Russia's Antidemocratic Alliance

In the latest, tit-for-tat move between the US and Russia, Russia has announced that it may hold joint naval exercises with Venezuela. This is a clear (though unacknowledged) move to send a message to the US regarding its current naval activities in the Black Sea.

How many similar, anti-US regimes of consequence can the Russians reach out to? One potential step for Russian escalation of their defiance of US hegemony would be to strengthen Russia's ties to Iran. This would cause concern for Russia, though, as it fears Iran's nuclear ambitions and Islamic radicalism. Russia itself has Islamic minority nationalist movements that it sometimes struggles to control.

Fortunately for the West, Russia's connection to Venezuela does not have strong ideological underpinnings. Venezuela, ironically, is now the more 'socialist' of the two countries (Russia's is a brand of state capitalism.) and its brand of demagogic populism is likely to unnerve Russia's more austere leadership.

Another interesting development for the West is that Russia appealed for, but did not receive, support for its Georgia moves, from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, whose only other weighty member is China. The Chinese, suspicious of all foreign interventions and protective of the perception of their neutrality, recognize at the same time that the future of their economic system (and of the Communist Party, whose legitimacy rests on economic growth) is tied up with the globalized market system as supported by the United States and the West. Is it possible that a resurgent Russia could, once again, push China closer to the more stable and predictable Western powers?

IRAQ AND GEORGIA

What do these invasions teach us about the state of our geopolitical system?

When the US invaded Iraq, it certainly contravened international legal norms that provided for aggression only when an enemy presented an immediate threat. This is a norm that the US helped to enshrine in the post-World War II legal order. We have witnessed, since the fall of the Soviet Union, a strengthening of the social and economic order promulgated by, and beneficial to, the US: democracy and free markets. The process of the US invasion of Iraq and its aftermath involves a negation of the legal order of the era of Pax Americana but an affirmation of the era’s social and economic order. In short, the US undermined the international legal system while strengthening the international social system.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia, however, represents a challenge both to the international legal order and to the socioeconomic order of US-led globalization. In Iraq, we ultimately seem to be witnessing the triumph of the liberal economic and political order. The ability, or inability, of that socioeconomic order to prevail in Georgia is of great symbolic significance over the next few years.

The US invasion of Iraq was, if you will, a wager in which the socioeconomic order of international democracy was chosen over the international norm of national sovereignty. It is not surprising that US disregard for the latter is costing us right now. Still, we would be foolish to be entranced by that fact and to overlook the greater stakes that underpinned the initial wager. The pace of the march of political and economic freedom around the world is at stake.

GEORGIA ON MY MIND, or WHY THE INVASION MATTERS SO MUCH

International aggression and ethnic separatism are important elements of this crisis but they do not lend it its singularity. Russia, an important global power, is announcing its refusal to align itself to a US-led global system that tends to support economic and political freedom.

Paul Krugman explains (though perhaps a bit too defnitively for my tastes):

[T]he war in Georgia [marks] the end of the Pax Americana — the era in which the United States more or less maintained a monopoly on the use of military force. And that raises some real questions about the future of globalization.

Some have asked, “Didn’t the American-created global order suffer a greater defeat with the invasion of Iraq?” or “How is the Russian support of South Ossetian independence different from the US support of Kosovar independence?”

The US invasion of Iraq does have consequences for the stability of the international system. It does make it harder for the US to assert the importance of respecting national sovereignty. But, it did not alter the fundamental fact that the US economy, society, and culture tend to see their interests aligned with politically and economically free societies ruled by law. No one is surprised that, following the increasing democratic stability in Iraq, the US is getting ready to leave. No one is surprised that the US is helping to support a free society in Kosovo. Russia cannot be expected to act similarly.

GEORGIA AND RUSSIA

Here are McCain and Obama's statements on Georgia.