“The Tsar’s sabres”
1. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND GEORGE? THE UKRAINE IS NOT EVEN A STATE!
What is the Ukraine? Part of its territory is in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, we gave them the most important part of their country!"
When last April 4th Vladimir Putin spoke these words to his "dear American friend", some of the leaders around the table at the NATO summit in Bucharest thought that the cold Russian chess player had slipped up. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was a calculated provocation, one of those learned in a beginner's course in Russian intelligence schools.
With a few sentences, staring directly into George W. Bush's eyes, Putin stamped the meaning of his first – and perhaps not last – eight years as President of Russia. His meaning: we are once again a great power and it would be best for everyone, friends, false friends and enemies, to take careful note of this, starting with the Ukraine, which together with Georgia continues to knock on NATO's door. Russia, warns Putin, is capable of destroying these countries. Should Kiev and Tbilisi really join the Atlantic Pact, they would do so as small and diminished states; the Ukraine without Crimea (previously part of the Federal Russian Socialist Soviet Republic, lent free of charge in 1954 by the Ukrainian Khrusˇcˇëv to Soviet Ukraine) and its more pro-Russian eastern regions, Georgia without Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia, semi-annexed by Putin with one of his last directives. To be absolutely clear, Moscow has strengthened its military formations in the secessionist Abkhaz Republic. Peacekeeping, swears the Kremlin. Piecekeeping, the White House fears.
Not that Moscow intends to unleash its now rather dilapidated armoured divisions. This is no longer fashionable, although a simple provocation is sufficient for setting alight Georgia and the entire Caucasus. Other more subtle means can be used for the same objective, ranging from the energy lever to fifth columns embedded among his unruly neighbours. Bush knows this well. Above all so do his unreliable French, German and Italian allies who have obliged the American leader to take back his promise made to the Ukraine and Georgia, and postpone to more a auspicious occasion the start-up of Atlantic integration. Of course, assures NATO, the doors will be open. In the meantime however, the door remains closed. Putin's tactics worked. His 'no' divided the westerners; confirming that Russia has resumed its status as an unavoidable factor in the equation of Euro-Asian, and hence global, power, that it had for a couple of centuries.
And there is more. The lesson that Putin inflicted on Bush, seen within the context of all that the restorer of the Russian empire has said and done during his two presidential mandates, helps illustrate the strategic question: now that the new/old Russia has recovered its sovereignty and power, how does it intend to use it? The ambitious Project Russia currently the policy at the Kremlin and Russian corridors of power, can be summarised in three points.First.
The Russian Federation is a totally particular element in the multicoloured Mendeleev Table of world powers, as a multinational empire with a Russian-Orthodox imprint, but also as "part of the Islamic world" (as Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov said), extending well beyond the Central Asian steppes to the Arctic, to the Pacific and to the Chinese border, it is a sui generis subject not comparable to others. Nor is it soluble within alliances, such as NATO, which demand renouncing sovereignty in favour of the leader country. In Putin's own words, "Russia will be independent and sovereign, or it will not exist".
Simultaneously Russia's heart is in Europe, hence, in its own way, in the West – although many Russians are viscerally reluctant to sanction such a consequence. In the future one cannot exclude that Russia may become a member of the western club, be it NATO or not. "But we will only do this as a great power", warned one of Russia's most influential strategists, Sergej Karaganov. Another authoritative analyst, Vitalij Tret’jakov, explains: "When Russian renewal achieves a sufficient level of maturity, (…) Russia will propose to the European Union and to the United States, the creation of a political-military alliance. And perhaps that they should establish a Euro-Atlantic Confederation, with a common parliament and government".
Utopian, perhaps. But revealing. Since, on the contrary, they establish Russia's fundamental otherness compared to China. With the Europeans, and even with the Americans, all the quarrels seem like family ones, or at least one among the members of a condominium. Not so with China. The two empires remain unshakably 'others', even when they find themselves cooperating due to shared interests. The same would apply to Japan, should it ever cultivate neo-imperial ambitions. As Brezˇnev once explained to Margaret Thatcher: "Madam, we have a common mission: to defend the white race". From the "yellow peril" of course.
