City Pride

Every so often a musical group produces a song that is a fitting homage to a city. I think the Lemons on their most recent album have done this with their song "1983...1986" which is a light tribute to Mongolia's city. The video is particularly fun for its historical footage of Ulaanbaatar before the frenetic and unfettered development of the last two decades. An idyllic reminiscence of much simpler times gone by.



It is easy to sometimes forget that Ulaanbaatar has a storied past as a crossroads and cosmopolitan destination for Eurasian explorers, travelers, merchants, and spiritual pilgrims. Recently the ACMS library purchased a book that was published in 2006 in commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of the founding of the Great Mongol State. It is a fairly thorough photographic and pictorial history of the city, and includes some amazing archival pictures such as the dedication ceremony of the Sukhbaatar statue on Sukhbaatar Square when the square was an huge open patch of dirt and there was no parliament building. The photos are supplemented with passages describing different aspects of the city's development overtime, which for those unaware, has been going on for 370 years! I would encourage anyone with curiosity about Ulaanbaatar's history to stop by the center and look at the book. It is also available at Internom bookstore at the unbelievable price of 30,000MNT.

Ulaanbaatar can be an eyesore much of the year, but with the budding of spring leaves on the trees the city is becoming greener by the day. The Lemons song, the book, and the reemergence of natural colors outside the center windows does remind me that for all its faults Ulaanbaatar is a unique city that each citizen can find pride in. It is a 370 year work in progress, and, for all its supposed isolation, it has certainly never been a utterly boring place to live.

Hidden Gobi

As part of a weekend trip out to eastern Umnugovi Aimag with friends from Khankhongor Soum, the school driver from Khanbogd Soum (a mutual friend) led our group out to an interesting geological formation about 30km from the soum center. He emphasized to me several times that few people knew about the place, and everyone in the Khankhongor contingent confirmed this by repeating several times they had never even heard of the place let alone had visited it previously.

I am not a geologist, so I could only marvel at the site and wonder how it was formed. The rock looked like a cross between granite and crystalline concrete. It was very rough and it easily broke under modest pressure. It looked as though the rock formed initially under a sedimentary process, and then later the area was shaped by some sort of erosive force. I was compelled based on intuition and knowledge barely remembered from a geology class I took over ten years ago in college to think that it formed under the influence of water. It had several hallmarks of water erosion, especially pock marks born into the sides of boulders. But, that would suggest that a very large sea or other body of water with currents was present at the location at some point in its history, and I am not sure if there was such a body of water in the Gobi. The hypothesis therefore has an obvious flaw, and I remain ignorant of the true cause of the formations.

If there are any geologists out there reading this with ideas, please do offer comments. It was a truly interesting place.

The Other "Tolgoi"

Over the weekend I made a trip out to the eastern part of Umnugovi Aimag with my wife and a group of friends from Khankhongor Soum. Along the way we stopped at Tavan Tolgoi which is Mongolia's fantastically huge coal deposit and the other "tolgoi" after Oyu Tolgoi (the copper and gold mine near Khanbogd Soum). It was an impressive sight to behold. It was a large open pit mining operation, and although it is not even close to working at full capacity, it was amazing to see the amount of trucks coming and going from the pit. We were all greatly impressed by the size and potential scale of the project.

A few kilometers down the road we were flagged down by reporters from Channel 25 who were interviewing truck drivers and people like us about the conditions around the mine and on the road. Listening to our driver talk with the reporters I got a new sense of the uneasiness that regular people feel about the mining agreements at Tavan Tolgoi and Oyu Tolgoi. In particular when asked about the large trucks coming and going from the mine site tearing up the jeep trail used to go from the aimag center to the Chinese border, he made the comment that it was a bit frightening because the trucks were large, wipping up dangerous amounts of dust and he didn't know who the drivers were--Are they Mongolian or not? Who do they work for? Where do they come from and where do they go?

These questions struck me as reflecting a much larger worry of average people. Seeing the shear size of the Tavan Tolgoi mine site one is almost awestruck by it. So much mineral wealth. And, yet, where is it going? Who is going to reap the benefits of that wealth? Is it a very large fraud on ordinary people? If you don't even know who the drivers are, how can you know who the people making the real money are?

Of course, there are answers to these questions if one goes looking for them, but that is not what most people do. Instead in the absence of information people worry and they let their imaginations take control of what they know from experience. In Mongolia this is a particularly unproductive and insidious thing to happen. Owen Lattimore described the following in his book "Nomads and Commissars" (Oxford Press 1962) in a chapter entitled "Autonomous Mongolia: Years of Frustration" when referring to the forces that led to that nationalist movement that eventually became the socialist movement in the 1930s and 40s:

The people felt that every time there was a deal over national autonomy, over debts to Chinese merchants, over anything at all, there was also a sell-out. The big fellows came out of it with new titles, emoluments, and stipends. Then they turned around and wanted more taxes and special contributions from the people to pay for it all. They incited ordinary Mongols to massacre and beat up Chinese merchants and money-lenders, and burn their account books, but that just put the big fellows in a position to say to the Chinese, later, "Well, forget about my personal debt and I'll help you to collect the rest." (pg. 65)

There are some unsettling parallels between that passage and the present situation in Mongolia. One almost feels that it could be written today with "Chinese merchant" replaced by "mining conglomerate." It makes one think of the old adage the more things change the more they stay the same.

