An Ounce of Prevention

There's two theories concerning what happened in Ukraine last weekend.  One is that the Russian government, as per a tradition of destabilizing neighbors who dared to cross them by arming insurgents within their borders, gave high-end military hardware to idiots who proceeded to shoot down a civilian airliner after mistaking it for a legitimate target.  The other is that Flight 17 was loaded with exsanguinated corpses and shot down by the Ukrainian air force as part of a pretext for an invasion of Russia / after being mistaken for Putin's personal aircraft, all as part of a conspiracy involving Western journalists, the internet, and in fact every media source that isn't controlled by the Russian government.

The whole incident has been called a game-changer, but when the folks on TV use the words their referring to states' policy towards Russia.  I'd prefer it to be a game-changer in terms of changing the way the game is played entirely.

See, despite the phrase "international community," states aren't always good neighbors.  Sure, they occasionally give aid packages to each other, help find another country's lost plane, form neighborhood organizations that change what we think global governance can accomplish, or liberate their friends from their enemies.  But when it comes to civil conflict, the response is usually "could you keep it down, please?"  If the countries of the world were houses on a block, it'd be one with constant gunshots and screams coming from far too many homes, while the rest mostly crank up their sound systems and try to ignore it.

The issue is, as usual, sovereignty.  States are recognized as the ultimate legitimate authority within their borders, and only within those borders.  Therefore, any internal conflict is the problem of that particular state, and others have no "right" or obligation to interfere.  There's a couple of problems with this, though.  First, for a civil war to be going on in the first place, a state has by definition lost its monopoly over the legitimate use of force used within its borders, and is sufficiently weak that a rebel groups believes it stands a chance of overthrowing it.  Or in other words, civil wars happen in states that are least equipped to deal with them, yet their neighbors expect them to handle the problem.

Second, there's no guarantee that a civil war will stay confined to those neat little lines we've drawn on the globe.  Even in a "normal" civil conflict, and despite the aforementioned tenants of sovereignty, states like to meddle.  Russia supplying the separatists in Ukraine is nothing new, the issue of the past week is that this meddling cost an airplane full of noncombatants their lives.  Worse are situations like the one in the Middle East, where the ISIS group is committed to redrawing the map entirely.  It was able to establish itself in Syria during its ongoing civil war, and is now pushing against a neighboring failing state, and is influencing politics throughout the region.

The inevitable questions after looking at all this is: what if, rather than merely condemning the fighting in Syria, someone had decided to intervene and bring it to a conclusion years ago, before ISIS built its power base?  What if someone had helped Kiev's new government pacify its rebellious eastern provinces, and secure its country's borders so no Russian anti-air platforms could be fired by trigger-happy morons at civilian aircraft?

Ah, but the phrasing of the question provides the answer.  When we say "someone needs to do something," we rarely mean "I should do something."

If states are the ultimate authority within their borders, then there is no legitimate agent in the world to go around interceding in civil conflicts to keep things like Flight 17 from happening - at least, not without those states' invitation.  And who would such a do-gooder be, anyway?  The United States, a war-weary superpower with a host of domestic issues to deal with?  The European Union, which can't quite decide whether it wants to move beyond its component national identities?  Or what if it's China or Russia that decides to go about (in Russia's case, overtly) interfering in civil conflicts to resolve them?  Would less authoritarian parts of the world be happy with the results?

And even if the world decided that someone was authorized to go around using force to end civil wars before they spread further, would that agent want to?  Could they afford to?  Some of the factors behind the United States' non-intervention in Syria was the fact that we'd just spent a decade occupying two countries in what's looking like a failed attempt at spreading democracy, and that Syria's anti-air capacities were a couple of levels above those of the regimes we'd previously crushed - the conclusion was that intervening in Syria was likely to be even less pleasant than "fixing" Iraq and Afghanistan.  But even if our military was still in top form, and confident it could evade Syrian AA fire, would we have been willing to commit out forces to a potentially lengthy occupation and peacemaking process?  Or would we be willing to have those soldiers available in case of a crisis that impacted states we were directly interested in?

Maybe it won't always be like this, but we're at an awkward stage in our development as a global community where our humanitarian inclinations are up against national interest and political notions devised to empower kings, which leaves us knowing we ought to act without feeling that we're able to.  And so we get the current situation, where we sit and watch civil wars happen, and hope that they stay relatively civil so we don't have to send troops to prop up an ally when a conflict spills over national borders, or lose citizens to trigger-happy insurgents supplied by a borderline rogue state.  Like watching a neighbor's house burn down and praying that the sparks don't land on our yard.

