The US and the lessons of
Chechnya By Christopher Lord
No two wars are the same. Iraq is not Vietnam,
it is not Algeria, and it is no replay of a conflict
from ancient Greece or China. But it has something of
Vietnam in its asymmetric nature, something of Algeria
in its tactical quality, and there are probably some
lessons to be learned from all sorts of comparisons with
other wars from history. To make a contemporary
comparison, in its domestic political dynamic and to a
degree in its expeditionary, overwhelming-force military
technique, US President George W Bush's venture in Iraq
can be compared with Russian Federation President
Vladimir Putin's war in Chechnya.
Politically,
Putin made the promise of victory in Chechnya the
central plank in his presidential election platform. It
was not like that for Bush, but his presidency was
floundering in its early days, dogged by suggestions
that he lacked legitimacy. He was married to his "war on
terrorism" as soon as it was formulated, if anything
more closely than Putin is married in the Russian public
awareness to the Chechen issue, and Iraq will be the
main issue in Bush's campaign for a second term.
Both presidents have been keen to present
themselves as "war presidents", brave champions of their
respective people against rather similar threats from
ruthless Islamic terrorists. Moscow has had nothing
quite as dramatic as the September 11, 2001, attacks to
make the message believable, but bombs, kidnappings and
the seizure of the Palace of Culture theater in
mid-performance in Moscow in October 2002 have left
Russian voters with no doubt of who the enemy is.
The immediate political advantage accruing to
the war president in both cases is an extraordinary
freedom of action. As commander-in-chief, there is
freedom to make war, as might be expected, but the
record shows that greater liberty than this has been
established. The logic is simple enough. At this time of
great national crisis, with the commander-in-chief doing
such a dangerous and vital job on the anti-terrorist
front, he must be left to handle the rest of his task as
he sees fit. His hand-picked team of advisers has no
thought but the national good, and to engage in the kind
of partisan or personal sniping that might arise under
more normal political circumstances would be
anti-patriotic and wrong.
Both men have seized
this extraordinary opportunity; Bush, to enact a wide
range of radical, conservative domestic policies, which
in many cases have no logical connection with the war
effort, and Putin to establish a centralized style of
government that appears to outsiders to verge on the
dictatorial (though few Russian voices are heard making
such criticisms).
There is an equally
straightforward disadvantage arising from this source of
legitimacy. A war president must win the war, as he has
promised. The Chechen war has been going longer than the
Iraq war, and oddly enough, the lack of a clear victory
- with the puppet president himself assassinated on May
9 - has not seemed to have damaged Putin's popularity.
How has he managed this? Partly it is a question of
control of the media, but this is not the primary
explanation. Information is available to those who want
it. The primary explanation lies in the patriotic
reflex. It has now been clearly established that it is
the patriotic duty of Russians to collectively support
Putin in the war against those whom he deems terrorists.
Each fresh episode of violence only confirms this
belief.
Can Bush count on such support in the
long term? It does not seem likely. Many would say that
the Russians who support Putin's war in Chechnya are
badly misinformed about the situation there, and the
evidence is that American voters also have resilient
false beliefs about Iraq. According to an April 22 poll
from the Program on International Policy Attitudes, 57
percent of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein
was supporting al-Qaeda before the September 11 attacks,
a percentage that has hardly changed since the run-up to
the war.
But when it comes to the attitude of
the media, the parallel with Russia breaks down. Russian
atrocities in Chechnya have been documented very
thoroughly in the rest of the world - Amnesty
International describes "wholesale abuses of human
rights and serious violations of international
humanitarian law" - but the Russian press, through a
mixture of patriotism, loyalty, respect and fear, has
been and remains largely silent.
American
disregard for the laws of war, while mostly ignored for
similar reasons inside America, has now become front
page news, not just abroad, but in the US as well. Those
trumpeting the bad news are mostly political opponents
of Bush and the Republican Party, but the issue has
become a national one, and the political values that
seemed so solid - of loyalty to the commander-in-chief,
of support for the troops and of steadfast belief in
final victory - are themselves looking increasingly
uncertain.
Some individual Americans would be
prepared to grant their armed forces the same kind of de
facto legal immunity enjoyed by Russian forces in
Chechnya, explicitly to allow them to carry out
interrogations under duress, intimidation through
illegal violence and other such extreme measures. But
the White House claims to represent an international
moral consensus, and this is not consistent with these
methods, either domestically or overseas. If recent
allegations about US central command being involved in a
planned, deliberate extra-judicial program of secret
detention, torture and other abuses in Afghanistan and
Iraq are proved correct, even the most loyal
international allies of the US will be forced to
reconsider their role in the war.
So in the end,
America is not Russia, and the analogy, while an
instructive one, breaks down. Vladimir Putin, who has no
international allies and does not need them, has
declared victory several times, and may well do so
again. Bush has only done so once, and is unlikely to
repeat the experiment.
Putin's message is one of
retribution and the iron fist, and more resistance from
Chechens can plausibly be met with more punishment.
Bush, on the other hand, has promised peace, justice and
democracy, and loyal supporters expect these items to be
delivered in due course, which explains why there is
simply no answer available as to why Iraqis are
resisting the US occupation. Why would anyone resist
peace, justice and democracy?
Something has
evidently gone wrong, and word is gradually spreading.
The Pentagon has the military means to sustain a war
like Putin's for decades, if necessary, in what is at
present very similar to a rebellious imperial
possession. As in Chechnya, an illegitimate puppet
government can be supported with blood and treasure from
a superpower as long as the domestic voters will support
it. But the solid support for the war president that is
general in Russia is limited to the Republican half of
the American population. Indeed, among Democrats, and
especially the undecided voters who will determine the
results of the November presidential election, the
figures show dramatic falls in support for Bush and the
war in general.
Published with permission of
thePower and Interest News Report,
an analysis-based publication that seeks to provide
insight into various conflicts, regions and points of
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