With the pundits questioning the next Washington
administration’s ability to handle the reborn aggressive and
demanding Russia, the Putin/Medvedev junta has made clear their
intentions. President (pro-tem) Dmitry Medvedev has defiantly said,
“We’re not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a new Cold
War.”
The Russian leaders really don’t care who is running the United
States. They are committed to getting their country once again
recognized as a political equal to America — thus again a true
international power. Vladimir Putin, ever the tough guy, will
challenge John McCain, the fighter jock, or alternatively will have
his acolyte Medvedev intellectualize and con Barack Obama. They
have it all clearly figured out.
In the meantime Putin has taken the traditional Czarist position
of building support within the armed forces. Invading Georgia was a
gift preceded by several years of massive materiel buildup and
promotions at key positions from non-coms to field grade officers.
No longer does the former security chief have to rely solely on his
ex-KGB siloviki. Obviously Putin believes a happy army is
a Russian leader’s best friend, even if he has the intelligence
services in hand.
Putin has persisted in pursuing the line that Washington was
behind the entire Georgian situation. He posed the sarcastic
question during a recent CNN interview when asked about the U.S.
role: “Why seek a difficult compromise solution in the peacekeeping
process? It’s easier [for the U.S.] to arm one of the sides and
provoke it into killing another side…and the job is done.”
Apparently the Kremlin’s effort to shift the ultimate
responsibility for the Russian invasion of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia to being a response to American aggression has not worked
with China or the other central Asian summit members meeting in
Tajikistan. This group of former Soviet republics plus China
refused to support Medvedev’s personal plea for approval of the
Russian action in Georgia nor approve of Moscow’s decision to
recognize the independence of the two breakaway territories.
The concept of supporting claims for independence by regions
ethnically different from the central government is clearly
inconsistent with China’s own policy. More importantly, however,
Russia had failed in its effort to put a benign face on what was an
obvious power play to exert Moscow’s authority in the post-Soviet
environment.
The Putin/Medvedev thought process appears to be to gain
leverage over that group of former Soviet republics and contiguous
states that they refer to as the “near abroad.” By not granting
such suzerainty, the Western nations are said to have insulted and,
to use Putin’s own term, sought to humiliate the post-Soviet
Russia. Imperial Russia lives in the hearts of all those recent
ex-communists.
That is the crux of the matter. Russia still yearns for the days
of the Czars, and most particularly the successful ones. St.
Petersburg is named that for a reason. Of course the average
citizen doesn’t want the exploitation that was part and parcel of
the past authoritarian regimes, communist or czarist. But they do
revere, and follow, the strong leader, even if he is heading an
autocratic government.
Democracy for Putin and his team of born-again disciples means
using the devices of the electoral system to manipulate government
so as to remain forever in power. It is not a unique bastardization
of the democratic process, but the post-Soviet Russians really
caught on quickly. The problem is that their apologists blithely
characterize the Russian application as not much different from
what goes on elsewhere.
Killing and “disappearing” journalists, assassination of
dissident former security officials and ethnic leaders,
imprisonment for oligarchs unwilling to turn their criminal gains
over to the government’s preferred criminal oligarchs are the sine
qua non of the “reformist” Putin/Medvedev regime. These are typical
incidents in a nation that pretends its misfortunes are all a
result of the humiliation heaped on them by the West following the
fall of their beloved and misunderstood communist empire.
The next American administration is going to have to deal with
an increasingly paranoiac Russia as it oil production, which
desperately needs substantial new investment, begins to
deteriorate. Russia’s corrupt bureaucracy and exploitive commercial
taxation have made foreign investment and needed technical
assistance in Russia’s energy sector increasingly questionable.
Medvedev, as the former chairman of the gas giant Gazprom, knows
well the government has been killing the goose that laid the golden
egg. Putin’s pretense to political sovereignty over any state with
Russian ethnic minorities (e.g. Baltic States, Ukraine, etc.)
further endangers Russia’s investment attraction.
The next American administration will have to deal with a Russia
under stress. The bear will be growling.