Not Quite Textbook

It's been a while since my Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies course, so I may not be remembering things correctly, but the current situation between Israel and Palestine doesn't fit into the normal narrative for dispute settlements.  Obviously the fighting has intensified over the past few days, but earlier this week there was an attempt to calm things down, calls for a ceasefire to be negotiated by Egypt. 

Normally, calls for arbitration or ceasefires are the result of a stalemate.  The thinking is that the belligerents enter their conflict each expecting they will win, because why would you fight a war you think you'll lose?  Once the fighting has gone on for a bit, and everyone's true military capacities are exposed on the battlefield, then the combatants realize who is likely to win the war if it continues.  The losing side may call for a time-out in an attempt to save itself, and the winning side is unlikely to comply if it's winning decisively, because why would you negotiate a peace with your foe if you could just crush him?  It is only, therefore, when the fighting has gone on for a bit but both sides are stalemated that you see genuine attempts at negotiated ends to the fighting.  The opportunity for peace is said to be "ripe," the belligerents have accumulated some war weariness, and neither is confident that continuing to fight will pay off more than reaching a settlement.

That's not what happened earlier.  We had one side, the Israelis, dominant yet pushing the hardest for a ceasefire.  The Palestinians in Gaza had made no gains, but were doggedly refusing to budge until they got concessions even when all they can "offer" is days of being bombed.  Evidently my course literature didn't account for suicidal combatants.

But this isn't a simple two-sided conflict, and looking a little deeper makes things make more sense, if a disturbing sort of sense.

In this case, peace, or at least an end to the current fighting, isn't necessarily the main objective, or even a shared objective.  Hamas, the group controlling Gaza, has defined itself through its opposition to Israel, and has been willing to commit terrorist acts in its pursuit of a Palestinian state.  It has little to show for this beyond a role in perpetuating a cycle of violence, but Hamas has at least proven popular enough to be elected to Gaza's leadership.

The problem is that there is now an alternative, an Arab, Islamist, anti-Israeli group that has actually succeeded at taking territory - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.  The group has already used the Syrian civil war as a staging point for its expansion into Iraq, and there are worries that it might try and keep expanding into places like Jordan, if not further.  Hamas, in short, has competition.  How fortunate that someone kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens, prompting a revenge killing that escalated into thrown stones, guerrilla warfare, and an Israeli offensive into Gaza?  It's certainly convenient that Hamas has a chance to get in the news and show Palestinians that it can still fight the good fight.

But it can't win the good fight, hence Hamas' dilemma.  For it to stay in power it needs to show that it can get results.  Since it can't do that through an outright victory, it must reject Israel's calls for a ceasefire and provoke more fighting, in hopes of making its inevitable defeat as uncomfortable as possible, bogging the Israelis down in urban warfare, provoking riots and bombings, launching the sort of underground attacks seen today, until the hassle of dealing with Hamas brings Israel to the negotiating table and allows Hamas to wring something, anything, out of them.  This is obviously a terrible spot to be in, hence Hamas' seemingly-insane attempt to get concessions before the Israeli offensive - I don't think anyone would look forward to getting blitzed by the IDF.

This tortured logic also puts Israel in a bind.  If they strike back too hard, and come out of this latest conflict too victorious, there's a chance that Hamas could fall and something worse could take its place, a group more fanatical and, so far, more successful.  At the same, Hamas is hardly a good neighbor, and being too generous with concessions and ceasefires runs the risk of encouraging them to provoke further conflict.  And Israel can't sidestep the issue and simply cease the current fighting without antagonizing elements of its own population that want vengeance/justice for the lives lost in the conflict's most recent iteration.

Perversely, this would really be a good time for the two sides to work together.  Israel could give Hamas opportunities to be seen leading the Palestinians, and hand over some slight concessions that Hamas could wave around during election season, proving that they can get results and Palestinians don't need to turn to ISIS.  This would also keep Hamas from causing too much trouble, as the more havoc they stir up, the less of a loss for Israel it would be if ISIS ended up taking over.  Unfortunately, if the two sides were able to find a common ground in this manner the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should have ended by now.

There are other outs, of course.  A lot of Israel's issues with Gaza only apply if it intends to allow Gaza to remain an independent territory after this conflict, and while they've insisted that its latest campaign is an "incursion" and not an invasion... well, look at it this way, you're being attacked from a neighboring territory and the government controlling it is either unable to stop it or in fact encouraging it.  Occupying Gaza to keep any sort of extremists, Hamas or ISIS or whatever, from running the place may start to look tempting.  The obvious downside is that this would antagonize the entire region and earn Israel criticism from its allies.