Second. Russia's power is not an end unto itself. Putin has not returned Moscow to the 'circle of sovereigns' for his own gratification. Great Russia does not dance alone. Russia wants to create a new global balance of power, together with superpower USA, China and India, and a few other regional hegemonies - Europe, should it ever exist, and in the meantime with its greatest nations. In that "do you understand, George", there is not only a threat, but a plea: we want to decide together. The United States and Russia will never again be enemies, repeats the now former president every time relations with Washington become tense. But never again will Moscow accept an American order.
Or, humiliated and offended, be obliged to castling. The counter-model, with Putin teaching, Bush a lesson is not only El’cin's clown-like subjection to Clinton, it is also the gesture of then Premier Primakov, obliged to about-turn while flying to Washington in March 1999, when hearing that NATO was bombing Belgrade. The Russia-US relationship must be one of exchange. Tough if necessary. But still a quid pro quo.
Third. The remains of the disintegration of the USSR, the remnant of the empire called the Russian Federation, is too small. It must expand again. Hence it is above necessary to consolidate its foundations, starting with the reduction of its geopolitical complexity. Paying homage to the "verticality of power", according to which the centre is the alpha and the omega of the State – the reader must decide whether to define it as centralist federalism, or federalist centralism – the number of federate subjects must be reduced (for example, merging Saint Petersburg with the Leningrad region, and the Finno-Ugric Republic of Marij El with some of the bordering Russian regions, so as to increase the importance of Russian subjects within the internal empire). In perspective, a number of former soviet territories should be reintegrated into the federal area. Including "the most important part" of the Ukraine, mentioned by Putin in Bucharest. According to Vitalij Tret’jakov's project, reflecting geopolitical inclinations widespread among Russian policy-makers, the countries that should rejoin the Federation are Southern Ossetia (to be annexed to the Ossetia of North-Alania), Transdnistria, Crimea, South-Eastern Ukraine and perhaps Kirghizstan. Byelorussia, the Ukraine (minus the western regions),Abkhazia, Armenia (together with the Nagorno-Karabakh), Kazakhstan and Tajikistan would instead be part of a confederation called the Russian Union (RU). Finally, Uzbekistan would be associated with Russia in a military alliance. All in all, compared to the USSR, the RU would renounce the three Baltic Republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania),Western Ukraine, Moldova to the west of the Dnestr, as well as Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. In one way or another, all the rest would return to be ruled by Moscow. Full stop.
2. This is the Project Russia Putin leaves as his inheritance to Dmitrij Medvedev, his adviser and executive enforcer for seventeen years, chosen by him as his successor and then duly unanimously elected to the Kremlin by the people. With his youngest cohort in Saint Petersburg's circles of power, Putin planned to establish as Prime Minister an unprecedented consular rule. A singular duumvirate, in which, formally, the maestro stands at a lower level – out of respect for the presidential system – but perhaps only to ensure that the student will very quickly return the sceptre temporarily entrusted to his care. For this reason also, Putin had himself elected President of United Russia, the "State Party", thereby accumulating two very important appointments. These may turn out to be decisive since they are held by him, the only charismatic leader of post-soviet Russia, thereby avoiding the trauma of a constitutional fracture, but looking to the continuity of power and geopolitical strategies already established in 2000, as soon as he rose to the presidency. Since, warns Putin, "Medvedev is no less a patriotic Russian than I am. He will represent Russia's national interests".
