Russia – Page 2

Humor — The Donald and the Art of the Tweet

December 5, 2016 by Llewellyn King 1 Comment

Do not tell anybody, but I am totally tweeterized. I long to see the latest tweet from Donald Trump. I am addicted, dependent, enslaved and hooked to the great man’s tweets.

If there has been one overnight, my day is going to be good. I will know The Donald is in his Tower of Power on Fifth Avenue in New York City, at his Mar-a-Lago palace in Palm Beach, Fla., or at a luxury hotel that he owns, along with some big banks, and all is well with the world because he has tweeted me.

And he is coming to Washington. I am overexcited, thrilled and all atremble that — can my heart take it? — President Tweet will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, and the first to govern by tweet.

Tweeting is going to make him the most democratic president ever. He will tweet — forgive me for thinking it is just to me — at each great milestone of his presidency: the start of building the wall; the end of the North American Free Trade Act; the beginning of wonderful health care, for some people; the slashing of that nasty federal income tax; the new Asian order, when China is burdened with high U.S. tariffs and is put in its place — I will not let my imagination go there.

Never will any president be so close to the public (there goes my heart again) as when he speaks to us by tweet, at any hour of the day or night, because it is necessary, or when the great man just cannot get to sleep.

When Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, has the effrontery to criticize the new privatized education system, The Donald will put him away in 140 characters. That is showing the power of Twitter-disciplined mind for you: so concise, so complete, so exact and right between the eyes.

If that Mr. Putin betrays The Donald’s trust in him and starts moving armies around Europe, the tweeter-in-chief will mobilize and let him have it by tweet at whatever hour, regardless of time zone. He will tell us, even before he has tweeted the Joint Chiefs of Staff on what they should do, and we will be comforted. Little me will be thrilled to see this world leader doing what he does best in crisis: tweeting.

I will feel so connected to the White House, or one of his grand resorts, which is probably where he will hang out mostly away from the prying press and the awful tourists. Just remember, all Tweet Man needs is a phone and he is connected to each and everyone of us: no journalists, press conferences, staff meetings needed. Just a word with one of his family members — and action.

Ring the bells, shout from the hills, spread the word — by tweet of course — and tell everyone there is a new order! The middlemen and women are out. A leader is one with his people by tweet, in touch 24/7.

There will be tweets to advise us if Ivanka is having a baby; if there are to be gold faucets at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; if the British are ending the special relationship; and if Mexico and Canada form a mutual defense pact.

A tweet here, a retweet there and very soon things are turned around: education policy, environment policy, foreign policy, healthcare policy, trade policy and, of course, policies affecting Empire Trump.

What is good for America is good for business. Forget blind trusts, even the blind know what is good for golf and the leisure industry. If you can tweet in the dark, you can see in the dark. Trust him.

The Big Tweet, the one I am waiting for more than for all the others, is, of course, the one we are all waiting for: When President Tweet tweets “America is great again.” — For InsideSources

Crime, War and Mischief Are the Internet Norms

May 14, 2016 by Llewellyn King Leave a Comment

By Llewellyn King

The big news coming out of the G7 meeting in Japan will not be about establishing international norms for cybersecurity. That will only get an honorable mention at best. But maybe it should get greater attention: the threat is real and growing.

Consider just these four events of the recent past:

The electric grid in Ukraine was brought down last Dec. 23 by, it is believed, the Russians. Because of its older design, operators were able to restore power with manual overrides of the computer-controlled system.

The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles was ransomed. This crime takes place when a hacker encrypts your data and demands a ransom, often in untraceable bitcoin, to unlock it. The hospital paid $17,000 rather than risk patients and its ability to operate.

While these ransom attacks are fairly common, this is the first one believed to have been launched against a hospital. Previously hospitals had thought patient records and payment details were what hackers would want, not control of the operating systems. Some of the ransoms are as low as $3,000, with the criminals clearly betting that the victims would lose much more by not settling immediately, as did the medical center. The extortionists first asked for $3.6 million.