Another alternative would be for the people of Gaza to ditch Hamas but pick a non-violent party to replace it, one that wouldn't have to continue this conflict to shore up its legitimacy, but I think the Israeli occupation of Gaza is more likely than that.

What's So Great About America, Anyway?

I’m wary of the phrase “American exceptionalism.”  To consider my country is exceptional is fine and good, but it’s easy to twist that phrase into meaning that exceptions should be made for America, and that doesn’t end well.  We may be the world’s sole superpower, for the moment, but that doesn’t mean what it used to in 1991.  America can “go it alone” when it comes to international consensus over its foreign policy, but that means we get to pay for the consequences ourselves.  The world’s best military is great at destroying things, not so much at building lasting accomplishments.  Our vast resources don’t do us much good when our government can’t balance a budget or reach a consensus on what to do with them.  And so forth. 

Likewise, gushing about how awesome America is can lead one to conclude that it exists as the final chapter of some global narrative.  To describe the country as some shining city on a hill is one thing, to add an element of destiny is another.  Considering all the people that had to die for America to happen, and all the shameful chapters in our national history that led up to this point, if America has any divine mandate it is on behalf of a genocidal, Old Testament sort of deity at odds with the benevolent God most Americans say they worship.  More importantly, claiming that America represents the most that any nation can aspire to blinds us to what we can learn from other countries, or even to the possibility that we can improve ourselves.

Nevertheless, I still think America is an exceptional country, and it doesn't have anything to do with deserving special treatment or our holy destiny.

Whereas other, later colonies were founded on the backs of subjugated indigenous populations, providence saw fit to clear out America's natives with diseases, and the survivors were able to be pushed westward or onto reservations as more colonists arrived.  The result was a lot of land just ripe for the taking, especially attractive if you're coming from a continent where all the real estate was divvied up between a bunch of old, feudal families.  America, once those troublesome natives were swept from it, was a blank slate, a place where someone with no prospects in the old country could make something of himself, become a landowner, and rise to the local aristocracy based on his own efforts, not a family inheritance or passed-down title.

This may be as much to blame for America's conception of men and kings as all those Enlightenment scholars like Locke who are usually cited when discussing the Founding Fathers' ideology.  If Goodman Joseph can get off his boat in New England, work hard for a decade or two, and become a respected landowner with a prosperous farm and associated business, it might be harder to believe that the inhabitants of a distant palace are somehow inherently better than the rest of us.  You might start to think that maybe people are created more or less equal to each other, and their differences in station are due to circumstance and their actions more than anything else.

At any rate, the end result was America's reputation as the Land of Opportunity.  Now, this may not be as true these days as it was a few centuries ago.  America eventually developed an aristocracy of sorts, and has political and business dynasties such as the Kennedys and Bushes, the Rockefellers and Waltons.  The gap between the richest fraction of a percentage of the population and the rest of us is growing wider, and despite our "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" national myth it's a lot easier for a millionaire to become a billionaire than it is for a poor man to become rich.  The frontier is gone, jobs are getting harder to find, and we have a looming water shortage that will one day prove that America does in fact have a maximum sustainable population.  But the main thing is that Americans like to believe that, with the right opportunity, anyone could improve their lot and prosper, and those who are wealthy aren't necessarily "better" than the rest of us.  We can recognize the differences in income while still viewing each other as equal.

This is all important because it attracted so many people to come start a new life in America, and that I think is the most exceptional thing about America.  We're a nation of immigrants, with a strong British heritage but also representatives from every other country on the planet.  Granted, this process was not without friction, and whatever minority population characterized one generation tended to assimilate in time to voice their dismay at the next wave of foreign invaders.  But generally we recognize that anyone on the planet is a potential American, if they buy into our national values.  

In short, "American" is not an ethnicity, though it might be a suffix to one.  Anyone, from anywhere, can come in an become part of our country.  They can wholeheartedly embrace their new homeland, or adopt America's culture and values while retaining the parts of their old country that they want to bring with them as a ___-American, either works.  You can do this in other countries, of course, but you won't fit in as well.  It's a lot easier to become a French or Swedish citizen than it is to become French or Swedish, because those are national identities tied to specific ethnicities and histories.

This is special because it puts us ahead of the curve, in a way.  The basic international unit for the past century or so has been the nation-state, a political entity inhabited by a national entity.  The French live in France, the Swedes live in Sweden, and so on.  The problem is that the world is changing, and populations are moving about - blame globalization for shifting economic opportunities, and modern transportation for making it possible to chase them.  The result is friction, strife, fears of a country being taken over by its immigrants, reactionary xenophobic nationalism, and so on.

