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EU Observer, 23 May 2012: The last few months saw speculation of two possible behavioural models for Putin. The usual wishful thinkers were hoping for a Putin 2.0 (or maybe 3.0 or even 4.0) who was supposed to have got the message of the street protests and was supposed to engage in (swiping) reforms to modernise Russia and gradually and slowly liberalize the political system to let some steam off. The alternative camp of usual alarmists were saying that Putin will return with even stronger determination to tighten the screws and things will be much worse in terms of repression before they get better. And both camps waited for the new government to get a sense of what will come next. With the government announced here are a few things to note:

1. On the surface three fourths of the government were changed, but the changes were rather (and unsurprisingly) conservative. The composition of the new government suggest neither a strong reformist push, nor a centralising backlash, but rather more of the same. Especially given that several key former ministers just joined Putin in the Presidential Administration as his advisors, but are likely to exercise more influence over specific policies than many of the new ministers.

2. Overall the government looks unexpectedly ‘Medvedievist’ – in the sense of having a good presence of soit-disant ‘liberals’. Igor Shuvalov, first deputy prime minister and one of the vocal proponents of modernisation in recent years, stayed on despite the recent exposure of some questionable financial transactions. Arkady Dvorkovich, ex-advisor to President Medvedev and another modernisation advocate was also appointed deputy prime-minister. Igor Sechin, ex-deputy prime minister in charge of the energy sector and the erstwhile silovik tsar who has the image of the dark cardinal behind the throne, is out. He moved (back) to the Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft. There is also talk that with his departure will mean that the running of the energy-related matters is taken out of the government. (more…)

dupa o saptamana si ceva in tiumen si moldova; un ragaz de cateva zile la londra. am sris si articolul despre paradoxul ca china e mai autoritara decat rusia, dar isi schimba liderii odata la 10 ani, iar rusia e mai putin autoritara dar liderii nu si-i schimba… aparut in project syndicate – o structura mediatica articolele si comentariile careia sunt publicate in intreaga lume.

maine – o masa ‘rotunda’ la ECFR cu Fyodor Lukianov despre politica externa a Rusiei in contextul revenirii lui Putin la presedintie. vineri plec in estonia la lenart meri conference – unul dintre cele mai interesante evenimente anuale de acest gen din europa centrala. vad ca va trebui sa vorbesc despre parteneriatul estic impreuna cu vice-ministrul de externe ucrainean. sunt sanse mari ca intreaga discutie va fi deturnata de cazul timosenko si euro2012. apoi wuerzburg, germania – continuarea dialogurilor transistrene cu alti organizatori, dar aceeasi idee.

Russia in Reverse

Project Syndicate, 7 May 2012

LONDON – Vladimir Putin has just been inaugurated for a third term as President of the Russian Federation. But the event’s pageantry could not mask that his return to the presidency, after a four-year stint as Prime Minister, is far from triumphant. On the contrary, Putin, who has been in power since 2000, represents the specter of stagnation that haunts Russia – a specter that wants at least another two six-year terms as President.

The contrast between the transition at the Kremlin and China’s upcoming – and strictly choreographed – power transfer could hardly be starker. This autumn, all nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, including the country’s president, Hu Jintao, and premier, Wen Jiabao, will step down, and at least 14 members of the 24-member Politburo will retire, making way for a new generation of leaders.

So, although China has the more authoritarian system, it is moving forward. The same cannot be said for Putin’s Russia. (more…)

Ukraine’s favourite foreign policy game is called ‘multi-vectorness’ – a constant process of ‘eschewing choice‘ as this recent study explained. For years Ukraine sought to extract concessions and be treated nicely by both Russia and the EU or US not because it was sticking to its promises, but because it played sometimes skilfully and sometimes brazenly on contradictions between external actors. A simplified version of the rule of rules of the game, in its Ukrainian version, looks the following way:

1. Promise both Russia and the EU everything they might want to hear (usually integration into some Russian- or EU-led initiative);
2. Ask for something in exchange (market access, lower gas prices, financial assistance, opportunities for lucrative but opaque deals  etc).
3. Get what you asked and drag your feet on delivering on your promises.
4. If either the EU or Russia is upset for not getting what they were promised – threaten that you will intensify cooperation with the other external partner.

