- (september 2009)
The sick man of Europe: Russia.
Putin was vastly credited with stabilizing Russia and bringing a level of wealth
that the nation had never witnessed before. Russians are now painfully learning
that neither was completely true. Russia remains a relatively poor country
(compared with the West and now even with the East) that relies mainly on
selling its natural resources to other countries, notably oil. When the prices
go down, Russia has not much else to rely on. As far as political stability
goes, the price to pay is getting higher and higher, both in terms of
government control of business and in terms of nosy journalists silenced
by mysterious assassins.
Putin is now "only" the prime minister. His interpretation of that function
is basically ideological. The prime minister is the one who rewrites history
and architects Russia's foreign policy. Russia has a major problem, that Putin
must be finally grasping in all its importance: even when it's right (like
in the case of Georgia), Russia is feared if not despised by its own neighbors.
Russia is probably the only country in the world that incites so much distrust
in its neighbors. After all, it is the only colonial empire that is still
around (although greatly reduced after the fall of the Soviet Union). Britain
and France have long abandoned the idea of salvaging their empire. Russia is
still the empire that the czars created over the centuries by expanding east
and south.
It is debatable Putin whether Putin the ideologue is making inroads anywhere.
When Putin visited Poland, he refused to apologize to Poland for Stalin's pact
with Hitler and for the massacres (more than one) that the Soviet troops
committed against Polish troops. He twisted history to show that Poland was
responsible for World War II. He insisted (like every Russian is taught in
school) that the Soviet Union "saved" and "liberated" Eastern Europe from
Hitler, despite the fact that most Eastern Europeans feel otherwise.
This attitude is unlikely to change the mood in Eastern Europe, just like
Japan's refusal to acknowledge its atrocities in World War II (and its
insistence that it was "liberating" Asia from the Western powers) has not
changed the mood in Asia.
Putin's next stop was Turkey. When they were imperial powers, Russia and Turkey
fought countless wars over many centuries. Turkey eventually became an essential
partner in NATO against the Soviet Union. Over the last decades Russia has
sided with Armenia and Turkey with Azerbaijan (Armenia and Azerbaijan fought
a bloody war over some disputed lands).
Turkey has implicitly supported Chechnya's independence war against Russia
while Russia implicitly supports the Kurdish independence war against Turkey.
Turkey is letting the Europeans
build a gas pipeline through its territory to bypass Russia, but (and here
is where they are beginning to get together)
Russia is Turkey's biggest trading partner and now Turkey has accepted a
gas pipeline from Russia that will bypass Ukraine.
Putin the ideologue failed to change the mood in Turkey either.
Russia has the same problem: its neighbors are willing to do business with
Russia when they need its natural resources (or arm sales) but they are
not enchanted by Russia's manners.
So far Putin has failed to change the image that Russia projects abroad.
Russia's only appeal for the rest of the world remains its vast natural
resources.
Putin has failed to change the mood towards Russia because he has failed
to change the mood inside Russia: Russians still perceive themselves as
surrounded by enemies.
The West has certainly not helped by treating Russia like an enemy.
(See also The mess the West got into
and The West is wrong on Russia).
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (august 2009)
Russia adrift.
The fundamental problem for Obama in dealing with Russia is to convince Russia's
leaders that Russia would benefit from the actions of the USA.
(See Resetting the relations with the USA).
So far Russia hasn't benefited at all, and it is hard to see what Russia would
gain from a world in which, for example, Iran has become a pro-Western democracy
and North Korea has been absorbed in South Korea.
Where its interests are obvious Russia does help: it has always allowed transit
of supplies for USA troops in Afghanistan and never objected to USA bombings
inside Pakistan. The Taliban would pose a threat to Russia itself: that's one
case where Russia sees a benefit from the USA's actions.
Obama has to convince Medvedev and Putin that Russia would benefit also from
the other aims of the USA, and that is much harder to prove after subtracting
Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Iraq and India from Russia's sphere of influence.
The problem is compounded by Russia's inability to modernize itself. It is
easier to convince China that the USA's geopolitical games benefit everybody
than to convince Russia.
