Russia
I wrote a commentary piece for Radio Free Europe on the future of Russia.
The central points, briefly, are these:
- “Diminished democratic decision making reduces the feedback Russian society can give to the government, increasing the likelihood that popular and elite interests will diverge.”
- “A state that relies on resource extraction can easily lose the inclination to attend to other aspects of economic strength that are more stable and promising over the long term.”
- “Russia seems fixated on threats from the West. But this sense of danger is misplaced,” as “Russia faces much more plausible security threats from the south and east.”
- “No foreign power is likely to do Russia as much harm as its dire demographic decline.”
A commenter had this to say about the piece: the “author conveniently forgets about the fact that throughout the 90s Russia already tried to align with the broadly defined “West”, only to see its interests completely ignored and enemies encouraged through a very short-sighted policies of US, EU, and NATO.”
One might ask: which enemies where encouraged? Russia’s only real enemies in the 1990s were separatists in Caucasian Russia, and the West had little to do with that. Unless Russia has military designs on the former countries of the Warsaw Pact, Russia’s interests are not harmed by their joining NATO, and in any case Russia does not get to choose their fates any longer. After centuries of abuse at Russian hands, the Poles (for instance) have every right to look for protection westward. (Though continued rapid NATO expansion is not a great idea: at this point, inclusion of divided Ukraine and irresponsible Georgia would probably harm NATO more than it would hurt Russian interests.)
And Serbia was a terrible place to place one’s sympathies: Russia ignored the fact that the Serbians were engaging in savage policies in both Bosnia and Kosovo — and neither situation was triggered by the West.
Internally, Russians were in fact harmed by the so-called oligarchs, but they were Russian, and they acquired wealth and power due to choices Russians made.
My ultimate point is this: it should act on its real interests, not a emotion-driven parody of those interests.
Parag Khanna, author of The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New World Order, offers some tips for a new US president in the October issue of Wired, in an article by Daniel Pink.
- The United States can avoid decline by “tightening trade and energy ties to the rest of the hemisphere, pursuing economic innovation at home, and establishing a ‘diplomatic-industrial complex.’”
- The US should create “an energy partnership with Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, and Brazil,” reducing dependence on oil from the Middle East.
- The US should treat Mexico as the EU does Turkey, “integrating, elevating, and partnering with it.”
- Egypt is “ripe for revolt. We should make friends quickly with other power centers in the country, including the Muslim Brotherhood.”
- The US should offer Iranians a deal: oust President Ahmadinejad, and they will get “everything they want in terms of of Western investment in energy, freer trade, diplomatic recognition, and increased cultural and student exchanges.”
- Uzbekistan merits attention, as the most populous and industrialized country in Central Asia, and the only state that shares borders with all the other “stans.”
- “India will never rival China . . . It’s not a superpower.”
- China’s rise will not be hindered by “demands for such niceties as transparency or free expression,” as “the Chinese people have a preference for stability over another revolution.”
- Russia has more problems than potential: it is “in demographic free fall” and “Chinese immigration is blurring the border.”
The gathering conflict between Georgia and Russia suggests a couple of larger issues:
- Self-determination: South Ossetia illustrates the fact that there simply are no rules for self-determination–when and how one place is allowed to separate from another. And no country consistently advocates a particular set of rules: as is the case with Abkhazia, South Ossetia would appear to have as much right as Kosovo to leave its parent state, and has been separate for years longer than Kosovo, but countries take opposite approaches to the two issues.
- NATO: The US wishes to extend NATO membership to Georgia. That Georgia could end up at war with Russia over a strategically trivial and morally muddy issue suggests some of the potential problems with that course. It would potentially subject the alliance to a clash with Russia without any key interests at stake (at least for NATO). Alternately, and more likely, it would extend NATO promises that would not ultimately be kept, as members would likely (and sensibly) balk at aiding Georgia in many scenarios, risking turning NATO into another hollow CENTO or SEATO.
