The Political Crisis in Ukraine and The Lingering Problem of Russian Hegemony in the Former Soviet Sphere

To some degree, my comments here could be taken as an extension from previous comments that I made supporting a boycott of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games.  While nominally unrelated, the current degradation of relations between non-Russian ethnic groups and the United Russia government in Moscow (with particular emphasis on the North Caucasus and the rise of Sunni Islamist extremism), accompanied by a surge of cultural intolerance within the broader Russian polity toward ethnic non-Russians and culturally subversive or otherwise marginalized groups (e.g. homosexuals and transgendered), reflects not only on the internal politics of the Russian Federation but also on Russia's relations with its independent, former Soviet republican neighbors.  This is most readily apparent at the moment in regard to Ukraine, where sitting President Viktor Yanukovych, whose recent actions in negotiating Ukraine's economic relations with the European Union and Russia have signaled an effort to steer closer the Moscow, is under siege by oppositional protesters seeking, on the one hand, to reinforce economic ties with the EU and, on the other, to reverse the imposition of draconian legal enactments intended to secure Yanukovych's hold on power by attaching criminal penalties to public demonstrations and criticism of government officials (see Richard Balmforth, "Ukraine opposition calls for talks, bruised Kiev picks up pieces,"on Reuters (20 Jan 2014), at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/20/us-ukraine-idUSBREA0J11420140120).  The overall importance of this moment in the history of Ukraine is underscored by the level of violence resulting from confrontations between police and protesters in Kiev and by the consequential effects of political uncertainty on the government's ability to finance itself through issuance of sovereign debt (see Ksenia Galouchko, "Ukraine Bonds Drop Most in Week After Kiev Protests Turn Violent," in BloombergBusinessweek (20 Jan 2014), at: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-01-20/ukraine-bonds-drop-most-in-week-after-kiev-protests-turn-violent).  If concerns regarding the effects of political instability in Kiev do not quickly dissipate, it seems likely that Kiev will be drawn ever closer to Moscow, provided that Putin's government remains Yanukovych's most reliable lender of last resort, and provided the opposition is incapable of forcing Yanukovych from power, especially if Russia actively intervenes in more emphatic ways in Ukrainian politics.  Last month, a pledge by Russia to invest $15 billion into Ukrainian sovereign debt issues and reduce prices on natural gas imports to Ukraine, with the implied understanding that Yanukovych would steer away from a trade deal with the EU, generated the initial rounds of anti-government/anti-Russian protests in Kiev. 

Ultimately, the current conflict between the Yanukovych government and the political opposition appears to concern Ukraine's place within potentially competing regional economic blocs and, consequently, the particular mode of economic development that the country will undergo as it integrates with other economies within its region to engage the larger global economy.  It, thus, implicates practical and theoretic questions on the nature of trade liberalization and the political and cultural consequences emanating therefrom.  The thinkers (e.g. J.M. Keynes) and policy makers who, in the late 1940s, set up the Bretton Woods system of international monetary regulation and trade liberalization (via the GATT), envisioned a system that would evolve to progressively integrate the advanced industrial economies in a globally expansive multi-lateral trading system based on reciprocity and non-discrimination in the negotiation by agreements between countries.  Constituted under such principles, the multi-lateral trading system would encourage the forging of trade linkages between the advanced industrial economies, promote economic development and rising standards of living, and promote political cooperation among member states to the GATT by virtue of a mutuality of interests in maintaining the economic strength of member states through mutually beneficial commercial ties rather than zero-sum militaristic engagements. 

In the contemporary global economy, the vision advanced through the Bretton Woods Conference has seen certain drastic changes.  While WTO has created a mechanism for the resolution of trade disputes in order to continue and expand the scope and geographic scale of multi-lateral trade liberalization, we have also seen, over the last twenty-five years, the rise of durable regional trading blocs for preferential broadening in the scope of trade liberalization beyond the underlying multi-lateral agreements embodied within GATT/WTO.  To a significant degree, there was an air of inevitability in the creation of such blocs, reinforced by the long term success of the European Economic Community over the postwar period in maintaining a framework for regional economic integration in excess of the multi-lateral GATT regime.  Approaching from my limited background in international trade theory (and, in any case, discounting the logic of theoretic frameworks like Heckscher-Ohlin that abstract from the institutional mechanisms necessary for inter-economy price equilibration and economic developmental convergence within a multi-lateral trade system), there appears to be some rather sound logic to the idea of developing a regional trade bloc that can insulate member economies from the broader effects of competition evident in full multi-lateral trade liberalization with non-members.  As a matter of capital investment, the development of a regional trading bloc among economies at a similar level of GDP per capita, with complementary resource endowments and levels of technological integration, might help address certain issues of path dependence that would otherwise consign individual economies to specialized roles within the broader global economy less advantageous to GDP growth and expansion of living standards for their populations.  As such, I am one of those economists who doesn't necessarily think that the formation of regional trading blocs is a bad thing. 

Having made this point, Ukraine has been at a crossroads, economically, politically, and culturally, since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.  Should it remain largely tied to Russia, with its significant natural resource endowments and the potential to create a regional trading bloc facilitating geographically dispersed investment in multiple upstream, higher value added industrial processes, perhaps, in other post-Soviet states, most notably Ukraine?  Or, should it veer closer to the EU seeking to increase its westward volume of trade and risk integration into a regional bloc with much stronger economies like that of Germany in which it might discover itself transformed into a low-wage hinterland economy, especially if it were to seek to enter the monetary Euro-zone (assuming that the Euro will continue to exist for the foreseeable future)?  Assuming that I am accurately advancing the economic stakes involved for Ukraine in its efforts forge linkages with Russia and the EU, integration in either direction will necessarily situate Ukraine as a junior partner to developmental processes orchestrated by state policy makers and private investors in larger national economies. 

