Living With Strong Russia

This week, The Economist published an article entitled 'Living with a strong Russia'. Here are some excerpts:

Forget the formal agenda at this weekend's G8 summit, given over to energy security, infectious diseases and education. The really awkward issue for the leaders of the seven rich democracies gathering in St Petersburg concerns their host: how to live with a strong, but increasingly undemocratic, Russia.

Since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, Russia has in many ways been a remarkable success. Thanks largely to high oil prices, its economy has grown by an average of 6.5% a year. Living standards have improved and a sizeable middle class has emerged. The stockmarket has boomed. Russia is running a huge current-account surplus, it is paying off the last of its debt and the rouble has just been made fully convertible. At the summit Russia also hopes to surmount the last hurdles to its joining the World Trade Organisation.
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Yet as well as these steps forward Russia has taken steps backwards. In Mr Putin's early years optimists hoped that stability and prosperity would not come at the expense of liberty and democracy. Western leaders gave him the benefit of their doubts over such matters as the war in Chechnya or curbs on the media. But it has become ever clearer that Russia is moving in the wrong direction. Greater state control of the economy, especially in the energy industry, has bred corruption and inefficiency. Any serious political opposition has been crushed. The broadcast media have been shut down or taken over by the government and its allies. Regional governors have been squashed—one of the last elected governors was arrested recently—and parliament has been emasculated, continuing the Kremlin's drive not merely to centralise, but to monopolise, political power.
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So what can the West do? The short answer is, not a lot. In the 1990s an economically enfeebled Russia needed help from abroad. Unless the oil price unexpectedly collapses, no such leverage will be available in the near future. Politically, too, pressure from outside is likely to rebound. With the Kremlin once again firmly in control, Russia will almost certainly change only from within—or not at all.
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They (western leaders) should speak out against Mr Putin's moves away from democracy, against his policy in Chechnya, or against Russian use of energy to bully its neighbours (many west European countries have been too timid in their criticism). They should continue to help NGOs and others who are trying to establish a civil society that may, one day, provide an alternative to the dead weight of the Kremlin. As the next presidential election of March 2008 nears, they should insist that any move to amend the constitution so that Mr Putin can run again is unacceptable—and would result in Russia's expulsion from the G8. They should do what they can to press for free and fair elections, even if the Kremlin's chosen candidate seems sure to win.

There are things they should not do, as well. Russia's membership of the G8 may be an embarrassment, since it is supposedly a club of democracies. But to throw it out now would only push Russia farther out of the West's orbit, and risk making it even less helpful over such issues as curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions. Equally, Americans and Europeans are right to assist countries in Russia's near-abroad that want to escape its baleful influence. But to push for Ukraine or Georgia, say, to join NATO before they are ready would serve no good purpose. Above all, Western leaders should avoid giving the impression that what they really object to is not an illiberal and undemocratic Russia but a strong and rich one—a paranoia that even Russia's few remaining liberals all too often share.

Sixty years ago a wise American diplomat, George Kennan, proposed that the right policy of the West towards an expansionary Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin should be “containment”. Russia today is clearly no such threat. But it still matters, and the West should care about where it is going. The best policy now is no longer containment but “wary engagement”.