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Book review: The New Cold War, #11

As per my quest to jot thoughts down about each of the books I'm reading in 2008... 

The New Cold War is a useful primer on the Putin years of Russian history. Edward Lucas, the author and a Moscow correspondent for The Economist, draws on his impressively comprehensive knowledge of recent Eurasian politics to call the Kremlin on its re-Sovietization, and to identify the challenges an increasingly powerful Russia will pose to the West. The book is packed with statistics and exposition, with very little narrative or dramatic tension to pull the reader through those percentage signs. The tone is unrelentingly negative. At one point, Mr. Lucas notes, "It is important to show [Russians] that our dislike of the Kremlin is not motivated by russophobia." Unfortunately, Mr. Lucas has not managed that particular trick here. At times his writing reads like an old anti-Soviet propaganda tract from the McCarthy era. And given the unrelentingly negative tone, I would have appreciated more acknowledgement that people who aren't democracy activists or imprisoned former oligarchs, you know, regular plumbers and auto mechanics in St. Petersburg or Nizhny Novgorod, don't share Mr. Lucas's anti-Kremlin bias. This national trait of autocratic acceptance seems perhaps to exasperate Mr. Lucas, as it does many Western journalists. It seems not to inspire in Mr. Lucas much curiosity. 

And that's a shame, because it seems to me that awakening the sleeping bear, that is, awakening the Russian people's will toward democracy, could be the quickest way to inspire the Kremlin to loosen control over voting behaviour and the press. In fact, a normative dimension is perhaps this book's biggest weakness. On topic after topic Mr. Lucas expertly describes the way the Kremlin has tightened its grip over the country. But what to do about all this? As it stands, the book's only suggestions are found in a nine-page conclusion where Mr. Lucas suggests that Washington and Brussels should stay united in the face of Moscow's attempt to split them apart. And: financial markets shouldn't tolerate the sort of murky dealings that are a trademark of such Russian companies as Gazprom. These are good ideas. The book would have benefited from more. 

Oh, one last thing. Perhaps it was the circumstance I was in as I raced through the last 20 or so pages of Philip Roth's great 1981 novel, Zuckerman Unbound, but since I finished it on Sunday afternoon I've been wondering something. The book is about Roth's alter-ego Zuckerman torturing himself after his publishing an extremely personal and extremely successful novel, which includes among its depictions lifted from Zuckerman's own life unflattering portrayals of Zuckerman's parents. The last bit is obsessed with whether and to what extent Zuckerman has failed to carry out a son's duty toward the father. I finished the book during my son's nap, with my son snuggled into my side, and since I've finished it, I haven't been able to get the question out of my head: What are the father's duty to the son? 

More on appeasement

So it took me about a month to slog through the 214 pages of the Edward Lucas book about Russia, The New Cold War. Hoping to explore my reaction to that book in a subsequent blog post. For now let's just say that I'm really enjoying its successor, Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound. One of the best things about finishing the writing of my own book is that I'm once again allowing myself to read novels. That said, the Roth novel opens with a  depressing scene. It starts with Zuckerman the novelist getting recognized on a Manhattan bus and then accosted and harangued until he has to flee the bus for the street. Set in the late '60s, the novel's showing its age, and that's the depressing part. Can you imagine any living novelist being recognized on a bus these days? 

Hillary, it's time to quit. There's the latest stupid thing you said -- which succeeds the previous stupid thing you said. Meanwhile, pretty much every aspect of Bush's Knesset speech last week has been gone over and refuted. Never mind Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's domestic political troubles; it remains a huge slap in Bush's face that the week after the U.S. president's visit, Olmert has contradicted American wishes and opened negotiations with Syria, which the U.S. government has called a state sponsor of terrorism. Oh, and remember how Bush referenced the 1938 Munich Conference? Daily Kos diarist revbludge refutes that on several levels. And a New York Times news analysis piece earlier this week quoted a Brookings Middle East expert thusly: "“Bush’s rhetoric is completely disconnected from everything on the ground.” And of course, as I am apt to do, I've already pointed out that my book argues that friendships between then-Soviet ambassador Aleksandr N. Yakovlev and such Canadian figures as Pierre Trudeau and George Cohon helped to set Yakovlev on his path toward perestroika.  

