government has tried to convince its people that U.S. sanctions are designed to hurt them, not the regime. Some Iranians have been left believing that the United States cares more about security issues — in particular preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — than their well-being. But far from wanting the United States to back off entirely, a majority say that they would like closer ties with the West, according to a recent poll from the International Peace Institute.

Whether or not the sanctions are “designed” to hurt the people, the more effective that sanctions are in inflicting damage on a country’s economy to pressure the government the more that the people are bound to suffer as a result. As sympathizers with the Green movement have pointed out in the past, the regime will make use of anti-American rhetoric regardless of what the U.S. does, but that is why actual, direct U.S. support for people who are already being denounced as “seditionists” is all the more unwise. As long as the opposition isn’t receiving American support, the “seditionist” charge is that much harder for undecided Iranians to take seriously. Lending the government’s public support to the Iranian opposition is akin to confirming regime propaganda. During the 1990s, the Clinton administration frequently claimed that it was not opposed to the people of the various countries it was bombing, but was opposed only to their governments. Very often, the result was that the people suffered from what were supposed to be purely “anti-regime” actions. Making this distinction did not lessen the resentment at U.S. interference, and it did not deprive the other government of the ability to rally support with anti-American propaganda.

The reality is that the U.S. does care more about security issues than the well-being of Iranians. It isn’t hard to see that the main reason why so many Westerners have been cheering the Green movement is that they continue to be under the impression that the Green movement offers some sort of magical political solution to disagreements with Iran. As Westerners have come to see that the Green movement offers them no such quick fix and never would have, they have lost interest in the movement’s fortunes. Many Westerners seem to be shocked to find that the opposition is actually filled with Iranians, and that it doesn’t see security issues in the same way that we do.

Iranians do want closer ties with the West, but that isn’t the same thing as saying that the Iranian opposition wants the U.S. government to embrace it publicly. Oddly enough, calls for supporting the Iranian opposition are the sort of thing that would make it harder to build the closer relations that Iranians want with the West. Western agitation on behalf of one faction in Iran is one of the things that makes the possibility of improved relations with Iran that much more remote.

Abdo continues:

If the United States makes clear that it condemns repression and supports the aspirations of the Iranian people, it could inspire young non-ideological Iranians — who have much in common with their Egyptian counterparts — to confront the security forces.

Yes, and that could lead to a large number of them being killed when they confront those forces. These protesters might confront the security forces in the false expectation that this outside support means something more than public statements of solidarity. This is the kind of “support” that the Iranian opposition could do without.

When I last discussed the new CAP report on Georgia, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, I focused on Georgian government policy and whether reintegrating the separatist states was still possible. Equally significant obstacles for moving towards the resolution of the conflicts are current U.S. policy and the politics of debating policy toward Georgia and Russia. The report’s authors, Samuel Charap and Cory Welt, are focused entirely on problems of policy, which is understandable, but it’s worth thinking about whether even the modest, reasonable recommendations that Charap and Welt propose are likely to find a receptive audience in Congress or in the administration.

Charap and Welt criticize the American idea of “strategic patience” this way:

As far as Georgia’s internal conflicts are concerned, the Obama administration, like the Bush and Clinton administrations before it, counsels “strategic patience”—the notion that Georgia will entice Abkhazia and South Ossetia into closer association and eventually incorporation through comparatively attractive political, social, and economic development. As Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Phillip Gordon said in September 2009, “The best way forward would be one of strategic patience whereby Georgia shows itself to be an attractive place, a stronger, democratic [country].”

This is as close as the U.S. government comes to describing how the Georgia conflicts will be resolved. The United States invests senior-level time and international political capital in conflict resolution in other settings, such as the Middle East or Bosnia. For the Georgia conflicts, however, the expectation appears to be that a
process is unnecessary.

Strategic patience is conflict resolution by osmosis. Somehow the authorities in and residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will miraculously come to the conclusion at some unspecified point in the future that they want to reintegrate with Georgia. The desire to partake of the latter’s success will be so overwhelming as to
make them forget their grievances, fears, and aspirations.

During Biden’s first visit to Tbilisi as Vice President, he made the “strategic patience” argument, and I found it as misguided then and Charap and Welt do now. For one thing, Georgians who want to reassert their government’s authority over these territories are not going to be satisfied by the idea that maybe some day after decades of waiting there will be some voluntary reunion.

