#4 - RW 10-29-04 - RW Home
RIA Novosti
October 27, 2004
WHAT IF THE DEMOCRATS WIN IN THE US?

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti political commentator Dmitry Kosyrev) - One can imagine Democrats regaining the White House after the November 2 elections. After all, they have a 50:50 chance, as the aggregate results of all opinion polls show. Will this disappoint the authorities, the political community and society of Russia? If not, what prompted President Vladimir Putin to make statements a few weeks ago that could be interpreted as support for Bush?

If we come to power, we should be friends and partners, a most charming Democrat on a trip to Moscow said recently. But then he asked his Russian colleagues with a smile, why then did you have to say that defeat for Bush would amount to a victory for terrorists?

It is because of this possibility that Moscow should have sent a clear signal to the Democrat Party to show it that Moscow can be friends with the Democrats, too. They may even turn out to be better friends than the Republicans. But for this to come true, both sides - Russia and the Democrats - should change. Russia should give up the strong, but possibly wrong, notions of difference between the Democrats and Republicans. And the Democrats should see what provokes foreign countries' dislike for them. After all, the list of countries whose authorities sympathize with Republicans does not only include the usual suspects of Japan, Italy and Russia. And it is impossible to endlessly build a national policy on fury over the Republicans' attitude to the war in Iraq.

Russians' opinion of Democrats - possibly erroneous and simplistic - is based on the assumption that the Democrats want to infiltrate all political and social structures of foreign countries. Some see the roots of this missionary zeal in J.F.K and his Peace Corps, while others say its history began long before that.

The first half of the 1990s, which Russians still recall with horror, is associated with a multitude of advisers, funds and media projects that were created not just by Americans but by the Democrats, when Bill Clinton was in power in the 1990s. The centrist and nationalist political parties that were only emerging in Russia saw with horror a new generation of citizens who looked astonishingly like the electorate of the Democratic Party.

Who lost Russia? the Republicans asked Bill Clinton at the end of the 1990s. And they were probably right: the Democrats lost it. It is Democrats' actions that are to blame for the appearance of "the Putin majority" in the electorate, who cannot hear the word "reforms" with respect to the 1990s and who do their best to keep from the State Duma liberal Russian politicians on whom Democratic Washington and "the West as a whole" pinned their hopes. Whether they acted in good faith or not is a different matter. The result is obvious.

Moreover, many people (and not only in Russia) blame the Democrats for an excessively idealistic view of modern realities, for promoting through rose-tinted glasses the liberal economic model and ideas of globalism as a world without borders and sovereignty. All this is now obsolete. Human rights as the stick for attaining goals that have nothing to do with rights or human beings - this "innovation" is believed to have a Democratic (and European), rather than a Republican, origin. The trouble is that part of the US business community used this elegant ideology in the 1990s too frequently, often disregarding the interests of foreign business quarters, not to mention foreign governments. It can be said that the current political elite in Russia, which relies on the powerful support of the electorate, is a Russian version of the Republicans, for whom national interests and the strengthening of the country are an incontestable priority. The Russian "Republicans" do not always like the actions of their American colleagues (especially in the case of Iraq), but at least they can understand and accept their attitude.

Nobody loves big and strong states. But there is also the question of their behavior. In many countries, the tiger is believed to be as dangerous as the snake, yet it evokes fractionally kinder feelings because of the "transparency" of its intentions.

Would Putin's Russia offer the Democrats a chance to cooperate in such close regions as Georgia or Central Asia? Possibly, but it so happened that the proposal was made to the Republicans. Consequently, many people in Moscow believed that numerous crises in Moscow-Washington relations were provoked by the "too democratic" actions of Republicans, for example, in Georgia. Many Russians still cannot understand who created a network of non-governmental organizations there and provoked a transfer of power that did not quite fit the framework of election democracy. Was it Bush's Republicans or the Democrats of George Soros, who is working energetically in Georgia?

There is one more explanation for Moscow's attempt to develop cooperation with America, including in the ex-Soviet regions. Russia-US economic relationship is worth only a few billion dollars, which is smaller than Russia's trade with a closely integrated Ukraine or with Italy. It is therefore not surprising that the Russia-US relationship is strategically ideological. The picture could have been different, if in the 1990s US business had invested in the Russian economy as much as it spent on its political and ideological infrastructure.

Presidential candidate John Kerry promises to shift the stress with respect to Chechnya and non-proliferation. Moscow would gladly begin dialogue and cooperation on these two issues. Both Russia and the US would gain from joint experience of normalizing life in the former kingdom of arbitrariness and extreme crime that Chechnya was until recently. Russia needs the support and experience of the US, while America could draw on the Russian experience in Chechnya, especially in view of the current ineffectiveness of the administration's attempts to restore peace in Iraq after a victorious war.

The liquidation of nuclear weapons is another issue where Moscow would benefit from cooperation. In principle, it should join forces with the US and other countries to review the non-proliferation regime and the package of related problems. But to be able to do this, we should eliminate the suspicion that somebody is using the regime to deprive nations of the right to nuclear power engineering, or that some nations will be labeled an "axis of evil" irrespective of their desire to cooperate on the nuclear issue.

Herodotus said, "No man can enter the same river twice, because the second time it is not the same river and he is not the same man." So, if the Republicans win the November 2 elections, they may be other Republicans, with a slightly different ideology and a new style. The extremists who unsuccessfully tried to implement the Pan-American global project will depart quietly; it was impossible to get rid of them in the run-up to the elections. But if the Democrats come to power, they will not throw us back into the 1990s. In the aftermath of Bush's failed European policy, they must inevitably choose in favor of cooperation and paying more attention to their allies and partners, which allows one to hope for both cooperation and friendship.