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Russian Roundup: Is the new Russia the old Russia? Or is Putin’s Russia something we haven’t seen before?

By Patricia H Kushlis

In a talk in Washington, DC last April, Strobe Talbot, Russian expert, journalist and former Deputy Secretary of State, described Vladimir Putin as a consummate risk taker, an excellent tactician but a poor strategist.  Putin’s dream of recreating the Soviet Union, its predecessor the Russian Empire or something like a Russian Orthodox ultranationalist caliphate whereby the Kremlin protects Russian-speakers regardless of location is just that, a dream.  It’s without a realistic vision, devoid of planning, in need of a reality check and, if continued economists predict, will bankrupt the country in approximately two years. (Photo left: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Moscow, Dec 1991 by PHKushlis)

Is Vladimir Putin crazy – as a couple of people here in Santa Fe have recently asked me - or is he only paranoid with a dash of megalomania thrown in?

Regardless, his behavior is so bizarre that the US and Europe need to be on guard.  I agree with Ambassador James Goodby in his recent article in the November 2014 Foreign Service Journal. I don’t see the Cold War returning. If nothing more, the Russian Federation is too weak. Besides Putin’s Russia has no ideology capable of attracting a worldwide audience as the siren song of Communism once did.

But . . .

Nibbling away at a neighbor’s territory violates basic OSCE principles.  The Russian Federation agreed to uphold those principles in 1991. The OSCE grew out of the earlier 1975 Helsinki Accords which, by the way, were the brainchild of the Soviet Union.  And the Russian Federation is its internationally recognized successor state.         

Not only is a bankrupt state dangerous to a country’s health, its people and the ‘hood, but it can threaten a leader’s own domestic longevity.  The Russian people have taken to the streets before – and despite the Kremlin’s seemingly successful efforts to squash them, they could do so again.  The large Moscow demonstrations in 2012 were in reaction to blatant electoral fraud in favor of Putin’s party in the  December 4 parliamentary elections.  Yet then the economy was doing well - the Russian people had never had it so good and the Kremlin crackdown on popular dissent worked – but that’s not the case now.  Empty refrigerators do not forebode well for long term political stability.  And Russian agriculture has certain climatic limitations - global warming not withstanding.  Frankly, Russian agricultural production was never all that strong and certainly not in the fresh fruit and vegetables departments.

Palace Coup?

A palace coup is not unthinkable especially in a country like Russia. The Bolsheviks did not gain power through popular elections in 1917.  Mr. Putin should also not forget that a failed coup in August 1991 brought down the Soviet Union despite the George H.W. Bush Administration’s efforts to keep the Gorbachev government in power and the country whole  - except as the record shows - for the Baltics which the US considered as illegally incorporated into the Soviet Union. Come to think of it, isn't the way the Soviet Union gobbled up the three small Baltic countries rather like Russia's take over of Crimea in March?               

Unlike 1998, when Russia was faced with a huge financial crisis and the US and others helped rescue the country; or even in 1989, when the Soviet Union was printing money like it had gone out of style and the US supported Gorbachev for fear that hard liners would oust him, this time it’s obvious that the US will keep the derecks pumping at full speed. So too, apparently, will the Saudis.

Lower energy prices puts more money into American pockets and lower energy costs should profit US businesses.  And this, in turn, will enrich the American government’s own coffers. 

Dirty Old King Coal

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

It was lovely to look at.  A bold white streak caught between blue sky and blue ocean!  A long string of hotels and resorts glimmering in the sun!  We were approaching the Florida coastline, and soon I was gazing down on roofs and terraces as my flight continued due west toward the airport in Fort Lauderdale last week.  

I’m a lover of wild beaches.  Once upon a time my consciousness would have been dominated by thoughts of over-development.  Not last week.  I'd been reading of studies that show how glaciers are melting in Alaska.  Also travel writers’ effusions about a Northwest passage now open to luxury cruises.  Result for Florida: water no longer captured as eternal polar ice has already imposed higher sea levels that Miamians are finding it hard to cope with.

