I penned a review of Robert Kagan's The Return of History but something kept nagging at me, that I had left something out. And it was this. Kagan explains why China's view of the international order appeals to other autocrats—but neglects to discuss how many democracies might also find Beijing's approach to be useful and even preferable to the one he lays out.

Kagan notes that the Chinese view—and here let me use the words of the 1972 Shanghai Communique—"the people of all countries have the right to choose their social systems according their own wishes and the right to safeguard the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of their own countries ..." is music to the ears of autocratic and non-democratic governments around the world. He cites it specifically in the context of Chinese-Iranian relations. True.

But it is also quite attractive to a number of democratic ones as well. It is the basis for India's participation as an observer in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa like the idea that their own path to democracy and development not be subject to the control or validation of outsiders. Even for U.S. allies like South Korea, this Chinese view is very welcome—because it means that Beijing's 1950 position—that North Korea did have a right to extend its system by force to the source—has been reversed and that South Korea's right to have a democratic, free-market system is not being challenged by China. And this makes it much easier for Europeans to deal with China—because Beijing seems to be saying, if you want to move to a post-nation state union where EU member-states have freely surrendered some sovereignty to Brussels, that is your affair.

[On a side note, what about the U.S. position in the Shanghai Communique—that "The United States supports individual freedom and social progress for all the peoples of the world, free of outside pressure or intervention"?]

And, as Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner and Steven Weber have been arguing in The National Interest (both the print and online editions) for more than a year now, China offers the vision of a world order based on sovereign states where these states negotiates contracts with one another in achieving their economic and security objectives and where international organizations have no authority to bypass the state on behalf of individuals. For many democratic states, particularly those that have a "John Quincy Adams" view that the fate of democracy in any given country is in the hands of that country alone, a global order predicated on sovereignty is just fine.

And what you may end up with, as Parag Khanna has argued, is a whole series of states—both democratic and non-democratic—that position themselves betwixt "autocratic/sovereign East" and "democratic/internationalist West." We shouldn't be counting on other democracies to automatically flock to our banner.

I quoted Lee Hamilton at the close of my review; but Khanna is more blunt and less polite than the former Congressman. How can America's power and leadership be revived? He complains, "One would expect hard-headed guidance based on experience,
observation and connections, yet instead one hears—from ex-administration officials from the Clinton or Bush eras—the platitudes of detached utopians."

One reason why I continue to think the association of democracies idea is problematic is that the world's "southern democracies" are very ambivalent about breaching the protective wall of state sovereignty. I blogged earlier this week about a pitch that might resonate with some of them.

But the current UN Security Council wrangling over Myanmar/Burma is quite instructive. France, as TWR readers may know, wanted to invoke the "responsibility to protect" to get the Security Council to authorize relief efforts that would bypass the Burmese military junta.

We are told that, in addition to Russia, China and Vietnam, South Africa also argued strongly behind closed doors that the Security Council should get involved. Panama also doesn't see a role for the Security Council, according to its ambassador, while Indonesia's representative seems to feel that relief work can best be undertaken by the Asian states.

First on Kosovo, now on Burma. So far, "southern democracies" still seem to place a greater premium on preserving state sovereignty and integrity. This is something that I am frustrated that so many of the advocates of the LOD/COD idea just won't address. But ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

Yesterday, Xie Feng, deputy chief of mission of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, spoke at the Nixon Center. He gave an optimistic view of the future of Sino-U.S. relations, grounded in common interests and, perhaps even over a time, a narrowing values gap.

But I don't know how receptive some are going to be to his viewpoint. Because, listening to his on-the-record remarks, Beijing's view of partnership with Washington is one where the relationship is defined by equality. One where, especially in economic terms, the U.S. and China are the "twin engines" (rather than the U.S. being the hub); one where both countries will have to work together on a number of issues but where it must be accepted that "we do not see eye to eye on everything" and where both sides will have to engage in dialogue to minimize differences. "We hope that the U.S. will meet us half-way" was a point made.

Diplomacy, anyone?

Earlier today, I passed along a news tidbit from The Hindu about the Indian-Brazilian-South African joint naval exercises.

Now, The Hindu is reporting:

"The Foreign Ministers of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) will meet exclusively for the first time in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg on May 14 with economics and cooperation at multilateral fora topping the agenda.

"A meeting of Foreign Ministers of Russia, India, China (RIC) will take place at the same venue the next day as a follow-up to their regular interactions, the latest being in Harbin, China, last year. Although the BRIC Foreign Ministers have discussed the prospects of mutual cooperation on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the agenda here will be solely focused on promoting the concept of BRIC."

Folks, we live in a dynamic world where powers keep open their options and hedge their bets. India does joint military exercises with the United States, reaches out to other middle powers to do their "own thing" and schedules regular consultations with the foreign ministers of China and Russia. India disproves the thesis about countries choosing and sticking with "blocs" and instead seems to indicate countries feel safer with multipolar options.

So two southern democracies, one sovereign democracy/managed pluralist state and one state still under the guiding role of the Communist Party are seeing whether they have common ground for policies.

