Brown’s stand on Russia is a welcome correction
Tony Blair was one of many Western leaders duped by President Putin, writes James Forsyth, but the new British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary must stand their ground
With oil at over $78 a barrel — about $60 higher than it was when the Soviet Union was officially dissolved on Christmas Day, 1991 — and predicted to reach the $90 mark this summer, Russia is flush with funds. As Fraser Nelson noted in last week’s Spectator, this money has not been spent on schools and hospitals but guns and ammo with the defence budget increasing sixfold since 2001. At the same time, Russia has gone from being a partly free country, according to the respected non-governmental organisation Freedom House, to being what even the Kremlin now talks of as a ‘managed democracy’. Sadly, this situation will not improve when Putin retires in 2008. Instead, things will get worse under his probable successor, Sergei Ivanov, the hawkish former defence minister whom Putin recently promoted to be Deputy Prime Minister.
A new crop of Western leaders must now grasp the challenge that Russia presents. Angela Merkel has already shown herself to have a far better understanding of the threat that it poses than her predecessor Gerhard Schröder, who disgracefully retired on to the board of a Gazprom subsidiary after striking a pipeline deal with Russia specifically designed to cut out Germany’s eastern neighbours. Merkel’s decision to reverse her opposition to nuclear power shows a welcome appreciation of the dangers of relying on Russian energy. Yet Putin still believes that he can pick off Western leaders one by one as illustrated by his decision to cut the French firm Total into the development of the Shtokman gas field, which is believed to hold enough gas by itself to meet all Europe’s gas needs for three years. Nicolas Sarkozy, who has placed human rights at the centre of his foreign policy, must show that this prize will not cause him to bite his tongue about the closing down of civil society in Russia.
Equally, the West must cease giving Russia a veto over its own security. Those who argue that the only legitimate way to act internationally is through the UN Security Council are empowering Russia. Putin has brilliantly — and cynically — used the fact that he has a veto over any actions that can be taken against Iran or Syria to persuade the West to turn a blind eye to his misdemeanours.
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