As such, the idea of joining a Eurasian customs union centered on Russia enjoys some positive economic virtues for Ukraine.  The majority of Ukrainian exports already flow toward Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, who would be Ukraine's economic principal partners in such a union.  Moreover, the exaggerated strength of the Russian rouble, thanks to demand for Russian petroleum exports, might create in impetus for a flow of investments to relatively peripheral corners of such a customs union, benefiting, at least in part, industrial regions in Eastern Ukraine.  In this manner, the possibilities for some inflow of Russian capital and outflow of an increased mass of Ukrainian industrial products, particular steel and aerospace equipment, might increase employment and help to bolster the value of the Ukrainian hryvnia in relation to the rouble, offsetting some of the substantial burden to Ukraine from the importation of Russian natural gas.  In the longer run, however, Kiev would be tying all of its hopes on enhanced development in Russian industry without which demand for Ukrainian exports of capital goods will not sustain utilization of Ukraine's present industrial capacity, let alone investment in new capacity.  Ultimately, the present strength of the Russian economy is anchored on the sale of petroleum products and, at least as far as I can understand from the little that I have actually investigated into the matter, petroleum revenues are not being adequately invested in diversification and qualitative improvements to existing Russian capital and consumer goods industries.  Definitively, if Russia is intent on remaining a principally extractive economy on which Ukraine remains dependent as a consumer of Russian gas, then the avenues for future transformations of the Ukrainian economy to meet broader global markets will be very sparse within a Eurasian trade bloc.  The Ukrainian political opposition might, thus, be quite right to look west for better opportunities to expand Ukraine's long run economic fortunes.  At the very least, collaborations by the Ukrainian government with Western petroleum corporations, with the motive of exploiting shale gas deposits, might enable Ukraine to shake some of its energy dependence on Russia, allowing Ukraine a limited degree of freedom to explore alternative economic developmental scenarios without having to kowtow to the Kremlin or to Gazprom (i.e. the Russian national petroleum exporting corporation) (see Richard Balmforth and Dmitry Zhdannikov, "UPDATE 1 - Ukraine signs landmark $10 bln gas deal with Shell," on Reuters (24 Jan 2013), at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/24/shale-ukraine-idUSL6N0ATER320130124). 

Beyond economic rationale, however, there are political and cultural reasons supporting increased integration of Ukraine with the EU and a distancing of Kiev from Moscow.  Emphatically, since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine have endured multiple political disputes concerning geographical jurisdictions (e.g. over the status of the Crimean Autonomous Republic and the port of Sevastopol) and the utilization by Russian military forces of facilities on Ukrainian soil.  Avoiding the broader wounds inflicted by both sides in their recurring economic disputes over gas supplies and transit of gas across Ukrainian territory to Europe, the longer history of intermixing of ethnically Ukrainian and ethnically Russian populations in Ukraine, especially in the heavily industrialized eastern administrative regions (oblasts), at least facilitates a potential problematic dynamic in defining the orientations of governmental policies effected within Kiev.  Politicians like Yanukovych, hailing from the eastern oblasts, come to power on the strength of constituencies heavily weighted with ethnic Russians for whom a strong concern for harmonization between Kiev and Moscow is an obvious concern.  By contrast, ethnically Ukrainian politicians, like former President Viktor Yushchenko, from the western oblasts, especially those bordering EU members Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania, approach Moscow with a more pronounced sense of suspicion toward the intentions of the Russian Federation relative to Ukraine.  Such considerations obviously reflect the tenor of internal politics within the Russian Federation, including its treatment of federation-level republics in the North Caucasus and its interventions in ethnic disputes in other former Soviet republics (e.g. the 2008 Russian military intervention into Georgian Abkhazia and South Ossetia on behalf of pro-Russian ethnic groups).  In this respect, threats voiced by the Kremlin to intervene in and, perhaps, formally annex the eastern Ukrainian oblasts if Ukraine were to join the EU or NATO appear credible!  Culturally, Ukraine contains an intractable ethnic divide traced by the Dnieper River basin, with oblasts to the east containing significant ethnic Russian minorities and oblasts to the west overwhelmingly Ukrainian, supporting a westward political and cultural orientation.

While the current political crisis in Kiev may be played out, in part, by new political actors and younger activist protesters, this round of political confrontation between pro-Russian and pro-EU forces in Ukraine bears a striking resemblance to the struggle of the 2004 Orange Revolution, displacing Yanukovych in favor of Yushchenko.  To be totally fair to Yanukovych, it seems evident that he made a tangible effort to achieve the demands of ethnic Ukrainians for greater economic integration with the EU.  His government was, after all, engaged in negotiating a free trade agreement with Europe.  Ukraine's lingering vulnerabilities in its relationship with Russia have simply tied Yanukovych's hands in balancing the short term fiscal needs of the Ukrainian state with the longer term advantages emanating from progressive economic integration with the EU.  On the other hand, as in 2004, the political opposition has a valid gripe in contesting legal restrictions on public demonstrations and the general heavy-handedness of the Yanukovych government.  Of course, I cannot help but hope that the resolution to this confrontation comes with a full reinstatement of the rights of the Ukrainian people, ethnic Ukrainians, Russians, and others, to democratic self-determination both by means of formal elections and by means of active, intentional public demonstration in expression of the needs of the people to define the course of their collective economic future.

More broadly, the crisis in Ukraine evokes a larger problem centered not on Ukraine, but on Russia.  Specifically, the lingering political, economic, and military dominance of Moscow within the geographic sphere of the post-Soviet republics effectively guarantees that contemporary Russia will reproduce the same political, economic, and cultural isolation that the Soviet bloc achieved in relation to Western Europe over the period of the Cold War or, even, for that matter, the isolation of Tsarist Russia from the Nineteenth Century Europe of liberal and socialist political revolution, industrializing capitalism, and cultural moderism.  In the process, Russia will fight an ultimately futile struggle to hold on to many of its former satellites against integration with more economically, politically, and culturally progressive corners of the world.  It begs the question: when will Russia ever find its way out of the self-imposed darkness of its own economic backwardness, reactionary politics, and cultural parochialism?

