Russia Profile
April 14, 2008
Time to Decide
Today’s Foreign Policy Squabbles Will Quickly Fade If the Economy Worsens
By Alexander Arkhangelsky
There is a pattern as old as the world itself. When everything starts to go well in Russia, the infighting begins. Instead of working for a better future, those in power work to redistribute the wealth and power of the present. When problems arise, the Russian policymakers shudder, strain, and begin to paddle ferociously to stay afloat.
While the economic and political pillars of the community shook, Boris Yeltsin maintained a system on the verge of collapse, building a new economy while preparing for tomorrow. He did this in a time when the price of oil per barrel was around $9. He was not afraid of freedom. Even in a precarious moment, he still was able to spur the country forward, guiding a bucking horse along the edge of a winding mountain road until the road flattened out and became straight.
Then everything changed. The price of raw materials skyrocketed as the dollar fell. Inflation diminished as the people calmed down and warmed up to the new faces of power. The country was given a tremendous opportunity for a breakthrough. Some things were accomplished. Terrorism was suppressed, state institutions rebuilt, but too much energy was wasted on harsh relations with insignificant neighbors, on fighting an orange revolution that would never come, and on dividing up the coffers among a debased elite.
These facts are not explained by claims that our neighbors are acting similarly, that the European bureaucrats are no better than ours. We complain that they provoked, incited, pushed and meddled. They are no smarter than us, and they may have started it, but that is exactly the game of politics as President-elect Dmitry Medvedev recentlyy said to fool others. The politician’s job again, in Medvedevv’s words is not to be fooled.
The fruits of this new politics were on display at the NATO Summit in Bucharest. The West, trying to play Russia for a fool, took a tiny step toward the ever-stubborn Moscow by slightly rebuffing Ukraine and Georgia a path to their cherished NATO membership but only slightly and not forever, just for a short time.
Then President Vladimir Putin, with the tone of a soldier at the end of his tenure, nonchalantly explains that if Russia’s interests continue to be considered, then, just maybe, public opinion will accept NATO’s existence and will stop reacting so violently to NATO initiatives. He then agrees with U.S. President George Bush on entry to the World Trade Organization and repealing the Jackson-Vanik amendment. This isn’t exactly complete peace, nor total paradise, but we can already witness a softening of tone.
Now, let’s turn from the long term to the short term and to the domestic situation. As any curious person who watches the news knows, inflation spiked in the first week of April though even withhout this jump it had been rising steadily. As for the lazy and the uncurious, inflation didn’t cross their mind though every day tthey visit shopping centers and quietly gasp.
Those who are not particularly concerned about an increase in the price of eggs worry instead about the alarming line graphs, while those who do not understand the graphs worry about the price tag. But this is not the end of the matter. This is, I am almost afraid to say, just the beginning. Soon, gasoline prices will skyrocket; then, in about two years, the value of the ruble will tumble. When the Democrats gain power in 2009, there is no telling what their policies will do to the dollar or the price of oil.
No matter how you try to control prices, no matter how you maneuver between business and political interests, the choice is still inevitable: a free-market economy or the laws of bureaucracy. If the market prevails prices will skyrocket; if bureaucracy wins goods will disapppear. And prices will still rise, although a bit later.
Let’s change our glasses again. Let us look beyond our beloved Russia. Are the glasses rose-tinted? Of course not. It’s just that new patterns have started working at a slow pace, a trial run. Soon they will start to accelerate.
As Russia’s economic situation becomes more tense, the knots in the international sphere will begin to unravel, first the tiny ones, then bigger, and then the huge ones. The last thing on our minds will be Georgia and Estonia, and it would be a pity to waste any money fighting the orange threat from Kiev. It’s not that we have surplus funds. Everything has already been accounted for. It is like a computer infected with a virus; to keep it from overheating you have to disconnect all the fancy auxiliary devices. Then you treat it with an anti-virus.
If the economic winds really are changing, then that anti-virus may be a fall in the price of oil which would demolish a system of reckless and irresponsible balancing created and fine-tuned over the last eight years. In the conditions of a deteriorating state of affairs, we will have to improve the management and control models, cast off bureaucratic barnacles and deprive law-enforcement bosses of their right to control everyone and everything through brute force alone.
Total control of the media can only be achieved in prosperous times, when information does not pose a threat to authority. The right to allow and forbid increases the status of the ideological controllers. It turns them from technological support people into the strategists of a sovereign democracy, all the while having absolutely no relation to the flow of everyday life.
But as soon as real problems arise, including inside the ruling class, they have to open up the sluices that are screwed shut and open the floodgates. The pride of the controllers suffers, but the system becomes steadier. Like the walls of a brick house, if the soil is reliable, then you can lay a rigid foundation. But if the sand is shifting, then at least one wall has to be able to shift as well. Otherwise, the house will start cracking at the seams.
This is a normal political response. But it could prove to be entirely different. Instead of steady fluctuations, there could be unstable rigidity. Instead of a virus altering the system, we could destroy the motherboard. Instead of discarding dead weight, we might succumb to a panicked desire to fill the basket to its brim. Instead of a straight and narrow road, we could leap off the precipice. Which will we chose? We will see. If not this year, then the next. If not in the next, then never. Either the situation will steadily straighten out, or life will fall apart.
The time for ambiguity is gone. It is finally time to make a decision.