In a blockbuster heist on the Internet, the Bangladesh central bank was robbed of $81 million. The crooks were able to authorize the Federal Reserve of New York to release the money held in an account there. They would have got away with another $860 million, if it were not for a typing mistake. In this case, the money was wired to fraudulent accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Target, the giant retailer, lost millions of customer records, including credit card details, to an attack in February 2014. Since then, these attacks on retailers to get data have become common. Hackers sell credit card details on what is known as the “black web” to other criminals for big money.

Often the finger is pointed at China, which will not be at the G7. While it may be a perpetrator, it also has victim concerns. There is no reason to think that Chinese commerce is not as vulnerable as that in the West.

China, with the help of the Red Army, is blamed in many attacks, particularly on U.S. government departments. But little is known of attacks Chinese institutions sustain.

Governments want to police the Internet and protect their commerce and citizens, but they are also interested in using it in cyberwar. Additionally, they freely use it in the collection of intelligence and as a tool of war or persuasion. Witness U.S. attempts to impede the operation of the centrifuges in Iran and its acknowledged attacks on the computers of ISIS.

As the Net’s guerilla war intensifies, the U.S. electric utility industry, and those of other countries, is a major source of concern, especially since the Ukraine attack. Scott Aaronson, who heads up the cybersecurity efforts of the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for private utilities, says the government’s role is essential, and the electric companies work closely with the government in bracing their own cyber defenses.

Still, opinions differ dramatically about the vulnerability of the electric grid.

These contrasting opinions were on view at a meeting in Boston last month, when two of the top experts on cybersecurity took opposing views of utility vulnerability. Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security who now teaches emergency management at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said she believed the threat to the electric grid was not severe. But Mourad Debbabi, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, who also has had a career in private industry, thinks the grid is vulnerable — and that vulnerability goes all the way down to new “smart meters.”

The fact is that the grid is the battleground for what Aaronson calls “asymmetrical war” where the enemy is varied in skill, purpose and location, while the victims are the equivalent of a standing army, vigilant and vulnerable. No amount of government collaboration will stop criminals and rogue non-state players from hacking out of greed, or malice, or just plain hacker adventurism.

Governments have double standards, exempting themselves when it suits from the norms they are trying to institutionalize. Cyber mischief and defending against it are both big businesses, and the existential threat is always there. — For InsideSources

Richardson Says We Should Honor Russia Plutonium Deal

September 28, 2015 by Llewellyn King Leave a Comment

By Llewellyn King

Bill Richardson could teach Donald Trump something about the art of the deal.

He has done a lot of them. Richardson also wrote a book about the art of the deal, the big deal, entitled “How to Sweet-Talk a Shark; Strategies and Stories from a Master Negotiator.”

In a towering life of public service (U.S. representative, U.N. ambassador, secretary of Energy, New Mexico governor, and peripatetic hostage negotiator), Richardson confronted Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, two of North Korea’s dictators, and an assortment of international thugs. He was a five-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The essence of Richardson’s deal-making was that the commitment must be kept by both parties.

At present Richardson sees one of his deals in jeopardy, and he was in Washington last week to raise the alarm, meeting privately with former colleagues and appearing at a press conference at the National Press Club.

The deal in jeopardy involves a commitment he made, when he was secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration, with the Russians to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium, the long-lived ingredient in nuclear weapons. There are 34 metric tons of the stuff that the United States is bound, by treaty with Russia, to dispose by integrating it into nuclear fuel and burning it in civilian power plants. This is known as mixed oxide fuel or MOX.

But the Obama administration wants to end the program, before a fleck of plutonium has been processed for fuel. It is seeking to pull the plug on the construction of the facility at a Department of Energy site on the Savannah River in South Carolina, which is two-thirds complete and has already cost over $4 billion.

The administration is now looking not at the completion cost, but at the lifetime cost of the facility. And it is saying that it is too high; although that could have been calculated years ago.

