Round Two?

Edward Lucas: The New Cold War

National Review, May 5, 2008

Putin
Putin

It’s not just the fact that Edward Lucas is a quietly proud, quietly amused holder of Lithuania’s Order of Gediminas (Fifth Class) that distinguishes him from many other non-native (he’s English) commentators on Eastern Europe; it’s also the depth of his interest in, and sympathy for, this long-contested stretch of territory’s cultures and peoples, an interest and a sympathy that resonate throughout this fine, timely, and thought-provoking new book.

It’s an interest he has pursued at first hand. Lucas (whom — full disclosure — I’ve known for more than 20 years) spent time in Poland as a student, and has been covering the region as a journalist since the late 1980s in a career that has included stints in Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Tallinn, Vilnius, and Moscow. He is now the Central and East European correspondent for The Economist. It’s his sympathy for the nations once trapped behind the Iron Curtain, and his grasp of their struggles — past, present, and, quite possibly, future — that now lead him to warn of the danger that a revived Russia might represent not only to their independence but also, for that matter, to the West.

To be sure, The New Cold War is, as its title reveals, a polemic. Obviously sensitive to accusations of hyperbole, Lucas takes care to stress that today’s threat is subtler than in the days of a divided continent and Mutually Assured Destruction. Nevertheless he’s out to alarm. He describes a Russia now run by, and for, its security services, a power once again on the prowl beyond its borders. Domestically it has, he shows, reverted to a form of authoritarianism, albeit one that, Lucas readily concedes, allows far more leeway than in the grim, gray, grinding Soviet past: “Never in Russian history have so many Russians lived so well and so freely.”

This is not an unfamiliar tale (news coverage of Putin’s rule has been more critical than Lucas sometimes appears to think), but here it’s recounted with fluency, authority, and an eye for detail that, even in this book’s lighter moments (of which there are a respectable number; he is a dryly amusing writer), betray its author’s long experience of the ramshackle, turbulent, and bewildering space that is all that remains of the utopia that never was:

I went to visit a new [Georgian] finance minister . . . who was being energetically promoted by the ever-optimistic American embassy. His office was bright, modern, and computerized. We had an enjoyable chat about e-government and zero-based budgeting. . . . As I left, I used an old journalist’s trick and asked to use the restroom, saying that I would find my way out. Not only was the toilet worse than a midden, but my detour to some of the other offices produced a much more convincing picture: a warren of ill-lit and dingy offices, each filled with rickety wooden furniture. Dumpy little men in ill-fitting brown suits were engaged in chain-smoking conversation with thickset men in leather jackets. Not a computer was in sight.

Clearly Lucas retains an unromantic, often skeptical view of the states that stumbled, lurched, and strode into the murky post-Soviet dawn. He’s often their cheerleader, but he’ll heckle too. Equally, his view of Russia is more balanced than his book’s title might suggest. After witnessing the chaos, violent criminality, and, for many, penury of the Yeltsin era, he can appreciate the attraction of the (partially) restored order and increasing prosperity associated with Putin, if not their political consequences. It’s telling that mounting suspicions (in Lucas’s view, “the weight of evidence so far supports the grimmest interpretation”) that the security services were behind the “terrorist” apartment bombings that helped pave the way for Putin’s election in 2000 have done little to dent his popularity: Russians have been prepared to pay dearly for the hope that the trains might someday run on time.

This is yet another reminder that the benign “universal” values (liberty, democracy, and so on) so cherished by Lucas are far from being universal priorities. Freedom may be important to Russians but it has demonstrably mattered less than the restoration of stability, and, probably, the desire that their country be, once again, a force to be reckoned with. But if nationalism can function as a valuable social glue, it can also gum things up. Adopting an increasingly rancid notion of the national interest may play well at home, but it has proved to be better theater than policy, and it’s leading Russia in a direction that is not just destructive, but self-destructive.

Bullying small neighbors is one thing (it’s an example of derzhavnichestvo, something that great powers just tend to do — and get away with), but Putin’s diplomacy has often appeared to put petulance before realpolitik. Aiding the Iranian theocracy may be an enjoyable way to taunt the West, but it makes little strategic sense for a country with mounting Islamist problems of its own. As for Putin’s embrace of China, Lucas approvingly quotes a Russian observer who despairingly, and reasonably, depicts such a partnership (presumably designed to act as a counterweight to those wicked Americans) as “an alliance between [Russian] rabbit and [Chinese] boa constrictor.”

Similarly, there is clear evidence, repeated by Lucas, that increasing meddling (to use a mild term) by the Kremlin has held back economic development. Times have been good but they could have been better. Investment has been deterred, delayed, or distorted. The high price Russia now receives for its oil and gas has been a godsend, but the resulting bonanza has both encouraged and financed the damage that an ever more assertive state is inflicting upon a still fledgling free market. Despite this, the prospects of rich pickings from Russia’s petro-economy not only have, as Lucas demonstrates in some of the most unsettling sections of his book, dampened Western criticism of Putin’s rule, but also look likely to set in motion a process that will leave Europe unhealthily dependent on Russian energy resources. To Lucas, “the growing [Western] business lobby tied to Russia represents a powerful fifth column of a kind unseen during the last Cold War. Once it was Communist trade unions that undermined the West at the Kremlin’s behest. Now it is pro-Kremlin bankers and politicians who betray their countries for 30 silver rubles.”

That’s a tirade too far, but it inevitably brings to mind Lenin’s best, if apocryphal, jibe: the one about rope, revolutionaries, capitalists, and selling. It’s a comparison that would gain added resonance were Lucas able to prove his contention that there is, once again, an ideological element to Moscow’s rivalry with the West. I’m not convinced that he is. To be sure, some of Putin’s more intellectually enterprising acolytes have managed to cobble together a doctrine of sorts, a haphazard jumble of grandiloquent, nostalgic nonsense that goes by the name of “sovereign democracy,” but nobody appears to take it terribly seriously. Nor should they. Russia has some traditions of government that are, mercifully, all its own, but these days they are, mercifully, no longer for export. There is no ideology behind Russia’s current maneuverings abroad, merely an old-fashioned pursuit of power, influence, and wealth — legitimate aims for any nation, great or small, flawed in this case by a profound misunderstanding of where its people’s best interests really lie.

But if the Kremlin is to play these games, so must we. Lucas concludes his book with some recommendations as to how to shove back. Some are sensible (focus on energy security), some naive (would Russia really care, or even notice, if it were suspended from the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly?), and some unnecessarily antagonistic (Georgia in NATO?). The first stage in any effective response, however, is a realistic understanding of what Russia is up to. This bracing, dismaying book doesn’t tell the full story (in particular, there’s not enough discussion of the extent to which Russia’s ambitions are both hobbled and inspired by its weakness), but it’s an excellent place to start.