Russian politics is in
turmoil as a result of the uprisings in the Arab world, in particular the
Egyptian revolution. Those fed up with an increasingly autocratic political
system hope that Russian citizens will be energised, while those who came out on
top following the collapse of the Soviet Union are quick to dismiss any
implications for the Russian political scene.
The official Russian reluctance to embrace the winds of change in the Middle East contrasts with the reaction of the rest of the world and speaks volumes about the real state of Russian politics. While the invasion of Libya revived the spectre of British/ French/ Italian/ US imperialism on Africa's north coast -- hardly a welcome development for Russia -- the implications of the Egyptian tidal wave now sweeping away corrupt, authoritarian politicians and their business cronies, without any need for French Exocet missiles and US-Israeli drones, is even more disturbing for the Kremlin, and it has nothing to do with Chechnya or Dagestan, where violence could hardly get worse as a result of a peaceful mass revolution like Egypt's.
The lack of enthusiasm
was a gut reaction by the leadership and has a very good cause, for despite the
very different cultures and histories, ordinary Russians face much the same
situation as did Egyptians prior to 25 January. Post-Soviet Russian politics has
not allowed the real voice of Russians to be heard, as starkly demonstrated in
1993, when Yeltsin violently disbanded the parliament,[r] and then in 1996, when
the communist Gennadi Ziuganov won the presidential election, but was kept from
office by the machinations of the Yeltsin clique and its Western backers.
Since then, Machiavellian "political technologists" have served up a dish which Ivan Krastev dubbed "sovereign democracy", a combination of "directed democracy and nationalism", an antidote to the dangerous combination of populist pressure from below and international pressure from above that destroyed the post-Communist Ukrainian, Georgian and Kyrgyz regimes in so-called colour revolutions.
The political elite
managed to avoid the fate of those regimes and stabilise the rule of the
Putin-Medvedev duumvirate, but in the process, returned Russia to the
undemocracy of the Soviet period, replacing the communists' social welfare and
anti-imperialist foreign policies with a dash of pluralism. The Arab spring is
no phoney colour revolution, and what is happening in Egypt is a frightening
affair for the Russian elite, both supporters of the more nationalist Putin and
those of the more Europhile Medvedev. Though Putin scandalously contradicted his
president by criticising the Western invasion of Libya as a "Crusade", few in
Russia take this spat seriously.
Their rivalry may add some spice to Russian politics, but the main ingredients are unchanged. Medvedev strives to carry out the Westernisers' programme, while Putin plays a rearguard defence, at times praising the Soviet legacy and condemning Western threats and invasions. Indeed, as Israel Shamir notes, "only Putin stands between the people's anger and the fat cats of Moscow. Russians know that the oligarchs and top Kremlin figures are perfectly integrated into the Western capitalist scheme: they keep their money in Bahamas, they send their children to Oxford, they own houses on the Riviera and Hampstead, they own shares in the transnational companies. And together with their Western chums, they fleece Russians."
The
Medvedev-Putin duo are a packaged deal -- if one goes, the whole post-Soviet
set-up totters. The elites they jointly represent have good cause to fear the
example that Egyptian revolutionaries have set. However, there is one important
plus for the would-be Russian Westernisers in the Kremlin deriving from the
unrest sweeping the Arab world. Whereas until a few months ago, NATO visits to
Ukraine and Georgia were continuing to embarrass the proponents of the
US-Russian "restart button", the noise of bombs exploding in Libya and tear gas
in Yemen and Bahrain is drowning out the calls for NATO's expansion eastward.
Nikolas Gvosdev explains that "both Russia and Poland sense the operation [in
Libya] may prove to be a turning point in the future direction of the North
Atlantic alliance."
No longer is NATO pushing eastward, threatening a now compliant Russia, concerned with maintaining its hegemony in its "near abroad", but posing no threat to Western Europe.
Thus the refusal of Russian UN Ambassador Vladimir Chamov to veto UNSC Resolution 1973, clearly a ploy to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi using pious UN platitudes like "Responsibility to Protect". Russia last used its precious UN veto in 2008 to prevent sanctions against Zimbabwe, and more famously in 1999 to prevent a UN bombing of Serbia. The Libyan resolution was just as cynical as either of these, but elicited only an abstention. (China merely followed suit so as not to be the odd-man-out.)
The Russian people are strongly against the operation; it is being called Kosovo-2 in Moscow. For them, "a Western intervention is a Western intervention, one of many they were on the receiving end of," writes Shamir.
The other puzzle here
is the refusal of Poland and Germany to jump on the Libyan bandwagon. The answer
lies in the implications of this new NATO project for Europe and the central
role French President Nicolas Napoleon (excuse me, Sarkozy) is playing in it. If
Russia approves NATO's shift from eastward to southward and moves closer to the
West, Poland loses its importance as a frontline state "keeping the Russians at
bay". So it is unhappy with developments. As for Germany, unlike France, it has
been anxious to expand economically eastward, to incorporate Russia into a
broader Eurasian association where it will call the shots. It was suspicious of
Sarkozy's Mediterranean Union, patched together by Sarkozy in 2008, from the
start and, like Poland, is against the NATO intervention in Libya.
The Mediterranean Union brings together all the Mediterranean countries and the EU, including Israel, sans Libya. At the same time, NATO has been pursuing the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)), and the GCC+4 (+ Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, US). The latter was heralded in 2007 as the "NATO of the Middle East", the successor to the Middle East Defense Organisation (MEDO) set up in the early 1950s to include Egypt, Iraq, Turkey and others.
This shift makes sense for both Europe and the US. Afghanistan is a lost cause and will have to be abandoned soon. Much more rational to pour money and effort into the Mediterranean region, integrate Israel and (hopefully) pull in Iraq as this new MEDO gains traction. The invasion of Libya is just the thing to provide an ailing NATO with a new lease on life. AFRICOM, the latest arm of the US military command structure, will be more than glad to help out. The US is already mooting the possibility of sending ground troops to support its Libyan rebel allies, and with stick-in-the-mud Gaddafi gone -- who knows? -- maybe AFRICOM will find a new home in Tripoli. It is still stuck in Germany, as no other African government has dared to offer it residence.
From the French point of view, this shift "from an East-West divide and toward a North-South bridge", as Gvozdev calls it, will kill no less than three birds with one stone: it gets rid of Gaddafi, it does not threaten European rapprochement with Russia, and it puts France back in the lead within the EU. Ruffling German and Polish feathers is neither here nor there for le gà ©nà ©ral.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