Again, Onto the NSA and the Defense of Mr. Snowden

Just a really quick set of comments on the current round of media gems given by Republican members of the House Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees.  Apparently, both Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Tex.), chairs of the House Committees on Intelligence and Home Security, respectively, claimed that Edward Snowden had to have acted in collaboration with the Russians to unearth all of the secret information on NSA surveillance activities released by Snowden.  Rogers, further, bemoaned the fact that NSA was being forced to adjust to a transformation of communications protocols by Al Qaeda in response to the revelations made by Snowden (see Hayley Tsukayama, "NSA Program Defenders Question Snowden's Motives," in Washington Post (19 Jan 2014), at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/nsa-program-defenders-question-snowdens-motives/2014/01/19/091fccaa-811d-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html).  Two comments.  First, Putin and Russian intelligence has nothing to gain from a degradation of U.S. intelligence capabilities against Al Qaeda - one way or another, the U.S. and Russia are both engaged in conflict against Sunni Islamic extremism and we have more to gain from collaborations rather than conflict.  Insofar as I may have strong misgivings about how Mr. Putin is addressing Sunni Islamic militants within Russia's borders, I cannot imagine that the disclosure of federal surveillance programs to Russia would, in any significant way, benefit Russian intelligence and counter-terrorism operations, especially against militant Islamists in the North Caucasus.  Second, the fact that Al Qaeda is changing their communications protocols does not mitigate the problem that NSA was operating a surveillance program in possible violation of Fourth Amendment protections to the privacy of American citizens without any knowledge that it was doing so!  These were programs that should have been discussed in public, before members of relevant Congressional committees, at least as a matter of principle if not inclusive of detailed information on contemplated surveillance programs or technologies, with footage or, at least, appropriately censored transcripts available for public inspection upon request under the Freedom of Information Act.  As American citizens, we have a right, at this moment, to ask why, in the name of God, it took an measely NSA contractor to spill the beans on what the federal government was doing in possible violation of our individual privacy protections!  Beyond these point, the effort of the Obama administration to curtail NSA information collections appears both inadequate to the larger problem entailed by the initial existence of such programs and, on the other hand, potentially, detrimental to national security.  Emphatically, nobody in the administration seems to have adequately made a public case for why metadata collection was necessary in the first place!  Neither the administration nor the relevant Congressional committees are engaging the American public on the purpose behind the NSA's programs in a way that can convincingly make the case that they are required to maintain our national security.  Instead, the administration is simply going to amend their operations in a way that may degrade their abilities to undertake adequate measure to safeguard the American public without any discussion before our representatives in Congress or dissemination of priniciples for consideration by the public at large.  To briefly reiterate what I had offered in a previous set of posts on the NSA surveillance scandal, in my view, this is not a strict question of what is allowed or not allowed under the Fourth Amendment - it is a question of what the American polity, through its elected representatives, is willing to enact as a matter of law and national security policy.  I, therefore, do not want the Obama administration to enact a handful of policy changes without obtaining Congressional approval.  I, further, do not want the federal judiciary to stick its nose in and invalidate procedures that might be necessary and warranted to keep the country safe.  I want Congress to be informed and to debate the principles underlying these programs through procedures that are fully transparent to the American public.  To a significant extent, this seems to be exactly what Mr. Snowden wanted too!      

Reflections on "Her"

I just saw Spike Jonze's new movie "Her" today.  Aside from the normally/tangentially altered mental state in which most movies render me (walking back from the darkness into the light, pondering how two hours of alternative reality/fantisization have shaped my thoughts about the "real" world), it seemed worthwhile to deliver a short set of comments on this movie, if only because it raised some considerations on the nature of love that I found formative to a broader discussion.  Additionally, I have meant to advance some comments on love and sex on here for quite some time, and this seems like an appropriate moment to start!

Without giving away too much of the plot line, the movie concerns a romantic relationship between a lonely, introverted writer (a paid author of heartfelt, emotionally sensitive, (computer-aided) hand written letters for busy people too occupied to hand write anniversary letters or condolensces to their loved ones, no less), on the verge of a finalized divorce, and his fully interactive, experientially-evolving computer operating system.  This peculiar scenario is, apparently, a commonplace in the futuristic world characterized by Jonze, where video game characters engage in full verbal interaction not only with human players but with other multi-media equipment!  The movie raises a number of important questions regarding the potentiality for a romantic encounter between a human being and his/her computer.  Notably, there is a highly relevant encounter between Joachin Phoenix's lead character, Theodore, and his impending ex-wife, Catherine, played by Rooney Mara, in which Catherine, upon learning of Theodore's relationship with his operating system, castigates him for having escaped from the inconvenience of dealing with the emotional volatility of other living human beings by hooking up with his laptop!  I want to deal with issues of emotional insensitivity in some post on this blog in the future, but, for the moment, another tangential concern grabs me.  Namely, can love survive permanent disembodiment?  Expressed in slightly different terms, is it possible or in any way desirable to dichotomize romantic love and physical sexuality?

The issue here stands out for me in a particular conversation between Theodore and Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johannson), his girlfriend/operating system, concerning Theodore's intention to personally meet with Catherine to sign their divorce papers.  Samantha expresses concerns (and overt jealousy) to Theodore about meeting with Catherine in person, when he could get his divorce papers signed some other way, given the fact that Catherine has an actual human body and is beautiful.  In a very minimalist sense, there is a certain Pinocchio-like tendency going on here (i.e. Samantha wishing she could have a human body and exist as more than an intellectually evolving product of human programming).  Beyond this level, there is the whole issue that Theodore can engage in actual physical sexuality with Catherine, but not with Samantha (something Samantha attempts to redress later in the movie).  Definitively, a problem exists here in Samantha's incapacity to engage in a physical way with Theodore. 

