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Enemy at the G8
In 2002, the leaders of the world's richest countries, gathered in Kananaskis, Canada, praised "the remarkable economic and democratic transformation that has occurred in Russia in recent years, and in particular under the leadership of President Putin". Prime Minister Tony Blair added that Russia's admission to the inner circle of the G8 was "a very strong message of support for President Putin and his reforms in Russia."
So much has changed, and so quickly. Nobody was surprised when, on his way to this year's G8 meeting, George W. Bush stopped off at a right-wing 'pro-democracy' conference in Prague and gave a speech in which he asserted:
"In Russia, reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development".
Under the headline "Kick the Russians out", an editorial in the Daily Telegraph lavished even greater indignation on the Russian President:
"...such freedom as was introduced in those years [under Yeltsin] is now being revoked. Russia is showing all the signs of incipient dictatorship: the harassment of opposition politicians, the closure of independent media, the arrest of dissidents on spurious charges.
"Membership of G8 bestows a credibility on the Putin regime which its actions no longer merit. It is time to go back to G7."
Neither Bush nor the Daily Telegraph noted that it was Yeltsin who in 1993 sent tanks to shell the Russian parliament, and who in 1996 rigged the presidential election in order to defeat the Communist Party candidate.
The New Statesman, a magazine which claims to cover "global issues the mainstream press often ignores" was almost fully on message with a special 'focus on Russia' issue during this year's G8 summit. The issue included a gallery of photographs picturing 40 of the "many reporters to die in suspicious circumstances in Russia in recent years". The accompanying commentary made no remark on the fact that 22 of the 40 had died during the Yelstin regime, or that only 13 of the deceased had met their suspicious ends since Western leaders heaped praise on Putin in June 2002.
Beggaring the questions
Even more illuminating is a feature article in the same edition of the New Statesman which follows a peculiar tradition in British political journalism- that of honestly reporting a set of facts which point in one direction, while adding adjectives and comments which give the piece the appearance of supporting the opposite view. The article, by BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall MBE, was entitled "Russia: The beggar becomes the belligerent".
Kendall quotes a Russian businessman who told her:
"The west saw the Soviet Union as an enemy. It only wanted reform and democracy in order to weaken us... not to seize our country, but to destabilise it and get cheap access to our resources."
Kendall describes this remark as "astonishing", because the businessman thereby showed no gratitude for the "loans or advice [given by the West] in the 1990s", which assisted him to become rich. It is left for the reader to deduce that amassing personal wealth need not always make one immune to the plight of ones country and most of its inhabitants.
She proceeds to cite other Russians with similar views:
" 'It was rich people who destroyed the Soviet Union, with the help of external enemies,' one retired engineer says. 'We have to be ready to stop American occupiers from trying to organise protests to bring down our government,' says a fresh-faced, 17-year-old student."
Kendall describes this "common sentiment in Russia today" as "a paranoid refrain that creeps into ordinary conversations". The word 'paranoid' suggests that such ideas are irrational delusions, lacking a basis in reality. But she faithfully records the reality of Russia under the Western-backed Yeltsin government:
"...at the end of 1991, their country disappeared overnight and all they got in return was closed borders where once they could freely visit cousins in Ukraine, plus years of terrifyingly rampant hyperinflation and a president prepared to bomb his own parliament as well as send young Russian conscripts off to war in Chechnya...
" 'You normally only see a population disappearance on this scale when a country has been through civil war,' notes one World Health Organisation official on the impact of rising infant mortality and death rates for adults in the mid-1990s.
" 'It was worse than the blockade,' was the verdict on the 1990s of an old lady whose daughter and husband both died in her arms, one of cancer, the other of a heart attack. This woman survived the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis in the Second World War by eating grass and shoe leather. But the relentless trauma of rising prices, unpaid wages and pensions and the constant political uncertainty of Yeltsin's Russia were worse, in her opinion."
