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RUSSIA AN AL-JAZEERA PRESENTATION Empire ... Al Jazeera English: Putin's Russia PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZcUsdARY6o Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
Putin's Russia \| Empire Al Jazeera English 15.8M subscribers ... 1,775,754 views ... 5K likes Apr 27, 2012 Al Jazeera is funded in whole or in part by the Qatari government. #aljazeeraenglish #putin #ukrainewar As Vladimir Putin begins his third term as Russian president, we ask if Russia can become a superpower once again. Russia is the largest country on the planet. It straddles nine time zones, is the largest energy producer and possesses half the world's nuclear warheads. But Russia is not the former Soviet Union. Since the Cold War ended two decades ago, the new emerging Russia has been largely defined by two men, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin presided over the dismemberment of the old Soviet Union and the reckless privatisation of state assets. Washington saw this chaotic free-for-all as a new wild west and assisted the plunder. When Putin took over the presidency in 2000, he was determined to rid Russia of Yeltsin's embarrassing legacy and to stop the rot. As Putin begins his third term as president, flexing his muscles at home and abroad, we ask: Can Russia be a superpower once again? Social Media links: Facebook: / aljazeera Instagram: https://instagram.com/aljazeera/?ref=... Twitter: / ajenglish Website: http://www.aljazeera.com/ google+: https://plus.google.com/+aljazeera/posts ‪@aljazeeraenglish‬ #Russia #Ukraine #aljazeeraenglish #putin #russia #ukraine #usa #ukrainewar #ukraine #news #russiaukrainewar Transcript 0:03 russia is the largest country on the planet it straddles nine time zones possesses half of the world's nuclear warheads and it's the largest energy producer but russia is not the former soviet union as third-term president vladimir putin flexes his muscles at home and abroad can russia be a superpower once again this is hello and welcome to empire i am marwan bishera since the cold war ended two decades ago the new emerging russia has been largely defined by two men boris yeltsin and vladimir putin yeltsin presided over the dismemberment of the old soviet union and the reckless privatization of the state's assets 1:07 complicit in this decade-long russian underhall stood western powers eager to transform their old nemesis into a new ally washington saw this chaotic free-for-all as a new wild west and assisted the plunder deepening inequality mounting insecurity and disorder put a damper on the economic liberalization and increase the popular demand for security stability and the rule of the law to regulate the heist and limit the damage a new brand of centralization through authoritarianism and populist nationalism was introduced to russia by the yeltsin clique in 1999 some call it putinism vladimir putin is not a man you'd describe as subtle the once in future russian president wants to convey one message and one message only vladimir putin equals power 2:13 he's an athlete master of martial arts he rides a bike he's multi-skilled like our country so he is as well multi-skilled positive very handsome and we simply love him but lest you think these carefully orchestrated photo ops are merely a vanity project they're not entirely lost at sea putin sees the russian presidency as a metronym for the entire country in other words when you think of russia he wants you to think of this not this the yeltsin days may be long gone but putin knows the same problems still exist while russia does boast massive reserves of natural gas coal and oil that's only 3:07 good news when energy prices soar because the economy is dangerously unbalanced a massive 70 percent of all exports come from energy sources or minerals meaning the country is at the mercy of global commodities markets just as alarming the russian people are dying off at a staggering rate male life expectancy is a mere 59 and at this rate russia is set to lose 50 million people in the next 40 years so it's no wonder putin does everything he can to eliminate the impression of weakness it also explains why he has never had any apparent qualms in crushing internal rebellion which tries to challenge the power of the kremlin hopes rose late last year of a newfound momentum for democratic 4:05 are announcing a campaign for the constitutional and lawful dismissal of the putin group from power critics of the kremlin now openly describe political life in russia as sovereign democracy a curious state of affairs in which all the trappings of a democratic nation are readily apparent but they exist purely to mask a fully functioning autocracy i come out onto the street and see totally different things from what i'm told on tv and that's it for one thing they've never believed dmitry medvedev to be the true leader of the nation critics look at the job swap with vladimir putin and see a puppet pretending to be president looked on with boredom by his master but for the time being vladimir putin doesn't give the impression he particularly cares he's happy to continue this political marriage of convenience he does what he wants medvedev does what he's told 5:04 one of the most vexing questions is how putin has managed to weld together popular support with the institutions of state to create this domination of power the single most effective way has been the threat of terrorist attack whether it be real fabricated convenient or a combination of the three major incidents like the moscow theater siege in 2002 and the best land school siege in 2004 have left a powerful impression on the russian people these extremist attacks among others are what putin and his supporters cite in order to justify his uncompromising approach to power they believe it's not democracy that's under threat it's russia i'm itself putin because he's the only one i can trust with my fatherland for my grandchildren