Walker's World: Bush and Putin
By Martin Walker
UPI Chief International Correspondent
From the International Desk
Published 6/30/2002 7:03 AM
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PARIS, June 30 (UPI) -- An extraordinary and improbable love affair is under way. But the blossoming relationship between President George Bush and the Russia of Vladimir Putin could yet fulfill the sardonic definition of the 17th century French writer, le Comte de la Rochefoucauld, that "Love, such as it exists in this modern world, is no more than the contact of two skins and of two fantasies."
Last week's G8 summit was Putin's triumph. It was supposed to be about Africa. Instead, the big winner was Putin, pocketing a cool $20 billion of Western money to help safeguard and cut Russia's ill-guarded nuclear stockpiles.
Moreover, Putin has become a real member of the globe's ruling class. Hitherto, Russian leaders were semi-members of the G8, invited along only to the main political sessions of the world's industrial leaders. The real power of the old G7 was the constant coordination and discussion that took place at the regular meetings of the G7 finance ministers and their staffs.
Despite an economy that is smaller than that of the Netherlands (although Russia has 10 times as many people), Russia now joins the big league of global economic management.
And for the first time, Russia will be a full member of the G8 process, hosting its own first G8 summit in 2006. More immediately, next year will see a summit between Russia and the European Union in St. Petersburg, immediately before all the participants then fly off to Paris for next year's G8 meeting - whose agenda will therefore be dominated by EU-Russian concerns.
Putin did not pay a high price for these favors. He gave vocal support for the war on terrorism, some overflight and landing rights for the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and shared some Russian intelligence on Islamic extremism.
This also means that the West has gone rather quiet about Russian excesses in the war in Chechnya.
Beyond that, Putin more or less cheerfully acquiesced in two U.S. strategic decisions he could not have stopped anyway; the decision to proceed with the development of anti-missile weapons, and the enlargement of NATO into the former Soviet Republics of the Baltic states.
It is only a year since Bush and Putin has their first summit at Ljubljana in Slovenia, and Bush declared that he had "looked into Putin's soul" and found not just a man he could do business with, but someone who is now starting to look like a serious ally.
This was the first important and surprising choice of the Bush Presidency, coming from a Bush national security team that had during the campaign been notably skeptical of the Clinton administration's policy toward Russia, and its dependence on the personal relationship with Boris Yeltsin. Significantly, Bush's crucial shift to cooperation with Putin took place before the terrorist attacks of September 11.
There is no question that this was the right choice to make. A friendly, democratic and increasingly prosperous Russia is strongly in the interests of the United States and Europe. And if Russia can make the long haul from its current pitiful economic level of a GDP of some $2,000 a head to the European average of $20,000 a head, that will mean that the overall global economy grows by the equivalent of Britain and Germany combined.
But can it happen? Such an economic transformation would require 10 percent annual growth rate sustained for the next 30 years. This may just be possible, as China's performance over the past 20 years suggests, but looks highly improbable.
A lot of things are going right for Russia, starting with the oil price. And now the Duma (parliament) has passed the law authorizing the privatization of Land (although foreign purchasers are barred), Russian agriculture could finally begin to grow.
The steady drain of Russian funds overseas is coming to an end, as Russian businessmen see the prospect of making more money legally at home than in Israeli and Cyprus banks and Mediterranean real estate.
An overhaul of the tax system based on a 13 percent flat rate of income tax is starting to make Russia a helpful place to work, save and invest.
But the demographic nightmare of falling birth rates and the lowest male life expectancy in the developed world - which Putin once called "Russia's biggest problem" - shows no signs of improvement. Indeed, Russia's HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the near collapse of the health service, are making matters worse.
The industrial infrastructure inherited from Soviet days is obsolete, inefficient and requires swift replacement - at an estimated cost of $5,000 billion that Russian simply does not have. The Russian environment, pillaged by eight decades of ruthless Soviet exploitation, is probably the most damaged on the planet.
Putin's half-free Russia, where the media are now safely tamed and the parliamentary opposition cowed, may yet fulfill Bush's great strategic gamble and become a lasting partner for the West.
But more likely, de la Rochefoucould's "contact of two skins and two fantasies" suggests that mutual disappointment lies ahead as the hard realities of Russia's plight prove stubbornly hard to overcome.
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