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 high-school student surnamed Yang (楊) gained admissions to several prestigious medical schools recently. However, when Yang shared his “learning portfolio” on social media, he was caught exaggerating and even falsifying content, and his admissions were revoked. Now he has to take the “advanced subjects test” scheduled for next month. With his outstanding performance in the general scholastic ability test (GSAT), Yang successfully gained admissions to five prestigious medical schools. However, his university dreams have now been frustrated by the “flaws” in his learning portfolio. This is a wake-up call not only for students, but also teachers. Yang did make a big
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) concludes his fourth visit to China since leaving office, Taiwan finds itself once again trapped in a familiar cycle of political theater. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has criticized Ma’s participation in the Straits Forum as “dancing with Beijing,” while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) defends it as an act of constitutional diplomacy. Both sides miss a crucial point: The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world. The disagreement reduces Taiwan’s
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is visiting China, where he is addressed in a few ways, but never as a former president. On Sunday, he attended the Straits Forum in Xiamen, not as a former president of Taiwan, but as a former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman. There, he met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Presumably, Wang at least would have been aware that Ma had once been president, and yet he did not mention that fact, referring to him only as “Mr Ma Ying-jeou.” Perhaps the apparent oversight was not intended to convey a lack of
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) last week announced that the KMT was launching “Operation Patriot” in response to an unprecedented massive campaign to recall 31 KMT legislators. However, his action has also raised questions and doubts: Are these so-called “patriots” pledging allegiance to the country or to the party? While all KMT-proposed campaigns to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers have failed, and a growing number of local KMT chapter personnel have been indicted for allegedly forging petition signatures, media reports said that at least 26 recall motions against KMT legislators have passed the second signature threshold