Putin's Wars (14 page)
Putin has “made clear that Russia has no intention of joining anybody else’s ‘holy
alliances,’” wrote Eugene Rumer.
[42]
This is, indeed, true. Putin prefers to build his
own
organizations. He is a staunch organization builder and undertakes initiatives in
all possible directions, building organizations when only the slightest oportunity
arises. An example is the first BRIC summit convened in Yekaterinburg on June 16,
2009. BRIC is a term coined by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs to indicate the four most
important emerging economies in the world: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. It was
meant by him only as an investment term and had nothing to do with politics. Putin,
however, jumped at the opportunity, seeing another prominent role for Russia in a
global forum. The first meeting of the presidents of the BRIC countries immediately
exposed their fundamental differences. Two of them, Brazil and India, are democracies.
The other two, China and Russia, are non-democratic dictatorships. While the first
two are in effect newly emerging powers, the other two are already long-established
and recognized powers on the world scene, both being permanent members of the UN Security
Council. The four disagree on most issues: human rights, democracy, trade, climate
change, and the reform of global governance. The year in which the first BRIC conference
took place was also the year in which the term “BRIC”—in itself already an artificial
construction—lost the last remnants of its initial meaning of fast-growing emerging
economies: while in the crisis year 2009 the other countries continued to grow, Russia’s
GDP plunged 7.9 percent—which was the worst performance among the Group of Twenty
leading economies. Participants at a business conference in Moscow in February 2010,
therefore, ironically, suggested changing the name from BRIC into BIC.
[43]
This did not prevent the BRIC from organizing its second conference in Brazil’s
capital Brasilia in April 2010. Even if Russia, with its inefficient state capitalism,
cronyism, and rampant corruption, remained the economic dwarf of the four, the BRIC
format offered Moscow an extra forum to project its political influence on the world
stage.
However—as is the case in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—the BRIC was not only
a forum for Russia, but equally for China. In December 2010 South Africa became a
member and China sent an invitation to South African President Jacob Zuma to participate
in the 2011 BRIC summit in China. The aim was to broaden the BRIC into BRICS, this
despite the fact that the size of the South African economy is only a quarter of Russia’s
and its growth in 2011 would not exceed 3 percent. China especially, which, with South
Africa, is the biggest investor on the African continent, seemed to profit from this
enlargement of the BRIC.
[44]
However, during the BRICS summit in the South African town of Durban on March 26
and 27, 2013, President Putin succeeded in forging a closer cooperation with his South
African counterpart. Vladimir Putin and Jacob Zuma agreed to create a kind of platinum
OPEC,
[45]
and Putin offered South Africa help with the construction of a nuclear power plant.
The two leaders also decided to build a strategic partnership and deepen cooperation
in the military sphere, including joint exercises of the armed forces of the two countries.
Plans were also announced to set up a joint production of the Ansat light purpose
helicopter.
[46]
The cherry on the cake was a declaration by both countries “not to participate
in any treaties and agreements which have an aim to encroach on the independence,
sovereignty, territorial integrity or national security interests of the other party,”
[47]
which can be read as a South African pledge to keep its distance from NATO. Another
Russian hope: to build a BRICS development bank that would challenge the hegemony
of the Western-dominated IMF and World Bank had to be postponed to the summit of 2014.
There are plans to enlarge the BRICS with other emerging economies. The main candidate
is Indonesia. Its accession would transform the BRICS into BRIICS.
[48]
Another candidate is Turkey. In fact there is a whole series of emerging economies
that would qualify for membership. The list of potential new members includes Mexico,
Nigeria, South Korea, and Vietnam. However, as Martyn Davies, indicated, “There is
a debate within the Brics as to whether to ‘deepen’ or ‘widen’ the grouping. While
South Africa and Brazil are keen to expand the number of member countries, China and
India prefer to consolidate. Russia is ambivalent.”