and their children we came here to congratulate him we came to remind people that the russian state has to be defended for it not to 6:04 collapse for not to pull to pieces if there's any doubt about putin's commitment to this belief just ask the chechens putin's approach toward this breakaway republic has been entirely straightforward he simply smashed it since 2007 chechnya has been ruled by a former warlord hand-picked by the kremlin despite having fought against the russians in the first chechen war and if anything this partnership works a bit too well during the election one chechen district awarded putin a curious 107 percent of the vote a fact no one in the kremlin seems to mind what's more important is spectacle consistency and the projection of power the rest has to wait joining me to discuss the set of play in putin's russia are alex pravda lecturer and former director of the russian and 7:03 eurasian studies center at saint anthony's college in oxford and editor of leading russia putin in perspective and andrew wood former british ambassador to russia and co-author of change or decay russia's dilemma and the west response and edward lucas the international editor of the economist and author of deception spies lies and how russia dupes the west and last but not least alexander nekrassov journalist and former criminal advisor gentlemen welcome to empire alex let me start with you okay putinism what does it mean to you what does it mean to me it means a construction of a clan network system of sharing wealth out among people in return for their supporting themselves to power it means a hierarchy of power it means management of society rather than politics of society it means the avoidance of pluralism the avoidance of 8:02 conflict because conflict is too risky for russia order is the watch word and order is the basis for his popularity and he still retains that largely not because he's delivered so well but because the alternatives are far worse and the alternatives are a picture of disorder mayhem chaos society in russia never seems to trust itself sufficiently to allow pluralism to bloom and to risk conflict and real politics but after the years and years perhaps a bit of authoritarianism is exactly what russia needs well russia had authoritarians amanda yeltsin it was a messy authoritarianism it was an authoritarian which didn't exist on a nicely coalesced set of agreements between those who were the tycoons on the one hand who had the money and they were given business assets and the politicians on the other there was an uncertain relationship putin established or rather re-established the traditional russian set up and that goes soviet pre-soviet that the state is the freeholder of assets business tycoons aristocrats are leaseholders and that's the agreement 9:06 and they serve their time they do their bidding they get the money so he did that in a much more orderly fashion than yeltsin edward putin a departure from elton or the extension i think putin has his roots in the yeltsin era and although he likes now to say that the 1990s were a time of chaos and humiliation and all sorts of other bad things and western interference and so on we shouldn't forget that during these 1990s he went from being an unemployed former secret policeman into being one of the most powerful men in russia um via some very lucrative business deals and some very important government appointments i think that we in the in the 1990s we saw the beginnings of election rigging which has become elevated to an art form in russia now we also saw the resurrection of the old kgb under a new label the growth and importance of the fsb which is its domestic wing particularly which mr putin headed that's now one of the great 10:01 organs of power inside russia in a way is the kind of chief enforcer for the regime so i think there is continuity but i think it's also made things worse he made things worse i think it's worse than they are seniors i think that the yeltsin years were bad chiefly because the oil price was very low if putin had had to deal with yeltsin's oil price of below twenty dollars a barrel his record would be disastrous if yeltsin had had putin's oil price of over a hundred dollars a barrel we wouldn't look so harshly on yeltsin so he had this huge asset of high oil prices alexander putin years worse than the elsa news well the problem was that and i was an adviser at the time i was telling the kremlin that there was a need to create a political system with a proper opposition with proper institutions and that's what yeltsin didn't do and i think that was the lasting damage that he inflicted on russia and putin basically is the product of that system it is not a system where somebody a leader of a party gets up the party ladder and becomes popular tries to become just 11:01 appointments appointments appointments and that's why now we see that there are no political candidates that can actually stand in elections and have some weight or respect of the public and um that's another problem with the russian opposition there is no russian opposition these are all opportunist and chancellors who are trying to jump on the bandwagon isn't their national position is it the russians fought because as i said under yellowstone there was no political system a proper political system created you have to have candidates for the presidency who would look respectable who would be interesting who would have a program but nothing like that was you see yeltsin was paranoid in the last years in power he was paranoid he didn't understand what was going on around him his family was running things so i think that is the result of what happened in the 90s we see now are you talking more about the so-called managed democracy that means that you have to create the political system from the top down we didn't have any democracy on the yeltsin it was a stage managed democracy it was 12:04 uh okay it had a bit of change because we had some