The form is standard and designed to eliminate most of the work
customs and passport control would normally have to do. You write down
for them your flight info, the countries you visited before this
particular U.S. arrival and other information readily accessible via
air-travel manifestos and the stamp sections of your passport.

You then answer “no” to a series of questions about any fruits,
animals or disease cultures you may be carrying with you. Even if you
do have them in your baggage, those “no’s” ensure that customs will
not check them. Bizarrely, U.S. customs continues to operate on a
self-reporting system, meaning the only thing that will hold you up or
get you into trouble when arriving to a U.S. airport is honesty. (They
will ask you to step aside so that they can investigate any exotic or
banal declarations of papayas, salsa – or in my case a few years back,
mirabelles – as if they were defusing a chemical weapon.)

The State Department operates under a similar principle, which brings
me to the only section of the little blue form that irked me. Under
“Number of friends or family traveling with you,” I begrudgingly
marked “zero.”

That was not the plan.

In addition to the usual Christmas festivities, this particular trip
back to the United States was supposed to be about my family getting
to know my fiancée, who is a Georgian citizen. For some naïve and
misguided reason, we didn’t think that would be much of a problem.
Instead, we entered the strange world of U.S. State Department logic
with a smile.

If you are a foreigner traveling to the United States with no
intention of staying long-term (or even a month) then you are looking
to apply for a non-immigrant visa. Looking at the menu of
non-immigrant visas on offer for Georgian citizens, it was easy to
narrow down which ones applied to my fiancée’s particular situation,
and our particular trip – not going for work, study, etc. Just a visit
and a bit of sight-seeing.

So, we applied for the typical DS-160 Tourist Visa like any other
unsuspecting would-be visitor to the United States. Thus began a
feverous document-gathering process – verification of a $140
application-fee payment, a mugshot befitting the U.S. embassy’s
exclusive specifications, a long and detailed application and an
appointment for a face-to-face interview with a consular officer. It
should be noted that, by contrast, citizens of the U.S. and dozens of
other countries can come to Georgia visa-free as a tourist for up to
360 days. To renew the tourist visa, all one must do is leave the
country and re-enter during that 360-day period. I have been living in
Georgia since June 2009 on a series of tourist stays, none of which
have required any documentation.

We made it clear in the application that the purpose of the trip was
to visit my family, and that my family was helping to pay for the
trip. We were a bit unsure as to whether or not it was wise to
officially state that we were engaged, but we (again, naively) assumed
that the risk of being caught in a lie was far greater than the
benefit of fibbing on a few points. Plus, although the fact that we
were engaged might raise a few red flags, the purpose of the
face-to-face interview, in theory, is for the applicant and the
consular officer to iron out those details and for latter to make a
judgment call on whether this person appeared to be the type to
violate the terms of their visa.

In the end, the officer asked a few quick questions to my fiancée that
were already on the application, and then stamped the denial
form. Why? “You applied for the wrong visa. You are engaged to an
American.”

Now, there is such a thing as the K-1 “fiancée visa,” which I took a
look at, but quickly discounted as inappropriate for our particular
circumstance. According to the State Dept. website:

“The K-1 visa permits the foreign-citizen fiancé(e) to travel to the
United States and marry his or her U.S. citizen sponsor within 90 days
of arrival. The foreign-citizen will then apply for adjustment of
status to a permanent resident (LPR) with the Department of Homeland
Security’s (DHS) U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).”

Now, I apologize for all of this mundane detail, but as in all
bureaucratic nightmares, that is where the devil resides. For a
variety of reasons, this K-1 visa made no sense for us because: 1.) We
did not intend to go to the U.S. for 90 days or more 2.) We did not
plan on getting married during the trip 3.) I do not live in the U.S.
and therefore could not file the paperwork from there 4.) My fiancée
and I live and work in Georgia and had no intention of immigrating.

But alas, the State Dept. operates under the assumption that anyone
who is even thinking about coming to U.S. plans to stay indefinitely,
and if they are in a serious relationship with an American, well, then
there is absolutely no doubt about their aims. The State Dept.
website’s section on visa denials betrays even greater hubris.

“Every alien shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he (sexism!)
establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time
of application for admission, that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant
status…”

“Failure to do so will result in a refusal of a visa under INA 214(b).
The most frequent basis for such a refusal concerns the requirement
that the prospective visitor or student possess a residence abroad
he/she has no intention of abandoning. Applicants prove the existence
of such residence by demonstrating that they have ties abroad that
would compel them to leave the U.S. at the end of the temporary stay.
[…]”

“Please Note: Under U.S. immigration law, American citizens may not
have any role in the non-immigrant visa application process.  Visa
applicants must qualify for the visa according to their own
circumstances, not on the basis of an American sponsor’s assurance.”

In short: everyone in the world who might, for any number of reasons,
desire to come to the United States is an immigrant until proven
otherwise. There is nothing any American citizen can say to vouch for
any of these so-called tourists. We know evil-doers and gold diggers
when we see them.

In addition to not trusting me, the State Dept. also apparently does
not trust the governments of Germany, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and a
host of other countries my fiancée has worked and studied in – never
overstaying her visa in the process.

In a clear attempt to irritate me further, representatives of the
embassy’s consular service contacted over the phone claimed there was
no rule that fiancées of American citizens were ineligible for tourist
visas – although that is exactly what the officer stamping the refusal
said. Instead, the voice on the phone said that it would be “very,
very difficult” for a Georgian fiancée of an American citizen to be
granted a tourist visa, but she encouraged us to try again – starting
with a new $140 application fee. According to their website,
re-applicants stand no better chance of being accepted until their
“circumstances change considerably.”

Translation: Until she dumps me, my fiancée is barred from entering
the United States as anything other than an immigrant, but, by all
means, continue wasting your time and money trying.

