West reverts to its cold war ways

Vladimir Radyuhin
The Hindu, July 30

The new Russia is building a market economy, has opened up to foreign investors, and is striving to integrate with the rest of the world. This is what makes it dangerous in the eyes of western hawks.

History has come full circle again. The west sees the new Russia as a big thorn in its side — as big and painful as the erstwhile Soviet Union. If there were any doubts about it, the row over the death by radioactive poisoning of the former Russian security officer Alexander Litvinenko in London has dispelled it. The tragic incident has been exploited to fuel a massive campaign to portray Russia as a re-incarnation of the “evil empire,” as Ronald Reagan labelled the Soviet Union.

Britain’s decision to expel four Russian diplomats over Russia’s refusal to extradite businessman Andrei Lugovoy, the main suspect in British eyes in the Litvinenko case, amounted to a declaration of war. The British government had known all along that Moscow would not turn over the man because Russia’s Constitution explicitly prohibits extradition of its citizens. London needed Moscow’s formal refusal to extradite Mr. Lugovoy to throw out Russian diplomats and hammer home the point that Britain was holding the Kremlin responsible for what it called an “act of state terrorism.” Moscow has strongly denied any involvement and offered to try Mr. Lugovoy in Russia if the British side provides sufficient evidence of his guilt. However, London has refused and insisted on having the man handed over to it.

Britain has thereby joined Poland and some other allies of the United States in Europe in the Russia-bashing being orchestrated by neo-conservatives such as the historian Richard Pipes. He claims Russia is a greater threat than Islamic extremism. “That country is more dangerous than bin Laden,” Dr. Pipes said in an interview to Italia’s Corriere della Sera last week.

He hit the nail on the head: Russia indeed presents a greater danger to western interests than the Soviet Union did. The only threat the Soviet Union was perceived to pose to the west was a military one, but it was easily countered with U.S. missiles and NATO tanks. The Soviet Union was isolated, securely cordoned off by the Iron Curtain. By contrast, the new Russia is not separated from the west by any ideological, political or economic walls. Russia has renounced communist ideology, is building a market economy, has opened up to foreign investors, and is striving to integrate with the rest of the world. This is what makes it dangerous in the eyes of western hawks.

There is something today the west fears more than Soviet tanks and missiles — Russia’s resurgence as a global power opposed to a U.S.-led unipolar world, and its economic expansion into western markets. The western media are full of stories about the Kremlin’s creeping conquest of Europe through Russian state-controlled mega-companies.

The Russian army has long withdrawn from Europe, BusinessWeek warned, but the Russians “are back, this time armed with bank accounts bulging with energy wealth.”

The west has even forfeited the sacred principle of economic freedom to stop the Russian economic offensive. According to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Russian companies had failed to clinch $50 billion in deals over the past year due to western non-market barriers.

But overall, Russia has been beating the west at its own game — free market competition. Moscow has consolidated its control over Central Asia’s energy resources and increased its strategic dominance in the energy markets of Europe.

Russia’s stinging censure of the U.S. and NATO aggression in Yugoslavia and Iraq sounds almost as harsh as the anti-imperialist tirades of Soviet leaders. But they cannot be easily brushed away as ideologically motivated attacks coming from a totalitarian regime. When President Vladimir Putin in his famous speech in Munich in February blasted the U.S. for “an almost uncontained hyper use of military force in international relations, which is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts,” he spoke from the high moral ground of the leader of a nation that has embraced democracy and upholds democratic principles in world politics. Mr. Putin’s principled castigation of U.S. adventurism has raised the prestige of Russia as one of the few big nations that has the guts to stand up to the superpower.

According to International Olympic Committee members, Mr. Putin’s personal charisma played a crucial role in winning the 2014 Winter Games for Russia earlier this month. Even in the U.S., Mr. Putin scored 30 per cent in popularity ratings, which looks not bad at all compared with George W. Bush’s 45 per cent.

Nearly two decades after winning the Cold War, the west sees its victory being snatched away. “All the spoils of its [the West’s] Cold War ‘win’… are already slipping through its fingers as the global momentum in almost every sphere shifts in the favour of Russia, China, India and the East,” laments analyst W. Joseph Stroupe, trumpeter of a “Neo Cold War.”

To rescue some of its Cold War gains, the U.S. and its allies have unleashed a propaganda war depicting Russia as a totalitarian regime and denouncing its leader. Leading U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, for one, ranked Russia among “hostile regimes” along with Iran and Venezuela for pursuing an independent energy-export policy.

Britain has joined the U.S.’ campaign of Russia-baiting as eagerly as it supported the invasion of Iraq. Press outlets on both sides of the Atlantic have accused President Putin of ordering the killing of political opponents even though not a shred of evidence has been produced to support the charge. Russia has accused the British authorities of politicising the Litvinenko case and failing to provide Moscow with any evidence for the charges against Mr. Lugovoy, not even an autopsy report on Mr. Litvinenko’s death. Russian prosecutors found many gaps and inconsistencies in Scotland Yard’s investigation, while the Russian press suggested that no evidence was forthcoming because there simply was none.

It pointed out that if Britain wanted to resolve the Litvinenko case, it would have agreed to an open trial of its Russian suspect on Russian soil.

Britain meanwhile went on to fan the anti-Russia hysteria. Russian bombers on regular training flights in the Northern Sea last week were accused of encroaching into U.K. airspace in what the British media described as “the Russians flexing their muscles.” In another bizarre incident, the British police reported the arrest of a man on the suspicion of conspiring to murder fugitive Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, whom Russian investigators suspect of organising the killing of his protégé Litvinenko. But instead of charging the man, the British authorities just deported him.

New containment policy

Moscow believes the anti-Russian campaign in the west serves to provide ideological motivation for a new containment policy. If Russia can be made out to be sliding back towards dictatorship, then the west would be perfectly justified in banning Russian companies from buying assets in Europe and the U.S., in rejecting the Kremlin’s various cooperation initiatives such as a joint global missile shield, and in putting a loaded gun to Russia’s head by setting up new military bases along its borders.

In the run-up to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s first visit to the U.S. this week, Congressman Tom Lantos, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, gave a call to “revitalise the transatlantic alliance” to contain Russia, which “is using anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism to wreak havoc.”

Mr. Lantos stood the issue on its head. Even such a committed pro-west person as Russia’s former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar admitted that it was Washington’s policy that had led to an alarming rise of anti-Americanism in top Russian universities and in the Russian body politic. The architect of Russia’s pro-western market reforms said he had been trying to alert western leaders to the danger that they were strengthening anti-western and authoritarian forces in Russia and this could eventually impact on Russian foreign and domestic policies.

But then this seems to be exactly the U.S. goal — to push Russia back into its totalitarian and isolationist past. “The more aggressive sections of the Western elites have long abandoned efforts to export democracy to Russia, but are actively working to lure Russia into authoritarianism,” the Kremlin-connected Expert magazine wrote in its latest issue. An authoritarian Russia “will still sell its oil and gas, but will not aspire to gain a foothold in Western gas-distribution networks and in the global markets.”

Pollsters have indeed noted a rise in anti-western sentiments in Russia recently. Nearly half of the Russians surveyed this month said the west was trying to solve its problems at Russia’s expense and “damages Russia’s interests whenever a convenient opportunity arises.”

But most importantly, opinion surveys registered a record rise in Mr. Putin’s popularity, with 85 per cent of Russians approving his fiercely nationalistic policy. The Russian leader appears to be outmanoeuvring his western foes once again: the Russia-baiting campaign has strengthened his hand at home at a time when he is preparing to hand over power to a trusted successor in the presidential elections next year.