*What with all that’s going on in Ukraine and speculation about Vlad Putin’s end game, there’s been no lack of Cold War references of late. That remains a rhetorical reach. This is not a Cold War rerun, because it’s not the U.S. vs. the U.S.S.R. with Berlin and Havana trip wires and proxies fighting each other from Angola to the Middle East to Latin America. There is no “Dr. Strangelove II” in the works.
This is not Nikita Khrushchev’s East Bloc Soviet Union. We’re not confronted with the 21st century version of the Cuban missile crisis. Jihadists–not Commies–are the world’s existential threat. And this, to be sure, is not the command-economy USSR.
In fact, the forces that worry Russia most are market forces. For all his KGB knavery and nationalistic bluster, Putin knows Russia’s role in the global economy. He also knows Russia’s 100 billionaires aren’t what Engels, Marx and Lenin envisioned.
A broader conflict could endanger Russia’s oil and gas revenue, which accounts for nearly 3/4 of its export income. On the first day after the Crimea takeover, the ruble plunged and the stock market–yes, Russia has a stock market these days–tanked more than 10 percent.
And Crimea is no prize beyond nationalistic symbolism. It’s known for its organized crime and disorganized economy. GDP per capita in Crimea is about $5,000. In Russia, it’s about $14,000. About 40 percent of Crimea’s annual ($500 million) budget had been subsidized by Kiev. That’s now Russia’s responsibility.
No, this is not Cold War renewal. This is a Russia with half as many people (142 million) as the old U.S.S.R. A Russia with a stock market and vulnerability to Visa and MasterCard service as well as Fitch and Standard & Poor’s credit rating downgrades. A Russia that was in slow-growth mode before Crimean sanctions. Economic projections for this year now call for zero growth.
And this is a U.S. with, candidly, no less vexing issues with the disparate, 28-member European Union–forming a united front and moving on from NSA snooping–than Russia.
Too bad, however, that it’s not Mikhail Gorbachev in charge in Moscow. As Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan found out, he was somebody the West could work with.
* A key point, and it’s beyond ironic, with taking issue with Putin over Crimea, is “self determination,”a tenet the West has always venerated. It was good for the American colonies and Kosovo and probably Catalonia. At its core–masked troops and Russian security forces-overseen referendum notwithstanding–self-determination, however idealized, is what the Russian-rooted and Russian-speaking majority of Crimea want. And, ironically, may deserve.
* You can call it weak, or inconsistent or even incoherent, but the foreign policy of President Barack Obama is fundamentally flawed because it is inevitably dependent on an enlightened, cooperative world.