Russian Roulette Part 11

Only 28 percent of Russians polled now view the United States favorably, compared with 68 percent a mere few months ago. A majority of 55 percent disapprove of the USA in a country that was, until very recently, by far the most pro-American in Europe. A Russian telecom, Excom, is offering unlimited free phone calls to the White House to protest U.S. "aggression".

Washington, on its part, has accused the Russian firm, Aviaconversiya, of helping Iraqi forces to jam global positioning system (GPS) signals.

Other firms - including anti-tank Kornet missile manufacturer, KBP Tula - have also been fingered for supplying Iraq with sensitive military technologies.

These allegations were vehemently denied by President Vladimir Putin in a phone call to Bush - and ridiculed by the companies ostensibly involved. Russia exported c. $5 billion of military hardware and another $2.6 billion in nuclear equipment and expertise last year, mostly to India and China - triple the 1994 figure.

Russia and the United States have continually exchanged barbs over the sale of fission technology to Iran. In retaliation, Atomic Energy Minister, Alexander Rumyantsev, exposed an Anglo-German-Dutch deal with the Iranians, which, he said, included the sale of uranium enrichment centrifuges.

Is Putin reviving the Cold War to regain his nationalist credentials, tarnished by the positioning, unopposed, of American troops in central Asia, the unilateral American withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and the expansion of NATO and the European Union to Russia's borders?

Or, dependent as it is on energy exports, is Russia opposed to the war because it fears an American monopoly on the second largest known reserves of crude? Russia announced on Thursday that it would insist on honoring all prewar contracts signed between Iraq and Russian oil companies and worth of billions of dollars - and on the repayment of $8-9 billion in Iraqi overdue debt to Russia.

According to Rosbalt, every drop of $1 in oil prices translates into annual losses to the Russian treasury of $2 billion. Aggregate corporate profits rose in January by one fifth year on year, mostly on the strength of surging crude quotes. The Economist Intelligence Unit expects this year's GDP to grow by 3.8 percent. Foreign exchange reserves are stable at $54 billion.

The threat to Russia's prominence and market share is not imminent.

Iraqi oil is unlikely to hit world markets in the next few years, as Iraq's dilapidated and outdated infrastructure is rebuilt. Moreover, Russian oil is cheap compared to the North Sea or Alaskan varieties and thus const.i.tutes an attractive investment opportunity as the recent takeover of Tyumen Oil by British Petroleum proves. Still, the long-term risk of being unseated by a reconstructed Iraq as the second largest oil producer in the world is tangible.

Russia has spent the last six months enhancing old alliances and constructing new bridges. According to Interfax, the Russian news agency, yesterday, Russia has made yet another payment of $27 million to the International Monetary Fund. The Russian and Romanian prime ministers met and signed bilateral agreements for the first time since 1989. This week, after 12 years of abortive contacts, the republics of the former Yugoslavia agreed with the Russian Federation on a framework for settling its $600 million in clearing debts.

Recent spats notwithstanding, the Anglo-Saxon alliance still regards Russia as a strategically crucial ally. Last week, British police, in a sudden display of unaccustomed efficacy, nabbed Russian oligarch and mortal Putin-foe, Boris Berezovsky, charged by the Kremlin with defrauding the Samara region of $13 million while he was director of LogoVaz in 1994-5.

The Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, did not remain oblivious to these overtures. Russia and the USA remain partners, he a.s.serted. RIA Novosti, the Russian news agency, quoted him as saying: "If we settle the Iraqi problem by political means and in an accord, the road will open to teamwork on other, no less involved problems."

As Robert Kagan correctly observes in his essay "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order", the weaker a polity is militarily, the stricter its adherence to international law, the only protection, however feeble, from bullying. Putin, presiding over a decrepit and bloated army, naturally insists that the world must be governed by international regulation and not by the "rule of the fist".

But Kagan - and Putin - get it backwards as far as the European Union is concerned. Its members are not compelled to uphold international prescripts by their indisputable and overwhelming martial deficiency.

Rather, after centuries of futile bloodletting, they choose not to resort to weapons and, instead, to settle their differences juridically.

Thus, Putin is not a European in the full sense of the word. He supports an international framework of dispute settlement because he has no armed choice, not because it tallies with his deeply held convictions and values. According to Kagan, Putin is, in essence, an American: he believes that the world order ultimately rests on military power and the ability to project it.

Russia aspires to be America, not France. Its business ethos, grasp of realpolitik, nuclear a.r.s.enal and evolving values place it firmly in the Anglo-Saxon camp. Its dalliance with France and Germany is hardly an elopement. Had Russia been courted more aggressively by Secretary of State, Colin Powell and its concerns shown more respect by the American administration, it would have tilted differently. It is a lesson to be memorized in Washington.

Russia's Second Empire

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also published by United Press International (UPI)

History teaches us little except how little we can learn from it.

Still, there is nothing new under the sun. Thus, drawing too many parallels between the environmentalist movements of the late 19th century and their counterparts in the second half of the twentieth century - would probably prove misleading. Similarly, every fin de siecle has its f.u.kuyama, proclaiming the end of history and the victory of liberalism and capitalism.

Liberal parliamentarianism (coupled with unbridled individualistic capitalism) seemed to irreversibly dominate the political landscape by 1890 - when it was suddenly and surprisingly toppled by the confluence of revolutionary authoritarian nationalism and revolutionary authoritarian socialism.