Read the full Hindu piece, it is quite interesting.

For those of you who are interested (and didn't hear Michele Kelemen's report on NPR's Morning Edition).

Igor Yurgens, vice president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, was quoted as saying, "He's a young guy, Internet generation leader—from this point of view, more open."

Mark Medish, of the Carnegie Endowment, feels that both outgoing presidents—Putin and Bush—have left their successors, in terms of the U.S.-Russia relationship, "a list of things to be done in the future, things that have not been really accomplished ..."

My takeaway? "This is the first Russian leader who was trained in instruments of power that are not military and not intelligence. So for the 20th century, the fear was Russian tanks are going to be coming across the border. We're now dealing with the 21st century Russian leader who understands that energy and currency are the tools of power."

My colleague Paul Saunders has this to say on the subject.

Yesterday, I posted a note about the "southern democracies" and today I read in the Hindu about the start of joint naval exercises between India, Brazil and South Africa that are being conducted along the coast offshore from Cape Town. This is the first time military maneuvers have been undertaken under the aegis of the trilateral IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) forum.

First, given the nature of the exercises—dealing with terrorists and pirates—it is interesting as a demonstration as to how rising powers are beginning to take steps to ensure their own security rather than simply relying on the U.S. It is also important for what it signals about the interest of the "southern democracies" to work together and to develop independent capabilities.

A South African naval commander, Captain Charl Coetzee, is quoted as saying the exercises are designed to facilitate a "common understanding of interoperability" and to strengthen multilateral cohesion between the three powers.

An interesting development.

I have noted in the past that "southern democracies" like India or South Africa are nonetheless very receptive to China's contention that respect for state sovereignty must still serve as the fundamental basis of the world order. They are suspicious of claims that other states can and should intervene in the domestic affairs of a state, even on human rights grounds-and this was manifested by reluctance to intervene in Zimbabwe or Burma.

So an interesting "pitch" is underway—to argue that the international community has no right to intervene in the affairs of democracies, only non-democracies. Also a useful doctrine for Americans suspicious of EU style legal interventionism (e.g. The ICC).

I was recently asked what happened to the "realist" agenda for the U.S.-Russia relationship. I think that Alexey Pushkov's comments last week are quite apropos: the core fundamentals—anti-terrorism, promoting stability in the international system, stemming nuclear proliferation, and so on—were never really operationalized with clear criteria and where both sides took the "in principle" and moved to "what we do" (e.g., from Moscow's statement that, "in principle", Russia does not want Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, to what Moscow actually thinks is the problem and what it is prepared to do about it).

Both sides could still try to move forward to provide more definition—and the documents agreed at Sochi last month do give us a framework—but I doubt we will see much action.

One of the major stumbling blocks as well was the question of what both sides should expect to get. Over the last several years, Washington has, at times, become more comfortable with the idea of one-off coalitions and groups that come together to focus on only one issue—and therefore, this assemblage of states who come together to work on a particular issue are NOT expected to support the positions or interests or prioriteis of member-states on issues UNRELATED to the specific issue at hand. Take the Proliferation Security Initiative. Cyprus, for instance, is under no illusions that because it is part of the PSI—given its large merchant fleet and that it is an international banking center—other members of this initiative, working together to stem the likelihood of a nuclear terrorist attack which would have negative economic consequences for the PSI's members, even if they were not the actual recipient of the attack—are somehow obligated to support Cyprus' position on OTHER international issues (especially resolution of its territorial integrity). The same might be said of the Six-Party Talks on North Korea.

This runs up against a prevailing Russian interest that weighs cooperation alongside the continued restoration of Russia's great power status and interest—so that if cooperation with other states undermines that quest, it must be questioned.

I wrote in 2002 for TNI about this problem—where U.S. and Russian interests might collide—and think that the analysis holds up for 2008.

But what it also means for today is that I do think that the realist agenda for the U.S.-Russia relationship shifts. Now, an American realist wants to focus on preventing problems from opening up in the trans-Atlantic relationship OVER Russia. That is to say, most of the principal European countries are following a track vis-a-vis Russia that is similar to ours (and of most Asian states) vis-a-vis China. Yes, they have a number of complaints about a number of Russian internal and external policies; but those complaints don't lead them to assume that a more confrontational stance towards Moscow is justified. So, if the U.S. thinks that Russia's resurgence is now a problem—it may find it more difficult to find a consensus with the Europeans. The Bucharest NATO summit was a foretaste of this—and then begs the question, what political capital does the U.S. want to spend with Europe on the Russia account? At Bucharest, for instance, the president didn't "get" MAP for Georgia and Ukraine but got approval for missile defense and at least token increases for Afghanistan.

Just some thoughts.

It appears that China and representatives of the Dalai Lama are set to begin talks.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy had made his attendance at the Beijing games conditional on the start of an official dialogue; will this suffice? And, of course, starting a dialogue is no guarantee of any solution. Starting talks is not the same as reaching a settlement that would be acceptable both to China and the Tibetans.

