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Is it me, or has The Economist become incredibly lazy as of late? I’ve noticed, in much of their reporting, sloppy fact checking, incomplete analysis, and just plain old wrong information. Take this little screed against Kazakhstan’s potential chairmanship of the OSCE. Can a news agency discuss Kazakhstan without referencing Borat? The super-serious newsmagazine seemingly cannot: while pontificating the grand issues of democracy promotion and human rights, they quote Cohen’s character under a portrait of Uncle Nazzy. At this point, such frivolity is not just tacky, it is tired. We get it, Borat was funny. He’s also British.

The Economist goes on, however, to show more subtle indications they are working more off stereotype and assumption than reality:

IF YOU believe in realpolitik, it is a no-brainer. Kazakhstan should chair the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2009. If you believe in the principles of democracy on which the OSCE was founded, the question of Kazakhstan is a no-brainer too: an undemocratic country should not chair one of the continent’s main democracy-promoting organisation.

This is no mere wrangle about protocol. The debate over Kazakhstan and the OSCE raises a fundamental question about Europe’s willingness to trade democracy for security.

So far, so good. It is indeed a thorny issue, about methods, tactics, and so on (Nathan and I disagree on the value of engagement in promoting sane behavior from authoritarian countries). But it is beyond this simple stating of fact that the Economist veers perilously close to incoherence.

The then Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, meeting in Helsinki in 1975, traded security, in the form of Western assent to the division of Europe, for freedom: the Kremlin’s formal commitment to support human rights across the continent. That helped destroy totalitarianism, because it gave dissidents behind the iron curtain a legal basis to challenge their communist rulers.

Not only is this a difficult case to make (”totalitarianism” still exists in Europe, and the OSCE had little to do directly with the collapse of the Soviet Union), but it is entirely immaterial: though authoritarian, Kazakhstan is not totalitarian, at least by the particularly vicious standards of other legitimately totalitarian countries.

Now Russia and its allies want to cripple the OSCE until it turns into a mere talking-shop. They have systematically tried to strangle its election-monitoring outfit, the Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR—pronounced, aptly enough, “oh dear”). The Kremlin also detests the OSCE’s openness to independent non-governmental organisations. The OSCE is one of the few places where outfits such as the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (banned in Russia but now registered in Finland) can get a public hearing before an official audience.

The chairmanship of the 56-member OSCE changes every year. Spain holds the chair now; Finland is next. Kazakhstan desperately desires the job in 2009. Giving Kazakhstan what it wants, argue supporters such as Germany, would help reach out to the most important and promising country in central Asia. It would integrate Kazakhstan into the heart of Europe’s security structures—and maybe gain Kazakh support for a gas pipeline direct from central Asia to Europe, bypassing Russia.

Wait, when did we start talking about the Kremlin? Kazakhstan and Russia are allies? Kazakhstan is Russia’s puppet? If they’re such tight friends that reaching out to Astana is equivalent to bowing to Moscow, why or how could they be expected to build a pipe that bypasses Russia?

But it is hard to portray this as a move to counter Russian influence in central Asia, given that the Kremlin also strongly supports the Kazakh bid. Russia wants to set a precedent that a non-democratic country can hold the chair. This year Kazakhstan, so why not Belarus in 2010?

My, that’s a nice red herring. Who said anything about Belarus? No one did, it is just a cheap debate tactic. Back in December, Nathan provided some much-needed context (sorely missing from The Economists’s take) to this discussion. In short, Russia views the OSCE has having neglected its political and military role in favor of human rights and elections, and if it wants to focus solely on human rights, then it should relaunch itself to better do so. In other words, they see the OSCE as operating outside its mandate, using the access granted it has for other purposes than its original intent.

Quibble with that if you will (The Economist certainly does, though they don’t seem fond of offering evidence to bolster their case), but Russia also makes a much more compelling case: the OSCE has turned into a two-tiered organization composed of the U.S. and the original EU-12 lecturing the former Soviet states as second-class members. That is a serious issue, one that deals with perception as much as objective fact, and it is one in which a drawn-out lecture on the precise nature of Western-style democracy will backfire quite miserably.

Nevertheless, the stereotypes continue:

Britain and America are still holding out against the plan. Kazakhstan’s human-rights record is dire. It has never held an internationally validated election. Nursultan Nazarbayev (pictured), the president for 17 years already, has just claimed the post for life. Leaders in Washington and London fear that Kazakhstan may mute the OSCE’s effectiveness if, say, an election is rigged, a demonstration violently crushed or a journalist killed somewhere in Russia or another part of the former Soviet Union in 2009; judging from current affairs, such events are all too likely.

Calling Ann Penketh. Normally, if you label a country’s human rights record as “dire,” you offer some sort of example of dire human rights violations—say, a massacre, or wretched oppression, or a brutal civil war. Maybe you even discuss worrying trends instead of imagined scenarios like crushed demonstrations or murdered journalists (in Russia, which is not, I should repeat, Kazakhstan, just as “another part of the former Soviet Union” is not Kazakhstan). No, since they don’t have free elections, therefore the situation is dire and teetering on the verge of Andijon-like chaos. Has no one taught these jokers the dangers of hyperbole? Are they that incapable of distinguishing between very different countries, simply because they all happen to be Mongols and speak related languages? It would be like discussing Italy, Spain, and Portugal as one indistinguishable mass, and worrying that Germany is pulling the strings somehow because they all used to kind of be the same country. It is totally incoherent reasoning.

