President Putin and President Bush in September 2003
One week ago Russians went to the polls to vote in national parliamentary elections. The result was hardly in doubt -- the United Russia Party of Russia's President Vladimir Putin swept to victory. Equally predictable was the reaction of most Western media to this largely foreordained result.
We are told that Putin is reviving the Soviet Union and that he has been busy building a cult of personality while crushing all political opposition. More importantly, we are told that Putin is reigniting the Cold War rivalry between Russia and the United States. This is the message that we constantly read on the editorial pages of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, even as the business sections of each paper continue to report the tremendous growth of the Russian economy since Putin took office in 2000.
Yet if the Kremlin is really hell bent on another Cold War with America, why is the Pentagon still using huge Russian transport planes to haul American war materiel into Iraq and Afghanistan? If the Putin Administration is systematically renationalizing Russian industries, why did the first six months of 2007 see more foreign investment in Russia than during the entire decade of the 1990s?
Coattails - a United Russia campaign poster reads: "Putin's Plan is Tkacheva's Plan"
Clearly there are facts that contradict the conventional wisdom that a resurgent Russian leadership, bolstered by higher world energy prices, has set about restoring the Evil Empire. Nonetheless, there are some troubling -- and legitimate -- questions about Russia's leadership that should be viewed in perspective.
For starters, there is the seemingly larger than life figure of Russia's President, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Like President Bush, whom many foreigners see as the swaggering personification of everything they dislike about America, "VVP" has become a lighting rod for criticism of his country. Like foreigners observing Bush and America, there is a tendency for non-Russians to pretend that if only Putin were not in charge, if only someone more accommodating to foreign opinion were president, then Russia would suddenly become what we want it to be, and not what it is -- a nation struggling to overcome centuries of Czarist misrule and decades of Soviet tyranny.
We are told that Putin is a dictator, and that as a former KGB officer he has never let go of nostalgia for Russia's Soviet past. However, when President Boris Yeltsin passed away a few months ago, Putin summed up his predecessor's accomplishments by saying, "he gave us freedom." This in spite of the fact that Yeltsin shelled a rebellious Russian Parliament when it tried to impeach him in 1993 and that during his administration oligarchs built their vast fortunes based on looted state assets. Popular discontent over this chaotic era -- which included the total collapse of the Russian ruble and banking system -- led the deeply unpopular Yeltsin to appoint Putin as his successor in 1999. Since then, as President Bush observed at a press conference with Putin in July 2007, Russia has gone from being a debtor nation to having some of the world's largest hard currency reserves and a growing middle class.
For their part, Russia watchers in the West will usually acknowledge these positive changes, but then dismiss them all as the product of higher prices for oil, natural gas, and minerals, all of which Russia exports in abundance. However, Yegor Gaidar, a former economic adviser to Yeltsin and leading member of Russia's liberal opposition, has declared that the Russian economic turnaround began before world energy prices shot up three years ago, after Putin instituted a flat tax and privatized agricultural land across the country. And while Putin may seem like just another resource nationalist for seeking to renegotiate deals the Yeltsin Administration inked with multinational oil companies 10 years ago, it was probably not a coincidence that world commodity prices reached lows not seen since the Great Depression during the 1990s -- at a time when Russia's oligarchs were exporting massive amounts of raw materials at prices well below world market rates.
When the Russian energy monopoly Gazprom stopped subsidizing its former Soviet republics with cheap natural gas in 2006 and 2007, the Russians were accused of trying to manipulate politics in neighboring Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus. Hardly any free market-championing Anglo-American pundit stopped to ask whether these countries were entitled to receive natural gas at rates less than half of what Western Europeans pay. Perhaps this is because Gazprom, unlike Exxon Mobil, is a corporation controlled by the Russian state, and it is unimaginable that an entity so closely connected to the Kremlin could possibly base its decisions on economics, rather than on Machiavellian calculations.
Russians and Americans speaking the common language of business - then Secretary of State Colin Powell speaking to the U.S.-Russia Chamber of Commerce in 2004
Yet whether Washington likes it or not, we are living in a world where state-owned "national champions" -- and trillion dollar sovereign wealth funds -- are exerting an increasing influence over global trade. And this is the real reason why the one-sided, overwhelmingly negative view Americans are receiving of modern Russia could cost us. It was one thing for Congress to engage in bipartisan election-year demagoguery over a bid by a United Arab Emirates-based company to operate several U.S. ports in 2006. It will be quite another thing if Congress drives hundreds of billions in Russian, Arab and Chinese capital out of American financial markets through financial protectionism.