Walking along the beach a few days later, I came upon a yellow earthmover building a little berm in front of one property.  A three foot wall of loose sand!  How long will it last when the next hurricane arrives?  How pathetic!  Like the general response so far to the inexorable warming of the earth.

Florida's Doom

Sadly, it’s hard to imagine what Floridians, who occupy a vast, low-lying sand sprit,  can do about their very real jeopardy.  The challenge of protecting endless hundreds of miles of properties—hotels, resorts, homes, whole cities—makes the task of protecting New Orleans seem like a Legoland game. 

No doubt some of the global warming that’s underway is downright cosmic and beyond human control.  But much has been caused by the industrialization that has so enormously improved our standard of living—and the good news today is that humans can enjoy these benefits without generating the greenhouse gases that warm the earth unnecessarily. (To say nothing of lung-clogging soot.)  Yes, the warming curve can be flattened, and the sooner we humans take that job seriously, the better for the life-sustaining qualities of earth.  Then what’s the obstacle to meaningful action?  Short term political and economic profiteering make it almost impossible to mobilize an effort that is much more effective, locally- and globally-speaking, than the sand-shifting of that poor little bulldozer on the beach at Ft. Lauderdale.

Maybe Floridians can’t protect the entire state from oceanic encroachment, but they can support efforts to save a good bit of the world we love.  It’s in their own interest, after all. Sooner or later, the people of Florida, like the residents of the Pacific isles, are going to need a receptive landscape to move to.  Unfortunately climate issues don’t seem to play the dominant role in Florida politics.

China Wakes Up

At least China seems to have awakened from its smoggy slumber, if only because its own citizens are beginning to demand action and China seeks civic order above all.  Efforts are being made to reduce air and water pollution, and the Chinese have invested so massively in alternative energy that Chinese products dominate the solar power industry even in the U.S.  Doing well by doing good.  Which is not to say that the Chinese don't continue to mine some particularly noxious types of coal.  And cars in Beijing had to be grounded to make the air breathable during President Barack Obama’s visit to China two weeks ago.
 
The highlight of those US-China discussions  was a disingenuously tepid climate accord focused on green house gas emissions.  Critics say it won’t accomplish much  more than what could be expected from existing declarations, treaties and agreements, but (1) it allows China and America to agree about something, which is a good thing, and (2) it forms a useful foundation, a springboard even, for broader negotiations scheduled to begin in Paris next year. Anything on paper is better than nothing.  References to democratic processes in moribund Constitutions have been known to spring alive and unseat autocrats.   

Coal Belt Politics

Among those ridiculing the Obama-Xi accord is the soon-to-be-Senate-Majority-Leader Mitch McConnell, who owes his electoral success to the support of his state’s ultra-powerful coal industry.  If any state is under the thumb of King Coal, it’s Kentucky, though West Virginia comes close.  Coal-mining pollutes rivers and streams; coal-burning pollutes the air with lung-ravaging soot and greenhouse gases, but it’s profitable enough to underwrite supporters’ political campaigns and destroy the electoral chances of environmentally-conscious candidates.  Should the Republicans have gained control of  the White House as well as Congress if and when a climate-protecting treaty is written in Paris, don’t expect the U.S. to sign on, however reasonable or scientifically sound the terms of the accord may be.  

Perhaps Mitch should move to India when he tires (or gets kicked out) of American politics.  King Coal rules happily there, with all the usual ill effects.   Some years ago life in New Delhi was greatly improved when municipal buses emitting enormous clouds of black exhaust gave way to transport powered by natural gas, but it will take a lot more than that to make Delhi’s air salubrious, especially in the winter.  Meanwhile, the forests and waters of Eastern India are being ravaged, thanks to mining permits that are issued with no regard for the environment or the wishes of the surrounding population.  The scale of this politically-corrupt depredation is so enormous that a recent news story merited this title: “Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance on Climate Change.”   Read the article to learn of the horrendous impact of unrestrained mining in the area of Dhanbad in the  state of Jharkhand

Oddly enough. the article failed to mention another, equally calamitous effect of coal mining gone mad: insurrection.   A long-running Marxist rebellion in the Eastern hills of India was sparked and continues to be fed by irresponsible mineral extraction in areas inhabited by tribal peoples who value their hills and forests as essential to a way of life.  Unfortunately these people are poor and politically impotent.  They can’t compete with the coal cartels that pay for votes, influence and contracts. Hence, the seemingly endless and relentlessly expanding rebellion.

