Awkward Russia. Hindrance or help?

Testing Vladimir Putin's true intentions

SQUINT just a bit, and it could almost be that the cold war never ended. Russia's relations with America and Europe have turned frostier since Ukraine's "orange" revolution a year ago wrested a rigged election from Vladimir Putin's preferred candidate. Since then, Mr Putin has turned his orange-tinted pique on Poland (Ukraine's supporter) and his Baltic neighbours, openly backed the bloody suppression of democracy protests in Uzbekistan, and let it be known that Russia will "stand by" Iran and Syria, fending off UN sanctions. At home, Mr Putin's allies have proposed a new law to throttle foreign-financed NGOs and subject Russian ones to Soviet-style bureaucratic harassment. And he is sticking more cronies on the boards of key companies not already under his control. All this makes Mr Putin's Russia an awkward partner for the West.

There is an added awkwardness, too: Russia is shortly to become chairman-for-a-year of the G8 group of (until Russia joined the original G7) rich, market-driven democracies. The G8 is not the world-steering mechanism its members like to think it is. But, elevated prematurely to membership in hopes of encouraging it towards greater democracy and economic reform, Russia has done less and less to earn its place.

The true picture is not entirely bleak. Russia is not reverting to communism. Its economy, though increasingly manipulated, is still open for private business. Though Mr Putin regrets the collapse of the Soviet Union - earlier this year he called it "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century" - he is more nouveau tsar than commissar. Nor is there anything wrong with Russia pursuing its own foreign-policy interests in relations with America or Europe. The real problem for Russia is how narrowly Mr Putin defines those interests. That, and his increasing crankiness with those who challenge him, which compounds the mistake.

Getting Russia on message

The new NGO law may yet be amended, to keep foreign funds to battle AIDS, or find peaceful work for Russia's former nuclear, chemical and biological weaponeers. But the clamp on Russian NGOs is likely to endure ()see page 42. Like China, Mr Putin is cracking down in part out of fear that the "colour revolutions" that overturned rotten governments from Georgia, to Ukraine, to Kirgizstan will spread further. But depriving Russians of any channel for political debate (he has knocked away other checks on his power) will not make Russia better governed, or help end the home-grown mayhem in Chechnya ()see page 41. And helping dam up the pressures for change in badly misgoverned neighbours, like Uzbekistan, will make the eventual explosion more deadly to Russia too.

As for Syria and Iran, Mr Putin's policies have a logic, up to a point. With Iraq under new management, Syria is Russia's only real foothold to hoist itself into a seat at future Middle East negotiations. Iran offers Russia the chance to do what China does over North Korea: play up its own diplomatic influence by offering to broker a deal.

A big test of Mr Putin's foreign-policy intentions will come if the regime in Damascus refuses all chivvying to co-operate with the UN investigation into the killing earlier this year of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister. Or if Iran tosses aside Russia's offer to enrich uranium on its behalf, as a way of heading off a clash over Iran's own "peaceful" enrichment programme that two decades of cover-ups and lies have led many governments to worry is just a cover for bomb-building.

Better for Russia, and everyone else, if he were to tell Iran (and get China to as well) that starting its own enrichment, as it is threatening to do, will end Russia's support at the UN and invite sanctions. Bringing Russia on message is about all, diplomatically, that might give Iran pause. If he managed that, even a prickly Mr Putin could usefully spend part of his G8 presidency helping to devise a scheme of nuclear-fuel guarantees for other countries too, cutting the risk that such technologies could in future be abused for weapons-making.

Editorial looks at developments in Russia under President Putin, particularly in the politcial and foreign policy spheres.

• Primary Source