Will the Medvedev-Putin, or rather Putin-Medvedev pair really work? Or will the sacredness of the Kremlin, temple of the leader also when he was called a Tsar or a Secretary General, transubstantiate the neo-president from a puppet into a Caesar? Should we expect a conflict of ambition to destroy the web weaved by Putin? In April 67% of Russians were convinced that the new president would take orders from the old one. But 47% thought that the Federation's supreme authority should belong to Medvedev, while only 17% assigned it to Putin. Even before being sworn in, Medvedev experienced the Kremlin-effect. It is hard to imagine him spending all his presidential time listening to his beloved Deep Purple between one ukaz and another of his friend the premier. However this odd couple may evolve, short-term at least, the geopolitical orientations will remain the aforementioned ones. Perhaps with a few modulations, if only because of inevitable differences in language usage and in experience. Hence, it is well worth lingering on the impact that Project Russia has already had and will have on the strategies of the other leading players on the global stage, in particular on the United States, China and what remains of the European powers.
3. Project Russia is based on the observation that the "unipolar moment" is over. The American empire's trajectory is a descending one. The claim to mono-power has turned out to be an excessive one. Self-destructive. The failure of the "war on terror" and the consequent loss of influence in the world are forcing the United States to change course. But how? The model Moscow offers Washington is the old "concert of powers", elevated from European to global.
With the usual nostalgia for the good old days (bipolar), Putin theorised this in the speech he made in Munich (February 10th 2007), the summa of his geopolitics: "We have a debt with the balance of power between the two superpowers. There was a balance and fear of reciprocal destruction. In those days one side feared to take an extra step without consulting the other. Of course, it was a fragile peace and one based of fear. But as one can see now, it was reliable. Nowadays peace does not seem so reliable".
The balance of power has no juridical or moral foundation. It is pure geopolitics. In Putin's dream, a small élite of sovereign states, more equal than others, assume the responsibility of regulating the world system, just as in the post-Napoleonic 19th century Metternich and his peers co-managed Europe. The status quo seen as a good thing per se, to be maintained peacefully, or, if necessary to restore using force, but always through compromise among the great powers. And Russia has returned to sit at their table. And intends to remain there.
Nothing could be more alien to the dominant culture in Washington. The balance of power incarnates a vision of the world that the Founding Fathers, and later with various modifications their successors, have always abhorred in the name of American uniqueness. A displayed morality in which national interest and ecumenical aspirations provide each other with reciprocal support. This because America is not just any country, but the "indispensable nation" provided with a universal, revolutionary mission: to bring freedom to the world. It is not part of the international system. It is the system, its last regulator of last resort.
The American approach to post-soviet Russia is a perfect example of this ideology. If it were a normal European-styled superpower, after winning the Cold War, America would have imposed a binding peace on Moscow, and then anchor the country as a minor partner in a new Euro-Asian balance dominated by Washington. Even Zbigniew Brzezinski, not exactly pro-Russian, observed that after the collapse of the USSR "the logical course for the West would have been to create long-term policies addressed at establishing a more solid bond between Russia and Europe, but there is little evidence that anyone in Washington devoted any constructive thought to this issue".
Perhaps Bush Senior envisaged something similar. He did not however have the time to configure a strategy for Russia. Clinton could have done it, but in his idolatry for globalisation there was no room for geopolitics. After repeating it so often, he must have ended up by believing that El’cin's Russia really had become a democracy, one of the many the "global world" is filled with. As far as Bush Junior is concerned, his approach to the Russian dossier started and ended in the summer of 2001, when he peered at Putin for the first time: "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul". What he actually understood is not clear. In those ice-cold eyes he must have seen something that was fascinating, because ever since then, although with thousands of difficulties, he never stopped considering a "friend" the leader that would do everything he could to overturn the outcome of the Cold War. And according to whom "the system of international relations is exactly like mathematics: there is no personal element".
Result: almost twenty years after the fall of the Wall, the United States has still not decided what to do about Russia. It vacillates between malign neglect and open hostility. It fears it may list towards China or hypnotise Old Europe to loosen the already slack Atlantic alliance. But it does not think of integrating Russia into the West. Putin has hence deducted that if NATO is not with Russia, it is against Russia. In fact, the Atlantic Alliance's global direction – out of area or out of business, according to Washington's mantra – indicates America's intention to replace the UN with NATO as the referee for world order. Armed to the teeth however, and without the Russians and the Chinese. Hence against them .
