Following up on yesterday’s Russia post a recent article in Macleans magazine details Russia’s confrontational tactics, illustrating how Russia has been incrementally ratcheting up various levers with which to pressure the world.
Russia can dominate the provision of energy resources to Europe and turn the taps on and off at will. It can interfere with Western aircraft production and repair. It can loot military technologies and upgrade its military forces. By attenuating internal criticism, the Kremlin has fewer and fewer checks and balances on its behaviour. Aggressive military behaviour against Canada and the U.S. is an indication that Vladimir Putin’s Russia isn’t merely interested in consolidating domestic power. There is a larger agenda, and the West needs to figure out what it is.
The authors are a professor (my history prof actually) and a graduate from Royal Military College.
Fear of the Russian Bear seems to be increasing. Slate had this to say yesterday:
After all, for the better part of a decade now, we’ve been desperately looking for weapons of mass destruction and for these strange new enemies, the Islamic radicals who might be planning to use them. And now we’ve discovered that there really is nuclear material for sale, and that it really is being used, in the West, to kill people. And the killers aren’t strange, or new, or even Islamic at all.
The foreseers look to China to be the conventional threat of the future. Could Russia be the wolf in sheep’s clothing we should really be looking out for?
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COMMENTS / 8 COMMENTS
Brian added these pithy words on 06 Dec 06 at 6:46 amIt’s a shame that the Regan Administration ended the policy of detente with the USSR. Allowing the Soviet Union to gradualy adopt market reforms through a policy of mutual non-interfearance would have been much preferable to the economic melt-down experienced by Russia in the 1990’s. Is it any wonder that, after a debilitating 40 year cold war and the break down of the the USSR, Russia is still in the control of thuggish henchmen and evil oligarchs? Nothing will ever change in Russia until it’s economy stabilizes. It pains me to say it, but by ending detente and steping up the arms race in the 1980’s, it missed a golden oppertunity to aid the Soviet Union in it’s transition to a more market based and peaceful society.
Younghusband added these pithy words on 06 Dec 06 at 8:02 amThe Economist is not so sure:
But the threat it poses to the rest of the world has been overstated. Russia is neither exporting a defunct ideology nor fighting proxy wars with America, as it did during the cold war. Its hints at disruptions to Europeans’ gas supplies are mostly bluff. Indeed, the biggest dangers Russia poses to the West may be as an incubator of assorted diseases and of Islamist extremism.
IJ added these pithy words on 06 Dec 06 at 10:30 amThis all reminds me of a failed attempt to change NATO, at the transformation summit in Riga a couple of weeks ago. There was little support for a global NATO, which would strengthen the energy security of the military alliance. Perhaps the solution is a strengthened United Nations system.
davesgonechina added these pithy words on 06 Dec 06 at 1:48 pm“Russia isn’t merely interested in consolidating domestic power. There is a larger agenda, and the West needs to figure out what it is.”
What evidence is there of a larger agenda? Those in power don’t want to lose it. So suppress dissidents, fund yourselves with petrodollars and keep your military up in case anybody gets any ideas. Why does there have to be any agenda larger than maintaining their own power?
And that Slate article was by Anne Applebaum, who fills her article with links but fails to show any proof for her main assertion, that Putin is pulling all the strings. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, but there’s plenty of other players in Russian intelligence who could have done it on their own time for their own reasons. Applebaum is a pretty terrible writer – her “Blame China” piece about North Korea was roundingly fisked by the entire China blogosphere, on the right and the left.
As for the Economist, I’ve seen the hysterics about the Islamicization of Russia and I’m not convinced. I’m willing to buy the diseases line, though, since I’ve read about Paul Farmer’s work on TB in Russian prisons.
“The foreseers look to China to be the conventional threat of the future. Could Russia be the wolf in sheep’s clothing we should really be looking out for?”