All of which raises the question: Why is Bush so dead-set against speaking with enemy states? Why be so dogmatic and inflexible? Why pin himself to such an absolutist position? I don't have an answer, although I'd be interested in hearing others' opinions. For what it's worth, I wonder whether his hardline, isolationist rhetoric has anything to do with his fundamentalist Christian beliefs -- with a belief in evil and a tendency to see the world in moral absolutes. If one is able to write off other human beings as evil... and if one is able to write off terrorists as evil-doers... then of course they should be isolated and ignored. Because they're irredeemable. 

To me, the reality is a hell of a lot more complicated. I don't think it's possible to completely write off as evil other human beings, regardless of how much they disagree with you, and I believe that a seemingly intransigent disagreement -- between people, between states -- can usually be improved with discussion. 

The answer is ambivalence

Recently I had an email from a reporter asking what I thought of Toro's new online-only incarnation, which launches tonight with a party at the Brant House. As a former writer-at-large for the old, defunct print version, the answer is that my reaction is complicated. 

I'm happy for the handful of old Toro contribs / staffers who are participating in this new incarnation, just as I'm relieved that the launch adverts are witty and amusingly self-referential. However, I have my misgivings. In the it-was-fun-while-it-lasted department, I feel as though Toro had a good run and any new incarnation can't possibly match the original's level of talent. Attesting to this is the fact that most of the former editors are all enriching the talent pool of other publications. The big cheese, former editor-in-chief Derek Finkle, is freelancing his ass off for Toronto Life and Maclean's and earlier this year received the Freedom to Read award from the Writers' Union of Canada, for his work on the Robert Baltovich case. Design and photo stalwarts Cameron Williamson and Myles McCutcheon are working under Maryam Sanati at Chatelaine, along with Melanie Morassutti. Pat Lynch and David Fielding are at the Globe in the Life section and ROB magazine, respectively. Possibly the skinniest editor in Canada, Dave Morris, is at Eye Weekly as music editor and last I heard Micah Toub was in Berlin madly typing away on a memoir thanks to a lucrative book deal. 

Then there's the but-you-did-it-yourself side of this issue. When I first moved to Toronto seven (?) years ago Neil Morton and Kevin Siu hired me as the web editor for the third incarnation of Shift magazine, the one that published under the aegis of Multi-Vision Publishing. Did the writers and editors who had previously worked under Evan Solomon and Andy Heintzman feel the same vague, rootless resentment that I feel toward this new toromagazine.com? And why the hell do I feel this resentment? Shouldn't I be happy that someone is trying to make another go of something I liked, something created by people I admired, something to which I was lucky enough to contribute? 

But my biggest ambivalence-causer is the fact that the old incarnation still apparently owes contributors money. Few indie Canadian magazines are great about paying with any sort of punctuality, and Toro editors took a lot of flack for the habitual late payments, but none of it was the editors' fault. Purse strings at Toro were controlled by exactly one person: Christopher Bratty, who also is funding this new incarnation. Bratty seems like a decent enough guy but he is completely clueless on the financial needs of people who didn't inherit millions of dollars. I think it was in December 2006 that I finally got frustrated with Finkle and started swearing at him on the telephone over a pair of invoices that were going on three months overdue. I had an excuse -- Christmas was coming up, the invoices totaled around $8,000 and my wife wasn't going to get any presents if those invoices didn't come in. 

The thing was, it wasn't Finkle's fault -- he had done his best to get me the money and finally just gave me Bratty's office phone number. I started bugging Bratty with incessant voice-mails explaining the situation, and at the very last minute before Christmas vacation -- I think on the 22nd of December -- I drove out to the west side of Toronto and met Bratty at a Starbuck's near his house, where he handed me the cheque. What got me was Bratty's manner. He tossed off some random comment to the effect of, he hoped I was grateful that he was going out of his way to pay me. This was an invoice that was at least three months overdue. And what gets me to this day, and what is probably the reason for my current venting, is that I didn't call him on that asshole comment. I didn't tell him how counter-productive his late payments were, or how frustrating these late payments were to the magazine's writers, editors and photographers, or about the unreliable reputation the magazine was getting. I swallowed all of those feelings because I wanted to keep writing for Toro. I thanked Bratty, and high-tailed it to the closest bank to deposit that cheque and start buying Christmas presents.