After the Gorbacˇëv mirage of Russian-American equal dignity and the El’cin parenthesis – when the Russian Federation was sinking into chaos, selling off oil companies at 4 cents per reserve barrel and appeared resigned to the rank of colony of the triumphant superpower – Russians began to experience profound hostility towards Washington. Moscow felt neglected, humiliated and hurt. Put in brackets by a country that had much else on its mind, be it China's ascent or the jihadist challenge. Undermined in its security by the project for an anti-missile shield based in Central Europe, the real objective of which is to minimise Russia's remaining strategic deterrence and by NATO's expansion –although the opposite had been falsely sworn to Gorbacˇëv. Moreover, Russia considers the "coloured revolutions" in the Ukraine and in Georgia, behind which Putin caught a glimpse of his "friend" Bush's hand, as a threat to its very existence.
Such a threat posed within what Moscow considers its own back yard, set off a red alert. In reacting, Putin veers towards tough confrontation, convinced that sooner or later the Americans will try and stir up Russians in the streets against the Kremlin. The Kiev revolt, in the autumn and winter of 2004, marked the end of residual illusions and the turning point in the reaction against the West's intrusive aggressiveness. The decision to abolish energy subsidies for the Ukrainians and other former soviet countries, used to special prices, was the first consequence of this choice. As Putin was to explain to a number of Euro-Atlantic interlocutors: "If the West wants to support “'orange' movements”, then let them pay for them. Or do you want to support them but have us pay the bill? Do you think we are idiots or something?". The second move was to field a robust and aggressive "youth movement", Nasˇi (Ours), charged with preventing home-grown opposition from falling into the hands of protesters paid by the enemy. Everything else, including the blackmail applied in Bucharest and Russian reinforcements in Abkhazia, is the result of the decision to block the anti-Russian offensive of the United States and its associates.
It is from here that Bush's successor will have to begin. The Russian élite would vote for Obama, because in Hillary Clinton they see a remake of the administration that humiliated the Kremlin and bombed Yugoslavia, while McCain has already presented himself as an enemy by calling Putin a "dangerous person" and demanding that "revanchist" Russia be excluded from the G8. Not that they are enthusiastic about Obama, especially since he has enlisted the "Polish hawk" Brzezinski as one of his advisors. But his trusted expert on Russian affairs is Michael McFaul, who would like to see NATO open its doors wide to Moscow. In any event, "we do not expect whoever wins the elections to radically improve our relationship", commented the Russian Ambassador to NATO, Dmitrij Rogozin.
Therefore, as far as the near future is concerned, one cannot envisage a serious Russian-American partnership. At best, pragmatic cooperation dictated by need. Afghanistan is a classical example. It was there that in 2001 Putin did everything possible to help the USA fight the Taleban, receiving a cold thank-you for his efforts. Nowadays, the Putin-Medvedev team is already at work to offer NATO a "humanitarian" logistic corridor towards Afghanistan, an alternative to the uncertain Pakistani route. Jihadists in fact target the allied convoys that travel from Karachi and Rawalpindi to supply their contingents deployed in the Afghan theatre. The northern alternative, via Russia-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan, is almost an obligatory one. Russian "aid" is hirsute. It is needed to remind the White House that in the Afghan-Pakistan quadrant - and not only - it will increasingly need Moscow. The Kremlin hopes that the Americans will be bogged down at length in the Afghan trap, with the evil delight of one knowing only too well what it means to get lost in that labyrinth, and well aware that the Americans are fighting also for the Russians, against a common jihadist enemy. Finally, they hope that when important matters are discussed at the Russian-NATO Council table, the USA will bear in mind the "favour" received.
In the final analysis, Russian-American relations will depend greatly on how their respective approaches to Beijing turn out. Medvedev has announced that his first state visits will be to Kazakhstan and China. A geopolitical signal. The neo-president wishes to balance projection towards Europe – which receives 81.6% of Russian gas exports and 94.1% of oil exports (chart) – by linking with Asian growth and its vast and virtually unpopulated eastern provinces, with their treasures of immensely valuable raw materials.