sort of parliament debate critics uh was saying that the president did didn't do his job well but in reality the real power still lay with the kremlin they did what they wanted and yeltsin was part of don't forget yeltsin was a member of the politburo of the soviet uh communist party he had that mentality of a soviet politician and i don't think he actually delivered on any of the promises he made do you get the sense that perhaps then putin is a bit of a melange between yeltsin and the soviet era well two things no nobody springs fully armed out of as if they were not part of history in one in that sense of course um i think we want to be a bit careful about how much of the difficulties of the 90s we attribute to yeltsin personally and also how little respect we pay to 13:00 the amount of evolution and development which actually did take place under his his watch the first liberal reforms introduced economic reforms introduced under putin stemmed directly from the aspirations of the reformers under yeltsin there were more possibilities under yeltsin of developing a federal system which would work than have evolved under putin and i think the appearance of strength that we see in in the putin system up until the very recent past was an illusion a key to putin's present dominance is the difficulty in seeing alternative is also a an accusation if you like he's not coming in for a new term effectively if he's coming in for a fourth term the one word we haven't mentioned here is corruption and um you asked alex what's the definition of putinism he gave a very good political definition but i think there's also a kind of business definition which is that the people who run russia also own 14:04 it and this is an elite which over the past 10 years has managed to steal tens of billions of dollars in natural resource rents and in bureaucratic rents bureaucratic rents being a fancy word for for bribes and this is obviously has its roots in the elcen era when things were also corrupt and we have the scandals about loans for shares and so on but this has intensified and grown to an absolutely extraordinary extent under putin and it's a really big question for me now whether that business model is sustainable it seems to me it's it's dependent on a high and rising oil price because this bribe control bribe sucking machine needs to be fed more and more every year so it's a source of instability now whereas it was a sort of source of stability earlier when they had more goodies to hand out but why do i get the feeling that whenever we talk about yeltsin we talk about reform and when we talk about putin we talk about corruption i mean i think we should get away from personalization i mean russia is of course a highly 15:00 personalized system alex can you can you escape personally yes i think we can because if you look at look at the soviet history of politics and we don't go back to tsarist times but these are individuals grappling with fantastically difficult problems the fundamental problem is this if you want to keep together as one state such a disparate and large territory underpopulated in the east for most of the and the decision was made to keep even the north caucasus that could have been actually allowed to float into international mandate responsibility we wouldn't have wanted church now and go on thrown onto our response but he decided to keep it and yeltsin decided to keep it integral territory integrity if you do that you are almost fatiguing yourself to having a top-down system and the experiments under yeltsin of allowing the region's elections and so on didn't work there's not the confidence to allow democracy and parties to be formed from below so the notion of something coming from below and the notion of a loyal opposition is absent from russian political traditions it's just not there so you think putin 16:01 is a political necessity so putin is trying to manage this given the basic requisites of keeping russia together which he and his clique have pushed as unquestionable principles if you decide to really decentralize the country and risk the chaos of democracy then you could change russia i emphatically do not agree that russia is incapable of federal structure not incapable very difficult very difficult but then so is democracy it was in fact authoritarianism it's not that easy either um it seems to me that andy yeltsin there were the possible beginnings of a federal structure and the first thing that putin did was to destroy that uh it needed obviously enforcing the departure of those governors who had been elected earlier and whose terms had expired and there was would have required a great deal of will but nonetheless there was at least the flexible possibility of a greater degree of federalism which is necessary for russia i think to be too seduced by the idea that he's kept on to chechnya for example is is uh 17:06 uh rather dangerous it's a chechnya without russians but you see the question is why when there was a de facto independent chechnya in the 90s wasn't chechnya let go let go you think they would let go like the other foreign economically in security terms well maybe that was a good thing maybe it wasn't it was against the written republicans let them go on the international system you couldn't allow such a uh situation develop in the caucuses we would have had an all-out war there so did putin teach everyone a lesson with chechnya simply that it was just a question of timing and putin has just become prime minister and he decided well he's kind of wondering he's going to teach everyone he's won the battles but he's lost the war i think in that he has cracked down very hard on the visible manifestations of separatism and so you now have khadirov and other regional leaders who play total lip service to putin but i 18:04 actually think that he's he's actually weakened the long-term prospects of keeping keeping russia together by this kind of centralization and personalization and absence