Water Wars

So far as that goes,  I am a bit surprised that the people of West Virginia and Kentucky haven’t taken to direct action to protect their beloved natural surroundings from corporate predators and land-levelers that make those bulldozers in St. Lauderdale look like so many tiny ants.  On the other hand, coal belt politicians haven’t done much to modernize these state economies.  Few alternative jobs exist and most people don’t like to starve.  

From time to time, climate experts express concerns about social unrest and violence should food supplies begin to suffer from repeated or extended droughts caused by global warming.  Globe-spanning competition for scarce agricultural resources will make the water wars of the 19th century American West look like child’s play.  It’s time to stage an irreversible coup against King Coal and replace the politicians beholden to the coal industry with representatives who know that it's cool to keep the earth cool.

         

Elections 2014: A Really Nice Experience in an Otherwise Dismal Day

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I spent November 4 working as an election official at a precinct in a nearby Pueblo.  The precinct is in Santa Fe County, about 20 miles north from the city of Santa Fe.  I’d worked there before – in June for the primaries.  At that time, the most difficult part was finding the site itself.  Google and maps on the Internet didn’t help.  It’s not there.

Several years ago when I lived in Albuquerque – 60 miles south – I’d worked at two different precincts, first as a Democratic poll watcher for a hotly contested election which went into recount, later as an election official at a well to do urban precinct co-located for voting purposes with three other wealthy precincts at a church.

Those precincts were distinctive enough, but in no way did the  voters at the pueblo precinct reflect your average American voter.  First of all, the turnout was high,  far higher than for the state and the nation as a whole, over 50% versus a statewide  37% and an even more dismal national average of 34%.  What’s more,  the precinct was heavily Democratic, and Democrats didn’t do themselves proud on turnout this year.  So what made the difference?  Why was the pueblo vote so high, and just how did these Native Americans vote?  Did these registered Democrats desert the party?

More important: what lessons can be learned that might be useful for the future?  Anything here that could be implemented elsewhere?

This pueblo is not poor, but it’s not wealthy either.  It has a casino and farm land. The voting site, an Intergenerational Center, built some six to seven years ago on the opposite side of the road and a bit to the south of the casino , is comfortable, nicely designed, well cared for, and its energy needs are met by a large solar panel which moves with the sun. 

The Center, which serves breakfast and lunch for older members of the tribe, has a well-equipped fitness center, a basketball court and a library as well as a traditional kiva fireplace in the meeting room that was used for the elections. The casino, gas station, school and other businesses help employ members of the pueblo. An organic farmer supplies the tribe with fruits and vegetables in the summer.   

So who came to the polls?  Everyone. 

Everyone  from the tribal leaders to young parents and grandparents carrying babies.  I especially remember a mother with her daughter, a student clarinetist wearing a green jacket advertising the local high school band – one which, by the way, has a dynamic music teacher who has doubled the band’s size in two years.  The kids were all well behaved, the parents didn’t have to wait in long lines or fret that something might happen to them if they were left at home.

A major Native American artist regaled us with stories about his family’s life in Berkeley, California – his father had also been a major artist - and tales of life in New Mexico.  Vietnam Vets came to vote in well-worn military caps. A few voters needed to use magnifying sheets to read the ballots and one elderly woman came with a relative, but no one required equipment for the disabled.  Very few people in the precinct had early voted – they didn’t need to. 

