The Medvedev-Putin era
Ding Ying

CRITICS of Russia’s current administration under President Vladimir Putin have been puzzled about who would become the leading candidate in country’s presidential election in March 2008. In early December 2007, the question was answered when Putin nominated First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as the candidate for the pro-Putin ruling United Russia party. Since then, critics have been wondering where Medvedev, as president, would take the country.
King of the hill
Candidate Medvedev will likely win the election hands down, foreign affairs experts said, not only because Putin supports him, but also because United Russia is backed by the country’s other three major parties-A Just Russia, the Agrarian Party and Civil Force. If Medvedev wins the election, the next Russian Government will follow Putin’s agenda for the country, and Putin himself will continue to pull the strings behind the scene, they said.
At a United Russia Party congress on December 17, 2007, Putin hailed him as the “best choice” in the country’s presidential election. Putin promised that he himself would become prime minister under Medvedev and that the powers between the president and the government would remain unchanged. Putin is very popular among the Russians, because of his efforts to improve the country’s international power and influence in the world. His stance on the presidential election is very crucial, said Shi Ze, Director of the Center for Security Studies of Surrounding Areas and a senior research fellow at the Chinese Institute of International Studies (CIIS). He pointed out that 40 percent of those surveyed in a recent poll in Russia said they would vote for any candidate Putin selected.
With the backing of Putin and the country’s four major political parties, Medvedev is standing on the Kremlin’s doormat. The four parties’ seats cover about 75 percent of Russia’s parliament. With such strong support, Medvedev has an 80 percent to 90 percent chance of winning the presidency, Shi said. Wang Lijiu, a researcher with the Institute of Russian Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), said that as first deputy prime minister, Medvedev has made great achievements in improving people’s living conditions while he has been in charge of the economy and social development affairs covering public health, education, housing and agriculture during the past years.
“He received high public praise from the people,” Wang said. Putin’s political opponents previously had supported other candidates, such as Sergei Ivanov, also the First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov. But support for them died down for several reasons after Putin decided to back Medvedev, Wang said.
First, Medvedev, an energetic 42-year-old, is younger than the other two candidates who are in their 50s and 60s. “The age advantage is very convincing to the voters, because they need a strong leader who can implement continuous policies,” Wang said. Second, Medvedev has a close relationship with Putin after working with him for 17 years. Putin has fully acknowledged Medvedev’s outstanding ability and insight as a leader.
“If leaders have privity between them, their cooperation will be better,” Wang said. He added that their relations become even more important given that the Russian Constitution will not be amended to enlarge the prime minister’s powers. Third, Medvedev, who used to be a law professor, will push for the additional legislative reforms that are necessary for the country now that it has recovered its economic strength. These will enable the country to peacefully get through the transition between Putin and the next president.
Fourth, Medvedev has been first deputy prime minister since 2005. He is very experienced in dealing with all kinds of affairs on a comprehensive level, which is a key requirement for presidents. He also has maintained good relations with top officials in various government ministries. Medvedev also has shown himself to be capable of mediating conflicts and maintaining good connections among government ministries. Fifth, Medvedev is a “liberalist” with no military or security background. He would easily be accepted by different political parties in Russia, as well as by other Western countries, Wang said.
Other analysts pointed out that Medvedev’s loyalty to Putin indicates that he would likely hand the presidency back to Putin in the future. Putin’s appointment of Zubkov as the country’s prime minister was intended to help smooth the transition between Putin’s presidency and Medvedev’s own in 2008, Wang said. “As an experienced politician who does not have much political ambition, Zubkov is the best choice to stabilize the government and the country’s social life during the special transition between two presidents,” he said.
The dynamic duo
During Putin’s eight years in office, Russia’s economy has grown rapidly, and the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) is now among the world’s top 10. In early 2007, the Russian Government stated its objective of developing the economy: By 2020, Russia’s GDP will be of the world’s top five, and the per-capita GDP will reach $30,000. In this regard, Russia’s next government must focus on the country’s economic and social development by continuing to follow Putin’s policies, said Shi from the CIIS.