The issue here stands out in my mind for a number of reasons.  As a matter of experience, I had this epiphany once on a day trip to Boston, wandering the streets of the Back Bay, that the particular way in which I approached women tended to dichotomize romantic love from physical sexuality, and that I always tended to prioritize the former at the expense of the latter.  It is an epiphany of which I'm still (poorly) sorting out the implications, but the point here, in relation to "Her," is that the idea of loving a disembodied entity in a committed way demands an exaggerated sense of attachment to something transcending the body.  To me, this necessarily implies a belief that there is more to a human being than the physical architecture of human anatomy and, more precisely, that there is something about a human being that is eternal, defying mortality and transcending the infinitely expansive boundaries of the universe.  There are multiple terminologies and concepts that we could apply in naming or describing what it is that we mean by the transcendence of the physical.  One concept that could apply here is mind.  Another is the soul.  Either one of these terms could imply, in some way, disembodiment, characterized by the capacity of the mind or of the soul to depart from the body and, in some immaterial sense (that is, non-material/non-physical, not irrelevant), continue to exist.  In this conceptualization, my understanding of romantic love is effectively tied into the existence of mind or of souls - the idea that the thing we fall in love with is a disembodied thing, that which is eternal to the other, to the object of our love.  Thus, the act of falling in love is an act of faith (an essentially religious act - not the acceptance of "God" per se, but the acceptance of something spiritual, belonging to the same genus of immaterial personality).  We cannot know that the other has a mind or a soul (because such things cannot be seen or verified by physical examination in the same way that we can say that someone has a brain/an organ), but we believe that they do and it confronts us as something innately beautiful and perfect and uncontrollably desirable, beyond the physical desirability of the body.  Ideally, these two motivations (romantic love and sexual desire) co-mingle.  They can and readily do, however, hold the potentiality to get disarticulated so that the motivations run off in a tangential divergence such that romantic love decays into neurotic obsession.

Not being, in any way, shape, or form, adequately versed to play around with Freudian psychoanalytic theorizations on obsessional neuroses (especially my own!), I have another obvious philosophical pathway to explore here.  Specifically, if romantic love is an act of religious faith, then I can apply Marx's commentary from the introduction to the "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" (i.e. "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul in souless conditions.  It is the opium of the people." See Marx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 3, at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm).  There are obvious reasons to seek to apply a broader interpretation of this principle beyond the Marxist-Leninist militant atheistic bastardization of it (insofar as militant atheism is, in the same vein, a kind of religion!).  Religious beliefs are not empty or devoid of meaning in the lives of human beings - they shape the way we respond to the world and, most emphatically, to the people around us to such a degree that it might be completely impossible to escape from religion.  Religion grounds human beings in faith-based knowledges that there is something transcending the human condition (or, alternately, if you are a militant atheist, the faith that there is absolutely nothing transcending the human condition, even if you cannot prove it!).  Romantic love is a piece contributing to and/or constituting this certainty, on faith, that there is something that transcends the monotony of a human existence without meaning.  At least in certain respects, it is an answer to negative nihilism and, perhaps, to Camus' absurdism (but read Camus' chapter on "Absurd Man" and its section on "Don Juanism," although they speak more succinctly to polygamy than to monogamous romantic love.  See Albert Camus (1955), "The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays," trans. Justin O'Brien, at: http://sharepoint.mvla.net/teachers/HectorP/SoPol/Documents/The%20Stranger/Camus%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus%20and%20other%20readings.pdf).  In broader terms, romantic love responds to the quandries of existentialism but, perhaps, only in a superficial way, because, in the end, like all religion, romantic love consigns man to adoration of a mythical (and, perhaps, perpetually unattainable) transcendent image.

There are two points to be made from here.  First, in regard to the dramatization in "Her," Theordore's romantic love of Samantha is as legitimate as any other conception of romantic love - what he loves is a transcendent thing - a love object in whose existence Theodore believes, even if this love object is a free floating entity in cyberspace.  That said, numerous conversations in "Her" tend to reinforce the notion that a permanent dichotomization between romantic love and physical sexuality is untenable.  The initial "sexual" encounter between Theodore and Samantha, for example, utilizes bodily references that make no sense whatsoever if you are dealing with an innately disembodied thing!  And my second point is a corollary from this reflection.  If romantic love is, itself, shaped by physical sexual considerations and its imageries are shaped from the potentialities for physical contact, then it makes no sense to conceptualize romantic love in permanent dichotomization from sexuality.  Conversely, is meaningful physical sexuality possible in permanent dichotomization from romantic love?  I choose to leave this question, intimately linked with the idea of "hook up culture," open for the moment!       

Litanies of Gun Violence

This post does not offer anything truly new in relation to the long set of posts that I offered almost a year ago on this blog in reference to "Gun Violence and Gun Control."  Rather, it is meant to posit a brief reiteration on the basic argument that I offered there in reference to events today.  Apparently a twelve year old male shooter entered a middle school in Roswell, New Mexico today with a shotgun, intent on hunting down an eleven year old male, who is now in critical condition with gun shot wounds in a Texas hospital. Additionally, a thirteen year old female was wounded and in serious condition (see Stephanie Slifer, "Police: Boy, 12, is N.M. School Shooter Who Injured Two," on CBS/AP, at: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-boy-12-opens-fire-in-nm-school-seriously-injuring-2/).  For peculiar reasons, at least if media coverage is indicative of anything, schools appear to have become the locations of choice of indiscriminate mass shooting incidents in the U.S. (although, this shooting does not seem to have been indiscriminate: the twelve year old hit just who he was aiming at!).  On the other hand, my inspection of news stories today reveals yet another incident involving a retired police officer in a Florida movie theater who shot another movie goer to death for texting during the movie!  (see Tamara Lush, "Man Fatally Shot in Fla. Theater over Texting," on ABC/AP, at: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/man-fatally-shot-fla-theater-texting-21531718). 

