Bombay Dude
BANNED
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- Sep 11, 2011
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Here we are again. Syria’s government has killed dozens more of its own citizens and what does its old ally, Russia, do? It obstructs a substantive UN Security Council response. This has long since become all-too-predictable a story, but it also raises a fundamental question: what is Russia’s place in today’s world?
Has its government built new bridges to the west? Hardly. After the Soviet Union collapsed, US and European leaders extended a hand toward Moscow. The G7 group of industrialised democracies became the G7+1. Nato, the west’s military alliance, created a Nato-Russia joint council. Russia inherited the Soviet seat in the UN Security Council.
How has all that worked out? When many of Russia’s neighbours moved to build new ties to the west, senior Russian leaders called it an American plot to encircle their country. When US leaders announced plans for a missile defence system in eastern Europe meant to counter threats from Iran, Russian officials warned that they were really designed to paralyse Russia’s defences in advance of a western invasion.
US officials have tried to “reset” relations with Russia – to begin again in a more co-operative spirit to strengthen US-Russian ties. In March, President Obama asked (then president, now prime minister) Dmitry Medvedev to allow time to address Moscow’s missile defence fears. In May, a senior Russian general threatened pre-emptive attacks on the sites.
Nor is Russian membership in western organisations yielding positive results. The G7+1 can’t become a G8 until Russia begins to act like a mature free market democracy. It’s hard to work up much optimism on that score with Vladimir Putin claiming that recent protests in his country are choreographed by western spies and that he couldn’t make it to the latest G8 summit at Camp David because he was busy putting together his new cabinet – always a complicated chore in an authoritarian country. Putin’s absence made little difference as discussion turned to Afghanistan and the Eurozone, where Russia can’t help, and to Iran and Syria, where Russia is part of the problem.
So if its government isn’t interested in western clubs, can we classify Russia as a dynamic emerging market? Not a chance. In China, a communist party has engineered a complex, high-powered economic engine that has lifted the country from abject poverty to become the world’s second-largest economy. India has produced some of the world’s most innovative private-sector companies. Brazil is now an increasingly self-confident democracy with a well-diversified economy and a growing international profile.
Russia, by contrast, has become an authoritarian state built on (president, then prime minister, now president again) Mr Putin’s reputation as a tough guy and the export of oil, gas, other natural resources and little else. Corruption is endemic. Graft is a particular problem in most developing countries and Transparency International’s global corruption index ranks Turkey at 61, Brazil at 73 and China at 75. Russia ranks 143rd. Russian courts and judges are among the world’s most politically compromised.
In addition, much of Russia’s commercial elite still views the country as a wealth generator but not a sound long-term investment bet. Capital flight, a chronic problem, has reportedly accelerated since Mr Putin’s re-election in March and it could get much worse if the country faces any extended period of civil unrest. The country’s population is falling – because healthcare is poor, socially-driven diseases such as alcoholism rampant and because well-educated Russians are leaving in search of better opportunities elsewhere. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia inherited some 148m citizens. Today, there are fewer than 142m. UN studies have warned that the population could fall by 30 per cent over the next four decades, with obvious implications for the country’s growth trajectory and even its long-term territorial integrity (with Siberia barely populated with Russians).
Are things improving? During Russia’s most recent Potemkin election campaign, Mr Putin spent more time bragging about the stability he established during his last stint as president than any grand plans for the country’s future. Russia is also about to become less transparent as Mr Putin has formed a cabinet with reformers who may not have real power and brings administrative heavyweights on to his presidential staff. The risk is that policy will be made not in Russia’s ministries but behind closed doors inside the Kremlin.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently referred to Russia as America’s “no. 1 geopolitical foe”. That’s absurd, not because Russia isn’t increasingly antagonistic to US interests but because Russia is becoming increasingly less relevant – as a political power or as an attractive emerging market. Russia’s fellow Brics may have no interest in dismissing Moscow from their club, but the rest of us can (and should) stop speaking of Russia as if it belongs in this company.
There are those in Russia who argue that their country can become a modern European state rather than the “Eurasian nation” of Mr Putin’s dreams. These include some of the reformers around Mr Medvedev, much of the country’s urban middle class, internet and social media-savvy young people, a new generation of entrepreneurs fed up with Byzantine restrictions and regulations, intellectuals and much of the media. Members of all these groups want a democratic Russia with an innovative, modern economy driven by private-sector ingenuity, and they have taken to the streets in recent months to make themselves heard.
For the moment, the Kremlin has managed to ignore these voices, acting neither like a Bric nor a member in good standing of the G8. Washington should not make the same mistake. If US and European leaders genuinely want to build new ties with Moscow, these are the people they should be talking to.
