Michael Moynihan’s article, framing Chavez’s power-grab and the upcoming Russian elections as evidence of “the Cold War’s return,” wouldn’t merit much comment, except that he makes this claim as he tries to tell his audience why they should care about what happens in the domestic politics of other countries:

Despite their obvious contempt for democratic institutions, both leaders still command a disturbing, though hardly overwhelming, level of Western support; defenders who will doubtless welcome a Chavez or Putin electoral victory and retrenchment.

He cites John Laughland’s TAC article on Putin (not available online) and a couple HuffPo columnists.  I’ll leave the latter until another time or perhaps to someone else, because the columns are available online and can be judged for themselves.  Moynihan attributes to Laughland “support” for Putin that would make him “welcome” electoral victory and retrenchment for United Russia, when Laughland’s article is an attempt to provide some balance and perspective about Putin’s regime, about which there have been more than a few breathless and hysterical Reason articles in the past.  There was no question of welcoming or dreading United Russia’s victory, since every informed person knows it is certain to happen and is a fact that should be viewed with some dispassion.  For some people, attempting to understand foreign governments and leaders in a sober way–free of provocative references to the start of another Cold War–is evidence of endorsement and support and “defense” of a foreign government.  To the extent that these observers want to avoid hostility and conflict between the West and these other governments, they will try to get past the (frequently self-serving) propaganda that would seek to make every insufficiently (or, in the case of Russia and Venezuela, arguably excessively) democratic government around the world into a dire threat or villains to be opposed. 

We should be clear about a few things.  No one needs to applaud Putin’s authoritarian populism (and no one is applauding it) to understand why it prevails in Russia and will continue to do so, no matter how many hectoring Western articles are writtenn against it, and that it is part of the political reality of our time.  We can respond to it rationally and according to our interests, which dictate that we do not get into another escalating confrontation with Russia, or we can respond to it viscerally and stoke such fruitless confrontation by making the internal politics of Russia our business. 

Since Laughland’s article isn’t online, it is difficult for non-subscribers to check Moynihan’s claim that it offers support and defense of Putin.  It seeks to get past caricature and vilification, yes, but the article is generally descriptive, not apologetic.  It allows Putin to speak for himself, rather than having Western pundits impute motives to him based on their own preoccupations with curtailing Russian power and backing U.S. hegemony in Eurasia.  If I were someone preoccupied with vilifying a foreign government, I might also find this “disturbing,” since it interferes with the generally unified message from Western media that we must fear and loathe Russia under Putin.   

Laughland starts by noting the excessive demonisation that seems to be focused on certain Slavic nations (typically when their governments do not play ball with Washington):

Is there such a thing as Slavophobia?  To be sure, not all Slavic nations are vilified in the West, but the recent demonization of the Serbs and Russians has an especially vicious quality….the Western mind attributes to them the most sinister of motives, as  if they were the embodiment of evil itself.

He then describes a meeting he had with Putin, noting:

The contrast between the image of Putin in the West and Putin in the flesh could hardly be greater.

This would almost have to be true, since the image promoted by many Western pundits is that of Stalin risen from the grave. 

Laughland says later:

Lack of ideology is the new Russian ideology, and Putin has a lot to be non-ideological about.  In his eight years in power, Russia has gone from being a semi-bankrupt state to having the largest gold reserves in the world and some $300 billion in foreign currency reserves besides….The Putin boom cannot be reduced to oil and gas revenues alone, for it has lifted many sectors and many different regions of this, the largest country in the world….Putin specifically referred to the abandonment of ideology during his long talk with us [bold mine-DL].  Asked what Russia’s role should now be in the world, he replied that neither the Tsarist model of support for Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire nor the Soviet model of support for socialism were remotely appropriate for Russia today.  Lenin, he said, had cared nothing for Russia itself but only for world revolution.  Putin spoke firmly to as he told us, “I have no wish to see our people, and even less our leadership, seized by missionary ideas.  We need to be a country that in every way has a healthy self-respect and can stand up for its interests but a country that is at the same time able to reach agreements and be a convenient partner for all members of the international community.”  Putin sees it as his mission to make Russia a normal country.