In addition to this being a great disappointment for my family and I,
the whole episode disturbed me because it is indicative of a larger
trend playing out in U.S. embassies across Eastern Europe, and likely
the world. It reminded me of a semi-mandatory meeting my fellow
American students and I attended at the U.S. Consulate in St.
Petersburg at the beginning of our studies in Russia in 2007.
Apparently, although our coordinator had been ducking their calls as
much as possible, the consulate had insisted we go in for an
orientation/scare session.

There at the consulate, a panel of awkward young Foreign Service guys
– one of which admitted he had just arrived in the country – droned on
about the dangers of living in Russia. Russians, in general, were not
to be trusted. That much they assured us. Beyond that, we should be
wary of public transit, bars, meals prepared by locals, and should
probably keep to our own kind — a wonderful introduction to a
cultural exchange.

In Georgia, the U.S. Embassy is a fortress, impregnable by U.S.
citizen and foreigner alike without a very-difficult-to-arrange
invitation by one of the bureaucrats of the Emerald City. The embassy
employees, which number in the hundreds, live in walled-off villas on
the outskirts of town and very few ever venture out to meet any locals
or expats who intermingle with the natives. All receive hazard pay
despite the fact that the crime rate in Washington is exponentially
higher than that of Tbilisi.

Earlier this year, I spoke with a friend of mine who has long worked
as an American journalist in Moscow and is herself betrothed to a
Russian. Although her husband is a successful businessman, she said
she had received all manner of condescension, inconvenience and
outright insult on official and unofficial levels from embassy folks.
Despite the fact that Eastern Europe made a stunning rebound out of
the ashes of the Soviet collapse over the last 10 years with
stabilized societies, strong economic growth and plummeting crime
rates, most U.S. officials seem to continue to cling to the notion
that it remains the chaotic hellscape that it was in the worst
chapters of the 1990’s, all research and data to the contrary be
damned.

Meanwhile, the preferred assumption is that anyone born in an Eastern
bloc country, given the opportunity to set foot on American soil,
would bolt off into the woods like a rabbit free from captivity. I
would expect that sort of myopic vision from the America’s less
worldly citizens, but it continues to stun me when it comes from State
Dept. employees as their own numbers and research contradict that
perception, and a simple stroll around town or conversation with a
local would tell them otherwise.

Although U.S. Immigration Services do not publish statistics on
applications for visas to the U.S. (for some reason), they do publish
data on the people it does give permanent residency and non-immigrant
visas to, from which I think it is fair to extrapolate relative
demand. And, based on the data on visa recipients, the draw of moving
to the United States from Eastern Europe is rapidly declining.

According to Homeland Security (DHS)’s “Yearbook of Immigration
Statistics 2011,” over the last 20 years, roughly 6 percent of all
people who have received permanent resident status in the United
States were from Eastern Europe. While DHS provides incomplete
breakdowns of small countries like Georgia, Russia, which represents a
large portion of the post-Soviet population, serves as a reasonably
good indicator for ex-Soviets seeking residency in the United States.
And, with Russia, the trend is stark.

While 433,427 Russian citizens received permanent U.S. resident status
from 1990-1999, only 167,152 did so between 2000 and 2009 – a 61.5
percent drop. Furthermore, the number of Russian residency recipients
in 2010 was 55 percent lower than their yearly average from 2000-2009.
That trend bears out across Eastern Europe, with the numbers of
residency recipients from Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia dropping
39 percent and 64 percent respectively in 2010 as compared to their
2000-2009 averages. Therefore, unless Eastern Europeans are suddenly
being arbitrarily denied residency in the United States, the numbers
show that perhaps they just don’t really want to live in the ole’ U.S.
of A.

Meanwhile, the numbers of Russians getting non-immigrant visas is
soaring – to 229,725 in 2010 from 111,270 in 2003. What does all of
this mean? Citizens of the ex-USSR are honestly more interested in
visiting the U.S. than living there, although the State Dept. does
their darnedest to make that difficult. Also, immigration into Russia
has greatly outpaced emigration from it in every year since the fall
of the Soviet Union. But, in the case of my fiancée, visiting the U.S.
is still not an option because of unofficial visa regulations — a
circumstance that fits nicely into consular officers’ arrogant
assumptions about desperate Eastern Europeans and their singular
mission to get a green card.

In the end, according to the World Bank, only 12,480 Georgians have
permanently emigrated to the United States over the past several
decades as compared with 634,372 who have resettled in Russia. Face
it, Washington, they’re just not that into you.

Speaking with my Moscow journalist friend, we were only able to come
up with one clear reason for the great discrepancy in the numbers and
the perceptions of U.S. embassy people – after the Cold War, the U.S.
can’t help but be a sore winner. Just like those consular officers in
St. Petersburg describing a parallel Russian universe where foreigners
have a strong chance of being kidnapped aboard public buses or awake
after a one-night stand missing a kidney or two, it was clear they
were reveling in a sort of collective victory.

These fantasies that are absurd for anyone who has really lived in
Eastern Europe are part of a deeply engrained desire by U.S. officials
to continue to look down upon these supposed failed states and the
desperate masses that were impoverished due by their empire’s defeat,
ostensibly at the hands of the U.S. It is all part of a continuing
victory lap, a touchdown dance made all the more inane by its clear
break from reality.

Unfortunately for me, that general annoyance with misplaced
triumphalism has now turned into a serious inconvenience as I will
reluctantly begin filing paperwork for the K-1 “fiancée visa,” which
is clearly designed for mail-order brides. The fact that the paperwork
has to be filed by me in the U.S. and I am officially referred to in
the documents as my fiancée’s “sponsor” makes this offensively
obvious.  In fact, due to two laws passed by Congress in the wake of
several mail-order marriages gone wrong over the past 20 years, as a
K-1 applicant, I will also be issued state-ordered reading materials
on domestic abuse and will undergo a background check before they let
me carry out my “sponsorship.”