The Wall's End and the Sinatra Doctrine 25 years Later

Five years ago today I wrote “The Soviets, The Sinatra Doctrine and the Beginning of the Cold War’s End” which I posted here on WhirledView.

As I read recently published historical accounts and personal reminiscences in commemoration of that fateful night, it occurred to me that something important has been largely forgotten:  Namely, the earlier decision of the Gorbachev government to end the Soviet Union's continued military support for the Communist regimes then in place in Eastern Europe.  This included the Honecker government in East Germany. ("Check Point Charlie" July 1989 photo by PHKushlis; Crosses at the Berlin Wall, July 1989 photo by WJKushlis)

By November 1989, the Soviet economy was in shambles, the Kremlin erroneously expected Eastern European hardline regimes to soften and embrace “perestroika” and “glasnost” as it had.  Besides, the USSR could no longer afford to keep its friends in office through massive Soviet troop presence in their countries and had announced “freedom of choice” at the Warsaw Pact Summit in Bucharest in July.  Meanwhile, East Germany’s stiff-necked Erich Honecker, no favorite of the Kremlin, had been replaced by Egon Krenz – more amenable to Gorbachev’s thinking - in a surprise meeting of the East German Politburo in mid-October.

The Kremlin’s crucial policy change was cryptically referred to in public by Gorbachev's press spokesman Gennady Gerasimov.  He nicknamed it "the Sinatra Doctrine" not long before November 9 in a few seemingly off-handed remarks in the West. 

I was US Embassy Press Attaché in Helsinki when just 16 days (October 25-27) before November 9,1989 Gorbachev made a presidential visit to Finland. The Finns had given a few of us press credentials that allowed us to attend the media events at Finlandia Hall as well as obtain copies of transcripts of speeches and press conferences held during the visit. (Finlandia Hall, spring 1992 by PHKushlis)

Few western journalists were present so the visit was largely ignored by the western media but, not surprisingly, it was heavily covered by the Finns, the Swedes and the Russians. This was how and when the U.S. Embassy Helsinki first came across Gerasimov’s term for this new “doctrine.” The term was contained in a transcript of a Gerasimov press conference. The political counselor pointed it out, questioned its meaning and reported it to Washington.  Yet, did any of us know then what the “Sinatra Doctrine’s” future ramifications would be?

I doubt it. Conventional wisdom had it that the nearly still Stalinist East Germany would be the last to change. The Wall had looked invincible when I had visited East Berlin in July. Although East Germans in the thousands had begun to flee to the West in May – a trickle that had led to a flood by summer - as they circumvented the Wall through Hungary after the Hungarian government had opened its western borders to them.  Then, once the threat of Soviet military force had been removed it was only a matter of time before the Soviet-backed Eastern European regimes toppled like the proverbial house of cards. (Graffiti on the Wall, July 1989, Photo by PHKushlis)

 Here is a link to the post I wrote in 2009.  It's still worth reading: I read it again last night.  The Wall may have fallen in a matter of hours and shocked US Embassy officials and others in East Berlin and elsewhere  - but the events and factors leading up to it had already been set in motion months, if not years before.

Introverts Aren’t Losers: Re-reading Haruki Murakami’s Latest

A Review Article

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Prisms turn a beam of  colorless light into a full color spectrum. Sunshine in.  Red/orange/yellow/green/blue/violet out.  A rain- bow! No one who learns to do this in junior high science forgets the magic of it.  

Well, hardly anyone forgets, unless they become literary critics, it seems.  None of the reviewers I’ve encountered caught what’s largely at play in Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.  They've tended to see the hero as a pathetic loser, which is almost excusable.  Murakami, in his usual devious way, leads us into this trap.  Even the hero of his tale has difficulty grasping the wonder of his own talent, which takes the  form of engineering efficient railroad stations.  He may be a level-headed, practical man of science, but people depend on him to get where they want to go safely and on time.  What’s pathetic about that?  Especially considering the importance of railroads in Japan.  Bullet trains anyone?

