2001-2002: Russia’s Status As Global Player Remains Ambiguous

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW, Dec 30 2001 (IPS) - Since the Soviet Union fell apart ten years ago, the Russian leadership has repeatedly pledged to create a strong state and improve the country’s international standing.

However, President Vladimir Putin is far removed from achieving that objective at home and abroad.

According to political observers, in his first full year in the Kremlin, Putin has consolidated power, creating the conditions necessary to make major changes in the way the country is run.

Yet his favourite project, restoring Moscow’s control over the country’s 89 regions, has been undermined by concessions to some governors.

One of the new laws created a mechanism for removing regional leaders who ignore federal laws, governing according to their own rules. But so far, Putin has not used this powerful new weapon.

Putin has stated that he favours a strong state. But liberals are concerned about the rise of KGB and military officers to top posts in his administration.

It has been pointed out that Putin’s eventual break with the Family, the group of Kremlin insiders under Boris Yeltsin, is imminent. But Putin has been unable or unwilling to shake the Family’s influence completely.

Although Putin’s approval rating soared before the presidential election in March 2000 due to his tough rhetoric on Chechnya yet a pacification campaign in breakaway Chechnya goes ahead for the third year.

Putin’s high approval ratings have barely gone down since his election as some two thirds of Russians approve of his performance as president.

Yet it has been argued that Putin did not take full advantage of a broad-based support from a loyal parliament and an economy boosted by high oil prices, to push through real reforms in fighting Russia’s endemic graft or improving the legal system.

Perhaps Putin’s most striking achievement was to force his political enemies either off the political field or onto his team. But not everybody is impressed and some academics and politicians have criticised his political and economic record.

The problem is not that Russia is governed by a “Stalin”. The real issue is that it is a very small “Stalin”, who is unable to work out a strategy for Russia’s development, said Mikhail Delyagin, an economist who heads the Institute of Globalization Problems.

Even Putin’s chief economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, concedes that Russia still follows basically the same policies as it did under his predecessor Boris Yeltsin.

Moreover, the scale of corruption is even higher than under Yeltsin, admits Illarionov.

Apart from pressing domestic issues, President Putin is faced with immense foreign policy challenges.

Moscow has moved closer to joining the World Trade Organization. Russia has also emerged as a reliable alternative to OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, keen to ally politically with the West.

Nonetheless, despite repeated Russian warnings that American plans of anti-missile shield could trigger a new arms race, the Kremlin is constrained to live with new realities in the aftermath of the U.S. jettisoning a treaty that Washington saw as Cold War era deadweight.

In response to the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) with effect from June 13, 2002, Putin told his countrymen in a nationwide television address that the Washington move was a “mistake” – but added that it would not threaten Russia’s security.

Russia had opposed the U.S. plans to abandon ABM treaty, which Moscow regarded as the cornerstone of nuclear deterrence. Under the ABM pact, Russia and the United States may protect only one site each with such a system.

Putin has managed to drum up some support from the former Soviet states for his response to the U.S. decision to scrap the ABM treaty.

Ukraine’s President Leonid Kuchma backed Putin’s statement, describing it as a balanced assessment of the U.S. move.

The ABM treaty used to be a stabilizing factor. Yet following the Sep.11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and subsequent global changes the US had “a moral right” to abandon ABM, Kuchma said.

Russia’s closest ally, Belarus, however warned that the U.S. withdrawal from ABM might undermine “strategic stability and international security”.

On the other hand, many Russian politicians have defended Putin’s policy of rapprochement with the West. In the wake of Sep.11, Putin had made the only one right choice, said Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the liberal Yabloko party.

Meanwhile, Russia’s once ultra-nationalist Liberal-Democratic Party (LDPR) has announced that it had decided to drop its anti-Western, anti-American and anti-NATO stance.

The party’s leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, told the LDPR 13th Congress recently in Moscow that following Sep.11 terrorist attacks Russia should ally with what he described as “Northern civilization”, notably the U.S. and Western Europe.

The LDPR had become notorious because of its anti-Western and nationalist rhetoric. Not surprisingly, Zhirinovsky has described the party’s change of mind as the LDPR’s “second birth”.

There are signs that despite the ABM demise, the Kremlin still aims at approaching the West differently.

As the US move to abandon ABM came against a backdrop of Russia’s improved relations with the West, political observers are of the view that Moscow’s global status as Washington’s equal partner faces yet another reality test.

Some analysts see a silver lining on the horizon for Russia. The current situation gives Putin a unique chance to become a mediator between Washington and Beijing, argues Lilya Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment.

This view is however interpreted by other analysts as a sign that Russia’s global status is undergoing yet another downgrade, because even optimistic scenarios give Moscow a mediation role rather than seeing it in the position of a powerful global player.