In reality, the fact is that it was I who voluntarily emigrated from
the U.S. and choose to continue to live abroad with no plans to return
the self-styled land of freedom on a permanent basis. While living in
Georgia, I fell for a wonderful, bright, independent and successful
woman. We live together and have been together for more than two
years. Before planning this trip, we hadn’t even thought about, and
certainly didn’t plan on, living in the U.S. or her getting
citizenship. In the end, we’re pretty much your average young couple.

Unfortunately, we will have to indulge my government’s outdated
fantasies and undergo months of migraine-inducing and mildly insulting
bureaucracy (plus a $350 fee) for the opportunity for her to go
through the rather routine step of visiting my hometown and meeting my
family. At the same time, with U.S. population growth at its lowest
point since America sent most of its virile male population off to war
in the 1940’s, my country should only hope that my fiancée and I
decide to settle down there. At the moment, they’re not making the
strongest case.

Follow Nicholas Clayton at @ClaytonNicholas!

The lack of freedoms of media, association and speech in Russia means that the March election cannot be truly free, fair and competitive.  These enormous problems notwithstanding, Putin may in fact be the most popular candidate on the ballot.  However, it is still possible that Putin and his organization will seek to inflate his margin of victory to make him seem stronger and that election fraud will spill over into election day and the post-election counting rather than simply pre-election intimidation and similar behaviors.  If the parliamentary elections can be viewed as a precedent, a reasonable proposition, than it is likely that there will be election fraud before, during and after March 4th, and that there will also be large demonstrations in Moscow and possibly elsewhere in Russia following the presidential election.

It is still difficult to know where these demonstrations will lead, but they will raise some challenges for the Obama administration and the U.S.  The U.S. was behind he curve in recognizing the seriousness of the citizen uprisings in North Africa last year, but Russia is a different country where a different set of issues and concerns confront the administration.

The dilemma itself is not very complicated.  While the U.S. would like to see liberalization and political change in Russia, it cannot be seen as being too strong in its opposition to the Putin regime.  This would damage U.S.-Russia relations and possibly push Russia towards a more anti-U.S. foreign policy.  It would also undermine the Russian opposition by making Putin’s inevitable attack on them on the grounds of being American proxies or stooges more resonant.  However, if the U.S. does not support the demonstrators, their is a risk that the U.S. will miss an opportunity to help make change in Russia and will demonstrate that the U.S. commitment to democracy and human rights is inconsistent.

The Obama administration will need to strike a balance, at first offering rhetorical support for the principles of fair elections, free media and the right to demonstrate and rallying international support for more democracy in Russia, while avoiding a confrontation with the Russian government or offering sufficient support to the demonstrators that the movement is tarred as being an American creation and thus fatally weakened.  As the post-election scenario evolves, the U.S. will need to be flexible enough to adjust their tactics as needed.  This approach probably cannot be executed perfectly, but it may be the best the U.S. can do.

The U.S. response to events in Russia in March will be complicated by another presidential election, the one in the U.S.  While President Obama will have to respond to events in Russia in a thoughtful way taking into consideration a range of issues, Republicans will use these events as an opportunity to portray Obama as soft on Russia.  Talking tough on Russia will be a good way for likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney to strengthen his support in at least one part of the Republican base.

Unlike Obama, Romney and the Republicans do not have to govern, or worry about the consequences of what they say.  Therefore, they will be able to take strong, and politically popular anti-Russia positions with little regard for the potential impact of their statements and positions.  The Republicans have spent most of the last three years seeking to portray Obama as weak.  Tough posturing on Russia will be another way for Romney to make this argument.  Republicans in congress will only be too happy to join in as well.

This may in the short term make opponents of Putin, both in Russia and the U.S. feel good, but it will accomplish little.  The Republican rhetoric, despite not coming from the administration itself will make it easier for the Russian regime to scapegoat American intervention, will raise expectations of the Russian opposition that cannot be met by any American administration and, by further damaging U.S.-Russia relations will reduce whatever remaining influence the U.S. has on Russia’s leadership.  The Obama administration has, differentiated itself from its predecessor by prioritizing results over bluster.  This is the administration, after all that talked about the war on terror less, but killed Osama Bin Laden.  Going back to prioritizing tough talk may make some feel better, and even give Romney a temporary bump in the polls, but it will accomplish little.

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For example ISIS declared that the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran contained “the most comprehensive detail and analysis to date [of] evidence of nuclear weaponization-related activities conducted by Iran.” Nevertheless, it concluded, “Notably absent … is any assessment by the IAEA of Iran’s capability to make a nuclear explosive device based on what it learned through these activities.”

Meanwhile, at Race for Iran, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett write that in no way does the IAEA report “demonstrate that Iran is ‘developing a nuclear weapon.” Besides, according to Article II of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a party, “non-nuclear-weapon state signatories [are not permitted] ‘to manufacture or otherwise acquire’” nuclear weapons. In other words, write the Leveretts:

“The Treaty prohibits the building of actual weapons. It does not prohibit signatories from studying nuclear weapons designs … or even conducting experiments on high-explosives of the sort that could be used in a bomb.”

However, in a paper for the “Nuclear Iran” section of ISIS’s website in November of last year titled Iran Nuclear Issue – Considerations for a Negotiated Outcomet, John Carlson begs to differ. The former Director General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office writes: “To ‘manufacture’ cannot be interpreted so narrowly that there is no violation of Article II until a nuclear weapon is fully assembled – this would be an unreasonably rigorous approach that would undermine the practical value of the NPT.” He continues:

“Since the purpose of nuclear hedging [the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons as opposed to their actual possession] is to be in a position to make nuclear weapons, at the very least nuclear hedging is not a “peaceful purpose”, hence is not a purpose permitted by Article IV [the general right to use nuclear energy]. … But it is not clear how far preparations to make nuclear weapons can progress before a state will be regarded as being in violation of Article II.”

How is whether or not “the real purpose of an ostensibly peaceful program is to establish a nuclear weapon capability” determined? Carlson answers.