As the authors correctly point out, the larger problem with “strategic patience” is that it is essentially a polic of waiting and hoping for the best, while simultaneously ignoring the agency and interests of any of the other parties. It is just a diplomatic way of saying the obvious to Georgia that a military solution is not possible, so Georgia should continue economic and internal reforms instead. To sweeten this unpleasant truth, the administration holds out the unlikely scenario of future reunion to make Tbilisi set aside its preoccupation with reintegration. Most important, “strategic patience” doesn’t take into account the current Russian role:

Strategic patience thus implies neither interethnic reconciliation nor a negotiated settlement resulting in the delegation of powers of self-government to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Nor does it give any indication of a process that brings the people together, which makes the notion of “progress” toward resolution abstract if not nonsensical.

Moreover, strategic patience neglects Russia as an actor in the process. Prior to the war a reasonable case might have been made for such a posture. After all, Russia was formally fulfilling a peacekeeping function with the (begrudging) consent of the Georgian government. If Abkhazia and South Ossetia were so compelled by
Georgia’s attractiveness as to reach political settlements, Russian troops presumably would be told their services were no longer needed.

After the war, strategic patience—even combined with the Geneva discussions where Russia is present—does not adequately address Russia’s new role and what its officials often call the “new reality” on the ground. It simply assumes Russia will someday realize that its intervention in August 2008, recognition decision, and militarization of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were mistaken. Russia repents and withdraws in this scenario, cursing its prior policy errors and thanking the triumphant Georgians for having been right all along and having the courage of their convictions.

This scenario seems highly unlikely given the strong support for the war across Russia’s political spectrum. A July 2010 opinion poll showed that 54 percent of Russians support keeping troops in South Ossetia and only 26 percent support withdrawal. These numbers are statistically identical to those from the same survey the month after the war.

The one thing that I will say for the “strategic patience” position is that it is a fairly easy way for the U.S. to make Georgia a lower priority for U.S. foreign policy. The virtue of the position for the administration is that a decades-long project of building up Georgia so that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are clamoring to reconcile not only leaves everything up to the Georgians, which makes a certain amount of sense, but it also takes for granted that no significant progress on resolving these conflicts is possible in the foreseeable future. The main problem that I see with it is that “strategic patience” is obviously not going to get Georgia what it wants, so the Georgian government isn’t going to accept this as the best approach. Instead of being a well-developed policy, it is more of a placeholder. However, a placeholder isn’t good enough as long as Washington remains rhetorically and politically committed to backing Georgia. If the U.S. weren’t acting as Georgia’s patron, it would be a different story, but the U.S. continues to be stuck with this client state because of the consensus in Washington in support of Georgia.

That consensus may be the biggest obstacle to changing U.S. policy constructively. The authors note that one of their objections to the American response to these conflicts is the language U.S. officials use:

Currently, however, the language used by U.S. officials often suggests irreconcilable differences between the parties that would rule out any progress, leading to a Cyprus-style, long-term stalemate.

U.S. officials describe the differences this way because anything less than this will be seized on by members of Congress and the media as proof that the administration has “abandoned” or “sold out” Georgia. If there is to be a sustainable effort on the part of the U.S. in helping to resolve these conflicts, there will need to be fairly broad consensus that normalizing relations among the parties is the top priority. Right now, the consensus is much more narrowly focused on denouncing Russian “occupation” and urging arms sales to Georgia. There is a significant bloc of hawks in Congress that will insist on unwavering support for whatever Georgia wants, which makes pushing for conflict resolution in Georgia politically risky without the prospect of much reward or success. Given the political obstacles any administration would have to face in modifying its policy on these conflicts, the current administration may not see much point in making the effort. As long as Republicans are more or less unified in Bush-era support for Georgia, there is not much reason to expect that a serious conflict resolution policy would last beyond the end of the Obama administration.

