MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2010


A Russia reset with human rights


by David J. Kramer A


fter opposition protests in Russia were vi- olently suppressed in May, July and Au- gust, spokesmen for the National Security Council and the State Department expressed “concern” and “regret” that Russian authorities were not respecting the freedom of assembly. During the May 31 crackdown, one journalist who days before had interviewed NSC Russia expert Michael McFaul had his arm broken. When McFaul and Undersecretary of State Wil- liam Burns met with a group of human rights activists and others this month in Moscow, longtime activist Lev Ponomaryov was notably absent. He had been arrested for giving an in- terview critical of the mayor of Moscow during which he allegedly “stepped on the foot of a mi- litia officer.” Burns lamely called it “regrettable” that Ponomaryov was unable to attend. The activists who met with Burns and


McFaul urged the United States to take a more public and critical position about the deteriorat- ing state of human rights in Russia. Indeed, Burns and McFaul should have recognized Po- nomaryov’s arrest as a slap in the face by Rus- sian officials and condemned it. A raid before their visit on the Moscow offices of the New Times by masked and heavily armed security forces triggered no official response from Wash- ington, though McFaul met with the editors of the journal. What will it take for higher levels of the Obama administration to unequivocally condemn arrests of activists, violence against protesters, pressure on journalists and murders of government critics?


Alas, speaking the truth about Russia isn’t


likely to happen as long as the Obama adminis- tration spins its “reset” policy with Russia as one of its major foreign policy successes. Worse, administration officials have on numerous oc- casions rejected the notion of “linkage” between human rights problems and the U.S-Russia rela- tionship. Such attitudes signal to Russian offi- cials that there are no consequences for behav- ior such as cracking the heads of protesters, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently ad- vocated in an interview with the newspaper Kommersant, or the Moscow prosecutor’s office demanding organizational and financial docu- mentation from leading human rights groups, as it did after the McFaul-Burns visit. Given that the United States has little lever-


age over Russia, some in and outside the U.S. government argue that we should focus on areas where we can work together, such as in dealing with Iran, North Korea and nonprolifer- ation. This thinking overlooks the effect that do- mestic developments have on Russia’s foreign policy. A growing values gap will reduce areas of common interest between our governments. So what could be done? For starters, the ad-


ministration should repudiate its policy of pub- licly rejecting linkage. Instead, officials should state that a deteriorating internal situation in Russia will affect the bilateral relationship and affect Russian elites’ ability to pursue their in- terests in the West. Using clear language, they should condemn human rights abuses. Second, the U.S. government should refuse to


help Russian leaderswith economic moderniza- tion in the absence of any political liberaliza- tion. Doing so simply plays into their agenda and runs the risk that we will be seen as compli- cit in the elites’ phony, top-down drive for mod- ernization. Third, McFaul, a longtime democracy ad-


vocate, should terminate his Civil Society Work- ing Group, of which Vladislav Surkov, first dep- uty head of the presidential administration and the architect of Russian’s “sovereign democ- racy” concept, is co-chair. This group should never have been launched with Surkov’s in- volvement. Fourth, U.S. support for Russian membership in the World Trade Organization should be sus- pended unless Russia abides by the rules of the organizations in which it is already a member, such as the Organization for Security and Coop- eration in Europe, the Group of Eight and the Council of Europe. Having Russia join the WTO and defy its rules, too, would make a mockery of all these organizations and will not help Rus- sian reforms. Fifth, the administration should consider de-


nying visas to Russian officials who authorize or engage in human rights abuses. Sen. Ben Car- din (D-Md.) proposed this after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in jail last year after be- ing deprived of medical care. Washington should look into applying this approach to oth- er cases, including the farcical trial of the oil bil- lionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his busi- ness partner Platon Lebedev. Depriving Russian officials the opportunity to visit America, edu- cate their children here and hide their money in U.S. bank accounts would get their attention in a hurry.


Sixth, U.S. officials should have serious dis-


cussions with European counterparts to en- courage them to pursue similar approaches. Some governments want to ignore rights abus- es while they promote engagement and busi- ness strategies with Russia, but any potential impact will be greater if this is a joint U.S.- European initiative. In Britain, the idea of a visa ban has already been raised in some circles. The human rights situation in Russia is bad


and likely to get much worse as the March 2012 presidential election nears. Those in power will do anything to stay in power. Russia’s future and political development will be determined by Russians, but the West should do no further harm by perpetuating the current system. Enough already with U.S. expressions of “re- gret” about the deteriorating situation inside Russia — it’s time to call it like it is: Condemn what’s happening there and consider conse- quences for continued human rights abuses.


The writer, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, was an assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the George W. Bush administration. The opinions expressed here are his own.