“The fact that [determining] this might not be straightforward is no justification for accepting hedging as a legitimate activity. A number of indicators can be identified that would help distinguish a peaceful program from one whose purpose is hedging. [Such as] determining whether pursuit of the fuel cycle in question — uranium enrichment or reprocessing — is consistent with the state’s nuclear energy needs.”

Carlson concludes:

“Any outcome to the Iranian situation that proceeds on the basis that hedging is acceptable will be fundamentally flawed — it would mislead Iran about international tolerance levels, and mislead the international community about Iran’s commitment to non-proliferation. No outcome will provide the necessary international confidence if states continue to think the real purpose of Iran’s nuclear program is to establish a break-out capability.”

This disarmament advocate is inclined to agree as long as this argument isn’t used to threaten Iran further. Furthermore, write the ISIS staff (David Albright, Paul Brannan, Andrea Stricker and Andrew Ortendahl) in a January 2012 report titled Reality Check: Shorter and Shorter Timeframe if Iran Decides to Make Nuclear Weapons:

Given Iran’s steady, albeit slow progress, downplaying the threat can end up serving to undermine the development of non-military methods to keep Iran from building nuclear weapons.

“In other words, they support continued sanctions. But, from this disarmament activist’s point of view, what ‘can end up serving to undermine the development of non-military methods to keep Iran from building nuclear weapons’ to an even greater extent is failure by Western nuclear powers to show unconditional disarmament leadership — whether it’s likely to succeed or not. Though states that seek to proliferate may either ignore such substantive steps or even gloat over them, there’s no other recourse for the West if, in the long term, it seeks to stay the hand of proliferators.”

Though it’s the correct course of action, calling for disarmament to prevent proliferation is as counterintuitive as asking states to attempt to solve financial crises by spending instead of cutting in the cause of austerity. A tough sell, in other words.

In 2008 Barack Obama captured the idealism and hope of people both inside and outside the U.S. in an election that renewed people’s faith in democracy and in America.  None of the candidates this year, including President Obama who is, of course, seeking reelection, is inspiring very much idealism and hope.  Moreover, for much of the Republican primary period, the dialog, particularly on foreign policy, has felt like a competition to see who could produce the most jingoistic bluster.  That phase seems to have receded as the race has narrowed to two serious candidates and two others.

There are, nonetheless, reasons why this election, as depressing as it has been for some, also demonstrates the strength and value of democracy.  First, after a three or so year period of increasingly heated rhetoric and personal attacks on the president, the need to win votes has, surprisingly, tempered some of this rhetoric.  The most confrontational, angry and intolerant candidates have fallen by the wayside.  The exception to this is Rick Santorum, who is about as intolerant as any major figure in American politics, and is also about ten days away from seeing the end of his political career and returning to his richly deserved Google infamy.  Overall, the election has, perhaps surprisingly, acted as a moderating force for the Republican candidates.  Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, the two leading candidates, have had to moderate their rhetoric as the election has moved from small states to bigger ones.  This will continue as the general election approaches.

Second, while the Republican primary has at times felt like a political reality television show with several candidates that are demonstrably unqualified to run a grocery store, let alone a country, and who have expressed a hatred and contempt for the current President that borders on pathological, the campaign has proceeded as planned.  In the American context, this seems completely normal, but in other countries it is easy to imagine candidates as axiomatically unqualified as Herman Cain being kept off the ballot, or candidates as committed to the destruction of the president as Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann portrayed as treasonous and pushed out of politics.  It seems obvious, but  the inclusion of these types of radical candidates is evidence of the strength of the American system, while their demise is evidence that the best solutions to problems of democracy is often more democracy.

A central aspect of democracy is that voters must be allowed to make mistakes.  While the American people do not need to make a mistake on the scale of, for example electing Newt Gingrich President, to demonstrate this to the rest of the world, the campaign to this point has shown that the American system allows for mistakes to happen.  Recent history has also show that the key to ameliorating the impact of these mistakes is to keep institution such as free press and regular elections strong.

It is easy to see the strengths of a democratic system when inspiring or otherwise extraordinary candidates win elections, but this is not likely to happen in the U.S. in 2012. The most likely outcome is that the president, who is no longer the extraordinary persona he was in 2012, will be reelected, but it is possible that Mitt Romney, an even less inspiring politician, will unseat President Obama.  Accordingly, the world will not see the American system give rise to an inspiring candidate or even an inspiring narrative this year.  Instead, the U.S. election, which has already, given a stage to a handful of narrow-minded candidates seemingly unaware of most of the rest of the world, will likely produce an ugly race between two deeply imperfect figures.  This too is part of the story, even the strength, of democracy.  Democracy sometimes produces mediocrity or worse, but the process is nonetheless significant.  The ability to endure and keep the country relatively peaceful even when many of the politicians themselves are not up to the task is also democracy’s strength.  This is the lesson from the U.S. in 2012.

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I left the Jewish Quarter. A taxi crested the hill behind me; I raised my arm to hail it, but the driver zoomed past. Another taxi. A third. No one seemed willing to stop. Finally, a cab pulled over. “Where you want to go?” the driver asked. He was a man my age, by which I mean his fifties. Dignified, I thought. Distinguished. In my early twenties, I was kidnapped and mugged by a pair of fake cabbies in London, so I am extraordinarily careful about which cars I do—or don’t—get into. But the markings on this taxi seemed identical to the markings on every other taxi in Jerusalem, and the driver struck me as a trustworthy man. We settled on the fare—everyone had warned me that cabbies in Jerusalem will rip you off, but the guy at the tourist booth had clued me in exactly how much to pay—so off we went.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get far. We were driving a narrow one-way street when the car ahead of us stopped and a bearded older man in the white shirt, black trousers, and fringed tsitsit that mark an ultra-Orthodox Jew got out the passenger side. I waited for the car to pull away; when it didn’t, I waited for the driver of my cab to honk. Israelis honk merely because they like the sound of their own horns, so I was surprised to see my driver sitting ramrod straight, staring blankly out the windshield.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. He shook his head. I turned and saw another taxi pull up behind us, and two cars behind that. The silence was eerie. And then, suddenly, we were surrounded by angry men gesticulating at the driver, banging on the windshield, shouting what seemed to be curses in Hebrew. The man who had gotten out of the car in front began banging on my window, motioning me to get out. “What is it?” I kept repeating. “Someone tell me, in English.”

