In all of this, cross-border investment will help, because Russian companies will continue to need know-how and foreign direct investment while Western companies engaging with their Russian counterparts will have to live under the watchful eyes of the American SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) or the German BaFin (Bundesaufsichtsamt für das Finanzwesen), and nobody in his right mind wants to run foul of those venerable institutions. The same is true when it comes to the major Western stock exchanges, whether New York, Chicago, London or Frankfurt. They have their own ways, irreverent and brutal, to punish anybody, big or small, who disobeys the rules. While toning down public criticism of Russia, it may well prove to be more effective to draw Russian attention to the fine print in the Western club rules. At the time of the Soviet Union the Iron Curtain separated two different worlds, and business could be conducted irrespective of Soviet repression, and kept very much insulated. Today this would be a dangerous illusion. The internet, global TV and travel produce an interconnected universe of information, almost impossible to control. More important still, the interdependence of world capital markets does indeed impose rules and regulations upon Russia that are impossible to shut out and likely to unfold revolutionary powers of transformation. Western business, while often downplaying the human rights rhetoric of political leaders, must be aware of the moral basis for business in an interconnected universe.
Cultural exchange among the academic elite, journalists and managers ought to be encouraged. The harassment inflicted by the FSB on the Russian operation of the British Council in the early days of 2008 is counterproductive by any standard, Russian or otherwise. The ‘lone wolf’ theory of Russia in the world may be good for Nasi enthusiasts but it is bad for the projection of soft power. It is impossible to play to the gallery and whip up Russian xenophobia, and at the same time attract investment and investors from outside. Sooner or later Russia’s modern leaders will have to overcome the authoritarianism inherent in the FSB and open doors and windows. The Soviet Union left no civil infrastructure behind. Paying lip-service to the virtues of civil society will not do in the long run. Reality must change.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of room for cooperation. What both sides share is the need for stability. This starts with an imperative to join forces in the struggle against climate change – though Russian official policy seems not to mind the prospect of a milder climate in Siberia and elsewhere. There is the old arms control agenda from the Cold War and a new one from the time thereafter. The old one comprises the Test Ban Treaty, the various strategic arms limitation treaties, the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the additional watchdog bureaucracy in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA is, however, also part of the new challenges. Not only because there are more proliferators, some like North Korea and Iran active and others waiting in the wings. But there is also the growing need, all over the globe, for more nuclear energy and the enriched uranium to fuel it. To control this peaceful proliferation without allowing any military aspirants to play foul is a gigantic task requiring the greatest attention of the two original superpowers, and their close cooperation.
Transport systems will have to be redesigned to save energy and make use of those northern passages hitherto covered by ice and soon accessible as a result of global warming. Piracy in its traditional form as well as in combination with modern terrorism is another threat requiring joint surveillance, exchange of data and joint defences.
Offshore drilling for gas and oil, whoever owns the seabed, will be another effort in which Russia will need cooperation from abroad, especially from Norway. Otherwise the Russian dream of Shtokman riches from under the Polar Circle will remain a dream for a long time to come. This is only part of the grand bargain to be developed between Russia and the West: energy from Russia; technology from the West in the form of machine tools, information technology, avionics and nanotechnology. Russia, for all its petrodollars, has an enormous need for technology imports from Europe and the US. From road-bulding to housing, from electricity grids to superfast telecommunications, Russia is far behind its needs and its possibilities – and behind the people’s expectations.
Russia and the West
The question remains: is there still a political agenda, a system of thought, a pattern of interests, a global vision constituting the West? The answer is no when defined in terms of the Cold War: the organizing principle was containment of the Soviet Union, and with the Soviet Union the organizing principle has gone too. The answer is also yes when defined in terms of soft power and political culture, open society and the right to the pursuit of happiness.
But where is the moral and political place of Russia in all of this, now and in the foreseeable future? Russia has gone through one or two burnouts, and this can be seen in the body language of the older generation, in the massive exodus of elites, and the conditioned reflex of the security services to take control. Russia, in spite of appearances, goes back to its roots – this could be one answer, and both the siloviki in the Kremlin and the weakness of civil society could be cited as proof, together with the burden of history and the age-old instinct of Russians to define themselves in defiance of Europe and the US.
There is also another answer, however, and it holds out more hope for Russia and its neighbours far and wide. No return to the leaden years of Brezhnev or the brutal suppression under Stalin and Lenin. Russia is reinventing itself, and the vast natural resources of Siberia at rising world market prices are a chance both to create firm financial ground and to compete with Western countries. Of course Moscow will not soon accept the European Union as a major player in its own right on the world scene but will try, whenever possible, the bilateral track. And Moscow will, whenever possible, try to enhance differences across Europe and between Europeans and Americans. This is nineteenth-century great power diplomacy played out in an early twenty-first-century environment – and that is why it cannot be the winning strategy. The interdependence of highly industrialized countries in terms of global challenges is too vast, the punishment for unilateralism too severe, the lure of the West throughout the Russian population is far greater than anything China has to offer. The idea in Moscow that a systemic conflict is developing between on one side countries combining capitalism and authoritarianism and on the other side countries opting for liberal capitalism is academic, because it ignores the geopolitics of Asia in general, and Siberia in particular.
Ever since Russia became part of the power play of Europe, i.e. more than three hundred years ago, for all its exceptionalism Russia has been a European power with a vast Asian hinterland. ‘Europe our common house’ was, in Gorbachev’s time, less of a propaganda slogan and more of a vision. Today the democratic subtext of this vision has faded, but the material base has grown. Russia and the countries of Europe, Russia and the US will, whether they like it or not, share a common destiny.
12
Epilogue: the making of a president
‘Do not reproach me for my contradictions. I perceived them without wishing to avoid them, for they exist in the things that I describe – let this be said once and for all. How can I give you a true idea of what I am describing without contradicting myself at every word?’