Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005
From: Roger Hamburg (hamburgr@iusb.edu)
Subject: re Aslund
You asked for comments on Aslund's "Putin's decline and America's Response" which I first read in the original Carnegie source. I thought that Ed Lozansky's rejoinder was a bit out of line but I partially agree with some of this comments.
I have recently written for a Chicago based think tank, The National Strategy Forum, about democracy in general and Russia.The published version cut some of my original remarks. I will get back to those later.
But first Aslund is "right on" about Russia's oil curse. Russian corruption and inefficiency historically have resulted in the fact that Russia (the U.S.S.R.and empire before it) has never been able to export "world class" consumer goods, unlike China. Russia exports oil,natural gas,raw materials like diamonds, weapons, hockey players and, as one Russian suggested to me, "women". I should add that Aslund in the box means "distribution" of oil wealth as a result of dissipation. He is also right on "checks and balances" which have an uneven history even here in the U.S. after over 200 years of it. The liberal opposition IS demoralized. Nemtsov said that at a Harvard- Columbia seminar and IYvlinsky is adored at Harvard but NOT in Russia.
Now back to my published comments. Even honest voting may result in "the people" being wrong. Putin may be losing his popularity but he is still the most popular political figure and no support has coalesced around anyone else including (gratefully) the Communists and Rodina. Parenthetically, I understand that Khodorkovsky has suggested that Russia need to go back to its communist roots to cleanse itself!
On foreign policy as Lozansky rightly points out Russia may not be a consistent friend but outside of Tony Blair and "new Europe" there aren't many. Even the "Orange" Ukrainians are negotiating to buy oil from Iran. (It is true that Moscow has an interesting relationship with Tehran on the nuclear "industry" front.) And there is the "war on terror." According to Dmitri Simes in the current National Interest the FBI and FSB cooperated to foil a plot to shhot down civilian airliners in U.S. air space. And I have seen confirmed that Chernomyrdin told Milosevich at the time of the U.S.and NATO intervention in Kosovo that the Russians would not support him and that, not a NATO ground invasion, was what dissuaded him. (A U.S. ground intervention, in my view.would have been a bloody mess.)
Domestically, I called Russia a "chameleon" in my National Strategy Forum piece. As for quoting president Bush he did say what he is quoted as saying and I wrote about that in another paper but politcs and "interests" make strange bedfellows. We live in an imperfect and dangerous world. Despite an age old desire to transform the world, we have to deal with states and nations as they are even as we encourage pluralism, civil society, rule of law,etc. Russia is NOT a full blown dictatorship. The print media in "the List" indicate re the A28 Bathyscape (batiskaf) incident. It is true that a whistle blower from Vladivostock blew the whistle and helped avoid another Kursk. Old habits die hard and the mishandling of that tragedy by the "security" police in Beslan have generated sympathy for some of the prepetrators of that atrocity and disaster.