From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 7/19/2006 2:42 AM
The west folds before Putin's bluff
Publication time: 18 July 2006, 13:12
Anyone who has sat around a poker table knows the feeling. You have been dealt a strong hand but the steely eyed fellow opposite keeps raising the stakes. Eventually, your nerve breaks. Even as your adversary scoops the pot you know in your heart it was a bluff. Pride demands you pretend otherwise.
Vladimir Putin is a leader who has been enjoying his winnings. For Mr Putin, the purpose of the St Petersburg summit was to reassert Russia's role as a global superpower. The task was made easy by the fact that his fellow leaders in the Group of Eight leading nations had folded their cards even before they reached the summit table. On one level, St Petersburg testifies to the inconsequential nature of the G8. On another, to the Russian president's skill in exploiting what might best be called the new international disorder.
In the absence of anything resembling a consensus on the Middle East, the leaders struggled to paper over the cracks. The Russian refusal to criticise Iran and Syria for their undoubted role in the conflagration in Lebanon sat alongside George W. Bush's simplistic mantra that all this is about the global war on terrorism. When France's Jacques Chirac said a statement released by the G8 leaders had called for a ceasefire, Mr Bush's aides insisted otherwise. Tony Blair by and large sided with Mr Bush and Israel. The message from all this to the combatants? Keep fighting.
Just as they are divided on the Middle East, so western leaders have misread Mr Putin. There was a brief moment earlier this year when it seemed that the west's democracies might at least extract a small price for their attendance in St Petersburg. There were whispers that Mr Bush might even boycott the summit. Instead, they asked for nothing and were mocked in return by their host.
Sitting alongside Mr Bush, Mr Putin quipped that he was not interested in importing Iraqi-style democracy to Russia. Asked about corruption, the Russian leader offered a barb at Mr Blair's expense. Was the prime minister not under investigation for his role in party funding?
Energy security was supposed to be at the heart of the deliberations. Instead, the final communique was another badly stitched compromise. For Russia, oil and gas are the essential instruments of its return to the global stage. For others around the summit table, energy is a scarce commodity. So why argue with one of the world's biggest suppliers? Better to settle on a few rhetorical bromides.
In this, St Petersburg could be said to have been a triumph for those who count themselves members of the realist school of foreign policy. Their argument runs roughly as follows. Mr Putin has restored internal order to Russia while soaring energy prices have filled the Kremlin's coffers. Europe is ever more dependent on Russian gas. The US needs Moscow to help curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. So why get overexcited at Russia's steady drift from nascent democracy to authoritarian kleptocracy?
To my mind, this is to confuse realism with capitulation. Earlier this year Russia disrupted gas supplies to Europe when it turned off supplies to Ukraine. Amid much indignation, European governments demanded Russia guarantee security of supply by liberalising its energy market. Mr Putin refused. The Europeans shrugged their shoulders.
A truly realist policy towards Russia would have two components. The first would recognise that the present regime in the Kremlin is not interested in grand bargains with the west, about energy or anything else. Nor does it want to "integrate" Russia into Europe.
Mr Putin's Russia has bigger ambitions. It intends to use its new-found wealth to maximise its global influence. On the way it is also determined to re-establish its authority over its so-called near abroad - most obviously Ukraine, the Caucasus and central Asia.
The second component would understand that, most of the time, Mr Putin is bluffing. For all its present good fortune, Russia is a state in decline. Its almost complete economic reliance on oil and gas is reminiscent of the late Soviet era. The country's population is shrinking by more than 500,000 a year and its workforce is ravaged by ill health and alcoholism.
Those with close knowledge of the industry say that businesses such as Gazprom, the state gas monopoly, are rotting from the inside. Gazprom is hopelessly inefficient, technologically backward and can meet its orders only by coercing central Asian suppliers. As for threats to cut off supplies to Europe, Gazprom has no other customers. Nor does Moscow possess the financial capacity or the technology to develop its vast hydrocarbon resources in Siberia.
In short, Russia has none of the attributes of a 21st-century superpower. In poker terms, the country's oil and gas reserves give the Russian leader a hand equivalent to, say, a pair of sevens. But Mr Putin knows how to bluff - easy enough when your opponents have so obviously lost their nerve.
By Philip Stephens
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/07/18/5000.shtml