And here’s the rub: While the United States grappled with its inability (whether for lack of a fulcrum or fear of meddling) to use leverage to remove the regimes in Tunis and Cairo, it actually does have the power to affect change and promote transparent and accountable governance in Pristina — where a coterie of thuggish leaders, holdovers from a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) unit accused of war crimes and weapons dealing, now run the country. But, thus far, Washington has been unwilling to exert the necessary pressure on Kosovo’s leaders — and in its impotence pours billions of dollars down the drain and risks condemning the state to thugocracy. ~Mason and Healy-Aarons

It’s not exactly shocking news for some of us that supporting an independent Kosovo run by terrorists turns out to be a waste of U.S. resources. The article is valuable for reporting on the extent of the criminality and misrule of Kosovo’s new rulers, including war crimes against Serbs and Albanians in 1998-99, but going back to before the 1999 war there was good reason to suspect the KLA of most or all of the crimes that their leaders have been committing. Back then, the enthusiasm to support self-determination and to oppose Milosevic was too great, so naturally the solution was to start a war and set up an impoverished statelet run by hoodlums.

The authors note:

As it turns out, U.S. support for the world’s youngest democracy has been almost as bad for economic security, political stability and democratic principles [bold mine-DL] as backing the globe’s oldest autocracies.

Who would have guessed that? It’s almost as if mindlessly endorsing separatist movements and following abstract Wilsonian principles lead to bad outcomes. One might conclude that replacing a repressive authoritarian system with a democratically-elected government where it has never existed before can easily lead to even worse political and economic conditions! The better time to think through all of this was in 1999 and the years immediately following. At the very least, not recognizing Kosovo’s independence would have been wise. Kosovo might still be run by thugs, but they wouldn’t have the seal of approval that comes with being recognized as the elected government of a supposedly sovereign state. The article details at some length the extent to which the U.S. was responsible for empowering and legitimizing the KLA. That is the real legacy of “humanitarian” intervention.

Obviously, it’s too late for undoing critical mistakes, so what can be done now that the U.S. has saddled itself with a criminal gang-dominated dependency? The article makes no recommendations, but I’ll propose one or two to start. The easiest option would be to suspend all aid to the current government. Even if U.S. aid isn’t directly fueling the leadership’s corruption, it is subsidizing a government that is rife with it. Another would be to target the leadership’s financial assets to be frozen, or at least make it more difficult for them to benefit from their illicit profits. The U.S. should also be willing to assist in arresting and transporting indicted leaders to stand trial. Washington is quite directly responsible for the current situation, so there is some obligation for the U.S. to attempt some remedy.

We all understand that Washington probably won’t do any of these things, because propping up Kosovo as an independent state never had much to do with the quality of governance in Kosovo or the well-being of its population. That much was obvious from the beginning of the 1999 war. Bombing and then partitioning Serbia were statements of U.S. power and influence, and Washington isn’t going to be eager to draw attention to how badly all of this turned out.

In truth, there is no alternative in Egypt to liberal democracy, or, to be more precise, a democratizing Egypt. And what is true of Egypt will soon become true throughout the Middle East, as the autocratic dominoes fall. ~John Guardiano

Like the Takeyh column I wrote about earlier today, Guardiano’s argument relies heavily on asserting that his recommended response is the only alternative, and it is the only alternative because there is “no alternative” to Egyptian democratization. I have to say that this claim betrays a lack of imagination. There are at least a few alternatives to a democratizing Egypt. One of these is the perpetuation of an entrenched military ruling class behind the facade of a government of nominal reformers. Another is a new autocrat who has a greater interest in liberalizing reforms. Yet another might be a caretaker junta in which no one officer becomes the sole ruler, and the period of “transition” proves to be as unending as the “emergency” situation that permits arbitrary detentions and gross abuses of power. I have been trying to point out many of the potential dangers of democratization, but democratization may not be the most likely outcome from all of this. Dr. Hadar draws comparisons with 1848 revolutions in his new TACarticle. That reminded me that the alternative to a fully democratizing France at that point turned out to be Bonapartism and the Second Empire with its failed attempts at a revisionist foreign policy. There was an election, and then there was a coup. That was in a country that had some experience with political liberalism and representative government alongside its bouts of democratic despotism. Egypt has plenty of experience with Bonaparte-like rulers, and it it reasonable to expect that someone like that will assume power in the years to come.

