By Patricia H. Kushlis
I have been having an ongoing e-mail conversation about whether and what kind of influence the US and Western Europe can and should have on the political situation in Russia in view of the recent anti-government demonstrations protesting Putin’s cavalier changing places announcement last September and the well-documented and blatant electoral fraud in the December 4 parliamentary elections which was employed – almost Soviet style - to maintain his party in power.
No, this was not a send-in-the-NATO-tanks-as-Putin-plays-hardball-with-the-Russian-political-opposition sort of conversation. It was more about moral suasion and whether the new US Ambassador can have a positive influence on Russian internal politics at a time when the situation is more fluid than at any other period since 1991 only this time with Putin and his henchmen assuming the roles of the drunken coup-makers of twenty years ago.
What sort of influence can an Ambassador have on another country’s internal affairs – if at all? This is what the tough and broader question boils down to. Or should a US Ambassador in a country like Russia, China or even Syria confine his or her activities to dealing with the government in power as the best way to represent this country’s interests.
There’s been a fair amount of play in the US news media and American academia about soft power and the importance of an Ambassador’s role as the country’s chief public face or public diplomacy representative and what sort of message that individual sends or should send to the people and the government of the country to which he or she is accredited.
Gary Locke, US Ambassador to China, has recently become a folk hero because Locke, America’s first Chinese American Ambassador, went to the countryside to meet ordinary rural Chinese. A recent met-and-greet included a visit to the village of his ancestors – to the consternation of the Beijing officials who have strangled Chinese media coverage of his meetings with the people because apparently Locke is far more likeable than they are. The US media who accompanied him on his ancestral village pilgrimage - as a result perhaps - gave him far more prominent coverage than he would have received had the Chinese government not been so uptight.
I have to wonder why Chinese officialdom should fear Locke – I mean – it’s not as if he’s using the position to run for China’s first non-Communist president after all. But that’s another story.
McFaul and the Russians
Meanwhile, Russian officials were upset – and the political opposition heartened – when America’s new Ambassador to the Russian Federation Michael McFaul, who had arrived on a Saturday, began by meeting with democratic opposition leaders over the weekend before holding official meetings with the government at which time he may have presented his credentials for approval making his stay in the country official.
Now it’s true McFaul didn’t need to meet with anyone those first couple of days – but it is hard to imagine the Russian Foreign Minister, for instance, being willing to give him the time of day, let alone an official appointment, on a weekend. Weekends are weekends after all as well they should be.
In the Garden of the Beasts - Ambassador Dodd's dilemma
I recently finished reading Eric Larson’s In the Garden of the Beasts, a fascinating account of US Ambassador William E. Dodd’s assignment to Berlin from 1933-7 during Hitler’s consolidation of power. Larson’s archival research shows that the State Department saw its primary task as that of cementing a cooperative relationship with the German government regardless of that government’s odious political cast as the best way of protecting American interests. These interests boiled down to two: to ensure German repayment of war debts owed to US banks – and to spring American Jews and other citizens from detention after being picked up and roughed up by the Nazis as a result of their religious or perceived religious beliefs. (The Nazis did make some identity mistakes by the way.)
Dodd, a Roosevelt political appointee and an American historian who had taught at the University of Chicago was not a part of State’s then Ivy League circle. He came from humble origins, had spent a year as a student in Leipzig and was not disposed one way or another to the Nazis when he first arrived. As time continued, he became increasingly sickened at the regime’s treatment of the Jews including Jewish Americans resident in Germany as well as horrified by the Nazis’ own vicious party purge (The Night of the Long Knives) as a tiny group of fanatics gained absolute control over the country. This nightmare swirled around him in Kafkaesque fashion throughout his tenure there.
The question was how Dodd should best behave: his answer was to minimize contact and above all to refrain from public appearances with the Nazis as a way of demonstrating America’s displeasure with the repressive and brutal regime – a decision which cost him his job thanks to State’s then appallingly antediluvian leadership which thought otherwise.
Syria - Ford versus Asad
In a blog post on Sunday in FP, Middle East specialist Marc Lynch raises the question as to whether the US Embassy in Damascus should be closed and/or the highly visible Ambassador Robert Ford withdrawn. According to Lynch, State is considering closing the Embassy if, that is, the Syrian regime fails to guarantee its security. He concludes by arguing that the Embassy still has valuable work to do including developing and maintaining contacts with the embryonic opposition inside the country as well as the Syrian business community in preparation for a post-Asad era.
Lynch makes an excellent case for staying put - at least right now - but then there’s the flip side. Does the Obama administration really want to risk another Iran 1979 if the Asad regime decides it has more to gain by terrorizing Embassy staff than not? And what is the likelihood of this worst case scenario coming to pass?
I was not as enthralled with Ford’s highly publicized trip to Hama last summer as some others have been – a trip where he was greeted with flowers and olive branches by the anti-Asad opposition and strong condemnation thereafter by the government. If the goal, as stated, was a fact finding mission, wouldn’t it have been just as productive, if not more so, to send a mid-level political officer who would not have attracted the kind of attention Ford did?
That’s how the US covered unrest in the Baltic Republics in the years prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union: it sent in mid-level officers from the Embassy in Moscow and the Consulate in Leningrad almost on a rotational basis – not the Ambassador or even his Deputy. The US also met with Baltic leaders when they visited Moscow, Leningrad and Helsinki so that contact between the higher levels at the Embassy and the republics future leaders was not exactly cut off.
Aren’t there other just as effective ways to demonstrate displeasure with the actions of a repressive regime and to help a democratic opposition which are not so in-your-face? Seems to me there are very good times and places to wave the flag publicly. I’m not so sure that in the middle of someone else’s civil war is one of them.
This is not to say that countries do not meddle and have not meddled in other countries domestic affairs if they see it in their interest and this doesn’t mean enacting a military “solution.” The British and the French, for instance, supported the South during the US Civil War. AIPAC, the wealthy conservative Jewish lobbying organization does everything it can to gain US government support for the Israeli government and its' efforts are highly effective. These are just a few examples. They don't ensure success – but then neither does empty and sometimes counterproductive showing of the flag or worse, sending in the tanks.
But this takes me back to McFaul and Russia. The US has long operated on two tracks with respect to Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union. America’s heart is, and has long been, with the democratic opposition; its head, however, is with the need to maintain decent relations with the Russian or Soviet government whether run by Communist apparatchiks or ex-KGB officers masquerading as democrats for the purposes of world stability and nuclear nonproliferation.
As a consequence, when high level American officials visit Moscow they not only pay obligatory calls on government officials but they also meet with opposition leaders and address university students – events that may, or may not be covered by the official media but surely are broadcast by RFE and VOA and also transmitted virally through the Internet and cell phones by Russians themselves.
But here’s the problem: just as Ambassador Dodd was faced with the quandary as to how best to represent the US in Germany during the 1930s, so too are Ambassadors McFaul, Ford and Locke faced with similar dilemmas today. These decisions are not easy. They require both strategy and tactics and must be finely calculated and calibrated. Often there is no one right answer.
Effective use of soft power, however, is also not always in-your-face flag waving. This form of high level gamesmanship should be used judiciously and appropriately depending upon the circumstance.