KLMNO E.J. DIONNE JR.


game, too. The same being true in elec- tions, it’s remarkable how timidity leads Democrats to fight this year’s campaign on Republican terms. Nowhere is this more obvious than on taxes, where the entire debate re- volves around what to do about the cuts enacted under George W. Bush. Al- most no one is talking about extending the progressive tax cuts that were in- cluded in President Obama’s stimulus program. Nor are we discussing the im- pending death of a pro-work public as- sistance program that, for a rather modest sum, has helped provide jobs to 250,000 low-income Americans. At least on the Bush tax cuts, Obama


JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS


Vincent Gray claims victory against D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty last week. FRED HIATT


School reform after Fenty Voters weren’t necessarily rejecting both


Certainly the biggest opponents of school reform won. The teachers unions poured $1 million into the race to knock off the mayor, accord- ing to Politico, and they got their scalp. Now, before you fire up the e- mails, let me quickly say: Teachers do heroic work, they know more than anyone else about what goes on in a classroom, and their unions have an honorable mission: defending the jobs and enhancing the pay and ben- efits of teachers, who deserve gener- ous pay and benefits. But union interests don’t always coincide with public interests. How could they? Teachers want schools to get better. But their unions’ primary mission is to protect their members. As a result, teachers unions often oppose charter schools, because charter schools tend to be nonunion and tend to compete with traditional (unionized) public schools. They have vociferously opposed evaluat- ing teachers on the basis of perform- ance, because that could cause some teachers to lose their jobs. And when legislators debate how to spend tax money, unions will always plump for higher salaries and pensions. The unions aren’t without strong arguments on any of these. The inde- pendence of charter schools raises tough questions about how to ensure that they offer a good education. It’s hard to evaluate teachers in a way that recognizes the complexity of their task without being too sub- jective. Sometimes putting more money into teacher pensions will be the best use of public resources. But not always. And when it’s not, you need political leaders with the independence to say so. Doctors know more about what goes on with their patients than anyone else, but I wouldn’t give the American Medical Association exclusive control over health-care reform. And unions don’t speak for all teachers, any more than the AMA speaks for all physicians. For much of Fenty’s term, union leaders prevented their rank-and-file from voting on a contract that would make it easier for bad teachers to be fired and good ones to be rewarded. When political pressure finally forced a vote on a pact that preserved those core principles, Washington teachers overwhelmingly said yes. Undoubtedly some did so because


D


id school reform lose last Tuesday along with Washing- ton Mayor Adrian Fenty?


they were tired of waiting for a raise. But many knew themselves to be tal- ented and hardworking, wanted to be rewarded for it — and maybe were tired of carrying incompetent or lazy colleagues. The biggest difference between union leaders and Fenty was of ex- pectation and accountability. Union leaders argue that teachers shouldn’t be blamed for the lack of progress made by poor children liv- ing in often broken homes without books or a computer. Again, they are right about the terrible and unfair disadvantages such children face. But Fenty and his schools chancel-


lor, Michelle Rhee, argued that enough schools around the country (including, as it happens, in neigh- boring Montgomery County) were showing that poor children could learn to justify an expectation that all poor children would learn. Did this no-excuses, high-


expectation philosophy lose on Tues- day? Among some voters, for sure. Others, let’s be honest, did not like having a non-black superintendent in charge of a majority-black school system.


But there’s good reason to think


that most voters were not voting against school reform. They — espe- cially black Washingtonians — were upset with what they saw as Fenty’s arrogance, disrespect and pettiness. He and Rhee both were punished for their tin ear and self-inflicted wounds, which became so iconic for local residents that they need no ex- plication: “baseball tickets,” for example, or “broomstick cover.” In fact, in a Post opinion poll pub- lished two weeks before the vote, two-thirds of Democrats said Fenty had “brought needed change to the District,” and twice as many thought schools had improved as thought the opposite. Maybe Tuesday’s winner, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, will recognize that sentiment and push forward. He has said all along that he, too, favors school reform, only with more inclusiveness. But, like sensible politicians every- where, he will have to think twice, and twice again, before taking on the unions that gave him important cam- paign support. So here’s the maddening answer:


Washington voters may not have vot- ed against school reform last Tues- day. But school reform nonetheless lost.


fredhiatt@washpost.com POST PARTISAN


Excerpts from The Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at washingtonpost.com/postpartisan


EUGENE ROBINSON


Rhee continues burning bridges


There are some people that Michelle Rhee managed not to offend during her tenure as chancellor of the District pub- lic schools. Apparently, in whatever time she has left, she’s determined to make it all the way to the bottom of the list. Speaking Wednesday night at the