Guardiano calls on us to see the world as it is. That’s a good idea. In the “world as it is,” the Egyptian military dominates, the opposition has access to power at its discretion, and the constitutional changes the military council is proposing so far appear to be very limited. Set aside military rule for a moment. Let us ask the most important question: why should the U.S. be assisting a transition towards liberal democracy? Other than the pious sentiment that this is a Good Thing That Americans Do, what is the actual argument for it? Guardiano doesn’t really provide one, and the tone of his articles on this subject is one of exasperation and puzzlement that other conservatives do not see the obvious virtue in what he is proposing.

Guardiano is certainly disappointed:

I don’t typically agree with left-wing columnist Eugene Robinson; but he’s absolutely right about the Republicans’ stunning — and seriously disconcerting — lack of strategic vision and apparent indifference to the momentous events that are now rocking Egypt, North Africa and the Middle East.

Of course, Robinson is engaged in a bit of cyclical point-scoring. A few years ago, it was mainstream conservatives’ turn to preen and claim that they were the far-seeing supporters of universal freedom, and their political opponents played the skeptics, and now the wheel has turned. Unfortunately, some people on the right seem to have come away from the debacle of the Bush years convinced that the “freedom agenda” was something other than a disaster. Many Republicans may not be indifferent to what is happening. They may be very opposed, but they are probably unsure how to speak out against the democratism that remains fashionable in many circles on the right. It is possible that many of them maintain the double standard that “people power” is desirable only when it lines up with U.S. policies. That may be inconsistent and somewhat cynical, but at least I can understand why they feign interest in certain foreign political movements and ignore others. Enthusiasts for democratization regardless of the situation are the ones I don’t really understand.

As for strategic vision, what is a bit stunning is that Guardiano doesn’t offer any hints of what his vision is other than aiding liberal democracy. He objects to the apparent lack of enthusiasm for democratization on the right, but he doesn’t explain how this translates into a “lack of strategic vision.” In fact, it seems to me that it is the democratists that have been entirely indifferent to U.S. strategic interests. I had to laugh when I saw Guardiano ask at the end of his column, “And how can we hasten similar awakenings in other places such as Iran and Syria?” The uprisings we have been seeing have largely been working to the advantage of Iran and its allies. While sympathizers with the Green movement might hope that the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt will spark a new wave of Iranian protests, they are missing that Iran is the chief beneficiary of all of the unrest we have seen for the last month. It is also doubtful that “we” can hasten popular uprisings in countries where our government commands little or no respect.

Guardiano’s argument reminded me of Nick Kristof’s column from this morning on the unrest in Bahrain. Kristof wrote:

Bahrain’s leaders may whisper to American officials that the democracy protesters are fundamentalists inspired by Iran. That’s ridiculous. There’s no anti-Americanism in the protests — and if we favor “people power” in Iran, we should favor it in Bahrain as well.

That provides as succinct an argument against supporting “people power” in Iran as I could ever hope to find. If people insist on promoting popular uprisings against any authoritarian government as a matter of general principle, that is a good argument against promoting them anywhere. If we can’t even make the distinction between using popular unrest to destabilize rival or hostile governments and destabilizing allies, we have no business attempting to promote political changes abroad. As I see it, we don’t really have any business promoting political change abroad anyway, but a view that can’t even distinguish between a modestly liberalizing monarchy allied with the U.S. and the government in Tehran is one too blinded by optimism and sentimentality to be worth anything.

I doubt that the protests in Bahrain have anything to do with Iran, but anti-Americanism or the lack of it in the protests is beside the point. It isn’t hard to imagine how a successful uprising in Bahrain that weakens or overthrows the monarchy there fits into the overall pattern of aiding Iranian influence and undermining the American position.

My column for The Week on Egypt’s protests and political upheaval is online.