I thought in a multipolar, 4GW world the phrase “conventional threat” would be obsolete.
von Kaufman-Turkestansky added these pithy words on 06 Dec 06 at 6:13 pmYour prof’s article has many insights; at the same time he muddles things rhetorically. I can think of few major public intellectuals or pundits who are critical of the US in Iraq but are forgiving to Russia in Chechnya. I can think of many who are not – such as conservative Eric Margolis and many on the left in Europe (which seems justified to me – both ivasions are horrible); I can also think of many conservatives who are critical of Russia in Chechnya but not of the US in Iraq (which seems looking from the outside hardly a tenable position, particularly since Chechnya is within the borders the Russian Federation inherited). You pretty much have to go to Russia to see the example the Macleans authors are talking about, and I get suspicious when I see suspect rhetoric. It is also interesting that their article begins with military excercises from the 1990’s (that is not to say that there were not very vocal anti-Western voices in Russia then, especially in the military. There were. But again it seems to muddle the context of what is happening now). Furthermore, they rhetorically wonder where Russia’s gratitude is for high oil prices, as if they are trying to say that Russia owes a moral debt to the West for its current windfall, which seems silly. They sneer at environmental laws there; while I understand that there may be reasons to suspect double-dealing, we all get the joke, from a dispassionate point of view that really seems like a double standard; and they seem to have a beef with Russia for defending its own commercial interests. From the point of view of your average Iosif on the street in Russia, that just seems to confirm what they were suspecting all along – that greedy westerners are simply hoping to take everything they can.
All of that said, the authors have a very good point: Russia, like everyone who has power these days, is playing hardball. And countries like Poland are nervous, and indeed they are right to predict a possible future with NATO troops in the Baltic, the way things are going.
This kind of rhetoric that looks so obviously like double standards makes it unproductive, and it just plays into the hands of the more hard-core geopolitical realists in Russia now, making them seem all the more “right” to the average citizen. It helps to undo a lot of good work done by Americans and other westerners during the 1990’s.
But ultimately, yes, there is a larger agenda. Russia will work to maximize its geopolitical impact. You won’t see Russia “joining Europe” or “the West” since these entities are not big enough for it. Russia and Europe (or the West) will have to find a way to co-exist; they have done so for a long time so I don’t see why they cannot do so in the future. I think a realist attitude, balancing, checking, but not going into hysterics, will be the most reasonable way of existing.
Now I may be negating everything I have just written when I offer this, but regarding Russia’s “hidden agenda” there is a great series of articles in Asia Times Online. It’s food for thought, by a guy named W. Joseph Stroupe. I don’t know much about him, but he paints a dark picture, making a more compelling case for Lugar (who is quoted in one of these articles). Take a look here, I would be interested in comments:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH25Dj01.html …
and here…http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HK14Aa01.html ...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HK15Aa01.html ...and finally here…
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HK22Ag01.html …
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HK23Ag01.html …
IJ added these pithy words on 06 Dec 06 at 8:09 pmNATO members refused to support Senator Lugar’s argument, which suggested they should attack sovereign countries that threaten Western prosperity. One alternative is a UN route for energy security.
Chechnya is not a sovereign country, is it?
Younghusband added these pithy words on 11 Dec 06 at 2:59 amEdward Lucas from The Economist:
Russia is a threat. The Soviet cocktail of communism and imperialism was a hard sell. ... Russia’s main weapons now are more subtle and potent: cheap gas, and money for the right people. ... The West is all the weaker for its addiction to wishful thinking. Surely it is better to negotiate and compromise with Russia, than have a messy and costly confrontation? ... We face a systemic rivalry based on conflicting values and clashing geopolitics. Not a cold war, perhaps, but it’s getting chilly.
IJ added these pithy words on 11 Dec 06 at 11:54 amSurely it is better to negotiate and compromise with Russia, than have a messy and costly confrontation?... We face a systemic rivalry based on conflicting values and clashing geopolitics.
Some negotiations are taking place. A few weeks ago, the EU’s Energy Commissioner addressed the EU-Russia Energy Dialogue Conference. Mr Piebalgs praised Russia for being “a stable and reliable supplier of natural gas to the European Union. . . even during the tremendous political changes that occurred in the early nineties.”
However times are changing, and the Commissioner also said that Russia needs now to spend huge amounts of money to maintain and grow its production. This suggests introducing a secure and attractive investment climate – which is contrary to the energy nationalism we are seeing at present.
