Tom Graham’s wide-ranging “Response to the Critics” included a question for me, in his fourth paragraph. He saw an inconsistency between, on the one hand, my view that Putin’s crackdown over the first year of his latest Presidency has been internally generated and was not a response to U.S. pressure, and, on the other hand, my comment that what the United States and the West say and do matters in Russia. Let me explain, briefly. The matter has a bearing on Graham’s call at the end of his piece for a strategic dialogue, by implication one primarily between the United States and Russia.
Putin’s 2012 choice of increased repression and still further reliance on personalized rule was predictable but was not inevitable. It was what he and a preponderant number of his inner circle decided was preferable to the risks inherent in structural change. The shock, if there has been one, has been in the scale and rapidity of the process.
Graham is right to say that Russia has a long history of autocracy. But autocracy exists in varying degrees, and its Russian history embraces failures as well as what Graham sees as achievements. For me, at least, the failures of autocracy in Russia outweigh the successes. The more personal and more repressive the autocracy, as a rule of thumb, the greater the eventual threat to the system. The main point here and now is, however, that Russia is divided and uncertain, with no articulated strategic vision of its future. The Opposition, however defined, has no space to work on one, and the ruling authorities are paralyzed by the prime force of their will to maintain control.
Graham is of course right to say that it is for the Russians themselves to resolve this unstable situation, and when to do it. No one would dispute that. But in setting out my view that what we for our part say and do nonetheless matters, I had it in mind that the Russians are a plurality, with attitudes, hopes and ambitions going beyond what the Kremlin proclaims. They are not cut off from the rest of us. A good proportion accept that the norms of the rule of law, respect for private property, and the sanctity of contracts are not just “largely set by the West” but also essential preconditions for the sustainable and desirable development of their country. It behooves us as strategists to remember that what we do and say now will be recalled to our credit or discredit in the future.
There is in fact already an ongoing dialogue between Russia and the West—not just a discussion between governments but one of ideas and people and institutions outside government. That is as it should be, scratchy though it can prove at times. It is however open to question whether such a dialogue can be made strategic, at least for now. Tactical cooperation over particular issues is one thing, but some sort of grand bargain between governments, which is what Graham seems to have in mind, would be a very different proposition. The time is scarcely ripe for it, with a Russian government intent on blaming foreign agencies for its difficulties at home as well as abroad, and quite probably in some cases actually believing in the malevolent cunning of the West in pursuing its allegedly hostile goals.
A strategic dialogue that might lead to concrete understanding would need to be based on commonly accepted principles. It is not obvious how these might be agreed between the United States and Russia. Graham writes for example in his response: “Russia does have legitimate security interests in the former Soviet space, which we need to respect, although at times we will oppose the way in which it defends those interests”. That is fair, if unspecific, on one important condition, namely that those other states now in that space also have legitimate security interests in Russia, not least that Russia should fully respect their equal autonomy. Their confidence, based on history and recent experience, that it will, is low. The West should not accept the propositions inherent in the Kremlin agenda that Russian interests should be given priority, or that Central Asia, the Caucasus, or the European “lands in between” are a sort of battleground, however muted, between the West and Russia. No serious approach to this sort of question can be based on the United States and Russia agreeing to some form of joint oversight, with or without the European Union, which Graham has in the past mentioned as a possibility. Let us by all means work together where we can but let us also be forthright when we cannot.