The novel’s set up involves a group of five young people who eventually attend the same public high school in the suburbs of Nagoya.   This group of inseparable friends includes two other boys, one named Akamatsu, which means Red Pine, the other named Oumi or Blue Sea.  The two girls are sisters, Shirane or White Root and Kurono or Black Field.  The latter names seem to be outliers at first, but they are tricks of light as dramatically in tension as the notions of colorful and colorless.  One expects such modulations/complications from Murakami.

As for Tsukuru, he received from his father a curious name that means “create” in Chinese characters or “make/build,” in simpler Japanese characters, the variant deemed by papa to be less “burdensome” as a name for his son, whatever that means.  Looking back at his childhood, Tsukuru isn’t sure.  As a boy and young man, however, he fears that he is “the only one of the group [of friends] without anything special about him.”  Ao is much smarter.  Oumi is a terrific athlete. The girls are talented and beautiful.  As for Tsukuru, he views himself as a colorless,    middling sort of guy, smart but not brilliant, decent-looking yet far from film star handsome, no sportsman but not a klutz either.  Oh yes!  As a child, he liked to play with trains, a boyish obsession that turns into a profession demanding resourcefulness as well as calculation.   

Meanwhile, although the young Tsukuru often wonders why his colorful friends put up with him, he revels in the reliability of their mutual loyalty, which seems to endure even after they graduate from high school, when Tsukuru is the only one to continue his studies.  Leaving the others to do what they can in Nagoro, Tsukuru follows an engineering curriculum in  Tokyo, returning periodically to visit his widowed mother and enjoy his friends.  And then, horrors!  During a routine visit, he’s informed that none of his friends want anything to do with him anymore.  No visits. No phone calls.  No explanations.  The long expected has actually happened.   His colorful friends have  rejected him.  He falls into a debilitating depression, and his social life in Tokyo is too meager to compensate.  

Worse, the one girl who interests him won’t get serious until he returns to Nagoro and solves the  mystery behind the wall of silence.  Forced into a face to face session, Ao spills the beans.  The neurotic “black” girl, having returned from a trip to Tokyo, had told her friends that Tsukuru had raped her.  Ao admits that it was hard to visualize Tsukuru as a rapist, but the girl’s mental health was too fragile for argument.  They had to pamper her, he says, although their loyalty couldn’t protect her from being murdered some time later by an intruder in her own apartment.  This is tragic news for Tsukuru, but it’s also heartening news: he himself hasn’t been rejected—and he has made another important discovery.  His colorful old pals, while succeeding up to a point, aren’t exactly making history.  They certainly aren’t doing any better than he is.

In the closing chapters Murakami tips his hand less ambiguously than usual.  The best scene finds Tsukuru sitting on a bench, one of many along the platform of an important station.  He's watching the arrival and departure of trains, the ebb and flow of people.  Like a poet rereading one of his own very good poems, Tsukuru takes quiet satisfaction in what he does so well.  He also feels the drama and romance of the travel that he makes possible for people with errands and dreams.  No, Tsukuru is not flamboyant.  He’ll never be colorful. But he’s colorless as white light is: complete, integrated, whole.

Realizing this (though never is so many words), he’s ready to pursue the woman who wasn’t ready for him, which doesn’t mean she’ll accept him.  Murakami isn’t going to give us such easy satisfaction.  Nevertheless,  Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage isn’t the story of a dorky sad sack.  It’s a success story.  And his pilgrimage?  It’s a journey to self-understanding and self-acceptance.  

Why did so many American critics fail to see this?   Partly, I think, it’s because Murakami slyly invites the derogatory interpretation.  He depicts Tsukuru as thoroughly brainwashed into believing that only flamingly colorful extroversion is real personality.  But mostly, I believe, the critical blindness stems from the deeply-ingrained American preference for extroverts, a phenomenon that is brilliantly examined by Susan Cain in her recent book entitled  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.  Even in intellectual circles, evidently,  there’s little appreciation for quiet accomplishment.