By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
So what do you think of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize? I?m nonplussed ? I admire his efforts toward Middle East peace, but the prize still seems very premature. What has he done?
Obama?s work on the Middle East, mostly through Senator Mitchell?s efforts, are sensible but haven?t produced any results yet. They certainly don?t match the intensive efforts that Bill Clinton made with his Middle East peace negotiations in the fall of 2000. Likewise, Obama?s efforts on nuclear non-proliferation are important, but they are purely an aspiration. All the hard work is yet to come ? and trying to renegotiate the NPT will be very hard indeed.
In other areas, Obama has done little. He?s been largely absent on Sudan, Congo, Burma and global poverty and health issues, and doesn?t even have a USAID administrator. I think he has the right instincts on these issues and expect him to get engaged, but shouldn?t the Nobel Peace Prize have a higher bar than high expectations? Especially when there are so many people who have worked for years and years on the front lines, often in dangerous situations, to make a difference to the most voiceless people of the world? I think of Dr. Denis Mukwege at the Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo, or Jo and Lyn Lusi at the Heal Africa Hospital also in eastern Congo, or Greg Mortenson traipsing all over Pakistan and Afghanistan to build schools, or Dr. Catherine Hamlin working for half a century to fight obstetric fistula and maternal mortality in Ethiopia, or so many others. In the light of that competition, it seems to me that it might have made sense to wait and give Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in his eighth year in office, after he has actually made peace somewhere.
In any case, I do hope that the Prize gives Obama a bit more political capital in his Middle East peace efforts, and a bit more confidence and willingness to bang heads there when necessary.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
What Does Russia Think?
If we want to deal with Russia, we need to understand it. But since the end of the Cold War the dominant discourse in the West has focused on what Russia lacks -- be it Western-style democracy, the rule of law, or property rights.
These may indeed be missing, but Russia has ways of justifying their absence or claiming that they are present in uniquely Russian forms. This may be just a cover story, but we need to look at the Russian debate to find out.
One thing is clear. Since the end of a period in the 1990s when anything that smacked of ideology was anathema, Vladimir Putin's Russia has been quietly rediscovering the power of ideas. Today's Russia has a lively intellectual debate that cites thinkers as diverse as Slavoj ?i?ek and Carl Schmitt, and also produces a range of domestic ideas on national identity, the Russian political system, modernization, globalization, and international politics.
"What Does Russia Think?" is a collection of essays by leading Russian political observers that was released this month by the European Council on Foreign Relations. The papers are the product of a conference of the same name held in Moscow on the eve of U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Russia in July, and they form a useful guide to the intellectual discussion currently going on in Russia.
In the Western media, the Russia debate is normally presented as a straightforward face-off between the regime's apologists and its liberal critics. But this masks a far more complex reality. The common ground shared by Putin's generation is neither liberal proselytism nor nostalgia for Stalinism, but the cumulative experience of the "20-year crisis" since the late perestroika era and the existential crisis produced by the unexpected independence of the Russian Federation in 1991.
Their worldview is shaped by what they see as a double failure - of both Soviet authoritarianism and of Boris Yeltsin's anarchic version of democracy.
The Putin Consensus
Vyacheslav Glazychev, a publisher and a member of Russia's Public Chamber, claims in his essay for the volume that "a fear of empty space" is the main underlying reason for supporting Putin. Free Russia NGO Union head Modest Kolerov identifies the secret of Putin's success in the fact that he is the first Russian leader to embody both a security and a social consensus -- restoring the power of the state after its near collapse in the 1990s and supposedly reigning in the oligarchs.
Both authors claim it is wrong to think of this consensus as a temporary aberration, soon to be replaced by a resurgent liberal elite. The "Putin consensus" is not just a transactional relationship based on high oil prices.
While Yeltsin's Russia was inclined to imitate Western models, the Russia of Putin and Dmitry Medvedev is trying to come up with a model of its own. As the essay by political scientist Leonid Polyakov shows, the overarching quest for most Russians is not to join the West, but to free themselves from the West. And in the long term, "the task before us is to turn Russia from an imitator of other civilizations into a model to be imitated by others."
Nevertheless, for the moment at least, the "Putin consensus" is still largely a negative phenomenon. The regime's intellectual supporters can agree on what they do not want, but they do not agree on what the Russian economy or society should look like in 10 or 20 years' time.
Center for Post-Industrial Studies director Vladislav Inozemtsev argues that "there is no consensus in favor of modernization. In most countries that have successfully modernized in recent years, there was a widespread feeling that the country was trailing not only the great powers but even its regional partners. However, the political elite claims that Russia is already successful, while a large part of the entrepreneurial class and the ruling bureaucracy derives its riches from oil and gas extraction and other resource-producing companies, and is therefore not interested in modernizing industry."