[49]
The Russian ambivalence could be explained by the geopolitical rather than economic
importance it ascribes to the grouping. It would certainly welcome an old ally, such
as Vietnam, and possibly even Turkey, which is considered by the Kremlin to be an
independent and critical NATO member. It would certainly be, however, reluctant to
admit a close US ally, such as South Korea. All this cannot conceal the fact that
the BRICS remain a highly artificial construct, and this will even be more so when
the club expands. Ruchir Sharma wrote:
NotesChina apart, they have limited trade ties with one another, and they have few political
or foreign policy interests in common. A problem with thinking in acronyms is that
once one catches one, it tends to lock analysts into a worldview that may soon be
outdated. In recent years, Russia’s economy and stock market have been among the weakest
of the emerging markets, dominated by an oil-rich class of billionaires, whose assets
equal 20 percent of GDP, by far the largest share held by the superrich in any major
economy. Although deeply out of balance, Russia remains a member of the BRICS, if
only because the term sounds better with an
R.
[50]
“Top Kremlin Aide Says Putin Is God’s Gift to Russia,”
Reuters
, July 8, 2011.
Yevgenia Albats,
The State within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia: Past, Present, and Future
(New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux, 1994), 325.
Former Prime Minister Primakov, for instance, did not hide his disappointment. He
wrote that after the war with Georgia in 2008, “Russian society was pained by the
silence in the beginning from our CIS allies, and still more by that of the Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Quite certainly we have overestimated relations
within the CIS and the CSTO.” (Evgueni Primakov,
Le monde sans la Russie? À quoi conduit la myopie politique
, with a preface by Hubert Védrine (Paris: Economica, 2009), 175.)
Cf. Janusz Bugajski,
Georgian Lessons: Conflicting Russian and Western Interests in the Wider Europe
(Washington, DC: Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2010), 19.
Dmitry Babich, “Russia-Belarus Union State on Shaky Legs,”
RIA Novosti
(December 8, 2009).
Chubais quoted in Valery Paniouchkine and Mikhaïl Zygar.
Gazprom: L’arme de la Russie
(Paris: Actes Sud, 2008), 188.
Larissa Sayenko, “Kto kogo dushit,”
Moskovskie Novosti
, no. 13 (March 30–April 6, 1997), 8.
“Lukashenka at Bay,”
The Economist
(December 4, 2010).
Dmitri Trenin,
Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story
(Washington, DC, and Moscow: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011),
46.
Jan Maksymiuk, “Belarus: Lukashenka Eyes Union with Ukraine,”
RFE/RL
(November 24, 2006).
“Putin Named PM of Belarus-Russia Alliance,”
msnbc.com
(May 27, 2008).
“Medvedev Says Belarus Has Not Been Asked to Become Part of Russia,”
RIA Novosti
(November 23, 2009).
“Medvedev Says Belarus Has Not Been Asked to Become Part of Russia.”
Sergey Borisov, “Common Economic Space May ‘Absorb’ Union State of Russia, Belarus,”
RT
(October 19, 2010).
Borodin quoted by Ivan Savelyev, “Union State of Russia and Belarus Needs Intensive
Care,”
RIA Novosti
(October 14, 2010).
Dmitry Medvedev’s blog, October 4, 2010.
http://rt.com/About_Us/Blogs/kremlin-messages-president-talks-to-the-web.html
.
“Union State Should Re-integrate Former USSR, Russian Analyst Says,”
Belta
(November 26, 2010).
Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power
(New York: Basic Books, 2012), 94.
“Speaker Rules Out Ukraine Joining Belarus-Russia Union State,”
iupdp.org
(April 7, 2010).
“Speaker Rules Out Ukraine Joining Belarus-Russia Union State.”
“Klaus von Beyme: Slavic Federation of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia Would be a Natural
Partner for the EU and NATO,”
Information Analysis Portal of the Union State
(November 19, 2010).
http://www.soyuz.by/en/print.aspx?guid=93465
(accessed December 7, 2010).
“South Ossetia May Join Russia-Belarus Union State,”
RT
(August 2, 2011).
Andrew Jack, “Putin ‘Could Head Post-Soviet Confederation,’”
The Financial Times
(October 28, 2003).
“Ukraine to Observe Russian-Belarusian-Kazakh Negotiations on Creation of Customs
Union,” Office for a Democratic Belarus (December 1, 2010).