But would this give him sufficient cover to say he has made a stand on human rights-something he'd promised to do as a presidential candidate, with limiting the damage done to Franco-Chinese ties over the past few months?

Some follow-up thoughts.

Beyond the democracy caucus at the UN, a majority of General Assembly members are classed as democracies-but it is clear that regional alignments, especially with non-democracies, still takes precedence.

Would those patterns change in a differently-configured international organization?

In his interview with Newsweek, Bob Kagan has this to say about the need for a League of Democracies:

There are international institutions that gather together all the rich nations, there are groups of poor nations, there's an Islamic Conference. The one thing there doesn't seem to be is a group of democracies, getting together to discuss the issues of the day. I think that's something that's lacking in the present system, and one that could possibly do some good.

I think Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, for one, might find that statement problematic. When she spoke at the Seoul ministerial meeting of the Community of Democracies back in 2002, she described this body as a "circle of democracies" that embraced some 140 countries. She went on to say,

We, the world’s democracies -- young and old, developed and developing—stand together on the frontlines of freedom. Our growing Community of Democracies truly represents the world’s greatest hope.
And I have no doubt that the Plan of Action that results from these deliberations will identify concrete steps our governments can take—individually, collectively and in partnership with non-governmental groups—to keep Democracy’s hope strong and secure.

And let's not forget the Democracy Caucus at the UN, set up in 2005. The State Department tells us:

Democratic nations share a common commitment to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms. The United States believes that democratic nations must work more closely together in order to help the United Nations live up to its founding principles. The Democracy Caucus at the United Nations — a network of democratic nations working together — advances the work of the UN in areas such as human rights, good governance, and the rule of law.

The Democracy Caucus does not supplant longstanding regional or other groupings, but rather provides an added mechanism for like-minded democratic nations to cooperate. Countries use the Caucus as a supplementary network to cooperate on resolutions, on such areas as promoting democratic transitions, rule of law, and corruption-free societies.

Perhaps these two bodies have gone down the memory hole because they haven't really been able to bring the world's democracies into alignment and behind the United States. Fine; we can admit that these two bodies have not functioned as intended, but we should be honest about their drawbacks and not try to erase their very existence from the record.

By making it seem, though, that this idea of bringing together the "world's democracies" has NEVER BEEN TRIED, however, then one doesn't have to address the reasons why these two previous attempts—the COD and the Democracy Caucus—haven't worked.

Fighting is on the upswing in Iraq and U.S. casualties increased in April, mainly as a result of combat against the Mahdi Army.

For the last several months, it appeared that the U.S. strategy was to prioritize stability and local control at the expense of the writ of the central government in Baghdad. This included reaching out to Sunni elements who were suspicious of the Iraqi central government but who might be prepared to work with the U.S.

Now, however, Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki wants to disarm Shia militias and Sunni fighters—by force if necessary—if they refuse to disarm. The Iraqi army will need help—and will turn to the U.S. for it.

So the stability that has been achieved could then be threatened as Maliki wants, in advance of local elections, to assert the supremacy of his government.

This is a problem that NATO is also confronting in Afghanistan and in Kosovo. There is a big difference between being engaged in “stability operations”—essentially keeping the peace—and dealing with the fact that the government in the capital city doesn’t control all the territory of the country. So in both places, you are going to have NATO allies who say the mission is to make sure fighting is over and just keep things quiet, versus those who identify the success of the mission in ensuring that orders from the capital are enforced in the outlying areas-which may force NATO troops into fighting with locals and make the mission more dangerous in terms of casualties—which then undermines public support back home.

We'll see how this plays out in Iraq.

My final thoughts on the U.S.-Russia conference and what happens in the future. My pessimistic sense is that the initiative in the U.S. -Russia relationship, whether by choice or by accident, seems to be slipping out of the hands of the policymakers in Washington and Moscow. I was struck by repeated comments that the goal for the next year is to avoid any major confrontations--but it also seems that other, third-party actors are in a position to damage or alter the trajectory of the U.S.-Russia relationship. Instead of the agenda the two presidents agreed on in Sochi--even recognizing that much of it is highly ambitious and cannot be realized in 2008--we have a situation where what leaders like Saakashvili, Kostunica, Bagapsh, or Thaci have a good deal of influence over the tenor of relations between Moscow and Washington. In other words, both powers have not sufficiently insulated their relationship or build the ballast needed to ride out difficulties.

Listening to our last speakers in the final session, in particularly Igor Yurgens talking about the future direction of the Russian economy, got me wondering. Let's assume that the Russian economy continues to grow, Russia becomes the economic center of the region, continues its path of constructing interlocking businesses with Europe, and also continues reforms that promote the rule of law and greater transparency and democracy in decision-making.

What then?

Is Russia fundamentally a revisionist or status quo power? (And, from the luncheon discussion, when does revisionism become revanchism?)

Are Russia's goals for the reconstruction of its power fundamentally at odds with key U.S. interests—meaning that the future of the U.S.-Russia relationship may depend a lot less on personalities (or have less room for good personal relations between leaders from being able to insulate the relationship from these developments).

Just some final thoughts.