Knowledge@Wharton this week offered a series of articles on Russia’s evolution.
Scholars suggest that Russia is not reverting to old ways, as such, and Russians may broadly find the country’s present course agreeable.
Some commentators interpret nearly all his moves as attempts to restore to the Kremlin, Russia’s executive branch, to the omnipotence that it enjoyed during the Soviet years. That’s a misreading of Russian reality, says Valery Yakubovich, a Wharton management professor and Russian native. For one thing, “Nobody in Russia wants to go back,” he says. For another, Putin doesn’t have the power to push the country backwards, even if he wants to. “Around him there are various cliques, and he’s trying to balance them,” Yakubovich explains. “The government’s not completely under his control or design.”
As for Putin himself, Wharton writes that “he is so popular at home that many Russians would relax the rules to allow him to seek a third term” in the 2008 election.
“I think the Russian people would support Putin staying in power indefinitely,” says Dmitri Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Moscow Center. “If you look at the way people live today compared with when he came to power, they will say that living standards are twice as high. More importantly, there’s a sense of stability that has replaced the chaos of the 1990s. They will also say that Putin has restored some pride and respect for Russia abroad.”
Russians are far less interested in joining the European Union than they were a few years ago, according to a new poll.
In 2003, 73% thought Russia should join the bloc. Now only about a third (36%) feel this way.
At some level this fluctuation hardly matters: it will be decades before Europe’s limping eastern giant is a realistic candidate for membership in the grouping.
In a new Russian poll, two-thirds of Russians (64%) say they would vote to unite Russia and Belarus.
Belarusians may not be so keen on the prospect of what would amount to absorption by their giant neighbor. The elite in particular are likely to have grown attached to a state of their own.
Russia is bringing more key companies under state influence, the WP reports.
The Russian government portrays this trend as furthering the “creation of powerful companies that can compete in the global economy.”
If this is accurate, it would point further toward an East Asian scenario for Russia, in which the government guides a predominantly capitalist system.
But some have their doubts. Says one opposition politician, “We should differentiate between state capitalism and bureaucratic capitalism; here we have bureaucratic capitalism, groups of state bureaucrats taking control of companies.”
Another notes that the Russian state is employing companies as political tools domestically and abroad, “so economic logic becomes a victim of political interests.”
This could undermine an Asian model for Russia. Guided capitalism has worked, but it depends on the competence and public-spiritedness of those governing. If public purposes and prosperity are subordinated to other goals, then Russia ends up with the standard Third World model, and poor prospects for wealth.
A new poll shows that Russians are not particularly enthusiastic about democracy.
Only 15% strongly agree that democracy is the best form of government, with another 37% agreeing somewhat. The comparative numbers in the US are 57% and 34%.
That only half of Russians believe much in democracy helps explain Russia’s current trajectory toward soft authoritarianism. The likelihood of an Asian political model — perhaps like Singapore or Malaysia — is rising.
The Boston Consulting Group has released a report on 100 emerging-market companies with global competetive potential, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Firms from China (44 companies), India (21), Brazil, and Russia constitute most of the group, with Mexico also making a good showing.
Companies like these will be the shock troops for the redistribution of global economic power. In the process, they will transform their home countries’ global roles and interests.
An emerging market expert points out that the developed world may balk at the process:
“The whole pace of globalisation may have to slow or it could set off a wave of protectionism. So far the West has mostly been losing jobs at the low end, and the process has been mutually beneficial. There is now a big risk of losing jobs at the high end too now that China and India are moving move swiftly up the ladder, as we have already seen in software. This means that incomes in the West may have to adjust downwards, and the workforce is not going to tolerate this.”
[Via Social Technologies; image: Social Technologies]
Russia’s president Putin has announced plans to pay families monthly stipends if they have children, to counter one of the country’s most dire problems, population decline, now running at 700,000 people a year.
As the Washington Post explains,
If it continues, officials say today’s population of around 143 million will be down to 100 million by the middle of the century, translating into a weaker workforce and smaller army.