Inozemtsev continues: "There is little understanding of what modernization actually requires. Modernization is often confused with the development of a high-tech knowledge economy rather than improvements in manufacturing industry."
In the early stages of the global economic crisis, therefore, many in the West predicted that as the oil price collapsed, Russia's modernizing economists, such as Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin, would seek to patch things up with the West. "Ekspert" editor Valery Fadeev argues that the crisis has in fact strengthened the statist elements of the Putin consensus, leading the Kremlin to consolidate its grip on the economy and to clip the wings of various oligarchs. Moreover, the fatalism of Inozemtsev's piece shows how beleaguered economic reformers have become now that the price of oil has returned to over $70 a barrel.
Multipolar Or Unipolar?
Russian foreign policy is less stable, however. One important source of tension and ambiguity is that Russia is a status-quo power on a global level, but a revisionist power in Europe. The essay by Timofei Bordachev, of the online magazine "Russian Journal," shows that Russia's global policies are guided by its obsession with different models of polarity.
After the old Cold War bipolarity collapsed in 1991, Russia's overriding obsession has been opposing U.S. unipolarity with effective multipolarity, where all poles have sufficient resources to check one another. Moscow is therefore only interested in its status relative to other powers, in particular the United States. "Reset" diplomacy may therefore face real problems. If Russia's main goal is to prevent unipolarity, it is actually interested in a stronger Iran.
At the European level, however, Russia's ambitions are revisionist. First, the traditional fear of Russia's elites that its current borders are vulnerable -- hence its constant drive to surround itself with satellites or buffer states. Second is the psychological insecurity that Putin's elite developed in the 1990s. Third is resentment against European institutions that it feels are biased against Russia, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, and the European Court of Human Rights. A return to a state-centered Westphalian world is, in Russia's view, the only way to bring stability back to Europe.
In Moscow's view, the global economic crisis is an opportunity to realize some of these goals. It will reverse the process of globalization and strengthen the trend toward regionalization -- hence Russia's decreased interest in the World Trade Organization and its struggle for the post-Soviet space to be recognized as a sphere of its "privileged interests." Russia also expects the crisis to accelerate the decline of Washington's influence and of the EU's global relevance.
The EU will only be able to develop an effective approach to Moscow if its policymakers rediscover some of the curiosity for Russia's internal debates that they had during the Cold War. As the historian Vojtech Mastny has argued: ?If the Cold War and its ending demonstrated anything, it showed that beliefs can be as powerful as realities and illusions more compelling than interests.'
Andrew Wilson is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and a coeditor of the new volume "What Does Russia Think?" He was assisted in the preparation of this article by the volume's other editors: ECFR board member Ivan Krastev and ECFR Executive Director Mark Leonard. The views expressed in this commentary are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.
This piece was originally published by Radio Free Europe.
These may indeed be missing, but Russia has ways of justifying their absence or claiming that they are present in uniquely Russian forms. This may be just a cover story, but we need to look at the Russian debate to find out.
One thing is clear. Since the end of a period in the 1990s when anything that smacked of ideology was anathema, Vladimir Putin's Russia has been quietly rediscovering the power of ideas. Today's Russia has a lively intellectual debate that cites thinkers as diverse as Slavoj ?i?ek and Carl Schmitt, and also produces a range of domestic ideas on national identity, the Russian political system, modernization, globalization, and international politics.
"What Does Russia Think?" is a collection of essays by leading Russian political observers that was released this month by the European Council on Foreign Relations. The papers are the product of a conference of the same name held in Moscow on the eve of U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Russia in July, and they form a useful guide to the intellectual discussion currently going on in Russia.
In the Western media, the Russia debate is normally presented as a straightforward face-off between the regime's apologists and its liberal critics. But this masks a far more complex reality. The common ground shared by Putin's generation is neither liberal proselytism nor nostalgia for Stalinism, but the cumulative experience of the "20-year crisis" since the late perestroika era and the existential crisis produced by the unexpected independence of the Russian Federation in 1991.
Their worldview is shaped by what they see as a double failure - of both Soviet authoritarianism and of Boris Yeltsin's anarchic version of democracy.
The Putin Consensus
Vyacheslav Glazychev, a publisher and a member of Russia's Public Chamber, claims in his essay for the volume that "a fear of empty space" is the main underlying reason for supporting Putin. Free Russia NGO Union head Modest Kolerov identifies the secret of Putin's success in the fact that he is the first Russian leader to embody both a security and a social consensus -- restoring the power of the state after its near collapse in the 1990s and supposedly reigning in the oligarchs.
