More from the Life of Nouri...

Little Nouri is consolidating power. Today's NYT story on the arrest of 35 Interior Ministry officials includes a correction.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that one of the Iraqi officials arrested was Gen. Ahmed Abu Raqeef, the ministry’s director of internal affairs.

Turns out WaPo read the first draft and just called up General Abu Raqeef to ask if he had hired a lawyer. Obv., 'Qeef was pissed:

When reached by telephone, Raqeef denied the allegation and said he was still in his job. He blamed disgruntled rivals inside the ministry for spreading rumors to discredit him." I fired many officers and sent some of them to face justice," Raqeef told the Washington Post. "Probably this is why they are trying to destroy my reputation."

Until we have details of the planned coup, names of the conspirators, when they met, where they met, how much money they had, and proof that Al Awda (The Return) is more than an acronym for Nouri's Al Dawa, probably we should file these stories under "Nouri Does the Putin."

GI's are out. Surely it would help Nouri going forward if Shiite militias acting as the military wing of Dawa were active again. And the quickest route to that happening is to diminish the power of the IM's Internal Affairs, chief of which is the "squeaky clean" Gen'l Abu Raqeef. Says Mr. Kazimi at the Hudson Institute:

He was arrested by U.S. troops not too long ago on trumped up charges, and I wouldn't be surprised if these latest accusations turn out to be more of the same.

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Who has the bolshy yarbles? Female suicide bombers, that's who.

The head of Putin is heavy. As Dark Steer's analysis showed, the last thing Putin really wanted this August when he invaded Georgia / accepted Georgian provocation to invade was to add yet another Russian region to the long list of "restives."

Today we saw proof. Russia can't expand a sphere of influence while continuing to wage war just to maintain its territorial integrity. What succor can Putin offer the "oppressed peoples" of northern Georgia when he can't protect his own from Chechen suicide bombers?

So, questions for the Premier: Was Putin's motivation in the Georgian incursion to deny safe haven in South Ossetia for Chechen militants? If so, can't we expect him to back down on the announced Polish-border missiles?

Don't the Chechens want what Putin does, i.e. land and thus oil royalties? So isn't the real beef a federalist beef, i.e., between the regions en masse and the central government? Thus, isn't it absurd to target the capital of North Ossetia rather than a Big Russian target? What kind of dumbass Chechen would do this?

Do Ossetians (of N and S) really want Chechens to have beef with them rather than with Mother Russia? If not, does this push them towards Moscow and anschluss, or away and toward more "restiveness"? Might Moscow have a reason to start beef between regions therefore?

(This is not nearly as paranoid as it sounds. Putin covered up Beslan, assassinated Anna Politkovskaya, etc. He likes Dark Ops. Why he can't just say, "I'm waging war on Chechnya, don't mess with me, this is an insurrection," I still don't know. Presumably he still wants to be invited to the G8, but that's a high price for a tea party...)

hasta
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Form of: Hegemony!

Really, what kind of world do we live in when we've ceded the leadership role on international terrorism to the Russians?

Russia has called for a revival of the global anti-terrorism coalition that formed after Sept. 11, 2001, but that started to unravel with what it called the subsequent domination by a single power - a veiled reference to the United States.

"The solidarity of the international community fostered on the wave of struggle against terrorism turned out to be somehow 'privatized,"' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia said Saturday at the UN General Assembly annual ministerial meeting.

Oh, I know what kind of world: a multipolar one. Oh, joy!

"It has become crystal clear that the solidarity expressed by all of us after 9/11 should be revived, without double standards, when we fight against any infringements upon the international law," he said.

Lavrov also called for "solidarity" within the international community and a strengthened United Nations, saying that only in the post-Cold War world could the organization "fully realize its potential" as a source of "open and frank debate and coordination of the world policies on a just and equitable basis, free from double standards."

"This is an essential requirement, if the world is to regain its equilibrium," he said.

Beautiful. How much of a clusterfuck has the Bush administration proved to be? Seven and a half years in, we're getting lectured on multilateralism and international law by the Russians. And, strangely enough, world opinion is in agreement:

Some 29% of people said the "war on terror" launched by President George W Bush in 2001 had had no effect on the Islamist militant network.

According to 30% of those surveyed, US policies have strengthened al-Qaeda.

Asked who is winning "the conflict between al-Qaeda and the US", 49% said neither side while 22% believed the US had gained the upper hand. Just 10% said al-Qaeda was winning.

