Lecturing President Putin on Democracy: How about President Bush?

Br Brigitte L. Nacos
As reported in the New York Times, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “indirectly chided Mr. Putin for overseeing a steady erosion of the independent media, the courts and the legislative branch” during her visit in Moscow he other day. She criticized the accumulation of power in the Russian presidency explaining that “in any country, if you don’t have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development.” According to the Associated Press, she said furthermore, “I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma," said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament.” According to the AP, Rice “encouraged the activists [she met with] to build institutions of democracy. These would help combat arbitrary state power amid increasing pressure from the Kremlin…”

Dr. Rice was certainly right in warning of too much power in the hands of the chief-executive as detrimental to a healthy democracy. But although the developments in Russia justify critical remarks along Dr. Rice’s lines, the problem is that the track record of the Bush administration is not exactly exemplary in this respect. Indeed, since the events of 9/11 President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others in the administration have tried relentlessly and succeeded greatly in amassing power in the hands of the executive and thereby violated the power sharing and checks-and-balances system that the U.S. Constitution prescribes. Thus, Dr. Rice would be well advised to lecture Mr. Bush and, more important, the architect of expanded executive power, Mr. Cheney, on the dangers of presidential abuse of power as well.

And there are others who should be required to attend a lecture on the constitutional power distribution in the United States as well—first of all the viable candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. Judging from their answers during their last televised debate, these candidates need to be instructed on the constitutional delegation of war powers and on the statutory provisions of the War Powers Act.
Finally, one wonders, how the White House would react, if Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov would chide President Bush during a visit in Washington for his administration’s post-9/11 power grab and meet with Bush’s critics on this count to offer his support. This hypothetical behavior would be just as detrimental to U.S.-Russian relations as Dr. Rice’s actual remarks in Moscow at a time when the United States does not need to add to its problems. Instead, Putin who will visit Tehran this week should be enlisted to help solving the dispute over Iran's nuclear power program.
Yes, there is a need to speak out in support of human rights and civil liberties and democratic transparency. But unfortunately, on all of these counts the U.S. has lost its once indisputable moral high ground and thus its bully pulpit to credibly lecture on these values.
Take a look at the latest Frank Rich column that elaborates on this.

Comments

[Brigitte]

Dmitri:
Thanks for your comments and the link to Mr. Bukovsky’s article that I missed at the time it was published. I agree with everything you and Bukovsky write. The actions by and developments in the U.S. government in the post-9/11 years have tarnished the American model as ideal for the forces of democratization around the world and actually strengthened the hands of governments that abuse their power in violation of the most fundamental democratic rights and values.

[Dmitri Glinski]

The sad paradox is that in Russia and other less-than-democratic societies, the U.S. continues to be invoked as a normative standard, but not by the democrats and human rights advocates any more. Instead, it provides a convenient reference point for those who, like Mr. Putin himself, feel most at ease in a political environment where nobody can claim that "high moral ground". U.S. policies, whether actual or perceived, are frequently used these days, in Russia and elsewhere, to justify super-presidentialism and executive power abuse, high barriers to political participation, violations of human rights, and the kind of foreign policy realism that relies on crude power to achieve its aims at the expense of the weaker nations. And it's for this very reason that in recent years Russia's democrats and human rights defenders have kept as much distance as possible from their USG connections. They also have by and large lost their confidence in the USG actual intentions of helping democracy and democrats when push comes to shove, as opposed to using them instrumentally to advance U.S. economic and military interests.

While neither Sergei Lavrov nor any other Russian government official has sufficient democratic credibility to criticize U.S. domestic policies, there are still quite a few truly non-governmental, independent voices in Russian society. They should be given more opportunities to comment in U.S. media on matters of global concern, including USG actions. A number of Russia's democrats have the requisite moral authority, wisdom and experience of standing up for human rights to bring into this debate. For a relatively recent example, see this article by Vladimir Bukovsky, Russia's leading human rights campaigner from the 1970s (who is currently running a hopeless campaign for Russia's presidency):

Torture's Long Shadow
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121700018.html