The castling in the Putin-Medvedev tandem, which occurred at the September Congress of the United Russia party, instantaneously became the main issue on Russia’s internal political agenda. Meanwhile, given Russia’s role and the degree of its impact on the world politics it also automatically raises this problem to international level.
Particular interest in the situation in Russia is shown by its neighbors, and for obvious reasons, in the first place – the South Caucasus countries. This interest is quite understandable.
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First, one of the three South Caucasian countries - Georgia - is not just Russia’s neighbor. It is a country, with which quite recently a military conflict has taken place. From the point of view of Georgian politicians (both from the authorities and from the opposition), it is Moscow who is to blame for two ethno-political confrontations on its territory, and Moscow is responsible for the de facto secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. We shall not dispute this reasoning in this article. We will just note the fact itself of perception of Russia and its policies by the ruling elite and the public opinion.
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Second, it was Russia who, having recognized independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, created an important precedent of border revision between former Soviet republics. This risky and dubious step created big hopes, on the one side, and on the other – big phobias.
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Third, Georgia and Azerbaijan have borders not just with Russia, but with the republics of the Northern Caucasus, the “hottest” Russian region. And the fire in the Northern Caucasus during the 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union has many times reached both Georgian and Azerbaijani territories. Suffice to say that maps of well-known terrorist organization “Emirate Caucasus” mentions the “Azerbaijani Jamaat of Dagestan vilayet”.
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Fourth, one of the few of Moscow’s strategic partners on the post-Soviet area – Armenia – is situated in the South Caucasus. It hosts a military base (Gjumri), and Russian border-guards are still there. However, Armenia does not have a direct border with Russia, and its economic development and security depend on the dynamics of Russian-Georgian relations.
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Fifth, Moscow is one of the mediators in the resolution of Karabakh conflict. And both Yerevan and Baku cast their looks, full of hope, on its policy. And many in Armenia and Azerbaijan are convinced (rightfully or not is another question) that the keys for the peace are to be found in Moscow. Sixth, the post-Soviet politics is extremely personalized.. And even if Vladimir Putin, Ilham Aliev, Serge Sargsyan and Mikhail Saakashvili are acting in this or that situation, based on circumstances, and not due to some voluntary purposes, personal factors in perception remains highly important. One recalls the number of discussions about August war of 2008 that provoked a tough rhetoric by Putin or Medvedev.
Against this background the interest in the return of the current Prime-Minister of Russia into the Presidential chair increases, regardless of reality and actual state of affairs, especially as Vladimir Vladimirovich himself is giving cause to maintain this interest in him. In the beginning of October he published in Izvestiya daily a programme text, focusing on Russia’s integration policy on post-Soviet area. Many observers already saw in Putin’s article aspiration if not to restore the Soviet Union in its former shape, then at least to aim for social-economic and political domination in Eurasia.
So how dangerous or, on the contrary, how beneficial, can Putin’s move from the position of Prime-Minister to that of President be?
I suppose the discourse of return itself, which has become very popular in Western media over the past few weeks, needs serious correction, simply because after 2008 Vladimir Putin never left the governance system (as Levon Ter-Petrosyan or Robert Kocharyan did for example). As a Prime-Minister, it was he who was the key figure taking internal or foreign policy decisions. And to pretend that Russia’s real leader of the last three years was President Dmitry Medvedev is to seriously distort the picture. Yes, in 2008-2011 Putin ceded the “rhetoric field” to Medvedev, giving him an opportunity to advance some innovative discourses (“modernization” in the country, new architecture of European security and agreement fixing its basic regulations in foreign policy). But rhetoric cannot be 100% equal to politics!