Again, this is not “lauding”–it is describing what has happened and quoting what Putin says.  Now you can be skeptical, and we should always be skeptical when politicians say any of these things, but the point of Laughland’s article is to report what Putin said at this meeting, to try to understand the current Russian government as one that is not nearly so far removed from modern Europe as its critics would make it out to be and to appeal to people in the West to be more reasonable in their attitudes towards the Russian government.  As both Moynihan and Laughland would acknowledge, the current form of regime in Russia is not going anywhere anytime soon.  It is realism and common sense to see Putin and Russia as something other than “villainous” (Moynihan’s word for Putin) enemies to be thwarted and checked.  Putin and Putinism will remain, so it is probably wiser to seek a modus vivendi rather than endlessly provoking and perturbing Moscow.  If that constitutes a “defense” of Putin, we have watered down the meaning of apologetics pretty thoroughly. 

For the record, I don’t approve of Putin’s squelching of independent media and most of his so-called “managed democracy,” and I don’t approve of Saakashvili and Musharraf’s declarations of emergency rule and everything that goes with them, but what ought to matter most in determining our relations with all these states are our interests and theirs and the points of agreement between them.  Where Putin’s rule has been promoting stability in Russia, Saakashvili and Musharraf have promoted instability and have in the process jeopardised real U.S. interests in their respective regions.  It seems to me that Americans should be a great deal more concerned with what our feckless client states are doing that may harm U.S. interests, and we should be much less concerned with what a very powerful potential ally does within its own borders.  Most pundits and politicians in America seem to have this exactly backwards.

Jim Antle notes that Ron Paul’s campaign has raised over $10 million this quarter. The campaign could reach its goal of $12 million before the next fundraising day, which had been announced as December 16 in commemoration of the Boston Tea Party.

To hear the pronouncements about Ukraine that issue from that establishment’s nodes every time the country makes it through another election without mass violence, you’d think this was Switzerland. Brussels and Washington pat Ukraine on the head for its ‘maturity’ and its ‘evolving democracy’. The smart locals know they live in a klepto-oligarchy, and that the West will trumpet Ukraine’s ‘robust democratic culture’ as long as capital keeps flowing in and out of the country. It’s meaningful that every time populist Ukrainian politicians have made noises about renationalising industrial properties stolen by oligarchs, the screaming from the West has been such to make you think a return to Stalinist terror had been proposed.

And it’s telling to watch Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the Orange revolution’s villain restored now to power, smiling a thousand-watt smile as he consorts with sheepish Western leaders. He knows where his bread gets buttered. Ukraine has achieved that sine qua non of the second-tier country whose elite wants to prosper in the global order — it’s managed to unlink politics from the economy. ~Andrey Slivka

Ross wrote:

Without the two of them [Huckabee and Paul], you’d have a field whose ideological spectrum runs from Steven Moore to Grover Norquist on domestic policy, and from Michael Ledeen to Norman Podhoretz on foreign affairs. There would be greater party unity, sure, but sometimes unity’s just another word for self-marginalization. I don’t think Huckabee and Paul are the ideal candidates to jolt the GOP out of its ideological rut, but they’re better than nothing.

I agree entirely with the sentiment here, and I have made a similar point before:

I don’t like Huckabee, and I don’t want him to do well, but both he and Paul drive different parts of the establishment crazy and could throw the entire race into disarray, which would be a good thing for many reasons.

But I think Ross is being a little hard on the Republicans.  They are a “big tent” party, after all.  Their ideological spectrum on foreign affairs easily runs all the way from Victor Davis Hanson to Michael Rubin.  The breadth is truly remarkable.

Will Huckabee and Paul actually jolt the party out of its rut?  Certainly, you can say that it’s far too early to know for sure.  Even so, aside from their sowing of some electoral chaos in the early states and giving mainstream pundits conniption fits, which is all fine by me, what are the odds that the establishment will take the growing success of these candidacies as evidence that the establishment needs to change and adjust to address the constituencies these candidates represent?  What will stop the party establishment from giving both the third degree in the conservative media (treatment that has only just begun for Huckabee), squash their perceived ‘heresies’ on economics, trade and foreign policy and carry on as if nothing had happened?  One major repudiation at the polls hasn’t managed to snap them out of it, so what does the GOP actually learn from Huckabee and Paul?  They learn to exclude candidates like them from the debates early on.  The party will not try to co-opt Huckabee’s protectionism or Paul’s non-interventionism, because as far as the party leadership is concerned these positions are completely unacceptable.  However, all of this may credit Huckabee with more envelope-pushing than he deserves.  Instead of jolting the party out of a rut, most of his campaign seems to be aimed at easing the GOP back into the sinkhole of Bushism from which some are desperately trying to escape. 

