When President George W. Bush gazed into the eyes of Vladimir Putin during their
first encounter in June 2001 and claimed to discover a friend he could trust,
the Russian leader probably never told him about his scorn for Western- style
democracy. Now that Putin is clamping down on dissent, solidifying his control
over his country’s oil and gas resources and destabilizing his neighbors, the
United States and its European allies are waking up to the fact that Russia’s
relations with the West still pose one of history’s unsolved problems.
Russia’s slide toward authoritarian rule has raised all sorts of questions about
its membership in the select circle of industrial democracies and its plans to
host the next Group of Eight (G8) summit in Saint Petersburg. Senator John
McCain, the Republican Senator from Arizona who is a leading candidate to
succeed Bush as president, has called on the United States and its allies to
boycott the summit as a sign of their displeasure at Putin’s crude consolidation
of power. Diplomatically, Russia’s relations with the European Union are at
their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, especially now that the union
includes Poland and the Baltic states. But as Bush and other Western leaders
weigh their options, they are finding that their idealistic notions about
promoting democracy do not measure up to the need to do business with tyrants in
order to defend their security interests.
Washington recognizes that it will require Russia’s cooperation on a number of
key fronts: preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and fissile materials,
taking a tough stand by the United Nations in halting weapons programs in Iran
and North Korea, and curbing the tide of Islamic radicalism. For Germany and
other European countries, Russia’s role as key supplier of oil and gas makes
Putin a vital strategic partner who cannot be ignored or antagonized.
Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took office last autumn with a much
more skeptical attitude toward Putin than her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, has
tempered her stance and recognized that she has no other choice than to embrace
Putin. Germany is Europe’s biggest importer of Russian gas, and its dependency
on it will rise if Germany carries out plans to phase out its nuclear power
plants by 2020. Her need to do business with Russia in this sphere may help
explain German reluctance to back any significant increase in the European
Commission’s authority in developing and policing a common energy policy for the
European Union.
In Merkel’s talks with Putin in Siberia in April, a deal was announced giving
the German chemical company, BASF, access to a Russian gas field. In return,
Gazprom, the giant Russian utility, will hold shares in a German gas
distribution company (a subsidiary of BASF). In other words, Russia agreed to
supply the gas on condition it got a share in the pipeline that will carry it to
customers in Europe. Putin publicly reiterated his often-repeated demand that
Gazprom, the world’s largest gas company, obtain shares in the downstream
energy-distribution business in Europe as part of a larger accord tying Russian
resources to European outlets. Otherwise, Putin warned, Russia will “start to
look for other markets” for its oil and gas exports.
Europe’s main gas supplier, Gazprom is effectively controlled by the Russian
government, so its political dimensions have made the authorities in other
European countries, notably Britain, reluctant to accept the Russian company as
a normal investor in their national gas-distributors. Even though Ms.Merkel’s
personal relations with Putin are distinctly cooler than her predecessor’s, she
has continued to play the game whenever required to keep Germany’s position as
Russia’s favorite partner in the EU; for example, she supports the planned
Baltic pipeline that will supply gas directly to Germany (and thence other west
European countries), bypassing Poland and other east European countries.
Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has tempered her stance and
recognized that she has no other choice than to embrace Putin
Germany’s special consideration for Russia’s viewpoint on the gas issue has had
a positive spill-over effect on the two countries’ wider ties: bilateral trade
is soaring. This trend is not lost on Germany’s business elite. German
businessmen have pressured Ms. Merkel to realize that the value of Germany’s
trade and investments with Russia must take precedence over any desire she might
have to show disdain for Putin’s undemocratic ways.
Understandably, that position does not sit well with Germany’s eastern
neighbors. Given their history of Russian oppression, Poland and the Baltic
states have been warning other EU states about the dangers of any strategic
partnership that would enable Russia to exercise political leverage over its
neighbors through its growing clout as an energy supplier. The heavy-handed move
by Gazprom to cut gas supplies to Ukraine in the middle of winter only raised
fresh doubts about Russia’s persistent claims to serve as a reliable supplier
that would not wield the energy club for political purposes. Russia’s continuing
refusal to sign the European Energy Charter, which was set up back in 1991 with
the intention of helping integrate the former Soviet Union’s energy sector into
European markets, underlines Putin’s determination to maintain untrammeled
control over Russia’s hydrocarbon taps and pipelines.
Poland and the Baltic states have been warning about the dangers of
Russia’s growing clout as an energy supplier
Leveraging Russia’s natural assets, the Kremlin is working to expand the reach
and influence of Russia’s energy industry. Putin warned the EU in May that
Russia will demand reciprocity in any investment arrangements designed to ensure
greater confidence about Russian deliveries of oil and gas. If Europeans want
access to Russian oil and gas-fields and pipelines, Putin said, EU countries
will have to open their energy companies to Russian investment in their
‘downstream’ distribution networks. “if our European partners expect that we
will let them into the inner sanctum of our economy – the energy sector – and
let them in as they would like to be admitted, then we expect reciprocal steps
for Russian companies’ development in the EU,” he said after an EU-Russian
summit meeting dominated by energy concerns.
For the Kremlin, rising energy prices have brought Russia – the world’s leading
gas exporter and second-ranked oil supplier – an economic bonanza. Politically,
it has been a windfall in the form of new national self-confidence for Russians.
Their energy clout can give them a feeling that their country is at least a
naturalresource power and therefore a force that other powerful nations,
including the United States, have to reckon with.