Newseum, where a documentary on school reform was having its red-carpet premiere, Rhee pronounced the follow- ing words: “Yesterday’s election results were devastating, devastating . . . Not for me, because I’ll be fine, and not even for [Mayor Adrian] Fenty, because he’ll be fine, but devastating for the schoolchil- dren of Washington, D.C.” Okay, she can put a big check next to


my name, too. The arrogance takes one’s breath away. Rhee essentially declares Fenty — and herself — to be indispensable. Moreover, she alleges that D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray, who will be the city’s next mayor, is prepared to allow students of the D.C. public schools to suffer “devas- tating” consequences. This will sound like hyperbole, but it’s true: I’ve seen Lat- in American juntas surrender power


more gracefully. It may be the case that Rhee, who can point to some admirable accomplish- ments during her tenure, is the only vi- sionary-cum-taskmaster who can whip the chronically troubled D.C. schools into shape — though it’s always foolish to forget Charles de Gaulle’s observation that “the graveyards are full of indispens- able men.” But what’s so offensive is the idea that Gray — a native Washingtonian who graduated from Dunbar High School and has dedicated his career to public service — would inevitably allow the children of his beloved city to be dev- astated. Whether through incompetence, callousness or some other failing, Rhee does not specify. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d think that someone who cared so desperately about the city’s students would do everything she could to try to ensure that the re- forms she initiated would continue. She might look for a way to stay on with the new administration, learning to work under a new boss. If that were unrealistic — and, after what she said, I find it hard to imagine that Gray could ask her to stay —she might at least begin a constructive dialogue aimed at a smooth transition. But the way to start that conversation would be with words of congratulations. Instead, she took the peremptory Louis XV approach: “After me, the deluge.” But it’s not about her, you understand. As she said at the Newseum, “I’ll be fine.”


ROBERT J. SAMUELSON


Rhetorical claims grow more partisan and self-serving. We are now deep in this process. President Obama’s pol- icies either averted another Great De- pression — or have crippled the recov- ery. These debates confirm the dreary state of economic discourse. The right rejects the idea that sometimes gov- ernment must rescue the economy from panic; the left sees salvation only in ever-larger government. The first is an invitation to anarchy; the second threatens long-term economic growth through higher taxes, regulations or budget deficits.


Lost in the sound bites I


t is a ritual as predictable as the tides. With every election, we de- scend into sound-bite economics.


When Obama took office in early 2009, the economy and financial mar- kets were in virtual free-fall. By sum- mer, they were not. Only a rabid parti- san can think that Obama’s policies had nothing to do with the reversal. His forcefulness helped calmed the prevailing hysteria. True, many recovery policies came from the Federal Reserve, and others — notably, the unpopular Troubled As- sets Relief Program (TARP) — began under the Bush administration. Oba- ma’s contributions included the “stim- ulus program,” a rescue of the auto in- dustry and a “stress test” for 19 large banks. The stress test explored wheth- er banks needed big infusions of cap- ital. Most didn’t. The process was messy, and, al- though many details can be ques- tioned, the overall impact was huge. Without government’s aggressive re- sponse, gross domestic product would have dropped 12 percent instead of 4 percent and 16.6 million jobs would have been lost instead of 8.4 million, estimate economists Alan Blinder of Princeton and Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics. Unemployment would have hit 16 percent.These numbers, too, can be disputed (they seem high to me), but the direction is certainly correct. Up to a point, blaming Obama for the sluggish recovery is also unfair. Millions of Americans were over-bor- rowed. Paying down debts was bound to crimp the $10 trillion of annual con- sumer spending. Could anyone have realistically neutralized this? Nope. Nor could the housing collapse be quickly reversed. The right’s sweeping indictment of Obama is wildly exag- gerated. It is not, however, entirely misplaced. Confidence is crucial to stimulating consumer spending and business in- vestment, and Obama constantly sub- verts confidence. In the past year, he’s undone some of the good of his first months. He loves to pick fights with Wall Street bankers, oil companies, multinational firms, health insurers and others. He thinks that he can sep-


The wrong tax debate I


n any athletic contest, winning teams play their own game and force the other side to play that


R


A15


most families an $800 refundable tax credit but also the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit, which were especially helpful to lower- income families.


If the child tax credit isn’t extended,


has drawn a clear and sensible line. He’s said that Congress should extend the reductions for the middle class but not those for families earning more than $250,000 a year. For the life of me, I don’t get why some Democrats are so afraid of this vote. Substantively, most of the 31 House Democrats who signed a letter last week urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to chicken out of this fight claim to be deficit hawks. Why, then, add $700 billion to the deficit for the pur- pose of continuing a tax program that disproportionately benefits million- aires?