By now, there must have been a dozen men—and a few women—gathered around our cab, yelling, banging on our windows, motioning me to get out. “Is this a union thing?” I asked my driver. “Is that it?” But he sat rigidly, ignoring our attackers, ignoring me. I rolled down my window an inch or two and demanded that someone tell me what was going on. Rather than answer, the man with the beard—although really, all the men except my driver had beards—jammed in his arm, jerked up the handle on my door, grabbed me by my wrist, and pulled me out.

I don’t want to exaggerate my fear. These were my own people. For all I knew, they were protecting me from some very real danger. But I reflexively distrust anyone who yanks me from a cab, refuses to let me go, and begins dragging me toward his car.

“Listen,” I said, “someone tell me right now what this is about.”

Disdainfully, one of the women hissed: “He’s an Arab. He’ll cheat you. We don’t want our women driving in cars with their men.”

I wish I could say I admonished my co-religionists with a speech worthy of Martin Luther King. But the best I could come up with was: “That’s disgusting!” I yanked away my wrist, climbed back in my cab, rolled up my window, locked the door, and told the driver, “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t understand. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll sit here as long as it takes. I’m from America. All I want is for everyone to get along.”

As an American, of course, I hoped for a happy ending. The driver would break down and sob with gratitude at my heroic display of solidarity, and somehow this would lead to Netanyahu and the Palestinians making peace. In reality, he remained staring impassively out his windshield at the men who had resumed pounding on the glass and cursing him. “I don’t say anything to them,” he said. “I say nothing to you. You must do as you wish.”

After another ten or fifteen minutes, the mob gave up and left. “You still want to go to the museum?” my driver asked.

“If you’ll take me there,” I said.

He nodded and drove me the few miles in silence. At the gate, a guard inspected our trunk for bombs and let us in. I paid my driver the amount we had agreed upon—I wish I could say I doubled it as a tip—and, still shaking with anger, I went inside to view the magnificent cultural displays of a nation whose policies I spend most of my time back in Ann Arbor trying to defend against students and colleagues who barely acknowledge its right to exist.

I understand those who dismiss the actions of the Palestinian “Freedom Riders” as bearing no relation to the challenges to segregation enacted by civil rights activists—many of them Jewish—who brought down Jim Crow in the American South. And yet, the heart of the civil rights movement in America was the demand that no citizen have his or her dignity trampled or liberty impaired because of race, country of origin, sexual preference, or religion. In what way was my driver a threat to anyone’s security? In what way was my experience not analogous to that of a white woman pulled from a taxi in Mississippi or Alabama by a mob of Klansmen intent on preventing her from riding alone in a car driven by one of “their men”?

Hardliners will find it easy to pillory my opinions. This was my first trip to Israel. I’m an American—what do I know? But the incident speaks for itself. There are issues of security and defense, and then there are issues of basic human dignity. No matter whether the Palestinians on that bus have the right to call themselves “Freedom Riders,” Israel is eventually going to need to commit itself to the same sort of civil rights movement that Americans struggled through in the past—and are still struggling through today.

Happily, that movement has already started. Nearly every Israeli to whom I told this story was outraged. The woman from whom I was renting my room demanded to know why I hadn’t reported the incident to the police. “If you had given them the license of the car in front of you,” she said, “they would have found the guy and arrested him.” I was heartsick to realize it had never occurred to me to report my attackers because their ugly, unembarrassed hooliganism—in broad daylight, no less—already had convinced me that the city had been hijacked by the anti-democratic right to such an extent that only a naïve, first-time American tourist would even care.

Eileen Pollack is the author of the new novel Breaking and Entering.

Image from palestinesolidarityproject.org

The U.S. and NATO claim that the European “Missile Shield” is designed to be able to shoot down nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles emanating from Iran or North Korea. Russia claims it is a NATO attempt to undermine Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrence. Turkey claims neither is true.

All are at least part-lying, and they know it. Here’s why.

First, NATO’s initial plan was to base 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic. This was a curious location to defend NATO countries from the Middle East – not directly mid-range between Europe and Iran, but rather in northeastern Europe on the border with Russia’s enclave of Kaliningrad and Russian client state, Belarus. Poland was primarily chosen because it was among the most enthusiastic and the eastern-most of NATO’s newest member states.

The Polish government insisted that hosting the Missile Shield was essential to its security, although you’ll be forgiven if you can’t recall what Middle Eastern countries have a major beef with the Poles or why Kim Jong-il was preoccupied with nuking Krakow. Instead, in selling the Missile Shield to its own citizens, Polish leaders nearly always mentioned Russia as the true threat. Speaking to residents of the towns of Słupsk and Redzików where the interceptors would be based in 2008, Polish President Donald Tusk said, “In the past, when Russia threatened to turn its missiles against us, nobody took it seriously. But now, after what happened in Georgia, these words have become much more serious.”

Needless to say, Russia was not amused. It didn’t help that Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain held as part of his campaign stance on missile defense that the Shield was necessary to, “hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China.” After Barack Obama was elected president in the U.S., the new administration moved the planned Missile Shield south, modifying it to initially rely on ship-based interceptors deployed to the Black Sea area and eventually include interceptors based in Romania and radar in Turkey. Meanwhile, they invited Russia to participate in the project.

Russia said it would participate in the Missile Shield on one of two conditions: 1.) It be made a full partner in the system, with joint control over its operation. 2.) NATO sign legal guarantees stating that the Missile Shield would never be used against Russia.

Thus far, NATO has refused Russia on both counts, implying at the very least that they want to be left to use the Missile Shield as they please, including against a potential Russian strike. In short, NATO’s sheepish assurances that it now views Russia as a partner in world peace and not a threat come off as disingenuous at best.