When Finkle called me in February 2007 to tell me that Toro was dying, I felt as though somebody had punched me in the stomach. Part of the reason was that I was supposed to be flying to Costa Rica on a research trip the next week, for a piece on Calvin Ayre. Under no obligation to me, Finkle scrambled his ass off and arranged for me to sell the piece to Maclean's -- only one of the many reasons why I admire that dude. The other reason I felt as though I was punched in the stomach was that at that point I had about $10,000 in invoices outstanding to Toro (read: Bratty). Which was more money than I had outstanding to anyone like, ever. The magazine had a wake / final party at the Spoke Club a couple of weeks after the death announcement and I reintroduced myself to Bratty and told him how great I thought Toro was (true) and explained about my new baby and this book that I was writing, and how much I needed that cash (also true), and to Bratty's credit he had his accountant cut me a cheque for the full amount the following week. 

However, not everyone was so lucky as I was, and this is another reason why I'm ambivalent about this Toro relaunch. Pay your contribs! And if you don't, don't expect them to feel all warm and fuzzy about your relaunch. 

The Comfort of Appeasement

The October 1986 disarmament summit in Reykjavik. Reagan is at left. Yakovlev sits to Gorbachev's left on the photo's right side. Photo source: Yakovlev family archives
Wow, do I ever disagree with the statement Pres. Bush, said yesterday before the Israeli parliament:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along... We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Much of the president's meaning is obscured here by rhetoric. If one substitutes "terrorists and radicals" with "enemies," then Bush and his nearly eight years in power suggest that it's OK to kill, and otherwise antagonize, our enemies. But we shouldn't talk to them. Or attempt to understand them. Or the reasons for our disagreement.

Let's set aside for a moment the fact that even the Bush administration hasn't subscribed to this logic. Others have pointed out the State Department's diplomatic dealings with Iran. And in the last year or two, while America and Russia were doing their posturing, Bush was engaging quite congenially with Pres. Putin.

Aside from that, the "lessons of history" in fact support the notion that we should be seeking ways to engage with "the terrorists and radicals." There is, for example, the history lesson that I recount in my book, which chronicles the role played by "ingenious argument" in convincing Aleksandr N. Yakovlev that his society was wrong all along. And the way that Yakovlev would go on to play an integral role in ending the Cold War.

So the "ingenious argument" slagged by Pres. Bush helped to end the Cold War. Funny, but I am having trouble isolating any conflicts that Bush has managed to end with his favoured tactic of unilateral war.

CBC Radio 3

Hey, CBC Radio 3 blogged about that Walrus piece I did. Check it out.

Yakovlev, the Walrus + the Doukhobors

Doukhobors in Grand Forks, British Columbia. Photo credit: Sherlock77

A feature I wrote about Aleksandr N. Yakovlev is up on the Walrus magazine's website. On one level, the piece recounts the way the punk band D.O.A. and the Doukhobor community of southeastern British Columbia helped me to understand a key component of Yakovlev's life story. On another, it's about the way the Doukhobors disprove the theory of Russian exceptionalism -- that is, the theory that Russia is so different from the West that such supposedly Western concepts as the right to free speech and other tenets of liberal democracy aren't workable in the onetime land of the tsars. Russian exceptionalism often is used to justify Moscow's autocratic rule, in the Soviet era as well as today in the Putin / Medvedev duocracy.

The first paragraph:

It stands as one of the more unusual turning points of the Cold War, thanks mostly to the surprise appearance of several naked middle-aged women. It began with a plasterer named Peter Voykin driving his 1970 Ford Meteor toward the local community centre in Castlegar, in the Kootenay mountains of southeastern British Columbia, on the Saturday before Victoria Day in 1980. As a Doukhobor, a member of a sect of Christian anarchists who settled in the Kootenays after fleeing Russia in the 1890s, Voykin was a vegetarian and a pacifist who championed an ethic of communal living and sharing.

