Putin, Russia and Us
Time magazine named Vladimir Putin its “Person of the Year.” Although we would have chosen the U.S. military that turned the corner in Iraq this year despite the doom and gloom guys (or Gen. Petraeus, if you want just one person), we understand the choice. The question for the United States is what to make of it and what to make of Russia.
Time magazine named Vladimir Putin its “Person of the Year.” Although we would have chosen the U.S. military that turned the corner in Iraq this year despite the doom and gloom guys (or Gen. Petraeus, if you want just one person), we understand the choice. The question for the United States is what to make of it and what to make of Russia.
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Clinton administration treated Russia the same way it treated the countries of Central Europe and Central Asia – as a victim of communism and a new entry into the world of democracies. It was a mistake of colossal proportions. Russia, historically an imperialist power, had occupied the countries of the Warsaw Pact and swallowed the Baltic States, Ukraine and the Stans, imposing both communism and Russification on captive populations. Unlike Estonia, Czechoslovakia (then) or Poland, which emerged in the 1990s as triumphant survivors, Russia emerged a humiliated, rejected and diminished former power.
Internal conditions in Russia had deteriorated under the last decade of communism (demographers reported diseases such as diphtheria, which the West hadn’t seen in decades, as well as rampant tuberculosis and alcohol-related diseases). In the post-communist period, salaries and pensions were not paid, inefficient industries threw people out of work, the network of imports and exports collapsed. There was rising crime at home and an ugly war in Chechnya, and the rapid influx of Western media and entertainment all diminished the Russian sense of self and history.
Enter Putin. Chechnya is quiet (the dead are rarely noisy), pensions are back, and the ruble is stable (enhanced by the West’s need for oil and natural gas, which Russia has in abundance). In foreign affairs, Putin has put the United States on notice. Arms sales in the Arab world, trade and dialogue with Iran including a recently announced shipment of nuclear fuel to Bushehr, obstructionism in the UN, meeting Hamas leadership Moscow, manipulating natural gas shipments through Ukraine to Western Europe, membership in the Asian Six Party Talks and the Middle East Quartet all announce Russia’s return as a player.
The price for stability, economic progress and foreign policy clout was the radical diminution of democracy, free markets and free presses. None of these were historically important to the Russian people, however. Putin is “Person of the Year” because Russia is back and the Russian people like it and him. Not democratic, not necessarily our friend – and not necessarily our enemy – just back and demanding its due.
How America responds is crucial.
Our immediate foreign policy concerns are to stem radical Islamist terrorism; to prevent the rise of a nuclear Iran; to watch warily the emergence of China; to protect our friends and allies; to enhance consensual government, human rights and individual freedoms (not to be confused with spreading “democracy” through phony elections). Some are congruent with Russia’s interests; some are not. This, then, simply adds a requirement for the continual realistic engagement of Russia as the power and potential obstructionist that it is, not the fictional victim of communism or permanent enemy of the West that some would make it.