Another Putin era without Putin
Ding Ying

WHEN Vladimir Putin became Russia’s president in 2000, he asked the people to give him 20 years and he would give them a powerful Russia in return. During his two terms in office, Russia has grown through the interaction of its economic development and its involvement in world affairs. But Putin’s time is running out, because Russian law prohibits presidents from serving a third consecutive term.
Observers believe that Putin’s recent political, diplomatic and military moves are attempts to ensure his policies continue without him when Russians elect a new president in March 2008. These moves have drawn attention - if not alarm - from other countries such as the United States, which view them as a threat to democratic reform in Russia.
Chinese foreign affairs experts said that Putin’s actions not only show the growing might of Russia as well as the man himself, but also are intended to have some bearing on the man who replaces him. They believe that post-Putin Russia will march to the same beat under a loyal and Putin-groomed successor.
Growing Russian power
As a big country with political and military influence, Russia’s every move attracts the world’s attention. Its recent military actions indicate that it is seeking to resume its honor and power through military modernization.
In his State of the Union Address in April, Putin said that Russia was implementing a weapon equipment plan for 2007-15. Under this plan, about $167 billion will be used to purchase new weapons and military technology equipment, according to Xinhua News Agency.
In late May, Russia tested a new RS-24 continental ballistic missile and the improved Iskander-M tactical cruise missile system. In June, it launched two satellites to be used for scouting and intercepting enemy telecommunications. In early July, Russian Navy Chief Vladimir Masorin said the country would spend 9 billion rubles (about $358 million) for a modern nuclear submarine base on the Kamchatka peninsula in east Russia. On September 11, Russia tested a new type of fuel air-bomb four times more powerful than the U.S. vacuum bomb, according to Xinhua News Agency.
Xia Yishan, a senior researcher at the Chinese Institute of International Studies (CIIS), said that these actions were directly connected to Russia’s growing economic strength. Equipping the country with a strong military is part of Putin’s ongoing plan to rebuild a powerful Russia, he said.
Xia also pointed out that Russia’s economic power under Putin has increased. With ample oil and natural gas resources, Russia reaps big benefits by playing its “energy resource card,” he said. The country had paid off all its foreign debt, and its gold and foreign currency reserves reached $303.9 billion this January, according to statistics from Russia’s Central Bank.
Russia under Putin has readopted its tough stance on relations with the United States. Since Russia lost its standing as one of the world’s two superpowers after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it has continued to view the United States as its main threat, observers said.
“America is not in favor of a powerful Russia, due to the Cold War experiences; hence, it has launched a policy of restraint on Russia,” Xia said.
In 1999, U.S.-led NATO absorbed three former Soviet Union allies when the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined the military alliance. Through this enlargement, NATO pushed its bloc to the border of the former Soviet Union. Five years later, seven other Eastern European countries — Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia — four of which were former Soviet Union satellites and the other three Soviet Union states — joined NATO. Both enlargements shrank Russia’s traditional strategic space.
Earlier this year, Putin was irked when the United States made known its plans to establish an anti-missile base in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic. Russia argued that it would jeopardize its security. The two countries are still holding talks on the issue.
Russia must fight back to avoid a further strategic squeeze from the United States, Xia said, adding that Putin’s recent actions also serve to remind the Americans that the country’s military power is strong enough to bear up to the United States. Another aim of Putin’s military moves is to pave the road for Russia’s next president and continue Putin’s policies, Xia said.
The next president
On September 12, Putin nominated Viktor Zubkov as the new candidate for prime minister several hours after he dismissed the government of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov. After the nomination, Zubkov, a financial intelligence chief, said that he possibly would participate in the coming presidency election.
