Russia Rising

Here is the unedited version of an op-ed I wrote in response to another piece on Russia.

A Bear Reborn
The Dartmouth
May 17, 2007

I was very surprised to read on this page that Zachary Hyatt ’09 thinks the United States and Russia share similar national interests (“The Rumbling Bear: A Dying Art,” May 15). I believe that Russia’s recent actions, policies and rhetoric indicate the contrary.

For the past seven years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has eradicated the vestiges of democracy and civil society that his predecessor, the late Boris Yeltsin, had struggled to build. Putin eliminated the popular election of governors; now he appoints them. Putin has eliminated privately-owned Russian television stations; Kremlin told Russian radio stations that 50 percent of their news reports must be positive. Putin has consolidated Kremlin’s control over gas and oil through the Gasprom and Rosneft state monopolies. Putin has been accused of personally ordering the murder of his political opponents and critics. Putin’s steps consolidate power in long arm of the Kremlin, not in the hands of the Russian people. This goes against America’s interest, because democratic consolidation can ensure the stability of the world’s second largest nuclear power.

Hyatt thinks he has found the “one thing [Russia and the United States] both want more than anything else, and that is stability.” Mutual stability sounds silly because Russia wants nothing of the sort. The main reason the Russian people have taken to Putin, as Hyatt correctly suggests, is that the Russian GDP has been growing by an astounding average of 7 percent each year since 1999. The Russian people have been willing to trade democratic decline for relative economic prosperity.

The source of this economic miracle is oil and gas revenue. The IMF and the World Bank estimate that in 2005 the oil and gas sector represented 20 percent of the country’s GDP, and 60 percent of its export revenue. Russia’s future is tied to the price of oil and gas. According to an IMF study, a $1 per barrel increase in oil prices for one year will raise Russian federal budget revenues by 0.35 percent of GDP, or $3.4 billion. And what, above all else, keeps oil prices high? Instability. Specifically, unrest in the Middle East.

Political instability raises the price of oil and encourages importers to turn to Russia in efforts to diversify supply. So Russia continues to build the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran. It provides no troops to NATO efforts in Afghanistan or American efforts in Iraq. In fact, Russia is rumored to have supplied Iraqi military with U.S. war plans before the invasion. It sells weapons to the region. Russia has sold Syria $2 billion-worth of weapons, including surface-to-air missiles. It has sold Iran weapons worth $4 billion. Russia sells weapons to Hamas of the Palestinian Authority. It seems that America’s enemies in the Middle East are Russia’s friends. I don’t know about Hyatt, but that’s not what I call “mutual interests.”

Hyatt’s myth of “mutual interests” doesn’t even work from the Russian side of the story. From their perspective, for the past two decades the United States has been pushing for NATO expansion eastward against Russian protestations. While Russia was down, America advanced. The U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty was a slap in the face to the Russians. Now, the United States wants to put ten missile interceptors in Poland and a mid-course radar in the Czech Republic. No matter that the interceptors are few in number and defensive in nature. Russia views U.S. military expansion into former Soviet territory as a challenge to Russia’s sovereignty. So, in a predictable fashion, it withdraws from treaties that control its military expansion into Eastern Europe and proscribe the construction of long-range missiles.

In another geopolitical setting, Hyatt’s desire to cooperate could have been salvaged if Russia and America cooled their tensions (as Condoleezza Rice is doing in Moscow right now) and found some sources of cooperation—a common ideology, mutual benefits, or mutual threats. But geopolitics prevent Russia from prolonged cooperation. Russia is threatened by an advancing U.S.-NATO alliance to the west, a rising China in the east, and Islamic extremism in the south. In short, the Russian bear has awoken and found itself cornered.

So I am sorry to disappoint Hyatt, but his question still remains—“How do we deal with an independent and bellicose Russia?”