But Russia is full of it too.

The first stage of the Obama administration’s national missile defense (NMD) strategy involves deploying the sea-based Aegis weapons system in the Black Sea as well as integrating the missile defense networks of NATO states. None of this is particularly new. The Aegis system, which can guide and track dozens of missiles at once, is already deployed on about 100 American ships all of which can access and be deployed to the Black Sea due to the U.S.’s treaties with Turkey and Georgia. As for the land-based missile interceptors, well, Russia has little to fear there either.

So far, there are no indications that the deal approved by Bucharest in December to build a missile interceptor site in Romania will involve more than the 10 active interceptors that would have been located in Poland. The SM-3 missile interceptors that will be eventually be deployed have so far failed to ever intercept a ballistic missile that has counter-measures or evasive-maneuvering capabilities in tests. Not only do modern Russian ballistic missiles have both counter-measures and the capability of evading interceptors, but Russia has 2,200 active missiles in its arsenal, plus an undisclosed number of short-range tactical nukes. Each ballistic missile contains enough warheads to potentially strike several targets each.

Therefore, even if the European Missile Shield had an outside chance of intercepting a Russian missile strike – which it currently does not – heck, even if the interceptors went 10 for 10, there would still be enough nuclear warheads in the air to obliterate every city and military target in NATO.

Russia has responded to the breakdown in the Missile Shield talks by activating radar assets and deploying Iskander nuclear missiles to Kaliningrad, behind the Missile Shield. Militarily speaking, this move is totally irrelevant, but it has served to marginally antagonize Poland, on whose borders the short-range missiles are to be placed.

Meanwhile, as both Russia and NATO are talking tough towards each other about a defense system that has effectively no impact on their strategic balance of forces, proponents of the Missile Shield plan are now more trying to get it deployed more urgently as tensions rise with Iran. This month, the EU is even discussing the previously anathema step of embargoing Iranian oil, which would cause fuel prices to spike in Western economies already mired in recession.

Sensing a sudden lack of absurdity in the situation, NATO member Turkey jumped in to add some silliness to the debate. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in Tehran earlier this month that the Missile Shield was not a threat to Iran, and the radar NATO was paying Turkey to deploy on its territory was for some other undefined purpose.

So, to recap, Russia has objected to NATO’s intention to build a missile interceptor system that doesn’t currently work and would pose no threat to it. NATO claims it is not aimed at defending against Russia in the first place, except that’s not what NATO member Poland says, and NATO’s refusal to sign anything on the subject seems to indicate Warsaw is right. Instead, the Missile Shield is meant to defend Europe from Iran, except that’s not what NATO member Turkey says.

While Russia and Turkey here are clearly just being cheeky for their own purposes – Russia wants to keep NATO bases from getting any closer to its territory and Turkey wants to at least to pretend to have good neighborly relations with Tehran – it is NATO that I don’t fully understand in this whole farcical charade.

NATO has claimed again and again that the Missile Shield could not and would not be used against Russia, but refuses to sign any guarantees to that end. Why not? You know it doesn’t stand a chance against Russia’s nuclear arsenal anyway, and it would at least assuage some of the Kremlin’s trademark paranoia. Plus, given that NATO is intent on shutting Russia out of the decision-making portion of the system even if a compromise is reached, what is the danger of at least signing a piece of paper that says, “We won’t shoot down your missiles with this thing”?

Does NATO really think that the world would bring them to The Hague for breach of contract if Russia did really start firing nuclear missiles at its members and the alliance used the interceptors to shoot them down?

Obviously, this prolonged and absurd debate really isn’t about military capabilities, it’s about trust and the rhetoric regarding the Missile Shield has been a bellwether in Russian-American relations since the 1980’s when Reagan first unveiled his idea for the “Star Wars” program. When Bush tried to push the plan forward, Moscow drew battle lines. When Obama extended an olive branch, Russia said it wanted to get involved and was even optimistic about what a potential compromise could bring to world security.

Speaking to Russian newspaper Izvestiya in January 2011, then -Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitri Rogozin said collaborating on such a program could usher in a new era in NATO-Russian relations.

“We want to marry Russia’s and NATO’s interests in Europe,” he said. “In other words, to create such a situation when an armed conflict between East and West on our continent would be impossible.”

One year later, we’re back to nonsense-land.

The frustrating part is that I think the usually americanophobic Rogozin was correct in his buoyant remarks last year. If the Kremlin and Pentagon could set aside their egos and sabers for a second and realize that the world would be much safer if they were to integrate a worldwide missile defense system aimed at making sure no one gets nuked, they could set the stage for prolonged stability and eventually total worldwide nuclear disarmament.

But in the end, the decision-makers in both Washington and Moscow are old Cold Warriors, and two generations spent pondering how to undermine or destroy one another has programmed their worldview as one where there is a constant existential threat with his finger on the trigger. This mentality is ultimately self-prophetic, and as long as the two sides continue to peer at one another from their own ramparts they will also appear to be each other’s enemy, and every incremental change in the military landscape will be talked about like it is the next big thing to destabilize the relationship.

It’s not. The problem is that it’s still the same people doing all the talking.

Cambodia is in the throes of another land-grab drama in the early days of 2012, after the Borei Keila slum development was suddenly razed on the morning of January 3rd. The wealthy Phan Imex development company had promised the slum’s residents 10 alternate apartment buildings to make up for their soon-to-be destroyed homes: instead, the company built only 8 facilities.

Many Borei Keila residents fought back against riot police, in a fray that lasted half a day and saw plentiful injures on both sides. But the villagers couldn’t hold out long: 300 families soon found themselves out on the streets.

The luckiest among them were eventually allowed to take plots of land in desolate and far-off relocation sites, with hygiene and safety standards worse than those found in many refugee camps. The unlucky are now homeless, roaming the streets of Phnom Penh and asking for help from anyone who will listen. Despite protests outside Western embassies, no international help is forthcoming for the abandoned of Borei Keila.