Besides short-sighted moves based on congressional insecurity about our economic model competing with the global appeal of Russian-Chinese state capitalism, there are other potential headaches for U.S. businesses related to politics. Russia, like governments in several other major emerging markets, is planning an enormous infrastructure build out in the next several years. There are no good reasons why American companies should not compete with their Chinese and European counterparts for a share of that business, but they may find themselves the victims of tit-for-tat in a trade dispute. Additionally, if certain congressmen want to argue that allowing Gazprom to ship oil and liquefied natural gas to the U.S. Gulf Coast is terrible, than let them explain how buying the stuff from the Middle East or West Africa would be better for American interests. Delaying Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization, five years after authoritarian and officially communist China was allowed to join the organization, has already hurt U.S. businesses operating in Russia.
To be sure, in recent months Putin and his government have taken a harder line against the West and against the largely divided and ineffective opposition to his party. While Putin has a point that exiled oligarchs who have fled criminal charges in Russia are funding some of these groups, his recent speech suggesting that foreign-funded activists are plotting to overthrow the Russian government sounded silly and paranoid.
Many powerful Russian industrialists have publicly pushed Putin to change the constitution to allow him to stay on for a third consecutive term. Many pro-Kremlin activists have also urged Putin to become a kind of president-for-life as Hugo Chávez had hoped to become in Venezuela. But Putin has insisted that he will step down at the end of his second term, even as he has already listed himself as a candidate for a seat in parliament and, likely, a prime minister post. In American eyes, this may seem like a flimsy distinction. But no one called France a dictatorship when Jacques Chirac served several terms, first as a cabinet minister, then as prime minister and finally as president.
Putin at the controls of a jet at the MAKS Air Show
As the American geo-strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett recently observed, Putin may be auditioning to perform a role in Russia similar to that of Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore. And as several other American pundits have admitted, with a Bush, then a Clinton, then another Bush, and now another Clinton likely to serve as Presidents of the United States, it is getting more difficult for Americans to criticize Putin's appointment of his successor as dynastic.
Certainly there is a danger that United Russia could become the Russian version of the old Mexican PRI, a kind of pseudo-democratic party that becomes deeply entrenched for decades due to patronage, vote rigging and corruption. Russia has never been a liberal democracy, and contrary to what some may suggest, Russian television was not free of oligarch or Kremlin influence during the 1990s either. Far more Russian journalists and businessmen died violently during the Yeltsin years than during Putin's term. But because Yeltsin was seen as an ally in a country just emerging from Soviet dictatorship, he largely received a pass for this, and for the blatant vote buying and media manipulation conducted on his behalf against the opposition Communists in 1996. Therefore, Western governments and nongovernmental organizations lack credibility in Russian eyes when they accuse Putin's United Russia of doing the same thing now.
A Time magazine cover from the late Nineties
Today, many cynical Russians go one step further and ask: Is Western criticism really about democracy, or is it about dislike for Putin's less accommodating and more nationalistic policies? Is this about freedom, or is it about the West losing access to cheap raw materials? Ranking Kazakhstan, which actually does have a president for life, on par with Russia on Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders rankings does not exactly bolster the credibility of Western non-governmental organizations.
Meanwhile, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, a man widely credited in liberal circles in the West for ending the Cold War, recently described Russia's President as a "responsible leader" in an op-ed for the International Herald Tribune. He added that "Putin has not crossed the line that would turn Russia's system into an authoritarian regime."
The Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a man widely admired by conservatives worldwide for his stand against communism and atheistic materialism, recently told Germany's Der Spiegel magazine that, "Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible -- a slow and gradual restoration."
Eight consecutive years of economic growth have left Russia with some growing pains - and a mixed political landscape
Ultimately, the issue is not Putin, nor is it Bush. Both will be leaving office in 2008, though Putin enjoys far more popularity and will likely continue to exert significant influence over his country's affairs. The real question is: What actions will give us a Russia we can do more business with, and shift the world's largest country closer to a Western rather than an authoritarian, Chinese model of development? Many Russian leaders have already decided, based on the phenomenal economic growth of China and other Asian countries in recent years, that American-style liberal democracy is not necessary for a booming economy. So where does that leave us? How should America and Europe proceed to win back some of the leverage and credibility with Russia that we lost in the 1990s?