Many observers are arguing that instability in Egypt and the Middle East could cut against U.S. and Israeli interests in the region over the short term, but will contribute to an opening of those societies that will ultimately be better for U.S. and Israeli interests than the stability of authoritarian governments. It still remains to be seen whether what is true in theory will in fact be true in practice, but I am inclined to agree that over the long term that is probably true. ~Jim Antle

One reason that I am skeptical about this is that many of the people making this argument don’t believe that there the definition of U.S. interests will have to change. U.S. interests properly understood have not been jeopardized by greater democratization and civilian control in Turkey, but don’t tell that to the American hawks cheering on Egyptian protesters. It is now common for democratists to denounce the AKP government not only for its demagoguery and authoritarian habits (which they mistakenly confuse with its effort to bring the Turkish military under civilian control), but for any foreign policy decision that does not align with the most confrontational policies towards Iran. Some conservatives have started identifying the government of a formal NATO ally as having gone over to the “other side” with Iran, and all because it is pursuing a policy of economic and diplomatic engagement with a neighboring country that Washington would celebrate if it were happening in Europe. The changes in Turkey could be good for U.S. interests properly understood in the long term, but that would require some pretty dramatic changes in U.S. policies and in how Washington defines our interests.

That isn’t what most people in the U.S. talking about “the long term” mean. They mean that in the long run democratization in the region will actually help consolidate or support U.S. hegemonic policies, or at least not conflict with them. Perhaps they have Cold War-era democratic allies in mind, and perhaps they are making a foolish assumption that democratic “values” will bind these countries more closely to the U.S. than ever before. Whatever the reason, they are mistaken. After the experience of democracy promotion in Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon, one thing should be clear. In the short and medium term, the forces opposed to U.S. hegemony grow much stronger thanks to democratization, and there isn’t much reason to expect that to change in the decades to come. The democracy promotion fetish that hegemonists picked up and retained from the closing years of the Cold War is entirely at odds with the policies they prefer.

Each time democratism prevails, Iran and its allies have become stronger and more assertive, and the political forces aligned with the U.S. have been weakened or routed. The reality in the region is that U.S. influence typically retreats when majority rule takes hold. This is natural enough, since nations have divergent interests, and democratic polities are supposed to reflect the interests of their citizens, and those interests don’t usually involve being turned into a front-line state to fight someone else’s wars. In the process, legitimate U.S. interests are in danger of being thrown out along with the maintenance of regional hegemony that the U.S. doesn’t need and shouldn’t want.

It should give us some pause that many of the same people arguing for the “right side of history” and “long term” views of regional democratization were some of the same people promoting the “demonstration effect” and “drain the swamp” theories of the last decade. (For the record, I am aware that Jim has obviously not been making any of these arguments, and I’m not referring to him here.) One of these people has been calling for a Freedom Doctrine to combat Iranian influence after famously erring in his assessment of the effect the Iraq war would have on Iranian influence and internal Iranian affairs. In February 2002, Krauthammer wrote:

But Iran is not a ready candidate for the blunt instrument of American power, because it is in the grips of a revolution from below. We can best accelerate that revolution by the power of example and success: Overthrowing neighboring radical regimes shows the fragility of dictatorship, challenges the mullahs’ mandate from heaven and thus encourages disaffected Iranians to rise.

As we all know, what encouraged disaffected Iranians to rise as much as they did was electoral fraud and civil rights violations that took place over seven years after Krauthammer wrote this and had nothing to do with Iraq. In the meantime, Tehran’s influence inside Iraq has grown significantly because of the democratization he continues to advocate.

Reflecting on this sorry record, Dr. Hadar asks a good question in his new article for the forthcoming April issue of TAC:

The autocrats ruling Egypt and other Arab states were bound to face opposition at home. Why is it in the American interest to hasten the day of reckoning?

As Iran’s streets erupt with pro-democracy demonstrations, it is all too obvious that the only option the United States has in altering the Islamic Republic’s behavior is to support the Green Movement. ~Ray Takeyh

Takeyh must know how weak his argument is, since he feels compelled to insist on the obviousness and inevitability of the policy option he is advocating. U.S. support for the Green movement is a hard sell because it is not at all obvious that U.S. support is critical or desired by members of the movement. Unless Washington was willing to withdraw that support at a later date as an incentive to get Iran to make concessions on other issues, there is no reason to believe that U.S. support for the movement could alter the Iranian government’s behavior. This is the problem that democracy promotion advocates will keep encountering. Their democracy promotion recommendations don’t advance other U.S. policies, and instead frequently undermine them or get in the way, and so advocates have to insist all the more vehemently that their recommendations are absolutely vital. Supporting the Iranian opposition isn’t just one possible tool available–it is obviously the only option left!

