America may be the world’s only superpower, but since we often hear that Russia is Europe’s problem, let’s check in on how they were doing while Obama was busy retreating on every front. Early in 2011 I was invited to contribute an essay to a European publication on the topic “Russia in Europe: Partners or Challengers?” I almost thought they were joking, but it’s a good example of the self-deluded and self-destructive state of mind that gripped Europe at the time when it came to Russia.
In August 2008, Russian tanks crossed an international border in Georgia and a chill ran down the collective spine of all of Europe, especially the former Soviet Bloc nations. Just one month earlier, Russia had threatened a “military-technical response” against Poland and the Czech Republic, including targeting nuclear weapons, when a US missile defense plan was announced. In January 2009, Russia cut off natural gas supplies to hundreds of thousands of people in half the countries of Europe. The bear was back and the bear was hungry.
With just those very recent events in mind, the question proposed by the editors for the title of the essay seemed preposterous.
A partner is usually defined as someone with mutual interests, if not actual friendship or affinity, and who shares in your successes and your hardships. In case after case, for over a decade, the Putin regime that ran the Kremlin—and that does still, as if there were any doubt—took a bluntly adversarial position with Europe and the rest of the Western world. By 2011, however, the Kremlin’s most effective weapons were banks, not tanks. The money flow out of Russia was coming close to conquering more of Europe than the twentieth century’s most feared strongmen ever did.
For most of the decade, most of Europe’s leaders pretended that they could do business with Russia while half-heartedly protesting Putin’s demolition of our fragile democratic institutions and the overall crackdown on human rights. Other leaders simply dispensed with the token hypocrisy and embraced the “strong” and “popular” Putin in the hopes of achieving more favorable deals. That Faustian bargain enriched a small circle of elites in both Europe and Russia while Putin steadily turned Russia into a KGB police state.
Then the “Arab Spring” upheaval at the end of 2010 provided Putin with more good news on multiple fronts. To the obvious first: a rise in the price of oil is always the Kremlin’s top priority. Years of hoping for an Israeli military strike on Iran that would send oil to $200 a barrel gave way to quietly celebrating the uprisings that Putin hoped would achieve the same price target. Russia’s interests in Libya may not have been served by abstaining from the UN Security Council vote on military action, but Russia’s ruling junta’s cash interests were very well served.
The other bright spot for the Kremlin was the feeble Western reaction when the Saudis sent troops into Bahrain to help quash the rebellion there in March 2011. Unarmed protesters were shot at close range just days after Obama’s defense secretary Robert Gates met with the Bahraini monarchy. The United States eventually condemned the violence and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton politely asked the Gulf regimes that the US arms and supports, to “show restraint” in demolishing peaceful protests.
The European Parliament did slightly better, condemning the violent repression of demonstrators, but did so in a nonlegislative resolution with no hint of sanctions or other action. Putin had long wondered how far he could go in repressing domestic opposition without causing a significant backlash. In 2011 he learned there was no limit at all, and that live ammunition against Russian protesters was a viable option.
The Western intervention into the Libyan civil war had lessons for other rogue regimes as well. To Iran it said, “Hurry up!” Gaddafi had publicly given up his nuclear ambitions years ago, to much global acclaim. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-il could kill thousands, do whatever he liked, but was untouchable because the North Koreans had ignored all of the “Unacceptable!” cries from the rest of the world and detonated a few buckets of nuclear slop.
In John le Carre’s famous novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, spy-master George Smiley cautions an agent on dealing with the KGB: “The only problem arises when it transpires that you’ve been handing Polyakov the crown jewels and getting Russian chicken-feed in return.” The crown jewels of the West are democracy, human rights, and transparency. By cozying up to Putin, Europe betrayed those once sacred contracts for the chicken feed of oil, gas, and everything from automobiles and football teams to actual chickens.
“But wait,” I hear the so-called pragmatists say, “oil and gas are hardly trinkets, and anyway, isn’t economic engagement the best way to improve the Russian standard of living and, eventually, the state of its politics?” This line of thought has been discredited so many times that by now it is obvious that its proponents use it only as a way to avoid admitting they do not have the courage to stand up to a strongman. But let me discredit it one more time.
First, while the Kremlin has shown a willingness to freeze innocent people to death over a contractual dispute, Russia needs Europe’s consumers as much as Europe needs the oil and gas. The pipelines are in place and cannot be redirected. The main alternative client, China, has already driven very favorable long-term deals for cheap Russian energy, so selling there isn’t nearly as profitable as selling to Europe. Putin and his cronies know they have a limited window to pocket as much money as they can and they are not going to risk their precious cash flow, not that they have to take any risks when Europe’s leaders capitulate preemptively.
As for the second argument, just the phrase “economic engagement” should by now leave a bitter taste in the mouth of anyone with a genuine interest in the advancement of human rights. Russia’s elites profited mightily as the price of oil skyrocketed and industries were consolidated into the hands of Putin loyalists. Autocracies share the profits of engagement only as much as necessary to avoid mass societal unrest. When dictators do invest the money they don’t steal into the country, it goes into the security forces and propaganda machine, not liberalization of civil society.
The real impact economic engagement had was the reverse of the effect its apologists defend, namely the export of corruption from Russia to its “partners” in the free world. All that oil money has done its job abroad as well, buying respect where it cannot be earned. The Winter Olympics were purchased for Putin’s beloved Sochi—the security nightmare and environmental catastrophe of such an event in the small subtropical resort in the Caucasus somehow escaped the International Olympic Committee’s eagle-eyed evaluation teams. Then the World Cup was checked off Putin’s shopping list, though it’s hard to say which side is the less transparent, the Kremlin or FIFA.
I did not use the word “mafia” in a casual way in chapter 8. It is simply a more accurate way of defining the Putin regime than traditional political terms. The boss is the man who can provide protection, who can make deals with the authorities and keep the money flowing in. In this picture, Europe and America are the authorities, the only ones that could stand up to the mafia. But the boss, Putin, has them in his pocket and as long as he keeps the money coming in he will stay right where he is.
It is barely worth mentioning the attempt by some in the West to revive the old sport of Kremlinology by conjecturing on the balance of power between Medvedev and Putin. What matters is that the policies did not change, regardless of the nameplates on the office doors. At no point during Medvedev’s presidency was there ever a sign of the cherished liberalization that even some naive Russians were anticipating.