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Thursday, June 04, 2009

The Moscow Times Issue 4160 Opinion

Putin's Payroll04 June 2009By Andrei Piontkovsky

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schrder is a legend in Russia. Heserves Gazprom's interests for a measly couple of million euros ayear, sits in at sessions of the Russian Academy of Sciences andwrites books about his staunch friendship with "Genosse Wladimir,"who, in the not-so-distant past, earned himself the well-deserved

nickname of "Stasi" among business circles in gangster-ridden St.Petersburg.

But it is not immediately obvious whether it is Schrder lickingPrime Minister Vladimir Putin's boots nowadays or vice versa. Thetwo of them are building -- or trying to build -- the Nord Streamgas pipeline, an exceptionally costly project that satisfies twinstrategic objectives. Demonstratively hostile to the interests ofboth Belarus and Ukraine, the pipeline is intended to ensure thatthese countries are under Moscow's energy thumb, regardless of whois in power in Minsk and Kiev. As a bonus, the pipeline will alsoconsolidate the Russian economy's status as an appendage of Germanyand its chief supplier of natural resources.

The Kremlin's achievements in securing the help of Americans willing

to offer their influence are equally impressive. Indeed, U.S.President Barack Obama's policy on Russia is being nurtured withadvice from people who have no official position in theadministration but have close business ties to Russia and theKremlin: Former U.S. Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and JamesBaker, Kissinger Associates senior director Thomas Graham and NixonCenter president Dimitri Simes. They all write key reports for theadministration, shuttling between Moscow and Washington, andcoordinate the parameters of the Obama administration's effort to

"reset" the bilateral relationship.Like Schrder, the U.S. advisers are not economically disinterestedeither. Baker is a consultant for Gazprom and Rosneft, the twoenergy behemoths at the commanding heights of Russia's economy. TheKissinger Associates lobbying group (whose Russian section is headed

by Graham) feeds in to the Kissinger-Primakov working group, aquasi-private-sector effort, blessed by Putin, to deepen tiesbetween Russia and the United States.

It is highly instructive to read the recommendations of these people

and groups, as they unobtrusively render the objectives of theirKremlin clients into a language familiar to U.S. leaders.

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Graham's latest contribution, "Resurgent Russia and U.S. Purposes,"is most revealing in this respect. The author finds the governmentof a "Russia getting up off its knees" to consist of progressivemodernizers fully aware of the challenges facing their country as it

attempts to "return to the great powers club."

"In order to become a genuinely developed and modern country,"Graham continues, "in the coming decade, Russia will need to investat least $1 trillion in modernizing its infrastructure. America andthe West in general have a vital interest in seeing themodernization of Russia succeed. The lion's share of thetechnologies, know-how and a substantial proportion of theinvestment needs to come from Europe and the U.S.A."

In addition to the technology and investments, Graham quietly slipsin a foreign policy suggestion for the Obama administration that issure to please the Kremlin: "Finlandizing" Ukraine. Unless that sort

of appeasement is pursued, he warns, Russia will continue to opposethe United States "wherever and whenever it can." According toGraham, "At the extreme, a weak Russia, with its vast resources andsparse population east of the Urals, could become the object ofcompetition among the great powers, notably China and the UnitedStates."

That unspoken "help us develop or we'll let the Chinese do it"threat is a logical development of Putin's homily at this year'sWorld Economic Forum in Davos, where he advocated decisive action to

end the world economic crisis. His recipe? Western countries should

write off half a trillion dollars' worth of debt owed to them byRussian state corporations run by Putin's pals from the Dresden KGBand the Ozero dacha cooperative from his St. Petersburg days.

But no amount of money will succeed in modernizing Putin'skleptocratic regime, which has already squandered trillions in oilwealth. Simply put, the Putin system is politically, institutionally

and intellectually antithetical to the task of modernization.

Graham's only error in his presentation is his attempt to frightenthe administration with a hypothetical confrontation between theUnited States and China over Russian resources. This is not his area

of specialization. Kissinger works personally with the Chineseaccount, jointly propounding with his longtime rival ZbigniewBrzezinski the notion, so seductive for a United States growingweary of its imperial burden, of a global Big Two.

Here is a recent sample of Kissinger's geopolitical arts: "The roleof China in a new world order is crucial. A relationship thatstarted on both sides as essentially a strategic design to constrain

a common adversary has evolved over the decades into a pillar of the

international system. ... The Sino-American relationship needs to be

taken to a new level. This generation of leaders has the opportunity

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to shape relations into a design for a common destiny, much as wasdone with trans-Atlantic relations in the post-war period."

No doubt Kissinger believes every word he wrote, but his ideas alsohonestly articulate the aspirations of his customers. It's just that

not all customers have the same motives. One wants to get his hooksinto a further trillion dollars that it can pick away at, while theother wants to become "a central construct of the system ofinternational relations." But in both cases, the customers aregetting the influence for which they are paying.

Andrei Piontkovsky is a political scientist and a visiting fellow at

the Hudson Institute in Washington. Project Syndicate