To reiterate, in part, the conclusion of my previous set of posts, it seems evident that the U.S., as a society, is becoming really good at inculcating a culture of gun violence.  Moreover, while those on the political left are very quick to argue for gun control as the cure for all ills and those on the right are always ready to drag out and kick around the mentally ill and/or video game designers as the sources of every evil, I think that both sides in the political argument over guns are underestimating the complexity of the issues involved in the production of gun violence in the U.S.  What we are dealing with is a problem of culture that assembles a complex range of familial, legal, economic, mass media, sexual, bio-chemical/genetic, and myriad other social and ecological determinants that have jointly produced a collapsing sense of belonging to community in America.  Set adrift in a world where basic norms of congeniality and solidarity, even at the level of individual households, have broken down, individuals are becoming alienated and, in the face of various social adversities, many (especially males) are becoming mentally unstable and, combined with the availability of firepower, capable of lethal violence.  There is simply no easy way to address the sorts of issues producing gun violence, short of a broader crusade to address the political, economic, and cultural source of the breakdown of community in the U.S.  In this regard, we should be ready for many, many more school children, employees and managers in confined workplaces, shoppers in malls, and other innocent victims of mass shooting incidents in the near future, because there is simply no quick and easy solution to rectify the sources inciting or otherwise facilitating gun violence. 

Why the U.S. Olympic Committee Should Boycott the Sochi Winter Olympics

My argument here should not be construed as an effort to categorically denigrate the Russian people, Russian culture, or even Russian politics, per se.  It is simply a reflection on the current political environment of Russia and why the prospect of holding an Olympic games in Russia is wholly inconsistent with the conceptual spirit of the games, as an opportunity for athletes around the world to come together and compete but ultimately exalt our global collectivity as a species sharing one world in peace, community, and good sportsmanship.  Ideally, the invitation to host an Olympic games should be demonstrative not only of a nation's wealth and economic developmental status but also its culturally cosmopolitan character, openness to the rest of the world (including its closest neighbors), and the exuberance and inclusiveness of its politically democratic values.  In this sense, it is a reward to governments for pursuing the sorts of policies that not only enhance national wealth but create political and cultural environments welcoming to the rest of the world.  This might be an ideal that has seldom perfectly matched the reality of politics within the International Olympic Committee, but it at least presents a vision compatible with the lofty principles of Olympism (see International Olympic Committee, Olympic Charter (especially "Fundamental Principles of Olympism," 11-12), at:  http://www.olympic.org/documents/olympic_charter_en.pdf).  In these terms, numerous reasons, which I intend to elaborate here, make Russia an inappropriate location to host an Olympic games at the present time, especially an Olympic games in the North Caucasus region. 

1.  Participation in an Olympic games in Russia, in general, and in the North Caucasus region, in particular, legitimizes the brutal repression inflicted against the self-determination of diverse North Caucasian ethnic groups by the Russian central government and, additionally, promotes an intensification of repressive, police/military violence against non-Russians in the North Caucasus in the name of securing the safety of international athletes and spectators at Sochi.

The selection of Sochi as a host city for the twenty-second Olympic Winter Games constitutes a paradoxical outcome in view of the history of the Russian Federation's engagement with ethnic groups in the North Caucasus region since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.  Sochi, on the Black Sea in the administrative region of Krasnodar, lies in close proximity to the Russian federation-level republics of Chechnya and Dagestan.  Militants from both of these republics have been engaged in separatist conflict with Russia since 1991.  In my understanding, the most intense fervor of separatist sentiments in the region were first evident in Chechnya, which openly declared its independence from the Russian Federation when the Soviet Union dissolved.  Dagestan, by contrast, appears to have remained a silent bystander to the Chechen conflict until 1999, when Islamic militants of Dagestani origin began returning home to organize resistance to Russian rule in rural areas and engage in urban bombings.  Beyond Russia's present conflicts with these two groups, there remains Russia's somewhat more tranquil domination of the Muslim Ingush, who seceded from Chechnya in 1991 in an attempt to spare themselves the wrath of Russian military coercion (after they had engaged in a vigorous, clandestine resistance to the Soviet KGB from the early postwar period through the 1970s). 

I need not dwell on the longer history of ethnic conflict in this region since, say, the rise of Muscovite Russia in the 1500s, but it has been a hotbed of internecine clashes and shifting alliances with outside powers over the Twentieth century, framed by the overarching cultural hegemony and geographic expansiveness of ethnic Russians, even with the pretensions of ethnic harmony in a Marxian-inspired union of workers' republics.  Since 1991, ethnic conflict appears to have erupted on roughly religious lines.  This characterization reflects the predominant allegiance that Orthodox Christian-majority ethnic groups (e.g. the Ossetians) have shown toward Russia and a generalized opposition toward Russia exercised by Sunni Muslim-majority ethnic groups (e.g. Chechens, Dagestani, Ingush).  Noting this pattern, none of the latter groups appear to have entered the post-Soviet period with any connections to traditions of radical militant Sunni Islam or displayed any meaningful alliance with Arab or Central Asian Islamist movements in their struggles against monarchical and secularist dictatorial regimes (e.g. the Sunni Arab Muslim Brotherhood, the various indigenous and foreign Afghan Mujahedeen).  Since Russia's 1999 invasion of Chechnya, however, radical Islamist groups became dominant within the resistance to Russian rule of the Muslim North Caucasus.  From this point, the rhetoric of ethnic resistance to Russian rule in the North Caucasus has featured generous allusions to the global Islamist struggle against the West, exemplified by Al Qaeda, and the militant (terrorist) tactics of Chechen and Dagestani rebels have integrated the sort of high-profile attacks against soft targets (e.g. 2010 attacks by two female suicide bombers on stations of the Moscow metro at rush hour) that have become, to a great extent, the hallmark of Sunni extremist militarism.  The shift from a secularist separatist movement among Muslim North Caucasians toward militant Islam culminated with the declaration of the Islamic Caucasus Emirate in 2007, incorporating Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, the Krasnodar Black Sea coast (including Sochi), and even Christian North Ossetia, to be governed by Sharia law. 