Russia prides itself in being the world's second oil exporter and the world's
first gas exporter, but this means that Russia's economy is dangerously
dependent on oil and gas, just like most third-world countries depend on
exporting their natural resources.
Russia has not managed to develop a vibrant modern industry with all the oil
and gas revenues.
Where China depends on peaceful free trade, Russia's economy is largely
independent of foreign events. In fact, Russia stands to benefit from any
crisis that involves oil or gas.
China is, in fact, the one country that probably loves the new Russia. Russia
is a poor neighbor desperate to sell its natural resources and distracted by
its paranoia to defend the borders of its empire.
The bottom line is that there is precious little in the world's situation that
can scare Russia the way it scares the USA or its allies.
Russia's biggest problem might well be its shrinking population, something that
Russians cannot blame on the West but should blame on their passion for vodka
and meat.
In most of Russia the death rates are higher than in poor African countries.
Russia's main asset is not its natural resources but its high-technology
products, well represented by the nuclear arsenal (the largest in
the world) and its space program (the most successful in the world).
Unfortunately, Russia has not been able to capitalize on its own brand of
high technology. Instead of using its engineers and scientists to expand
its economy, Russia is slowly losing them to the West (where they emigrate
by the thousands every year).
Russia doesn't have good universities either: the very leaders who rant against
the West send their children to study at Western universities.
Russia is, fundamentally, a boring place to be.
There lies Putin's biggest failure.
But that is also Obama's problem: there is little that the USA can do to
help Russia solve its real problems, which are pretty much unique to Russia.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (july 2009)
Resetting the relations with the USA.
There is much talk of Obama's desire to reset the relations with Russia after
eight years of antagonizing attitudes (see
History repeats itself);
but the real question is whether there also exists a desire by Russia to reset
the relations with the USA.
Both the elite and the ordinary citizens have grown skeptic about the
intentions of the West. When communism fell, many citizens of the Soviet Union
had a favorable impression of the USA. Over the last decade that reservoir of good will
has been drained by the actions of the USA, that first contributed to the
dismantling of the Soviet empire, then used all pretexts to bring satellite
nations into Western organizations such as the European Union and NATO,
and even tried to help young amoral crooks as they were robbing the country of
its natural resources. Russians feel betrayed by the USA. They believe that
history shows a pattern of the USA methodically abusing Russia.
Anti-Western sentiment started in 1999 bombing of Serbia and was exacerbated after Russia helped the USA in september 2001 when the USA was vulnerable but USA never rewarded Russia. In fact, the USA unilaterally withdrew from the anti-ballistic treaty (ABM).
When the USA
wonders why Russia doesn't want to help in Iran or North Korea, the USA should
answer a simple question: what happens the day that Iran's regime or North
Korea's regime falls? Russians have seen that movie many times: the new regime
becomes friendly to the USA, the country is slowly absorbed into the orbit of
the Western alliances, and Russia doesn't even get a "thank you" for its help.
In a sense the problem is that Russia agrees with the USA: the Iranians want
to get rid of their Islamic regime. The problem is that this belief has two
radical implications for the two countries: it means that Iran
will probably become a friend of the USA, a sentence that has two radically
different meanings in Washington and Moskow.
Therefore the fundamental problem in "resetting" the relations is that Russia
does not see any benefits. The USA has put Russia in a lose-lose situation.
Compare with the European Union: the European Union may not like everything the
USA does, but at least it stands to benefit from a positive outcome. If the
USA wins in Iraq and Afghanistan and in all the areas where it's exercising
political influence, Europeans stand to gain something. Russia gains absolutely
nothing from all the wars of conquest and assorted political schemes that the
USA is starting.
The USA needs help in dealing with its multiple crises: Afghanistan,
Iran and North Korea. The USA needs to stabilize multiple regions of the world
(from the Far East, that is its main creditor, to the Middle East, that is
its main supplier of oil), whereas Russia needs nothing from the USA: Russia
does not import much from the USA, and does not export much to the USA.