The deal was signed by Vice President Al Gore with Russia back in 2000. The Russians, for their part, are burning their surplus plutonium in fast reactors, which we do not have in operation.

The back story may be not about lifetime cost, but about the deployment of federal dollars in the very near future. Nuclear industry insiders believe that the Department of Energy, which makes nuclear weapons and stockpiles them, wants to divert all available resources to its weapons refurbishment program and, in argot of the moment, kick the plutonium can down the road. New funds are harder to come by than re-purposing extant ones.

The department is floating the idea that the plutonium should be “down-blended,” meaning mixed with some secret ingredient that the department believes will render it safe for all time, and stored in a troubled existing facility: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.

“I don’t believe this is a good course of action.” Richardson told reporters at the press club event. He said the WIPP facility was designed for low-level waste … there would be a lot of opposition in New Mexico.” He was involved in that project, too, when he was in government.

On sanctity of treaties, Richardson said, “I think that [closing down the MOX facility] would be a grave mistake across the board.”

Richardson said that he had negotiated with the Russians as U.N. ambassador and as Energy secretary. In the matter of plutonium disposal, he said the Russians have kept their side of the deal. There was plenty of tension over Ukraine and Syria, and “we don’t need any more tension.” He said, “This is one potential area of cooperation that should not be discarded, and it would be, should the MOX facility be discarded.”

If the MOX facility is shuttered, it will be one of many nuclear facilities across the country, paid for by taxpayers, which have been abandoned because of other priorities or political agendas. The price is high in enthusiasm, creativity and commitment from the workforce at facilities, like the MOX one.

The dollars spent have no legacy except a sad, new kind of national monument: structures that have been left forlorn and incomplete as politics have zigged and zagged. These abandoned structures range from the experimental Fast Flux Test Facility in Hanford, Wash. to the Integrated Fast Reactor in Idaho Falls, Idaho to the sad, $18-billion Yucca Mountain facility sitting unused in Nevada. There are many more.

As Richardson might tell, in a long life in public service, you have to defend the deal long after it was signed, sealed and delivered. Not so, perhaps, in real estate transactions. — For InsideSources.com

Europe Faces Winter on the Edge of the Abyss

November 3, 2014 by White House Chronicle 1 Comment

BURGENLAND, Austria –There is another world crisis brewing – and one for which President Obama cannot be blamed. The Europeans and have made a mess of things, and now the wolves are at the door.

The first snarling wolf is deflation. Europe’s economies are so weak, so close to recession, that the very real danger of deflation – falling prices – has its economists petrified. It ought also to have its politicians in anguish, but whether it does is less clear.

Europe’s big-driver economy, Germany, as well as France and Italy, are on the edge. The German miracle is ailing, and Berlin may have been writing the wrong prescriptions for the rest of the 18 countries that share the euro as their currency. It has been aided in this effort by the International Monetary Fund.

That prescription, which often seems to harm the patient, as in Greece and Spain, is for austerity – which appears to work better on paper than in the real world. Germany worries about profligate borrowing throughout the European Union. But if the German economy is to escape recession, Chancellor Angela Merkel may have to borrow some money herself and inject it into infrastructure spending to keep Germany competitive and its workers on the job.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has been slow to institute a badly needed program of buying qualified bonds, known as quantitative easing. In the United States, the Federal Reserve, in a program that is now ending, has pumped more than $1 trillion into the economy and helped pull the economy out of recession. But ECB has been timid because it has no clear direction from the European political establishment — pointing up how cumbersome and directionless the European Union structure has become. It has a parliament, which has no power, and is increasingly attracting members who are actually opposed to the European project.

The European Commission has arguably too much power centered in the bureaucracy in Brussels, but no clear direction form its controller, the Council of Ministers. Trouble is the ministers can disagree and veto needed courses of action.

The economic crisis points up the ungovernable nature of Europe and its present institutions. If Washington is gridlocked, Europe is by structures that cannot deal with crisis and what often appear to reflect as many policies as there are members (28) in the EU.