And politically, why shouldn’t Demo-


crats dare Republicans to vote against extending middle-class tax cuts and then have to explain that they opposed them because not enough money was going to the rich? But notice that this entire battle is


being framed around Bush’s proposals. The parts of the Obama stimulus pro- gram that never get discussed — one reason it may be so unpopular — are its many tax reductions. John Podesta, president of the Cen- ter for American Progress and White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, noted the Obama tax cuts also expire at the end of this year: “I don’t understand why we’re only talk- ing about extending George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which are heavily skewed to help the wealthiest Americans, yet no one’s discussing President Obama’s cuts, which are exclusively focused on middle-class families.” I don’t understand it, either. The stimulus included not only the broad Making Work Pay tax cut that gave


7.6 million children who get the benefit through their families would lose it en- tirely, and the credit would be reduced for an additional 10.5 million children. The biggest losses, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, would be among families earning $12,850 to $16,333, many of which in- clude a parent working full time for minimum wage. Also set to expire are expansions of the earned-income tax credit that have helped working fami- lies that include 14.9 million children. Tell me again: Why is it more impor- tant to preserve millionaires’ tax cuts than to continue helping these far more vulnerable Americans? Why are Re- publican leaders who argue that failing to extend all of the Bush tax cuts would constitute a tax increase not saying ex- actly the same thing about the Obama tax cuts? Is it blind ideology, an excep- tional solicitude for people with very high incomes or the fact that Obama’s cuts were packaged into the dreaded stimulus? Perhaps the biggest scandal of all — especially after last week’s Census Bu- reau finding that one in seven Amer- icans is living in poverty — would be to allow the expiration of an emergency fund included in the stimulus to sub- sidize jobs for low-income parents and young Americans. The program will end on Sept. 30 un- less the Senate joins the House in pass- ing an extension. States have used more than $1 billion from the fund to work with businesses to provide jobs, and this innovative approach is particularly helpful to communities hit hardest by the downturn. It embodies a value ev- ery conservative campaigns on: that the best anti-poverty program is a job. Pelosi, at least, finally started talking


late last week about the need to extend the Obama tax cuts. And you have to hope that Senate Republicans will let the jobs-fund extension through, since it’s hard to think of a more Republican approach to alleviating poverty. But you also have to ask why Demo-


crats didn’t try long ago to move any of these items to the center of the debate. Why cede so much attention to the ideas of George W. Bush? ejdionne@washpost.com


arate policies that claim to promote re- covery from those that appeal to his liberal “base,” even when the partisan policies raise business costs, stymie job creation or augment uncertainty — and, thereby, undermine recovery. His health-care “reform” will make hiring more expensive to employers by man- dating insurance coverage. The mora- torium on deep-water oil drilling kills jobs; the administration’s estimate of employment loss is up to 12,000. Obama’s proposal to increase taxes on personal incomes exceeding $250,000 ($200,000 for singles) is the latest example of his delusional ap- proach. It satisfies the liberal itch to “get the rich.” Well, the rich and most other taxpayers will ultimately have to pay higher taxes to help close budget deficits. But not now.


Raising taxes in a weak economy


doesn’t make sense. Just consider this astonishing fact: These affluent house- holds represent almost a quarter of all consumer spending, according to Zan- di. Increasing their taxes, he estimates, would cost 770,000 jobs by mid-2012. Richard Curtin, director of the Univer- sity of Michigan’s Survey of Con- sumers, says his data suggest that un- certainty about the extension of the Bush tax cuts has already caused afflu- ent buyers to cut their spending. Some small businesses would also


be affected, because many (sole propri- etorships, partnerships and subchap- ter S corporations) file their taxes on personal returns. Higher taxes would discourage hiring and expansion. No one knows by how much, but the Tax Policy Center estimates that higher business taxes would affect 725,000 re- turns with about $400 billion of busi- ness income. Some of these are part- nerships of doctors, lawyers and ac- countants. Others are contractors, restaurant owners, florists and plumb- ers.


All the partisan rhetoric can be as- cribed to “politics as usual.” True. That’s the point. In an election dom- inated by the economy, the campaign discourse is strangely disconnected from underlying economic realities. The simplicities of the right collide with the simplicities of the left. In textbooks, elections clarify com-


plex issues and help resolve social con- flicts. In practice, they often sow con- fusion and create unrealistic expecta- tions, as politicians peddle phony solutions and make unattainable promises. Americans face crucial eco- nomic choices. How to cut long-term budget deficits without threatening the present recovery? How to control health spending without damaging health care? How to adjust to an aging society and still retain a powerful economy? On these and other hard questions, the silence is deafening.


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