For many months now, the international community has been anticipating a long rush-hour of forthcoming top-tier power changes. They are as important as to force strategy re-drawing of states and international institutions alike. While the next head of state in Russia is known, and due to take office on May 7, the next American is not.
Thousands of megabytes of analytical talk have meticulously attempted to decode the future plans of Vladimir Putin. Scenarios of non-believers of Putin’s withdrawal abound because the outgoing Russian president is in his prime and at the peak of his popularity, running a hectic agenda of visits right through the end of his term.
Therefore, Putin’s voluntary, even though constitutionally driven, withdrawal from the country’s top office has perplexed many. All the more so because it contravenes that typical of Russia gerontocratic – or lifelong-in-power – record of the past few decades.
This little understandable riddle is further complicated by the fact that Putin remains in politics and in charge of Russia’s executive power and United Russia – the party holding an overwhelming majority in parliament. It fuelled speculation about what moves he has made to cement his future. Many theorised that Russia might gradually move from presidential to parliamentary republic to fit the supremacy needs of a former strong president in a new capacity.
Yet that theory stumbles on the fact that his successor Dmitriy Medvedev has been Putin’s associate and friend for 17 years and that the two have a shared view on Russia’s domestic and foreign policies. What’s more, Putin publicly aired his determination not to superimpose his presidential authority. He repeatedly said Medvedev would represent Russia at the next G8 summit and introduced him to heads of state while on foreign visits. Thus, as articulated by Medvedev as well, he would play the “tandem” formula, whereby the outgoing president would oversee the executive and legislative and the new head of state would work on strategy.
Some foreign commentators doubted the sustainability of this mechanism, drawing on Russia’s poor record of double-headed rule and what they called repeated instances of suppression of democracy.
Foreign media repeatedly drew attention to the “lustration” of non-allegiant elements, which pervaded both the political, business – and why not? – the media life of the country. The infamous imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose release is now requested by a slew of high-profile foreign officials, became the trademark of this process in the business environment as well as the gradual concentration of core business assets to the state fold.
The latest general and presidential elections also passed in a sterile environment, almost stripped of international observers. While the parliamentary elections set the minimum threshold to seven per cent to procure an overwhelming electoral victory for United Russia, the presidential elections sieved off for technical reasons all liberal candidates so as to make Medvedev’s case a win-only situation. Many media were said to have slowly reached the ultimate censuring – and closure on dissension – stage.
Finally, the Federal Security Service apparatus, developed by a Putin of KGB background, has been stronger than ever to quash all dissension. And it is passing under the authority of the next prime minister.
With as neat a deployment toward autocracy, Putin’s democratic and constitution-abiding step-down from the presidential seat does seem bewildering, foreign observers commented.
Yet others dismissed talks measuring the extent of Putin’s power gluttony and its potential to inflame power struggles and, rather, look at what this power concentration targets. To them, Putin has the rare head-of-state approach of a visionary who curbs self-promotion and focuses on aggrandising Russia, both politically and economically. Condensing power in few hands makes sense when statesmen’s energy needs to entirely hone on difficult reforms, they argued in an interpretation of Putin’s philosophy.
In effect, such philosophy behind autocracy is novel to Russia and is capable of breaking historical precedents and can comfortably accommodate two men in power if thinking in the same vein, they added.
Medvedev and Putin do roll the same cart of domestic and international plans with the public and have too much work to do to spend time on power struggles.
Much to mind on the internal front
During his two mandates, Putin did make strong headway in resurrecting a cash-strapped Russia. A neatly devised energy strategy, which elevated Russia to the status of the world’s largest exporter, raised Europe’s sensitivity on energy dependence matters but also replenished Russia’s foreign currency reserves to the third largest after those of China and Japan. Propped by the soaring crude and gas prices on international markets, reserves last year reached $500 billion. Russia also reined in budget deficits and inflation. However, business remained burdened by high corporate taxes.
Its economy remained plagued by poor infrastructure, unreformed education, pension and health care systems and a dysfunctional judiciary that has nested the feeling of legal nihilism. And the population of the country continued to deplete rapidly.
Hence, it was hardly coincidental when at the spring economic summit in Krasnoyarsk Medvedev took up on the February 2008 statements of his predecessor and announced the long-term economic concept he’d pursue during his presidential term and that should translate the economic upswing into social welfare.
Dubbed the “four I’s” after the Russian initials of Institutions, Infrastructure, Innovation and Investment, it addresses the abovementioned pains of local economy.
The reforms are expensive. The upgrade of infrastructure alone is set to cost $1000 billion in the next 10 years, according to Russian public officials. At the same time, returns on these investments are to be felt in the next few decades. Hence, keeping the fiscal balance while the economy upgrades and diversifies so that it reduces its heavy dependence on energy and international market prices would be central to Medvedev’s term.
Yet that balance would be by augmenting both sides of the equation. Building up edges in innovation-geared sectors will go hand in hand with keeping the strong hold on energy, analysts said, adding one should not forget Medvedev was at the helm of Gazprom when Russia’s gas giant made successful inroads into Europe, through acquisitions of key assets and higher exports.
The role of Putin in equation re-balancing comes through his party. At a recent summit of United Russia, he said that the party should add to its to-date administrative-organisational function an analytical one. What is more, the party should become the country’s “brain” that would develop the instruments to implement the country’s long-term economic strategy.
“The country enters into a stage when ideas become more important than access to oil pipelines,” he said, adding that this was valid for politics as well.
What to expect on the foreign front
While ideas are a welcome asset in internal policy, so is the balanced and non-confrontational approach on foreign policy matters. Both Putin and Medvedev made clear that Russia would be interested in sustaining friendly – tailored after national interests – relations with the EU, Nato, the US and individual countries while making itself heard as frequently and on a variety of issues as to earn the status of a great power.
This non-infringing, yet a strategy of an intermediary in international matters has already been underway for several months now. Whether it be because of preparation for Russia’s handover to a man who is yet to win repute with the international community but during the last months of his presidency Putin made a number of important visits in his search for alliances. Their geography spanned Europe and the Middle East, the highlight being the Nato summit in Bucharest. At the same time, he hosted both US president George W Bush and the president of the autonomous Palestinian authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
Meanwhile, he insisted on a non-infringement policy toward itself, this meaning that the country remained faithful toward its policy of statehood, sovereignty and national interests. At the Nato summit, Russia earned the support of Germany and a host of other Nato members to postpone preliminary invitations to the alliance for its immediate neighbours Ukraine and Georgia.
At the same time it muted its support for Serbia and its fight for secessionist Kosovo.
This non-confrontational approach worked in parallel with maximum networking to ensure maximum visibility during a stage when many countries are inclined to make strategic shifts. With the EU set for radical changes with a Reform Treaty soon to be implemented, Nato postponing but inevitably heading to a similar transformation, the US anticipating its next president and Russia yet to prove the statesman acumen of its new leader, such little-friction strategy makes sense, according to analysts.
No immediate change
For the time being, Russia is hardly due to witness any radical changes in strategy. Most Russian analysts believe the change in the presidency will mark a smooth continuation of the course Putin has mapped out. Besides, the legacy of the outgoing president represents internal reforms that are half-way through and are recognised by the outgoing and incoming presidents as important to finalise. Hence a Putin-Medvedev cohabitation at this point in time and under this set of domestic and international circumstances does not seem like an implausible formula. Besides, as Medvedev said in his exclusive interview with the Financial Times, “Russia is a presidential republic with a strong executive authority”. Time will show if Medvedev’s nightingale forecast comes true.