During a recent mission to Khabarovsk, a few miles from the border with China, Medvedev spoke of his project for geopolitical readjustment: "Which is the region with the fastest growth in the world? Certainly the Asian-Pacific region. Where is it that we wish to develop? Only in Europe? Of course not. We wish to develop everywhere and here, in the Asia-Pacific regions, are the most important areas of growth". The idea is to turn the Siberian problem into a positive element, currently seen by Sinophobe Russians only as the "yellow superpower's only " entry route". "Our difficult geographical position can instead become our competitive advantage. Being such a large country is an advantage. We must not only be a double eagle, we must look to all regions – including Europe and Africa. We must observe what happens in America and we must certainly look to Asia, in particular to the Asia-Pacific region. If we do not pay attention to all our borders, we will lose all our advantages". If Medvedev, in agreement with Putin, could manage to breach the reciprocal mistrust currently restricting Russian-Chinese cooperation, he will deserve more than just a mention in history books.
To begin with, it would become possible to install the highly imaginative pipelines for transporting Siberian hydrocarbons to China, blocked until now by the resistance shown by both parties in setting-up energy and economic interdependence following the Russian-European model. It is however excessive to envisage a Moscow-Beijing pairing as an effective permanent alternative to the West. At least that is what they hope in Washington. And that is where the next inhabitant of the White House will have to decide whether to cultivate an economic-financial bond with China resulting in a global understanding, or instead apply new containment to the "middle kingdom", aligning India, South Korea, Japan and Australia against it. A chain in which the only missing link would be Russia. Moscow could in theory be led to clamp Beijing in a vice only if linked to the West in a fully legitimate manner. This will not happen in the near future, if ever.
4. Nowadays, by far the most important geopolitical phenomenon is Russia's return to being a power within Europe. This is the result of the algebraic sum of European decline, of American coolness regards to the Old Continent and of Russian renewal. At a global level, competition/cooperation is already multipolar (with China and Russia, but also with Brazil, India and Japan partnering with America, a leader in trouble), but without a European centre. The European Union is too heterogeneous to aspire to this. Above all, it is not and does not wish to become a state. Influential Old Continent-style ideologies boast of this, inflicting excommunications on those "homesick for Westphalia", who do not understand how history could have condemned the national state. Well maybe. This has never even entered the minds of the powers that matter or aspire to this. Nor those of the Americans, the Chinese and even less the Russians.
Russians observe in amazement the repudiation of sovereignty by the continent that invented it. Commenting caustically Putin said: "I recommend thinking about sovereign democracy. It is a concept that could be of interest for the European Union and for individual European countries". Sovereignty according to Putin, as for all non-European leaders (and for those Europeans insensitive to all that is politically correct), is a synonym for independence. And from independence only interdependence can arise, as the relation between sovereign nations. Between actors and non-actors there are no relations. This is basically the problem we Europeans have in negotiating with the Russians – and, in parallel, with the Americans. Facing Moscow – and Washington – there is not Brussels, understood as a metaphor for a united and sovereign Europe; there are 27 capitals finding it hard to express their respective national points of view.
There is no point in complaining, if, as is natural, Russia entertains bilateral relations with each individual country belonging to the E.U. and snubs the Commission. This bilateral interdependence is inevitably asymmetrical, totally to the advantage of the Kremlin, and not so much due to the different size of the players, but because they have conflicting opinions: "post-modern" states (if this adjective actually means anything) versus an imperial State, jealous of its own reconquered autonomy. Furthermore, we have incorporated in the vague European-Atlantic area a number of neo-republics that were previously vassal states of the Soviet Union, which adopt a double standard. Pro-sovereignty with us Western Europeans, "post-modern" with the United States, to which they have conceded part of their recently reconquered sovereignty as presumed 'life insurance' against a permanent Russian threat. Countries in which, Putin observes scornfully, "not just the candidate for the post of Defence Minister but even candidates for less important posts are discussed with the US Ambassador".
