Page 3 of 3 All power to Putin - not
quite By Anna Arutunyan
Kremlin's muscular policy as to its
muscular rhetoric. That rhetoric, in turn, may
actually reflect a loss of control rather than a
surge of power.
The dangers of
misinterpretation Russia is neither the
first nor the last country to be direly
misunderstood in the West. In this case what makes
Russia unique is its size and its energy
potential, and also the fact that Putin's
government still faces westward, whatever it
mumbles to
domestic television
audiences. A destabilized Russia after the 2008
elections means a destabilized world oil producer,
which has major implications for the global
economy.
The dangers of misinterpretations
are twofold. First, a weak argument often
generates an equally weak counter-argument. With
the abundance of negative spin in the Western
media, some nonconformists are apt to wax
apologetic about a Russian president who allegedly
is no more authoritarian than his US counterpart,
and to accuse the United States of judging Russia
according to double standards.
Instead of
assessing Russia on its own terms, such apologists
turn Russia's government into a mere argument in
the slew of accusations against the administration
of US President George W Bush. Neil Clark of The
Guardian writes, for instance: "Even though Putin
has acquiesced in the expansion of American
influence in the former Soviet republic, the
limited steps the Russian president has taken to
defend his country's interests have proved too
much for Washington's empire builders."
According to this argument, the first
thing to consider when joining the "current wave
of Putin-bashing" is whose cause these
"Russophobes" are serving. When dialogue comes
down to either criticizing Putin for being a
dictator or defending him for being a dictator,
there is little room left for a sober assessment
of where Russia as a whole is heading.
Second, when Western op-ed columnists call
for a tougher stance toward the Russian leadership
in advance of summits and state visits, and when
newspapers like The Guardian publish editorials
with titles like "The rise and rise of Putin
power", the signal to Western policymakers is
clear: there is much to fear from a strong Russia
with a control-freak president.
In the
end, this overestimation of the might of Putin and
the Kremlin in dictating the fate of 140 million
people obscures the very real dangers of a weak,
dilapidated Russia. Amid talk of a nation turning
into a police state, the recent ethnic clashes in
Kondopoga, rampant crime and corruption and a
demoralized army that is in the news only on the
occasion of brutal hazing incidents - all suggest
that the police have a great deal less control
over the state than either Western pundits or
Russian law-enforcement officials themselves would
like to believe.
Most important, however,
policymakers and Western businesses are themselves
unwittingly buying into a deterministic, top-down
management system for Russia - and hence
perpetuating it. The rights abuses decried by
watchdog groups and the media do exist, and Putin,
as president, inevitably takes the blame. The
problem arises, however, when this belief in the
dictatorial nature of Putin's government
translates into the belief that if he wanted to,
the Russian president could make all the "murky
murders", journalist arrests and big-business
muscling disappear. The bleak reality is that
pressuring Putin will not alleviate problems that
have other causes besides Putin himself.
Russia may indeed be using strong
rhetoric. But a sound foreign policy needs to mind
its inherent weaknesses. A government that, in the
words of Viktor Militarev, is suffering a "crisis
of corporate management", could use better
medicine than constant reminders about a
"democratic course".
If such a crisis is
indeed imminent, how can Washington help correct
it? Ironically, by understanding that the best it
can do is doing nothing at all. Russia expert
Stephen Cohen wrote in The Nation last summer, "Do
no harm! Do nothing to undermine [Russia's]
fragile stability, nothing to dissuade the Kremlin
from giving first priority to repairing the
nation's crumbling infrastructures." In his view,
it is Washington's own muscular stance in Russia's
"back yard" that has generated protectionist
rhetoric in Moscow. By continuing to meddle, the
West may just be provoking the kind of suspicious,
isolationist attitude that it is decrying.
Whatever Putin's shortcomings and the
weakness of his administration, regime change is
by far not the best option for further stability
and domestic growth in Russia. Putin's government
has made progress, however small, in rebuilding
Russia's infrastructure in his seven-year tenure.
It is hard to imagine how a more liberal and
pro-Western successor, whose top priority will be
a total overhaul of the government apparatus,
could successfully continue this process. It is
even harder to imagine how such an overhaul could
ameliorate the immediate problems of corruption
and lack of accountability.
In this sense,
foreign-sponsored non-governmental organizations
aimed at strengthening various supposedly liberal
opposition forces are at best a waste of time and
resources, and at worst a potential catalyst for
instability. Programs aimed at stimulating
Russia's internal development would do better by
de-emphasizing political opposition and
stimulating small business and grassroots
organization.
Finally, the West is
understandably worried by the perceived
isolationist tendencies of Russia. But once again,
the current gas wars reveal the complexity of
Russia's energy-driven integration.
The
recent price hike in gas supplies to Belarus - and
Europe's reaction - points to a paradoxical,
twofold problem. On the one hand, already
dependent on Russian energy, the West is dealing
with a seemingly integrated world power, a major
player that the West depends on. But on the other
hand, Russia's relations with Belarus, and their
impact, show just how incomplete the transfer from
a Soviet power to a loose confederation really
was.
We can view Russia as a bully using
its energy muscle to discipline a former
satellite. Or we can look at the conflict as a
last attempt to draw badly needed boundaries of
sovereignty and thus establish Russia's identity
by redefining relations with its former holdings.
In the latter case, whatever side is right,
self-interested meddling by outside powers will
only perpetuate Russia's long-standing, oftentimes
tragic, paradox: its constant struggle to be a
major player in the world arena at the expense of
domestic development and national identity.
FPIF contributor Anna Arutunyan
is a freelance writer and an editor at the Moscow
News.
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