Since Putin decided that he would not change the power distribution between the president and prime minister, the two will be able to work together seamlessly when Medvedev is president and Putin is prime minister. With United Russia as the leading party in the Duma, the Russian parliament, the prime minister and president will all cooperate smoothly, and the government will be able to work more efficiently, Wang said. The future Medvedev-Putin alliance with Medvedev as president will follow the country’s current development strategy and stance on social reformation, Shi said.
“Improving the Russian people’s living conditions is an important mission for the new government,” he said. Previously, the Russian Duma had blueprinted its plans with four projects aimed at developing the social economy and adjusting the country’s economic structure by encouraging scientific innovation instead of simply exploiting natural resources. Although
Russia’s GDP has increased significantly, the country’s economic development has relied heavily on rising oil prices, Shi said. Foreign exchange reserves of Russia are about $400 billion; about $200 billion-$250 billion of that comes from oil exports. With his extensive experience overseeing Russia’s economy and social services, Medvedev will give an outstanding performance in his new role, Shi said.
Then there are the neighbors
Mending relations with other countries, especially with Western nations, will be another task for Medvedev’s government. During his time in office, Putin has kept close ties with foreign leaders, including U.S. President George W. Bush. With Putin’s strong support, Medvedev will have a good start on dealing with big world powers, Shi said, although Russia will continue revitalizing its own power. Putin is viewed as a tough guy by the American administration. In 2007, ties between Russia and the United States became tense when Washington made plans to establish an anti-missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Russia, feeling threatened, strongly opposes the plan. The enlargement of NATO in Eastern Europe and pro-U.S. “color revolutions” in countries that made up the former Soviet Union also strained Russian-U.S. relations.
Foreign affairs experts believe that Medvedev, as a milder mannered leader, might adjust Russia’s foreign policy to regenerate relations with Western countries. Shi also pointed out that Medvedev, who has been managing affairs with the “China Year in Russia,” is very familiar with Chinese issues, and he would likely handle relations with China very well. “China and Russia’s economic structures complement each other, thus strengthening bilateral economic ties would benefit both countries and make them good neighbors and partners,” Shi said.
Both China and Russia are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional organization in the Northeastern and Central Asia. In past years, the SCO members have focused on security and carried out joint military drills. With China and Russia’s rising economic strength, the regional organization will have a greater possibility for increased economic cooperation, Shi said. The two countries could jointly establish some economic and scientific foundations that would help other SCO members, he added.
Many of Putin’s critics inside Russia talked previously about forming a federation that combines Russia and Belarus and discussed the possibility of Putin as its president. Russia and Belarus have maintained a very close relationship inside the Commonwealth of Independent States, but they still have a lot of differences between their levels of economic development and social structures. Both countries need to set up legislative systems to adequately govern their regimes, experts said. Both Shi and Wang believe that the federation would not be established very soon. They said that Medvedev as president would continue to implement Putin’s plan to upgrade the relationship between the two countries.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)

Governments must not keep North, South Poles to themselves
Simon Jenkins

SITTING on my desk is an illegal acquisition, a black pebble the size of a walnut. I picked it up some years ago on the slopes of Cape Crozier on Ross Island in the Antarctic. This vast wilderness of rock and ice lies on a cliff overlooking the Ross Sea and is celebrated as destination of the “worst journey in the world”. This was the title of the book written by the British explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard about a trip taken by him and two colleagues from Scott’s 1911 polar expedition to acquire the eggs of the Emperor penguin. The storm shelter of stones, canvas and bits of sledge from which they barely escaped alive still lies on the cape, literally frozen in time. I was visiting it with the doughty New Zealande David Harrowfield, recorder and conserver of the relics of mankind’s earlier settlements on the Antarctic continent, including the vulnerable Scott an Shackleton huts.
