Russia And Putin's New Order

Michael McFaul, until very recently our ambassador to Russia, has an article in today's New York Times.

He takes a look at how things came to this pass. "We did not seek this confrontation," McFaul writes. "This new era crept up on us, because we did not fully win the Cold War. Communism faded, the Soviet Union disappeared and Russian power diminished. But the collapse of the Soviet order did not lead smoothly to a transition to democracy and markets inside Russia, or Russia’s integration into the West."

I have a different take on this. Prerevolutionary Russia was always undemocratic, and the state played an enormous role in the economy. 

A century ago, as the German Empire was flexing its muscle and a Serbian nationalist under instructions from Belgrade assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, France and England allied with Tsarist Russia to oppose Germany and Austria. The US remained neutral, in part because President Wilson was uncomfortable making common cause with Autocratic Russia. Even after the Zimmerman telegram (German proposal to Mexico to enter the war against the US in return for the return of territory taken from Mexico in 1846) and German unrestricted submarine warfare and sinking of six US Flag merchant ships, the US did not declare war until after the Tsar was overthrown in March of 1917.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991 brought with it the possibility of changes that would bring Russia into the general international system.

"Some Russians," McFaul writes,  "pushed forward on this enormous agenda of revolutionary change. And they produced results: the relatively peaceful (so far) collapse of the Soviet empire, a Russian society richer than ever before, greater protection of individual rights and episodically functioning democratic institutions."

But the transition did not go smoothly. I took part in a minor way in the transition, when I worked on projects by the United States Agency for International Development to assist in privatization. The contemplated transition was unprecedented. The truth is, no one knew how to do it and it was managed in a way that brought severe hardship to ordinary citizens.

The process also laid the foundation for well-connected government officials (the "nomenklatura") to skim great wealth from privatization. The most knowledgable and effective officials were KGB officers who had worked the international scene. They understood the workings of the west better than anyone else in the USSR.

McFaul explains that "the simultaneity of democracy’s introduction, economic depression and imperial loss generated a counterrevolutionary backlash — a yearning for the old order and a resentment of the terms of the Cold War’s end."

McFaul draws similarities between recent developments in Putin's Russia and the conflicts of the last century.

I would go further back. Since at least the time of Peter the Great, there has been a struggle within Russia between the "westernizers," who want to join the world of Europe, and the "slavophils," who see Russia as more pure and worthy. Slavophils oppose adopting the ways of the West.

There is much of that lind of emotion at work in today's Russia.

I recommend reading McFaul's article here.

Freedom Is Just A Word

“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
― William Faulkner, Essays, Speeches & Public Letters

I think what Faulkner is saying here is that we don't become free by insisting on our own rights, but by granting rights to others.

The history of man is not replete with examples of such generosity of spirit.

It is easy for us to see that, though Russia holds elections, Russians are not free. Only a minority of Russians understand this.

How much more free are we?

Russia's Paranoid Schizophrenia and The Clueless West

The West's contribution to the totally unprecedented challenge of conversion of the Soviet Union to a democratic and market-based society was, in my view, spotty at best. I say this as one who was involved in projects in Russia, Ukraine and Poland and very aware of projects in Estonia, Rumania and Moldova.

I also deplored at the time the unrestrained triumphalism that proclaimed: "we're number one - nyah, nyah nyah, we won the cold war." That wasn't helpful. Especially in places like Ukraine where people, especially elderly pensioners, were suddenly plunged into poverty by policies we pushed. So-called "shock therapy," for example, was pushed by policy makers who had no idea what the previous seventy years had put into place. The idea of "privatizing" a complex industrial establishment by issuing coupons to the citizens so they could buy shares in crumbling enterprises was a disaster in the making.

One of the most disappointing viewpoints at the time was that of USAID, whose bureaucracy was certain we knew what to do because, after all, we had privatized railroads and coal mines in the UK under Thatcher, tin mines in Bolivia and such like. They were, in short, clueless.

The folks the big six accounting firms sent out to do this gargantuan task were, for the most part, recent MBA's who didn't speak any local language and who were ignorant of the context. Bright, energetic, but ignorant.

We could have done better. Germany did do better. The Germans managed the conversion of East Germany not perfectly, but well enough. One reason Estonia is doing pretty well these days is that the Germans managed that conversion. Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary had the advantage of pre-war experience in a market-based system.

Not only did the people we sent not have a background in Soviet economics, they had no background in Western Europe. They thought the American Way was the Only Way.

Let's do better next time.

I've been reading the news from Ukraine with dismay.

Didn't we win the cold war? Didn't we do away with Communism? Didn't George W. Bush look into Putin's soul and see someone we can do business with?

The truth is, our cold war conflict with the Soviet Union had little to do with Communism except in the minds of our own paranoid capitalists. In fact, in the opinion of the last Prime Minister of Russia before the October (Bolshevik) revolution, the Soviet Union didn't have a socialist or communist system at all - it was a case of State capitalism.

