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| Russia: Prospects for Democracy |
| Putin and Medvedev |
| The Russian Invasion of Georgia |
| Our Future Relations with Russia |
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by Charles Magee (delivered on November 9, 2008)
Here are four questions for us to ponder:
Is democracy ever going to take hold in Russia?Putin as Prime Minister and Medvedev as President – who’s in charge?
Russia’s invasion of Georgia – are we in a new Cold War?
How should the new U.S. administration deal with Russia?
Over the past year we have certainly seen some changes in Russia – its prospects for democracy, and in U.S. – Russian relations – changes, I’ll have to say, that have been mostly for the worse. The situation in Russia is, as always, complicated, murky, anything but black and white.I want to spend some time looking at the Russian leadership to see what we can make of it: Putin in his new role as Prime Minister, and Medvedev as the new President. And we have to spend some time examining Russia’s invasion of Georgia last August – a game-changing move that has, I’m afraid, some dark implications for the future. And I want to offer some points for the new Obama administration to keep in mind in dealing with Russia.
Nothing is simple in today’s Russia. But I would say, based on frequent visits in recent years, that things are not as bad as they may look on the surface. The old Soviet Union is genuinely dead and cannot return. The government under Putin and Medvedev is gradually privatizing the economy, indeed doing it faster than other former republics. In only 17 years after the disintegration of the old Soviet Union – surely one of the most astonishing events in the second half of the 20th century, and perhaps the greatest political miracle of our era – it can fairly be said that Russia has moved a long way toward becoming a market economy. That is a remarkable transformation.
Now let me admit right off to a pet peeve. It’s those opinion pieces in our press by some of our Russian experts moaning about the awful state of U.S. – Russian relations, which they describe as the worst in many years, the worst in decades, the worst since the height of the Cold War, and so on. Even some of our leading scholars are taking this line.
Well, let me tell you, as one who labored in the diplomatic trenches during much of the Cold War, that it just isn’t so. Now I wouldn’t say for a moment that our current relations with Russia are good; they aren’t. They are difficult, complicated, and likely to remain that way. And it’s certainly correct to say that Russia’s relations with the U.S. have deteriorated somewhat in the last few years, in the light of differences on a range of issues and what I would call a new-found assertiveness in Russian foreign policy. But it would be wrong to say that the current tensions in our mutual relations are threatening to spin out of control. The fact is simply that our relations are not nearly as bad as they were during the Cold War, when each side had hundreds, even thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at the other.
Some of the most positive developments in our relations with Russia get very little attention in our media. Let me mention just one that happened recently. It was announced that Boeing won a three-billion dollar order from the Russian state-run airline Aeroflot for 22 of its new 787 Dreamliner passenger jets. The first of the Dreamliners are to be delivered to Aeroflot in 2014.
Now you can say that this Boeing sale by itself is hardly a gigantic order, and you’d be right. But I would say it is quite a significant indication that the current state of our relations is not so bad after all. Last fall I flew over to Moscow on Aeroflot, on a Boeing 767. Who could have imagined, even ten years ago, that Aeroflot would be flying Boeing aircraft? So much has changed, and is continuing to change.
In fact, Aeroflot is the second Russian customer for the Dreamliner. S7 Airlines, the second largest Russian carrier – and maybe the largest airline that you’ve never heard of – recently agreed to buy 15 of the aircraft with options for another ten. S7 was formerly named Sibir, meaning Siberian, Airlines. S7 and Aeroflot are both expanding their fleets, with Russian air travel expected to double by 2015. When you consider that this huge country spans 11 time zones and that travel to more than 60 percent of Russian territory is feasible only by plane, you can see what a huge market Russia is going to be for modern aircraft.
Another annoying statement that you see and hear from time to time in our media is the claim that Russia is “lost.” Is it really lost? And if so, who lost it? Well, let’s look again – Russia is not lost. It is precisely where it should be, stretching across the vast Eurasian landmass. More importantly, it is also a quasi-free society (now I’m not saying democratic, but quasi-free). Yes, it is corrupt, crime-ridden, inefficient, and not well developed. But it is neither a fascist nor a communist power. And it is not, as it was for so long, a huge threat menacing the free world.
This is no minor accomplishment. Let’s keep in mind that Russia, as opposed to, say, Poland or the Czech Republic or the Baltic States, never was a democracy, not even for the short period between the two world wars. It was always governed by an authoritarian system of some kind, first monarchy and then communism. For most of the 20th century it had no free market system.
What has been lost when it comes to Russia, it seems to me, are our unrealistic expectations – and that’s a positive development.