Time to stop seeing Russia as a Bric - FT.com
Has its government built new bridges to the west? Hardly. After the Soviet Union collapsed, US and European leaders extended a hand toward Moscow. The G7 group of industrialised democracies became the G7+1. Nato, the west’s military alliance, created a Nato-Russia joint council. Russia inherited the Soviet seat in the UN Security Council.
How has all that worked out? When many of Russia’s neighbours moved to build new ties to the west, senior Russian leaders called it an American plot to encircle their country. When US leaders announced plans for a missile defence system in eastern Europe meant to counter threats from Iran, Russian officials warned that they were really designed to paralyse Russia’s defences in advance of a western invasion.
US officials have tried to “reset” relations with Russia – to begin again in a more co-operative spirit to strengthen US-Russian ties. In March, President Obama asked (then president, now prime minister) Dmitry Medvedev to allow time to address Moscow’s missile defence fears. In May, a senior Russian general threatened pre-emptive attacks on the sites.
Nor is Russian membership in western organisations yielding positive results. The G7+1 can’t become a G8 until Russia begins to act like a mature free market democracy. It’s hard to work up much optimism on that score with Vladimir Putin claiming that recent protests in his country are choreographed by western spies and that he couldn’t make it to the latest G8 summit at Camp David because he was busy putting together his new cabinet – always a complicated chore in an authoritarian country. Putin’s absence made little difference as discussion turned to Afghanistan and the Eurozone, where Russia can’t help, and to Iran and Syria, where Russia is part of the problem.
So if its government isn’t interested in western clubs, can we classify Russia as a dynamic emerging market? Not a chance. In China, a communist party has engineered a complex, high-powered economic engine that has lifted the country from abject poverty to become the world’s second-largest economy. India has produced some of the world’s most innovative private-sector companies. Brazil is now an increasingly self-confident democracy with a well-diversified economy and a growing international profile.
Russia, by contrast, has become an authoritarian state built on (president, then prime minister, now president again) Mr Putin’s reputation as a tough guy and the export of oil, gas, other natural resources and little else. Corruption is endemic. Graft is a particular problem in most developing countries and Transparency International’s global corruption index ranks Turkey at 61, Brazil at 73 and China at 75. Russia ranks 143rd. Russian courts and judges are among the world’s most politically compromised.
In addition, much of Russia’s commercial elite still views the country as a wealth generator but not a sound long-term investment bet. Capital flight, a chronic problem, has reportedly accelerated since Mr Putin’s re-election in March and it could get much worse if the country faces any extended period of civil unrest. The country’s population is falling – because healthcare is poor, socially-driven diseases such as alcoholism rampant and because well-educated Russians are leaving in search of better opportunities elsewhere. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia inherited some 148m citizens. Today, there are fewer than 142m. UN studies have warned that the population could fall by 30 per cent over the next four decades, with obvious implications for the country’s growth trajectory and even its long-term territorial integrity (with Siberia barely populated with Russians).
Are things improving? During Russia’s most recent Potemkin election campaign, Mr Putin spent more time bragging about the stability he established during his last stint as president than any grand plans for the country’s future. Russia is also about to become less transparent as Mr Putin has formed a cabinet with reformers who may not have real power and brings administrative heavyweights on to his presidential staff. The risk is that policy will be made not in Russia’s ministries but behind closed doors inside the Kremlin.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently referred to Russia as America’s “no. 1 geopolitical foe”. That’s absurd, not because Russia isn’t increasingly antagonistic to US interests but because Russia is becoming increasingly less relevant – as a political power or as an attractive emerging market. Russia’s fellow Brics may have no interest in dismissing Moscow from their club, but the rest of us can (and should) stop speaking of Russia as if it belongs in this company.
There are those in Russia who argue that their country can become a modern European state rather than the “Eurasian nation” of Mr Putin’s dreams. These include some of the reformers around Mr Medvedev, much of the country’s urban middle class, internet and social media-savvy young people, a new generation of entrepreneurs fed up with Byzantine restrictions and regulations, intellectuals and much of the media. Members of all these groups want a democratic Russia with an innovative, modern economy driven by private-sector ingenuity, and they have taken to the streets in recent months to make themselves heard.
For the moment, the Kremlin has managed to ignore these voices, acting neither like a Bric nor a member in good standing of the G8. Washington should not make the same mistake. If US and European leaders genuinely want to build new ties with Moscow, these are the people they should be talking to.
Time to stop seeing Russia as a Bric - FT.com