And then here's the nut graf:

If the West is searching for ways to steer an increasingly autocratic Russia back toward functioning democracy, then Yakovlev’s story is a useful case study. And in that case study, one of the pivotal but least understood periods is the decade he spent in Ottawa. As the author of a biography of Yakovlev, I’d set out to understand the man’s ideological journey from anti-Western autocrat to the most potent force for freedom and democracy ever to walk the halls of the Kremlin. I thought his story might provide hints on how to deal with today’s Russian leaders. But as my book deadline approached, there was one aspect of Yakovlev’s story I failed to understand. In his memoirs, he describes the onset in 1978 of a severe depression that was complicated, as the years passed, by an increasingly rancorous Cold War. Then, suddenly, the funk disappeared.

To read the whole story, click here.

Oh wait, Bill Richardson

Photo credit: Delta Niner

Oh wait, no, I changed my mind, Clinton would be a bad running mate for Obama. And in retrospect it's like, jesus, what was I thinking. I was talking with my Republican friend this morning and he made the point that he would consider voting for Obama but not with Clinton on the ticket, which got me thinking about clean breaks and fresh starts. I like Obama because I feel like America needs a unifier. It needs someone who can break with the partisanship that has defined the last 16 years. Obama has a freshness to him that suggests he may have the potential to do that. Clinton on a Democratic ticket would alienate a lot of voters and leave him open to the criticism that he's simply extending the partisanship of the Clinton White House.

So if not, Clinton, who? Been bouncing around a lot of names -- Nancy Pelosi might attract some of the women who have been sticking with Hillary. But Pelosi's also valuable in Congress. Al Gore is a southern Democrat with a big fat Nobel Prize, except he and Obama together may come off as too elitist -- and besides, I doubt Gore would bring many voters to Obama -- anyone who would be attracted to Gore already is voting for Obama. OK -- John Edwards? Ted Kennedy? Hey, what if Obama pitches McCain on running on a non-partisan ticket? Naw, I think the best running mate for Obama is Bill Richardson, the Latino governor of New Mexico who was an early dropout from the primary process. Richardson has an ability to empathize with working voters that Obama lacks, and he could bring the Hispanic vote that has been sticking with Clinton. He's also a veteran politico. Obama-Richardson. Nice.

Random thought: Earlier this week the recycle fairy dropped one of the big new blue recycling bins on our front sidewalk. This thing is so huge that it can swallow all the paper, plastic, whatever that we could ever generate in two weeks. It's great. So now that I don't need my old recycling bins, I have a question: Can you recycle your recycling bins?

Where are the Canadians? and other stuff

Oooh, my legs are stiff from playing soccer last night. So for the first time I'm using Facebook's "Blog It" application to deliver the sort of random musings I've previously restricted to my blog. Hopefully this posts simultaneiously to both Facebook and the blog. Blog blog blog. Here goes...

More people are calling for Canada to elevate its role in global affairs... Yesterday it was Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie speaking at a gala dinner for the Canadian Press. "The key is to build capacity on addressing the kind of important issues that our nation faces and the world faces," Balsillie said. "The nature of the issues are quite substantial - they're big and they're multilateral and complex and they're getting bigger... It's not that the Canadian voice isn't valued, it's that we're not there, we're not voicing..."

Perhaps because of my recent research into the Doukhobors for a story in this month's Walrus, I've been following the media attention toward a much different religious community that also happens to reside in the British Columbia Kootenays: Mormon polygamists. Today the Globe ran a bad headline for what turns out to be an impressively objective story: "Special prosecutor targets polygamy 'epidemic.'" The headline makes it seem as though women are rushing to join polygamist unions. In fact, the story painstakingly distinguishes between the practice of polygamy and such negative phenomena as child abuse that can occur in fundamentalist communities.

The Guardian reports on an Obama signal that the apparant nominee for the Democratic presidential candidacy is considering offering Hillary Clinton the spot of vice-presidential nominee. There have been whispers about this for awhile but from where I stand this is the first signal that Obama would consider it. It's a good idea... combining Obama's ability to unify with the experience of the Clinton team.

Lastly, what are we to make of this story which notes that earlier today, before a vote in the Russian parliament to confirm Putin as prime minister, the leader of Russia's Communist Party delivered a "scathing assessment" of the Putin presidency? And not only that -- in marked difference from its recent practice of parroting what amounted to the party line, Russian national TV actually broadcast the speech!