Bridget Kendall recalls that the USA "walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty", "tried to build permanent bases for its troops in former Soviet republics in central Asia" and she mentions also the "US-led invasion of Iraq". Yet it is Putin's statements, rather than Western actions, which inspire Kendall's fearful adjectives:
"These days Vladimir Putin's speeches and interviews are littered with comments imbued with suspicion of western intentions... [these] bellicose threats, redolent with Cold War phrases, are chilling in comparison [with previous statements by Putin]..."
But why is it only now that Russia feels able to assert a foriegn policy independent from the USA? Kendall comments:
"...the revenues the government is enjoying from high oil and gas prices have transformed its self-image. The Kremlin relishes the potential global influence it can wield as a major energy provider. Though more remote towns and villages would argue that they are still being starved of support from federal coffers, Russia's budget is regularly in surplus. It is repaying foreign debts ahead of time. It no longer believes it needs outside help to develop. Advice, training and foreign investment are no longer welcomed unconditionally. Even foreign charities are viewed with suspicion."
One only needs to add that these foreign 'charities' are regime-change organisations funded by the US Government's National Endowment for Democracy, and the word "even" becomes redundant.
Normality for vassals
Ms Kendall's article concludes with a thought-provoking paragraph:
"If today's Russians want stability so they can live their lives quietly and concentrate on getting more prosperous and becoming a normal country for a change, the last thing they want is relations with the west so strained that these are a threat to peace. Russia may not be a democracy in the western sense, but popular sentiment can still make a difference."
Live a quiet life, and aspire to become a normal country. So what is a normal country, and is the possibility of becoming normal open to Russia?
If Russia is the odd man out among the G8, it is the G7- the USA, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada which are taken to be normal. Normality is akin to the concept of 'the west'- a category which, in defiance of geography, includes Japan. Six of the G7 countries are in NATO, and the remainder, Japan, is the site of strategic US military bases.
What we now see as 'normality' is, in historical terms, a fairly recent phase. Before the start of the Cold War in the late 1940s, it was the norm for the major capitalist powers to engage in bitter rivalries and arms races with each other, over access to markets and resources, colonies and spheres of influence; breaking out now and again into open warfare. After World War Two, the United States made its bankrupt and ruined allies and former rivals an offer which they could not refuse: accept subordinate positions within the US-dominated military, political and economic structures which were aimed at containing the USSR and keeping the Third World in its place. In return for what Zbigniew Brzezinski describes as 'vassal' status within the US imperium, the USA modified the previous cut-throat competititive economic relations with the NATO members and Japan, which instead received financial subsidies and privileged access to US markets and technology. Peace and prosperity- for the elite countries within the US-led club of North America, Western Europe and Japan.
The possibility that the United States might allow post-communist Russia an entry to the club of 'normal' prosperous nations in return for acceding to the USA's agenda was tested to the point of near-destruction during Yeltsin's regime. The persisting US-controlled structural relationship between the major capitalist powers was used to provide the necessary unity to enforce the neo-liberal project of privatisation and marketisation (which although ruinous for Russia as well as many other countries, had the consequence of hugely increased profits for the transnational companies) and for the USA's military and political power to be extended into Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
Western 'generosity' to the Russians during the 1990s amounted to a reverse Marshall plan: asset stripping on a grand scale.
Bridget Kendall's New Statesman article makes a further point: the potential for fluidity in diplomatic relationships as a new crop of leaders take over. Western Europe may harden further against Russia under Merkel and Sarkozy. Unless there is a change in Russia's constitution, a new president will be elected to replace Putin in March 2008. Ten months later, the USA will elect its new commander-in chief.
But politics is the art of the possible, and leaders operate under circumstances which are not chosen by themselves. Russia's renewed assertiveness under Putin has only been possible because of the rise of China. The benefit to Russia of the steep rise in oil and gas prices which resulted from China's industrial expansion has been accompanied by a deepening political and military friendship between the two countries, formalised through the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which has also drawn in the Central Asian republics. The Chinese have gently supported the Russian opposition to both the USA's post-Star Wars 'missile defense' project and to the western plan to sever Kosovo from Serbia.
Russia can face the west with confidence because it has an alliance in the east, with a nation which, as quietly as it can, is growing ever more powerful. And China is also not a normal country.