It is a real concern that ordinary people do not trust anyone to make the proper decision regarding the mineral wealth of the country whether it be Mongolia's political leaders or the people negotiating the mining deals for the multi-national corporations. I always understood that in an academic and abstract way, but seeing Tavan Tolgoi for the first time made me feel first hand a sense of the real worry that ordinary people have. It is the same feeling you get when you sense that a trick is being played on you. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and Mongolia loses its best chance at accumulating real wealth because people at the top are playing a game.

It is easy to become cynical and read into these feelings that nothing good can come of all this, as if the sentiment that the rich get richer; etc, is the only alternative. The mining agreements have been painfully slow to move towards fruition. On the one hand, this could mean that the "big fellows" are just trying to position themselves to become even wealthier at the expense of everyone else. On the other hand, it might mean that the worries of ordinary people like my driver to eastern Umnugovi are actually having an influence on the process. A third option is that both are occurring with a whole lot of other political machinations in between which makes the whole thing one big Gordian knot. Whatever it is, it is certainly not easy.

Mongolia and Conservatism in the US

Over the weekend I was finishing up Robert P. Newman's "Owen Lattimore and the 'Loss' of China" (UC Press 1992), and I came across the following passage:

Sokolsky reviewed the "great power of Ghengis [sic] Khan, which in the 13th Century conquered China and conquered much of Europe, east of Germany. It held Russia for a prolonged period. It held India and the Mongol Empire in India. It is Mongolia which is being revived as a power in this attempt to force upon the world the United Nations. This peril which is really greater than one imagines because, to us, the name Mongolia hardly means anything anymore and yet, out of that desert land has come this great power which at one time dominated much of the world and which can do it again if armed and given the direction and guidance that could lead to that. This, then, is our peril at the time." (pg. 507)

The passage is a transcript from a radio broadcast on ABC July 16, 1961 in which conservative columnist George Sokolsky was reacting to news that Owen and Eleanor Lattimore were in the People's Republic of Mongolia on a study tour at the same time the Kennedy administration was exploring the possibility of diplomatically recognizing Mongolia. According to Newman, a firestorm was unleashed by the coincidence of these two events among ultraconservatives, causing people like Sokolsky to make fatuous comments like the one above. Surely only the truly ignorant and uneducated at the time would have accepted the recognition of Mongolia as first step in reviving the Mongol Empire under the auspices of the United Nations?

Yet, these sorts of musings unfettered by reality and basic research seem to still find their way into conservative media in the United States. The above passage reminded me of a full page ad printed last year in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) by Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) expressing real and immediate concern that Mongolia was backsliding in its commitment to protect private property rights and democracy, implying that it was moving down a path ideologically hostile to the foreign policy of the US. True, the ad was not an editorial, so it did not necessarily represent the views of the newspaper. But, WSJ still printed the ad, which called for punitive action against Mongolia in the form of removing its Millennium Challenge Account funds if progress was not made in its allegedly deteriorating record of upholding the rights of private businessmen.

I believe the very same week an article was printed in the Washington Times painting Mongolia as a significant player in a worldwide sea born smuggling ring of illicit materials to rogue states. The Times article is an amusing read because it comes across as a similar attempt to Sokolsky's passage above to construct a conspiracy from one's readers' active imaginations without reference to common sense or basic fact. I do not contest that Mongolian ships have occasionally been used for nefarious purposes (I have not researched this, so it could be true), but taking it to the level of geo-political maneuvering sort of defies logic. I would not be surprised to learn that 9 in 10 Mongolians and an equal ratio of parliamentarians are unaware that Mongolia even has a maritime fleet. It is more likely a criminal matter than a geo-political matter. The government can hardly enforce the traffic laws in Ulaanbaatar, should we be surprised that it is unable to control who flies the Mongolian flag on international waters on occasion? The argument in the editorial seems very far fetched and construed to support a particular agenda.

This entry is not intended to be a survey of US conservative views on Mongolia but rather a reflection on historical and modern examples of the strange views on Mongolia that can make their way into print in the US. It is altogether possible that liberal outlets also have an odd predilection to present fantasy about the situation in Mongolia, but so far I have only seen the really weird stuff come from the right. It makes one wonder what the fascination with Mongolia is and why there is little effort to actually do even the most rudimentary research to support conjectures about the country. The simple answer probably involves the desires of business interests seeking to reap profits or ideologues seeking to promote particular beliefs in a world that matches that which is invented for the pages of newspapers. Understanding reality, in the case of Mongolia's reality, may not be nearly as attractive for those particular people. It's not exactly mass denial or outright lying but rather a wishful attempt to use the power of argument to bend reality to conform to the requisites of one's own agenda.