But it is not just the economic wolf that is at Europe’s door. The Russian bear is there, too. Already there is an undeclared war raging in Ukraine.

At the Association of European Journalists' meeting here, a spokesman from the Ukrainian government, who asked not to be identified by name, expressed the sense in Ukraine that it has been betrayed by EU bungling.

“Europe sees Ukraine as its European neighborhood partner. But in Ukraine, the truth is different: Ukraine’s view is that Europe let us down. We are hurt, bleeding. We have been betrayed by a neighbor that, six months ago, we saw as a brotherly nation,” he said.

What was not said was that Europe may freeze this winter if the Putin regime — a growling wolf — wants to punish Ukraine and its neighbors. Europe is hopelessly dependent on Russian gas, which is used mostly for heating. Germany gets 40 percent of its gas from Russia, and Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia get 90 percent. Russian gas makes its way — largely through Ukraine — down into Italy, and even the United Kingdom has some small exposure.

If the gas goes off, Europe freezes and its economies go south in an avalanche. The most hopeful thing for Europe this winter is that with the world oil price falling, Russia’s own fragile economy may dictate that it keeps the gas flowing — but it will force up the price where it can.

Washington, with a new Congress, might want to brace for Europe’s winter of crisis and disaster. If Europe goes into severe recession, can the U.S. economy escape major harm? The new Congress will be on a sharp learning curve. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Step on the Gas, Europeans Plead

May 5, 2014 by White House Chronicle Leave a Comment

To hear Brenda Shaffer, a peripatetic academic specializing in European and Eurasian energy issues, currently on a research fellowship at Georgetown University, natural gas is the predominant fuel of the 21st century, and it will be used copiously as time goes on. It will become the fuel of transportation as well as heating, manufacturing and electric generation.

But, at this point in time, moving natural gas from supplier to user presents special problems. It is not as easily transported as oil, and it is not as fungible.

Ideally, natural gas is transported by pipeline. Less desirably, it is converted into a liquid at -260 F and shipped around the world, where it has to be regassified. The freezing and the regassification processes for liquefied natural gas (LNG) require hugely expensive plants: over $5 billion at the originating end, and half that at the receiving end. This makes the gas expensive and its shipment inflexible.

Oil is put on tankers and unloaded wherever it is needed. LNG is shipped in special cryogenic tankers to dedicated terminals on long-term, take-or-pay contracts.

The United States is in the middle of a natural gas boom of unprecedented proportions; the result of extraordinary reserves in shale and the development of sophisticated hydraulic fracturing (fracking) technology linked to horizontal drilling. The pressure to export is on, balanced by environmental concerns and the fear of manufacturers tat the price will rise.

In the current crisis over Ukraine, a question has arisen as to whether we can help our European allies by shipping them LNG. The answer is “yes and no.”

We do not have any terminals ready to begin exports; the first LNG exports will be loaded from the Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana late next year and will be shipped to Asia. Nor does Europe have enough receiving terminals.

But the Europeans argue strongly that the mere presence of the United States as a player in the natural gas export business will have a huge impact on the world market, signaling that we are on the way and, hopefully, warning Russia that its captive gas customers in eastern and central Europe are looking at alternatives, and want to lift the yoke of dependence on Russia.

With the invasion of parts of Ukraine by Russian troops or their surrogates, gas has become a weapon of war. Russia's giant, state-owned gas monopoly, Gazprom, has been an arbitrary supplier to Europe for years. Most troublesome is that the bulk of Europe's gas supplies transit Ukraine, and that Gazprom has never behaved like anything but an arm of the Kremlin, dangerous and capricious.

In 2009, Gazprom cut off supplies over alleged contract and payment issues; in the cold of winter, the Russian bear was merciless. Also, it posts a different gas price for each customer, regardless the distance from Russia's border or cost of delivery.

Desperately, Europe is looking for a defense against Russia freezing supply to Ukraine this winter and cutting off some countries, particularly those wholly dependent on Russian gas, like the Baltic states and Slovakia.

