Russia: International security and domestic insecurity
Why would Dmitry Medvedev make such a hawkish statement directed at America and Poland within hours of the election of an American president who by all accounts will be much less stubbornly aggressive than our current president? I don’t think Obama wants that missile shield in Poland: it’s expensive, it probably wouldn’t work against Russian missiles anyways, and if it’s really about Iran, it ought to be a lot closer to Iran (or at least on a line between Iran and Western Europe).
But Medvedev is not so stupid (even if he were stupid, I probably wouldn’t say so, because then I might be refused a Russian visa the next time I need to go do research there) as to be unaware of the fact that such a statement will make it hard for Obama to curtail the planned missile shield without looking like a wimp. And Obama doesn’t want to look like a wimp, and Medvedev & Putin know it. So why make such a statement? Do Medvedev & Putin actually want to increase the likelihood of that missile shield popping up in Poland?
I don’t think so–just like a lot of America’s foreign policy during the Bush administration was a drama put on for the sake of the domestic audience to distract it from problems on the home front, I think the source of such saber-rattling is not ambition in the realm of international security, but concerns about the regime’s domestic insecurity.
Riding on high oil prices, increasing transfers through pension and other government payments to keep the lower rungs of Russia’s population happy, and massive international reserves that could sustain an overvalued currency to keep imported goods inexpensive and allow Russians to vacation cheaply all over western Europe and the Mediterranean, Putin and Medvedev have sustained unheard-of levels of popularity (+70%). Such levels are necessary not so much to stay in power, but to keep any credible opposition from emerging, even among half the electorate, which has always been the Putin regime’s strategy: you don’t have to beat the opposition in the polls if you don’t allow any credible opposition to catch the voters’ eye.
Now, however, these strategies to keep their popularity sky-high are running into problems. The price of oil has come down to below $70/barrel, the credit crunch has pushed a number of Russian banks to the edge of failure and the regime’s client oligarchs now need to draw down its foreign currency reserves in a Russian bailout (even as foreign currency is coming in at half the previous rate because of the oil collapse), “moderate” inflation of 10-12% per year has gone on for long enough that the economy is likely overheating in terms of prices and salaries just at the point when it’s cooling off in terms revenue-generation. And except for a tiny number of very wealthy Russians, the country’s big-spending new middle class has no savings to keep consumption up during lean times. Not to mention the phenomenal regional imbalances between Moscow & Petersburg on the one hand and the rest of the country on the other, which have grown more and more pronounced as every (visible) Muscovite seems to be living like royalty compared to provinces that creep along with dilapidated infrastructure and little growth stimulus other than rising government salaries and transfers.
Russia’s going to have tough times ahead, economically, and with its stock market having to be suspended every other week and its international reserves hemorrhaging at the rate of $15b per month to defend the currency and keep leveraged oligarchs in business, those times could come soon.
Ever forward-thinking, Medvedev and Putin know there is no better, cheaper, more efficient way to gin up some extra approval-rating percentage points than by making some jingoistic statements that will convince Russians that there’s a steady hand at the helm and an external threat that the country’s macho leaders are taking a firm stance to counteract. It worked for George W. Bush to win the 2002 mid-term elections, and Putin & Medvedev know it. And I think that’s what’s behind this statement, not an actual desire or plan to invade central Europe (despite the predictions of that eminent foreign-policy analyst Dr. James Dobson, to the alternative).