Starting with such dissymmetry, Russia exercises its renewed influence over the Old Continent. This influence is based on three vectors, all more or less involving the state, or rather its leader (or two leaders) and his (their) oligarchy.
The first is Russia's rank as a bi-continental nuclear power, extending over a vast territory, immensely rich in raw materials; an empire in geopolitical (reconquering areas lost by Gorbacˇëv and El’cin) and natural-geopolitical expansion (claiming the Arctic immensity undergoing emancipation from the ice, if the climate cooperates of course).
The second, so excessively reported on, are hydrocarbon exports, which amount to 44% (gas) and 30% (oil) of European imports. A phenomenal money-making factory, allowing Russia, and above all its one hundred thousand millionaires and over fifty billionaires (in dollars), to go shopping around the world, while the state treasury holds over 420 billion reserves in dollars and gold. Plus the 140 billion allocated to the Stabilisation Fund. Our thirst for energy and Russian interest in satisfying it, stimulates the exchange between hydrocarbons and assets, as witnessed by agreements between Gazprom and E.ON, BASF, Gaz de France, and ENI. These agreements have also resulted in amazing routes for underwater and overland pipelines to bypass, to the north and to the south, the euro-oriental former-satellite infidels and point directly at euro-western partners. At a global level, Moscow dreams of maximising the geopolitical effect and economic efficiency of its energy assets in a future "OPEC of gas", in which it intends to associate to itself, and thereby control other great exporters, from Iran to Qatar, from Venezuela to Nigeria and Algeria.
The third, only superficially visible, mixes informal agencies (such as the former KGB's external network, well organised in our continent) and mafias, more or less infiltrated and used by the State (and vice versa) for promoting interests that are both economic and geopolitical. This last vector specifically illustrates Russia's deep penetration of the Balkans and towards the Mediterranean. It is in this area, with its weak governmental institutions, stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea and the Adriatic, where disintegration of "real socialism" has produced mafia states and no man's lands, that the links of the chain of exclaves controlled or at least conditioned by Moscow shine brightly: South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transdnistria, to Montenegro.
The Kremlin's main European reference points are however in the west. After the collapse of the USSR, it promoted an exchange of Old-Continent pairs between the East (from Russified to pro-American) and the West (less linked to the USA and increasingly open to Russia). Moscow celebrates the birth in Europe of its "friends club", given this name by Sergej Jastrzˇembskij, Putin's right hand man for European affairs. He gave a membership card to the E.U.'s four largest continental states – Italy, France, Germany and Spain – plus Greece, Cyprus and Luxemburg, also including Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Serbia, which stand out within the euro-oriental context for their proximity to Russian interests.
And so we have a more concrete idea of what Putin and Medvedev mean when speaking of a balance of power in Europe. No more and no less than what in 1935 Federico Chabod codified in his introduction on "The principle of balance in the history of Europe". And hence: "Treaties ratified in the name of balance between various powers"; an acknowledgment that "to achieve this balance, it is legitimate for great powers to share among themselves the territories of others, to break-up or even allow small states to vanish when annexed to one or the other great states, bearing in mind, with well-thought out calculations, the territory, the population, the wealth, and the geographic-strategic position of the areas to be dismantled"; finally, treaties must have "guarantors", and who but the great powers should play this role. It is based on this principle, invented in Renaissance Italy, that modern Europe was born, a civilisation founded on the "interdependence of various parties, each clearly distinct from the other". Perhaps they do not read Chabod, but we are sure that Putin and Medvedev would both endorse his moderate thesis, since the balance of power relies on power relations; and on limiting the sovereignty of minor countries in favour of major ones; a category Russia belongs to by birth and by census.