The truth is that this has mostly worked. (Not just for Ukraine, but also for Moldova under Voronin and at times Belarus’ Lukashenko or a whole series of Central Asian states, not to mention a plethora of historical case from Italian city-states in the Middle Ages, to Nasser’s Egypt and Tito’s Yugoslavia.) (more…)

On a recent trip to Ukraine for the Kiev Security Forum I asked some of the Ukrainian analysts whether Yanukovich will manage to become like Putin - a successful authoritarian leader able to retain firm political control for a long time. There is little doubt that Yanukovich would like to be like Putin and is trying to build a more or less similar system. But there are a number of differences. First, is that Ukraine does not have energy resources and Yanukovich therefore lacks the money to co-opt the elites and the public as widely as Putin could do.

But another important factor is how Putin and Yanukovich play their systems. Putin’s role in the Russian system is that of the ultimate arbiter between various elite groups. He is a moderator, not a player in the elite squabbles. He is not neutral, nor fair. During his presidency, his closest friends acquired vast assets, and there has been quite some redistribution of property. But Putin mainly tries to stay above the fray realising that this is an important power resource for him. This is how he makes himself indispensable to the multiple interests groups within the Russian elites. That is also why elites value him – he has the power and the skill to maintain some degree of balance between competing factions. (more…)

It is standard practice to bash Catherine Ashton and how the External Action Service turned out. The story is of an inward looking institution, without having a grand narrative or strategic vision, and little credibility in either EU member states or EU’s external partners. It is hard to argue that EU foreign policy is doing well. But that is first and foremost because of structural factors – the economic crisis that drastically reduces EU’s foreign policy appetite and resources, as well as soft power appeal (see EU Foreign Policy scorecard 2012 for a similar assessment).

It is perhaps time to reconsider at least some of the standard, off the cuff, assessments of the EEAS. If one looks at some specific foreign policy dossiers, the reality is that of a gradually emerging political animal that can show its teeth if and when necessary (were the Soviet Union alive, its propaganda department would have have used the consecrated term of  ’zverinnyi oskal imperializma’ – the evil grin of imperialism), rather than a fat cat throwing money around as its recently dominant image used to be. (more…)

A year or so ago, while doing research for the post-BRIC Russia report, I spoke to a US diplomat dealing with Russia about the ‘reset’. He sounded (naturally) very positive about its effectiveness. Among its two key achievements he mentioned cooperation on transit to Afghanistan and  halt of anti-US propaganda on the Kremlin-controlled media and a subsequent decrease in anti-Americanism in Russia society.

With Putin’s return, protests in Russia and the US elections all talk is now about the end of the reset. In the last few months anti-American propaganda made forceful comeback in the Russian media. Many thought it was just electioneering in the run-up to the March presidential elections. But that was too optimistic, it seems. In the last few weeks things became even more heated. NTV, a Russian TV channel owned by Gazprom Media, has been following US ambassador Michael McFaul pretty much everywhere, which lead to an outburst of indignation from McFaul, as well as accusations that his phone (and therefore calendar) is hacked, and a formal US State Department protest over the harassment of the US ambassador. McFaul also claimed that upon arrival to Moscow last January he felt like he was back in the Cold War and that ’it has been surprising that there was so much anti-Americanism, because we thought we were building a different kind of relationship, and it makes some people nervous that it could so quickly and reflexively go back to – in terms of rhetoric – an era that we thought was behind us’. Then, on a different occasion, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called McFaul ‘arrogant’. In other words, the dismantlement of what was considered a key achivement of the reset is well advanced. (more…)

Brussels might have started to get used to the sharp-tongued former Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin, but Moldova is only in the early stages of doing so. After a stint in Brussels, Rogozin moved back to Moscow last December to be appointed deputy prime-minister in charge of the military-industrial complex. Rogozin is a Russian populist nationalist politician with huge  (rumour has it that presidential) ambitions. A couple of weeks ago he was also appointed special representative of the Russian president on Transnistria (rather than on conflict settlement in Transnistria) and co-chair of the Russian-Moldovan intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation. The move was badly staged. The Moldovans learned about it from the media. The appointment came in the same package as the nomination of two Russian regional governors (of Krasnodar Krai and North Ossetia) as ’special representatives’, read overseers, for the adjacent Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And Rogozin on the third day of his new appointment called Moldova a ‘hencoop’ on his twitter account.