America doesn't have to deal with that - or at least, it isn't acceptable to openly admit as much.  When we rail about Central American immigrants, it's because they crossed the border illegally, not simply because there are now Mexicans living in our country.  Oh, there are efforts to enforce English as a national language through de jure legislation rather than de facto custom, and some alarm about immigrant enclaves that are refusing to assimilate into the local culture, but America isn't "threatened" by newcomers in the same way as other countries are.  Beyond being one of the architects of the current globalized world, we're well-situated to weather the turbulence of globalization.  So long as they buy into national values of equality and share our belief in opportunity, we're generally accepting of immigrants.

It's the whole e pluribus unum thing, how a diverse population when it comes to ethnicity, religion, and subculture can still belong to the same ideologically-based nation.  It's why the European Union is so interesting to watch, at least from the perspective as an international affairs-minded American - we can see our own history in it, as a collection of states take steps towards becoming something more.  Granted, a collection of English colonies with limited capacities had an easier time unifying than a continent's worth of nation-states that are or were great powers in their own right, and that's probably why a unified "European" identity isn't taking precedence over national identities yet.  But that may change.  I'm not advocating an "end to history," but I do think America can be considered the future, or at least a future, that other countries can follow.

Until that day, well... in a world with shifting populations, and where states' borders may not necessarily align with, or may even divide, national distributions, the fact that America has been able to build such a successful country that people keep wanting to be a part of, a country based on lofty ideals of equality and opportunity rather than an ethnic identity or totalitarian adherence to a religious or political doctrine, remains pretty exceptional.

Global Governance or the Lack Thereof

The current crisis is of course the violence in Libya.  The one before that was eastern Ukraine, which isn't to say that particular problem has been resolved, but we're currently more interested in other things.  Falling between them was a fuss between China and Vietnam over an oil platform being built in what the latter insists is its territorial waters, which isn't so much a distinct crisis as it is the most recent flareup of an ongoing dispute that's plagued the region like herpes.

It's a problem with serious policy implications and long-term consequences, yet I only found out about it a few days ago, 'cause Fox News was on the TV nearest my treadmill at the gym.  The incident was naturally being used as further proof that the Obama administration had no coherent foreign policy plan, America's weakness was emboldening its enemies, countries like China or Russia will continue to flout international law until someone sends them a firm message, and so forth.  The panel - there's always a panel, Fox is always ready to interpret the news for you so you don't have to draw your own conclusion - stopped short of actually proscribing policy, and didn't explain what firm actions the US should take to keep China from stepping outside its boundaries.  Maybe park our navy outside a Chinese port and threaten to bombard it?  A missile strike or two?  Obama will surely know what to do.

It got me thinking, mostly morose thoughts about how international governance can be easily spoiled by a few brutes who refuse to play by the rules everyone else has agreed to, and how little these normative and legal regimes can do to stop transgressors.  We - mainly the countries in the West - build something like the UN that's supposed to resolve international conflicts, and act sort of  like a world government, yet cringe at the thought of an official world government.  We like local government just fine, and are willing to tolerate national governments, but as things scale up, our attitudes change.

If my neighbor is trying to build a well, and according to my documents he's trying to do it on my property, it's not going to be hard for me to resolve the issue.  I can show him my property deed and where the lines are drawn, and point out that if he continues he'll be violating the law.  If he refuses to stop, I call the police, who can use force to stop him.

If my neighboring country is trying to build a well on what according to international agreement is my property, it's a bit different.  I can show him these treaties and the maps and argue that he's violating international law, but he may declare that these treaties are unfair, or inaccurate, or illegitimate.  If he refuses to stop... I guess I get to decide how far I'm willing to go to try and stop him.  If I'm Luxembourg, and my neighbor is the United States, I'm probably not going to be able to stop him at all.

If the neighbors are individuals within a country, we rarely see a flat-out rejection of the law, even if neither party was involved in crafting it.  I have no idea who came up with the system used to determine what land I can "own," or who drew the lines that carved out my home property.  I don't question the legitimacy of my property lines, they're part of a legal system I was born into, and even though I don't participate in it, I don't mind living under it.  I suppose I do have a little say in how it operates if I remember to vote once every so often, assuming the candidates I vote for get elected and happen to make a decision regarding property laws.  But it's indirect control at best.

Likewise, I don't quail at the thought of a policeman appearing on my street.  It helps that I'm a white male in a white male's country, of course, but even if I weren't, I doubt the notion of a cop stepping in to settle my property dispute would generate the sort of abhorrence we see when we suggest establishing some sort of hard enforcement mechanism for international law.

