Russia and the West: Living With Putin, Again
ON THE margin of the G20 summit later this month Russia’s new (but also old) president, Vladimir Putin, will meet America’s Barack Obama for the first time since his election in March. The atmosphere is likely to be chilly. That is as it should be, for since his decision last autumn to return to the Kremlin, Mr Putin has been stridently negative and anti-Western, most recently over Syria (see article). Such behaviour demands a stiff response from the West.
When Mr Obama came to power, his administration talked of a “reset” in relations with Russia. This new, friendlier approach had some useful consequences. It enabled America to negotiate and ratify a strategic arms-reduction treaty. It helped to bring about a slightly more constructive Russian attitude to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. And it secured Russia’s imminent entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Just as with China a decade ago, WTO membership should press Russia to compete more openly and fairly in world markets and to abide more closely by international trade rules.
But the reset was based in part on two misplaced hopes: that Dmitry Medvedev, who had been lent the presidency for one term by Mr Putin in 2008, would genuinely take charge of the country, and that some in his government had sound liberalising, pro-Western instincts. Those hopes were dashed by Mr Putin’s swatting aside of Mr Medvedev last September to allow his own return to the Kremlin, the rigging of elections, his crackdown on Moscow’s protesters and his new Nyet posture.