The dangers of dealing with the Russian Mephistopheles, by Philip
Stephens

FT, November 26 2004

The trouble with Faustian pacts is that, sooner than you think, the
moment comes when you are asked to deliver your soul. The big
western democracies have arrived at that point in their relationship
with Vladimir Putin's Russia. For all the private handwringing and
public protests at the calculated stifling of Ukrainian democracy,
we have seen few signs yet that Washington and Rome, Berlin and
Paris are ready to renege on their dark bargain with Moscow.

When George W. Bush entered the White House he found it hard to
imagine doing business with Mr Putin. The Russian leader was a
former head of the KGB. That told him all he needed to know, the
president would say to visitors to Washington. Condoleezza Rice, his
national security adviser, added intellectual substance to his
visceral instincts. She after all had started out in foreign policy
as a cold warrior student of the Soviet Union. Few were surprised
that one of Mr Bush's first diplomatic acts was to expel dozens of
alleged Russian spies.

That was then. Only a few weeks ago Mr Putin was cheering Mr Bush to
a second-term victory almost as eagerly as he backed his friend
Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine (*). The US administration meanwhile
boasted warm relations with Moscow as one of the foreign policy
successes of the president's first term. Ms Rice's change of heart
was apparent some time ago when she remarked that Russia would be
forgiven for opposing the Iraq war, while Germany would be ignored
and France punished. More recently, she has been heard to say that a
weak Russia is a bigger problem than a strong one.

As it happens, Mr Putin's Russia is a curious mix of strength and
weakness, a hollow within a hard shell. Geography is the most
obvious source of its power. Almost anywhere you look, Russia's
borders touch the vital strategic interests of the US or Europe and,
more often, both. Think of actual and potential sources of
geopolitical instability — say, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran,
Iraq, the Caucasus, Moldova and Belarus as well as Ukraine — and
Russia has a geographical presence. Meanwhile demand for its oil and
gas has stabilised its economy and given it valuable diplomatic
bargaining chips in a world ever more preoccupied with energy
security. Closer to home, Mr Putin has systematically rebuilt the
political authority of the Kremlin.

Yet the weaknesses are equally obvious: an ageing and shrinking
population, crumbling infrastructure and a moribund manufacturing
sector, an unreformed and under-resourced military, and a brutal,
unwinnable war in Chechyna. The awful scale of the slaughter of
innocent children during the Beslan school siege earlier this year
spoke as much to a chaotic failure of the Russian state as to the
ruthlessness of the terrorists.

Mr Putin, though, is artful in his diplomacy. Like Israel's Ariel
Sharon he was quick to exploit the strategic earthquake in
Washington triggered by the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001.
Russian solidarity in the war against al-Qaeda was traded for tacit
agreement that the Chechen rebellion would henceforth fall under the
same rubric of Islamist extremism; a US military presence in parts
of central Asia was matched with the reassertion of Moscow's
interests in former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan.

The Russian leader is skilled too at the game of divide and rule.
Tony Blair was once his closest friend in the west. He served as a
vital bridge in the initial rapprochement with Washington. That
purpose served, Mr Blair was discarded. Relations with London are
now chilled by the presence in Britain of a Chechen opposition
leader and an exiled Russian oligarch. Others too have been
disappointed. For all his assiduous investment in France's
relationship with Moscow, President Jacques Chirac has thus far
failed to persuade Mr Putin to play the multipolar game against the
US.

Europe has been left weakened and divided. Germany's Gerhard
Schroder and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi have joined Mr Chirac in
courting the Russian leader. It has been left largely to the former
communist countries of central and eastern Europe and to the Nordic
and Baltic states to protest at the price they have paid for Mr
Putin's affection. Elsewhere, the progressive tightening of his
authoritarian rule, the dismantling of independent media, the
abolition of regional democracy and a nasty campaign to eradicate
dissent in Russia's civil society have passed with only token
protests.

Such is the background to this week's elections in Ukraine. There
was no surprise in western capitals at the vote-rigging witnessed by
independent observers. Mr Putin's campaign appearances on behalf of
Mr Yanukovich were just the tip of a much deeper iceberg of Russian
interference in the election. Of course, there were hopes in
Washington and elsewhere that Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition
leader, might somehow defy the odds and be declared president. But
that was largely wishful thinking.

So I suppose the rest of us should be equally unsurprised that cries
of anguish and warnings of retribution this week have been directed
not at Mr Putin but at the newly declared President Yanukovich.
Colin Powell, the outgoing US secretary of state, sounded quite
tough in his warnings that an illegitimate Ukrainian government
would pay a price for the subversion of democracy. But Mr Putin
escaped serious censure. The Russian leader has got away with
meddling in Georgia and Moldova and he serves as sponsor to the
tyrannical regime in Belarus. Ukraine was always next in Mr Putin's
efforts to tame Russia's near-abroad.

The west's complicity, or at the very least acquiescence, has been
justified as part of the bigger (let's not dignify it by calling it
grand) bargain. Washington is anxious for Russian co-operation in
Iraq. Europe has sought its aid in persuading Iran to scale back its
nuclear ambitions. And, of course, the oil companies want access to
Russia's vast reserves. Somewhere along the way the strategic
ambition to support and entrench Russian democracy has been
discarded. Maybe events in Ukraine will change things. I hope so.
But I am not optimistic.

The other day someone reminded me that two years from now it will
fall to Russia to chair the Group of Eight nations. This elite club
used to go by the name of the world's leading democracies. I suppose
there is time enough to find another epithet before Mr Putin takes
his turn.

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(*) Elsewhere in today's FT it is reported that Putin speaking in
the Hague said: "We don't believe it is our right to interfere in
any way in the electoral process or impose our opinion on the
Ukrainian people". But, with those double standards which are such a
distinguishing characteristic of the upper levels of the government
of the Russian Federation, Putin himself had flagrantly interfered
in the Ukraine election by his support for Yanukovich. (He also
interfered in the US election by supporting the Bush candidacy. In
his pitiful ignorance of political standards he thinks that is not
interfering.) - JP