The Moldovans are worried, the EU unimpressed and both irritated. Clearly the appointment of Rogozin shows a much higher Russian political interest in Transnistria. The trouble is that when Russia would rather put up a show instead of cooperating – Rogozin is the right person to (mis)handle dossiers. Given that in the last couple of months there have been some hopes regarding conflict settlement in Transnistria after the long-serving Transnistrian leader Igor Smirnov lost power to the younger Evgeny Shevchuk, the appointment of Rogozin is an ever bigger nuisance. Rogozin is likely to be more concerned with self-promotion than pursuing conflict-settlement. (more…)

This is a continuation of the previous post on Morocco’s political system.

The 20 February movement

Speaking at an Italian restaurant in Rabat some early-twenties activists from the ’20 February movement’ are saying that ‘We do not feel represented by the existing political parties. We want a monarchy like in Holland. For now we are asking for reforms, not regime change.’ The movement is not a typical youth movement modelled on the type of Otpor in Serbia, Pora in Ukraine or Kefaya in Egypt. Actually the early-20s activists of the Moroccan movement have not even heard of Kefaya. Their movement brings together or is supported by a ragtag of young urban middle class ‘spoiled kids’, the outlawed Islamist movement Al-Adl Wal Ihsane (Justice and Spirituality) and leftists disappointed with the left-wing parties. (more…)

tocmai revenit din maroc. ECFR scrie mai multe studii despre intreaga vecinatate sudica. colegii mei au fost in egipt si libia, iar eu m-am ales cu cazurile mai usoare – tunisia si maroc. daca nu mergeam la chisinau as fi ajuns si eu in egipt si poate libia… in maroc ne-am intalnit si cu (r)evolutionari, si cu islamisti, si cu guvernul… islamistii sunt curiosi… partie de justice et development – partid islamist legal si oarecum loial regelui marocului (care e descedendent al profetului si ‘commander of the faithful’) cat si miscarea pentru justitie si binefacere – care e interzisa si mai putin loiala regelui. actualmente puterea curtii regale e contestata de o coalitie de islamisti, tineri/facebookeristi/bloggeri/si stangisti. islamistii ne-au povestit timp de 10 minute despre fratia religiilor si cum crestinii coptici ii protejau pe musulmani in timpul rugaciunilor in tahrir, si vice-versa. scriu mai multe bloguri despre asta. iata un prim blog. mai urmeaza altele.

Revolutions and youth movements

One of the main stories of the 2000-2005 wave of revolutions – successful in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and failed in Belarus, Azerbaijan and Egypt – were the existence of organised youth movements with names which were variations on the idea ‘enough is enough’. Otpor in Serbia, Pora in Ukraine, Kmara in Georgia, Kefaya in Egypt, Zubr in Belarus), and Mjaft in Albania became almost household names. However, I have not heard of anything ressembling Kefaya in the recent Egyptian or Tunisian revolutions. These recent revolutions were conspicuous by the absence of well-organised and well-branded youth movements. The revolutions seem to have done well enough without them. (more…)

The revolutionary upheaval in the Southern neighbourhood and the failures of reforms in most of the Eastern neighbourhood are begging for a revised EU approach to the neighbourhood policy (ENP). In March the EU presented some ideas on ‘a partnership for democracy and shared prosperity’ with the Southern Mediterranean. Some time in May the EU will present also a full review of the ENP. A central concept of the updated ENP is the idea of ‘more for more’ – the EU should give more political and financial support to those neighbourhood countries that implement more reforms and are more democratic.

‘More for more’ stands for a more meritocratic ENP. It should lay the basis for proper differentiation between neighbours, not based on geographic criteria, but based on their performance. The concept is also supposed to change the way the EU is spending its money. Currently the EU pre-allocates most of its assistance to specific neighbourhood states (almost irrespective of their reform performance) in 7-years budgetary cycles. ‘More for more’ is supposed to make it easier to shift its more EU assistance from one neighbourhood state to another depending on their reform performance. Overall, the concept the concept of ‘more for more’ is laudable and fair, but also quite slippery. (more…)