That is why the Visegrad Group, consisting of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, under the chairmanship of Hungary, has been intensively lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would simplify and speed up the licensing of export terminals in the United States. At present, seven terminals have provisional licenses from the Department of Energy, and Sabine Pass is fully licensed.

Visegrad members swarmed Capitol Hill this week, lobbying for the legislation. They were accompanied by officials from Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Romania and Ukraine.

Their message was simple: the legislation would convince the Russians that they had to play by market rules because the entry of the United States as a player in the world of LNG — even if the gas cannot be offloaded in Europe in the near future — will send a strong market-stabilizing message.

Where possible, eastern and central European countries are improving their interconnections and adjusting their systems so they can reverse the flow of gas to help Ukraine in a dire emergency. But no one believes that it will make enough of a difference; besides, as most of that gas will have originated in Russia, some Russian contracts specify the use of the gas.

Almost all of the gas in the region is used for heating rather than electric generation or manufacturing. Central and eastern Europe is dreading winter and imploring the United States to send strong signals, even if it will be a long time before Pennsylvania or Ohio gas warms the people of Ukraine and its neighbors. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

The Fuel Revolution that Is Changing the World — And Us

July 24, 2012 by White House Chronicle Leave a Comment

Colorless, odorless natural gas is changing the world geopolitically and economically in ways undreamed of even five years ago.

It is a giant upheaval of which President Obama is both the beneficiary and the victim. He benefits because low natural gas prices are helping consumers and industry. And he is undermined by them because the cheap gas is savaging his dreams of “green” energy alternatives with scads of jobs attached.

The technologies which have brought on the gas boom also are contributing to enhanced oil production in the United States. Who would have believed that North Dakota would become the third-largest oil-producing state?

But the price of gas, now at historical lows, is also a political difficulty for Obama. His energy policy has been based on the old reality of shortage and a need for “alternatives.” In the administration’s scheme of things, the slack was to be taken up by the renewable sources ofenergy, wind, solar and wave power. With natural gas in plentiful supply and pushing out coal and new nuclear, the president is saddled with his failed attempts to push alternatives and to create a plethora of “green” jobs.

Yet without the boost that oil and natural gas are giving to the economy, it would be in worse shape than it already is.

A similar natural resources boom in the North Sea greatly aided Margaret Thatcher’s government and has underwritten Britain’s economy to this day, when production and British prosperity are both in decline.

New technology has brought the gas boom to the world and with it a change in geopolitics, soothing some tensions and exacerbating others.

The biggest excitement is in the Eastern Mediterranean, where there have been huge discoveries of gas — and sometimes oil and gas — off the coasts of Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, and around the Island of Cyprus.

The problems reflect the old tensions of the regions and some new ones, such as the growing estrangement between Israel and Turkey and the projection of Russian interests in the region.

Cyprus, itself a divided island since the Turkish invasion of 1974, is the closest member of the European Union to chaotic Syria and is being courted on several fronts by Russia.

Russia is worried about new gas supplies affecting its monopoly in gas supply in Europe, as well as the future of its naval base in Syria. As a result, Russia is pouring money and people (150,000) into Cyprus to keep its options in the Mediterranean open.

Cyprus would like to become a transshipment point for Israeli gas (when a gas liquefaction plant is built). But claim to reserves in its own territorial waters are being contested by Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots. About 63 percent of the island is controlled by 900,000 Greek Cypriots who claim to speak for the whole island.

With new gas everywhere, there will be a rush to find markets. Europe, for example, is hoping to ease its Russian gas dependence by building pipelines that will bring gas from Central Asia through Turkey avoiding Russia. Others, like Qatar, are looking away from Europe and to Asia for new customers.

The appeal of gas to electric utilities everywhere is undeniable. It burns with about half the greenhouse effluent than oil and coal. The power plants are easily sited, do not need huge cooling structures and the capital cost is low.

