#7
Asia Times
January 3, 2002
Russia's global player status uncertain
By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - Since the Soviet Union fell apart 10 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, either at home or 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 favorite project, restoring Moscow's control over the country's 89 regions, has been undermined by concessions to 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 favors a strong state. But liberals are concerned about the rise of former 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, a pacification campaign in the breakaway province 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 criticized 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 Boris Yeltsin. Moreover, the scale of corruption is even higher than under Yeltsin, admits Illarionov.

Apart from pressing domestic issues, Putin is faced with immense foreign policy challenges. Moscow has moved closer to joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). Russia has also emerged as a reliable alternative to Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), keen to ally politically with the West.

Nonetheless, despite repeated Russian warnings that American plans of an anti-missile shield could trigger a new arms race, the Kremlin is constrained to live with new realities in the aftermath of the US jettisoning of a treaty that Washington saw as Cold War era dead-weight. In response to the US withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, with effect from June 13, 2002, Putin told his countrymen in a nationwide television address that the Washington move is a "mistake", but one that will not threaten Russia's security. Russia had opposed the US plans to abandon the 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 US decision to scrap the ABM treaty. Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma backed Putin's statement, describing it as a balanced assessment of the US move. The ABM treaty used to be a stabilizing factor. Yet Kuchma said that following the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and subsequent global changes, the US had "a moral right" to abandon ABM. Russia's closest ally, Belarus, warned that the US 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 September 11, Putin made the only right choice, said Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the liberal Yabloko party.

Meanwhile, Russia's once ultra-nationalist Liberal-Democratic Party (LDPR) announced that it has decided to drop its anti-Western, anti-American and anti-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) stance. The party's leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, told the LDPR 13th Congress recently in Moscow that following the September 11 terrorist attacks Russia should ally with what he described as "Northern civilization", notably the United States 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, argued 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. (Inter Press Service)

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