Russia has stabilized its republics. In fact, the only instability is created
by the USA when it tries to expand NATO towards the Russian borders. Other than
this annoyance, Russia is largely self-sufficient and indifferent to the rest
of the world.
The only way to change Russia's attitude is for the USA to create the premises
for Russia to benefit from USA actions. What does Russia gain if Iran's regime
falls and a pro-USA regime seizes power? What does Russia gain if North Korea's
regime falls and North Korea is absorbed by the strong USA ally South Korea the
same way East Germany was absorbed by West Germany?
From a Russian point of view both events would further erode Russian influence
and power.
Add to the picture the fact that Russia has know-how, goods (especially arms)
and natural resources (especially oil and gas) that just about everybody wants.
Russians are justified in thinking that the goal of the USA is simply to
deprive them of the wealth that would otherwise rain on them.
Westerners often paint Putin as an anti-Western crusader, when in fact he was
criticized in Russia for letting the West get away with everything the West
wanted.
When he rose to power, Putin did not antagonize the West: in fact, Putin is the
one who buried communism for good (see Summarizing Putin).
However, he got nothing in return from the West. The West, happy to have
disposed of communism, moved Russia to the bottom of its priorities and
proceeded to rule the world as the USA pleased.
No wonder Putin is now so bitter and disillusioned about the USA and the West:
he has learned that the USA just does not care about the rest of the world,
once it has solved its own problems. Russia is not the only country to have
learned that lesson the hard way.
Another element of distrust comes from the vulnerability of Russia's fragile ethnic archipelago.
Russian leaders are well aware that no Western country is planning to invade
Russia any time soon (there is no Napoleon or Hitler on the rise) but Russia
is also painfully aware that it is a divided country, or, better, a divided
empire, a mosaic of ethnic groups that have been patched together over the
centuries by the tsars and kept together mostly by brute force.
It doesn't take much to stir up ethnic separatism, and Russia feels that
the West would support any separatist movement withing Russia the same way
it supported the independence of the former Soviet republics.
Western commentators frequently describe the distrust between the USA and Russia
as a distrust between executives, when in fact (according to a recent Russian
poll) fewer than 25% of Russians trust president Obama, and the favorable
opinion of the USA has plunged from 83% in November 1991 to 43% in june 2009.
Ordinary Russians are puzzled at best by the USA. First the USA elected Bush,
a cowboy from Texas who went on to start two wars in two years. Now the USA
has elected Obama, a black man and, while not racists by nature, many Russians
see this as a sign of how out of control the USA society is.
Western Europe hailed Obama as a hero. Russians scoffed at Obama's election
as one of those ridiculous USA oddities.
The problem clearly is not the Russian elite, but the millions of ordinary
Russians who perceive the USA as a bully who just doesn't like them.
Putin is simply the manifestation of that sentiment.
Putin's era has created a very nationalistic population, but not because of
Putin: because of the actions of the USA and the way that ordinary Russians
perceived them.
Obama can only hope that Dmitry Medvedev, who was not personally affected by
the USA's numerous betrayals, will be more amenable than Putin at granting the
USA one more chance.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2008 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (april 2009)
History repeats itself.
There has hardly ever been a pause in the century-old conflict between western
and eastern Christianity. The first major incident was the sack of Byzantium by
the crusaders led by Venezia/Venice in 1204. When Byzantium fell to the Turks
in 1453, Moskow took over the role of defender of "orthodox" Christianity in
the east. Moskow rapidly expanded (one of the least told success stories of European imperialism and colonialism), reaching the Pacific Ocean in 1639 and incorporating all sorts of ethnic and religious groups within a fundamentally Slavic
and Christian empire. As it became bigger and richer, Russia also developed the
love/hate relationship with Western Europe that still characterizes it.
Russians love most Western ideas and products (even communism was, after all,
a Western invention, as Marx was German and Lenin lived in Britain). However,
they see themselves as a target of Western expansionism.
Three centuries of history justify their feelings. The Western powers frequently
sided with Russia's enemies (whether Turkey or Japan).
France (under Napoleon) invaded Russia. Germany (under Hitler) invaded Russia.
