Posts Tagged ‘thomas graham’
Once More on Russia
I’m sure some readers are growing weary of the back-and-forth on Russia over the past few months, but I hope they will indulge me in one more response to Thomas Graham’s reply to me and other critics of his original piece. Replies from several of us generated his latest, “A Response to the Critics.” Several of his most recent points warrant further consideration.
In responding to Andrew Wood’s posting of March 29, Graham writes: “The United States should not shy away from defending and promoting its values (although Wood and I might differ on the best way to do that).” Graham never explains how he would do this in the case of Russia beyond exchange programs and the like, and later in his piece, he drops his passing support for promoting our values. Instead, he reverts back to his emphasis on engaging the Putin regime in other ways. Indeed, he alleges that “[I]f our goal is to advance the cause of democracy in Russia, then we must take care that our actions do not in fact limit the space for its progress.” According to Graham, the United States bears some responsibility for Russia’s current plight through things like “triumphalism in Washington over the ‘color revolutions’” and the Magnitsky Act, both of which, Graham claims, fed into the Kremlin’s paranoia and “inclined the Kremlin to deal more harshly with the systemic opposition.” To be clear, the Magnitsky Act was passed by Congress in December 2012; Putin had already pursued many ways to crack down on civil society and the opposition in Russia before the Magnistky Act became law.
Graham goes on to argue the following:
The United States would like to see a change in essence. To that end, it should amplify the pressure for such change by, for example, drawing Russia deeper into the globalized economy, ensuring as free an international flow of information as possible, and pressing the frontiers of technological advance. We also urgently need to fix our own society to provide a model of success for emulation. But we should leave to Russians the management of the internal politics of this change. It is, after all, their country. And why shouldn’t those who believe in democracy have some confidence that in the end the Russians will make the right choices, without mentoring and interference from the West?
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What Putin’s Return Means for U.S.-Russia Policy
Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin as Russia’s President next spring will once again align real and formal power in Russia, as they were during his earlier two terms in office. Although the Russian Prime Minister is nominally subordinate to the President, Putin has dominated Russian politics throughout Dmitri Medvedev’s presidency. As if to underscore that point, both Putin and Medvedev have implied that they had agreed on Putin’s return as a condition for Medvedev’s assumption of the presidency in 2008. (The Constitution banned a third consecutive term for Putin.) Although that was likely true only in a general way—that Putin reserved the right to return should circumstances warrant—the public insinuations stripped Medvedev of credibility as a leader and his achievements in office of any lasting political worth.
And there were achievements both at home and abroad, no matter how artificial the so-called Medvedev-Putin tandem may now appear. Abroad, Medvedev’s more “modern” image eased the repair of relations with the United States and Europe after the dark days of the last two years of the Bush Administration. At home, Medvedev’s presence as a second pole of power, albeit very circumscribed, fostered a much-needed broader elite discussion of the challenges facing Russia and the appropriate policy responses to them, enticing participation from progressives suspicious of Putin. Putin’s presence, meanwhile, reassured the more retrograde elements that Medvedev’s “reforms” would not spin out of control as Gorbachev’s had a generation earlier. As a result, Russia’s standing in the world improved and a spotlight was turned on the requirements for Russian modernization in the face of the corrosive effects of “legal nihilism.” Little was accomplished in a practical way in this latter portfolio, but there was at least hope, and hope can kindle morale and, ultimately, action.
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