In this respect, the blame for the rise of militant Sunni Islamism in the North Caucasus region rests largely in the hands of the Kremlin and, most especially, in the political leadership of United Russia led by President Putin.  Prior to the Russian invasion of 1999, Chechen secular moderates, supported by a relatively irreligious majority, struggled with a militant Islamist minority, determined to institute Sharia.  When Islamic militants became active against Russian forces in Dagestan in 1999 and a wave of bombings against civilian targets occurred in several Russian cities, the Russian federal government was quick to lay the blame entirely on Chechnya and to squash Chechen independence with aerial bombardments, ground assaults, and occupation.  With this history in mind, I want to argue that circumstances in the present could have been much different if cooler heads had prevailed in Moscow and if secularists in Grozny had been more adequately supported by Russia to develop a truly sovereign regime, with the capacity to keep militants in check and a good understanding of the stakes involved for all parties in ethnic harmony for the region.  In place of a stable North Caucasus region, governed by indigenous secular ethno-nationalist parties under relatively detached stewardship from the Kremlin, the muscularity of Russian aggression against Chechnya has created dual regimes of militant, intolerant cultural absolutism.  To one side, we have the ethnocentric, imperialist militarism of Putin's United Russia, appealing to Russian hyper-nationalism in seeking to exercise control or influence over the entire geography of the former Soviet Union in an era when Russia's stature as a global power appears less certain.  To the other, the global movement of Sunni Islamist extremism and all its disperate, weakly networked parts, including the diverse elements of Al Qaeda, the Central Asian Taliban, and, apparently, the Caucasus Emirate, which would, no doubt, exercise the full brutality of Sharia against North Caucasian Muslims and non-Muslims alike if it had the capacity to do so.

Taking full account of the underlying political drama being played out on the doorstep of Sochi, participation by any nation in the Sochi Olympic games must, in my view, legitimize what Russia has done in the North Caucasus.  If, as a nation, the U.S. presumes to exercise a certain degree of moral obligation to condemn ethnic violence and support national self-determination of repressed populations, then it would seem imperative that we not passively participate in an event that will, for all intents and purposes, tell Russia that it was OK to go ahead and shell Grozny into submission at the expense of creating an aggressive, militant Islamist resistance in the process.   

2.  Russian security forces cannot adequately defend athletes and foreign spectators in Sochi from militant actions by North Caucasian Islamists, and, if the U.S. renders assistance to Russian security forces, we will implicate ourselves in the larger conflict that is inciting terrorist activity. 

Last week, militants, apparently of Chechnian or Dagestani origin, connected to the Islamist Caucasus Emirate, detonated suicide bombs in Volgograd, the main accessable rail hub for trains destined from central Russia to Sochi. Volgograd is around 425 miles from Sochi. By contrast, Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, is less than 300 miles distant. A map of incidents in the North Caucasus region since the 2007 announcement of the Sochi Olympics, created by Russian journalist Ilya Mouzykantskii, presents the geography of the problem presented by the Sochi games (see "Map of all terrorist attacks near Sochi since Russia awarded Winter Olympics (Jun '07)," at: http://imgur.com/n13C32b).  Sochi's location, on the outer edge of the North Caucasus, places it in close proximity to the main battlefield of resistance to Russian rule.  Judging, moreover, from Mouzykantskii's map, attacks have already occurred in the recent past in other areas on the Krasnodar coastal area near Sochi. 

The obvious concern, in this respect, is that, logistically speaking, the Caucasus Emirate doesn't have far to go in order to inflict casualties at the Olympics - they are practically on scene.  Furthermore, given the logistical complexity of the games, energy, food, water, and a wide range of other materials will need to find its way to Sochi from outside locations.  The same concern obviously applies to land based human transit into and out of Sochi.  The overwhelming majority of foreign athletes and spectators going to Sochi will travel overland because the local airport of Sochi-Adler apparently does not possess the logistical capacity to handle more than a restricted quantity of air traffic from destinations in the former Soviet Union (see Carol Matlack, "The Biggest Olympic Security Risk may not be at Sochi," in Bloomberg BusinessWeek (30 Dec 13), at: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-30/the-biggest-olympic-security-risk-may-not-be-at-sochi).  From descriptions on the security preparations already made by the Russian federal government for Sochi, the Olympic games are liable to be one of the most heavily secured events in recent history - effectively, the policing of competition sites, outside corporate-sponsored events, athlete villages, and concentrated lodging for international spectators may take the appearances of an armed camp interspersed with security checkpoints.  On the other hand, however well Russian security forces can establish a secure perimeter around the games and clear the interior of a militant presence, there must be transmission corridors leading into and out of Sochi that cannot be cleared over their entire length and present obvious targets for the Caucasian Emirate (i.e. either for attacks on the transmission technologies/pathways (rail, road, pipelines, cables, vehicles) or for compromise of materials in transit (food poisoning)). 

Finally, ideologically speaking, the grievances advanced by the Caucasus Emirate against Russia are two centuries old and allude, at least in part, to the conquest of the larger region by ethnic Russians over the 1850s and 1860s and the subsequent forcible expulsion of much of the region's indigenous ethnic population, which was overwhelmingly Muslim.  In particular, the area around Sochi (the Krasnodar administrative district) had been the ethnic homeland of Muslim Abkhazians, most of whom were either forcibly deported or killed by Russian forces after the area was subdued in the 1860s.  Doku Umarov, the "Emir" of the Caucasus, has, in this regard, called on his forces to concentrate their attacks on the "satanist games" at Sochi to avenge the insult of holding the spectacle on the bones of so many dead Muslims of the conquest on the Black Sea coast (see Michael Weiss, "The Return of Big Terror to Russia," in The Daily Beast (2 Jan 14), at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/02/the-volgograd-bombings-and-the-return-of-big-terror-to-russia.html#url=/articles/2014/01/02/the-volgograd-bombings-and-the-return-of-big-terror-to-russia.html). 

