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Jewish World Review August 22, 2008 / 21 Menachem-Av 5768 When history is not repeated By Caroline B. Glick
Medvedev make this declaration after signing an order recognizing the
sovereignty of Georgia's two pro-Russian provinces South Ossetia and
Abkhazia. Some observers warn that Russian annexation of the two territories
is just a matter of time.
While less attractive than a competitive alliance, Russia' violent, bullying
behavior makes it impossible to imagine its leaders returning to their
pre-invasion cooperative posture with the West. As a consequence, like
Medvedev, many Western officials have been noting the possibility that a new
cold war will transpire between Russia and the West.
Yet the nature of Russia's regime which propelled its decision to launch its
war in Georgia raises doubts about the viability of reaching an equilibrium
of hostility with the West comparable to that which existed during the Cold
War. It is true that similarities between Russia's current behavior and that
of the Soviet Union before it abound. As was the case with the Soviet Union,
it is fairly clear that Russia's current regime has expansionist aspirations
far beyond its immediate borders. Moscow's threat to attack Poland with
nuclear bombs, its aggressive naval deployment in the Mediterranean Sea, its
hosting of Syrian President Bashar Assad and its renewed talk of supplying
Syria and Iran with advanced weapons systems all make its Soviet-like
expansionist aims clear.
Moreover, as Pavel Felgenhauer noted on the Jamestown Foundation's *Eurasia
Daily Monitor*, Russia's government controlled media is engaged in
Soviet-like frenzied, demonization of US leaders. In one prominent example
this week, the government-mouthpiece *Izvestia* launched an obscene
broadside against US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The newspaper
referred to her as "insane," and then crudely demeaned her as "a skinny old
single lady who likes to display her underwear during talks with Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Ivanov."
As the West scrambles to build a strategy for contending with Russia, many
writers and policymakers have pointed out that Russia is fundamentally weak.
As my former Jerusalem Post colleague Bret Stephens noted Tuesday in
the Wall
Street Journal, Russia's demographic forecast like its oil and gas
production forecasts are dim. The CIA has pointed out through demographic
attrition, Russia's population will decline more than twenty percent over
the next forty years. And due to "underinvestment, incompetence, corruption,
political interference and crude profiteering," Russia's oil production will
decline this year for the first time. Its production rates are expected to
drop precipitously next year and in the coming years as well.
Cognizant of these negative trends, US and European leaders are hoping that
Russia's bleak prospects will convince its leaders to step back from the
precipice of war to which they are now hurtling the West. On Wednesday, US
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried
warned, "Russia is going to have to come to terms with the reality that it
can either integrate with the world or it can be a self-isolated bully. But
it can't have both."
While it remains to be seen if the West will agree to isolate the Russian
bully, it is certainly the case that Russia's leaders are not blind to their
country's weaknesses. This is so because to a large degree, Russia's dim
long-term prognosis has been caused by the domestic policies of Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin and his cronies. And in light of this, it can be
safely assumed that far from causing them to avoid confrontation with the
West, their cognizance of Russia's problems is what caused them to adopt
their belligerent posture.
In December, Russian political insider Stanislav Belkovsky told the German
media that during his two terms as Russia's president, Putin amassed a
fortune in excess of $40 billion making him the wealthiest man in Europe.
Putin's wealth has been built through his ownership of vast holdings in
three Russian oil and gas companies.
Were Putin invested in the long-term prosperity and strength of his country,
he would have invested that money in Russia. Instead he has squirreled it
away in bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. And of course, Putin
is not alone in betting his wealth against his country's future. Like him,
his cronies in the Kremlin and the FSB have accrued their wealth through
their ownership in Russian companies that Putin has nationalized. And like
him, they have taken their loot out of the country.
The behavior of Russia's rulers makes clear that they do not concern
themselves with the long-term health of their country as they construct
their policies. And their concentration on short-term gains makes their
decision to confront the US and Europe inevitable. It is now, when Russia's
oil wealth is at its peak that they are most powerful. And with their
current power they seek to maximize their personal gains while justifying
their actions in the name of Russian glory.
By doing this, they are working to ensure that in spite of their despoiling
of Russia's natural resources and fostering of social pathologies which
guarantee that Russia will be unable to stem its decline, Putin and his men
will go out in a blaze of fire and light. Through his fascist cultivation of
a cult of personality and his jingoistic aggression and incitement against
the US, Putin, like Peter the Great and Josef Stalin will enter the pantheon
of Russia's great heroes after he abandons his devastated country to be
reunited with his money. He cares not for the consequences of his actions on
his fellow Russians. His loyalties are to immortality, and his bank
accounts.
