Candid words on Russia's drift from democracy

Feb 24th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Vladimir Putin and George Bush have had a “candid” discussion about American fears that the Russian leader is sliding back into his country's old, authoritarian ways. Despite differences on this, the two leaders agreed on other important issues—and emerged from the summit still apparently friends

BEFORE meeting Vladimir Putin in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, on Thursday February 24th, George Bush had urged European Union leaders to join him in pressing Mr Putin to recommit himself to “democratic reform”, following several recent moves in which the Russian leader has seemed to be taking Russia back towards its authoritarian past. After their summit, the American president used the word “candid” to describe their discussion on this matter. As Mr Bush breezily reiterated to the assembled reporters the concerns he had expressed about the rule of law, press freedom and other democratic institutions in Russia, Mr Putin stood beside him, stony-faced.

Mr Putin insisted Russia would not slide back towards totalitarianism and defended his much-criticised decision to abolish direct elections for Russia's regional governors—arguing that he was not simply installing placemen, as many suspect. Candidates for governor would have to be approved by the elected regional assemblies, said Mr Putin, arguing that this was no less democratic than the electoral-college system used to choose American presidents.

The public expressions of concern over Mr Putin's authoritarian drift that Mr Bush made during his European tour this week have encouraged a challenge to the Russian leader from Mikhail Kasyanov, whom the president sacked as prime minister a year ago. Shortly before the Bratislava summit, Mr Kasyanov called a news conference in Moscow to attack Mr Putin's record on basic rights and signal that he intended to challenge him for the presidency in the 2008 elections, at the head of a pro-democracy coalition.

Mr Putin can hardly have welcomed Mr Bush's interference in Russian politics, so it would be unsurprising if the word “candid” was diplomatic language for angry exchanges between the two summit leaders. Nevertheless, despite their differences, they did reach a number of important agreements, including pledges to continue co-operating in the fight against terrorism and in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Mr Bush also reiterated his strong backing for Russia's entry to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which may happen as soon as this year.

Perhaps most importantly, the two leaders seemed to end the summit still friends and still in agreement that it is in their countries' common interest to be allies instead of adversaries.
There was a time when a meeting between the American and Russian leaders was a summit of the world’s two great, rival powers. Nowadays, it is a meeting between the world’s one main power and a medium-sized country whose global importance is still fading but which still has plenty of scope for troublemaking—and a huge nuclear arsenal. After meeting Mr Putin for the first time, in June 2001, Mr Bush seemed optimistic both about the direction Russia would take under its new leader and the prospects for good relations between their two countries. A few months later, Mr Bush’s confidence seemed justified, when, in the wake of the September 11th attacks, Mr Putin offered America his support in defeating global terrorism.

This initial confidence has taken several knocks in the intervening four years. Hopes that Mr Putin would be a liberaliser and moderniser have been belied by his crushing of opposition voices and independent media in Russia; by the disregard for the rule of law that he has shown in destroying Yukos, an energy giant; by his brutal military campaign to try to crush separatism in Chechnya; and by the scrapping of elections for regional governors.

It is not just Mr Putin’s illiberal actions at home that have upset Mr Bush but his foreign policies too. The Russian leader sided with France and Germany in opposing the American-led war in Iraq. He is also helping Iran to build its civilian nuclear capabilities (which, America fears, could aid the Islamic republic’s clandestine atomic-weapons programme). And he is negotiating to sell advanced military hardware to Syria.

At the time of the Iraq invasion, Condoleezza Rice—now Mr Bush’s secretary of state, and a specialist in Russian affairs—urged the American president to punish France and ignore Germany but to forgive Russia for its opposition to the war. Now, though, Mr Bush is under growing pressure to toughen his line with the Russian leader. In America’s Senate last week, two of its most senior members, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, proposed expelling Russia from the Group of Eight (G8) over its record on democracy and human rights. In the latest edition of the Weekly Standard, an influential voice of Mr Bush’s key “neo-conservative” constituency, James Goldgeier and Michael McFaul argue that Mr Putin’s authoritarianism may be the worst setback so far to the wave of democratisation that has swept the globe since the 1970s, from Latin America to Asia. Thus, they said, it was imperative for Mr Bush to make plain his concerns at the summit.

But what carrots and sticks can the American president offer his Russian counterpart? Despite the calls in Washington for some sort of sanctions, Mr Bush is still backing Russia's bid to join the WTO because he believes that having to live by its rules will strengthen the rule of law in Russia. He is also unlikely to contemplate anything so drastic as expelling Russia from the G8. There is no point even thinking of promoting “regime change” in Russia: whatever the flaws in the country’s electoral process, and despite recent protests by pensioners, there is no doubt that Mr Putin is still genuinely popular among Russians. They share his belief in the need for a strong, centralised leadership and his suspicion of westerners’ motives for peddling democracy.

Mr Putin is supposedly obliged to stand down in 2008 but he is quite likely to seek some more or less legitimate reason to stay in power after then—Mr Kasyanov would face an enormous challenge in trying to unseat him.

Following the Reagan strategy

Messrs Goldgeier and McFaul say in their Weekly Standard paper that Mr Bush should follow the twin-track strategy that Ronald Reagan adopted in relations with the Soviet Union in the 1980s: simultaneously offering serious co-operation on strategic matters of interest to the Russians (eg, reaching new agreements on dismantling nuclear weapons and liberalising American trade with Russia in advance of its joining the WTO) while wielding the stick, selectively, to prod Russia back towards democracy (eg, persuading other members of Community of Democracies to downgrade Russia’s status in the forum; or continuing to draw former Russian satellites, such as Ukraine and Georgia, into the democratic fold).

Mr Bush realises that such a strategy would be much more effective if the EU joined in. Pressure from the Union has helped to foster democracy in many of the former Russian satellites, a number of which have already joined the club. That said, EU membership for Russia is a very distant prospect indeed, so it would hardly be plausible to dangle it in front of Mr Putin. Furthermore, Mr Putin’s bargaining power in his relations with the EU is greatly strengthened by his having something Europe craves—plentiful oil and gas—and by his having things that terrorists and rogue states crave—nuclear know-how and materials.

However, what Mr Putin craves is a seat at the world’s top tables, and due respect for him and his country from the West’s main powers. Thus if America and Europe applied the right mix of incentives and pressures—and worked together in applying them, instead of letting Mr Putin play them off against each other, as he has often done—then there should be some scope for constraining his autocratic tendencies, if not converting him into a genuine born-again democrat.

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