In short, while some states are keen on the idea of global governance, and are willing to adhere to international agreements, or even let foreign soldiers onto their soil as peacekeepers in emergencies, there is a real reluctance to give international institutions the sort of coercive power necessary to fully govern.

The state-level explanation for this is straightforward.  The world we live in is dominated by a number of actors called states, institutions that define themselves as the ultimate legal authority in their respective territories, and claim a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in their domain.  Adding any "higher" laws, or allowing an outside organization to step in with armed forces, undermines this definition and goes against their self-interest (unless they decide it is in their self-interest to abide by this laws or allow foreign forces into their country). 

A related argument would be that states play at higher "stakes" than bickering neighbors, and have to be strong enough to repel their rivals, and therefore refuse to weaken themselves by empowering international governments.  Or in other words, the world system is anarchical and "help yourself," so states can't afford to create something capable of bringing order to the system or helping themselves and others.  I find this explanation particularly unsatisfying.

I prefer to work on the individual or "people" level, states only exist in our minds anyway.  From this angle, the explanation for the lack of strong global governance is as follows - I'm not a minority living in a country dominated by a different ethnic group or other demographic, so when I talk about my government or my police, I feel a connection to them.  Even if the laws of the land are drawn up in a distant capital, they were made by "my" people, and a few folks from my region were at least in the room when those laws were signed.  Police officers are similarly drawn from the cities they protect, making them as much neighbors as they are enforcers of the federal government.  In short, I see a lot of myself in the people writing and executing the laws, so I feel like they're looking after my interest, or at least not out to get me.

If we talk about international law, or some sort of global army to enforce the United Nations' decisions, I can't feel so confident.  Are people from a culture from the other side of the planet, who grew up hearing different morality tales from a different religion, whose history diverges from mine so many, many centuries ago, really like me?  Can I trust them to keep my interests in mind, or are they out to get me?  More importantly, if we try to make the UN less dysfunctional by removing the five permanent Security Council members' vetoes, how could I stop the General Assembly from denouncing Israel?  Things only get worse when you consider some armed force that could settle things like border disputes - can you really trust someone who doesn't even speak your language?

So this is why right wingnut fears about the New World Order and world government are pretty silly - whether on the individual or national level, not many people are comfortable with the idea.  But I think that might change, in time.  We've got this wonderful, globalized world, where ideas can flow and diffuse with greater speed and ease than at any point in human history.  We had, until recent setbacks, and attempt to spread a particular group of norms that were supportive of regional and international governance.  And modern communications have allowed people to connect from all corners of the world, proving that whether they're from the United States or Brazil, Russia or China, people are equally capable of jackassery on the internet.

So maybe there will come a time when we see enough of ourselves in the Hague to give the International Criminal Court some real weight (or maybe even ratify it!).  Maybe someday we'll feel comfortable with empowering other countries' soldiers with the authority to use force to keep countries from building platforms where they're not allowed, even if those countries could potentially include us.  But we've a ways to go, and in the meantime we're stuck with figuring out how to talk China into voluntarily following an international law it would rather ignore.

Emergent-cy

One of the neat things to come out of my qualitative research methods class is the idea of emergent or grounded theory.  Now I'm just a novice, but my understanding of the concept is as follows: rather than walking into a situation with a hypothesis to be tested through quantitative data analysis, a qualitative researcher approaches an issue with enough background information to be at least somewhat knowledgeable about it, but no specific theory in mind. 

Instead, the qualitative researcher looks for patterns and processes, notices trends, comes up with a starting theory, and then goes back to collect more data, bouncing back and forth between data collection and theory-crafting until there's nothing more to be learned from the situation, and the researcher has something that does a good job of explaining it.  There's no concern about applicability; as the study progresses the researcher may be able to pull in other work describing similar patterns and behavior, but creating some grand universal theory is less important than one that works for the topic.

Quite different from quantitative work, in other words.  It's slower and meticulous, unconcerned with prediction or prescription.  And perhaps not as attractive to policymakers wanting someone to load some case data into an equation and spit out the odds that Dysfunctionstan is about to explode.

But it made me think about my other course readings, and the names on them - Kupchan, de Mesquita, Svensson, with a few exceptions, the names are all European, Western.  When Morgenthau wrote his realist theory of international relations, the examples he used were from European history, particularly the exciting bits around World War II, or else Western nations' (particularly America) dealings with the rest of the world.  Keohane's book on neorealism isn't much different, and aside from a brief mention of China's warring states period, is based on European history and European theorists. 

