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
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
On a quiet lane in Taipei’s central Daan District (大安), an otherwise unremarkable high-rise is marked by a police guard and a tawdry A4 printout from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating an “embassy area.” Keen observers would see the emblem of the Holy See, one of Taiwan’s 12 so-called “diplomatic allies.” Unlike Taipei’s other embassies and quasi-consulates, no national flag flies there, nor is there a plaque indicating what country’s embassy this is. Visitors hoping to sign a condolence book for the late Pope Francis would instead have to visit the Italian Trade Office, adjacent to Taipei 101. The death of
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
On April 19, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave a public speech, his first in about 17 years. During the address at the Ketagalan Institute in Taipei, Chen’s words were vague and his tone was sour. He said that democracy should not be used as an echo chamber for a single politician, that people must be tolerant of other views, that the president should not act as a dictator and that the judiciary should not get involved in politics. He then went on to say that others with different opinions should not be criticized as “XX fellow travelers,” in reference to
RSS