We could start by recognizing that Russia does not need to be a full-fledged liberal democracy to be a useful ally in the fight against terrorism. In the long term, with the support of America, India, and other world powers, Russia can also help insure that China's rise remains peaceful, based on commerce rather than on territorial acquisition in Russia's Far East. Taking this long view may require abandoning missile defense systems and further military alliances in Russia's back yard. But if the real enemy is the global jihadist movement, what useful purpose does expanding NATO into Ukraine serve?
As the former advisor to President Reagan and conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan has pointed out, this would be the equivalent of Russia inviting Mexico into a mutual defense pact. Just as there are millions of Mexicans and people of Mexican descent in the United States, so Russia has centuries worth of history and blood ties with Ukraine. Denying this reality only sows distrust between Washington and Moscow while fueling disunity in Kiev.
President Ronald Reagan shaking hands with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. President Reagan contemplated the U.S. and Russia establishing a joint missile defense system, but ironically, many who would claim his ideological mantle reject the idea out of hand
When it comes to defending Europe from a potential missile threat from Iran, America should take up the Russian offer to establish a joint missile defense system in southern Russia, and place early warning radars in Azerbaijan and Iraqi Kurdistan. From a technical perspective, placing ground-based interceptors 2,000 miles away from Iran in Poland and the Czech Republic makes no sense, unless the goal is to please certain ideologues and Eastern European lobbies in Washington.
Lest we forget, on Sept. 11, 2001, the first world leader to telephone President Bush offering America basing and overflight rights to use against the Taliban was none other than Vladimir Putin. The Russian President extended this offer over the vigorous objections of his cabinet and military. Within days, fully armed American bombers were flying over Russian territory to bases in Central Asia, something that would have been unthinkable during the Cold War. In the months that followed, the heady talk of a U.S.-Russia alliance against global terrorism vanished, along with America's post-9/11 bipartisanship -- but it should not be forgotten.
America needs Russian resources, and Russia needs American technology and investment. Throwing out the half century-long aberration of the Cold War, America and Russia have historically been friends, not enemies. Let's keep it that way.
UPDATE: Russia Profile has republished this article here.
Charles Ganske is a Fort Worth, Texas based writer and a former editor of Russia Blog. This article was previously published by World Politics Review (www.worldpoliticsreview.com).
Hello Charles,
I haven't expressed my opinion in awhile so I'm catching up here....
To change the way Americans think, this will take decades, it will take a generation.
Recently CNN's Christiane Amanpour made a special report called "Czar Putin".
Americans just don't get it. The west believes that the former Soviet Union, and it's people are too stupid and too incompetent that the only form of democracy in Russia would be best with an American flag ontop of the Kremlin.
I've even heard the logic, from so called human rights experts and democracy believers, that America must control Russia or someone else will.
Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Kasyanov agree with the US sentiment on democracy, and elections in Russia.
In fact, these two clowns will walk the Americans, hand in hand, up the Kremlin walls and help in any way in replacing the Russian flag with the US flag.
... for democracy....
Kasparov and Kasyanov remind me of something. While America was busy building her democracy 300 years ago, America was sailing in and out of Africa, busy with the logistics of shipping 100's of thousands of African slaves - you know, for democracy, but in Africa you had these jackals, these opportunistic Africans that assisted the white Americans in rounding up the slaves.
You know, for democracy...
And this is what Kasparov and Kasyanov are, the middlemen for the west, eager and ready to help exploit their own in the cloaked words called democracy, human rights, free market, and so forth. Yet these two buffoons don't even know what democracy is, their aim is self serving, and no different than those that rounded up their brothers and sisters for slavery in Africa 300 years ago, you know, to help build America's democracy...
Today what we see in Russia is "DEMOCRACY" without water boarding and without the CIA so scared of truth that it requires the destruction of evidence... The CIS is finally ready to surpass democracy standards found in the west.
