Premonition of the "Cold War"

The reset might give way to the isolation of Russia.

The return of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin gives rise to inevitable searches for a new foreign policy course in Russia and simultaneously sharply narrows the field for such searches. In light of Putin’s obvious imperialistic inclinations, the country has neither the military or economic possibilities for such a course.

The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican John Boehner, directly blames the Russian government and Vladimir Putin himself for the Soviet-style foreign policy course and nostalgia for the USSR. While he appealed for a reset in relations with Moscow, he himself did not reset U.S. foreign policy. This rhetoric was in reaction to the creation of a list of American officials who are restricted from entering Russia, a retaliatory move to the American “Magnitsky List.” Official State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, expressing the position of the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, which is more loyal to Moscow, didn’t support Boehner’s idea. Nuland noted that in Washington and Moscow there are areas of mutual constructive cooperation. However, the State Department spokesperson publicly expressed bewilderment regarding the Russian response to the “Magnitsky List,” saying that there is no basis for the Russian authorities to restrict American officials from entering Russia except for the desire for retribution for the sanctions against those involved in the scandal connected with the prison death of the former Hermitage Capital Management lawyer.

However, if the U.S. still has reached no conclusion regarding the fate of the “reset,” Russia is already beginning to hold a fairly formal vote on its completion.

With Putin personally returning to Russian domestic politics, Russia’s representative to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, recently announced that discussions between Russia and the USA concerning anti-ballistic missile defense are deadlocked and that Russia no longer intends to make concessions at the expense of its security. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has made concessions, reversing plans for stationing American anti-ballistic missiles in the Czech Republic and Poland. Now, the Republicans are mercilessly criticizing this, believing that Obama didn’t receive anything from Russia in return.

But the problem of Russian foreign policy is much broader and more complex than its relationship with America. For example, it is completely clear that Moscow is no longer successfully playing “good cop, bad cop” as it did when President Medvedev would send the West one signal while the actions of Russia, always dictated by Putin, turned out to be different.

Such untoward actions, like the public disagreement concerning the U.N. Security Council resolution on Libya, will, by definition, become impossible after Putin returns to the Kremlin.

Indeed, Medvedev, as Prime Minister, will not even have legal authority to participate in the development of the country’s foreign policy.

Possibly, the shape of the new foreign policy course will appear in the lead-up to the presidential elections in Russia, when Putin must speak at the Munich Security Conference. One of his speeches at this conference already caused worldwide uproar when it was interpreted as an unequivocal call to the West for a new Cold War. Putin expounded on part of the new foreign policy idea in an article in the newspaper Izvestiya, discussing the formation of a Eurasian union of several former Soviet republics. Such a union, according to Putin, could be a kind of political mediator between China and the West. But China is too powerful and independent a player and doesn’t need mediators. Neither in Medvedev’s nor in Putin’s past presidency was Russia able to become any kind of influential or effective mediator in resolving local conflicts. Mediation by Russia in South Ossetia and Abkhazia during the war turned into de facto annexation of these territories in Georgia, and Western countries and former Soviet republics were politically shocked – not one of them recognized the independence of these territories, fearing a repeat of a similar scenario for themselves. Russian mediation missions were not successful in the Middle East or on the Korean peninsula.

On the other hand, the possibility of a new Russian imperialism (judging from previous experience, this is what Putin wants) is very limited.

The army is equipped with obsolete weapons, and both the Russian Ministry of Defense and our main foreign buyers like India have gradually phased out purchases. Now, more markets for Russian weapons have been lost in Arab countries, where revolution changed ruling authoritarian regimes. So the country is losing considerable revenue from one of the main elements of export revenues.

The global crisis showed the critical dependence of the Russian economy on Western economic conditions, not to mention the fact that the money of the Russian elite is saved in the West and not in Iran, Venezuela or Syria, with the regimes that Russia tried to flirt with in recent years, forming an anti-Western block. Russia has failed to gain new friends in the Islamic world, judging by the fate of the political realignment in countries of the Arab Spring; with respect to these events with our authorities, Russia has also not gained.

Putin’s return could force Russia into neo-isolationism and sharply increase the probability of a new Cold War, but for Putin’s team, a political gift could be the victory of the Republican candidate in the U.S. presidential elections, whose administration will almost certainly return to harsher anti-Russian rhetoric.

In this instance, it is possible to construct foreign policy in a traditional way: domestically exploit the old image of the West as an enemy, thus mobilizing the population; externally, continue mutually beneficial projects with selected foreign companies and buy the necessary loyalty of individual representatives of the Western oil and gas money elites.

The only issue is that financial resources for such a policy, in the case of intensification of world economic problems, will dissipate in front of our eyes.