Both authors claim it is wrong to think of this consensus as a temporary aberration, soon to be replaced by a resurgent liberal elite. The "Putin consensus" is not just a transactional relationship based on high oil prices.
While Yeltsin's Russia was inclined to imitate Western models, the Russia of Putin and Dmitry Medvedev is trying to come up with a model of its own. As the essay by political scientist Leonid Polyakov shows, the overarching quest for most Russians is not to join the West, but to free themselves from the West. And in the long term, "the task before us is to turn Russia from an imitator of other civilizations into a model to be imitated by others."
Nevertheless, for the moment at least, the "Putin consensus" is still largely a negative phenomenon. The regime's intellectual supporters can agree on what they do not want, but they do not agree on what the Russian economy or society should look like in 10 or 20 years' time.
Center for Post-Industrial Studies director Vladislav Inozemtsev argues that "there is no consensus in favor of modernization. In most countries that have successfully modernized in recent years, there was a widespread feeling that the country was trailing not only the great powers but even its regional partners. However, the political elite claims that Russia is already successful, while a large part of the entrepreneurial class and the ruling bureaucracy derives its riches from oil and gas extraction and other resource-producing companies, and is therefore not interested in modernizing industry."
Inozemtsev continues: "There is little understanding of what modernization actually requires. Modernization is often confused with the development of a high-tech knowledge economy rather than improvements in manufacturing industry."
In the early stages of the global economic crisis, therefore, many in the West predicted that as the oil price collapsed, Russia's modernizing economists, such as Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin, would seek to patch things up with the West. "Ekspert" editor Valery Fadeev argues that the crisis has in fact strengthened the statist elements of the Putin consensus, leading the Kremlin to consolidate its grip on the economy and to clip the wings of various oligarchs. Moreover, the fatalism of Inozemtsev's piece shows how beleaguered economic reformers have become now that the price of oil has returned to over $70 a barrel.
Multipolar Or Unipolar?
Russian foreign policy is less stable, however. One important source of tension and ambiguity is that Russia is a status-quo power on a global level, but a revisionist power in Europe. The essay by Timofei Bordachev, of the online magazine "Russian Journal," shows that Russia's global policies are guided by its obsession with different models of polarity.
After the old Cold War bipolarity collapsed in 1991, Russia's overriding obsession has been opposing U.S. unipolarity with effective multipolarity, where all poles have sufficient resources to check one another. Moscow is therefore only interested in its status relative to other powers, in particular the United States. "Reset" diplomacy may therefore face real problems. If Russia's main goal is to prevent unipolarity, it is actually interested in a stronger Iran.
At the European level, however, Russia's ambitions are revisionist. First, the traditional fear of Russia's elites that its current borders are vulnerable -- hence its constant drive to surround itself with satellites or buffer states. Second is the psychological insecurity that Putin's elite developed in the 1990s. Third is resentment against European institutions that it feels are biased against Russia, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, and the European Court of Human Rights. A return to a state-centered Westphalian world is, in Russia's view, the only way to bring stability back to Europe.
In Moscow's view, the global economic crisis is an opportunity to realize some of these goals. It will reverse the process of globalization and strengthen the trend toward regionalization -- hence Russia's decreased interest in the World Trade Organization and its struggle for the post-Soviet space to be recognized as a sphere of its "privileged interests." Russia also expects the crisis to accelerate the decline of Washington's influence and of the EU's global relevance.
The EU will only be able to develop an effective approach to Moscow if its policymakers rediscover some of the curiosity for Russia's internal debates that they had during the Cold War. As the historian Vojtech Mastny has argued: ?If the Cold War and its ending demonstrated anything, it showed that beliefs can be as powerful as realities and illusions more compelling than interests.'
Andrew Wilson is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and a coeditor of the new volume "What Does Russia Think?" He was assisted in the preparation of this article by the volume's other editors: ECFR board member Ivan Krastev and ECFR Executive Director Mark Leonard. The views expressed in this commentary are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.