In many respects, Huckabee’s policy ideas–to the extent that they are actually ideas and not just sentimental gestures–are “compassionate conservatism”/Gersonism risen from the dead (try as we might, we seem unable to kill this flesh-eating zombie of an ideology).  Did I mention that I don’t like Huckabee?  The extent to which Huckabee succeeds will measure how captivated the GOP rank and file are by the strange lure of Bush Era “conservatism” that Ross described here.  Ross’ thesis back at the start of the year was this:

Since the Republicans’ stinging defeat in the 2006 midterm elections, Bush’s distinctive ideological cocktail—social conservatism and an accommodation with big government at home, and a moralistic interventionism abroad—has similarly been derided by many as political poison. The various ingredients of “Bushism,” it’s been argued, have alienated fiscal hawks and foreign-policy realists, Catholics and libertarians—in short, everyone but the party’s evangelical base.

But someone must have forgotten to tell the GOP presidential field. If you consider how the nation’s most ambitious Republicans are positioning themselves for 2008, Bushism looks like it could have surprising staying power.

The rise of Huckabee to date is strong evidence that Ross was right that the poisonous cocktail of Bushism(-Gersonism) may well be here to stay, at least in the near term.  Paul’s insurgent campaign offers the small hope that there is some resistance to this tendency within the GOP.

At what point do we stop granting Giuliani the prestige of being called “the frontrunner”?  He receives this title on account of misleading national polls.  In the first four states, he is usually behind, in some cases quite badly.  In Iowa, he is tied for third.  Iin New Hampshire, he is at best a distant second.  In Michigan, he is barely leading the Michigan native Romney–it seems unlikely that he will retain that perch if he drops the first two states.  Accordng to the latest polling in South Carolina, his supposed “firewall” state, he is in fifth….behind McCain!  When McCain is beating you in South Carolina, it’s time to start thinking about another line of work.

Update: That Clemson poll is apparently worthless.  Earlier polls have shown Giuliani doing reasonably well, and now there is one showing him marginally in the lead.  The Clemson poll seems to have completely misrepresented the state of the Democratic race as well.  Via Michael Crowley.  I still think Giuliani’s chances are poor, but he probably isn’t doing as badly in South Carolina as he appeared to be. 

That is supposed to leave Romney and Huckabee (this week it’s a three-man race, when just weeks ago the former Arkansas governor was only considered half a candidate until voters started to have something to say about it).  Voters are now supposed to choose between a fraud and a huckster.  It seems improbable to me that Huckabee can win New Hampshire (Ross is right), and I don’t think he will even manage second place.  The trouble with any plan for Huckabee’s success is that Huckabee’s campaign will sooner or later start running out of money, and he doesn’t seem to be raising nearly enough to remain competitive.  Meanwhile, the candidates with the money seem to get less popular the more people have a chance to see them up close.  I suppose someone has to win, but it’s not at all clear to me how any of the current three in the “three-man race” do that.  Can one of the others take advantage of this?  At this point, I really have no idea.   

P.S.  I still don’t believe a Giuliani-Huckabee ticket will ever happen for some of the reasons stated above, but that idea that Ross floated many, many months ago looks a lot more clever today, while my dismissive retort to the same is looking rather less so.

P.P.S.  In case someone hasn’t already mentioned this, it’s worth noting that Huckabee’s leap to the top in Iowa makes the NRLC’s endorsement of Thompson look even worse and more bizarre than it already was.

Since it has become a point of contention, it might be instructive to note that Trevino’s rather uncharitable view of the Esphigmenou matter has some relation to his disrespect for the Patriarchate of Moscow, since the latter has interceded on behalf of the monks of Esphigmenou in the past and has already, according to Kathimerini, reasonably called for the Ecumenical Patriarchate “to abstain from irrational measures and the use of force.”  That seems like a fair request to me.

Trevino calls me a “fan of Esphigmenou die-hards,” for which he has no proof, and I never said that I was “immunized” from anything.  It was Trevino’s baseless accusation that I had endorsed schismatics that led me to point out just how wrong he was.  Once again: I do not “endorse” the monks at Esphigmenou.  I object to the way they have been treated, as do many of the monks on Mt. Athos.  Since they have been making their protest against Constantinople for four decades, during which time the Patriarchate has not seen fit to expel them, it seems strange that it has suddenly become a burning issue that now must be resolved with coercion and force.  His parting insult against Patriarch Alexei is typical of those die-hards who would rather go into schism than see the Russian Church united.  Were I to follow his rather dreary reasoning, I suppose his remarks would make him a “fan” of the opponents of reconciliation.  That would be absurd, but that is the sort of argument that Trevino has been making.  If insults against hierarchs and slanders against fellow Orthodox represent Trevino’s style of representing Orthodoxy in the public square, I’m not sure how it helps. 

