The Rebirth of President Putin

Vladimir Putin announced yesterday that he will trade places with current president Dmitry Medvedev next year, running for the presidency while Medvedev settles for the number two spot of prime minister. Under revisions to the Russian constitution, the presidency has been lengthened from a four-year to a six-year term, and presidents can run for re-election once. Twelve more years!

The announcement was hardly a surprise, of course. Despite appearances and titles, Putin has largely been running the show in Moscow even since Medvedev formally became the country’s chief executive in 2008, and virtually no one is surprised that Putin will seek to regain his formal status as president next year or that he will, in all likelihood, be elected overwhelmingly by the Russian electorate in reasonably free and open voting. Unless he either becomes ill or Russia experiences a great downturn during his first six years, he will dutifully be reelected in 2018. If all goes according to plan, Putin will remain in power until he is 72. Speculation about anything past 2024 is not worth making.

While exhibiting the beauty and inevitability of a mud slide (an analogy I crib without permission from an old University of Alabama dean), this is not particularly good news for the United States or the region, at least in term of promoting greater democratization and independence for the countries and peoples there. Russians apparently do not care terribly about such matters; what they care about is what Putin delivers.

Putin is attractive to the Russian (and especially ethnic Russian) majority in the federation. A robust and charismatic figure, Putin has three obvious sources of attraction. First, he is a dynamic and forceful leader who, particularly in the minds of Russians, projects an image of strength and importance of their country in the world. Just as we are entreated not to “mess with Texas,” the image of Vladimir Putin is that you had better not mess with Russia either.

Second, Putin is committed to restoring Russia’s place as a major power in the region and the world. This determination, which is related to the first source of his attraction, rings very much true to the Russian electorate. One of Russian history’s major themes is the quest for status as a world power. While most Russians do not look back at the old Soviet days with much poignancy, they do remember favorably the fact that the Soviet Union was an acknowledged, even feared, superpower which held sway within its region and was, for many purposes, the major peer of the United States. Russians want to return to that status; Putin, by word and deed, offers them what they believe is the best chance to do so. This perception stands in stark contrast with the image of the affable Medvedev, who appears much too bland and compliant for Russian tastes. Think Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Third, Putin is a consummate politician. His rise to power happened to coincide with Russia’s emergence as the world’s second largest exporter of oil and largest exporter of natural gas (especially to Europe, which is highyl dependent on Russian supplies), and he turned this windfall into two advantages for himself and his country. Internally, Putin has skillfullyused energy revenues essentially to “buy off” the voting public with the largesse of government disbursements that have improved the material conditions of many Russians. He became, during the 2000s wshen he was formally in the presidency, one of the two particular experts in what Thomas L. Friedman calls “petrolist” politics, using oil revenues to bolster support and, not entirely coincidentally, to erode democracy. It is a Faustian bargain of sorts, but one the Russian people have accepted as a necessary tradeoff for their own prosperity and sense of national resurgence.

Internationally, energy exports give Russia leverage they have lacked since the end of the Cold War. While Russia retains a nuclear force roughly equivalent to that of the United States, that is not enough to insure Russian prestige and acceptance as a”super” power: to many, it is still a “Third World country with nuclear weapons.” Oil and natural gas change that, since the world is hungry for energy, and especially for energy that does not come from the unstable Middle East: Russia may still be a Third World country, but energy makes them more consequential, and Putin both knows this and how to exploit it.

Will Putin return to his old ways when he returns to office? There is no reason to think he won’t. What will this mean for the United States? The answer somewhat depends on how the US government decides to treat a new Russian regime, but it will detainly dampen American enthusiasm for Russian movement toward “normal” status in the region and world and dim any hope that Russia will soon evolve into a full-scale western democracy. It will also mean a more assertive Russian stance toward the “internal abroad” (those ethnically non-Russian parts of Russia that seek autonomy or independence–think Chechnya and Dagestan) or the “near abroad” (the former Soviet republics on itrs periphery–think Georgia). Russia will almost certainly act in ways of which the United States disapproves, and the results will almost certainly return greater strain to those relations.

Russia still has its problems, which Putin cannot wish away. Russian demographics are still horrible, and population decline will continue and hamper Russia’s return to major status. The rate of exploitation of Russia’s oil reserves cannot be sustained long before they begin to become depleted. Russia needs to be looking toward new bases of influence beyond energy, and buying off the population only serves short-term, not long-term goals. These are Russian realities that face any Russian leader.

As yesterday’s indicates, Valdimir Putin is back. He never really went away, but in March, the Russian public will put him back in the driver’s seat, while his understudy, Dmitry Medvedev, will be consigned to the rumble seat. It is not particularly good news, but there is not a whole lot that can be done about it.

Bush’s Missile Defense, One More Time

President Obama is in Moscow meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, with the shadow Vladimir Putin not far from their sight. The highlight of the talks, which are aimed at improving relations with Russia typically soured by the Bush administration, center on nuclear arms agreements, which were at the heart of Cold War negotiations and were one the areas that led to ending the Cold War confrontation. As usual, missile defenses (in this case Bush’s proposed “light” defense in Poland and the Czech Republic) are the centerpiece of these discussions.

