Containing Russia

Yuliya Tymoshenko

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007

Summary:  Russia's imperial ambitions did not end with the fall of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin has returned to expansionism, trying to recapture great-power status at the expense of its neighbors, warns one of Ukraine's most prominent politicians. The United States and Europe must counter with a strong response -- one that keeps Russia in check without sparking a new Cold War.

Yuliya Tymoshenko is the leader of Ukraine's parliamentary opposition. From January to September 2005, she was Prime Minister of Ukraine.

THE SOURCES OF RUSSIAN CONDUCT

Sixty-one years ago, a telegram arrived at the State Department from the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Its purpose was to examine the sources of the conduct of the men who ruled in the Kremlin. Its impact was immediate. The "Long Telegram," penned by a young diplomat named George Kennan, became the basis for U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for the next half century.

Although the Soviet Union is long gone, the West is once again groping to understand what motivates the leaders in the Kremlin. Many believe that the principles behind Kennan's policy of "containment" are still applicable today -- and see a new Cold War, this time against Vladimir Putin's resurgent Russia, in the offing.

I do not believe that a new Cold War is under way or likely. Nevertheless, because Russia has indeed transformed itself since Putin became president in 2000, the problem of fitting Russia into the world's diplomatic and economic structures (particularly when it comes to markets for energy) raises profound questions. Those questions are all the more vexing because Russia is usually judged on the basis of speculation about its intentions rather than on the basis of its actions.

In the aftermath of communism's collapse, it was assumed that Russia's imperial ambitions had vanished -- and that foreign policy toward Russia could be conducted as if former diplomatic considerations did not apply. Yet they must apply, for Russia straddles the world's geopolitical heartland and is heir to a remorseless imperial tradition. Encouraging economic and political reform -- the West's preferred means of engaging Russia since communism's end -- is of course an important foreign policy tool. But it cannot substitute for a serious effort to counter Russia's long-standing expansionism and its present desire to recapture its great-power status at the expense of its neighbors.

THE RUSSIAN JANUS

Thanks to high energy prices, the chaotic conditions that prevailed across Russia in the early 1990s have given way to several years of 6.5 percent annual economic growth and a trillion-dollar economy. Living standards have improved (although life expectancy has not), the middle class is growing and increasingly confident, and the stock market is booming. Russia possesses the third-largest hard-currency reserves in the world, and it is running a huge current account surplus and paying off the last of the debts it accumulated in the early 1990s. The ruble has been made fully convertible and may even be undervalued. Russian membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) beckons. Ordinary Russians are grateful to Putin for the country's stability and economic growth, and they are proud that Russia appears to matter when great global issues are debated. No wonder, then, that Putin's popularity rating is around 70 percent -- a sustained achievement that any politician would envy.

Yet, for every step forward that Russia has taken over the course of Putin's second term, it has taken a step backward. Greater state control of the economy -- especially in the energy industry, where, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the state's share of oil production has doubled in three years -- has bred corruption and inefficiency. Serious political opposition has been muzzled. Newspapers and television and radio stations have been shut down or taken over by the government and its allies. Kremlin cronies have replaced elected regional governors, and Russia's parliament, the Duma, has been emasculated as part of the Kremlin's drive to monopolize all state power.

Russia's foreign policy has been equally troubling. Moscow has given Iran diplomatic protection for its nuclear ambitions, and Russian arms sales are promiscuous. The Kremlin has consistently harassed neighboring countries; former Soviet nations, such as Georgia, have faced near economic strangulation. In February, Putin spoke favorably about creating a "gas OPEC."

None of this should be surprising, for Putin's aim has been unvarying from the start of his presidency: restore Russian greatness. Unlike Boris Yeltsin, who accepted dissent as a necessary part of democratic politics -- it was, after all, as a dissenter from Mikhail Gorbachev's rule that he gained the presidency of Russia -- Putin was determined from the outset to curtail political opposition as an essential step toward revitalizing centralized power. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of Yukos Oil, for example, is in prison for daring to challenge the Kremlin's authority and perhaps aspiring to succeed Putin. Order, power (including the power to divide the spoils of Russia's natural-resource wealth), and reviving Russia's international influence, not democracy or human rights, are what matter in today's Kremlin.