The spot must be one of the most breathtaking on earth, looking south over the Ross ice shelf towards the pole and north to the sweeping ocean icebergs. But it is forbidden to take anything from this land. No matter that removing my pebble had as much ecological impact as taking a grain of sand from the Sahara. The rulers of the greatest nanny state on earth, Antarctica, had declared it their own and only they can remove bits of it. I await the arrival of the Antarctic police, handcuffs at the ready. We are in the midst of a flurry of centenaries of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. One is of Shackleton’s landing at Cape Royds and another, in three years, is of Scott’s last, fatal voyage on the Terra Nova. Meanwhile, a combination of global warming and soaring raw material prices has seen a sudden revival of 50-year-old territorial aggrandisement, straining the agreements that govern the status of the polar regions.
Russia has claimed the mineral rights to the sea bed under the north pole. America is impeding conservation agreements so as to press ahead with its Alaskan oil and gas exploration. Britain is celebrating the centenary of its first claim to Antarctica by demanding a million square kilometres of the south Atlantic ocean bed. This is under the UN law of the sea convention, based on adjacent territorial claims in Antarctica. Tourism has quadrupled in the past decade and continues to accelerate, despite the sinking last November of a cruise ship that hit an iceberg. Numbers rose last year alone by 14 per cent to 37,000, almost all by ship. Tourists are banned from staying ashore and are strictly regulated as to what they can and cannot do.
They are hated by scientists who “won” the continent under the 1959 Antarctic treaty and are reluctant to relinquish it or share it with others. Annual Antarctic conferences yield such headlines as “Tourism threat to earth’s last great wilderness”. Scientists apparently pose no threat. This double standard is well illustrated in the admirable Lonely Planet guide to Antarctica. A furious diktat against tourists picking up rocks or even feathers is carried alongside a scientist boasting the riches he has garnered from the place: “The problem is not in finding the fossils but in deciding which ones to collect.”
The 1959 treaty is regularly proclaimed as a rare success of world government, albeit one protected by geographical vastness and climatic ferocity. It has held while everyone turned a blind eye to the Americans, who agreed to abide by it as long as they could do what they liked, including build bases at the poles. They are now constructing a 1,000-mile ice highway from McMurdo Station to the south pole. A brown cloud of pollution hovers off the Ross Shelf air base, where not just Hercules transport planes but Globemaster military jets are now able to land. I can eulogise with the most florid romantic about the virgin wastes of ice, but I cannot see why nobody should be allowed to visit polar regions except scientists and eccentric explorers. The north and south ice caps are manifestly thawing and this is making both exploitation and tourism more feasible. The idea that a few lucky people should have exclusive rights to a mass of the world’s surface is bizarre. It also leads to duplication and ridiculous national rivalry, such as India’s building of a third base to prove that it is geologically part of Antarctica.
Energy conservation may be a global imperative but to deny the peoples of the earth the mineral wealth of the Arctic regions is perverse. Aluminium, diamonds and even gold have been found in Greenland, so much so that the country is contemplating a return to the warm summers of the ninth century and independence of Denmark. Oil, gas and coal abound. If they are economic and their extraction can be governed by suitable environmental protocols — as is scientific research — what is the problem?
There is no reason why millions should go cold or hungry because some people like the idea of somewhere on Earth being pristine — or a private research laboratory. The conservation of the polar bear is a worthy cause, but like lions and elephants they can cohabit with man. To use their cause to forbid mineral extraction in the Arctic is as silly as it would be to plead the Emperor penguin as a reason for banning scientists from the Antarctic. The condemnation of tourists for daring to encroach on these wonderful landscapes is equally unacceptable. These are not destinations for the masses. They are too distant and costly, and tolerable only in summer. But anyone, duly supervised, should be allowed to enjoy the wonders of polar regions, as of the world’s deserts and forests. Ice is ecologically fragile, but these lands are vast. Besides, the best ambassadors for polar conservation are those who pay good money to see it.
