The Russian cold war

Edward Lucas:

How was Alexander Litvinenko murdered? We don’t know yet; we may never find out, but what is clear is his death marks the start of a new Cold War. The question is how to win it.

Vladimir Putin’s thuggish and arrogant rhetoric; the routine use of murder in business and politics; the bullying of neighbours such as Georgia; energy blackmail; authoritarian behaviour by the Kremlin — all have crystallised a growing unease with the wishful thinking that has marked outsiders’ attitudes to Russia in the past 15 years.

It is still possible — just — to argue that this is a messy but necessary transition period, and that stability will produce a middle class in Russia that will want liberal politics and friendly relations with Europe and the US. Those hopes hang on a thread: that the 2008 Russian presidential elections will bring a real contest, rather than a fixed coronation.

But the overwhelming likelihood is that Russia will get worse not better. The Economist recently cautioned that Russia was heading towards fascism: blustery, bossy and brutal. It will have particular Russian features too, chiefly extraordinary corruption, waste and incompetence.

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The first response must be not to panic. For all its bombast, Russia’s strength rests on sand. Its demographics are disastrous: in the minute you may have taken to read to this point, five Russians died, and only three were born. Its roads and railways are still rickety, its pipelines and powerstations clapped-out. The much touted gas weapon may not be loaded: decades of neglect and under-investment may mean that Russia is an energy beggar, not an energy bully.

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Much of the rest of the article is about what Europe must do to avoid dependency on Russia. There is no mention of Russia's most dangerous mischief in Iran where it is helping the Iranian build their nuke plants and is selling air defense systems to protect them. The US and Israel have been unusually quite about this latest development. I suspect it is because they know how to defeat the Russian missiles.