Main Page | About PostGlobal | The Panel |

Need to Know

Need to Know Main Page | Need to Know Archives | PostGlobal Archives

« Previous Post | Next Post »

Panelist View

Putin Stays Strong, but Lacks Strategic Vision

By Masha Lipman

Vladimir Putin has every reason to regard his meeting with the U.S. president at Kennebunkport as a victory. He hasn’t budged one inch on any of the contentious issues of U.S.-Russian relations, such as Kosovo independence or U.S. missile defense plans in Central Europe. He wouldn’t put up with any criticism of Russian domestic affairs, and in recent months he has sounded fairly tough on U.S. policies -- yet, George W. Bush honored him with an invitation to spend time at his family home.

“I trust him,” Bush said as the two presidents finished their discussion. He could hardly say otherwise after he invited Putin to spend informal time with his parents. “I don’t trust anyone but myself,” Putin told NBC almost exactly one year ago. Today his tough, intransigent stance seems to be vindicated. At Kennebunkport he could even afford to be pleasant, make jokes and show magnanimity -- as he did after being the only one to catch a fish, referring to it as a “team effort.”

Apart from the friendly and informal atmosphere, however, the summit at Kennebunkport has hardly produced any substantial results. Nor was it expected to.

Bush may have said that Putin is a “transparent” and “easy” man, but in fact he’s been secretive and difficult. And relations between Russia and the United States have seriously deteriorated during his tenure. Putin regards Russia’s early post-Communist years as a time of humiliating dependence on the West and is strongly determined to use his country’s new economic power to make the West, and especially the United States, reckon with Russia. Unlike his predecessors, such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, he can afford to say “no” to U.S. foreign policy initiatives, and he wouldn’t miss this opportunity. It appears more important for him at this point to assert himself than to reach a constructive compromise.

Over the recent years whatever trust or mutual understanding had existed between our countries has largely been lost. It is hardly Russia alone that can be blamed for this, though. It is true that in his desire to show the world that Russia is powerful again and will not be taken for granted, Putin has sometimes acted in a fairly unattractive, vengeful and petty fashion, especially with regard to the former republics of the USSR or countries of the “new Europe.” But neither has the West, nor the United States for that matter, developed a rational strategy for how to deal with post-Communist Russia. There was too much self-complacency after the collapse of the USSR and the Communist system to realize that the emerging Russian state calls for new and thoughtful engagement. The aversion to Communism (and to the USSR as its stronghold) was too often and too easily extended to Russia even after it shed the Communist regime. This bias may be understood after decades of the Cold War, but it was certainly detrimental to Russian-American relations.

As the two presidents meet at Kennebunkport, Bush is on a sharp decline, having completely failed to achieve what he proclaimed as his foreign policy mission. He has also largely squandered America’s moral authority as a pillar of democracy and freedom in the world. Putin, on the other hand, seems to have overachieved in his domestic agenda. He has full control over politics and increasingly over public life, he’s universally recognized as the ultimate arbiter of inner disputes and the uncontested decision-maker. The Russian nation has never lived as well as in Putin’s tenure, and his popularity rating at the end of his second term is about 80 percent.

He did so by scrapping whatever fledgling democracy was emerging under president Yeltsin and pushing Russia back on its habitual track of the omnipotent state and the impotent society. He’s brought back the style of governance and some of the police state practices of the stagnation period of the 1970’s. His project for Russia is traditionally paternalistic and largely anti-modernization. But for the time being, the Russian people don’t seem to mind. Putin has been lucky with public attitudes, just as he has been with energy prices and, not least, with a disastrous U.S. foreign policy and the ensuing discord among Western nations. Within his country today he can get away with practically any policy move. The tougher he rejects U.S. foreign policy initiatives and criticism of Russia’s democratic record, the more popular he becomes.

There’s no shortage of speculation that the current regime is not sustainable. It is true that Putin’s authoritarian rule makes the transfer of presidential authority a highly risky undertaking, and that the lack of accountability and feedback with the public has led to low-quality governance. But right now Putin certainly looks powerful and successful. And Russia’s future is, as ever, hard to predict.

On the Russian foreign policy front there’s an obvious lack of strategic vision. It is one thing to feel strong enough to unabashedly voice your frustration, to be tough and uncompromising and make things hard for the most powerful country of the world. It’s quite another matter to translate your strength into confident and responsible policies that may help make the world better and more secure. This is a challenge that Russia is certainly not ready to meet. But it is also true that under the administration of George W. Bush the most powerful country of the world, the United States, has failed to meet this challenge as well. This is something for the next U.S. administration to think about, as well as how to deal with Russia so that the two greatest nuclear powers in the world can evolve as partners rather than rivals.

PostGlobal panelist Masha Lipman is the editor of the Pro et Contra journal, published by Carnegie Moscow Center, and an expert in the center's Civil Society Program. See her other posts here.

Please e-mail PostGlobal if you'd like to receive an email notification when PostGlobal sends out a new question.

Posted by Masha Lipman on July 3, 2007 12:30 PM