Update: As Trevino must know, the criticism against Patriarch Alexei for his alleged past KGB associations is revived and kept alive by those who would like to keep demonising the Moscow Patriarchate and who sought to prevent the reconciliation that was already long overdue. Insulting a hierarch of the Church is all well and good, provided that it isn’t a hierarch whom he likes.  The monks’  ecclesiological protest at least has some rationale behind it, whether you think them to be in the right or not.

I used to like Josh Trevino, too, and I was unaware that my views–which haven’t changed an iota since I started writing this blog–seemed so terribly false and misguided to him.  They apparently weren’t so false when he invited me to participate in our now-defunct group blog, Enchiridion Militis, for whose successor, What’s Wrong With the World, I am pleased to still be a contributing member.  Something changed, but I don’t think I was the one who changed.  Ron Paul really does bother these people, doesn’t he?   

In fact, I had no idea that Trevino supported attempting to starve and expel monks from their monastery (the treatment that has been afforded to the monks of Esphigmenou for their refusal to commemorate the Patriarch of Constantinople), nor did I realise that he favoured constitutional usurpation.  Evidently, he does, or he has strong objections to those who are opposed to both.  For the record, I have linked to the site of Holy Esphigmenou Monastery because I have found it disgraceful that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has resorted to the use of state coercion and violence to impose its authority over the monks there.  I have not written about it on the blog before, but I feel compelled now to say something.  If the monks of Esphigmenou are in the wrong canonically and legally, as they may be (it is actually not my place to say), the way they have been treated has nonetheless been a scandal and an embarrassment.  Even if I did not regard ecumenism as an error, I would think that the treatment meted out to the monks of Esphigmenou would merit the sympathy of Orthodox Christians, even if they disagreed with the monks’ stand.  Until I had been (it seems to me pretty baselessly) accused of sympathy for schism, I have never once written a single word disparaging the Patriarch of Constantinople or lending support to the monks of Holy Esphigmenou Monastery, and I will not say more against the Ecumenical Patriarchate now.  I am obviously such a proponent of schism that I have written manyposts againstattacks on the bishops of the Russian Church Abroad for their willingness to reunite with the Patriarchate of Moscow, and I am such a fan of the “dead purity of antiquity” that I have been a vocalsupporter of the reunion of the separated parts of the Russian Church.  If I were what Mr. Trevino claims that I am in the sphere of religion, I would have broken with the Russian Church and joined a splinter group by now.  Mr. Trevino is simply wrong here, and he has to have known that he was grasping at straws when he made this charge.  This is all the more sad because it is pretty obviously spurred on by political and policy differences.

Trevino writes:

Too many Orthodox Christian converts in America — and especially those who participate in the public square — seem pulled toward perceived originalism or anachronism in the political realm. This has the appearance of being motivated by the same aesthetic sensibility that appears to draw them toward Orthodoxy: the sense of a necessary fidelity to the foundational faith is basically the same, translated from the religious to the political sphere. But in both spheres, it leads them to falsehood.

Mr. Trevino’s objections to my and others’ support for Ron Paul are no more credible.  If there are cases where Ron Paul’s constitutional views are not perfect, his willingness to adhere to the Constitution according to strict constructionist and originalist interpretations–the interpretations conservatives are supposed to respect and follow–is so much greater than that of his rivals that it seems absurd that someone could find fault with him for lacking in fidelity to the Constitution.  Which candidate can Trevino find who is more faithful to more provisions of the Constitution?  Of course, there is none.  It is not as if Trevino has found himself a more faithful constitutionalist whom he can support–his complaints against Paul on this score are basically groundless.  Not that it matters, but my affinity for strict constructionism and constitutionalism predated my conversion to Orthodoxy by many years.  My embrace of Orthodoxy was a result of coming to recognise, through the working of the Holy Spirit, that it was the fullness of Christian revelation.  It has nothing to do with being drawn toward the “dead purity of antiquity,” and no one should know that better than a fellow convert to Orthodoxy.  

