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September 14, 2004
Russia Centralizes

Putin is severly tightening the central grip on the 89 entities that make up todays Russia.

Putin proposed, first, to scrap direct gubernatorial elections, replacing them with a system in which the president submits nominees to regional legislatures for approval. He also called for doing away with first-past-the-post contests for the State Duma; instead, the lower house is to be composed exclusively of candidates elected from party lists. (Moscow Times Report and Editorial)

Putin sees the ramified democratic and federal structures as endangering the state. As a consequence he is recreating the traditional centralism of Russia and seems to do so within the consens of the majority. He has also inititated two additional major policy changes. First

Putin appointed his confidant and Cabinet chief of staff Dmitry Kozak as the head of a new federal commission that will try to get at the roots of terrorism by tackling poverty and poor education in the North Caucasus.

and second

Putin, reiterating threats by senior military officials last week, said the military is ready to carry out preemptive strikes on terrorist bases anywhere in the world.

The first measure will be positive, if Putin manages to put enough money behind it and if he is able to this over long years. The second is a clear warning to the US. Stay out of our sphere, or we will hit back – chess is our national sport, we know how to play it.

Is all of this positive? My gut feeling is yes. The Russian people were disenfranchised by the breakdown of the Sowjet imperium. The Yelzin wodka induced anarchie did put Russias wealth into the hand of a small class of oligarchs. Live expectations did sink from 65.0 years in 1987 to 57.3 in 1994. Infant mortality did increase from 17.6 per 1000 in 1990 to 20.3 in 1993. The state nearly dissolved and crime took over.

Since 1999 the economy is back on track and the state stabilizes. Fortunatly the Sowjet Union dissolved without much bloodshed, relations with neighbor states are tolerable. The next step Russia will have to take is to consolidate its strategic independence and clean the internal social mess. It chances to do so are quite good as it is economically self sufficient and the low birth rate insures imperial ambitions are contained.

In the typical Russian family all sons are equal. Emmanuel Todd sees this as the base of a Russian universalism in contrast to the individualism most western cultures have developed. Maybe it is also the inherited base for the steps Putin is taking now.

Posted by b on September 14, 2004 at 10:18 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. How can you flame Bush yet not see Putin’s dictatorial aspirations? They’re both power-hungry anti-democratic fascists.

Posted by: gylangirl | Sep 14 2004 13:44 utc | 1

There is an article on counterpunch: The Problem of Chechnya – European Islam & the Caucasian “War on Terrorism”.
It tries to pick apart the powerplay and chess “games” behind the wars in the caucasus – a central part of Russian policy.

Posted by: b | Sep 14 2004 16:34 utc | 2

Noting of the sort… it just the overt moves of “THE GRAND CHESSBOARD”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 15 2004 0:17 utc | 3

@Uncle:
It’s just Geostrategic Reality. It’s no secret.
And I doubt, that things will go so well in the ‘Stans, Chechnya,etc., as Bernhard believes, for Czar Putin. Humpty-Dumpty broke is hellacious hard to put back together again. And all the former subject peoples have a history and race memory of the likes of czars, Stalin, and Putin.
Not looking good for Czar Putin, on this one.

Posted by: zbig | Sep 15 2004 0:53 utc | 4

Strategy, thy name is Zbigniew! If you have not read Uncle’s link to “The Grand Chessboard” in the last few years, the time is right.
Hey, Unc … I got a wry grin reading about Putin this morning. Nuttin’ like beating the “security drums” to whip up enthusiasm for absolutism, eh?

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Sep 15 2004 1:00 utc | 5

@Kate:
I read it all. I understand. But I am, just a Realist. It’s the world we live in.
Sadly,

Posted by: zbig | Sep 15 2004 2:14 utc | 6

seems like less and less posts lately.i’m not on
the same scale of intellect as most of you but i
wanted to let you know i check this site several
times dailey and do really appreciate your insight.some of the best links to info also.
thanks!

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 15 2004 5:27 utc | 7

A portrait of Basayev, the Chechen terrorist/freedom fighter, in the NYT The Chechen’s Story: From Unrivaled Guerrilla Leader to the Terror of Russia

Posted by: b | Sep 15 2004 6:39 utc | 8

Well, if Putin had talked and listened to Cheney, he woulden’t have to go through the trouble of reorgenizing Russia. The rest of Europe better listen. :^)
Talking about European nations and the war on terror, Cheney said, and I quote: “I think some have hoped that if they kept their heads down and stayed out of the line of fire, they wouldn’t get hit. I think what happened in Russia now demonstrates pretty conclusively that everybody is a target. That Russia, of course, didn’t support us in Iraq, they didn’t get involved in sending troops there, they’ve gotten hit anyway.”
The rest is here

Posted by: Fran | Sep 15 2004 15:22 utc | 9

@ zbig
You state that you are a Realist, so perhaps I can glean some insight from you on this view. My understanding of Realism is that it “views international politics as an anarchic order in which competing states conceived as rational actors pursue their security interests.”
I have copied notes from a book I read earlier this year by Alex Callinicos wherein he offers up two serious analytical inadequacies of Realism to comprehending the economic and geopolitical components of the “Grand Strategy of American Imperialism,” esp w/ relation to Brzezinski’s “Eruasian Balkans.”
I. Realism tends to ignore the role that ideological representations play in motivating political action in both the domestic and the international arena
II. In treating states (conceived as unitary entities) as the sole significant international actors, realists fail to integrate into their analysis the capitalist economic context on which both Marxists and liberal enthusiasts for globalization lays much stress. The capitalist economic context w/ which states operate gives them both resources to pursue their geopolitical objectives and further motives for taking action w/i the interstate system in order to advance the interests of the capitals based in their territory. Hegemony is better understood as the capacity, always relative and contested, of the most powerful state in the world system to get other states to support it in pursuing its objectives thanks to…its structural power, which derives from advantageous positions w/i the various dimensions of the International system.
Callinicos prefers the filter of the Marxist theory of Imperialism (“in the course of the 19th century two hiterhto relatively autonomous processes – the geopolitical rivalries among states and economic competition between capitals – increasingly fused”) b/c “it conceptualizes the Int’l system in broader terms than Realists do, w/o falling into the wishful thinking characteristic of liberal enthusiasts for globalization,” providing the “best framework for understanding the contemporary American war drive.”
So what is the advantage of the filter of Realism in understanding what is going on WRT the Grand Chessboard specifically and US Imperialism more generally, if it is indeed a limited analysis that fails to include the broader roles of ideologies and economic contexts? I have yet to be convinced that competing states are rational actors, so perhaps you can shed some insight or resources w/ which to grasp the benefit of having a Realist filter in my toolbox.

Posted by: b real | Sep 15 2004 15:54 utc | 10

For a portrait of Putin in line with my gut feeling take a look at A different view of Putin
Anatol Lieven is a writer at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Vladimir Putin is a convinced reformer, dedicated to modernizing Russia and integrating in into the world economy. Both his language and his actions leave no doubt about this. Equally, it is obvious that Mr Putin is not a sincere or convinced liberal democrat. At least not for Russia in its present state or for many years to come.”
(I didn´t read Lieven before, so he didn´t shape my opinion.)

Posted by: b | Sep 16 2004 11:55 utc | 11

@B:
Enjoyed that analysis on Putin.
The group might also enjoy reading a review of:
The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership
by Zbigniew Brzezinski
A lot of things can change on that old chessboard in 7 years.
LINK

Posted by: Zbig | Sep 16 2004 14:45 utc | 12

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