Time to Reevaluate?

Two bits of Russian news this afternoon and both of them highlight the incessant hostility between Russia and the West, hostility which stems from our pushing to develop an anti-balisitic missile system in Eastern Europe. The Bush Administration states that this shield will be used to deter an attack from Iran. Russia has maintained that this is unnecessary and that the shield will affect their strategic interests.

Well, now Russia may be cutting off gas to the Czechs in retaliation for allowing the US to build a radar on their territory. Russia, as the article mentions, is the world's largest exporter of energy resources and ever since their current economic windfall, they've been looking to reestablish their influence in Eastern Europe.

I'm anxious as all hell to hear what the Russians' excuse is going to be, what they'll say is "really" the reason they're cutting off gas. They've done this twice before, once in Lithuania after they decided to sell a non-Russian company and once in Ukraine shortly after the Orange Revolution. I think those two incidents were overreactions and unnecessary, but I'm hard pressed to fault the Russians too much for not liking this anti-balistic business. Russia points to recent tests to indicate Iran is incapable of getting a missile that deep into Europe.

But then again, maybe I'm too disillusioned by our saber-rattling towards Iran and want to prove they aren't a threat. It certainly seems as though our pushing the matter isn't helping anything on any side.

And while flexing their energy muscles is arguably sensible, Russia's grudge is pushing them so far as to veto sanctions against Zimbabwe, a move - whether they realize it or not - which is incredibly embarrassing.

On a final note, Robert Farley makes an interesting point: with this current veto, Russia has moved from using its veto power to protect its interests, but not going out of its way to oppose the US, to going out of its way to oppose the US. It's not back to the Cold War, but.....

Love Thy Neighbor

There's been some interesting news out of Russia over the past few days. First, in a typically surreal political agenda, Russian legislators are considering banning Halloween and all things emo in an effort to save its youth. This, as anyone who is familiar with Russia's youth knows, is insane in a culture where the government holds neo-fascist Pro-Putin Youth Camps. Somehow the Russians never got the memo about how criminalizing already self-righteous and rebellious adolescent behavior is not the greatest deterrent.

Addressing more pressing issues facing his country, Dmitry Medvedev gave an interview to the Times in which he said lots of nice, wonderful things about building political competition (he used the modifier, "correctly" as opposed to incorrectly building political competition and god knows what that means), and continues his assertion that he will do everything he can to eliminate corruption. It all sounds really terrific, but we heard it all before in Putin's first term. He will hopefully need more than rhetoric to bring Russia into cooperation with the EU.

About the only unqualified positive thing I can say about Medvedev is that he's not in the security services. You may remember these guys: descendants of the KGB and NKVD, people who've allegedly poisoned two dissidents, one, a legislator and journalist who was exposed to a chemical that ran him a deadly fever and made his skin peel off in layers, the other exposed to polonium-20, a highly radioactive substance, which killed him slowly and made his hair fall out.

And speaking of Litvinenko, Medvedev states that he's ready to work with Britain regarding the former security officials death. Depending on what he wants from Gordon Brown, this could be a good thing.

The current relationship between Russia and The West, historically a tumultuous one to say the least, is now yet agin on the brink of disaster. But there are nuances today that weren't there yesterday and they're especially worrisome. For instance, Russia is content to alienate the West because they believe that they can negotiate instead with Hamas, with Tehran and with Beijing. They believe that America is on the decline and thus Europe will soon follow. They're hedging their bets. But they're ignoring the fact that they have a terrible relationship with their expanding Muslim population in the Caucuses, a population which has some pretty serious issues with Moscow. What do they even think is going happen? Do they think that radical fundamentalists are going to forget Chechnya? Chechnya makes Iraq look like a Donald O'Connor song and dance number.

Then there's China. The Kremlin has this ridiculous fantasy of an equal partnership between Russia and China. However, China's economy is much more stable, much less dependent on energy resources and while Russia imports a vast number of Chinese goods, the reverse can't be said. When I was in Moscow, I saw kiosks selling Chinese food on practically every metro station, in the huge markets there were entire tables selling chinese tea sets, home decor and other goods. I can hardly imagine there being more than a handful of token novelty stores selling matryoshka dolls in China. If Russia enters into a dependent relationship with China, then, as Andrei Piontkovsky points out, Putin's legacy could see China in control of Russia's mineral rich Far East region. Then what would happen? Russia would be transported back to their pre-Imperial history, nestling in Kiev Rus and utterly dependent on countries who've they've worked so hard to piss off.

[--Edit: Ok. So I've fixed the roughly 6,000 typos and errors in this post. Sorry about that.]