Washington Post - 05.22.2002

 

The Washington Post

Mr. Putin in Perspective

THE ANNOUNCEMENT of two important security agreements between Russia and the West and the approach of this week's summit meeting between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin have triggered a round of euphoric rhetoric. It is widely proclaimed that Mr. Putin is leading Russia to "join the West"; the Bush administration's ambassador to Moscow, Sandy Vershbow, last week spoke of the United States and Russia "increasingly becoming allies in the full sense of the term." Certainly the new agreements, on reductions of nuclear weapons and cooperation between Russia and NATO, are welcome, even if both offer more in political symbolism than in substance. So is Mr. Putin's willingness to cooperate with the war on terrorism. But before the lovefest in St. Petersburg gets fully underway, it's worth pointing out that, in both foreign and domestic policy, Mr. Putin's state continues to differ dramatically from the democracies that are genuine U.S. allies.

The Russian leader has been given enormous credit for dropping his resistance to further NATO expansion in exchange for a new mechanism for including Russia in alliance decision-making. Yet, even as he has negotiated this deal, Mr. Putin has been stepping up Moscow's efforts to establish political and economic dominion over the European and Central Asian countries outside the alliance, ranging from Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova in Europe to Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. To preserve its influence at the expense of the West, Russia is backing corrupt, anti-democratic and anti-Western forces all through this "near-abroad"; Mr. Putin is single-handedly propping up Europe's last Stalinist dictator, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. Russian troops continue to occupy bases and strong points in the sovereign states of Moldova and Georgia, despite promises to pull out. And Mr. Putin continues to wage the brutal and bloody military campaign he initiated against Chechnya in 1999, rejecting Western calls for a political settlement.

Mr. Vershbow, like other Bush administration officials, speaks of Russia's "integration into the Western family of democratic nations." But Russia under Mr. Putin has become less, rather than more, democratic. Media organizations that questioned the Chechnya war were crushed and silenced; critical intellectuals have been intimidated by a series of bogus espionage trials. Provincial governments have been stripped of authority and power recentralized in Mr. Putin's Kremlin. Business tycoons have learned that while monopolistic practices are still tolerated, political disloyalty is not.

Mr. Putin's admirers argue that he is ahead of his elite in cooperating with the West, and so cannot easily control these clashing policies or others, such as Russia's continuing sales of nuclear technology to Iran. But Mr. Putin's personal stamp is as much on Russia's handling of Belarus and Chechnya as it is on relations with NATO; it's just that the latter gets much more attention in the West. That doesn't mean his moves toward strategic cooperation with Mr. Bush are not genuine. But Mr. Putin's policies make more sense, and no longer seem so contradictory, if they are understood not as the revolutionary steps of a Russian Thomas Jefferson but as the more pragmatic efforts of a hard-headed former KGB officer to restore Russian influence in the world by the best available means. Some days that means collaborating with the world's most powerful democracy, which in any case Russia is too weak to oppose; on other days, it means trampling on democrats and democratic values both abroad and at home. There's nothing wrong in Mr. Bush's striking deals with such a leader, or in doing as much as possible to make Russia more like a Western democracy. But it is wrong, and dangerous, to suppose that "joining the West" is Mr. Putin's plan.