However, methane, which makes up 75 percent of natural gas, is a serious greenhouse contributor and needs to be kept out of the environment. The other components of natural gas are ethane, 15 percent, and butane and propane come in at about 5 percent each. Natural gas is the world’s most abundant compound.

While the case against the swing to gas is primarily environmental, there is an economic concern about costs in the decades to come. The environmental case is twofold:

• One, that although it produces less CO2, a principal greenhouse gas, than coal or oil, it still produces half as much as they do.

• Two, that hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking” affects groundwater, uses too much water itself in the process and may stimulate earthquakes.

Yet the chances of the world or the United States turning away from this new bounty are nil.

If the 19th century belonged to coal and the 20the century to oil, it looks as though the 21st will be the natural gas century. Reports of the death of fossil fuels are wildly exaggerated. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

How Russia Coerces Europe

January 9, 2009 by White House Chronicle Leave a Comment

No building in Moscow so much says “Soviet Union” as the headquarters of Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly. It is more foreboding than the Lubyanka, the former headquarters and torture emporium of the KGB. The romantic charm of the czarist era, epitomized by the Kremlin itself, is wholly absent. Like the state monopoly itself, the structure is gigantic, threatening and very hard to get into.

It is set back from the road, and there are layers of security a visitor has to negotiate to see an official. It is easier to get into the Kremlin, No. 10 Downing Street or the White House than it is to get into Gazprom HQ. I know because I have gotten into all of them. No wonder old KGB hand Vladimir Putin loves the gas company.

As president, and now as prime minister, Putin grew Gazprom and its oil counterpart, Rosneft, not to be normal companies but agents of political implementation. Between them, they were tasked to gobble up the pieces of Yukos when its luckless founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was thrown in jail.

But even more than Rosneft, it is Gazprom that has emerged as the right hand of Russian policy in Europe.

At the moment, in the dead of winter, it is Gazprom that has cut off supplies of gas to more than 12 European countries. Ostensibly, the argument is over the price paid for gas by Ukraine, the transshipper of gas to all of Europe. But the Russian political agenda is not concealed. Putin, and the siloviki (the men of power around Putin and President Dimitry Medvedev) are angered by the defiance of former members of the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine. Despite its large Russian-speaking minority (about 40 percent) it has talked of joining NATO and the European Union–a red rag to Russia. Russia is angry at the West, in general, for trying to route new pipelines from Central Asia through Georgia, avoiding Russia. It is also mad at the West for recognizing Kosovo, and has responded by buying the Serbian gas fields.

Russian gas, which now makes up 30 percent of Europe’s need, does not look such a good idea–particularly to Germany, where pressure from the Green party led to the retreat from nuclear and the push for gas turbines. Before Germany turned its back on nuclear, it was a leader in the development of promising pebble bed technology. Now, sadly, Germany depends on Russia for nearly 40 percent of its gas supplies.

The gas crisis is worst in countries like Bulgaria, where there is very little gas storage and demand is in real time. But it is also affecting Italy and Southern Europe. Having closed their coal-fired power plants and shelved their nuclear plans, those countries now feel the full pain of the Russian bear’s embrace: gas droughts and electric shortages are leaving their populations cold and hungry in the dark.

So dependent has Europe become on Russian energy that every step to ameliorate the situation is a possible irritant to Moscow. If the pipelines bypass Russia, or the hub in Ukraine, that is a provocation. If new gas comes by ship from North Africa, that is an excuse for Russia to try and price its pipeline gas at the higher price of liquefied natural gas.

Belatedly, Britain and Finland commissioned new nuclear power plants. But Germany, whose former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder took a lucrative job with Gazprom, has chosen to increase its energy dependence on Russia.

Most observers believe that the current crisis will not last. Most likely, it will conclude with a jump in the price of gas, and some satisfaction in the Kremlin that Europe has been taught a lesson. But that lesson may have to be repeated over issues far from energy–such as the expansion of NATO and the European Union.