Succession Plan

Amid all of last night's excitement in Indiana and North Carolina it's easy to lose sight of another important development in presidential successions, the formal installment earlier today of Dmitri A. Medvedev as Putin's successor in the role of Russian president. I'll limit my comments because I'm a little under the gun on a couple of deadlines. However, is anyone else noticing how coverage of Medvedev has shifted in the West? Three months ago most Western journalists were dismissing Medvedev as little more than a puppet of Putin and the siloviki. In today's small item in the Times, the headline refers to the new Russian president as Putin's "protégé." Increasing reluctance to dismiss Medvedev also is exhibited by this story in the Guardian. It's a subtle shift, but an important one, as more Western observers realize that Medvedev could represent a break from the creeping re-Sovietization that has marked Putin's final term—something I pointed out months ago here.

Now what I would like to see is a strategy for dealing with Russia designed to encourage Medvedev's avowed democratic instincts. Canada is well-placed to play this encouraging role. My book recounts the story of a Russian patriot visiting Canada thirty years ago and learning from our example that a democracy can be a stable, orderly affair; he then returned to Moscow and was able to convince Gorbachev to execute the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. With the Harper government exhibiting the symptoms of tunnel vision on Afghanistan, Canada may be missing a similar opportunity today.

One final word for an audience of one. Dear Hillary: It's over. Do the Democratic Party a favour and quit. All this talk of Michigan and Florida is delegitimizing the primary process. In a somewhat similar situation eight years ago your former friend Al Gore was big enough to concede defeat to a far worse alternative. You should do the same today. Hugs, Chris

The Moment I Became A Published Author

Few things surpass a thrill I had recently when I opened up a courier package from McClelland & Stewart to discover the first advance copy of my book. To convey my reaction I should go back a couple of years. I have been a geek about books since I was old enough to read. For long stretches of my youth and adolescence my mind resided in some fictional universe—Steinbeck's Monterey, Enid Blyton's English countryside, Susan Cooper's Wales and the frontier Utah of the Great Brain series. To maximize the amount of time I'm reading I've developed a ninja-like expertise in a set of obscure skills. I can read while walking. I can read while cruising over the rough waters of Lake St. Clair in a bowrider inboard/outboard. I can read in the stop-and-go herky-jerky progress of a TTC streetcar. This is not bragging. These are simple statements of fact.

When I was in primary school I used to spend my lunch hours helping the librarian shelve books. My first job amounted to doing the same thing after school at the Emeryville Public Library. And to this day I get a feeling of contentment when I'm in the stacks of a library or bookstore. No, that's not quite right. It's a feeling of belonging. It's an awareness of this ancient community of readers and writers that stretches back past the days of Shakespeare, past Plutarch and Homer. And it's a sense of my membership in that community.

Throughout my long career as One Who Devours Reading Material, I've considered what it would be like to have published a book. The appeal for me has never been ego tripping. I haven't wanted to become an author to, say, impress people at parties. It's more a desire to join that odd fraternity of loners and freaks who have spent a significant fraction of a lifespan placing enough letters on enough pieces of paper that the result fills an inch or two of shelf space—one or two inches of shelf space in libraries where the titles go on for yards, for furlongs, for miles.

I knew that my book was at home several hours before I arrived. I prevented myself from hurrying as I went from workdesk to front door. I even drew out the trip home by stopping at a bakery to pick up a cherry pie for some celebratory dessert. The package was a matte brown envelope, the kind that you pull open with a plastic cord. The only thing it contained was my book.

Between the signing of a book contract and the actual publishing of a book there are a lot of contingencies. Research problems could have scuttled the project. I could have been hit by a bus, or killed by lightning. My arms could have been severed in a lawn-cutting incident. My publisher could have gone out of business. None of this happened, of course. But I worried about them all the same.

No more contingencies existed once I had the book in my hands. My book is now bound to be up there among the work of all those other writers. I didn't get a sense of achievement when I held my book in my hands. There wasn't exultation or triumph. There was only relief, and that feeling of membership. Finally, 35 years into this life of mine, I had joined them.