From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 11/28/2005 12:47 AM
  MSNBC.com

The Myth Of Stability
Allies must have common goals and values. Putin's Russia shares neither.
By Garry Kasparov
Newsweek International

Nov. 28, 2005 issue - If we were to sum up the conventional wisdom about Russia today, it would read something like this: The Putin government is less democratic than it could be, but Russia isn't ready for full democracy. The economy, while lagging, is improving. Instead of a cold-war enemy the West has an ally in the global war in terror. If he's a little heavy-handed on his own turf it's all in the name of security and stability.

Unfortunately, that CW is as wrong today as it always seems to be about Russia. And it is not only an illusion but a dangerous one. The Russian people are ready for democracy—no less so than Iraqis. It's the Putin government that finds democracy unsuitable for its ends. The freedoms gained after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. have been steadily eroded until little remains. Putin is clamping the lid down so tight, in fact, that an explosion is inevitable. Stable? Not Russia.

Consider the supposedly improving economy. Russia is a fine place to turn a profit—if you stay on the Kremlin's Christmas-card list. Otherwise your assets are only on loan to you from an increasingly powerful and ravenous tax office. (A recent Russian spam e-mail headline: what to do if your office is raided by a government agency!) The stores are full of expensive goods, virtually none of them produced in Russia. Manufacturing exports are falling and imports are rising. The pretty GDP numbers that so impress bankers and foreign investors are based entirely on the steep climb of energy prices. Yet even this windfall is deceptive, for Russia's government is investing little in maintaining its production capacity. A falloff is inevitable. Such an economy is thus only as stable as the price of a barrel of oil—or (leading to our next topic) the barrel of a gun.

The embattled George W. Bush isn't going to pick a fight with Mr. Putin on matters of democracy and economy when these days everything is secondary to the war on terror. Here we come to the most dangerous delusion of all—that a strongman in the Kremlin is good for security and necessary for stability. What started as a separatist war in Chechnya has been transformed by the Kremlin's hard-line tactics into an increasingly radicalized jihad that now spans the entire North Caucasus. In addition to living with poverty and military abuses, locals find that the legal avenues for opposition have entirely disappeared. For the first time in more than 150 years, visitors to the region hear the ominous slogan of the 19th-century Caucasian resistance: "The Russians are stronger than us, but Allah is stronger than the Russians."

It's hard to imagine a more potent recipe for fomenting radicalism than the one cooked up by the Putin regime. Every citizen in the region is treated as a potential terrorist, and the few Russian soldiers brought up on charges of abuse are quickly freed by the courts. When the law of the land is blatantly corrupt, the rule of Sharia with the Qur'an in one hand and a gun in the other begins to look tempting. The blood-revenge tradition of the region and Islam are an explosive mix.

Nor is Russia an ally on terror outside its borders. Nuclear and missile technology flow to Iran, and Syria's dictatorship is shielded from U.N. investigation of its terror activities, all while the Kremlin says it is trying to help by exploiting its "special relationship" with these rogue states.

What's overlooked or ignored is how well this situation suits Putin and his clique. They have a vested interest in sowing instability at home and abroad in order to reap higher oil prices and justify an oppressive level of security, the two things they require to stay in power. This is policy, not negligence or mere obstructionism. With a Potemkin economy and dwindling liberties, force will eventually be required to repress an increasingly restive Russian populace—difficult to justify in a "stable environment," hence the need for enemies.

The U.S. president and European leaders may quarrel, but there is little doubt they share a belief in the sanctity of human life. In Russia today the state is matching the terrorists blow for blow, dragging us down to the lowest denominator of morality. Incendiary grenades and tanks were used against terrorists and child hostages alike in Beslan, and the investigation remains blocked. Military poison gas killed 130 hostages in the 2002 Nord-Ost theater siege, and the hundreds of survivors cannot get effective treatment for the side effects because the government refuses to release the composition of the toxin they inhaled.

Allies must have common goals and values. Putin's Russia shares neither with the West today. It is time that the leaders of the free world stopped pretending otherwise.

Kasparov is the chairman of Committee 2008 Free Choice and leader of the United Civil Front of Russia.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
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