Book Review

A chill wind blows from the east

The New Cold War: how the Kremlin menaces both Russia and the West

This is a good book but it does not make a wholly persuasive case for its title and the timing of publication is unfortunate. Edward Lucas, the Central and East European correspondent of The Economist, has been covering the region for over two decades. That period has encompassed perestroika under Gorbachev, the collapse of the Soviet empire, the chaotic liberalisation of the Yeltsin years and a new assertion of central control and hostility towards the West by Vladimir Putin. He is thus eminently qualified to assess the significance of Russia's latest guise.

His account of the past eight years makes grim reading. At home, Putin has relentlessly drawn power back into the Kremlin, whether through crushing political opponents, removing the autonomy of regional governors or emasculating the media. Lucas equates the "sovereign democracy" which the president proclaims with "authoritarian crony capitalism". Its most dramatic manifestations have been the hounding of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the founder of the oil giant Yukos, who languishes in a Siberian jail, and the murder of Aleksander Litvinenko in London. Equally sinister is the recourse to Stalinist practice: the committing of dissidents to psychiatric hospitals, the rewriting of history, in particular the portrayal of Yeltsin's rule as disastrous, and the unleashing of the Nashi movement as a latter-day Soviet Communist Youth League.

Such are the consequences of allowing an estimated three-quarters of the top posts in the country to fall into the hands of ex-members of the security services, Putin, a former KGB agent, being the supreme example. In 2005, the president described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest "geo-political catastrophe" of the twentieth century. That notorious conclusion helps explain his attitude to the outside world. Russia, he thinks, will become great again by using the high price of oil and gas to bind European nations into dependency. It will reassert a droit de regard over the former Soviet empire, from the Baltic states to Central Asia. Through aggressive posturing it will seek to sow dissension in the EU and Nato by hinting that newer adherents are second-class members.

Yet that does not amount to a new Cold War, if by that is meant confrontation between two ideologically opposed blocs with thermo-nuclear weapons trained on each other. Lucas recognises this. Russia is no longer a military threat to the West, he writes; its forces are demoralised and much of its equipment is obsolete. And it has abandoned the old propaganda war, seeking instead to embrace its own kind of capitalism; rich Russians invest heavily in the West and send their children to be educated there. Pace Francis Fukuyama, history has come back with a vengeance, in the form of Islamist terrorism and nuclear proliferation, but it does not face the leaders of the United States with deciding in minutes whether to order a counter-strike against a Soviet missile attack, which could have left 160 million people dead. And while the oil and gas bonanza has given Russia a new swagger, it remains dependent on the technical expertise of the West.

Lucas writes of having to produce his book at breakneck speed. The publisher obviously wanted something in the shops before Putin steps down in May. There are only passing references to Dmitry Medvedev, the president-elect, the most interesting being that he thinks the term "sovereign democracy" is an "ideological cliché". Appointed Putin's deputy prime minister and chairman of the state gas monopoly, Gazprom, he has said that he hopes Putin will become prime minister, to ensure continuation of present policy.

Medvedev's subservience may change once he assumes the powers of patronage granted the president under the 1993 constitution. A paper from a think tank connected with the president-elect suggests he will maintain the drive to preserve the country's territorial integrity and restore its international status; it also contains a chilling remark that "democracy itself is not of great value" because in Russia it is associated with a weak state.

Nevertheless, another key goal is listed as revitalising a market economy impeded by "over-regulation, corruption, insecurity of property rights, innovative inactivity and state inefficiency". At present, the paper says, Russia is like Latin American countries in its average level of income, the gap between rich and poor and heavy dependence on raw materials. A better model for social and economic development would be Canada. The think tank implicitly recognises other glaring failures of Putin's presidency: low life expectancy, high infant mortality, inadequate provision of housing and of support for the disabled. It hints at a more social-democratic model in which the economy will be diversified, welfare improved and a civil society created.

Putin would not necessarily disagree with these goals. But his emphasis has been different. He flexed his muscles over Chechnya and has since burnished that macho image by relaunching long-range bomber patrols and threatening to retarget Russian rockets on to European countries which participate in the new American missile shield. He has also suspended participation in the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty and spoken of withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, two cornerstones of the post-Cold War dispensation.

If Putin becomes prime minister, the question will be whose authority will prevail. Will the new president be able to play on differences between the siloviki (those with security services connections) and winkle them out of the Kremlin? Could Russia be destabilised by dual centres of power? Remember parliament's 1993 revolt against Yeltsin.

Just as interesting is whether a growing middle class will demand greater freedom of association and speech after the authoritarianism of the Putin years. Lucas writes that "never in Russian history have so many Russians lived so well and so freely." Material advance is undeniable but freedom in a state with an overweening bureaucracy, a cowed judiciary and an homogenised parliament is relative. The Russian people deserve better.

All this may have been outside Lucas' brief but it would have been interesting to have had his views on what might happen after May. In the meantime, he has put us on guard against what Russia has become under Putin and proposed ways of countering its malign influence. A new Cold War it may not be, but that should not preclude a coordinated response from the West based on its belief in "open, law-governed political pluralism". Without that, Lucas concludes, "we stand not the slightest chance of persuading Russians themselves that the authoritarian, xenophobic and distorted version of capitalism peddled by their rulers is not a new civilisation but a dead end".

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