...Russia should be given a new chance, but only after Putin has
departed. Russia is no enemy of the west; Vladimir Putin is.

Putin's last stand
Anders Aslund

March 29, 2008 5:00 PM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/anders_aslund/2008/03/putins_last_st
and.html

On April 2-4, Nato will hold its summit in Bucharest, the capital of its
new member, Romania. Incredibly, Nato has invited its fiercest critic,
Russian president Vladimir Putin, to attend. For the first time since
2002, he will. His presence is an embarrassment to Nato, but an even
greater disgrace for Russia.

The two biggest issues in Bucharest will be whether to invite Albania,
Croatia, and Macedonia to join Nato, and whether to offer applications
to Ukraine and Georgia to start so-called "membership action plans".
These questions should be decided by Nato's members, not outsiders.

In February 2007, Putin, in an anti-western tirade delivered in Munich,
declared: "I think it is obvious that Nato expansion does not have any
relation with the modernisation of the alliance itself or with ensuring
security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation
that reduces the level of mutual trust."

So Putin's views about Nato are clear. He will scandalise the summit by
seeking to intimidate the former Soviet clients in the room.

Such an aggressive attitude benefits a country's foreign policy only up
to a point - one that Putin passed long ago. Initially, he acted as an
able diplomat and accommodator, but since his Munich speech, Putin has
begun uniting the west against Russia.

In his speech on May 9, 2007, commemorating Russia's victory in the
second world war, Putin compared the United States with Nazi Germany:
"We have a duty to remember that the causes of any war lie above all in
the mistakes and miscalculations of peacetime, and that these causes
have their roots in an ideology of confrontation and extremism.

"It is all the more important that we remember this today, because these
threats are not becoming fewer, but are only transforming and changing
their appearance. These new threats, just as under the Third Reich, show
the same contempt for human life and the same aspiration to establish an
exclusive dictate over the world."

Serious politicians do not speak like that. These are the rants of
Putin's few remaining friends - Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Iran's Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, and Belarus's Alyaksandr Lukashenka. At home, awareness is
rising that Putin is damaging Russia's interests by insulting and
intimidating everybody. He is isolating his country among the world's
pariahs; worse yet, he has achieved little.

When Putin became president in 2000, he named accession to the World
Trade Organisation as his foreign policy priority. He failed, because he
gave in to petty protectionist interests, imposing a timber embargo
against Finland and Sweden, a fish embargo against Norway, and various
agricultural embargos against Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and
others.

Russia's foreign policy is focused on the interests of its
state-dominated corporations, notably Gazprom, which has concluded
agreements with many foreign countries and companies for monopolistic
deliveries. But a Gazprom pipeline typically costs three times as much
per kilometer as a similar western pipeline, because of "leakage"
(kickbacks and waste). The primary purpose of Russia's foreign policy
seems to be to tap Russia's state companies for the benefit of Kremlin
officials.

But customers do not trust suppliers who cut deliveries, raise prices
unpredictably, expropriate competitors, and let production decrease in
the way Gazprom and Russia's other state companies have done. As a
result, Russia's gas exports to Europe have started declining.

Putin's foreign policy also is evidently intended to whip up populist
chauvinism. Beating up on foreigners may boost his authoritarian rule,
but this, too, has a price. Not only the US and Europe, but all former
Soviet republics feel alienated by Putin's aggressive tactics. Many are
seeking to shield themselves from Russia's capricious embargos - for
example, by seeking alternative energy supplies.

Arguably, Russia has improved its relations with China under Putin, but
at the cost of acceding to China's demands for two big disputed islands
over which the two countries fought in 1969. Putin's apparent aim was to
secure financing for Rosneft's purchase of the Yugansk oil field, which
was part of the Yukos confiscation. Yet China, too, is wary of Putin,
and has been sending warm signals to leaders of former Soviet republics,
such as Ukraine's Yuliya Tymoshenko.

Russia's nationalists are also outraged by Putin's foreign policy,
because it has alienated former Soviet republics and weakened Russia's
military. The nationalist Council for National Strategy published a
devastating report on the decay of Russia's military under Putin.
Russian military procurement, it claims, has plummeted. For example,
only three new military aircraft have been purchased since 2000.

True, armaments costs have risen sharply, but only because Putin's KGB
friends, who monopolise weapons production, have stolen inordinate
amounts. Yet, despite this spending shortfall, Putin seems obsessed with
making pointless and provocative gestures, such as resuming long-range
nuclear bomber flights off the American coast.

In the early 1990's, many westerners and Russians wanted Russia to
become a full-fledged member of both the European Union and Nato, on the
condition that Russia became a full-fledged democracy. Unfortunately,
the west never made that offer, and Russian democracy went astray.

Russia should be given a new chance, but only after Putin has departed.
Russia is no enemy of the west; Vladimir Putin is.


In cooperation with Project Syndicate, 2008.