Takeyh does argue that taking military action against Iran is undesirable, but his reason isn’t very convincing:

And the military option that was always unattractive has now become implausible; it would be rash to employ force against Iran’s suspected nuclear installations and radicalize the Arab populace just as forces of moderation and democracy seem ascendant.

Is Takeyh suggesting that it wouldn’t be rash to launch unnecessary military strikes if the “forces of moderation and democracy” weren’t on the rise? It is curious that Takeyh links the “forces of moderation and democracy” when the results of democratization in the region so far have been to undermine or defeat the “forces of moderation.” It’s true enough that another American war will contribute to political radicalism in the region, but that isn’t the main reason why the U.S. shouldn’t start another war.

Takeyh makes another pronouncement:

Whether motivated by idealism or a desire to advance practical security concerns, the West must recognize that the only thing standing between the mullahs and the bomb is the Green Movement.

If that were true, that would mean that there isn’t really anything standing in the way. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be true. The Green movement cannot stop the Iranian government from pursuing nuclear weapons if it decides to do this, and in the unlikely event that the Green movement’s leaders acquire some measure of power it is not guaranteed that they would oppose building these weapons. It is not too strong to say that their opposition to the Iranian government has nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program, and if they immediately achieved the reforms they sought it would not slow down Iran’s nuclear program.

The latest Iran NIE tells us that the Iranian government is apparently divided over whether or not to pursue nuclear weapons, and it has not yet made the decision to build such weapons. It is doubtful that support for the Green movement would affect this decision either way, but there’s no reason to assume that a successful Iranian civil rights movement is going to make Iran’s nuclear policy line up with what Washington wants.

Andrew asked on Monday in response to this post:

I wonder what part of “Death To Khamenei!” Daniel doesn’t understand?

The slogan is very straightforward, and I don’t doubt that there are many people in the Green movement (and perhaps some not directly involved in it) who loathe Khamenei that much. It is harder to argue that the Green movement is unified around the goal of regime change that the slogan implies, which is what distinguishes its demands from the demands of the protesters in Egypt. More radical elements within any political movement are going to take maximalist positions, but it doesn’t mean that the rest of the movement will go along with them. If some Iranian protesters are calling for Khamenei’s head, they are probably not speaking for most of the Green movement, much less the rest of Iran.

Omid Memarian’s article on the new Iranian protests included an important distinction between the protesters in Cairo and the Green movement’s most recent activities:

Aside from the imprisonment of its leaders and the isolation from the world, the green movement suffers from a lack of direction, said Sadjadpour. The Egyptians had a very clear demand: They wanted Mubarak out. In Iran, there is still some confusion about whether there should be another revolution—something many can’t stomach just three decades after the last one, which overthrew the shah—or reform within the existing Islamic Republic.

“I don’t think a critical mass of people is going to take to the streets and risk their lives for ambiguous ends,” said [Karim] Sadjadpour.

It’s this relatively greater ambiguity of what the Green movement seeks that makes direct comparisons with the uprisings we have seen elsewhere less convincing. There certainly seems to be a desire on the part of some of the Green movement leaders to express solidarity with those uprisings and to contradict the regime’s spin on these events, but the goals of their movement do not appear to be quite the same. It was Hooman Majd who made a persuasive case that the Green movement should best be understood as a civil rights movement rather than a revolutionary movement, and at the end of January he wrote a column explaining why the Green movement is different:

As with the Lebanese protests, the green movement’s large number of demonstrators gave the impression that the entire country was unified behind one goal. But again, much like the Cedar Revolution, that turned out to be an illusion.

Many of the green movement’s demands still resonate with Iranians — some even, evidently, with Ahmadinejad and his government. But major change in Iran is unlikely to come about through street protests — which is why no one calls for them anymore. Not while the whole country, unlike in the Arab states, isn’t united in hatred of its leaders.

Last week I read an article in The New York Times on Georgia’s potentially dangerous policy towards the North Caucasus, which I previously discussed here, and I noticed that Center for American Progress was putting together an extensive report to be released later in the month. The report is now online, and this is a introduction to their arguments. The authors, Samuel Charap and Cory Welt, present two possible scenarios for the future of the region. In the first, the conflicts continue unresolved and drag on indefinitely, and the other involves a “process of conflict transformation that reduces tensions, brings people together across the conflict lines, creates trust, builds trade links, and normalizes contacts among authorities.” When things are presented this way, there is no question that the second scenario is more desirable for all parties, but it’s not clear to me that the best way to realize it is for the U.S. to be more “proactive.”