This piece was originally published by Radio Free Europe.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Russlands Militärpotential zwischen Großmachtanspruch und Wirklichkeit
Um den eigenen Großmachtanspruch zu untermauern, verbreitet die russische Führung spätestens seit der zweiten Amtszeit Putins das Bild einer militärischen Renaissance des Landes. Mit großem Pomp werden Paraden und Großübungen abgehalten sowie umfangreiche Rüstungsprogramme angekündigt. Trotzdem stellt lediglich das Nukleararsenal einen realen Pfeiler des russischen Großmachtanspruchs dar. Den konventionellen Streitkräften fehlt es zum einen an Fähigkeiten zur globalen Machtprojektion. Zum anderen leiden sie an veralteter Ausrüstung, mangelhaftem Training und einer überholten Einsatzkonzeption, wie der Georgienkrieg offenlegte. Diese Defizite sollen durch die neue Militärreform, die Moskau im Oktober 2008 ankündigte, überwunden werden. Vorgesehen ist, die Mobilisierungsarmee zu einer modern ausgerüsteten, besser ausgebildeten und flexibleren Einsatzarmee umzubauen. Auch wenn dies am grundlegenden Kräfteverhältnis gegenüber der Nato nur wenig ändern würde, könnte Moskau damit seine Vormachtstellung im postsowjetischen Raum weiter ausbauen. Daraus ergibt sich ein europäisches Interesse an der Wiederbelebung der konventionellen Rüstungskontrolle. Insgesamt sind die Chancen für eine umfassende Verwirklichung der Militärreform aber skeptisch einzuschätzen. Erstens werden Russlands finanzielle und rüstungsindustrielle Ressourcen kaum ausreichen, um den enormen Modernisierungsbedarf zu decken. Zweitens ist angesichts der demographischen Krise des Landes davon auszugehen, dass sich das Rekrutierungsproblem weiter verschärft. Drittens fehlt es bislang an einem kohärenten Anforderungsprofil für die Streitkräfte. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist davon auszugehen, dass die Kluft zwischen Großmachtanspruch und realen Fähigkeiten im militärischen Bereich mittelfristig weiterbestehen wird.
Quelle: SWP
Allow access, freedom for civil society
Human Rights Watch joined the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and 13 other groups in issuing a statement today calling on governments and companies that have recently gained access to Turkmenistan to use their connection to improve the lives of the country's more than 5 million people. The groups said these governments and companies should also press Turkmenistan to allow international civil society groups and human rights organizations to work in the country.
Human Rights Watch joined the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and 13 other groups in issuing a statement today calling on governments and companies that have recently gained access to Turkmenistan to use their connection to improve the lives of the country's more than 5 million people. The groups said these governments and companies should also press Turkmenistan to allow international civil society groups and human rights organizations to work in the country.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov took over the leadership on Turkmenistan at the end of 2006 promising reforms, but reports say that the country still holds many political prisoners, who suffer ill-treatment and torture and deplorable conditions. The media is severely restricted, and many people are not allowed to travel outside the country.
"The president took power promising to open up the country, but for the people who live there, little has changed," said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director for Human Rights Watch. "Turkmenistan's new partners should be making it clear that basic freedoms are a condition of their friendship."
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov took over the leadership on Turkmenistan at the end of 2006 promising reforms, but reports say that the country still holds many political prisoners, who suffer ill-treatment and torture and deplorable conditions. The media is severely restricted, and many people are not allowed to travel outside the country.
"The president took power promising to open up the country, but for the people who live there, little has changed," said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director for Human Rights Watch. "Turkmenistan's new partners should be making it clear that basic freedoms are a condition of their friendship."
Monday, June 8, 2009
New try
Hm, always reading blogs but still not able to produce some by my own.
This should change! Therefore I will try to be more active in blogging about personal stuff regarding my interests. So stay tuned ....
—Posted via iphone
This should change! Therefore I will try to be more active in blogging about personal stuff regarding my interests. So stay tuned ....
—Posted via iphone
Thursday, February 19, 2009
You have to watch this
This is a very interesting video, not only for the ones who love numbers and statistics :-)
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Küppersbusch ist wieder da !
Ein nettes kurzes Video mit Küppersbusch: Er hat von seiner Bissigkeit nix verloren :-)
Zwischen Tür und Angel: Friedrich Kueppersbusch from politik-digital on Vimeo.
Zwischen Tür und Angel: Friedrich Kueppersbusch from politik-digital on Vimeo.
Austrian Police spied for Kazakh Government
Austrian media report today that two policemen were arrested yesterday. They are accused of spying for the Kazakh Government concerning official investigations against R. Aliyev, who is living in Vienna.
Aliyev, former Deputy Foreign Minister and Ex- son-in-law of the Kazakh President, might be put on trial at an Austrian court for kidnappning, conspirancy and corruption.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
OSCE Chairmanship 2010
After my interview at DW on the Constitutional Amendments in KAZ and some good thoughts by friends from KAZ regarding this issue, I am now preparing a survey for Western political key players, what they expect from the OSCE Chairmanship 2010
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Kazkhstan's law reforms and the OSCE
Gave an interview today for the Central Asia programme of Deutsche Welle (Russian) concerning the President's signature on the Constitutional Reforms in Kazakhstan.
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