So the Russians--of course, taking their airs of magnanimity with a grain of salt and a ton of vodka--are calling for a strengthened UN and international cooperation regarding terrorism, rightly calling out the US for flouting international opinion in invading Iraq and calling us on "double standards" with regard to Georgia and Kosovo's independence movement. Meanwhile, the Famous Air Pirate is still tipping his Cold Warrior hand, still wanting to keelhaul Russia and make 'em walk the plank out of the G8. And the Beauty Queen continues to ramble on--to the embarrassment of those who should be supporting her--spouting something about the disembodied head of Czar Putin hovering over the Aleutian Islands.

Aurora Putinalis aside, the real issue here is just how right BHO is when he says "McCain just doesn't get it." The Russians get it. The Chinese are counting on it. The Europeans--if we may judge by their reaction to Georgian episode--get it. The Germans definitely get it. But Bush, the Air Pirate, the Beauty Queen, and most of America don't get it: the Post-American Moment is here in full force.

So, while the Air Pirate, et al, wax fanciful about some new Superfriends League of Righteous Democracies--Wonder Twin Powers, Activate! Form of: Eternal Hegemony!--the Rest of the World is very much moving on. One only hopes that BHO, with his talk of being a citizen of the world and the need to fill the position of Leader of the Free World, gets it. Otherwise, it's a harder drop to the level playing field than it needs to be.

Nouri al-Maliki preps for the big dance...kill the lights...

Last week, ethnographers at UCLA revealed evidence for the Balkanization of Iraq.

Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved.

Analyzing patterns of light and darkness in the Baghdad night sky, they discovered that Shia areas of Baghdad remained unchanged, and Sunni and mixed areas were abandoned, leaving the city pacified by February 2007.

Ethnic cleansing -- which we've all known about via anecdotes -- turns out to be not the thing the surge was meant to end, but its core building-block.

'Bout a year ago, when the surge had begun and Sunnis were blowing each other up to figure out which among them would get guns from the al-Amriki tribe, Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin responded to an unhinged screed of mine, elucidating the reasoning behind the surge:

[...]unless every last ditch effort is made to temper the consequences of a pullout, the results will be even more horrible for Iraqis, the region and us than what you see now. And I don't mean some slogan of "they'll follow us home" - I mean total collapse in Iraq, even more bloody fighting, a return of Al Qaeda there in force and negative consequences for the rest of the region.

And the reasoning for extending the "surge" indefinitely rests on the same ground: we have to square this country away. This week we learned that between Sadr's truce and the complete ethnic partition of Baghdad, the country was pretty well squared away 18 months ago...

Which brings us to what the future holds...oil wealth, a speculative boom, rampant unemployment and a host of splinter-regions...this is Russia at the dawn of the Putin era. The combination of crony capitalism and a crackdown on opposition parties that Nouri al-Maliki has been overtly orchestrating for the past year is pure Putin, as the man says...so expect two Maliki versions of the Chechen war, arguments with Turkey, and an Iraqi Guggenheim branch, built by Shia oligarkii...
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Frozen conflicts...Putin losing marbles: "I am surprised that you are surprised..."

Is there anyone in the region actually intimidated by Vlad Putin? Poland signed a missile defense agreement at long last. Lithuania's president is a noted hardass (and a serious thinker; here's his speech to the London School of Economics in February). Putin can bluster about countries making themselves into targets, but the biggest thing he/Medvedev have threatened lately is Moldova.

Said Medvedev to the Moldovan president:

After the Georgian leadership lost their marbles, as they say, all the problems got worse and a military conflict erupted [...]

The dispute between Transdniestrian separatists and the Moldovan central government was identified as Second Most Likely to Feel the Putin by Joshua Kucera in Slate:

The conflict in Transdniestria has been frozen for some time, and there's not much at stake in Moldova, but if the situation heated up, the United States and Russia would definitely take opposing sides, and in the post-South Ossetia world, who knows?

Indeed; good news for cartographers, though.

As for losing marbles, Putin now believes that the West arranged for the Georgian aggression in order to boost the McCain candidacy (and to remind McCain what country Putin is from). Here's Putin in the WaPo:

When the CNN correspondent, Matthew Chance, expressed skepticism, Putin argued that the Bush administration faced difficulties in the Middle East and Afghanistan, as well as economic difficulties.

"A small, victorious war is needed," Putin said. "And if you don't succeed, it's possible to shift the blame on us, turn us into the enemy against the backdrop of rah-rah patriotism to rally the country again around certain political forces. I am surprised that you are surprised at what I say. It's obvious."