A point of honesty is due here. I have been a consistent opponent of missile defenses since the 1960s, when they were first proposed. My opposition has four bases that I can rattle off easily. First, they are expensive; President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), pegged at a helf-trillion or so (when a trillion dollars seemed like a lot) was the mother lode of this expense. Second, they do not work–or at least we have never built one that does against a real live attack seeking to overcome them. This, of course, makes their expense more dubious. Third, even if they were to work, they are easy to overcome, simply by building enough extra offensive systems (which are invariably cheaper than the defenses) to overwhelm them. This problem is progressive, meaning that an arms spiral of offense-defense will always favor the offense. Fourth, they are provocative and destabilizing; if they actually can be made to work, they would effectively disarm the offensive capabilities of the side at which they are aimed. That sounds like a much better idea on the surface than it really is. All the arguments for defenses deny these points, add the sentimental argument that we have to try to save the “women and chill’uns” (a task best accomplished by avoiding war altogether), and are, in my judgment, wrong.

Back to Moscow. The talks there are focused on two matters. One is the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). That agreement (START I) was negotiated in 1991 and will run out in December of this year. Everyone agrees it is in our interest to keep START going and to reach a new agreement that will reduce nuclear arsenals more; the only disagreement is the levels at which reductions will occur (the Russians want a lower bottom line than do the Americans). The Russians, who have always opposed missile defenses, argue that progress on START requires doing something about the Bush missile defense plan: no BMD agreement, no START.

Should the Obama administration bow to Russian pressure and cancel the Polish-Czech system? A positive answer includes the argument that the system is basically worthless (meaning we don’t give up much) and is aimed at a threat (Iran) that does not exist. From a national security vantage point, not much is being sacrificed. Proponents of the Bush plan suggest that the screen could work and that buckling in to the Russian demands is less than macho. These proponents, mostly Republicans, could make life miserable for Obama were he to accede to Russian demands.

Is there a compromise? Yes. There are two possiblities on the table. One is to move the system: radars in Turkey, launchers in Romania. The Russians are no more enthused about this than they are the Czech-Polish deployment plan. The other is to base the system on American Aegis ships, which are developing a theater missile defense system scheduled for deployment in 2015. The Russians do not object to this possibility, and it poses no additional national defense peril, since the Iranians cannot possibly have a deployable system before then (if they ever do). Declaring a deployment pause until 2015 thus seems a reasonable compromise.

The missile defense issue does not rise to the level of national security concern that, say, Iraq and Agfhanistan do, but improving U.S.-Russian relations may, so the visit is not inconsequential. It would, of course, be much simpler were it not for the persistent missile defense issue, which seems never to go away, no matter how badly one might wish it would. Support of missile defenses has been a nagging thorn in the national security debate for over 40 years now, and it has reared its head one more time. Let’s hope for a quiet burial this time!

The Burr Under Putin’s Saddle

Why the Russians chose to invade Georgia remains a matter of considerable conversation and controversy. If one discounts (or at least views skeptically) the self-proclaimed reason of saving the beleaguered South Ossetians and Abkhazians from their Georgian oppressors (although that may have been a valid concern), what is one left with as an explanation for an action that has clearly inflamed relations between Russia and the West, and especially the United States?

Part of the explanation that is gaining some traction is that the action was Vladimir Putin’s way of demonstrating unequivocally that Russia was back and was no longer to be taken lightly. The Russians have made the “near abroad” (their designation of the former Soviet republics) a little closer to the breast of the Russian bear; their pointed ignoring of entreaties to leave and apparent violation of their agreements to cease their invasion sends a clear message that old-fashioned spheres of influence have not disappeared from world politics. They laugh, appropriately, at the pious, hypocritical plea of George Bush that countries don’t invade other countries in the Twenty-first century.

Admitting that all of this is part of the calculus, there is another explanation–the burr under Mr. Putin’s saddle. That is the missile defense system the United States just finished negotiating with Poland. The Russians have been objecting to missile defense schemes for 40 years and to this one since Bush proposed it. When Russian General Anatoly Nogovitsyn of the Russian General Staff said the final decision to deploy the system in Poland (with supportive radars in the Czech Republic) and to defend the complex with Patriot missiles was a provocation that “cannot go unpunished,” hie words were dismissed as Cold War-era bombast. But what if they had more meaning?

I must make a confession on this subject. I have thought missile defenses were a bad idea for over a quarter-century. My first objections–basically that they are hyper-expensive boondoggles–was made in 1983 in a book, The Nuclear Future (University of Alabama Press), and in reviewing what I said then, not much has changed. The current scheme, which has been a Bush hobby horse since he was elected, proposes a “thin” screen against an attack by a “rogue state” (read Iran). Like all such schemes, it probably won’t work, but fortunately, the threat against which it is proposed is so unlikely that that doesn’t matter much. It does, however, exercise the Russians in ways reminiscent of their opposition to Ronald Reagan’s Rube Goldberg scheme, the Strategic Defense Intitiative, in the 1980s.