It is due to Putin's non-domestic considerations that it is virtually
impossible to reach a stable equilibrium of hostility with Russia today like
that which existed with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This is the
case for two reasons. First, because it is impossible to know how long he
will stay around. And second, Putin's motivations block any chance of
reaching a raison d'etre with Russia because his motivations are not shared
by his countrymen.
The fact of the matter is that in its indifference toward Russia's long-term
wellbeing, Putin's regime is far more similar to Iran and North Korea than
it is to the Soviet Union which preceded it. As Iran invests hundreds of
billions of dollars in its nuclear program and still more billions in its
terror proxies, client states and offensive military systems in the name of
its quest for Islamic domination and salvation, its domestic economy is
falling apart.
For the first time since 1982, this year Iran was forced to import wheat
from the US. Parliament member Sayed Delkhosh announced Tuesday that thirty
percent of Iran's annual $280 billion budget has gone towards preventing
failed government owned companies from going bankrupt. Then too, Iran's oil
distribution company just announced that it intends to cut the public's
gasoline rations ahead of the winter.
As to North Korea, its principle exports are missiles, weapons of mass
destruction, forged currency and narcotics. North Korea is a slave state
replete will full regimentation of the entire starving population,
abandoned, ruined villages and an archipelago of concentration camps. It is
country dedicated completely to the perpetuation of the pathological regime
of absolute dictator Kim Jong-Il and his family.
It is due to the fact that they base their national policies on
considerations unrelated to their national wellbeing that Russia, Iran and
North Korea have chosen a posture of war and confrontation with the West.
For it is through confrontation and aggression that they coerce the West to
pay attention to them. The identification of the West as the enemy enables
them to divert their peoples' attention away from their domestic policy
failures. Through their manipulation of public opinion Russia , Iran and
North Korea have convinced their people to blame the outside enemy for their
impoverishment and their suffering. And in light of the supposed enemies at
their gates, the Russians, Iranians and North Koreans feel free, indeed
compelled to repress all opponents of their regimes.
It is true that each of these regimes is motivated by different governing
rationales. But whether their governing rationales are apocalyptic
messianism, megalomania or greed, the result is the same. Guided by
short-term goals, the leaders of Iran, Russia and North Korea seek out
confrontation and war with the West.
To understand the acuteness of the challenges that Russia, Iran and North
Korea constitute for the West, it is useful to compare them to the ascendant
People's Republic of China. It is absolutely clear that like the Soviet
Union before it, the PRC is currently engaged in a long-term strategy of
expanding its military and economic power. Like the USSR, the PRC is
emerging as a major power in competition and conflict with the US.
While the emergence of the PRC as a competitor of America's presents the US
with major strategic challenges, the US has many options short of overt
confrontation for contending with the rise of China. It can expand its naval
forces and modernize its nuclear arsenal. It can strengthen its alliances
with Japan, South Korea and other Asian democracies. It can expand and
develop manufacturing markets in Thailand and India to compete with Chinese
factories. At the same time, it can diversify its energy consumption to
lower tensions over oil supplies with China.
The fact that Russia, Iran and North Korea are unstable does not simply bar
the prospect of reaching accords with them that will enable a stable
equilibrium of terror and deterrence to emerge. Their inherent instability,
evidenced by their otherworldly and so necessarily short-term policy
horizons make clear that the lifespan of any deal is unknowable at best and
most likely extremely limited. Moreover, even in the absence of a deal, it
is impossible to reach a stable balance of terror.
In contrast, during Cold War, even when explicit agreements were impossible
to accomplish there was still a basic framework of deterrence that limited
the nature of the threat and the magnitude of possible conflagrations. Both
the US and the Soviets based their strategies for contending with one
another on a balance of terror predicated on mutually assured destruction.
This understanding was founded on the American and Soviet presumption of the
stability of the other side. In contrast, when forging policies to contend
with the Russian, Iranian and North Korean regimes it is impossible to
presume their stability because they are by their very natures unstable.
The lesson of all of this is that while all enemies present dangers, not all
enemies are alike. The same strategies cannot be employed against unstable
enemies as can be employed against stable ones. Rather than forging policies
towards Russia as well as Iran and North Korea based on false analogies of
the Cold War, it is vital to recognize that regimes that do not concern
themselves with the welfare of their own people are not regimes that will be
credible negotiating partners or stable antagonists in cold wars based upon
an assumption of mutual assured destruction.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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