And of course this makes a lot of sense, it's going to be a lot more important for a political scientist to study the history and politics of nearby nations, and the West designed and dominates the current world.  And you could argue that a monarchy is a monarchy, a dictator a dictator, whether they're in Paris or Mogadishu or Beijing or Kabul.

But I can't help but think of Marxism, which was devised by a German, then picked up and applied in Russia, Cambodia, China, and too many other places.  And in all cases, the result was an appalling body count and a coercive totalitarian state unlike the happy little dictatorship Marx envisioned.  This is probably a bad example, as Marx couldn't even predict what would happen in his own country, but it reminds me of America's recent difficulties spreading democracy, or the confusion of early Western visitors to Japan who mistook the shogun for an emperor and the emperor for a pope.

In short, I want to see fewer attempts to apply venerable political theories born in the West to any given political development, and more scholars from the rest of the world walking into their studies with an open mind and seeing what they come up with.  If the results turn out identical to those aforementioned Western theories, fantastic, let's give Morgenthau and the others another award.  And if the results are different, we may learn something we didn't know, have a better way at looking at the world, and could even open further research to compare and contrast the new theories with the old ones.

If nothing else, we'd get more diversity on the syllabus.

What To Do About Russia

I'm not sure anyone is surprised by Russia announcing the formal annexation of Crimea - a substantial part of the local population supports the move, and more importantly the region is swarming with Russian soldiers.  Ukraine and Western leaders are of course outraged at this illegitimate referndum and brazen land-grab, and are threatening additional consequences on top of already-issued sanctions and travel restrictions on high-ranking Russian political figures.

But unless the recent clash between Ukrainian and Russian forces gets out of control, the situation in Crimea is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.  Ever since the crisis started, pundits in the United States have been calling for a more developed Russia strategy from the Obama Administration, amid concerns that it may not even have one.

As for what such a strategy should entail, that depends on a few important questions.

First, is this a personal matter?  Last Friday, Secretary of State Kerry insisted that his warnings of consequences for Russia's actions were not "meant in a personal way," but whether America's problem is with Russia in general or Putin in particular will have a huge effect on its strategy.  If we expect that Russia's current bad behavior - a campaign against international organizations and political freedom within its borders, bullying of states on its borders, and now an outright annexation of territory - to be inherent to the system, so to speak, then our strategy against Russia may turn out to be a decades-long plan to isolate and counter a predatory illiberal regime.

On the other hand, we could pin all of this on Putin.  Given the sparse limits on his power and the handful of other figures who can be said to have any input on his decision-making, it would be easy for America to focus its discontent on Russia's de facto dictator while insisting that it has no problem with the rest of the country.  This would give us a better chance to reach out to Putin's successors - the man is 61 years old in a country where the average male life expectancy is 64, after all, so we should only be dealing with him for at most another administration or two.  Perhaps just as importantly, this would argue against any sort of "East vs West" rhetoric put forth to explain America and Europe's response to the Crimean crisis.

Related to this is the question of what the rest of the world wants to do with Russia.  If we're content to once again divide Eurasia between rival power blocs for the foreseeable future, this allows us to be quite strict with the economic sanctions and other consequences for Crimea, since anything that hurts the Enemy is good for us.  But if we look forward to a time we can work with a post-Putin Russia, or entertain thoughts of expanding the West to create an economically-integrated, liberal-democratic North, that puts more limits on our actions precisely when we're trying to deter Putin/Russia from further bad behavior.

Enacting crippling economic sanctions in the vein of those that the United States likes to put on Iran, or excluding Russia from international clubs such as the G8, would be counter-productive if we hope to eventually win the country over.  Coming down too hard on Russia would only drive it further away from Europe, and give it extra incentive to consolidate its "Eurasian Union" neo-Soviet hegemony.  More to the point, there are concerns that we may not be able to effectively sanction Russia.  It's a major energy exporter supplying Europe, which makes some of our allies hesitant to sanction the people sending them gas, and Russia has another enormous potential market in the form of China, who might not see what all the fuss in Crimea is about.  We may be able to hurt it, but not necessarily hurt it enough to serve as a proper rebuke.

This leads into America and the West's non-economic response to Crimea.  A throwaway sentence in a BBC report mentioned that Russia's parliament is considering "a bill on a procedure to admit parts of a foreign state to Russia."  It sounds like Russia's government foresees future territorial expansion, and while Russia's foreign minister has insisted that "Russia doesn't and can't have any plans to invade southeastern regions of Ukraine," Putin has expressed concern about the safety of Russian-speaking citizens in those very regions, and holds that Russia has a responsibility to protect its own.  It's unlikely Russia would consider a move into eastern Ukraine any more an invasion than it does its current occupation of Crimea.