This is a photo essay about the Borei Keila site itself, which I managed to get into after my friend Alex, who lives near the site, texted me to tell me the police had finally moved away from the area. Cops barred my previous attempts to get into the site, after some heart-wrenching photographs were released to the public from the January 3rd violence.

“They tore down one building and they’re tearing down another,” he told me. My boyfriend and I immediately headed over to the site.

I scrambled around on rebar, tile, and brick, and took some photos of the collapsed apartment building. Many random possessions—bras, stuffed animals, clothing items—were strewn among the bricks. Some of these things probably belonged to the protesters I’ve spoken with outside the US Embassy.

This woman was trash-picking the wreckage of the apartment complex. I don’t know if she lived there or not.

It is at times difficult to avoid the Stuffed Animal Poignantly Sits Amid Wreckage photograph. In any case, it tells the story.

These kids live at Borei Keila and were interested in me and my camera. I’ve heard the apartment complexes they are standing in front of are slated for destruction in the near future. I hope they have somewhere to go.

This woman was hanging laundry outside her apartment. I think this complex will be taken down soon as well. As my boyfriend pointed out, the hanging trees make the complex look almost like an Angkor-era temple.

Change-agent. Friendly construction workers. Like they have a say in this one way or the other. Some of these guys probably live in very similar conditions.

As my boyfriend and I went through my photos, we stopped at this shot of kids playing outside the still-standing complex. “They were playing some game involving shooting each other,” I told him.
“They were playing riot police against villagers,” he said. “Look at the cardboard shields.”

I’m almost certain he was right. These three kids, after all, saw one of Phnom Penh’s most violent housing riots in recent years on Tuesday. Cops armed with riot shields shot rubber bullets at residents armed with stones and Molotov cocktails. Many were injured on both sides.
Why wouldn’t they decide to emulate the most terrifying – and exciting – event they’ve probably ever seen?

This kid was playing with a toy excavator extremely similar to the one taking down what may have been his former home. The irony was probably lost on him, but I doubt it was lost on the small group of hard-faced adults standing nearby.

The Borei Keila site is directly behind a bus station where there are always at least 30 foreign tourists having a drink and awaiting the next bus out. They probably have no idea what has happened to the former residents of Borei Keila. I like to hope they’ll pick up a local English paper at some point during their visit here and realize what was going on literally behind their backs.

A food vendor has set up shop outside Borei Keila, and a couple of families seem to have taken up residence on mats set up in this sandy corridor, in lieu of anywhere better to go. This man was selling eggs. He didn’t look very happy to see me.

I wish it was easier to explain sometimes why I’m taking pictures of other people’s pain.

It is also possible that the U.S. does not really want good elections in Georgia, but simply issued that statement because that is the kind of thing which is expected of the U.S.  This, however, is unlikely in regards to Georgia where fair elections and stronger democracy are essential pre-requisites for the U.S. to achieve its interests.  The American goals of bringing Georgia into NATO, and solidifying Georgia’s role as a stable U.S. ally in a tumultuous region would be much easier to achieve if Georgia could demonstrate, particularly to Europe, that it is moving towards democracy.

The U.S. and their European and other democratic allies have two primary approaches to improving elections in countries that like Georgia are neither democratic nor totalitarian and are not enemies of the west.  The first approach is to monitor the election.  The tools and institutions used for monitoring elections are professional and sophisticated able to not only determine the extent to which an election was free and fair, but to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a particular election.  However, these organizations are empowered to monitor elections, not to intervene in them or improve them.  Thus, in many cases the primary achievement of international monitoring groups, or domestic monitoring groups supported by western donors is to identify whether an election was good or not.  In many cases they are largely reaffirming impressions which were widespread before the election, or documenting how an election which was expected to be bad was, in fact, bad

The second approach is to provide technical support to the country conducting the election.  The U.S. government’s statement about Georgia, for example, was followed by a commitment to spend $1 million to improve the voter lists in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.  Similar projects in various countries focus on technical issues such as providing ink to mark voters, purchasing transparent ballot boxes or supporting endless discussions about revising the election law.  The problems with these approaches are that they offer answers to problems that are often not very salient or propose technical solutions to problems that are, in most cases, largely political.

The major obstacles to fair elections in countries like Georgia, for example, are not poor voter lists, or lack of quality election equipment, although these are often problems in some countries, but the reality that governments are not prepared to conduct elections in a way that makes it possible that they might lose.  Accordingly, technical solutions can only have a limited impact on election fairness in these countries, but they remain appealing because they are easy to fund and implement and rarely create problems with the government of the country having the elections.

It is not clear that the U.S. is able to influence the degree of election fairness in entrenched semi-democratic or semi-authoritarian regimes, but it is clear that the current approaches are no longer sufficient.  The tools which are necessary to push countries to better elections are no longer simply help with election lists and other straightforwardly technical tactics, but include things like concrete political pressure linked to consequences, a willingness to publicly urge foreign leaders to conduct fair elections, and intervene more frequently when government abuses occur in the pre-election period.  The politics of doing these things in countries that are allies is very complicated.  It is unlikely, for example, that the U.S. government in Washington or Tbilisi is going to link assistance to Georgia, a country that has more than 1,000 troops in Afghanistan, to fair elections, or that leaders of American allies will be publicly chastised for things like arresting opposition activists or threatening opposition supporters, but unless the U.S. is willing to do these things, its ability to push countries to better elections will be severely limited.

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Only a few moments later Romney, again speaking about the President stated “He wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society…The President takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe.”  In the speech’s closing statement, Romney referred to “the worst of what Europe has become.”  Romney, only moments after pledging to be all but uncritical of America’s friends chastised, to put it mildly, Europe.   There are two possible explanations for this.  Either Romney cannot follow the not very rigorous logic of his own assertions, or he does not consider European countries to be friends of the U.S.  Neither one of these is a comforting explanation.

