Pride and Prejudice at the Kremlin

Back in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville prophesized a bipolar future with Russia and the United States as opposed master puppeteers. The duel of course, is passé today.

Russia is technically a democracy, a supporter of free markets which strives to join the World Trade Organization, and the host of the G8 summit this July in St. Petersburg. Especially in this context, the West must remember that nothing has really changed since the times of either Peter the Great or Lenin: Russia cares about its pride, not about global security.

Amidst the rhetorical battle on the prospects of an American strike, Iran remains the world’s most delicate international crisis. An American-induced Security Council bill to curtail Teheran’s nuclear ambitions will inexorably fail due to implicit opposition from Beijing and Moscow. For China, it is primarily about oil thirst. But for Russia, it is about weapons industries lingering from the Soviet era.

After Gorbachev, the Russian military complex stopped shipping AK-47s to the Middle East under the pretext of fighting capitalist imperialism. However, Russia’s brand-new capitalist mindset has led it to seek contracts with countries like Iran, Syria, and Libya to maintain capital inflow, and hence, some pride. Iranian leadership might lack legitimacy, but it has plenty of cash. Guess which nation got the contracts to build the reactors and turbines in sites like Bushehr.

As Russia loses power politically and economically, the arrogance of its military interest groups grows. These elites wish to cut ties with Western allies to show independence from Washington, filling their bank accounts in the meantime.

In 1995, the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission reached an agreement for Russia to stop selling weapons to Iran in exchange for the lifting of American prohibitions on certain technology exports. In light of this precedent, it may be sensible to offer compensation for the lost Iranian profit, as certain negotiators have requested. If we cannot count on their ideology, we can count on our checkbooks.

Iran might be the most sensitive issue, but it is not the only one. With oil at $70 a barrel, Russian egos have become as inflated as their reserve surplus, which now amounts to almost $60 billion last year. With part of that money, the Kremlin is contributing aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, even when the Palestinians miserably failed to condemn the suicide attack in Israel during Passover. This approach (also favored, alas, by Iran) actively undermines the Western funding freeze designed to force Hamas to reject violence and recognize Israel.

At the same time, the Kremlin-managed energy monopoly, Gazprom, attempts to assert power in a classic, ham-fisted Russian manner—just remember the gas sales to Ukraine last New Year.Although it ultimately failed, the growing ties with the energy-hungry Chinese dragon should make Europeans ever more worried about their dependence on Russian gas. With decreasing levels of democracy and freedom to dissent with the government, Putin’s Russia can be relied upon neither for gas, nor for global stability.

Back in the day, the Pravda newspaper was considered a prime tool of red propaganda. In 2003, a rather curious title suggested: “Russian weapons make every country feel safe.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In the eve of the G8 summit, fellow members of this elite club must acknowledge that Russia is no Mr. Darcy: No sweet interior is hidden beyond its cold façade. The Kremlin wants to assert its pride and prejudices as if perestroika had not happened. Ergo, the façade is as good as it gets.



Pierpaolo Barbieri ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Thayer Hall.