Internal crisis shapes Putin's
foreign policy By Pavel
Felgenhauer
The Moscow Center of Strategic
Studies (CSS) - an influential think tank led by
well-known economist, former parliamentarian and
first deputy economics minister in Vladimir
Putin's first government, Mikhail Dmitriev - has
recently published a report about the ongoing
political and economic crisis in Russia. According
to sociological research conducted via focus
groups, the vast majority of urban-based
populations in all regions of Russia demand
change.
The emerging middle class in
Moscow and several other major cities is demanding
an independent and non-corrupt judiciary and law
enforcement, free speech, and political rights,
while the less educated and lower earning masses
are more concerned with economic issues, as well
as the availability of social services.
Still, the protest agendas of the middle
class and the broader
Russian masses largely
coincide: the corrupt police force and crony
judicial system cause overall revulsion. Russians
are fed up with Putin and his cohorts monopolizing
political and economic power. There is a growing
urge to see new actors with new ideas in power.
The number of loyal "Putinites" in Russia is
dramatically dwindling, while a critical mass of
devoted anti-Putin activists has emerged primarily
in Moscow.
The CSS report predicts that
the internal political, social and economic crisis
will increasingly influence Putin's foreign
policy, foreseeing attempts to "compensate
internal political failures with populist foreign
policy actions." Russian foreign policy may turn
into an appendix of internal political troubles,
becoming "less realistic and increasingly
indoctrinated".
Instead of pragmatically
pursuing Russia's long-term national interests,
Putin's Kremlin seems bent on pigheadedly
confronting the United States on almost any global
or regional issue, guessing that the Russian
public will approve. The Kremlin is attempting to
paint the pro-democracy movement in Russia as a
Western (American) plot and part of a global
anti-Russian conspiracy.
Riot police
officers from a special anti-riot OMON unit from
Voronezh (a city south of Moscow) were deployed in
Moscow last month and brutally attacked
pro-democracy protesters. They later told
journalists that their own commanders and special
"anti-extremist" Interior Ministry agents briefed
them in advance about Western spies financing the
opposition. The officers believe that Western-paid
agents were deployed in the streets of Moscow to
provoke trouble. It is possible Putin himself
believes this narrative. Putin's return to the
Kremlin early this year could have been expected
to make Russian foreign policy more aggressive and
assertive. But what is happening at present seems
to be more than anyone predicted, as demonstrated
by the increasingly erratic, aggressive and
irrational stand on Syria. Reports have been
circulating for some time about a possible
deployment of Russian combat troops in Syria. In
recent days, rumors originating in Russia and
abroad have alleged Russian marines and warships
were already sailing to Syria or were imminently
ready to sail. The reports were denied by
authorities, then partially or unofficially
confirmed, and then denied again.
The
semi-official Iranian Fars news agency reported
that joint military exercises involving some
90,000 troops, 400 warplanes and 1,000 tanks from
Iran, Russia, China and Syria would be held on
Syrian territory and in coastal waters. An armada
of Chinese, Russian and Iranian warships,
including nuclear submarines and an "aircraft
carrier," would be deployed.
The Russian
semi-official news agency Interfax immediately
reprinted the report and without questioning its
validity added, quoting sources in the Russian
navy, that a major landing ship, Kaliningrad, from
the Baltic Fleet together with similar vessels,
Nikolai Filchenkov and the Tsezar Kunikov, from
the Black Sea Fleet were prepared to imminently
sail with marines on board to the Russian naval
base in the Syrian port of Tartus to "defend
Russian citizens and infrastructure".
After some hesitation, the Russian Navy
denied entirely the report of the planned
exercises or that the landing ships with marines
were on their way to Syria. An advisor of the
Iranian president, who was visiting Moscow,
Bouthaina Shabaan, told journalists the reports of
joint military exercises were "false and
provocative". The official Russian government
daily accused the West of waging an "information
war" against Russia and China by spreading false
rumors about an imminent military deployment in
Syria to prepare grounds for a Western military
intervention. A day passed and another seemingly
reliable daily, quoting "two sources in Russia's
power ministries," reported that the Navy and
"other power departments" were preparing for "a
campaign in Syria".
Plans were being
prepared for a possible deployment of troops to
help evacuate Russian military personnel and
citizens from the naval base in Tartus and from
Syria in general. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
is quoted as putting the number of Russian
citizens and members of families of Russian women
married to Syrians at some 100,000.
Russia's only aircraft carrier, Admiral
Kuznetsov, is not ready for action, and the
landing ships, Nikolai Filchenkov and
Tsezar Kunikov, cannot carry more that
several hundred marines and a handful of pieces of
armor. The deputy chief of the Russian Air Force,
General Vladimir Gradusov, told journalists that
"if ordered by Putin" the Air Force would provide
cover for the Russian ships sent to Syria and help
to evacuate Russians. However, the mission may
turn out to be difficult, since Russia lacks air
bases in the region or a deployable aircraft or
helicopter carrier. North Atlantic Treaty
Organization nations, including Turkey, may decide
to close their air space to Russian military
flights, making things worse.
Russia's
stubborn defense of the crumbling and bloody
Bashar al-Assad regime has long been puzzling
observers as irrational and damaging to Russia's
long-term interests in the Arab and Muslim world,
while infuriating the West. A deployment of a
limited military contingent alongside Assad's
forces under the pretext of defending Russian
citizens (the same pretext was used to invade
Georgia in 2008) could surely further worsen the
situation.
Of course, the rationale of
such actions may indeed be internal: to boost
nationalistic passions by openly confronting the
West and, possibly, splitting the opposition
protest movement's leftist, nationalistic and
liberal wings. Such a foreign policy, based
primarily on internal political considerations, is
highly risky; it could easily drag Russia into an
overseas conflict that it is not prepared to fight
or win.
The prospect of bringing into
Russia some 100,000 refuges from Syria (if
Lavrov's figures are true) could cause
insurmountable political, social and economic
problems. Russian leaders may be in deep doubt as
to how to proceed, which may explain the on again,
off again nature of the presumed Syrian
deployment.
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