In response to the bombings in Volgograd, the U.S. National Security Council submitted a public release condemning the attack, extending condolences to the families of victims, and offering "our full support to the Russian government in security preparations for the Sochi Olympic Games" (see "Statement by NSC Spokesperson Caitlin Hayden on Attacks in Russia," at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/12/30/statement-nsc-spokesperson-caitlin-hayden-attacks-russia).  For reasons that I have already noted in this post, I think the extension of support for the anti-terrorism objectives of the Russian government is a mistake on our part.  The source of a terrorist threat at Sochi emanates from legitimate grievances by a repressed ethnic group seeking rights to national self-determination.  Stepping into the middle of this conflict in the name of securing our athletes and our citizen spectators actively renders the U.S. a participant to a conflict to which we are already too deeply embroiled for no good reason!  In May of 2011, the U.S. State Department issued a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Doku Umarov, almost two years before two immigrant Chechen brothers set off bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon (an attack for which the Caucasus Emirate, in any case, vigorously disavowed any association or connection).  The linkages between Russia's conflict in the North Caucasus and the global Islamist war against the West, waged by the Al Qaeda networks, are extremely complex and liable to be overstated.  With this in mind, the importance of a ransom on the head of a North Caucasian Islamist leader by the U.S. is extremely questionable.  The U.S. has no reason and no business sticking its head into Chechnya, Dagestan, and the larger conflict over the North Caucasus of which Russia is more than capable of controlling over time by means of superior firepower and a willingness on the part of Putin and his political allies to exercise brutal, ruthless physical state political violence.   

3.  In the post-Soviet period, Russian culture is descending into abject intolerance, marked by the presence of ethnic anti-immigrant pogroms and support for vicious homophobic governmental legislative enactments, wholly inconsistent with the contemporary direction of Western cultural values and the broader spirit of toleration embodied in the Enlightenment.  If we Americans truly believe, as a basic element of our character as the inheritors of our revolution, in political liberty, cultural tolerance, and harmonious social and economic development, then we cannot malign our values by accepting the invitation to an event that will exalt a nation that seems, at this moment in its history, intent on denigrating them.    

As someone on the radical Marxian left, I have this whistful imagery in my mind of the first decade after the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, before the horrors of Stalinism had fully set in, as a moment in which every conservative cultural rigidity of Orthodox Tsarist Russia was thrown aside in the name of permanently transforming human development to make the Russian people ready for communism.  In a sense, though I do not believe the term was ever applied or even contemplated except in a few isolated writings by Lenin and, later, possibly, by Trotsky, the Bolsheviks were lauching a cultural revolution as ambitious as that contemplated four decades later by Mao and the Chinese Communists.  For complex reasons, rooted, in part, in the universalistic assumptions of Marxian theory regarding the structural positionalities of workers in (globalizing) capitalism and, in part, from the peculiar, multi-ethnic character of pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia, this generation of Russian Communists possessed an extremely open sense of multi-ethnic cultural tolerance.  In this sense, historian Liliana Riga has argued, the intensive cultural Russification of the pre-revolutionary Tsarist state contributed in important ways in forging connections between Russian and non-Russian Bolsheviks wholly transcending ethnic boundaries in ways that made the Bolshevism an inclusive, universalistic movement (see Riga (2012), The Bolsheviks and the Russian Empire, 261-264.  New York: Cambridge University Press).  Moreover, almost immediately in the aftermath of their seizure of power, the Bolsheviks moved to transform the institution of civil marriage (while contemplating its full abolition) and establish institutions of no-fault divorce, paid maternity leave and provisions to facilitate nursing and care of infants for mothers returning to the workplace, and access to information on birth control and legal availability of abortion on demand.  Finally, under the influence of such theorists and party activists as Alexandra Kollontai, the Bolsheviks transformed legal restrictions on sexual practices, including abolition of restrictions on homosexuality, unheard of in Western contexts of the period (see Thomas Harrison, "Socialism and Homosexuality," in New Politics (Winter 2009, XII-2, No. 46, at: http://newpol.org/content/socialism-and-homosexuality). 

This was a fleeting moment orchestrated by ideologically committed people who were palpably flawed (and indisputably hostile to a range of Western liberal institutions like free speech, which they regarded as irretrievably bourgeois!), and there are adequate reasons to question particular elements of the corpus of policies introduced in early Soviet Russia (especially, coming out of a background in Roman Catholicism, such institutions as unrestricted abortion on demand).  This historical reference point is not offered as much in order to celebrate the brief opening decade of revolutionary Bolshevism as it is to point out how far the contemporary Russia of Putin and his political allies has descended into sad, regretful culturally reactionary conservatism!  Of course, it need not have fallen in this direction.  The collapse of the Soviet Union, orchestrated or otherwise supported by forces committed to the political and economic liberalization of Russia, could have veered the country in a direction leading it closer to the social democratic institutions of Western Europe.  In important ways, the U.S. is at least partly to blame for the course of Russia's post-Soviet political evolution by promoting, at least passively, the continued isolation of Russia from Europe (e.g. by insisting on the continued existence and expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe against the wishes of Moscow).  As a result, instead of being fully integrated within Europe as a full-fledged partner in a post-Cold War/post-Soviet future, Russia was abandoned to be master of a constantly shrinking sphere of influence.  The larger point, however, is that Russia's relative decline in political stature, even in its own traditional geographic zones of control, has nutured poisonous tendencies inciting ethnocentric Russian nationalism, militaristic engagement with minority ethnic groups, and rabid cultural bigotry, exercised demonstratively as much through fascistic mob violence as through reactionary legislation. 

