real rule by law
think things through, people
Um, what was Michael Travis Leake thinking to remain in Russia over the past 16 months? I don’t know anything about the man except what I heard following his incarceration this weekend on drug trafficking charges. That information included statistics that he is 51 years old, a punk rocker with Lovi Noch, and he is a former U.S. paratrooper (to which I would say ‘Danger, Will Robinson! Danger, Will Robinson!). The Russian authorities charged him with networking illegal drugs which is a serious charge.
If he indeed was involved with any kind of illegal substances in Putin’s realm, he is crazy. We all remember Brittney Griner spent nine months in a Russian prison in 2022 on marijuana charges, freed only because the Biden administration exchanged the illegal arms czar Viktor Bout who Putin sought to return home.
Leake joins alleged spy Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal, former Marine Paul Whelan, school teacher Sarah Krivanek who defended herself with a knife against her violent boyfriend, and fellow teacher Marc Fogel who also violated marijuana laws. This is not a place Americans should travel these days—period. Putin likes to hold Americans in jail. No, five is not a high number but how many Americans are still there?
The current American national propensity to pick and choose which laws pertain to their personal actions is not a good approach overseas. Indeed, challenging the power of an authoritarian government power frequently leads to prison. Whether it’s Putin’s harsh drug penalties or Xi’s unnilaterally labeling many actions as threatening his country’s national security, the individual entitlement to ignore the danger of falling prey to incarceration is a high one.
These are governments which use ‘rule by law’ rather than ‘rule of law’. The former means they cower dissent by rapidly subjugating those who can be linked to ‘illegal’ actions of some sort. Rule by law is often personal retribution rather than something responding to violating laws that pertain to everyone.
The centrality of the rule of law means it pertains to all in the same circumstances. The interpretations of whether the circumstances are indeed the same is the heart of our contemporary national psyche but that is not how tyrants use law to bend the will of others. In societies which rule by law, the individual voice truly is irrelevant unless it’s the voice of the authoritarian ruler and his invariably tiny clique.
We don’t realise, it seems to me, how selectively we each are becoming about what we will respect as laws. People appear to believe the Rights, often poorly and incorrectly understood and cited inappropriated as ironclad guarantees protected by the Constitution and its Amendments, are absolutely sacrosanct in most Americans’ eyes anywhere in the world; nothing could be further from the facts.
Putin or Xi or the Saudi de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, among many others, could not care less about what Americans think are their rights at home. The Americans or Irish or Brazilians who run afoul of the law in one of these harsh societies will find their rights circumscribed by local laws. That is not accidental: the leaders of so many societies live in terror of showing weakness that can bring ignite protests against their rule. So they invoke the rule by law, criminalising so much.
This all means any U.S. citizen needs think hard about being in those countries during periods of major bilateral tensions between Washington and the affected capitals. The Kremlin is not allowing Gershkovich the normal visits by consular officials from Embassy Moscow. Leake has been in Russia for an extended period of time so he must know about Griner’s case along with Gershkovich’s on-going struggle. Yet he stayed. It’s nice to stand on principle that one is guiltless but it also is a form of incredibly naivete. If—and I have no idea whether this has any applicability at all—Leake were indeed involved with drugs in Russia, he was downright foolish. Putin uses any and all instruments of his power to prove he is in charge.
Similarly, foreigners have been departing China for the better part of a decade but especially now. Just this weekend, a Chinese scholar questioned how the Middle Kingdom can claim to be a leader in the international community when they are so few foreigners remaining in his country. That is a most interesting observation, one I am sure led to some discomfort within the scholar’s professional circles as it implies Xi Jinping’s campaign to make foreigners unwelcome could be the wrong path. That is not a good message in contemporary China.
Two different aspects of behaviour merit consideration when abroad. One is personal behaviour which can include recognising limits on personal actions (as opposed to uninhibited entitlement to challenge any and all limits anywhere). That is what every individual overseas must consider to prevent losing one’s freedom if in an authoritarian country at some point. The Embassy can only do so much for you….
The second is not assuming the rest of the world acts like us. There are indeed nations where one can act freely short of murder, robbery, and common sense limitations (yes, I do believe there are some common sense limitations out there as I don’t think the U.S. Constitution and its Amendments guarantee everyone can do anything and everything they desire). Most of western Europe, Australia, some of Latin America, New Zealand, and a handful of other countries fit in that category along with the United States and Canada.
Beyond that list, I believe the list of places where freedoms are robust is contracting rapidly. Israel less so than a decade ago, for example, as the religious right seek to create further divisions in a society already separating Jewish and Palestinians. Modi’s India privileges Hindu nationalism but millions in that country are not Hindu, at their peril.
For many rulers, someone engaging in political opposition hardly differs from criminal activity. Too many rulers see any opposition as personally threatening rather than open, legitimate national debate.
I am not sure I’ll ever know what Leake was thinking any more than I’ll ever know whether he was trafficking drugs. I just hope that those thinking this can’t happen to them in Russia, in China, or in many other parts of the world take time to think about their options rather than solely wanting things their way. We know how it’s going here where so many people across the board grumble that the rule of law is eroding. In too many places, it was always a chimera at best.FIN