Most in the United States know that all this world politics and all this constant bickering about human rights or democracy actually has nothing to do with either. And it's why the CIA destroyed tapes of gitmo torture sessions and why America hands money for colored revolutions to Georgia or Ukraine while looking over Mikheil Saakashvili's shoulder at Caspian energy reserves... all of this cloaked in some silly peace mission called GUUAM.
I wonder what they called the project/mission 300 years while sailing in and out of Africa to round up slaves?
Let me guess, operation Save Loving African Virtues and Equality (SLAVE)...
This not only silly but it's getting so ridiculous...
When you account US rhetoric and propaganda, then Vladimir Zhirinovsky sounds like a moderate, heck - even SHY, when I watch yet another CNN special investigative report on "Czar Putin".
Charles and Yuri, this is why few in Russia don't spend much money on more NGO's like RussiaToday.ru, they just don't need to. The silly stuff coming out of the west is just so far from reality that time and truth will eventually over come Western double standards and hypocrisy.
I was nervous in the 1990's for Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and other CIS members, but at this stage, real democracy is finally winning, Belarus is embracing democracy by Belarusians, Russia is embracing democracy by Russians, Ukraine will follow and all the NGO money the US blows will be as fruitless as their efforts in Iraq or cleaning up Katrina.
Putin was warning the west not to interfere in Russia's election, but no worry, US credibility and track records coupled with truth and genuine (by Russians) democracy are making that influence pointless and powerless...
You really need to take a closer look at the 'Putin's plan' poster. I don't think it's saying what you think it's saying...
Candide, you are absolutely right :)
This is a "black pr".
Michael,
I think my post didn't come out right....
I was wrong in saying Russia doesn't need to finance NGOs in the US.
What I was thinking, as I wrote that, was that Russia's gov or even wealthy private Russians (a future "Russian" George Soros), that they don't need to resort to the US methodologies of such spin.
True, the US spins and distorts and pounds away with extremes about Russia or Belarus... but, I believe a Russian backed NGO effort should be consistent, predictable and focused on the truth...
Leave innovation and lies to the American methodologies. Let the US expend all it's energy in spinning while Russia only needs to poke a finger and simply STOP the spin to expose realty.
To this end, more RussiaBlog's, and RussiaToday's are what's needed.
And I hope as Russia strengthens that she doesn't finance and emulate FoxNews, CNN or WSJ types of media that look more like groupthinks, Enron board room meetings of yes men, brewhahas, and circle jerks of neocons or liberals hell bent distorting everything.
But then, maybe in this dog eat dog world, maybe a Russian WSJ distorting reality in favor for Russia, might this be the best thing to do?
We will see...
After all, we know the US is doing everything that it does for some self-serving reason, democracy or human rights or market mechanisms have nothing to do with any of it.
If the global rules are to be a dog eat dog world then America had better run for the hills.
What's good for the Goose is good for the gander...
They said HW was a "traitor", evident with the airplane incident during WorldWarII. As we witnessed repeatedly in the 20th century, these incidents ocurr to establish a legacy and pave the way for a far more significant events in the future::::
If true this legacy would recurr in W's administration::::
Rebate checks on the way into and out of office are both bad signs.
Signing on to Iraq to eliminate Saddam and 4,000 Americans is another clue.
Don't be surprised if they have him sabotage some things on his way out, and since McCain is good it will (has) happen(ed) one way or the other::::
The whole economy issue came out of nowhere in February 2008. Consistant with the god's methodology, expect justification was utilized::::::
Of course the crashing dollar of the last few years has comeplled OPEC to value oil with the Euro instead of the dollar.
Don't forget:::The Reagan administration was charecterized with banking scandal too.
Sounding like a goddamn blooming idiot when he speaks is a clue unlike any others. When Reagan spoke it sounded as if he "fuddled", a clue not to trust him.
"They're going to pay for 2004." Redneck states. And how many think they are "earning"?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tibet has fallen prey to the Big Lie of democracy, just as so many Vietnamese did decades ago.
You are the morbidly disfavored people who fail to recognize god's favor when you see it:::
The pinnicle of irony:::ED pharmeceuticals.
People injest this poison which will cost them their health TO DEFEAT FAVOR GRANTED BY THE GODS, indifference towards sex the god's way of helping you avoid this damaging behavior.
Took the Dali Lama a week to speak about the riots ocurring in Tibet.
