From the New York Times:

Female suicide bombers set off huge explosions in two subway stations in central Moscow during the Monday morning rush hour, Russian officials said, killing more than three dozen people and raising fears that the Muslim insurgency in southern Russia was once again being brought to the country’s heart.

Russia Today interviewed me about Afghanistan a few days ago. I think I need to brush up on my TV interview skills.

Lilia Shevtsova is not happy about US and Western European policy towards Russia:

A consensus seems to be growing among Western policymakers and intellectuals that Russia is not ready for liberalism and that there are even certain advantages to dealing with the illiberal political order built by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. This may be why Western policy toward Russia has only served to shore up the Russian powers that are pursuing anti-Western interests…

So what would a more principled Russia policy entail? Western leaders must keep liberal and democratic principles in mind while dealing with the Russian elite. They must be wary of the latest fairy tales about “modernization,” avoid naively spreading the Kremlin’s ideas…

Democracy is Russia is a very dim prospect. In a Gallup public opinion poll in February 2009, only 18% of respondents thought that democracy was good for Russia, while close to 70% preferred some sort of dictatorship. This not surprising as Russia’s only experience with democracy was in the 1990s, during a time of deep economic crisis and embarrassing leadership of Boris Yeltsin, while growth exploded and the country regained status as a major power under Putin‘s return to dictatorship. Nevertheless, the regime does not tolerate internal dissent and its discouraging to see democratic leaders fail to highlight this point.

The “China model” has garnered attention as an alternative for liberal development, but comparisons are largely drawn on the experiences of economic liberalization taking place under one-party dictatorships in Southeast Asia. Outside these regional comparisons, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seemed to have little applicability to political organization in the rest of the world. Now, according to this New York Times piece, Putin’s United Russia party believes the CCP deserving of study. The article describes a special meeting held earlier this month that featured senior Communist Party officials describing their ruling methodology and quotes from various United Russia leaders on the value and success of the CCP template.

China itself has a similar history of sending its officials abroad to learn techniques of governance they believed suitable for China’s future. Since the 1980s the CCP has demonstrated interest in the People’s Action Party (PAP) in Singapore. David Shambaugh’s book, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation, reveals that the CCP values the PAP model for “guided democracy” in which the PAP sustains itself through successful policies and co-optation of the opposition”.

Each of these cases is evidence of oft assumed authoritarian cooperation, but what the implications of this learning between authoritarians are for democracy advocates and practitioners is unclear. The ability of democracy assistance or democracy/reform advocates to exert any kind of pressure on authoritarian regimes is minimal. However, a regime’s selection and analysis of case studies is perhaps indicative of direction. In China, corruption could potentially undermine the ability of the CCP to claim itself an efficient manager and capable steward of economic expansion. Singapore is the logical choice for the CCP to study given its economic success and the PAP’s ability to retain control of the state during and after economic modernization. Shambaugh believes the interest of the CCP in semi-authoritarian regimes is one example of the CCP undergoing renovation in order to retain power. If similar direction can be assumed from United Russia’s choice of China as a model then the implications are less positive. That direction might best be summed up by Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the liberal pro-Western Yabloko party, who is quoted in the NY Times article as saying “the China meeting demonstrated that United Russia wants to establish a single-party dictatorship in Russia, for all time”.

Best friends forever?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is taking a tour of the world’s autocracies.  Over the past 11 days, he has visited Russia, Iran, Syria, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Libya, and Algeria.  While Venezuela is still nominally (barely?) a democracy, Chavez seems intent on building his authoritarian bona fides. His trip to Russia was particularly productive as he secured a $2.2 billion line of credit for weapons purchases and an agreement to jointly develop oil fields and nuclear energy.