Last year, on Russia's National Unity Day (Nov. 4), groups of Russian ultra-nationalists, waving flags with fascistic symbols, numbering between 8,000 and 20,000 in total, paraded around streets in various districts of Moscow, chanting nationalist slogans and voicing racial slurs against non-Russia immigrants and, in particular, against Muslims (see Anna Nemtsova, "Neo-nationalist Violence Targets Central Asians in Russia," on The Daily Beast (6 Nov 13), at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/06/neo-nationalist-violence-targets-central-asians-in-russia.html#url=/articles/2013/11/06/neo-nationalist-violence-targets-central-asians-in-russia.html).  In addition to such demonstrations of the burgeoning strength of an intolerant racist right wing in Moscow, the past year has witnessed an increasing prevalence of violence against non-Russian migrant workers from the Caucasus (Chechens, Dagestanis, Azerbaijanis) and former Soviet Central Asian republics (Kazaks, Uzbeks).  Attacks by gangs of Neo-fascist Russian youths against bystanders who appear non-Russian (i.e. non-White), loosely coordinated violence by mobs attacking migrant laborers in open air markets, and more highly organized activities by vigilante citizens' militias appear, in part, to be motivated by the fear of economic competition from non-Russian workers or by reactions to the perception of criminal activity, including drug activity and violent street crime, committed by illegal immigrants.  More succinctly, they reflect a growing perception and fear among ethnic Russians, even in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, that, especially in view of the decline in birth rates among Russians, non-Russian migrants, incapable of assimilating within the Russian population and adopting Russian cultural values, will overrun their country, undermine their capacity for self-rule, and destroy Russian culture (see video, "Race & Hate: Russia's Rising Nationalism" By Journal Reporters, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm1qvh2z058). 

As for the rise of Russian homophobia, Putin's United Russia Party apparently has a long history of using the enforcement of regional laws through the courts to outlaw gay and lesbian organizations and prohibit demonstrations of gay pride and for gay rights.  In June of 2013, Putin signed into law article 6.21 of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses, an article prohibiting the distribution of information to minors advocating ambiguously characterized "non-traditional sexual lifestyles" (see Innokenty (Kes) Grekov, "Russia's Anti-Gay Law, Spelled Out in Plain English," on PolicyMic (8 Aug 2013), at: http://www.policymic.com/articles/58649/russia-s-anti-gay-law-spelled-out-in-plain-english).  Beyond the ambiguity and capacity for flagrant abuse of such legal standards, the presence of a political/legal atmosphere supportive of homophobic attitudes within the general population has been conducive to the growth of violence against gays, lesbians, and transgendered individuals, in some cases by organizations seeking to "reform" homosexuals (see Alec Luhn, "Russian anti-gay law prompts rise in homophobic violence," in The Guardian (1 Sep 13), at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/russia-rise-homophobic-violence).

In many ways, the extreme character of culturally-driven ethnic and homophobic bigotry evident in contemporary Russia is mirrored within the U.S. population.  Against Russian citizens' anti-immigrant militias, we, of course, can offer the Minutemen Movement, policing the Mexican border against illegal crossings of Latino migrants seeking a better life in the U.S.  In important ways, Mexicans have occupied the same place in the U.S. context as Uzbeks, Tajiks, and other Central Asians and Caucasian groups in Russia, and large sections of the U.S. population (e.g. within the Tea Parties) continue to locate a fundamental threat to American culture from Latino migrants.  Further, the history of private violence by individuals and mobs against gays, lesbians, and transgendered individuals in the U.S. is too substantial to adequately recount.  It was, likewise, a violence reinforced in the past by a significant infrastructure of state laws against sodomy, intended both to criminalize "non-traditional" sexual practice and to culturally marginalize prohibited practices in order to encapsulate a vision of legally enforceable public morality. 

In these respects, my criticisms of contemporary Russian ethnic culture might be taken to embody a certain degree of hypocrisy.  I am willing to accept such a criticism, but I think the larger point is that Russia and the U.S. are, at least at this moment in our histories, moving in opposite directions in relation to the lofty cultural ideals embodied in the Enlightenment.  Tolerance, if not outright acceptance, of difference is a difficult, continuously unfinished project of Western civilization, one in which the U.S. has only ever imperfectly stood as an example.  The patchwork of states accepting marriage equality for heterosexual and homosexual unions is evidence that, as a society, we have a long way to go.  Moreover, the response of states like Arizona to Latino immigrants points to the contentious nature of immigration policy within the U.S. as a whole and widespread fear Anglo-White culture will be overrun by non-White, non-Anglo populations, refusing to accept assimilation.  Divergent political perspectives are engaged here in struggles over the contours of public policies that will both shape and be shaped by the degree of cultural tolerance exhibited by the American polity as a whole.  In that respect, I hope that we, as a society, are veering in the direction of toleration.   

By contrast, I am convinced that Russia is, by and large, moving in the opposite direction, reinforced by the policies enacted by a corrupt, culturally reactionary central government, headed by a former KGB thug.  As I suggested above, if the invitation to hold an Olympic Games implicitly expresses the national character of a host country to the rest of the world, then it was wholly inappropriate for the International Olympic Committee to grant the 2014 Winter Olympics to a city in a country mired in cultural xenophobia against migrants, persecuting sexual minorities, and waging aggressive war against ethnic and religious minorities seeking the promise of national self-determination.  For these reasons, I would advocate the idea that the U.S. Olympic Committee should actively boycott the Sochi Winter Games.  I would, likewise, advocate the idea that Americans who take the values of cultural toleration and the right of national self-determination seriously as elements in our political and cultural heritage as Americans should go a step further to identify American corporate sponsors of the Sochi Games to engage in an active boycott of goods and services marketed by such entities, and, further, to contact our local NBC affiliates to let them know that we will not watch any of their broadcasts if they participate in broadcasting events from Sochi.  I do not know how many U.S. athletes who would otherwise be competing have declined an invitation to compete because of Russia's homophobic legal enactments, but if such a cause is worth engaging in such a sacrifice on their parts, then it should at least be worth the time for other Americans to understand what is at stake in the cause for which they are acting.