To summarize: Moldova is the largest thing Putin's willing to threaten; Putin is slowly becoming deranged on CNN. Is there cause for alarm here? To my mind, the best indicator that the past month's media hyperventilation about the New Cold War is meaningless is that David Brooks thinks it's for real: from PBS, after watching BillyClint in Denver:

MARK SHIELDS: [...] People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power.

DAVID BROOKS: Not sure Vladimir Putin will be impressed by the power of our example or Ahmadinejad, but it's a nice formulation.

This is the benchmark by which we judge serious foreign policy difficulties: if Brooks is afraid, ignore it. If Brooks is for it, watch out.

By this standard, let us confidently assume that just as Putin has no intention of leaving Ossetia and Abkhazia, he also has no interest in adding a half-dozen wannabe-states to the roster of cranky part-Russian regions. No Nagorno-Karabakh, no second Dagestan, no Transdniestr. Let's see if we can get Putin out of Poti, and stop wetting the bed about What Happens Next...
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Dude, you just made me defend FoxNews...

I don't be-lieve you, as the man said.

Sure, Fox looked stupid when it realized it had Ossetians, you could see it coming from the point when he says the girl and her aunt fled via Moscow. The larger embarrassment is to discover that your interview is with a Kremlin partisan rather than with a victim of aggressive war...

Has anyone confirmed their stories? When someone is being bombed, does she know whose bombers they are? If the incoming weapons were artillery, sure, likelihood is Georgian. But Russia had air dominance from the start. Oh, and the niece said she didn't see or hear any bombs at all...Fox didn't cut away because they had the wrong victims; people who would talk about their real pain inflicted by the wrong -- to Fox's mind -- government, but because they didn't have victims at all.

The kicker is the aunt's parroting of Putin's line:

Russian authorities say 2,000 people were killed in fighting around Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, and more than 30,000 refugees fled over the Russian border.

Which would be impressive if it weren't nigh impossible. The estimated population of Ossetia is 30- to 65,000; the estimate is so wide, I imagine, because Ossetia is built like West Virginia on steroids. And you're telling me they all got out of whatever little hollers they live in in 48 hours?

Our best source for Ossetian casualties is the nominal president of Ossetia?

Eduard Kokoity, the president of South Ossetia, said in a statement on a government Web site that hundreds of civilians had been killed in fighting in the capital.

...whose estimate is inflated by "Russian authorities" to 2,000; the Times is content to split the difference: "1500 Reported Killed in Georgia Battle." And this supposed eyewitness' best guess is the same as yours, mine and Putin's?

Presumably, if we believe the 12-year-old and her aunt, we should also believe D.H. Williams of the "Daily Newscaster":

[...]the facts show that Georgian troops lead [sic] by Israeli Mossad agents attacked Russian troops and civilians in Ossetia.

I'm not even sure if I should link to this asshole. Cut and paste this if you must: http://www.dailynewscaster.com/2008/08/14/12-year-old-san-francisco-girl-tells-of-georgian-aggression-against-ossetian-civilians/

Oh, or this asshole: "OSSETIA HOLOCAUST! FOX NEWS LIE!...TRY TO STOP WOMAN TELLING THE TROOTH...[sic]" Again, watch at your own risk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZU8LteAAww

Dude.
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Hard Baltics vs. Iron Sphere...

<< Georgia part one

Putin's whole endeavor is to install Moscow-friendly regimes in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, in a paranoid rendition of the US campaign against Serbia. In this version, Russia comes to the rescue of aggrieved Russophile minorities, wages a bombing campaign, and calls actions by the small central government ethnic cleansing. Medvedev's aforementioned background provides the final stroke in the US : Serbia :: Russia : Georgia analogy; the lawyer wants Saakashvili in the Hague.

I can see the Ukraine falling, Saakashvili out of a job, etc., but it seems more likely that Poland and the Baltics will not shit themselves with fear. For one, Putin sounds unhinged, comparing Saakashvili to Saddam Hussein:

"Of course Saddam Hussein had to be hung for destroying some Shia villages. And the current Georgian rulers, who wiped ten Ossetian villages off the face of the Earth in an hour, of course they have to be protected."

Ilves of Estonia said "I am a Georgian"...Lech Kaczynski didn't trust Putin's cease-fire yesterday; today that looks pretty wise, as latest reports have Russians moving out of Gori, deeper into Georgia...

Little Lithuania, whose name was tossed around as an alternate missile defense site, and thus has been put on Putin's shitlist unnecessarily, may prove hard core. A few years ago, Russia cut oil to the Meziekiu Nafta refinery, and then set it on fire.



Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus, unmoved, hinted that the train to Kaliningrad would be shut down for "political repairs":

"We should guarantee the safety of trains and passengers," he said, according to the Baltic News Service. "Should repairs be needed in order to increase the safety of railway services, I see no reason to heat up political tensions."

Calmer than you are. Shit to this effect has been going on every other year for what seems like all decade. The Baltics respond to economic pressure in kind; they don't escalate. They don't mass troops on the borders of some nether region, incapable of being taunted into a "Who's got the bolshy yarbles?" contest. DS presumes the Iron Sphere will not expand...

Trying to stay calm...
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Hazards of guessing...

Russian tanks have cut Georgia in half. This is one of the hazards of guessing.

The "democracy agenda" forced Putin's hand. We're expanding NATO, sending anti-ballistic missile batteries to Poland and the Czech Republic, and we were training Georgian troops until this weekend. We assumed a Russian military response to be out of the question. We were wrong.

Fortunately for us, the war in Georgia has taught us rubes the lay of the land. Russia believes a sphere of influence is a sphere of influence. Listen to the prescient Ivan Krastev in 2005:

The “orange triumphalism” in the west that followed the regime changes in Georgia and Ukraine perceives the decline of Russia’s influence in the post-Soviet space as irreversible. The only relevant questions for the democratic triumphalists nowadays are how many more weeks Alexander Lukashenko can survive in power in Minsk and where the next “colour revolution” will take place.

In my view this single-scenario approach is an exercise in wishful non-thinking that underestimates the vulnerability of the newest “new democracies” and neglects Russia’s strategic drive to transform itself from a status-quo power into a revisionist power on the territory of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

While a return to Soviet size and authority is a scary strategic goal, Dark Steer thinks (right?) it unlikely. Putin has had to abduct tycoons, assassinate journalists, poison former spies, poison politicians of the "near abroad", and wage perennial war in his own backyard just to assert control. How many versions of Dagestan are there in Russia? Does Putin need more?

To be more specific, Abkhazia wants independence, not anschluss. Ossetia may feel stable under Russian absorption; a large troop presence there could just as easily invite attacks by Chechen separatists. It's a rough neighborhood, happily cut up by mountains, but rough.

Tentatively, since I was way wrong about the Israel-Syria love connection, I'm going to assume that Putin moves troops up to the outskirts of Tbilisi, scares shit out the populace, and pulls back. Russian "peacekeepers" sit on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, neither of which gains independence. Ukraine's Party of Regions takes parliament, Poland and the Czech shut down missile defense talks...

...Lithuania later...
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In Putin's Russia, Minister Primes You!

Widely acknowledged lapdog Dmitiri Medvedev unveiled his vision for Russia's foreign policy going forward. By all accounts, it boils down to "Yeah. What he said."

In addition to the expected expansion of powers for the Tsar--ahem--Prime Ministership, Medvedev's foreign policy vision also apparently emphasizes

...the importance of international law, which should come as no surprise given Medvedev's background as a lawyer, Trenin said.

Saints preserve us! The Russians are lecturing us on international law! No surprise, considering that we're building long-term bases and anti-ballistic missile installations in their own backyard. There are also nods to the burgeoning partnership/co-dependent relationship with the European Union and strengthening other international ties. The good folks over at Foreign Policy's Passport blog sum it up nicely:

Russia is officially operating in the post-American world.

Ah, the multi-polar world. Herein lies another major point Obama has to make plain to the American people: the post-Cold War unipolar world America used to squat atop is no more. While Walnuts rambles on about kicking Russia out of the G8 and complains about Kids These Days with their hippity-hop music, the opportunity exists to at least try to show the American people that this nation need not dominate the globe in order to lead it. BHO's international trip will likely focus on that mindset, which is one he's expressed before: America is ready to lead again. Nice slogan. Should garner some good will, while we try to dig ourselves out of the Bushco hole. No surprise he's got a major speech planned in Germany. Germany's a lynchpin in the Russo-EU relationship. One can only hope that the idea of cooperating with other nations--say, alternative energy with the EU; nuclear weapons security and reduction with Russia--will be a better draw for America than Walnuts' Big Stick aspirations.

One more thing:

At the top of the list is ensuring national security, followed by creating the foreign conditions needed to modernize Russia and protect its economic rights.

Hasn't this been Russia's goal since--ohhh--the dawn of the 20th Century? Keep chasing that dream, Russia. You'll always be the Can't Get Right of nations to us.