Anyhow, I wish the Ukrainians well. I have probably read more articles on the developing crisis than most Americans. I have collected links to a number of articles, mostly from the NY Times, but also from other sources. Please take your time and read them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/opinion/trudolyubov-putins-honest-brokers.html?hp&rref=opinion

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/opinion/mccain-a-return-to-us-realism.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/crimea-through-a-game-theory-lens.html?ref=international

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/04/opinion/la-oe-walker-ukraine-nato-expansion-20140304

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/opinion/getting-ukraine-wrong.html?action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DHomepage%26module%3DSearchSubmit%26contentCollection%3DHomepage%26t%3Dqry347%23%2Fukraine%2Bwest%2Bmistakes%2F

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2014/03/24/140324ta_talk_surowiecki

Cox v Town Of Oriental Now On Line

All of the documents for the case of Cox v Town of Oriental are now available on line at the NC Court of Appeals web site: http://www.ncappellatecourts.org/search-results.php?sDocketSearch=13-1222&exact=1

Any of you who are interested in the right of way dispute can now read all of the documents the Court of Appeals will consider.

No one can predict how the Court will rule, but I thinkI have by far the better argument.

Right of Way law is a bit esoteric. For the most part, it is based on Common Law - that is, law made by courts, not by legislators. Statutes can always override Common Law, but often they merely codify or clarify Common Law where there is some ambiguity.

In most cases, people's eyes glaze over when the topic of "right of way" law comes up. Even Linda Greenhouse, a  Supreme Court wonk who writes about the US Supreme Court for the New York Times, missed the significance of the US Supreme Court's ruling in its most recent case, MARVIN M. BRANDT REVOCABLE TRUST, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. UNITED STATES, decided March 10, 2014.

On the face of it, Brand was just another boring right of way case. Greenhouse couldn't figure out what the case was really about until she read Sonya Sotomayor's dissent in the 8-1 decision. The U.S. lost, by the way.

One thing becomes clear from the case: precedents matter. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, explains: “The government loses th[e] argument today, in large part because it won when it argued the opposite before this court more than 70 years ago,” he wrote.

Sotomayor's was the sole dissent. She argued that the 70 year old case shouldn’t govern the outcome of this one because it had involved subterranean rights — the right to drill for oil — rather than the simple surface rights now at issue. In Justice Sotomayor’s final paragraph, Greenhouse at last understood why the decision might matter: “The court undermines the legality of thousands of miles of former rights of way that the public now enjoys as means of transportation and recreation,” Sotomayor wrote, adding: “And lawsuits challenging the conversion of former rails to recreational trails alone may well cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Rails to Trails. Established by Congress with the National Trails System Act Amendments of 1983. A procedure established in the public interest.

My case is not dissimilar. I have not argued that the Town [that is, the municipal corporation which has legal rights like any other corporation] made a bad deal. I argue that they have no statutory right to make any deal at all - that the only thing of value they had to sell or trade was their vote. And that what's at stake is public access to the water.

I'll address our arguments in more detail later, but as the Town's web site says, "it's all about the water."

I'm Getting Too Old For All-Nighters - Or Even Almost-All-Nighters

Cox v Town of Oriental is taking more energy than I had hoped. Or maybe it is that I'm not as young as I used to be - but who is?

Last Sunday I was up most of the night reviewing the plaintiff appellant's (that's me) reply brief. What should I say about "defendant-appelant's" ( the Town) brief?

There was a lot to cover. Cases to read, past records to review, logical connections to think through. It isn't easy.

Is it worth it?

I think what is at stake is, at bottom, whether we will have the rule of law, and whether that law will protect the public interest.

In my view, those are pretty high stakes.

I never intended that the case be seen as a personal dispute.

I keep thinking of that scene in Godfather where the racketeer is taken for a ride: "This isn't personal - it's business!" the killer assures his victim.

My action isn't all that drastic.

I am told that the NC Court of Appeals has the goal of issuing its rulings no more than sixty days after receiving a case. The attorney filed the reply brief yesterday.

We may know the outcome in two months. But some cases take longer.

I will let my readers know when the reply brief is posted on the Court's web site.

Have You Ever Visited Beringia?

I have never quite bought the conjecture that North America was populated by people walking along the "land bridge" from Asia and bringing their Clovis points with them.

Why could they not have come by Sea? In fact, that's the way the aborigines reached Australia 30,000 years ago.  My surmise is that the land bridge theory is written by landsmen. Seamen know that the most efficient way to get from one place to the other is by water.

Now, though, we have new tools for investigating our ancient past. We have, for example, DNA studies that have been able to trace the migration of certain populations across the globe as they came out of Africa and dispersed.

We have been able to trace particular DNA mutations from place to place. We also know, to a fair degree, how often mutations happen.

Another improving tool is that of linguistic analysis. Linguists can also track evolution of languages and language families as they spread, mutate, interact and evolve.

A powerful new marriage of DNA research and linguistics postulates that, instead of a bridge connecting Asia and North America, there was an area of shrub tundra between Alaska and Siberia where ancestors of both Native Americans and Siberian peoples lived in isolation for 15,000 years before migrating both Eastward and Westward as the sea level began to rise.

Here is a summary of the research that tends to support this view.

I still like the hypothesis that Native Americans came by sea.

Why Is Ukraine's Economy So Fouled Up?

Justin Fox in Harvard Business Review has an interesting article on Ukraine's economy. Why is it so bad? In a nutshell - rampant corruption.

New Town Manager

I like what I read about the experience and education of the new Town Manager. I look forward to meeting her.

I have just one piece of advice - but she seems sharp enough to figure it out herself. Don't have a protracted turnover. I suggest no more than two or three days. Any more than that tends to confuse staff about who they really work for.