This isn't a threat that's limited to Ukraine: Stewart Patrick points out that there are Russian minorities in the Baltic states, which are under NATO protection, and in Belarus and Kazakhstan, which are not.  Given Russia's tactic of seeding to-be-annexed territory with Russian passports before launching invasions to protect its new citizens, this theoretically puts every country on Russia's border at risk.  Stephen Blank has some good ideas regarding a build-up of forces in Eastern Europe (though I'd argue over missile defense), especially since that seems to be the area under immediate threat.

But where do we go from there?  Should the United States try to rope Belarus and Kazakhstan into defensive pacts in case Russia looks their way?  Do we need a return to Cold War notions of containment?  Could the United States even afford an attempt at encircling Russia right now, and how would Putin react if he felt the West was trying to surround him?

I think a better question for the talking heads on the 24-hour news networks to ask would be not what America's Russia policy should be, but whether it really needs one.

After all, President Obama has baffled observers by breaking with tradition and not creating a coherent "Obama Doctrine" to guide US foreign policy, preferring instead the flexibility to take issues on a case-by-case basis.  There's little reason to expect he'd handle Russia any differently.

More than that, America already spent the better part of the previous century designing its foreign policy around keeping Russia in check, and we're still paying the price for it - not just economically or diplomatically, but in the unholy alliances we made to get our chess pieces in the right position, entanglements with non-democracies that continue to poison our claims of supporting freedom and human rights.  We've seen what happens when we decide that a country we otherwise have little in common with and no strategic interest in is too important to fall to the enemy.  We should not be eager to go down this path again.

Another thing to consider is that drastic action may not be necessary to punish Russia - as Ilan Berman tells us, Russia's economy was stumbling even before the Crimean crisis, and the market fallout from subsequent events and the initial round of sanctions is only making things worse.  It would be satisfyingly ironic for Putin's attempt to bolster his poll numbers and console his loss of Ukraine proper to hamstring any further expansion.

So what to do in the meantime?

Again, Stephen Blank's prescription for an increased focus on Ukraine is sensible, and hopefully the threat of escalation will dissuade Russia from pulling a similar stunt in the Russian-speaking border regions of Ukraine that it did in Crimea.  Providing economic and political assistance to the country would also build up another functional democracy in a world where freedom is in decline, and counter the propaganda labeling Ukraine's post-revolutionary government a bunch of Nazis.

It would also be helpful to, as Patrick recommends, do a better job of explaining why the United States and the rest of the West is outraged over the annexation of Crimea.  Yet we shouldn't pretend that the probable majority of the region doesn't want to rejoin Russia and that it is still part of Ukraine - instead, we could set conditions on Western acceptance of the annexation.  Ask for a plebiscite with an option to remain a part of Ukraine, held with international observers to ensure a fair vote, and without masked Russian grunts holding the region in lockdown.  Maybe we could ask for assurances that Crimean-Ukrainians won't face any persecution, and that the Tatars won't be deported again.  I'd be surprised if Russia agreed to this, but then it would have to explain why it's afraid of a legitimate vote.

Rather than scrambling to secure Belarus and Kazakhstan from Russian aggression, we may be able to wait and see if Russia makes any moves in those directions.  Its seizure of Crimea seems to be an attempt to save face following the loss of a local puppet, while Belarus and Kazakhstan seem comfortable in their current orbits around Russia.  More bluntly, those petty dictatorships are probably not worth "saving" from Russia.  In the meanwhile, it would be wise to reaffirm America's (and NATO's) commitment to the Baltic countries, just in case of any staggering lapses of Russian judgment.

I would argue that we should keep any economic sanctions of Russia to a minimum.  Though this runs counter to the notion of rebuking the country for its misdeeds, if Russia is truly on the verge of an economic decline, the less the West does to aid this, the less Russia can blame it for its problems, and therefore the worse for Putin and his cronies.  After all, America's heavy sanctions on Iran did hurt and isolate the country, but didn't actually change its regime. 

This isn't to say that Putin being voted out of office is particularly likely, but if the Russian people's ire is focused more on its leadership than the West, this will make it significantly easier to engage with Russia later if the West offers to help Russia out of its economic difficulties.  Such offers should come with stipulations, demands that Russia loosen state control of its media, be less restrictive of NGOs, and other political and economic reforms.  Similarly, Russia should be ostracized for its actions, but not made a pariah - rather than expelling it from the G8 or other international organizations, instead we could revoke some of its privileges and again set conditions for their return. 

