At an off-the-record discussion several months ago, a former aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that Russia's elite was intoxicated from the smell of oil and gas and was drunk with petroleum power. The state-controlled, cash-rich energy giant Gazprom had just attempted to purchase a British energy company and was making progress in its plan to gain control over European pipelines and gas terminals. Russia was making strides in building Nordstream, a Baltic Sea pipeline that would allow it to supply gas directly to Europe and bypass pipelines that run through Ukraine and Poland. And Central Asia's political leaders were in lock step with the Kremlin, agreeing that all energy exports to Europe should flow through Russia rather than across the Caspian and Turkey. In short, Russia was getting stronger, and it was using its prodigious resources to advance its geopolitical agenda.
But the Kremlin has overreached. Its arrogance and aggressive posturing have set off global alarm bells. The European Union has begun to respond, taking steps to rein in Russia and sap some of Putin's swagger. His fortunes began to turn with the May election of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, had made cooperation with Russia a hallmark of his presidency. But Sarkozy signaled a change in that relationship by warmly hosting the president of Ukraine, and raising concerns during a visit to Russia last week about the deterioration of human rights there. The EU has made a similar shift. Spooked by Putin's rhetoric and aggressive use of energy as a weapon against Ukraine in 2005 and Belarus in 2006, the EU issued new regulations in September that will bar foreign firms from owning Europe's energy distribution systems and utility companies. European leaders also agreed, after years of discussion, to proceed with a pipeline that will bypass Russia (and Iran) to bring new supplies of gas from Azerbaijan and Central Asia directly to Europe. At the same time, Russia's Nordstream project is moving ahead more slowly than expected-thanks to tiny Estonia, which asserted its sovereignty and denied Russia permission to survey its Baltic seabed.
Putin's authority had been derived from his ability to expand Russia's sphere of influence into much of Eastern Europe and into Central Asia. But that too is fading fast. In September, a pro-Western "Orange" majority retook Ukraine's Parliament, and is shaping a new government that will tighten ties to NATO and the EU. This month, Ukraine and its neighbors agreed to create a new oil-transport route that would bypass Russia and provide a significant new energy source for Central and Eastern Europe. Meantime, Russia's biggest critic in the EU, Poland, is about to regain its voice. Polish politics had turned inward, consumed by a scandal in the ruling right-wing coalition. Harsh anti-German and anti-European outbursts by twin brothers President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski had brought Polish relations with Europe to a new low in the post-communist era. Now polls indicate that elections on Oct. 21 will usher in a coalition government in which a key role will be played by pro-EU, centrist free-marketers who can mend relations with Western Europe. Even Turkmenistan may be edging West. After 16 years under a brutal dictatorship, the country's new president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov (assiduously wooed by British officials), has declared his interest in the creation of routes for Turkmen energy that bypass Russia.
In the short term, these shifts will anger Moscow. But if Russia is going to transform into a normal, peaceable state, its leaders will have to take a more realistic view of the country's place in the global economic system. Russia, after all, now provides 20 percent of Western Europe's annual energy needs, and are as dependent on Europe for revenue as Europe is dependent on Russia for energy. Perhaps if the Russian people come to understand that, they'll start to push back against Russia's authoritarian drift under President Putin. Just as their neighbors have.
Source: Newsweek
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