Putin himself has declared that he is eager to place energy security at the top
of the agenda for the G8 summit. The United States and its European allies –
four of whose leaders (from Britain, France, Italy, and Germany) will also
attend the Saint Petersburg meeting – should welcome this discussion to
ascertain the extent of Putin’s willingness to cooperate at a time when oil
prices are reaching record highs and threatening to undermine the global
economy. But they should also be prepared to raise their own qualms about
Russia’s authoritarian drift, in particular the disturbing tendency by Moscow to
stir up trouble for its neighbors.
Perhaps the greatest foreign policy success of modern Germany has been to
establish an enduring peace and prospering friendships with all nine of its
neighbors. Yet Russia still clings to its historical paranoia, visible in its
actions fomenting turmoil among bordering states in order to keep them weak and
provide a buffer to the outside world. Within Russia, Chechnya has receded in
salience, partly because of better Russian handling of the situation. But around
Russia’s periphery, there is a pattern in Moscow’s behavior. Its cold-shoulder
treatment of Poland and the Baltic states, the continuing upheaval in the
Caucasus, the military tensions with Georgia, the political meddling in Ukraine
and support for what is often called Europe’s last dictatorship in Belarus
illustrate how Russia’s 21st century attitudes toward its neighbors have not
changed much since the days of the czars.
For the United States, relations with Russia are less focused on its power and
proximity as a vast supplier of oil and gas than Moscow’s desire to recover its
lost superpower status. This has produced tensions as the Bush administration’s
democracy agenda clashes with actions by Putin designed to tighten the
government’s political grip, including on the domestic scene.
As a revealing vignette, the status of voluntary organizations in Russia seems
under threat.Many of the more political NGOs report that the Russian authorities
are putting bureaucratic obstacles in the way of their funding, especially if it
comes from official agencies in the European Union or the United States (such as
USAID). This hardening approach in Moscow to NGOs seems to reflect Russian
suspicions that these foreign-funded civil liberties groups are trying to
undermine the government’s authority and perhaps even destabilize it. “We are
against overseas funding for the political activities [of NGOs] in Russia,”
Putin said last year in a meeting with human rights activists. Interestingly,
Ms. Merkel made a point of meeting with foreign NGOs in Moscow during her first
visit there as chancellor in January 2006.
Russia has actually gone on the counter-offensive in the sphere of NGO activity,
fielding and helping NGOs of its own. Many of these employ people the Russians
call “political technologists” (some of them trained in the United States in
NGO-work and techniques) to work in NGOs that seem to be promoting Russian
influence in places such as Ukraine, according to an article in the April issue
of the Journal of Democracy, published by the US-based National Endowment for
Democracy.
This overall pattern of recent Russian actions – on energy, regional cooperation
and the domestic scene, including the media – prompted a public U.S. response in
May in the form of Vice President Dick Cheney’s public chastisement of Moscow in
his speech in Lithuania. Accusing Russia of cracking down on religious and
political rights and using its energy reserves as “tools of intimidation or
blackmail,” Cheney warned that such policy directions could damage Russia’s
relations with the United States and Europe. Meanwhile the Bush administration
has been actively working to curb Gazprom’s expansion, notably with U.S. efforts
to get central Asia’s gas-producing countries to route their exports through
planned new pipelines that would bypass both Russia and Iran.
We are against overseas funding for the political activities of NGOs in
Russia, says Putin
The outcome of this new “cold war of pipelines” remains completely in the
balance.Meanwhile, in U.S. efforts to call Russia into the dock ahead of the G8,
Cheney’s tough rhetoric may be as far as the administration can go. Despite the
concern in the Bush administration that Russian democracy may be backsliding
toward some old Soviet ways, Moscow has to be cultivated by Washington for its
diplomatic influence. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security
Council, Russia can provide (or withhold) crucial cooperation as the Bush
administration strives to turn Iran and North Korea away from nuclear weapons
programs by demonstrating the united opposition of the world’s leading powers.
If the United States and its allies turn their back on Russia, it would
not advance the cause of democracy there, but would probably exacerbate its
isolationist, statist and paranoid tendencies
Even though George W. Bush proclaimed that spreading the gospel of democracy
around the world would be the top foreign policy priority of his second term,
the need to fight other pressing battles, such as the struggle against jihadist
terrorism and halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, has forced him to
compromise on those prodemocracy principles. In the fight against terror, the
United States has embraced as “strategic partners” a neo-Stalinist regime in
Turkmenistan and a military dictatorship in Pakistan that developed clandestine
nuclear weapons, turning a blind eye to their anti-democratic practices. It
cannot have escaped other governments’ notice that the day after his public
scolding of Moscow about its undemocratic ways he continued on to a friendly
visit to oilrich Kazakhstan, whose recent elections were declared “not free” by
the U.S. State Department.
The same acceptance of realpolitik should apply to dealing with an authoritarian
Russia. The United States and its allies can ill afford to boycott the G8 summit
and turn their backs on Russia; doing so would not advance the cause of
democracy there and would probably exacerbate the isolationist, statist and
paranoid tendencies of the regime that are so pervasive in Russian history.
Pragmatic engagement with Putin, tempered with constructive criticism of his
authoritarian behavior at home and his destabilizing actions toward his
neighbors, seems to be the wisest and most productive approach for the United
States and its European allies. While grandstanding against tyrants might play
well in American political campaigns, it rarely produces effective results – as
shown by more than four decades of failed effort to undermine Cuba’s communist
dictator Fidel Castro.
William Drozdiak, a former foreign editor and chief European
correspondent for The Washington Post,
is president of the American Council on
Germany.
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