“Ukraine to Observe Russian-Belarusian-Kazakh Negotiations on Creation of Customs
Union.”
“Putin Reminded to Whom Belarus Obliged Its GDP Growth,”
udf.by
(July 13, 2012).
“Ukraine to Observe Russian-Belarusian-Kazakh Negotiations on Creation of Customs
Union.”
Åslund quoted by Konstantin Rozhnov, “Will a New Customs Union Hurt Russia’s WTO Bid?”
BBC News
(June 30, 2010).
“Putin: Ukraina prodast Evrope 2 litra moloka, a Tamozhennyy Soyuz dast ey $9mlrd
v god,”
Zerkalo Nedeli. Ukraina
(October 6, 2012).
Cf. Konstantin von Eggert, “Due West: Georgia’s Wildcard in Russia’s WTO Membership,”
RIA Novosti
(December 8, 2010).
http://en.rian.ru/colmnists/20101208/161688551.html.
Pavel K. Baev, “Medvedev Enjoys Foreign Policy ‘Successes,’”
Eurasia Daily Monitor
7, no. 222 (December 13, 2010).
“Putin Reminded to Whom Belarus Obliged its GDP Growth.”
“Russia Still Considering to Include Armenia in Single Customs Union,”
News.am
(December 6, 2010).
For a critical analysis of Medvedev’s proposal, see my paper “Medvedev’s Proposal
for a Pan-European Security Pact: Its Six Hidden Objectives and How the West Should
Respond,”
The Cicero Foundation
(October 2008).
http://www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/Marcel_H_Van_Herpen_Medvedevs_Proposal_for_a_Pan-European_Security_Pact.pdf
.
Cf. Stephen Blank, “The CSTO: Gendarme of Eurasia,”
Eurasia Daily Monitor
8, no. 176 (September 26, 2011).
Fyodor Lukyanov, “Eurasian Union is Putin’s Top Priority,”
Valdai Discussion Club
(June 4, 2012).
Uwe Halbach, “Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Union: A New Integration Project for the CIS
Region?”
SWP Comments 1,
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (January 2012), 3.
“Interview: Analyst Says Uzbekistan’s Suspension Shows CSTO is ‘Irrelevant,’”
RFE/RL
(June 29, 2012).
“Serbia Becomes PA CSTO Observer,”
Tanjug
(April 11, 2013).
Hall Gardner,
Dangerous Crossroads: Europe, Russia, and the Future of NATO
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 112.
Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov,
Putin Itogi: Nezavisimyy Ekspertnyy Doklad
(Moscow: Novaya Gazeta, 2008), 54.
Eugene B. Rumer, “Russian Foreign Policy beyond Putin,” Adelphi Paper No. 390 (London:
The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2007), 24.
Anders Åslund, “The End Seems Near for the Putin Model,”
The Washington Post
(February 26, 2010).
It led in South Africa to critical comments. One economist “berated the government
for simply replacing Western corporations plundering Africa’s natural resources with
a new group of what he called ‘sub-imperialist’ powers, the Brics.” (Peter Fabricius,
“Brics Summit Important for SA,”
IOL News
(March 22, 2013).)
Alain Faujas, “La création de la banque de développement des Brics renvoyée à 2014,”
Le Monde
(March 29, 2013).
“Russia Offers S. Africa Help with Nuclear Power,”
RIA Novosti
(March 26, 2013).
“Russian, South African Presidents Sign Declaration on Strategic Partnership,”
ITAR-TASS
(March 26, 2013).
Cf. Michael Schuman, “Should BRICS Become BRIICS?”
Time
(March 3, 2010). Cf. also Karen Brooks, “Is Indonesia Bound for the BRICS?”
Foreign Affairs
90, no. 6 (November/December 2011).
Martyn Davies, “Indonesia and Turkey Top Brics Contenders,”
Business Day
(South Africa) (March 3, 2013).
Ruchir Sharma, “Broken BRICs: Why the Rest Stopped Rising,”
Foreign Affairs
91, no. 6 (November/December 2012), 4–5.