of real institutions you have this bunch of incredibly rich people who control the money and the power at the top and who to test it um in the region they have to dole out money and goodies and other things to try and keep keep people loyal but i think you and you've also seen the migration of russians out of a lot of these regions which used to be quite mixed with ethnic russians and other people and ethnic russians have been moving in large numbers out of out of the north caucasus with a result that it now in in a way is not really part of the russian federation except it's not it's not subject the russian constitution it's not subject to the russian rule of law all it really has is a kind of military um modus of vendi way of living with the russian federation but there's not more than that alexander do you think hearing all of this you think putin is on the rise or is he on the decline regardless of the election results i 19:03 think that first of all all western academics experts on russia miss one point a very important one our country lived under communism for 75 years the most aggressive form of communism imaginable you must understand this is poison which goes into the system to cleanse the system you need decades you cannot just come like yeltsin and say that's it let's forget about communism it's capitalism now didn't work and it wouldn't work and that's why i think that both yeltsin and putin are temporary figures i know it's taking a long time but in my estimate it would probably take another 10 years for the generation change to happen and real changes start to happen second point the west played a very very negative role in the russian development in these 20 years if you see where the money is hidden which was stolen from russia it is hidden in the west 20:04 and when i hear all those stories how the west wanted to help russia change into democratic state i say rubbish the west proved to be an obstacle i was an adviser in the kremlin and we had 120 foreign advisors americans brits a couple of germans that was the washington consensus time but they were all horrible their advice liberalization and this sort of jump into privatization i was against it i was saying this is going to end in disaster so all these oligarchs who were created you know who was advising them westerners western bankers western lawyers and they were telling them how to hide that money on offshore accounts and so on and when i hear now you know some western experts saying well they didn't do that properly they didn't do that properly i always say to them give us our money back first and then you tell us what to do i agree with you absolutely there was an enormous amount of western naive optimism about the naive 21:03 there was a search looking for a new panacea a new formula which would actually solve everything at one in one shot and that was capitalism liberal democracy full marketing nobody thought like four markets that was imposed on the kremlin by those advisers could we say there was a russian role and the west was complicit there was always a split in the kremlin between the pro-westerners like it was always in russia and the people who said let's take it slowly let's not rush into these things i think it's it's we're getting back into this familiar argument about who made what mistakes in the 1990s and sure there is plenty of blame to go around but the fact is it's 10 years since the 1990s more than 10 years since the 1990s putin in that period has had unlimited money and unlimited power if he'd said i want all russians to wear blue hats and orange trousers for the good of the country they'd have done it and then look what happened 1.3 trillion dollars in excess oil and gas revenues have gone not invested just gone wasted stolen that's not there okay with the complicity of the west but the point 22:03 for russia is what happens now where's this machine going it's running it's running on empty it doesn't have that huge dividend of public trust anymore it doesn't have the huge dividend of the oil and gas revenue so what's he going to do i think that's what we should be looking at what edward is saying basically is that there's a system of patronage where you know they were put in his bodies on the top but could he have like for example during the commerce system tell people the bureaucrats not to steal the system is necessarily corrupt because um after all if you are somewhere in the in the feeding chain you see that your boss pays no attention to the law you're not going to either this is a fundamental weakness of the regime and it's a fundamental reason why there were such a large degree of protests uh towards the end of this past year those protests were tiny nobody supports them across the country these are these are but we haven't seen this before over the last year okay so they happen but these are tiny groups of people they have no 23:00 support across the country none think about it and the main point of the protest was in in indignation of the arrogance of power is there a russian spring on the uh no that's a wrong analogy yes but there's the beginnings of a the new middle class have all been waiting for for years is beginning to show a degree of self-respect and saying to politicians don't be as arrogant don't be as dismissive of us people are fed up with politics and we're going to be looking at that when we come back after a news break welcome back with my guests alexander nekrassov edward lucas alex pravda and andrew wood the cold war is hardly behind us yet there is talk of a new cold war with the middle east as one of its familiar battlegrounds the kremlin has warned against what it terms washington's destabilizing foreign policy and putin has publicly accused the west of interfering in russian 24:02 internal affairs and claims his re-election by almost a two-third majority as a victory against russian foreign and domestic enemies alike as he prepares to take over the kremlin for the third time there