New York Times writer Steven Lee Myers captures the Russian objection well in an August 15, 2008 article (“No Cold War But Big Chill over Georgia”): “No matter how much the Americans argue that NATO is now focused on other threats, for Russia, it remains an enemy force. And no matter how often the Americans say missile defense is aimed at Iran and other so-called rogue nations, it remains an existential threat to Russia’s aging and shrinking nuclear capability.”

NATO has increasingly encircled Russia, and proposals to extend the alliance to Ukraine and Georgia (which John McCain supports) would only tighten the knot, part of Putin’s burr. The Russians have always been paranoid about missile defenses, and completing the deal with Poland–which the Bush administration presumably sees as part of its permanent legacy–may have been the final burr under the saddle that caused Mr. Putin and his colleague Mr. Medvedev to say, enough is enough. And so they struck back and let us all know that we mess with Russia at our own risk.

I wonder how Mr. Bush missed that kind of determination when he looked in Mr. Putin’s eyes seven years ago. And while Mr. Putin certainly does reflect his KGB past, did Mr. McCain see this concern when he lashed out and said he wants to kick the Russians out of G-8 and, in essence, potentially start a new Cold War? Not trying to justify what the Russians have done in Georgia, it may help to put the whole thing into perspective.

Iraq, Afghanistan, and South Ossetia

Over the weekend, war has begun in South Ossetia, a part of the Republic of Georgia that, along with neighboring Abkhazia, wishes to disassociate itself from Georgia and either achieve independence or union with Russia. The attempt by South Ossetia to break away from Georgia goes back to the breakup of the Soviet Union and has bubbled to the surface periodically since. As such, South Ossetian (or Abkhazian) separatism is not great international news.

The fact that Russia has intervened with armed force in ways reminiscent of its 1994 invasion of Chechnya is news. The Russians have had “peacekeepers” in South Ossetia (North Ossetia, along the border, is part of Russia) since 2006, and when fighting broke out between Georgian forces and the separatists earlier this month, the Russians jumped to the aid of those separatists. The Russians have invaded South Ossetia in force (partly from Abkhazia) and threaten to treat the area with the same loving care they showered on Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, 15 years ago (they leveled it). Whether they will go further into the rest of Georgia remains uncertain at this point.

So what’s the big deal? South Ossetia (the Georgians deny there is any such place, preferring to call it Samachablo and maintaining there is only one Ossetia, the part in Russia) is a small place in the mountains with a population of about 70,000 (according to the BBC) and with a mixed population of Georgians, Ossetians, and Russians. It has little geopolitical importance in and of itself.

What is going on is important for two reasons. The first concerns the United States, which has closer relations with Georgia than any of the other former Soviet republics and has heralded Georgia as the beacon of what the FSU (former Soviet Union) can become. That “special relationship,” however, is being put to the test, because the United States is essentially powerless to do anything about Russian aggression in Georgia (assuming we would under any circumstances). The reason, of course, is that the U.S. is so tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan (and potentially Iran) that it cannot threaten credibly to do anything about the Russian actions. Vladimir Putin and George Bush sit side by side and chat at the Beijing Olympics, but there is little Bush can whisper in Putin’s ear that might cause the Russians to change course. 

The other concern is Russia. The Russians have long chafed at their impotence in the face of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and now oil wealth and American diversion appear to give them the opening to flex their muscles over what they consider some of the more egregious instances of Soviet disintegration. At least part of the reason they can act is because they know the United States cannot counteract.

One can, of course, argue that even if the United States was not involved in the Middle East that we still wouldn’t have a lot to say about South Ossetia which, after all, is hardly worth a potential confrontation with Russia in Russia’s own backyard. While that is true, the current situation does, however, offer two lessons that come immediately to mind.

The first lesson is that of overextension. The United States has invested so much of its capability and energy in Iraq and Afghanistan that it really has little left to apply elsewhere in the world. We have known this for some time, but only in the abstract. South Ossetia puts that impotence in concrete terms. Second, the situation also points to the limits of commitment. There have been discussions about the expansion of NATO further east, and Georgia, the democratic protege, has been one of the possible candidates mentioned in a future expansion. If Georgia were a NATO member today, the U.S. and its NATO allies would be in a very delicate situation, to put it mildly, trying to figure out how to honor an alliance commitment to defend an ally while avoiding an all-out war with Russia (which does still have nuclear weapons). Before we get out the treaty pen again, we might want to think about South Ossetia.

What happens next? Will South Ossetia break away and join Russia over Georgian objections? Will the United States be in any position to do anything but sit and wring its hands? Will others want to have much to do with us while we’re still tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan? At the bottom line, are Iraq and Afghanistan important enough to leave the United States in the compromised situation in which we find ourselves today?