In 2001, US President George W. Bush claimed that he had looked into Russian President Vladimir Putin's eyes and found a soulmate for the West. Putin then proceeded to restore authoritarian rule in Russia.?Today, Western leaders may well be about to repeat the same mistake with Dmitry Medvedev.
Sunday's election was a coronation rather than a competition. Medvedev's only opponents were has-beens from the 1990s like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who long ago converted himself from proto-fascist into a Kremlin loyalist, and Andrey Bogdanov, an ersatz "democrat" permitted to run by the Kremlin in order to dupe the West into thinking that a real contest was taking place.
It is therefore surprising that Medvedev should be hailed by so many in the West as a "liberal." Is this just because we have been maneuvered into fearing someone worse, a sabre-rattling silovik (past or present member of the security services), like former defense minister Sergey Ivanov? Or does Medvedev represent a genuine opportunity to unfreeze the current mini-Cold War between Russia and the West?
Medvedev is indeed personable. Putin's background was in the KGB, while Medvedev is a lawyer who has attacked Russia's "legal nihilism" and denounced the fashionable concept of "sovereign democracy."
Medvedev is familiar to the business world after seven years as chairman of the board of Gazprom. He can talk the talk at Davos. He wears nice suits. He does not look like an archetypal post-Soviet bureaucrat or KGB agent. He is a big fan of 1970s rockers Deep Purple.
But we need to understand the system that made Medvedev before rushing to embrace a new face that may turn out to be only a cosmetic improvement.
Russia's problem is not that it is an imperfect democracy, but that its governance is corrupted by so-called "political technology." This involves more than just stuffing the ballot box. Political technology means secretly sponsoring fake politicians like Bogdanov, setting up fake NGO's and "patriotic" youth movements like Nashi (Ours) to prevent a Russian version of Ukraine's Orange Revolution and mobilizing voters against a carefully scripted "enemy."
In 1996, the enemy was the Communists; in 1999 to 2000, the Chechens; in 2003 to 2004, the "oligarchs." Now it is us -- the supposedly hostile West and the threat posed by "color revolutions" to Russia's hard-won stability.
Medvedev himself may find some or all of this distasteful, but Russia now has an entire industry of political manipulation that is hardly likely to disappear overnight.
We also need to understand the mechanics of Russian succession politics. In the Russian context, "liberal" does not mean little more than opposing the siloviki. It means being in a different clan, at a different part of the feeding trough.
The uncertainties of the succession have created a covert war for property and influence between a handful of different clans, but the system cannot afford an outright winner.
In recent months, the most powerful clan, led by Deputy Head of Kremlin Administration Igor Sechin, whose company, Rosneft, received the biggest chunk of Yukos in 2004, has threatened to engulf the others. Another company, Russneft, worth an estimated US$8 billion to US$9 billion, seems to be heading its way, after its owner, Mikhail Gutseriyev, was evicted by the same recipe of legal threats and tax liens that was used against Yukos, and after the mysterious death of his son in a car crash. There are rumors that Sechin's clan has designs on Russia's Stabilization Fund, which has been pumped up to over US$140 billion because of soaring energy prices.
In other words, rebalancing the system, not any sudden desire to reverse the increasingly illiberal course Russia has taken since 2003, was the key reason for choosing Medvedev. Putin's ambition to stay in power as prime minister is also rooted in this rebalancing act. He needs to stay on as Medvedev's "minder" to keep any one clan from dominating the others.
So there should be no race to be Medvedev's new best friend and no staring into his eyes and speculating about his soul. Instead, we should concentrate on what Medvedev does, not on what he says, because there can be no real transition in Russia unless and until he begins to define the system rather than being defined by it.
Andrew Wilson is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Copyright: Project Syndicate/ECFR
A few weeks ago in Kaohsiung, tech mogul turned political pundit Robert Tsao (曹興誠) joined Western Washington University professor Chen Shih-fen (陳時奮) for a public forum in support of Taiwan’s recall campaign. Kaohsiung, already the most Taiwanese independence-minded city in Taiwan, was not in need of a recall. So Chen took a different approach: He made the case that unification with China would be too expensive to work. The argument was unusual. Most of the time, we hear that Taiwan should remain free out of respect for democracy and self-determination, but cost? That is not part of the usual script, and
Behind the gloating, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) must be letting out a big sigh of relief. Its powerful party machine saved the day, but it took that much effort just to survive a challenge mounted by a humble group of active citizens, and in areas where the KMT is historically strong. On the other hand, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) must now realize how toxic a brand it has become to many voters. The campaigners’ amateurism is what made them feel valid and authentic, but when the DPP belatedly inserted itself into the campaign, it did more harm than good. The
For nearly eight decades, Taiwan has provided a home for, and shielded and nurtured, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). After losing the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the KMT fled to Taiwan, bringing with it hundreds of thousands of soldiers, along with people who would go on to become public servants and educators. The party settled and prospered in Taiwan, and it developed and governed the nation. Taiwan gave the party a second chance. It was Taiwanese who rebuilt order from the ruins of war, through their own sweat and tears. It was Taiwanese who joined forces with democratic activists
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) held a news conference to celebrate his party’s success in surviving Saturday’s mass recall vote, shortly after the final results were confirmed. While the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would have much preferred a different result, it was not a defeat for the DPP in the same sense that it was a victory for the KMT: Only KMT legislators were facing recalls. That alone should have given Chu cause to reflect, acknowledge any fault, or perhaps even consider apologizing to his party and the nation. However, based on his speech, Chu showed
RSS