While the Russians appear to take some satisfaction in upsetting Western Europe, it is their Soviet-era satellites that most annoy them. Why, they wonder, can’t all of Eastern Europe remain suitably deferential, like Belarus and Armenia? Both toady to Moscow.

For the rest of Europe, the message is clear: build more gas storage, arrange more imports and diversify away from gas turbines.

For our part, we can help our friends and allies by thinking through our own actions, from the European missile shield to the willy-nilly expansion of NATO. This is a European problem. But if Europe has to make geopolitical compromises with Russia, it becomes problem for the Western alliance. That is us.

Russia: The Bad Neighbor

August 25, 2008 by White House Chronicle Leave a Comment

Georgia on my mind.

I was struck when I arrived in Tbilisi a few years ago, in the early hours of the morning, that the lights were blazing in dozens of stands that dotted the road from the airport to the city. This gave the impression that Georgia was booming; that the economy was vibrant and the people were entrepreneurial.

The next day, I learned that nothing in the small and ancient country of Georgia is quite the way it seems. A year after my visit a colleague from The Washington Times, Joseph Curl, also mistook the appearance of prosperity for the real thing.

The fact is that lights blaze night and day in Tbilisi because the good business people steal their electricity. Every one of the road stands is located next to a power line, and there is no attempt to hide the illegal connections. No wonder the lights stay on all night—no switches.

Georgia, like its bullying neighbor Russia, has fostered a strange indifference to law. It goes like this: laws are for the people who make laws, not for the rest of us. We just have to do the best we can.

In few countries have I felt more isolated by language than in Georgia. In most countries, at street level—restaurants and taxis–someone speaks English. Not so in Tbilisi. The first language, of course, is Georgian and the second is Russian. Happily, I was traveling with another journalist who spoke excellent Russian. Otherwise, like so many, I would have been confined to the international hotel where English was spoken.

Our first order of business was to get press passes at the information ministry. We were registered, photographed, paid a fee and were issued with press passes by an engaging young woman. My colleague, Nathan Hodge, elicited that our friendly registrar was going to a rock concert that evening and the tickets would cost about $150. We calculated that this would be many times her weekly salary and were perplexed. Georgians are poor, and government workers are not well paid. A role in the black economy? A rich lover?

Much in Georgia is unexplained. Since the Russian tanks rolled into South Ossetia, one those unexplained issues is how the government of Mikheil Saakashvili thought it could taunt Russia when it knew that Russia historically has been paranoid about its borders; and that its paranoia had been exacerbated by the West’s quick recognition of Kosovo and the loss of face by Serbia, a Russian Slavic ally.

Russia was poised to invade and the Georgian president lit the fuse when he sent Georgian troops to reclaim South Ossetia. Justice may have been on Saakashvili’s side, but realpolitik was not.

As long as Russia feels surrounded by American surrogates in the colors of NATO, it is going to bully where it can and use its energy superiority to try and separate Europe from the United States. Europe is 50-percent dependent on gas from Russia. Watch for European indignation to subside as winter approaches.

There is a precedent for Russia annexing chunks of its neighbors and getting away with it. Remember what happened to Finland during World War II. With the spread of mechanized warfare, Russia felt its crown jewel of a city, St. Petersburg, lying a few kilometers from the Finnish border, was vulnerable. So they began a land grab for about one-tenth of Finland, known as Karelia. This was to be a buffer zone.

After the bitterly fought Winter War of 1940, in a lopsided peace, Russia grabbed Karelia, including the second-largest Finnish city and most of its industrial infrastructure. Twelve percent of the Finnish population had to be resettled. It was a great blow to the Finns, and is remembered painfully today.

Neither candidate for the American presidency has any idea what to do about Russia. It is not an economic colossus. If it were not for energy, it would be sick indeed. It is not a competitive manufacturer in anything except vodka and nuclear power plants. It has not been able to divert its oil wealth for the betterment of its rural towns and villages, and its population of 142 million is declining rapidly.

