Karma; ‘What goes around, comes around’, people say. Well actually, it doesn’t always work like that, does it? Take Pol Pot, for example, a man with the blood of 3 million on his hands. He died peacefully, as an old man, in his own bed. So much for Karma, eh? Although, granted, he might have been re-born as a worm.
But the concept of ‘Karma’ is based on a grain of truth. There are no cosmic forces at work but if you treat someone nicely then they will probably, but not necessarily, treat you nicely too. Treat them badly and they’ll probably show you contempt, or worse. This isn’t a supernatural force at work, it’s just common sense.
This principle applies to everyone and everything from ordinary people like you and me to multi-national corporations. You can also apply it to the foreign policy of nation states. For example US foreign policy between 1945 and 1989 was periodically dominated by the theories of Realism and Containment whereby the US supported local rulers as long as they helped to contain the spread of Communism. In reality this counter-productive policy meant that the US became tainted by association with despotic local rulers and even led to the establishment of regimes just as threatening as the USSR, for example the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Of course America is a democratic country and different Presidents took different views on foreign policy. Wilson and Carter, for example were particularly vociferous in their promotion of democracy and since the 1980s America has been at the forefront of the spread of global democracy from Indonesia through to the Balkans and latterly Iraq and Afghanistan. If the US continues to promote democracy and free trade then our children will hopefully live in a more peaceful and prosperous world.
America has many faults but it has at least been the biggest force for the spread of global democracy in the twentieth century. Meanwhile dictatorships such as China support and prop-up brutal regimes without invoking the ire of the supposed liberal left. More recently Russia, the bastard son of the Evil Empire, has muscled its way back onto the global stage powered by record oil prices and plenty of nationalist bluster.
Russia has never been a paragon of human rights, nor has it ever sought to be any such thing. The modern Russian state controls the national media; it imprisons political rivals, cuts off energy supplies to its neighbours and curbs free speech. An incredible 61 journalists were murdered in Putin’s Russia and we all know who was responsible for Alexander Litvinvenko’s cruel assasination. The only ex-Soviet countries that ally themselves with Russia are brutal dictatorships such as those in Belo-Russia and Turkmenistan. Putin certainly had a hand in reforming the cronyism of Yeltsin’s chaotic rule but only a blind man would describe his own rule as anything other than nationalistic, authoritarian, anti-democratic and confrontational.
Many US-haters have fawned over Putin’s Russia and the recent war in the Caucasus was widely cited as a victory over ‘the West’. Except that it was no such thing, was it? Georgia is an inconsequential country, South Ossetia and that other province even more so. Even if the US hadn’t been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan it would never have risked World War III over South Ossetia. So Russia trounced a pathetic Georgian Army, so it may have annexed South Ossetia and that other province, frankly so what? What’s to gain from annexing a rural province in the middle of nowhere from a country the size of Scotland?
Every former Warsaw Pact country, apart from the dictatorship of Belo-Russia, has become a democracy with a free-market economy. The people of these countries who grew up under Communist tyranny have ditched Russia and voted to pursue the wealth and freedom that EU countries enjoy. Russia’s military actions will only strengthen their love of democracy and free markets and convince them that their future lies with ‘the West’. America has no strategic need of countries like Georgia, but America is interested in protecting the rights of free citizens to choose their future.
Aside from the fact that it has enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the world several times over Russia isn’t even a first rate power. Despite oil revenues of $1 billion a day Russia still has a smaller economy than the UK and its per capita GDP is lower than that of Botswana. Indeed the Russian military hardware seen in Georgia was distinctly Soviet in appearance. Furthermore the Russian population is steadily shrinking and the life expectancy of a Russian male is barely 61. Since last month’s invasion of Georgia the Russian stock market has plummeted by 30% and some $20 billion of foreign capital has been pulled out of Russia by investors who now see the country as unpredictable and unstable. Since the invasion the value of the rouble has slumped and the central bank has had to step in to stop the slide. The EU has also woken up to the militant nationalism of Putin’s Russia and leaders such as Brown have emphasised the need to escape the ‘dictatorship of oil’. The west does not want to be subject to the whim of troublesome states such as Russia and Saudi Arabia and it is slowly trying to break its addiction to oil. Pumping oil out f the ground isn’t exactly difficult and without this natural wealth, Russia would have a basket case economy and the Government would go bust, for a third time in 20 years. Russia would do well not to scare away the customers who give it all its money, after all Russia needs the West far more than the West needs Russia.
Georgia has learnt its lesson, its shattered towns will be rebuilt with money from US AID, Ukraine and Georgia have again asked to be allowed to join NATO, and the Baltic States enjoy the fruits of free markets and democracy. The 'victorious' Russians gained South Ossetia and some other God-forsaken place and killed a few thousand hapless Georgians. Meanwhile foreign investors have fled Russia as quickly as they can wire their money back home and the EU is now looking for someone else to supply its expensive gas and oil.
Perhaps Karma does work after all.