Look, no one denies that Kazakhstan is not a free country. It does not permit political freedom, I still have my doubts that racketeering is the real reason Rakhat Aliyev was arrested in Austria, and Uncle Nazzy has just recently declared himself president-for-life (and granted himself +10 dexterity). That is a political issue, however, and only vaguely related to the actual status of human rights in the country. Not-free elections, for example, say little about whether or a people is actively brutalized by its government (unless the argument is that the lack of elections is itself a brutality, which would have to account for liberal autocracies like Singapore). While it is a corrupt and capricious state, I would still much prefer to live in Kazakhstan than anywhere else in Central Asia.

The Economist’s issues, however, don’t stop at having a woefully incomplete understanding of Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and the former Soviet Union. They also don’t seem to enjoy being internally consistent:

Certainly the evidence so far is that stretching democratic principles to accommodate undemocratic countries does not spread freedom, but merely dents those principles. Admitting Russia to the Council of Europe, another talking-shop with a grand human-rights mandate, now looks premature to say the least. The same applies to the G8, supposedly a grouping of big advanced democracies. Official harassment of pro-democracy protesters made Russia’s G8 summit in St Petersburg last year a shameful farce.

I fail to see how the OSCE is itself a democratic principle, rather than an agency that can be used to support them (and where is the very salient fact that engagement and membership in liberal institutions has had a moderating and modernizing effect on other authoritarian states like China and Vietnam?). But the Economist didn’t have such a dim view of the G8 six weeks ago:

DESPITE the row over Russian missiles that preceded it and the mob of angry protestors outside, the G8 meeting probably helped in the quest for global stability. The top industrial countries ended their summit in Heiligendamm on Friday June 8th with a handful of agreements aimed at just that goal. The most positive outcome of the three-day summit was America’s apparent shift closer to the G8 mainstream.

Perhaps they should decide whether the G8 itself is to fail for including Russia, or if Russia is to blame for hosting a bad meeting. Because the logic is not the same: if including Russia as an equal partner in the G8 (which is foolish considering China, a wealthier authoritarian state, is excluded) can result in meetings that help “the quest for global stability,” but then an individual meeting can be a “shameful farce,” then that says something about Russia, and not necessarily the G8. Furthermore, shouldn’t the inclusion of Russia, which is most certainly not one of the top-8 economies in the world, or even among its generally more economically free, make the entire organization a farce in willful denial of its founding principles? Obviously, not—the G8 can accomplish important things to “help global stability” by including Russia. Similarly, including Kazakhstan in the OSCE, even as a chair, would not necessarily dilute what the OSCE does, and it will not necessarily scuttle the quest for human rights in Central Asia (which seems to be the only way The Economist chooses to view “security and cooperation”).

One solution would be to say that Kazakhstan can be chair in 2011—but only if it first meets some elementary democratic criteria. But it may be too late for such a deal. Anything short of the chairmanship in 2009 will be seen as a severe snub.

That is blatantly false. Unless someone has far better searching skills than I do, The Economist is the only news source claiming it would be a “severe snub.” Even a regular snub. In fact, since the chair is not a make-or-break prospect (Nazarbayev is clearly and openly gunning for prestige, nothing more), not getting it won’t be that big a deal in general terms. But the reasons why will be.

The sad truth is that an organisation like the OSCE can function only if its members mostly agree on most principles. That was the case through the 1990s. It no longer holds now. Rather than make shameful compromises in the name of security, it would be better to concentrate on the best long-term bet: promoting freedom.

“Most principles.” In the agency’s name, it includes “security and cooperation.” Their homepage describes themselves as “the world’s largest regional security organization.” The “human dimension” is but one of the three main activity areas they focus on, and of the human dimension, democratization and human rights are but tiny subsets of a much larger concept. I get the feeling The Economist doesn’t really know what the OSCE does, what its purpose is, or even where Kazakhstan ultimately stands. In fact, it sounds like this essay was researched solely in the British tabloids and the authors’ own holy outrage, rather than any sort of appropriate political-historical context. “Shameful compromises in the name of security?” Just seven paragraphs previously, they described the founding of the OSCE as a bargain: “security, in the form of Western assent to the division of Europe, for freedom.” In other words, the OSCE made occupying and brutalizing Eastern Europe okay, so long as the USSR made token promises not to abuse its people. To me, the bifurcation of Europe after World War II was a shameful compromise—necessary perhaps, but none the less shameful for it. The Yalta Conference sold out a hundred million people to save the familiar non-slavs from Russian conquest: a devil’s bargain if one ever existed.

Indeed, contrary to The Economist’s casual dismissal of Kazakhstan’s bid as realpolitik, the OSCE was founded upon its principles. It was a bargain, trading one evil for a slightly lesser evil, with neither being ideal. It is the same choice, though obviously with far lesser consequences, facing the OSCE today: do they engage with a capricious dictator who has legitimately improved human conditions in his country and actually contributed to regional security, or do they snub him for not measuring up to the grand liberty standards set by Tony Blair? Which would accomplish more good—engagement or snub? It is not a question that can be answered on principle: Islam Karimov, for example, is probably far less amenable to soft power. But striking out on principle like a petulant teenager is useful only to a point: at some point, these countries must be treated as either friends or foes… and our decision to treat them as either can play a huge role in which role they choose. Karimov, for example, is a foe. Nazarbayev, however? I wouldn’t go there. Both parties stand to gain tremendously through continued integration, and I simply do not see the benefit of petulantly giving Astana the cold shoulder.

Lastly, a stylistic note: the title of this post is quoted from the subtitle of The Economist essay. What is the “ugly trade” of which Kazakhstan is the supposed center? They never get around to saying it.

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