Putin's Russia dangerous, but mostly for Russians
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Russian President Vladimir Putin
(Dec 2, 2006)

There is a prickly KGB officer in the Kremlin. He suppresses dissent at home and -- if one believes allegations that he ordered the radioactive poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent who died in London last week -- abroad.

He obstructs America's foreign policy, sells arms to its enemies and cozies up to its rivals. He was a spectral presence at this week's NATO summit, where Russia seemed almost as pressing a concern as it was in the days of the Soviet Union. He uses his country's vast hydrocarbon reserves to bully the neighbours.

Prepare, conclude many Western commentators, for a Cold War against Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The doomsayers are half right: Putin's Russia is dangerous. However, this is as yet very far from being a new Cold War. It is mostly Russians who are endangered. And for the West, Russia's enduring weakness should be at least as troubling as its much advertised new strength.

Compared with the late 1990s, when it was ruled by a drunk and its currency collapsed, Russia has grown stronger under Putin but only relatively. Although its economy has recovered and its diplomacy is more assertive, Russia has an awesome array of problems any one of which would be seen as cataclysmic in most rich countries.

Booze and inadequate health services have helped to create a looming demographic catastrophe. The population is shrinking fast even before the full impact of a gathering AIDS epidemic is felt.

Russia's robust growth is precarious, based on high prices for oil and gas that may not last and rising production that may not prove sustainable. Inequality is perilously wide. Rampant corruption hampers business and helps terrorism.

The Kremlin has dealt with a separatist insurgency in Chechnya by fostering rule by a thuggish strongman, whose men terrorize and kill opponents not only in the region but also in Moscow. The North Caucasus is combustible. The army is crippled by graft.

This Russia certainly can and does threaten neighbours such as Georgia or Ukraine, which many Russian politicians still treat as wayward colonies. But the threat it poses to the rest of the world has been overstated.

Russia is neither exporting a defunct ideology nor fighting proxy wars with America, as it did during the Cold War. Its hints at disruptions to Europeans' gas supplies are mostly bluff. Indeed, the biggest dangers Russia poses to the West may be as an incubator of assorted diseases and of Islamist extremism.

The dangers to Russians, however, are real and daunting. The country is run largely in the interests of a ruling clique. Whoever killed Litvinenko, it is a fact that the lives of Putin's critics are often made uncomfortable and sometimes cut short.

Many other Russians, not specially targeted, have fallen victim to his policies: ordinary people harassed by corrupt police; those who are kidnapped by Caucasian militias; entrepreneurs whose businesses are stolen by state-backed racketeers; teenaged conscripts hired out as slave labour by officers.

That life has improved for many Russians under Putin is undeniable, as is his continuing popularity. But it is impossible to know how popular he would be without the Kremlin's stranglehold on television, which peddles the traditional myth of the good czar (responsible for everything that goes right) and his bad advisers (blamed for everything that doesn't). Both parliament and the courts have been neutered.

These depredations should concern the West, too. For the biggest risk of all is that Russia's weakness and instability will at some point produce a regime much nastier even than Putin's, which will inherit Russia's strengths: oil and gas pipelines and nuclear weapons.

The Kremlin's grip on the country relies mainly on Putin himself and he is due to step down in 2008. One popular Moscow view of the Litvinenko case is that it is just part of a murky factional infight ahead of Putin's departure.

Outsiders should try to avert the risk that Russia's simultaneous strength and weakness will produce something even more terrifying than Putin, but at the same time be ready to criticize his misdemeanours. It is a hard trick to pull off.

Like most Russians, Putin remains sensitive to criticism by the West, which should not shrink from dishing it out -- even if it ought also to avoid loose talk of a new Cold War.
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