Putin's Return and Washington's Reset With Russia

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Snapshot

The Temporary Return of Putin Co.

Lilia Shevtsova

Russia's ruling security-services clan, which has usurped power over the last decade, needs Vladimir Putin to return to power. Putin and this close-knit group plan to rule the country for life -- but economic stagnation and rising social unrest means they may be in for a shock.

Snapshot

The Hinge that Holds Russia Together

Vladislav Inozemtsev

The Russian state is devoid of institutions that can exist outside of the personalized power structure that Vladimir Putin has built inside the Kremlin. And that is a foremost reason he's returning to the presidency.

Snapshot

The End of the 'Reset'

Andrew C. Kuchins

It is hardly novel for Putin and his regime to blur domestic opposition with treason and terrorism, then claim that foreign support is the culprit. What is new today is Putin’s own insecurity about the future of his hold on power, which will make his foreign policy as president more unpredictable.

With last Saturday's announcement, we now know with virtual certainty that Vladimir Putin will be returning to the Kremlin in May as the next president of Russia. His groomed and subordinate sidekick, Dmitri Medvedev, will trade his position and become the next prime minister. The "tandem," as the arrangement was originally dubbed in 2008, will endure for the foreseeable future, perhaps even for more than a decade to come.

While this leadership change portends little for Russia -- indeed, once again de jure power will be reunited with de facto power -- one key area remains a question mark: relations with Washington. Remember back to Putin's second presidential term, from 2004 to 2008. His criticisms of the United States sharpened. He obstructed a number of U.S. foreign policy initiatives such as NATO enlargement and missile defense in Europe. And then things hit rock bottom in the fall of 2008 after the Russian invasion of Georgia, just after Medvedev became president.

Yet, virtually as soon as the Obama administration came to power the following January, relations between Washington and Moscow made an abrupt about-face. The Obama administration had several key incentives to "reset." First, Washington wanted Russian support in trying to curtail Iran's nuclear weapons program. Second, increasing the United States' military presence in Afghanistan would be ever more difficult without a friendly nod from the Kremlin. And third, Obama had made nuclear arms control a signature item on his foreign policy agenda. Moscow would have to be on board.

In the face of considerable skepticism in both capitals, Obama and Medvedev resuscitated the bilateral relationship. They worked together in the United Nations to pass the toughest sanctions ever on Iran. They reached agreement with Russia and other regional states to establish new transit corridors to supply troops in Afghanistan. And sitting together in Prague in April of 2010, they signed the so-called New START treaty, the most significant nuclear arms reduction agreement the world has seen in two decades. 

But now Putin is returning to the presidency. Some are suggesting the strongman will play tough, scrapping the considerable progress that Medvedev has made. Yet, unlike the two previous Washington-Moscow honeymoons -- the first in 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in 2002, immediately following 9/11, both of which quickly ended in mutual disappointment -- the current warming trend will be more sustainable. To put it most simply: With a rising China, falling oil prices, and a need for partnerships abroad, Putin can no longer go it alone.

Long before the financial crisis, a mainstream view prevailed in Russia that the United States was in economic decline. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were sapping U.S. power. Putin often made it a point of underscoring such arguments, while at the same time pleading his case that Russia was ascending alongside the other fast-growing BRIC countries. A truly new multipolar world was emerging. Or so the thinking went.

The dramatic impact of the global financial crisis not only took a toll on the United States, however. It struck a blow to Russia as well, proving exactly how vulnerable the Russian economic growth miracle of the previous decade had been. Of all the members of the G-20, the Russian economy was the hardest hit. The change in GDP from growth to shrinkage amounted to 15 percent in just one year. The sobering event led to renewed interest on the part of the Medvedev administration and much of Russia's political-economic elites to integrate more deeply with the West to insure Russia's modernization. 

As China came out a relative winner, Russian elites began to acknowledge openly that the changing global balance of economic and political power may not, as some had argued, be shifting to their favor. After years of obsessing about the dangers of U.S. power and unilateralism, Moscow seems to have a new bogeyman. The Kremlin is now increasingly concerned about the rapid rise of China and its growing influence in Siberia, the Far East, Central Asia, and the Caspian -- what Medvedev coined three years ago as Russia's "zone of privileged interests."

So Putin returns to the presidency to find a changed world. Back in the early 2000s, he displayed natural political instincts in positioning himself as a leader promising to bring stability, predictability, and greater prosperity to the Russian people. Indeed, they responded. But now the domestic policy challenges are different. Stability, predictability, and greater prosperity are taken for granted. Russians are far wealthier today, with a per capita GDP of close to $20,000 (it was just about $2,000 in 1999). Instead, demands for better social services, better governance, and less corruption are growing. There is a natural tendency, as modernization theory argues, that as a nation's per capita GDP grows beyond a level of $10,000, citizens demand greater government openness and accountability. Increasingly, at least at the elite level, Russians want more pluralistic, if not democratic, governance. This has been anything but Putin's priority in the past; he may have to reconsider his stance now.