So I suppose this will  be my last post on True/Slant. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending I suppose on your view of my writing, I don’t have the time to do a long-winded and dramatic goodbye. Please know, though, that I greatly enjoyed my time here, particularly the chance to interact with a very lively group of commentors and some of the oustanding contributors that this site attracted. Also Charles Johnson called me a sexually dysfunctional anti-Semite, which was pretty funny.

But do not despair, fair intertubes! I shall be making a return at some point in the near future, once I’ve finished contract negotiations with the FSB. Right now we’re in an extended holdout over my demand that I be given a province of my own. I’m still trying to get either Pskov or Leningrad but those selfish jerks keep trying to dump Vologda on me, which they helpfully describe as “a real challenge.”

I will hopefully see you all sometime in September, and in the meantime you can follow me on Twitter where I will no doubt continue to make announcements of great importance.

PS Also make sure you read my latest super-important article for INOSMI, no Friday is complete without it!

I was going to do a number-filled post incorporating all of the latest demographic data from GosKomStat, data that show that Russia’s demographics continue their slow but steady improvement, but then I saw that Anatoly Karlin had already produced a quality overview of the recent trends. However since Russian health and demographics are my speciality (or at least the area in which I embarrass myself the least) I still want to write something, because I think it’s an issue that is worth highlighting and an area in which Western forecasters have been almost uniformly awful.  

To simplify things just a little bit, and really just by a little, the basic Western view of Russia is the following: things are really awful, things are not only really awful but they are clearly getting worse, and not only are things really awful and clearly getting wore but they cannot get better due to the Kremlin’s malevolent incompetence .  The people expressing this decidedly pessimistic view of Russia, like any large group of people, run the gamut from the hackish, incompetent, and predictably idiotic (like Ed Lucas) to the honest, intelligent, and highly capable (like fellow True/Slant contributor Julia Ioffe).

Now the world is a very strange and unpredictable place, and it is perfectly possible that the “Russophobe” (a term I hate, as I generally find such labels worthless, but use here for convenience and clarity’s sake) view is the more accurate one. As is probably clear, I don’t have access to any special trove of knowledge, nor do I have a direct line to the powers-that-be in the Kremlin, so I can never state, and hope I’ve never stated, that I am 100% sure that Russia will do X, Y, or Z. I do my best to read a wide variety of sources to understand what’s happening, and I hope that my record as a prognosticator demonstrates that I have some idea what I’m talking about, but Russia is a very big and a very complicated place that has a nasty habit of routinely humbling the Westerners who study it.

All of this is an extremely long-winded and pretentious way of saying that, while I am mildly optimistic about Russia, I don’t want to understate the problems that still plague it: they are legion, and many are serious. The recent spate of violence in the North Caucasus is particularly alarming, and should be keeping even the most supremely confident siloviks up at night. The Putin-Medvedev government has built a great deal of its popularity on the idea (which, as it turns out,  is not entirely fanciful) that it has “kept Russians safe,” and a spate of Islamist violence that shows that this is not the case  could have potentially catastrophic destabilizing consequences.

Why, then, am I mildly optimistic about Russia, a country that even in the most optimistic of all readings has so many pressing issues? Is it simply because I’m a paid shill? There are two reasons, both of which are quite simple. First, the Russian themselves are increasingly optimistic about the future since they are having more babies, getting married more frequently, getting divorced less frequently, living longer, having fewer accidents, drinking themselves to death less often, and killing themselves (and each other) less and less frequently. Decreases in crime and suicide, and increases in fertility, marriage, and life expectancy, of the sort seen in Russia since 2000, and particularly since 2004, are exactly what one would expect from a society that is increasingly self-confident and making modest economic and social progress.*

Second, and this might even be more important than the first reason, things got so catastrophically awful, so incomprehensibly wretched, gruesome, and horrific during the 1990’s that, absent a descent into a truly Hobbesian state, there was little way to go but up. Most Westerners still don’t comprehend the extent to which Russia collapsed along with Communism, because contemplating things like societal collapses is as difficult as it is disconcerting. I have neither the time nor the rhetorical talent to do a full and comprehensive evaluation of the 1990’s, I’ve made a few crude attempts at various points while writing this blog, but the corruption, the thievery, the violence, the criminality, and the sheer amount of human misery in 1990s Russia make Putin’s version look like the Netherlands. Entire branches of industry, worth billions upon billions of dollars even by the most pessimistic reckonings, were simply handed over in rigged auctions or “purchased” by oligarchs with loans given to them by the state. Assets were stripped and sold off on a historically unprecedented rate, and the amount of capital flight was beyond anyone’s reckoning (some of this money is still tickling back in via Cyprus, which despite its miniscule population and economy is one of the largest sources of Russian ”FDI”). Perhaps most shockingly of all, Russia fought and lost a major war on its own territory.