Trevino’s appeal to living Orthodox tradition is all very well and good, but then he has no evidence whatever that I disagree with this understanding of Orthodoxy.  I find it more than a little bizarre that he opts to attack fellow Orthodox in this fashion over what appears to be primarily a political disagreement.  The implication inherent in his remarks that we should also embrace some “living Constitution” interpretation of our fundamental law is a perfect example of what is wrong with conservatives who strive to evolve and adapt with the times. 

He cites the Carlton quote on foreign policy that has been harmful to our fellow Orthodox around the world and calls it “ridiculous.”  He does not actually dispute that U.S.-backed policies in Kosovo and Israel-Palestine contribute to persecution and hardship for our brethren, but simply dismisses it.  Perhaps the churches and monasteries that have been destroyed by the KLA do not concern him?  He does not dispute the reality that Iraqi Christians were better off before the invasion, because he cannot dispute this.  In short, he has no rebuttal.  He speaks of an “abdication of moral sense” concerning the governments of Serbia and Russia, when it is nothing of the kind. 

My opposition to meddling in Serbian and Russian affairs comes, and has always come, from a non-interventionist and realist-informed view that their affairs are none of our business and that American interests are best served by not interfering and destabilising the Balkans still more and by not provoking and threatening Russia by meddling in its “near-abroad.”  I am fully aware of and opposed to the repression that has taken place in Milosevic’s Serbia and Putin’s Russia, but I am also aware that it is not in our national interest to quarrel with these states over their internal affairs.  For that matter, we should stop meddling in Georgian affairs and leave the Orthodox in Georgia well enough alone as well.  Trevino again has no evidence that either Prof. Carlton or I have abdicated our moral sense.  He takes our opposition to hegemonism as proof that we are somehow endorsing every practice of the foreign governments in question, when our responsibility as citizens is to challenge the misguided policies of our government.

In tonight’s debate McCain lambasted Ron Paul for “isolationism” of the kind that “led to caused WWII.”  Since the topic in question was the war in Iraq, James notes that this was an absurd comparison.  But leave aside how far-fetched the comparison was.  Just consider the thinking behind this.  Interventionists routinely complain that their opponents “blame America first,” but there is no more obvious attempt to blame America for something for which our country was not responsible than the outrageous lie that our “failure” to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or our “failure” to join the League of Nations–the usual charges against American “isolationism”–led to caused WWII.  If this were a true charge, that would be one thing, but it isn’t even accurate. 

Let’s be very clear about this: WWII in Europe came out of revanchism stoked by resentments over the post-WWI settlements and in both Europe and Asia resulted from the territorial revisionism of second-tier powers as they tried to become great powers.  The way that WWI ended and the way the effectively losing side was treated had a significant impact on interwar political developments inside Germany that had nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy during the 1920s and 1930s.  To the extent that America was involved with German affairs during this period, we were attempting to lighten the burden of the reparations and ameliorate the radicalising effects of the Treaty on German public opinion.  Had America belonged to the League of Nations, it would not have made the League any more effective at deterring Japanese aggression in Asia, Italian aggression in Africa or German aggression in Europe.  Furthermore, it is a caricature and a distortion of interwar U.S. foreign policy to refer to it as “isolationist.”  Our government was regularly involved in diplomatic activity, international relief efforts and international renegotiations of the terms of reparations under Versailles.  The Dawes Plan was not the product of an “isolationist” government, whatever you might think of its merits.  The Kellogg-Briand Treaty that “outlawed war” was quite stupid and pointless, but it was not the product of “isolationism.”  When hawks such as McCain complain about “isolationism,” they are complaining about a refusal to send Americans to fight and die in wars that usually have nothing to do with the United States.  By that standard, then, America was “isolationist” in this period, and we should be proud of it.  But by any honest assessment of U.S. foreign policy during this era, “isolationism” is a complete misnomer for what happened under the Harding, Coolidge and even Hoover administrations. 

Update: Via Cilizza, I see that McCain also said something else to Ron Paul, which I must have missed at the time: “We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude and appeasement.”  Of course, “we” did not “allow” Hitler to come to power, since Hitler came to power by being appointed Chancellor following elections in which his party won a plurality.  The attitudes and views of foreigners were utterly immaterial to Hitler’s rise to power.  Practically everything McCain said was just plain wrong.

This House has noted the Prime Minister’s remarkable transformation from Stalin to Mr Bean in the past few weeks. ~Vince Cable

Via James Forsyth