Despite being a clone host fake, he is a phoney, a hypocrite whose absence implied his support for the violence.
It is a clue not to respect him.
Both Confucious and Buddah emerged about the same time. Consistant with the god's methodology one is good while the other is evil.
Consistant with Hardship.wav, expect the evil one to be associated with the ignorant disfavored, those who are closer to Damnation.
Try to use the Vietnamese example above because I understand they have respect issues. The San Jose fiasco the gods put on the national stage to embarass the Vietnamese was yet another clue suggesting this.
Earthly religions are no longer the priority. Don't let them distract you from the task at hand with them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like aging, sleep is behavior forced upon us.
News story on sleep research, a good example of how education is preditory, deceptive.
People aren't fresher or sharper because of good sleep. The gods control all this.
Actually, they've mentioned that people with favor don't have to sleep and, like aging, sleep is behavior forced upon us.
This is today's research. Expect this applies to early research as well.
Incidentally, the gods create male superiority in the fields of computers, science and math for preditory reason.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Search "finalprophet" and the Man in the Moon paragraph to find my sound file web site.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is one geographic clue I have not addressed in years:::Uranus, a planet tilted 90 degrees on its axis. I have stated in years past that I think this is yet another geographic clue offered by the gods, this one suggesting the fate of planet Earth, that tectonic plate subduction would be the method of disposal:::Earth’s axis will shift breaking continental plates free and initiating mass subduction.
Undesirables will either perish in the government marijuana erradication program "gone awry" or be the recipients of reparations granted by the US government because of it.
Or both.
I believe the New Testiment battle of the Anti-Christ and the Second Coming of Christ will ocurr in subsequent years SPECIFICALLY because these people will be distracted with the money during the event.
When the Earth's axis shifts people will be cast into outer space with gold cards in hand.
I think this was foreshadowed on an episode of the Simpsons where Homer and Bart are on the disfavored ship and eject, only to experience a sense of euphoria, expand then explode in the vacuum of space.
Recall I recently brought up the possible Manifest Destiny-positioned Chinese invasion of the United States (west coast) upon economic abandonment by their clone host tools (economic destruction and deterioration.mp3). They have mentioned this in years past.
Newspaper just made a curious change where they combined the sports and business sections, and to properly read the business section you need to read "backward". Like Asian languages.
Tariffs. The gods are instruct their tools to defend open free trade, as they will to the bitter end. The gods have a script and they need economic (d)evolution sufficient to justify what they have scripted for our future, so they use their tools to adamantly defend this concept of fair trade::::The time for tariffs has long since past.
Incidentally, the Chinese recalls (lead-based paint on toys, toothpaste, etc) may be in preparation for this invasion, a tactic esuring a percentage of disfavored affected will fight to the bitter end.
I've recently stated how the gods will use the Japanese as role models to the Chinese as China becomes increasingly Westernized. Expect a cultural movement celebrating Japanese culture in decades prior, much as we witnessed in the west in the past.
If we do witness a Chinese invasion on American soil don't be surprised if the very same tactics the Japanese employed on the Chinese will be used on us. Lack of empathy is a dynamic the gods will find important in the context of justification, niggers:::
I've recently stated how the gods will use the Japanese as role models to the Chinese as China becomes increasingly Westernized.
Feedback II.wav
If we do witness a Chinese invasion on American soil don't be surprised if the very same tactcs the Japanese employed on the Chinese will be used on us. Lack of empathy is a dynamic the gods will find important in the context of justification.
Recall how Americans so frequently laughed at the French for their lack of military response when confronted by the Nazi army. To resist would have been suicide. Their reaction was appropriate. The opposite would be one as we witnessed in Vietnam. These are morbidly disfavored Asians and take great pride in their resistance. The gods DO use their pride in resistance by positioning in appropriate temptation, ensuring minimal sucess.
If events transpire I recommend you respond like the French and not like the Vietnamese. If this is a west coast event it may not have serious effect but if it is nationwide the United States will lose over a hundred million in the South and midwest.
... "has set about restoring the Evil Empire"
We are now a defensive country. We quit the reckless idea of exporting our ideology many years ago. But America still continues to do that - exporting its democracy. What should we do if American rockets are going to be installed near our borders? What if America want to do with us the same as it did in Iraq? Ok, we'll install our rockets on Cuba again. Will you stand it?