The authors make some interesting proposals, but it is almost certainly the case that things have gone far enough that the separatist republics will never actually be part of Georgia again. Charap and Welt dispute this argument:

The August 2008 war and Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia clearly made progress more difficult. Some in Washington seem to have concluded that progress is now impossible and effectively thrown in the towel completely on conflict resolution. To be sure, we shouldn’t expect the conflicts to be resolved in the next few years. But this doesn’t imply that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are forever “lost” to Georgia. It also doesn’t mean that the choice is between permanent dismemberment and the immediate restoration of territorial integrity. Short-term progress is possible and indeed necessary to solve long-term problems.

It is possible that those are not the only choices, but everything in their recommendations rests on the assumption that there is an alternative. There is no doubt that Tbilisi would like to “reintegrate” the two territories in some fashion in the future, but what if that really will never happen? I agree that urging “strategic patience” creates an unreasonable expectation that Georgia can win over the populations of these territories through economic growth and development, but perhaps reintegration itself is an unreasonable expectation. The U.S. may be enabling Georgia to pursue unreasonable goals by lending it consistent support for reintegration.

The authors also describe at some length the problems with Georgia’s “engagement” policy with the North Caucasus:

Further, some of the Georgian government’s steps appear to have nothing to do with engagement. Official calls for issuing a recognition of the 19th century Circassian genocide and of an international boycott of the Sochi Olympics, which will be located just across the Psou River from Abkhazia, seem designed to stir the pot.

The Olympics face increasing criticism by many in the Circassian community, especially in the diaspora, for being held on the site of historical ethnic cleansing or genocide without acknowledgment of the location’s Circassian history. At the same time, some Circassians are mobilizing for a unified ethnic republic in the northwest Caucasus where they are currently divided into three separate federal units.

Official rhetoric on engagement also occasionally sounds more like calls for liberation of all the peoples of the Caucasus—Georgian and Russian citizens alike—from “subjugation, assimilation or annexation” at the hands of outside oppressors. President Saakashvili, in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in September 2010, called for “a united Caucasus” having “in common a deep, essential and undefeated aspiration for freedom” and asserted that this “one Caucasus… will one day join the European family of free nations, following the Georgian path.”

While Saakashvili underlined that this vision did not involve “changing borders,” his words clearly invoked the North Caucasus’ subjugation by the Russian Empire, Soviet-era oppression, the post-Soviet Chechen war, and the ongoing socioeconomic inequalities of the North Caucasus regions of the Russian Federation vis-à-vis the rest of Russia. President Saakashvili thus equated his own government’s interstate conflict with Russia to these struggles that are now manifest in terrorist bombs that result in the deaths of dozens of innocent civilians in the heart of Moscow. This was a deeply provocative statement despite the lofty but largely
meaningless and/or false rhetoric.  

In this context, then, Georgia’s engagement policy appears to Moscow to endorse lax cross-border security, promote separatism and possibly terrorism, cause grave international embarrassment to Russia and purposefully add to existing tensions between Georgia and Russia. All of this directly complicates the Georgian government’s stated goals of restoring dialogue with Russia and creating an environment conducive to conflict resolution.

Whatever other recommendations one wants to make, a key element to conflict resolution has to be a cessation of pointless provocations from the government that has everything to lose and nothing to gain through such actions. To their credit, Charap and Welt make a number of worthwhile recommendations on this question, but they assume that Tbilisi would be willing to accept them. Despite occasional signs of pragmatism, Saakashvili seems incapable of crafting a regional policy that is not openly confrontational and hostile to Russian interests. It is clearly a self-defeating approach, as it cannot compel Russia to change its policy, and it gives Moscow one pretext after another to maintain the status quo. Saakashvili has not only made it far more difficult to imagine the reintegration of the territories, but he seems intent on doing most of the things that will make reintegration impossible. If his policies are becoming a significant impediment to restoring normal relations between Georgia and Russia, perhaps 2011 is not the best time to attempt a concerted push for resolving the conflicts.