is no telling what putin is thinking will he raise the anti-american rhetoric or pursue a more pragmatic course with washington either way the post-cold war honeymoon has given way to a new geopolitical clash of interests reminiscent of past rivalries day of high drama and momentous events in the current historic session of the united nations moscow's dealings with the united nations have always been a little bit prickly china a drastic reorganization of the world body secretary whether it be soviet leaders banging their shoes in 1960 or russian leaders blocking resolutions today the reason for the intransigence is the same 25:01 because of a deep-seated belief that western powers were manipulating the united nations to promote their own agenda last year russian diplomats made it abundantly clear that western countries far exceeded a un mandate to protect the libyan people and use the justification of a resolution to topple muammar gaddafi far beyond the original remit when a similar measure regarding syria came up for a vote earlier this year moscow refused to let it happen again russia will do all it can in order to prevent the situation in syria descending into a similar scenario to libya since then russia has signaled a willingness to help resolve the syrian crisis but on its terms damascus and moscow have long shared strategic interests and a sympathetic world view and so while russia's tone has softened its opposition to western interference has not at its essence vladimir putin's position 26:04 mirrors most of his soviet predecessors he believes that someone must stand up to the perpetual interference by the united states in the sovereign affairs of other nations and like those before him he's happy to be the man to do it noted for their absence are the perestroika days of overly optimistic statesmanship some believe that the weight of history condemned our two great countries our two great peoples to permanent confrontation well you and i must challenge history make new strides build a relationship of enduring cooperation once vladimir putin took office the mood was certainly polite but clearly more than a little awkward we spent a lot of time in our relationship trying to get rid of the cold war elsewhere putin will not back down on issues like nato expansion that moscow 27:01 feels are designed to provoke and he doesn't much care for washington's starting turf battles by blatantly trying to poach former soviet satellite states a brief war with georgia in 2008 was orchestrated to remind the west not just to blissey that putin was in no mood to be pushed around but he's also well aware how this plays at home when he takes on a defiant neighbor or slaps down washington it only adds to the nationalist zeal that's backed him for 13 years now and counting like those who went before him putin seems happy to forge relations which irritate and sometimes anger the west today russia's status as one of the bric countries gives it the opportunity to build new diplomatic and economic ties with the emerging world early last year china quietly overtook germany to become russia's largest trading partner welcome the prime minister of the russian federation with the economic balance shifting putin 28:06 feels confident to do a little lecturing today the pride of wall street's investment banks have virtually ceased to exist they have suffered losses surpassing their total revenues of the last 25 years cumulative this example better than any criticism describes the real situation all of which demonstrates that as far as moscow is concerned when it comes to dealing with the west whether it be diplomatically militarily or economically a little bit of tension is never a bad thing edward perhaps tensions a bit of populist foreign policy but a new cold war isn't that a bit of exaggeration well it depends what you mean by it but i think one has first of all to notice that russia is not strong enough today to have a real confrontation with the west the soviet union could just about do it but went bust trying to keep keep up the effort it's well worth remembering for example 29:03 the russian navy now has only 20 seaworthy major surface ships and even those aren't in great in great in great shape so the idea that you could have a full scale um confrontation over syria the way we did for example during the cuban missile crisis is just fanciful what russia can do is to use a kind of asymmetric approach where it does small but significant things that it knows will annoy the west so for example in response to the american missile shield in europe it says it will put missiles in the kaliningrad exclave next to poland and lithuania or possibly even in a bit of moldova that's controlled by a programming regime so it could do these small things and it can use its veto at the security council but it's quite hard to see where this ends because russia is not strong enough to be a real poll in a multipolar world it doesn't really have any other allies they don't want to be friends with china because they're beaten up they can't be friends with the muslim world there isn't a kind of global anti-western alliance that they can lead so i think this is this is a in the end is a bit of a dead end for them the cold war paradigm 30:05 is a very um misleading one it's misleading for russia because it leads them to place far too much emphasis on their relationship with the united states and to see the united states as somehow their natural partner which is not a reality the natural partner uh in terms of trade and in terms of uh uh self-interest is more within europe alex it seems to me that the chinese russian coordination at the security council on the question of syria there is a bit of support for the russian standing up to the west standing up but i think that first of all let's get rid of tunisia i think edward was quite right it's nonsense to talk of a cold war that was a bipolar system in a different world with nuclear weapons at its core