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Bloomberg Businessweek September 30, 2019ONE MORNING IN JULY, MONGOLIA’S PRESIDENT, BATTULGA
Khaltmaa, prepared to take the podium at the National Sports
Stadium in Ulaanbaatar. He was there to officially open the
traditional summer festival of Naadam, during which virtually
everyone in the country of 3 million celebrates feats of archery,
wrestling, and especially horsemanship. Riding has been cen-
tral to the national culture since the 13th century, when a tribal
leader named Genghis Khan united a disparate group of steppe
clans and conquered much of Eurasia.
A champion martial artist in his youth, Battulga is squat
and powerful, with a thickly muscled neck and ears slightly
squashed from years of grappling. He wore a dark fedora,
leather riding boots, and a wine-colored deel—a fancy version
of a traditional herder’s robe—cinched at the waist with a broad
sash. As he awaited his turn to speak, two teams of riders in red-
and-blue uniforms performed an impressive display of coordi-
nated dismounts. After remounting their steeds in one swift
movement, they tore away for a lap around the stadium, a rush-
ing eddy of pointed helmets and bouncing tails.
Battulga stepped to the mic. “Genghis Khan, the great lord
and our beloved forefather,” he said, “your horses are agile, the
strapping wrestlers are adept, and the archers are well-aimed.”
Naadam, he proclaimed, “is an occasion that makes each and
every one of us understand the essence of being a true Mongol.”
The great Khan, Mongolia’s official national hero and a man
Battulga so reveres that he constructed a 130-foot-tall statue of
him, was the most feared leader of his era. His forces killed mil-
lions, many in mass beheadings, as they tore across the conti-
nent. Hardly a model democrat, in other words. Yet for most of
the past three decades the country that glorifies him has been
considered a star pupil of the West. European and U.S. leaders
praise Mongolia as an oasis of liberty and capitalism, blessed
with abundant mineral reserves, a young, worldly population,
and a fervent desire to chart a path apart from its powerful
neighbors, Russia and China.This perception has elevated Mongolia in the minds of
foreign investors, notably Rio Tinto Plc, which is counting on
the giant Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold project in the far reaches
of the Gobi Desert, one of the world’s most ambitious min-
ing developments, for much of its future growth. But though
Mongolians have undoubtedly benefited from capitalism—gross
domestic product per head has risen tenfold since 1994—polls
indicate that many are deeply frustrated, believing their coun-
try’s mineral wealth has been stolen by outsiders. This sen-
timent fueled an explosion of anti-establishment anger that
brought Battulga, a populist businessman, to power in 2017.
Under him, Mongolia’s trajectory has shifted. Battulga has
cozied up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and earlier this
year he ignited a political crisis by getting legislation passed that
gives him the effective power to fire judges and top law enforce-
ment figures. He promptly used it to remove a range of judi-
cial officials—a move he cast as necessary to fight corruption
and preserve the long-term health of the country’s democracy.
“Mongolians are very loyal to the decision to have a democratic
political system,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek.
Although Mongolia’s reserves of copper, gold, iron ore, and
rare earths make it an attractive partner for the U.S. and its
allies, it’s been arguably more important to them as an exam-
ple. Situated in an otherwise unbroken arc of authoritarian-
ism extending from the South China Sea to Central Europe, the
country rebuts the notion that some parts of the world aren’t
suited to liberal values. As Battulga consolidates his position,
though, some Mongolians are asking whether they can remain
an exception. Oases do, after all, have a way of drying up.THE IMMEDIATE FOREBEAR OF MODERN MONGOLIA, THE
Mongolian People’s Republic, was nominally independent,
but in practice it was a Soviet client state. It began collapsing
in early 1990, after student protesters thronged the center of
Ulaanbaatar. Within months there were multiparty elections,
some of the first in the former
communist bloc. An economic
backwater even by Soviet stan-
dards, Mongolia switched to
market capitalism virtually over-
night, leaving many people dis-
oriented but creating enormous
opportunities for those with
the instincts or connections to
take advantage.
Battulga was among the lat-
ter. Raised in a tough neighbor-
hood on the capital’s outskirts,
he distinguished himself in the
1980s as a competitor in sambo,
a martial art favored by the
Soviet Red Army. Competing
abroad gave him opportuni-
ties to import luxuries such as
denim and VHS cassettes, and
when the Iron Curtain fell he
Riders compete during NaadamINJINAASH BOR