Britain seized land all around Russia during the Russian civil war.
The USA was a ferocious enemy during the Cold War.
Today the role of those Western powers has been taken and summarized by NATO,
an organism that was specifically created to contain the Soviet Union. When the
Soviet Union fell, NATO did not dissolve: it started incorporating the bits and
pieces of former Soviet Union that were declaring independence. There are NATO
troops just about everywhere around the Soviet borders (from Turkey to
Afghanistan to Mongolia to South Korea). In the event of a war between Russia
and the USA, the USA would have troops, ships and warplanes all around the
borders of Russia, whereas Russia does not have a single soldier, ship or
plane stationed in the Americas. Russians (even ordinary Russians) interpret it
as hostile behavior, and anyone would do so. There is a double standard that
is hard to deny. NATO attacked Serbia to defend
the right of Kosovo to declare independence, but when Russia attacked Georgia to
defend the right of two provinces to declare independence, the Western powers
went ballistic.
(See The mess the West got into).
It is anathema to the West to think that eastern Ukraine (a Russian-speaking
region) could secede and join Russia, but the same West promptly defended the
right of the Baltic regions to secede from the Soviet Union.
The only rule seems to be that anything that shrinks Russia is good, and
anything that enlarges it is bad.
In the old days the Soviet Union had a reputation for negotiating in a
unilateral way: "What we own is ours, what you, the USA, owns is up for
discussion". Now it's the USA that adopts that stance at every step of the way.
Russians feel betrayed. They were betrayed when communism fell and the USA
did nothing to help ordinary Russians (the perception is that the USA only
helped a gang of young and mostly Jewish crooks rob the country). They were
betrayed when the USA helped the republics secede (even republics like
Belorussia or Moldova or Turkmenistan that had never existed before in
history as independent states). They were betrayed when the USA asked for help
to invade Afghanistan and then decided to use its bases in the region to
expand its influence in Central Asia. They were betrayed when the USA
asked for United Nations condemnation of Saddam Hussein and then
attacked Iraq ignoring Russia's interests.
Just like in the past, it is the West (not Russia) that is confused about what
it wants. Russia has been and still is a very simple entity to understand: a
proud country that has created a multi-ethnic multi-religious federation
under a Christian umbrella, a country that simply wants to be respected and
treated with honor by the rest of the Christian world (if not by the whole world).
The West never quite found out what it wants with Russia.
It does want its resources (and Russia has always been happy to sell them).
It does not want its vast cold unpopulated territory. In theory the West should
be wanting Russia as a key ally, if not a member of NATO altogether.
In practice the West has always antagonized and sometimes humiliated Russia,
and is still doing so.
Russians fail to understand what NATO is meant to be
because the Western powers haven't quite figured it out themselves. It is a
sort of United Nations limited to capitalist democratic countries. It is a
peace-keeping and nation-building organization that provides stability to weak
(pro-Western) regimes. It still is, though, a military alliance to protect
Russian neighbors from Russian aggression. If it were only the first two,
it would do outline a path for eventual Russian membership. Russia would
obviously greatly increase the credibility and sheer firepower of NATO.
Just like in past centuries, instead, Europe (and the "Caucasian" world in
general) is wasting energies in an internal conflict between the Western
powers and Russia at a time when powerful competitors (if not enemies) are
emerging for both camps.
In fact, a Martian observer would probably figure
that the West needs Russia more than Russia needs the West. After all, Russia
is a success story in defeating Islamic hyperterrorism (Chechen terrorists
and the likes have virtually been wiped out), unlike the failure of the USA
to stop Al Qaeda from hitting around the world and reigniting the civil war
in Afghanistan. After all, Russia has plenty of oil and gas, whereas the
West is struggling to cope with hostile oil-producing countries
(Iran, Venezuela, Arabs).
The century-old paradox continues: the huge country that could easily solve
all the problems of the European/Christian world is being ignored or antagonized
by the European/Christian world. In a sense the Cold War (that divided the
European/Christian world in two) was the ultimate example of this senseless
turn of history tha started with the fall of Byzantium.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2008 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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