While Romney is not the first Republican to use anti-European rhetoric in this manner, he is also no longer just a Republican politician.  He is one of the two people most likely to be president of the U.S. in 53 weeks.  Coming from a potential president, these kinds of jibes against Europe should be seen differently.  Romney may legitimately believe that European style social democracy is bad for the U.S., or as is more likely, believe that caricaturing European policies is much easier than explaining his party’s policies of anti-poor class warfare of the last generation.  Nonetheless, it is very dangerous for an American president to not have a full understanding of the value of the U.S. relationship with many European countries, or to jeopardize that relationship through over-heated campaign slogans.

Romney’s speech also reflects a view of what constitutes a friend that is worth exploring.  Israel and the U.S. obviously enjoy a very close relationship, but it is a relationship that is also characterized by an enormous amount of foreign assistance flowing to Israel from the U.S.  Accordingly, Israel, unlike, for example, Germany or the U.K., needs the U.S. to an extent that precludes meaningful Israeli criticism of, or disagreement with, the U.S.  A similar dynamic exists between the U.S. and other states which are major recipients of U.S. assistance, for example, Georgia.  Romney’s view of friendship suggests that the U.S. should remain close only with those countries which, out of geopolitical necessity, must be almost entirely pro-U.S.  European countries, particularly those in western Europe, however, are not really friends, in his view, because they occasionally differ the U.S. and have different approaches to regulating capitalism.  This is an odd and limited understanding of friendship, and a destructive approach to foreign policy.

The U.S. should value all of its allies, not just those who are too dependent on the U.S. to be able to criticize it.  Moreover, demonizing the domestic policies of all European countries is extremely narrow-minded and demonstrates an unwillingness to explore policy options.  The U.S. should not necessarily try to be like Europe, but to view it as axiomatically impossible that a European country would have a policy worth emulating will limit U.S. ability to apply good solutions to a range of problems in areas such as the environment, infrastructure or education.

It also remains true that despite differences on economic policies, some foreign policy issues, and the role of religion in society, the powerful countries of western Europe remain the the most important and useful allies the U.S. has.  Combating Jihadist terror, addressing climate change-whether or not Romney believes in it-, getting the global economy back on track and supporting human rights and democracy, among other 21st century foreign policy challenges the U.S. faces will be exponentially more difficult without European cooperation.  We can only hope that Romney must know this, and that his speech in New Hampshire can be ignored.

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The UNM has generally drawn its power from several sources.  First, they are a reasonably popular political party.  Many Georgians have either been pleased about the reforms the Georgian government under the UNM’s stewardship have enacted, support the UNM on various issues or believe that the UNM is best able to move Georgia forward in a good direction.  This is one of the reasons that the UNM has been the most popular party in Georgia in virtually every poll taken since the Rose Revolution.

This is, however, only one explanation of the UNM’s success in Georgia.  Since coming to power the UNM has, according to most international watchdog organizations, limited media freedoms while civil society has been weakened, although this has begun to change in recent years.  Moreover, while elections have not been characterized by widespread fraud and chaos on Election Day, the UNM has abused administrative resources and used threats and intimidation to limit the influence of some opposition parties.  In this environment, the popularity and electoral victories of the UNM should be viewed somewhat differently-at least as much of as a residue of undemocratic elements of the system, than evidence of genuine and democratic support.

Another significant reason for the ongoing popularity and dominance of the UNM has been the Georgian opposition itself.  Much of the opposition, not surprisingly that part which is usually highlighted by the government and government run media, is given to political histrionics, unreasonable demands, murky relationships with Moscow and often bafflingly poor political judgment.  The more serious parts of the Georgian opposition, notably Irakli Alasania’s Free Democrats, have generally had limited access to resources and media.  Much of the media remains heavily influenced by the Georgian government, while support for a serious and legitimate opposition party by wealthy individuals or businesses can create problems for those individuals and businesses in Georgia’s crony capitalist economy.

The Georgian government has very cleverly exploited this situation, frequently complaining to both foreign and domestic audiences that Georgia lacks a serious and powerful opposition.  The government has, of course, complained about the opposition being too weak while simultaneously working to ensure that this remains the case.  Thus, the Georgian government has been able to deflect criticisms of one party dominance by arguing the self-fulfilling prophecy that due to the UNM’s popularity nobody was able to pose a plausible challenge.  This explanation has been useful and accurate for several years.

About three months ago, however, that suddenly changed, causing tremendous concern in Tbilisi.  The Georgian government after years of arguing that the opposition was too weak and too poor, almost overnight had to argue that that opposition was now too strong, and more pertinently, too rich.  The reason for this was the announcement by Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, in September, that he was going to become involved in politics and that he would work closely with, and help fund, the Free Democrats and the Republicans, two Georgian opposition parties who fall on the more rational, mature and moderate end of the Georgian opposition political spectrum.  Almost overnight, the Georgian government had to contend with an opposition that can use resources and afford the same kind of expensive modern campaign and infrastructure that in recent Georgian elections has only been within the provenance of the UNM.

The Georgian government has responded to Ivanishvili’s entrance into politics not by welcoming a worthy opponent who could help funnel resources to ensure that different political views were heard, but by seeking to weaken Ivanishvili and limit his ability to influence politics.  The ways the government has sought to do this include stripping Ivanishivili of his citizenship, and passing a new party finance law that would not only limit the billionaire’s ability to give money to political parties, but may also require the Free Democrats and Republicans to give back money they have already received.

Obviously, Ivanishvili tilts the scales in Georgia in a way that is more extreme than wealthy candidates like Michael Bloomberg or Mitt Romney in the U.S., but the Georgian government’s efforts to push him out of politics entirely demonstrates that the canard about the opposition being too weak was meant to explain away the government’s lack of interest in democracy rather than as a true lamentation of the relative state of Georgia’s political forces.  It is not yet clear the extent to which the government will succeed in limiting Ivanishvili’s role, but it is reasonably clear that the Georgian government will likely continue to describe oppositions as too weak or too strong and, unlike Goldilocks, never find the one that is just right for them.

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