Most politicians seeking election tend to nail as few policies as possible to their masts, thus allowing themselves room for maneuver if they are elected. Depending on your point of view, US Republican presidential candidate John McCain has chosen either to be refreshingly frank on his view of Russia or has just created a serious hostage to his own political fortunes.
He has proposed, to the anger of the Kremlin, that Russia should be excluded from the G-8 group of rich countries, because of its “backsliding” over democracy. Given that Russia assumes the chairmanship of the G-8 in 2009, tweaking its nose in this manner is hardly politic for a man who may be dealing with the Kremlin from next January.
There is no doubt that power is being reconsolidated and recentralized under the Russian presidency and now that Vladimir Putin has stepped down to be prime minister, into the premier’s office as well. When did the Russian Parliament last flex its muscles against the Kremlin? And if it did, are there still press and media sufficiently independent or courageous to report the confrontation at length and in depth? Yet there can be no doubt of the huge popular support for Putin and his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev, as demonstrated by the overwhelming popular vote for him this spring.
Historically Russians have always looked to strong government of a sort that would be anathema to the Americans. Thus McCain not only misunderstands Russian democracy but also demonstrates a Bush-like ineptness in foreign policy analysis. Washington needs Russian support in the world, not least as a partner in the Middle East Peace Quartet. Financed by its hydrocarbon revenues, Russia is on the way back to superpower status. Its cooperation in the United Nations over issues such as the Iranian nuclear program, the future of the UN mandate in Iraq, the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe and the bloodletting in Darfur are crucial.
China may be plowing its own new and deep foreign policy furrow that at times puzzles and annoys both Moscow and Washington. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians and the Americans have often seemed to share many common concerns. It has been the gun-slinging foreign policy of the Bush White House that has done so much to dissipate trust and undermine relations between the two countries. At the very least a man, hoping to be sitting in the Oval Office six months from now, ought to give himself the opportunity to start over with Russia and try and repair the damage wrought by Bush. Yet McCain, perhaps still caught up in the old anti-Soviet rhetoric of the Reagan years, has chosen to suggest the Russia be excluded from the prestigious, if perhaps now less powerful, G-8 because of its internal politics.
Even assuming McCain has the right to criticize Russian democracy, this damaging proposal is pointless since no other G-8 country is likely to back it. Why then did he make it in the first place?