More telling than any of the political, military, or economic problems (which were very serious indeed) though was the simple fact that Russians abruptly stopped having kids once the Soviet Union fell apart: in the few years after 1991 the fertility rate fell by 50% which is one of the most precipitous drops ever recorded. A more damning indictment of the state of the contry can hardly be imagined. Indeed the fertility rate stayed firmly planted down in the 1.2 range for most of the 1990’s and the first years of Putin’s reign until it started to increase significantly in 2006 (estimates are that it will be right around 1.6 for 2010, which is actually higher than the rate in most Central/East European countries).

The most parsimonious explanation for the increase is that, after significant economic growth and a dramatic increase in real wages, Russians were increasingly confident about their own futures and increasingly able to find gainful employment and afford the basic necessities required for raising a family. The fact that the state started dumping money into pro-natal programs probably didn’t hurt, but decisions about if or when to have a child are intensely personal in nature and are only weakly impacted by state policy.

 Of course there are other, competing, explanations for the recent increase in Russian fertility such as “it’s all Mooslims!” or “The state is cooking the books!” but these are pretty radical interpretations that would need a mountain of corroborating evidence to be taken seriously.

So what is the point of all of this? Is there one? Surely boosting my own ego is a major consideration, but I am truly exasperated by the Western tendency to conflate Russia’s condition with its trajectory. It is one thing to say “life in Russia sucks!” In general, I’d agree with this point since large sweeping sections of Russia remain desperately poor and ramshackle: you would need to be blissfully ignorant, or extremely stupid, to not notice the huge gaps between Russia’s level of development and the levels of development of leading industrialized nations. It is, however, an extremely different thing to say “things in Russia are getting worse!” This is simply not true, and the Russians themselves are exceedingly well aware of this. If the Russians come accross someone who is telling them that their country is getting worse they will rightfully be suspicious of that persons motives.

So to the 5 people that will read this screen/paen please: when describing Russia please try to do justice to the fact that things are getting better, and that the most basic indicators of the health of a society (life expectancy, the crime rate, average wages) are far more positive than they have been in many years.

*As Anatoly Karlin astutely noted in his post, Russia’s rates of “death from vice” (alcohol poisoning, suicide, and homicide) are now better than they were in 1990, meaning that one can make a compelling argument that Russians have never lived in a more stable and healthy society. Of course this says more about the deep dysfunctions and pathologies that have long been charicteristic of Russia than it does the blissful nature of Medvedev’s kingdom circa 2010

Ok, yes, so criticizing neocons for their failures of logic is sort of like beating the Cowboys in a playoff game or the Italians in a war: sure it’s fun to win but, given the quality of the opposition, it’s neither especially challenging nor particularly rewarding.

The other day, however, I stumbled upon a nearly perfect example of a logical fallacy in a predictably hysterical and screeching rant by noted British neoconservative Melanie Phillips.

Towards the beginning of her attack on David Cameron, prompted by his somewhat harsh assessment of Israel’s treatment of Gaza and its relations with Turkey, Phillips says:

This was because Cameron had no knowledge of or interest in foreign affairs, and so was always likely merely to reflect the most politically expedient views he encountered – which, given the current poisonous attitude within the British establishment and intelligentsia, were likely to push him into appeasing Britain’s mortal enemies in the Islamic world and dumping on Israel, Britain’s strategic ally in that great struggle.

This is a standard and instantly recognizable neoconservative trope, that corrupt, decadent, dastardly, cosmopolitan, and morally relativist “elites” are constantly backstabbing their own countries by actively collaborating with a truly bewildering variety of “mortal enemies” (Communists, Islamists, Tom Cruise, etc.)  Indeed hated of “the elite” is such a standard refrain of neoconservative boilerplate that it wouldn’t surprise me if Phillips didn’t even need to think as she wrote the paragraph: she’s been bemoaning the “poison” in the British “establishment” so frequently for such an extended period of time that her fingers surely know how to type out the words without any special prompting from her cortex.

I don’t want to wade into the accuracy of this “thesis” of elite depravity, though I will note that like most conspiracy theories it’s pretty light on evidence and pretty heavy on innuendo,  I merely want to highlight another part of Phillips’ article that suggests (shockingly!) that she has no principled stance against elitism whatsoever.

Barely three paragraphs after bemoaning the depravity and wickedness of Britain’s own elite, Phillips approvingly quotes a Wall Street Journal editorial by Turkish political economy professor Dani Rodrik. Phillips then sarcastically asks:

Into which category of prejudice would Cameron place the horrified Professor Rodrik – Turkish protectionist, Turkish culture warrior, or Turkish Islamophobe?

