Pipeline Politics Put Democracy in Back Seat

Using simple language that belied the complexity of their concerns, Western governments roundly condemned Russian intervention in the Caucasus this month at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They underscored a critical equation of post-Cold War diplomacy: Pipeline politics make foreign policy. The OSCE call to end Russia’s Chechen offensive was choreographed to accompany a long-sought agreement to build a Caspian Sea pipeline that, favoring U.S. policy, separates Russia and Iran from the oil and gas riches of central Asia.

If humanitarianism in service to energy politics seems unusual diplomatic fare, elevating mercantilism to political principle is even more difficult business. The Clinton administration’s efforts to marry its economic and foreign-policy interests is perhaps clearest in its energy policy, which seeks, in one step, to secure oil and gas reserves, build new security relationships and buttress the shaky foundations of the Soviet Union’s successor states. But U.S. policy may be compromised by its weak embrace of the democracy that Eurasia desperately requires.

Across Russia’s underbelly, conflict is commemorating communism’s demise. Cruel wars in Chechnya, Dagestan and Tajikistan imperil fragile political compacts and regional safety. Transborder ethnic strife--some local, some imported--bedevils states from the Caspian Sea to the Tien Shan mountains bordering China. In Russia’s efforts to secure its southern flanks, echoes of its past imperialism resonate, punctuated by military offenses in its near-abroad and occasional xenophobia at home.

But 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Central Asia’s political scorecard discloses mixed messages. Along with war, this autumn has witnessed elections across almost the entire region. Although many have been flawed, their very existence testifies to the complicated texture of post-Cold War politics. From the Caucasus to the Central Asian steppe, the real power of states is encountering, however haltingly, the potential power of political society.

This is the progress that the U.S. and the OSCE are counting on to secure their interests and investments. Major signatories to this week’s pipeline agreement--Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan--are recently elected governments. Turkmenistan’s rejection of elections or democracy is ignored in favor of its massive gas reserves. But electoral discipline varies: The OSCE has chastised sitting governments for putting technical compliance above democratic spirit, and human-rights organizations have been loath to endorse polls that legitimize abusive power. Oil producers nonetheless seek political sanction: Kazakhstan’s recent elections--in actuality, a small step from authoritarianism to timid populism--were designed as much for Western consumption as domestic power-sharing.

The U.S. and its partners are hoping that economic stability will bolster elected governments and move them toward democratic behavior. Arguing for financial incentives to strengthen weak democracies, they have used cash to stave off political divisiveness. Public monies have been replaced in part by private funds: The downtown renaissance of Baku, in Azerbaijan, was built by oil companies, not foreign aid; Almaty’s wide boulevards wait for oil to transform Kazakh citizens into global consumers.

But the line between triumphant electoralism and the ravages of war is often thin and wavering. A quick glance at Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, is an admonition to careless gloating by the U.S., which is keen to promote President Eduard A. Shevardnadze’s government as the jewel in the region’s democratic crown. Glistening new stores are shadowed by decaying hotels that house thousands of displaced persons from Georgia’s own hinterland hostilities in Abkhazia. Georgia’s progressive human-rights programs rarely reach the victims of its own territorial ambitions: This corner of the Caucasus harbors more little wars whose violence occasionally reaches the metropolis, threatening the tender roots of democratic reform.

The Caucasus’ old empires of small ethnicities hold prosperity hostage to the worst instincts of uncertain democracies: peace sacrificed to war, civil politics to military engagement, democratic dissent to stark regimes of law and order. The economic divides of the post-communist era, accentuated by the high human costs of war, are reminders of the political distance yet to be traversed.

New oil economies and their Western benefactors may think that old-fashioned trickle-down economics work miracles, but to citizens without resources, such beliefs mimic political philosophy. Among those left behind in the race for investments and energy profits, democracy is still illusory. Resurgent poverty threatens individual well-being, the durability of weak states and prospects for democracy. Soviet successor states now confront a development divide that jeopardizes democratic experiments.

But in debates between economics and politics, the U.S., sometimes unwittingly, often by intention, favors money. The promotion of democracy was once an independent tenet of U.S. policy: Profit will rise on a foundation of democratic pluralism. Today, the equation is reversed: Investments will build democracy. Seeking the hearts and minds of future democrats, U.S. policy aims first at their pocketbooks.

Can profits produce democracy? History offers mixed messages. Capitalism flourished for a while in Latin America’s authoritarian hothouses. Hasty judgments about economic and political gain have been reversed all too often in U.S. policy toward Russia, ensnaring democracy in a capitalist experiment that, for want of adequate preparation, has yet to succeed. Now, U.S. policy in the Caspian region substitutes hasty judgment and political illusion for democratic realities. But painting nascent pluralism in the colors of democratic success ignores public opinion and political change.

Eurasia’s halting, sometimes faltering local experiments in good governance require sustained investments in social welfare, political pluralism and democratic institutions. Its economies require assistance with nuance. Where citizens balance state power and share in future profits, collective security can be sensible and effective. To balance economics and politics--in Eurasia and for the U.S.--the most important investment is democracy. *