The Second important argument that allows us to take a more pragmatic view of Putin , relates to contexts in which this politician acted, both as President and Prime Minister. Yes, there is no argument – it is he who bears responsibility for turning the US and the West into a tool for internal political mobilization and PR. It is he who is to be blamed for excessive emotionality in building of the Caucasian vector of Russia’s foreign policy. In this context we talk not only about the countries of the region themselves, but also about policies in relation to Washington and Brussels. Putin missed numerous opportunities for compromises. But it hardly makes sense to call him an architect of a “new cold war” from political point of view, and it is hardly correct from an expert point of view also. Putin reacted to the actions of Caucasian leaders themselves, who were willing to rapidly “defreeze” the conflicts without considering Russia’s role and interests. Western leaders (and USA in particular) ignored the connection between the issues of Northern Caucasus security, and situation in the South Caucasus, granting unjustified advances to Mikhail Saakashvili, giving him confidence that Moscow’s position can be disregarded. We have to remember that Caucasus’ geopolitics was formed and is being formed with consideration to “background factors”, which impact the region only indirectly. In this way, the , failure of Dmitry Kozak plan for the resolution of Moldova-Transdniestria conflict (2003), in which American diplomacy had a decisive role, played an extremely negative role in further positioning of Putin’s foreign policy.
It was exactly that failure, and not the series of color revolutions that followed it, that tuned Putin’s harshness and intolerance of the positions of US, EU and NATO. History does not know subjunctive mood, but had the Transdniestrian resolution followed a different path, probably today, in 2011, Russia’s neighbors would not have cause to be alarmed about Putin’s “return”. The West overreacted in its phobias about the restoration of the USSR, since the implementation of such a project lacks the most important element – the communist ideology, which for 70 years glued the former parts of the Russian empire, destroyed in 1917-1918.
One should not forget that Medvedev’s Caucasian policy had no essential differences from the course conducted by Russia in 2000-2008. Moscow traditionally tried to preserve the status-quo where it was possible. Even the recognition of Kosovo independence in February 2008 did not force Kremlin to respond in kind.
The recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia only became possible after the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali, which could be expected in Moscow. But a fact remains a fact. After 26 August 2008 Moscow did not follow the path of total revisionism. And the recognition precedent was not repeated either in Nagorno Karabakh or Transdniestria. The very popular “who is the next” question, asked after the “five day war” remained in the air. Moscow chose selective revisionism. And this road was very successfulin 2008-2011, building parallel relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan. It was Putin himself who played a big role in advancing this policy, who with his visit to Baku in 2001 closed a very complicated page of preceding Russian-Azerbaijani relations. It is important to remember that n the 1990s relation between Moscow and Baku suffered a lot from personality factor, namely the animosityeity between Boris Yeltsin and Heydar Aliev. In the 2000-s Russia showed that the alliance with Armenia does not require the rejection of a partnership relationship with Azerbaijan. And there are hardly any reasons to believe that in 2012 Russia will step back from this course, just as there is no serious reason to expect a threat for Georgia in Putin’s return. Moscow has reached all its goals in that direction, and excluded the threat of Georgian conquest of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by force, even if in the course of doing so it created a risky political and legal precedent with that.
Russian risks in relation to the castling inside of the tandem are not hidden in the South Caucasus. And not in the post-Soviet space in general. . Even if we imagine that tomorrow the authorities will change in Russia, then we should not expect that Moscow would give up its current national interests. Whoever is Russian leader will be actively pursuing them. What are the risks and potential threats then? Putin’s system in the country is targeted not on development, but on “stability”, or reproduction of “administrative market” – authority of state bureaucracy and the big capital, linked to it. The “administrative market” does not need competition in economy or politics. This is where the possibility of new stagnation lies (it was not a coincidence that Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov named the 18 years of Leonid Brezhnev’s rule “a huge plus for the country”). But standstill does not simply lead to stagnation, it is fraught with managerial inadequacy and loss of connection with society. And in the long run it provokes non-constructive scenarios of social development. That’s exactly what not only Russians should fear, but also Russia’s neighbors. However, with any scenario of development of events, Russia’s objective geopolitical interests (no matter what its leader’s last name is) should be considered by its partners, regardless of what the surname of its leader is, otherwise the need for an anti-Western rhetoric will continue.. With Putin or without him.
Sergey Markedonov is a Visiting Fellow at the Center of Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC, USA). He contributed this comment to commonspace.eu.