Yang Chuang, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University and a senior researcher on Russia, said this was a familiar Russian tactic. In August 1999, President Boris Yeltsin nominated Putin, his chosen successor for president, as prime minister.
Before Putin nominated Zubkov, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, as well as Putin’s presidential chief of staff and OAO Gazprom chairman Dmitry Medvedev, were widely considered to be potential presidential successors.
Putin selected Zubkov for several reasons, Yang said. First, Putin and Zubkov have close ties. Both served as senior government officials in St. Petersburg, and Putin has commented on Zubkov’s ability to lead the country.
Second, Zubkov, having worked in high-ranking economic and financial positions in the Russian Government, will adhere to Putin’s policy of developing the country’s economic strength. As former first deputy finance minister and chief of a committee at the Russian anti-money laundering service, Zubkov gained experience monitoring the country’s economic development.
Third, by nominating Zubkov, Putin has put him under the spotlight so Russians can get to know him better. This will allow the country to have a smooth interim period between the two presidents’ administrations, should Zubkov assume office.
Fourth, having Zubkov in the presidential palace will pave the way for Putin’s return for presidency. Putin, 54, is energetic, healthy and enjoys wide support of Russian citizens. Many foreign experts believe his best political policies and legacy will be in the years to come. If he were to run for president in the 2012 election, Zubkov, who is now 66, would not likely stay in the post for two terms, they say.
Future Russian policy
The months preceding the parliamentary elections in December and the presidential election next March will be crucial, Yang said, because any major political or economic changes during this period will decide the country’s future leaders and policy.
No matter who wins the presidential election, the country’s major policies will remain the same, Xia from the CIIS said. If one of the top three candidates - Zubkov, Ivanov or Medvedev - becomes president, the other two will serve as important officials in the new government.
Because the three are all chosen by Putin, and they all laud Putin’s strategies on politics, economy and diplomacy, Putin will continue to influence Russia as his policy will remains, Xia said. Russia also will keep up its strategy of economic development by opening up more to the world, nationalizing its energy resources, eliminating financial and industrial oligarchs and increasing its living standard, he added. The country also will focus on developing its scientific research and technology.
The continuation of Putin’s policies under his successor will maintain Russia’s revival as a growing military, economic and diplomatic power, although the country will still confront and cooperate with the United States.
“Russia will be more influential and will play a bigger role on the world stage,” Xia said.
Shen Shishun, another foreign affairs expert from the CIIS, said that because Russia and the United States are two of the biggest countries in the world, “it is natural for them to fight for their own national interests.” He pointed out that after the Cold War ended, it became clear to Russia that intense competition with the United States would not be rational. The two countries also must work together on antiterrorism, world security, climate change and environmental protection, he said.
“However, if America continues its NATO enlargement policy and further squeezes Russia’s strategic space in spite of Russia’s feelings, Russia will definitely take hard-line measures to protect its own interest,” Shen said. Both countries still will have disputes over how to determine which extremist activities in central Asia should be considered terrorist activities.
As neighbors that share an over-4,300-km-long border, Russia’s ongoing revival now and under Putin’s successor also will influence its relations with China. Once the countries settled their centuries-old border disputes in 2005, they had less to fight about and more to share, Xia said. The old notion that “a powerful neighbor is a potential threat” is almost outdated today, he added.
In recent years, China and Russia have strengthened their ties through increasing trade and security cooperation measures. China’s northeast provinces - Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang - have had great economic growth due to the two countries’ interactions, Xia said. And as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Beijing and Moscow will continue to work hand-in-hand to maintain the peace, development and security under this regional framework, he said.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)