But Russia is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and is our partner in some things that work well, like weapons decommissioning and the International Space Station. John McCain has proposed throwing the Russians out of the G-8. To what end? It has no real role in that group. Barack Obama would talk to them more. No one has courted the Russians more assiduously than George W. Bush or been as thoroughly rebuffed.

The Russian enigma will be with us a long time. As for the enigma of the Tbilisi rock concert ticket-holder, I think she was making money selling press passes to gullible American journalists who did not need them.

Whither Cuba after the Brothers Castro?

March 9, 2008 by White House Chronicle

In Havana, the enfeebled fingers of Fidel Castro have handed the baton of dictatorship to the feeble fingers of his brother, Raul. The endgame is in sight, but what will it lead to?

There are those in Miami and Washington who believe that, by some miracle, the status quo ante will return to Cuba, but this time with democracy and transparency.

To understand what might happen in Cuba, let us look at two examples of countries where power was transferred.

First, take South Africa. The white minority government ceded power to the African National Congress by throwing open the franchise, enabling a black government to be elected. Significantly in South Africa, there were independent institutions, a democratic tradition among whites, and organized political groups.

Second, look at Russia. Change came quickly, but Russia was not ready for democratic emancipation in tandem with economic liberalization. While South Africa transferred power smoothly, it did not have to transfer ownership of its commerce. Result: an orderly transition. In Russia, the political transition was smoother than the commercial one. Smart kleptocrats stole Russia’s wealth. This has generated great public resentment; and from it, Vladimir Putin was able to abridge democracy. Of course, Putin was helped by the economic chaos of the early 1990s–another symptom of Russia’s democratic and commercial immaturity.

There are those who think that there will be a transition in Cuba akin to the one in South Africa. The parallel is faulty. They would be better advised to look at what happened in Russia and chart a future for Cuba that avoids the mistakes of Russia.

The great truth about Cuba, as far as the United States is concerned, is that it lies 90 miles off Florida; its economy is a disaster; and it has 11 million people—a goodly number of whom would like to move to the United States.

Here are some scenarios for Cuba:

1. The United States lifts the embargo. In the first week, Cuba is flooded with private aircraft and boats. There is chaos, and the Cubans fear that they are being taken over. Solution: a gradual lifting of the embargo over time.

2. A democratic government is established in Havana. But without political parties, Cuba divides along racial lines. Roughly 50 percent of Cubans are white and the rest are black. Solution: a government in exile is formed in Miami to prepare a constitution that could be adopted in Cuba, allowing for the special conditions on the island.

3. A new Cuban government seeks to privatize state-owned enterprises– the most valuable of which is the pharmaceutical research industry. Any move to privatize industry would put a new government at odds with the Cuban exile community in the United States. Many harbor claims against Cuba for companies and private property that were seized by Castro 48 years ago. These claims are extremely complicated and could bog down a new administration in litigation in Cuban and American courts. Solution: a commission of reconciliation, whose findings would be legislated into law in Havana with treaty recognition in the United States.

If things go wrong in Cuba, they go wrong for the United States as well. A rush to democracy could be as damaging as anything that has happened, including civil war. There are those in Havana who believe that there should be a period for private industry to be established before democracy is implemented. These are people who look not to the South African or Russian examples but to China.

And, of course, there are the Cubans. When I first went to Cuba in the 1980s, at least half of them remembered the days before the revolution and were sullenly angry about what had happened to Cuba. On my last visit, four years ago, the change in generations was apparent. There was less memory of the old days, and Cubans’ aspirations had more to do with their daily lives than with great upheavals. As I could define it, a wish-list included better pay, more meat in the diet, and better-fitting clothes. A distant fourth on the wish-list, and from the young, was to travel. But years of propaganda have taken their toll, and many young Cubans believe that life outside of Cuba is brutal and dangerous. Interviews on the street suggest that they fear the inequalities of the past as much as they resent the oppression of the present.

The Cuban question will not be resolved when two old men leave the scene there.