Phillips is, apparently, unaware that she is basing her argument about Turkey’s decline into tyranny almost solely on the opinions of a man who not only does not live in Turkey but who was educated at both Harvard and Princeton. Indeed Rodrik didn’t just go to Harvard, something that even a liliputian ignoramus like me can claim, he is a full tenured professor there.

It would be virtually impossible to find someone whose opinion is less representative of Turkish society than an expat Harvard professor, but that is exactly what Phillips has done. Without even the barest hint of self-awareness, and literally within 200 words, she  has managed to simultaneously demonize her own country’s elite as almost uniformly corrupt and treasonous while glorifying the elite of another country (one which she roundly despises) as being perfectly honesty and forthright.

This neocon trick (“Our elites are full of effeminate, weak, anti-semitic, and terrorist-appeasing jackals…but the elites of other countries are full of courageous promoters of democracy!”) is endlessly perplexing to me. Isn’t it much simpler to expect that, human nature being what it is, elites everywhere will be self-serving and corrupt? That if you’re going to distrust the internationalized and cosmopolitan elite of country X you should be similarly wary of the internationalized and cosmopolitan elite of country Y? That if you consider the intellectuals in country X to be lily-livered cowards then it makes little sense to paint the intellectuals of country Y as lion-hearted warriors?

While I think that neoconservatism’s undue obsession with elite hatred is very damaging, I am in complete sympathy with the idea that elites must be closely watched and constantly held to account. Elites, like any group, will look after their own interests and these frequently diverge from those of society as a whole. What I still can’t understand is neoconservatism’s constant need to latch onto totally obscure and entirely unrepresentative elite figures (e.g. Gary Kasparov or Ahmed Chalabi) and to take whatever bromides they utter at face values.

"What do I love more, nuclear weapons or freedom? Why do I have to choose?!"

 

Remember the time I appeared on RT and said how the Senate ratification of the START treaty  was going to be “a real mess” because the principled opposition war-mad fanatics on the Republican side of the aisle thought that a treaty that modestly decreased both the American and Russian nuclear arsenals was THE MOST DANGEROUS THING EVER? Well there are now some indications that I’m not a complete moron:

With the November midterm elections fast approaching, and with some Republican voices calling for no significant legislation to be considered in a post-election lame-duck session, prospects for what is widely considered to be President Obama’s most significant foreign-policy achievement to date may be wilting with every passing hot Washington summer day…Several influential Republican senators, including Jon Kyl of Arizona and John Thune of South Dakota, are pressing for reassurances on the treaty’s provisions. They are also using the debate over ratification to elicit administration commitments on related arms issues, such as the modernization of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex and missile defense.

Now I enjoy self-congratulation as much as the next guy, maybe I even enjoy it more since I’m super-important and brilliant and handsome and all that, but I don’t actually think that the partial confirmation of my prediction proves my far-sighted perspicacity but merely my basic literacy: Republicans have been publicly stating that they hate this treaty since the day it was signed. Indeed, it’s not the slightest bit clear to me why this article was published now, in late July, when it could just as easily have been published at any time since Obama and Medvedev left Prague in early April.

That conservative Republicans hate START and view many of its provisions as craven, cowardly, and dangerous is pretty much a given. They hate anything that doesn’t involve America blowing shit up. What would be extremely odd and newsworthy is if people like Jon Kyl and Joe Lieberman didn’t engage in an opportunity for militaristic posturing, threat inflation, and demands for more defense spending. Indeed it wouldn’t really shock me if Lieberman penned a fresh demand for more military hardware in response to a Red Sox-Yankees game, or a particularly thrilling episode of Dancing with the Stars, because that’s what Joe Lieberman does: demand more military spending regardless of the question being asked or the issue being addressed.

I certainly hope that the brain dead husks over in the Senate don’t scuttle this treaty out of a combination of spite and idiotic fears over the Russian “menace,” but after witnessing the past 10 years of congressional history it seems pretty clear that counting on the studied competence and good judgement of the US Senate makes about as much sense as counting on Tony Romo in a playoff game: the bigger the expectations and the hype the more crushingly awful is the inevitable failure.

Will START pass? It’s certainly possible, but if it does pass it is only going to be after a protracted political gang fight and some horse-trading (probably some sort of deal to upgrade the US nuclear deterrant) that will make the passage of the healthcare bill look like an example from a good government textbook.

I wonder what’s going to happen with all of those stories about plucky little pro-freedom Google now that it has pledged to “obey Chinese law.” But I though that  Sergey Brin was a champion of democracy, and that Google was single-handedly going to defeat those dastardly autocrats in Beijing? Oh wait, you mean Google sold it’s “principles” out because of financial pressure? That’s unpossible!

Hilarious, just hilarious.