Religion in politics
Pankaj Mishra

IN RECENT months, militant atheists have tried to convince us religion ought to be expelled from public as well as private life. It is not hard to imagine how their salon wisdom would have fared last week in the streets of Rangoon, where ordinary Burmese protesting against a military dictatorship rallied behind Buddhist monks — the ”highly revered moral core”, as the New York Times put it, of Burmese society. If the images of saffron-robed mendicants braving police brutality seem oddly familiar, it is because Buddhist monks left their monasteries and led protests against political repression frequently in the 20th century. So great and prolonged was the suffering of war in Indochina that the Buddhist attempt to alleviate it may seem a distant memory. But it was the self-immolation of a monk in Saigon in June 1963 — rather, pictures of him serenely meditating as flames devoured his body — that first troubled America’s conscience about what was then an obscure war.
Thich Nhat Hanh, another Vietnamese monk, was a prominent figure in the anti-war movement in the US who eventually persuaded Martin Luther King to pit his voice against the destruction of Vietnam. In Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge killed almost all the 60,000 monks, the Buddhist monk Maha Ghosananda became a major figure in the reconstruction of his country. In September 1987 Buddhist monks and nuns began the first major political demonstration in Tibet in years by unfurling the Tibetan flag in central Lhasa. They were arrested and severely beaten, sparking off clashes between Tibetans and police that provoked Hu Jintao, now China’s president and then the Chinese administrator in Tibet, to declare martial law. How did a supposedly meditative tradition produce political protesters? If “religion is a poison”, as Mao Zedong informed the Dalai Lama — a sentiment echoed by the secularists of our time — why then has Buddhism proved such an effective means of mass mobilisation against tyranny? The Buddha himself was no political theorist or activist. He preferred to address the question of what constitutes the ruler’s right to rule. Unlike the theorists of ancient India who claimed divine sanction for kingship, the Buddha did not find the ruler’s legitimacy in some transcendent realm. As the many stories about ideal kings in the Jataka Tales — a compendium of Buddhist stories — attest, righteousness is the only proper basis for the ruler’s authority.
The Buddha preferred small political communities in which all members shared the power of decision-making. In his lifetime, however, he witnessed the emergence of large states. Aware that these impersonal regimes exposed many people to a sense of powerlessness and insecurity, he hoped that the Buddhist sangha, or monastic order, would base itself near urban centres and help give newly uprooted people a sense of spiritual community and tradition.
Thus Buddhist monks, living not in forests but in retreats close to populated settlements, are traditionally bound to laymen by an ethic of social responsibility. Not surprisingly, in Tibet and Burma, where a modern, militarised state tyrannises a largely pre-modern and unorganised population, monasteries have been exalted as alternative centres of moral and political authority, and monks and nuns have come to spearhead resistance to unrighteous regimes. Certainly, Buddhists are not immune to ideological delusions. In early 20th-century Japan, and in Sri Lanka in the 1980s and 90s, many Buddhist monks succumbed to the lure of nationalism and militarism. Nevertheless, with its absence of dogma and emphasis on intellectual and spiritual vigilance, Buddhism has proved to be less vulnerable to fanatical zeal than not only other major religions, but also such modern ideologies as nationalism and secularism. As Nhat Hanh exhorts, echoing a major theme of the Buddha: “Do not be idolatrous about, or bound to, any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth.”
It helps, too, that Buddhist political methods aim, relatively modestly, at dialogue and moral conversion rather than total revolution. Writing to Martin Luther King in 1965, after another Buddhist self-immolation in Vietnam, Nhat Hanh explained that “the monks who burned themselves did not aim at the death of the oppressors, but only at a change in their policy. Their enemies are not man. They are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred and discrimination which lie within the heart of man.”
Maha Ghosananda, who lost his entire family in the Cambodian killing fields, insisted on including the Khmer Rouge at UN-sponsored talks on the future of Cambodia, claiming that he wanted an end to antagonism, not to antagonists. (Such practical wisdom traditionally preserved peace in Afghanistan’s tribal society, and the country’s current president, Hamid Karzai, appears to have embraced it by offering a seat in his cabinet to the Taleban.) Similarly, Samdhong Rinpoche, the monk prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile in India, claims he opposes the injustice and violence of Chinese rule rather than the Chinese people or state. Calling for a Gandhian-style campaign of satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, Samdhong Rinpoche asks Tibetans to actively reject Chinese rule through non-cooperation and disobedience, without hating or harming any Chinese. Both he and the Dalai Lama have reservations about even an economic boycott, which they believe hurts ordinary people more than it damages governments.

—Khaleej Times


Europe: Gap between elites & public
Jonathan Power

DOES Europe have a common foreign policy — one that can be regarded as of equal weight with America’s? The answer is no. But maybe the problem is not the people of Europe, but the so called elites of Europe — the senior European Union officials, mainstream political leaders and press commentators in most European countries. If one consults the people it is a different story — one that has been taking shape since the massive marches all over Europe when the US and Britain were preparing to invade Iraq. Then there appeared to be a common European foreign policy and it was clearly anti-war.
This dichotomy between a wide range of thinking people and the small crowd at the top has not much changed over the five years of the war. Although the elite in Europe will now say the war in Iraq is a bad mistake, they still seem to cling to the notion — one that Americans themselves very much hold on to — that the world badly needs strong US leadership, with the implication being that on balance American leadership is usually benign and often enough not self-interested. This viewpoint of the European elites is confirmed by a study just published by the University of Sienna. However a study published at the same time by the German Marshall Fund of the US of rank and file public opinion tells a different story. 88 percent of Europeans want the EU to assume more responsibility for tackling global threats, yet they don’t want European troops fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan, or threatening war with Iran. Indeed a high 77 percent say they don’t want Europe to be sending more troops into combat around the world.
It’s hard to see how European leaders can in the long-run retain their rhetorical commitment to supporting Washington. According to the German Marshall Fund poll, European public opinion does not expect that America will radically change its militaristic, America-first, attitude after the election. Barack Obama says the US “must lead the world once more” and Mitt Romney says “Radical Islam’s threat is just as real” as that posed before by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Both are leading presidential candidates. If they read the report “Forging a World of Liberty Under Law”, recently produced by the Princeton Project on National Security with 400 contributors, mostly the great and the good, European public opinion would not feel reassured that political opinion among the American elite which shifted so far to the unilateral right under the influence of 9/11 and the neoconservatives is capable of returning to a more moderate stance.
Whilst throwing out some liberal morsels, it is essentially a most conservative, America-centric document. For example, it suggests that the use of force, which under prevailing international law can only be legitimized by a UN Security Council vote, should be authorized by “another broadly representative multilateral body like NATO.” It seems to forget that Europe and the US make up only 12.5 percent of the world’s total population and why should such up and coming powers as India, South Africa, China and Brazil, not to mention Russia, settle for this? Indeed why should their opinions be ignored in the solving such conundrums as the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.—Arab News