GW Discourse

An interesting paragraph in a New York Times article today on Hillary Clinton’s trip to Russia highlights one of the more confusing aspects of that country’s political situation:

“Yet Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis was on the new rather than the old. She told the students that they symbolized a new Russia, one that produced innovators like Sergey Brin, who was born in Moscow and helped to start the Internet search giant Google. And she praised President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia for charting a vision of the country’s future based on technological innovation rather than mineral wealth.

Mrs. Clinton’s visit underscores the Obama administration’s growing attachment to Mr. Medvedev, Vladimir V. Putin’s handpicked choice to succeed him as president. Last month, the White House made much of Mr. Medvedev’s support for its tough stance toward Iran.

After Mrs. Clinton’s meeting on Tuesday with the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in which he ruled out threatening Iran with sanctions, she went to see Mr. Medvedev at his dacha outside Moscow. American officials said that Mr. Medvedev was unstinting in his support for the administration.

But on a visit to Beijing on Wednesday, Mr. Putin told reporters that he believed that it was too early to consider tough sanctions against Iran, suggesting that threats would poison negotiations.”

“Growing attachment?” What? Here the Times could be interpreted as suggesting that the Obama administration is pursuing a sort of wedge strategy in its dealings with the Russian government, playing the (maybe) more pro-American Medvedev off against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who had his own eight years as President to demonstrate his unfriendliness to the United States.

If the White House is in fact taking this approach, it’s a bad idea. For starters, we can’t really pretend to be experts on the internal dynamics of the Kremlin.  Medvedev was elected (or rather “elected”) to the Presidency in March of 2008, on the credentials of being Putin’s best friend, chief of staff and general right-hand man.  His first act was to appoint Putin to the position of Prime Minister, an administrative position below the Presidency in law. In practice, the man who spent most of the past decade centralizing power with a vengeance was not about to give up control so easily, and many observers see Medvedev as little more than a “puppet” or a “placeholder” that Putin uses as a show of respecting the two consecutive term limit in the post-Soviet constitution. Putin is also chairman of his and Medvedev’s United Russia Party, which enjoys an almost China-esque monopoly on government and genuinely huge popular support.

Medvedev has taken a softer tone toward political opposition groups and human rights advocates than his predecessor, but the obstacles they face from the Kremlin remain—no real action toward political openness is apparent. The same can be said about Russia’s relations with the United States since Obama took office, with many conciliatory words on Medvedev’s part but still no firm commitment to the Iran sanctions America wants. The only policy change Medvedev announced (“announced”, because who knows if he or Putin actually “made” the decision) has been a backpedaling on previous threats to deploy ballistic missiles in Kaliningrad, now that Obama has moved the much-hated missile defense system out of Eastern Europe .

So whether Medvedev’s supportive words reflect genuine reformist tendencies and a desire to work with America, or just the calculated PR statements of another autocrat is hard to say. We can’t be sure how much authority the Russian President actually has relative to “Tsar” Putin, and to try to exploit any imagined distance between the two men will at best sour US-Russia ties and at worst encourage an intra-government confrontation that leaves one man standing. If it’s Putin—and it probably would be—we’re back where we started.