Geopolitical DNA and memories of past glory encourage continental First Division players – which at a global level are reduced to Second Division players – such as France and Germany and even the more modest Italy and Spain, to appreciate the song sung by the Moscow siren. Hence French Prime Minister François Fillon let slip that the Ukraine and Georgia's integration into NATO "is not the right answer for the balance of power in Europe, and between Europe and Russia". On the other hand, it is no surprise that light and medium weight countries, even more so if Russophobe, such as the Baltic countries, Sweden and Poland, perceive a whiff of brimstone when the French praise their ancient friendship with Russia and German-Russian agreements are entered into behind their backs or under their noses. All in all, in their relations with Moscow the Europeans pay the price of the progressive disintegration of their own region, running parallel to the reintegration of the Russian empire. About fifty, between states, statelets and black holes occupy an area equivalent to a fourth of the Russian Federation. With most of them, Moscow only does business.
Russia speaks of important political matters with homologous and friendly France and Germany. At times Russia talks to the British, treated as enemies, or almost, except when wishing to buy one of their soccer teams. But when all is said and done, when addressing the balance of power in Europe, Russia thinks of the United States. The Americans are not friends, but they are sovereign. They play in the same league, but a couple of steps higher. It is with them that a strategic compromise must be found, without wasting too much time on the unrealistic Europeans. While it is true that the balance of power is a subject for grown-ups, for at least sixty years America has been number one in Europe and Russia/the Soviet Union (tomorrow the Russian Union?) has taken second place - except during the Nineties, when the challenger appeared to have surrendered to the champion. Today more than in the past, our destiny is entrusted to Washington and to Moscow. Not a century has gone by since the colours of European empires stood out on the planispheres, extended over every continent. And 51 years have gone by since a Mass for Europe's deliverance was celebrated in Rome. Our trajectory however remains a declining one; just as Russia's star returns to shine brightly.
5. By 2020 Putin wants Russia to become the country in which everyone would choose to live. The year by which he hopes perhaps to have completed his fourth mandate, if Medvedev will return his post to him in 2012 for two more four-year terms. In spite of making an effort, we find it hard to imagine by that date a global transhumance towards the new Russian Eldorado will be taking place. We remain stupidly fond of an old-fashioned aesthetic idea, according to which we would like to live in the most beautiful country in the world. Putin instead prefers the most powerful. And possibly as its leader. 2020 should hence be understood as the period within which the Project Russia must be completed.
The banana skins on which this ambitious project might slip are countless. Starting with the terrible demographic crisis, against which immigration can do little – projections indicate that by mid-century there will be fewer than one hundred million Russians. There is also the future uncertainty of national energy resources, stimulated by few investments, especially in the gas sector, while some experts swear that this year Russia has reached its peak as far as oil is concerned, until there are new convulsions in the political-institutional system, addressing the rigidity of its historical authoritarianism.
However, if in the near future Russia should become more powerful, more respected and even more beautiful than it is now, it will owe this also to the development of the 'soft power' without which there is no real power. Russia has never distinguished itself for having a talent to make itself likeable – hence more easily hegemonic - especially when acting as the USSR. Now the image of a Third Rome – missiles, hydrocarbons and mafias aside – is entrusted to the "new Russians", attacking the temples of the jet set like a bunch of parvenus. So much so that some European four and five star hotels have established a 10% quota beyond which Russians clients are not accepted . The Russkij Mir Foundation, set up by Putin to refine Russia's image in the world, will have a great deal of work to do. There has however been some progress; this year Russia is the country that has most increased the percentage of favourable comments among the 23 in a BBC survey: from 29 to 37 points. The United States, doing slightly better, has 32 ponts, while Iran and Israel – candidates for a clash in the near future – are the less appreciated.
Of course, should one compare the country that Putin picked up from the bottom of the heap eight years ago to the one he hands Medvedev (and himself) today, one must observe that once again, when all seemed lost, Russia discovered within itself formidable resources. The source of these resources is statolater patriotism mixed with the coldest pragmatism, the sort that inspired Stalin during the battle of Moscow. The enemy was a few yards from the Kremlin when General Budënnyj announced to the dictator that in the absence of any other available weapons, the cavalry had been given old sabres bearing the words: "For Faith, Tsar and Country". "But will they cut off the Germans' heads?", asked Stalin. "Yes, Comrade Stalin". "Well, our old sabres must work well then, for Faith, Tsar and Country!".