Should Putin host the G8?

Anne Applebaum

05 July 2006

By allowing Russia to stage the summit we have accepted her as one of us, says Anne Applebaum. This G8 will give its tacit approval to the theft of private assets, the destruction of the rule of law and the violation of human rights

What is at stake here, in other words, is not just Russian–Western relations, but the West’s very ability to go on talking about democracy — in Russia, in Iraq, anywhere — and still get taken even remotely seriously. In a world where the promotion of democratic and liberal values is itself a realpolitik necessity — some form of political liberalisation is absolutely essential to the battle against al-Qa’eda and the ultimate integration of the Middle East into the global economy — that’s a pretty big problem.

Oddly, the only people who seem really worried about the long-term credibility of the West are Russians. In Washington a few months ago, Andrei Illarionov, an economic adviser to Putin until his dramatic resignation last year, told me that Putin always returns from G8 meetings feeling utterly convinced of the rightness of his political course; more than once, Putin’s opponents have been arrested or put on trial in a G8 summit’s wake. By attending the G8 summit this month in St Petersburg, Illarionov said, Western leaders will show their approval of ‘the nationalisation of private property, destruction of the rule of law, violation of human rights and liquidation of democracy’. Garry Kasparov, the chess champion who dabbles in politics, has also said that the G8 will resemble ‘the Berlin Olympics in 1936’ and predicts it will be followed by the ‘equivalent of Munich 1938’ — the de facto acceptance of Putin’s Russia by the West.

But perhaps it is not surprising that Russians, not Americans or Brits, are the ones pointing this out. After all, it is they, not we, who really care about abstract ideas like ‘democracy’ and ‘free markets’ since it is they, not we, who will suffer without them. Russians also understand better the significance that the G8 — a dull bit of bureaucracy to most of us — has acquired in the rest of the world. When I told Illarionov that Americans and West Europeans don’t care much about the G8 one way or the other, he shrugged. ‘What is important is not how you in the US view the G8. You have to think how your participation will be viewed and used in the world.’

We, like the London Stock Exchange, have now been warned.

Anne Applebaum is a contributing editor of The Spectator and a Washington Post columnist and member of its editorial board.