One conclusion that I have come to from reading Newman's book is that Owen Lattimore's biggest crime was actually doing research (e.g. learning local languages and customs and interviewing regular people in Inner Asia) and then reporting the truth back to power. One can see recent parallels in other geo-political hot spots in the world in which prominent people have suggested listening, showing empathy, doing field research, and reporting the truth about people who inhabit those areas to make better policy decisions. When there is big money involved, though, it is fair to surmise that it is easy for people with active imaginations to paint a picture they want policy makers and the public to believe is true. It does make one pause and consider that with $100 billion worth of copper and gold sitting in the Gobi Desert, it behooves everyone--Mongolians and foreigners with a vested interest in Mongolia alike--to be educated about the basic facts of the world and Mongolia's own history. Otherwise, even ideas as ludicrous as Sokolsky's above or the Washington Times editorialist's can potentially gain traction in the absence of credible and forceful arguments based on facts and reality.

Complain and Ye Shall Receive

This weekend I was pleasantly surprised to find that the stretch of the Selbe river between the US Embassy and Sky Center was cleaned up. All the trash was collected in piles and burned, and even the shrub brush was cleared. There was still a lot of plastic in the water, but overall the river was relatively clean. I am sorry I missed the actual cleaning, because I would have liked to have seen how many people it involved. Needless to say, it was a victory for the "nature"-lovers among us city-dwellers. Many thanks to whatever city officials or concerned citizens group orchestrated the clean-up effort.

Re-evaluating Chinggis Khaan

Dr. Rossabi gave his lecture yesterday evening entitled: Recent Re-Evaluations of Chinggis Khaan and Khubilai Khan. Before the lecture the School of Foreign Service at the National University of Mongolia conferred on him the title of "Honary Doctor" and presented him with a doctoral robe, medal, and diploma. It was a well attended event with more than 60 people.

If anyone expected Dr. Rossabi to pull punches during his lecture out of deference to the occasion, they were proven wrong. He gave a rather candid reassessment of his book Khubilai Khan and the recent deification and "vulgarization," as he put it, of the popular image of Chinggis Khaan. It was a brave position to take given the politics involved, but he expressed his concern about exalting the positives of the Mongol Empire and attempting to conceal the negatives of the Mongol conquests. Noting that, of course, this is a response in some respect to a long history in the West of portraying the Mongols unfairly, still he insisted that honest and factual examinations of history are of paramount importance in scholarly research. The facts indicate that there were positives and negatives associated with the Mongol conquests of Eurasia.

It was not an easy argument to make, especially in Mongolia. It made me think of someone standing in front of a group of Americans and suggesting that the way forward in truly understanding American history is accepting, even embracing, the uncomfortable facts about slavery. For many people that would be tantamount to heresy, and in Mongolia suggesting that Chinggis Khaan was a great leader but he was also a ruthless and brutal leader can be very dangerous, indeed. I think Dr. Rossabi was making a very trenchant observation about the need for all people to embrace both the positives and negatives of their history in order to give lasting resilience and credibility to the image that is presented to the rest of the world. Americans who ignore the legacy of slavery risk being branded hypocrites on issues of human rights, and Mongolians who ignore the brutality of the Mongol conquests risk having people not believe the factual positives of Mongol rule.

Dr. Rossabi also added that in re-evaluating Mongolian history, he is somewhat troubled by the fact that other great Mongolians are often neglected in the national consciousness. Mongolian currency, for example, has images of Chinggis Khaan and Sukhbaatar, but not of Natsagdorj, Zanabazar, or others. But, at the same time, he said it was understandable because Chinggis Khaan and Sukhbaatar are Mongolia's great generals, and other countries also find it hard to give space to leaders of the arts and sciences. Hero worship of military leaders is a common phenomenon around the world. I remember the first time I saw a German 5 Mark bill and it had a portrait of Carl Friedrich Gauss. I was impressed to see a mathematician receiving such an honor. But, maybe Germany is one place generals are best left unremembered. In the rest of the world we have a tendency to measure greatness in terms of conquest of the physical environment as opposed to the human mind.

Overall the lecture was enjoyable, most especially for Dr. Rossabi's candid thoughts. He certainly elicited numerous questions at the end of the lecture which poured into the reception afterwards. Congratulations to you Dr. Rossabi for your award and thank you for an informative lecture.

Dr. Morris Rossabi to Give Lecture

Dr. Morris Rossabi of City University of New York and author of numerous books on Khubilai Khan and the Yuan Dynasty will be giving a lecture entitled "Recent Re-evaluations of Chinggis Khan and Khubilai Khan" at the ACMS Speaker Series this week April 23rd, 2009 at 5pm. The National University will also confer an honorary doctorate on Dr. Rossabi before the lecture for his contributions to the understanding of Mongolian history. The lecture is open to the public, and will take place in Room 305 of National University of Mongolia Building No. 5. Hope to see you there.