An apocalyptic report this week from Brussels bewailed a northwards migration of mankind as the ice caps melt and the tropic less inhabitable. This is surely a natural balancing of the occupants of planet earth in response to climate change. The mining settlements round the Arctic Circle, the tourists on the Antarctic peninsula and the American base at McMurdo Station are not going to shrink. What is clear is that some new governing framework must be developed to meet these changes, wider in accountability than to Big Science. There is no way national self-interest will be kept at bay unless a stronger body is granted sovereign authority, presumably under the United Nations.
Scientists and soldiers simply cannot tell tourists and prospectors to get lost from a chunk of the planet. The beauties and the riches of these regions are increasingly accessible and must be governed for the benefit of all, as should be the skies and the oceans. They are paradises made in hell, but they are no longer unknowable or untouchable. Those days are over.

—Khaleej Times






Requiem for the India, US nuclear deal?
Praful Bidwai

JUST days after the United Progressive Alliance launched what looked like a determined last-ditch effort to ram through the United States-India nuclear deal, the agreement seems ready to go into cold storage, if not oblivion.
It’s almost certain to miss the US political timetable, which requires that the deal be sent to the Senate by May for ratification. After that, it would be near-impossible to pass it before the presidential election. This is a major victory for India’s Left parties and the peace movement. It’s a morale-booster for all those who questioned any special collaborative arrangement with the US. And it’s a slap in the face of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. This is likely to alter Congress party power equations.
Irrespective of what happens in the UPA-Left joint committee, the deal cannot be resuscitated without a showdown with the Left. Withdrawal of the Left’s support will reduce the UPA to a minority. As Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee explicitly told Outlook, “a minority government cannot, need not, and should not, sign a major agreement.”
For the UPA, the government’s survival takes priority over the deal. Apart from this rationale, there are powerful arguments against the deal. It militates against peace and nuclear disarmament. It will further distort the skewed global nuclear order and encourage other countries to cross the nuclear threshold. Yet, the government was preparing for a showdown with the Left after extending the tenure of Ambassador Ronen Sen in Washington. President Pratibha Patil’s mention of the deal in her parliament address, and the “populist” railway and general budgets, strengthened that impression. As did Singh’s undignified plea to “Bhishma Pitamah” (grand patriarch) Atal Behari Vajpayee to support it.
Above all, there was hectic lobbying by US officials, Senators and businessmen, who hectoringly reminded the UPA that “time is of the essence”: “it’s now (the next few weeks), or never.” Defence Secretary Robert Gates, and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher also did some hard-selling. They carried another message: Bush has done his best for deal. India should expect no more. Also, the first contracts from the deal should go to US companies.
Finance minister P Chidambaram, commerce minister Kamal Nath, and science and technology minister Kapil Sibal, all planted stories about how the present moment gives India a unique chance to have the post-1974 sanctions against nuclear trade neutralised. To counter this lobby, Mukherjee gave two interviews clarifying that the government doesn’t want a confrontation with the Left, nor an early election. Mukherjee wouldn’t have done this without Sonia Gandhi’s nod. She has since said the election would be held next year. She’s loath to sever ties with the Left, not least because she may need the Left’s support after the elections.
In the event the Congress’s more sober leaders prevailed over its pro-American enthusiasts, who thought that the budget, with its Rs 60,000-crore write-off of farmers’ loans, would tilt the scales decisively in its favour and against the Left. They were aided by Boucher who tried to allay fears about the 2006 Hyde Act, passed in the US, which enables the deal although India, a nuclear weapons-state, hasn’t signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Act mandates the US to cease nuclear cooperation if India conducts a nuclear test. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently said the government would work within the Act’s four corners.
New Delhi maintains it’s not bound by the Hyde Act, only by the bilateral “123 agreement” with the US. The two, it claims, run in “parallel” and don’t impinge on each other. Boucher also said the same thing. True, some sections of the Act are non-binding. But when it comes to the crunch, that is, if India conducts a nuclear blast, the Act will prevail. The US will have to suspend nuclear cooperation with India — albeit after “consultations” on the test’s rationale. But the US won’t be bound by such consultations.