America's goal should not be a long-term strategy to contain or defeat Russia, but a plan to dissuade future Crimeas in the short term, with a wider goal of pulling the country out of Putinism, proving to Russia that becoming part of the liberal, democratic West (or North) is better than making itself an authoritarian regional hegemon once again competing with Europe for influence and "prestige."  In other words, America needs to succeed where it failed at the end of the Cold War.

Then we would no more need a Russia policy than we currently need a Germany policy.

The Ups and Downs of National Self-Determination

In theory, there's nothing wrong with people voting for independence from one country, or voting to join a country they feel a closer affiliation with than the one they're currently a part of.  After all, the United States and the West were supportive of Kosovo and South Sudan when they decided to break away from regimes that were waging war against them.

In general, though, states don't like it when borders are redrawn, and not just due to conservatism or a fondness for the old maps.  The champions of Western liberalism are not exempt from internal demographic issues: the United Kingdom controls a portion of an adjacent island that some would very much like to merge with the rest of Ireland, Spain has Basque separatists not content with status as an autonomous community, and even in the United States there are fears that a growing Hispanic population might try to reclaim former Mexican territories in the southwest.  True, none of these communities can claim to be persecuted or victimized to the extent of Kosovo or South Sudan, but support for the latter breakaway states may cause the former to ask why they can't enjoy the same self-determination.

More than that, such sentiments would wreck havoc with the post-colonial world.  When carving up the continent of Africa in particular, the European colonial powers famously ignored traditional ethnic or cultural boundaries, and in some cases purposely divided populations so that an empowered minority would be dependent on its colonial masters for survival against a disenfranchised majority.  The countries that emerged when colonialism petered out were unstable enough without a myriad of ethnic groups fighting to redraw arbitrary borders or form new nations, and thus the newly-liberated Third World was encouraged to either support multinationalism or create a new national identity based on an artificial state.  Such sentiments have since spread to the rest of the planet as increased immigration and shifting populations have challenged traditional notions of the nation-state, leading to a burgeoning "European" identity on one continent and no small amount of tension in countries with surging numbers of foreign workers - Qatar notably has its citizens outnumbered by such laborers.

So Kosovo and South Sudan are exceptions rather than the rule.  Should Crimea be another?  Overlooking for the moment that this flash of "self-determination" is taking place with thousands of undeclared Russian troops watching over these free and fair elections, and the options are "join Russia immediately" or "go indpendent," with no choice to remain a part of Ukraine.

As of a 2001 census, 60% of Crimeans identified as Russian, and the majority of its population speaks Russian.  During the Soviet era, Crimea used to belong to the Russian republic until Khrushchev transferred it to the Ukrainian republic in 1954, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, Crimea chose to remain a part of Ukraine, but with significant autonomy.  We could complain that this would have been a better time for the region to separate from Ukraine, but from its history, Crimea has a strong argument for becoming part of Russia. 

True, Ukrainian death squads haven't been trying to purge the region of Russians, but Crimea's view of the new government in Kiev as a bunch of Nazis, combined with that parliament's move to revoke a law giving Russian status as a regional language - in effect forcing Crimea to use another nation's tongue as its official language - evidently caused enough alarm to produce in 2014 the separatist movement that failed to succeed in 1991.  The invasion of unmarked Russian troops was of course a happy coincidence.

So Crimea may have legitimate reasons for becoming part of Russia, which is probably what's going to happen anyway. 

We might be able to mollify some of Crimea's concerns, urge it to remain a part of Ukraine for a year or so and see how the new government turns out once the upcoming elections are over.  Maybe the most unpalatable of Ukraine's fascist element will fail to win any seats, and perhaps we could encourage them to keep their heads down for the sake of the old borders.  Another obvious move would be to urge Kiev's government to reinstate Ukraine's language law and allow Crimea's autonomous government to conduct its business in its own language.  And of course we could try bribes, reminding Crimea that it could share in foreign aid packages to Ukraine, assuming we could outbid Russia.

Unfortunately, even if the Crimean people decide they'd rather remain part of Ukraine, there's no guarantee that Putin would accept that any more than he accepted the Ukrainian people turning on Yanukovych.  And again, the presence of all those Russian troops severely hampers Crimeans' ability to freely determine their region's destiny.  So any attempt to sway the masses in Crimea is probably a wasted effort.

On the other hand, if Putin is suddenly interested in national self-determination, maybe we could ask Chechnya and other Russian-minority federal subjects if they want to remain a part of the Russian Federation, or go independent...