Yet, every ostensibly modern (or post-modern) phenomenon has roots and mirrors in history. The spreading of the occult, materialism, rationalism, positivism, ethnic cleansing, regionalism, munic.i.p.al autonomy, environmentalism, alienation ("ennui"), information networking, globalization, anti-globalization, ma.s.s migration, capital and labour mobility, free trade - are all new mantras but very old phenomena.

Sometimes the parallels are both overwhelming and instructive.

Overview

Karl Marx regarded Louis-Napoleon's Second Empire as the first modern dictatorship - supported by the middle and upper cla.s.ses but independent of their patronage and, thus, self-perpetuating. Others went as far as calling it proto-fascistic.

Yet, the Second Empire was insufficiently authoritarian or revolutionary to warrant this t.i.tle. It did foster and encourage a personality cult, akin to the "Fuhrerprinzip" -but it derived its legitimacy, conservatively, from the Church and from the electorate. It was an odd mixture of Bonapartism, militarism, clericalism, conservatism and liberalism.

In a way, the Second Republic did amount to a secular religion, replete with martyrs and apostles. It made use of the nascent ma.s.s media to manipulate public opinion. It pursued industrialization and administrative modernization. But these features characterized all the political movements of the late 19th century, including socialism, and other empires, such as the Habsburg Austro-Hungary.

The Second Empire was, above all, inertial. It sought to preserve the bureaucratic, regulatory, and economic frameworks of the First Empire.

It was a rationalist, positivist, and materialist movement - despite the deliberate irrationalism of the young Louis-Napoleon. It was not affiliated to a revolutionary party, nor to popular militias. It was not collectivist. And its demise was the outcome of military defeat.

The Second Empire is very reminiscent of Vladimir Putin's reign in post-Yeltsin Russia.

Like the French Second Empire, it follows a period of revolutions and counter-revolutions. It is not identified with any one cla.s.s but does rely on the support of the middle cla.s.s, the intelligentsia, the managers and industrialists, the security services, and the military.

Putin is authoritarian, but not revolutionary. His regime derives its legitimacy from parliamentary and presidential elections based on a neo-liberal model of government. It is socially conservative but seeks to modernize Russia's administration and economy. Yet, it manipulates the ma.s.s media and encourages a personality cult.

Disparate Youths

Like Napoleon III, Putin started off as president (he was shortly as prime minister under Yeltsin). Like him, he may be undone by a military defeat, probably in the Caucasus or Central Asia.

The formative years of Putin and Louis-Napoleon have little in common, though.

The former was a cosseted member of the establishment and witnessed, first hand, the disintegration of his country. Putin was a KGB apparatchik. The KGB may have inspired, conspired in, or even instigated the transformation in Russian domestic affairs since the early 1980's - but to call it "revolutionary" would be to stretch the term.

Louis-Napoleon, on the other hand, was a true revolutionary. He narrowly escaped death at the hands of Austrian troops in a rebellion in Italy in 1831. His brother was not as lucky. Louis-Napoleon's claim to the throne of France (1832) was based on a half-baked ideology of imperial glory, concocted, disseminated and promoted by him. In 1836 and 1840 he even initiated (failed) coups d'etat. He was expelled even from neutral Switzerland and exiled to the USA. He spent six years in prison.

An Eerie Verisimilitude

Still, like Putin, Napoleon III was elected president. Like him, he was regarded by his political sponsors as merely a useful and disposable instrument. Like Putin, he had no parliamentary or political experience. Both of them won elections by promising "order" and "prosperity" coupled with "social compa.s.sion". And, like Putin, Louis-Napoleon, to the great chagrin of his backers, proved to be his own man - independent-minded, determined, and tough.

Putin, like Louis-Napoleon before him, proceeded to expand his powers and installed loyalists in every corner of the administration and the army. Like Louis-Napoleon, Putin is a populist, traveling throughout the country, posing for photo opportunities, responding to citizens'

queries in Q-and-A radio shows, siding with the "average bloke" on every occasion, taking advantage of Russia's previous economic and social disintegration to project an image of a "strong man".

Putin is as little dependent on the Duma as Napoleon III was on his parliament. But Putin reaped what Boris Yeltsin, his predecessor, has sown when he established an imperial presidency after what amounted to a coup d'etat in 1993 (the bombing of the Duma). Napoleon had to organize his own coup d'etat all by himself in 1852.

The Balancing Act

Napoleon III - as does Putin now - faced a delicate balancing act between the legitimacy conferred by parliamentary liberalism and the need to maintain a police state. When he sought to strengthen the enfeebled legislature he reaped only growing opposition within it to his domestic and foreign policies alike.

He liberalized the media and enshrined in France's legal code various civil freedoms. But he also set in motion and sanctioned a penumbral, all-pervasive and clandestine security apparatus which regularly gathered information on millions of Frenchmen and foreigners.

Modernization and Reform

Putin is considerably less of an economic modernizer than was Napoleon III. Putin also seems to be less interested in the social implications of his policies, in poverty alleviation and in growing economic inequalities and social tensions. Napoleon III was a man for all seasons - a buffer against socialism as well as a utopian social and administrative reformer.

Business flourished under Napoleon III - as it does under Putin. The 1850's witnessed rapid technological change - even more rapid than today's. France became a popular destination for foreign investors.

Napoleon III was the natural ally of domestic businessmen until he embarked on an unprecedented trade liberalization campaign in 1860.

Similarly, Putin is nudging Russia towards WTO membership and enhanced foreign compet.i.tion - alienating in the process the tyc.o.o.n-oligarchs, the industrial complex, and the energy behemoths.