is no longer the case russia is not the soviet union it doesn't aspire to even be the soviet union outside the former soviet space but to think of it in terms of causing deliberate nuisance of being a 31:01 spoiler i think is exaggerating the question russia believes in traditional geopolitics politics internationally as a zero-sum game it's not really a believer in positive sum games out there that everyone's going to end up in great friendship as we tried to 1990 1991 putin is on record consistently as saying russia is only respected when it's strong and given american behavior in the middle east and elsewhere that seems to be the american view as well strength is the only way towards global respect china is the one exception here which looks at economic resources and indirect influence so the balancing uh of the west with china and sometimes balancing with europe against china trying to co-manage central asia these are all very traditional great power international politics nothing new and nothing deliberately based on the strategy of being a nuisance no russia ultimately wants to be seen as an indispensable international actor part of the traditional it's a very conservative power internationally order-based system in the middle east 32:03 and hopefully globally at the moment it's a bi-regional power both in europe and in asia it's not a global power certain alexander it's no longer not only the global power it used to be it certainly doesn't have any claims of a new vision for the world communism is gone ideology is gone there's more pragmatism now is just russia developing into a new regional power russian foreign policy is still very soviet now people might not know this but the people they're all from soviet era lavrov is a typical soviet diplomat they could have achieved a lot in the past several years simply because the west has screwed up internationally i mean america is is as if it's it's it's working against itself you talk about iraq and afghanistan i'm talking about the whole lot the whole world uh i also think that the financial crisis has suddenly revealed to everyone that the western economic system capitalism does not work it's a corrupt 33:01 incompetent system and to to say about russian corruption that you know tens of billions as edward was pointing out stolen well trillions was stolen in the west with this financial crisis but certainly you're not you're not saying that russia is an alternative economic model no no it's not authority i'm talking about foreign policy here so this system has to change simply by removing the people who come from the old soviet structures if that does not happen russia would be still seen as a clumsy operator although i must say with syria and libya i think russia has moved up a notch on the international arena because i i suspect that anybody anybody same person would say libya and syria and iraq and afghanistan are a disaster for the west and there is certain argument uh you know sound argument that russia is pursuing a more reasonable sober foreign policy that does not want to see the world being too destabilized by humanitarian interventions and so on to conflate 34:06 afghanistan um iraq iran syria and libya is is is is nonsense the west is not responsible for what happened in uh not even really in in libya i mean it acted within that that framework which is different it's certainly not responsible for what's happened in syria but what russia said is that the west has exceeded its mandate in libya it went from protection to changing regimes that is a particular point and one can argue about that but it is not the same thing as to say that what's going on in syria as a result of western in interference or indeed the west has any ability or desire to but russia does not want the western interference syria because it's worried that this will treat a complete breakdown i'd see that the region but then the west also which is by which you presume to be in the united states um has every reason not to wish to to begin to even think about involving in 35:00 syria i think you put your finger on this and there's there's a streak of instinctive anti-westernism in russia which can be quite distorting whatever the worst wants must be bad for russia otherwise the west wouldn't want it and as alex said this is sort of zero-sum thinking which is which is quite misleading i do think you get much clearer confrontations and one's got to separate this out a bit in the form of soviet union you used in your report the very interesting phrase poaching that the west was poaching former soviet republics now of course this form of soviet republics don't feel that they're being poached they think they're exercising their sovereign right to make the alliances they want and so someone like estonia for example or georgia says we suffered very much under the soviet union we are still quite nervous about russia we feel that russia would like to get us back and we would like to be in a military alliance that can protect us now that's not necessarily poaching russia may not like it but there's a clear difference in the way in which the west looks at the security of kind of wider europe and the way in which russia looks it russia says this is our backyard and we have a saying what's going on the west 36:04 um more or less says we count these as independent countries and we want to deal with them as independent countries i think there's a qualitative difference between what edward's quite right to be talking about which is the near abroad which are not properly foreign countries part of the former soviet union in russia in russia's view between that and the middle east but again i'm not saying russia i'm not sympathetic to this but one's got to understand where they come from if you view from moscow the middle east it is part of a kind of greater neighborhood iran bears on azerbaijan azerbaijan directly bears on what's happening where from the united states the middle east is a far away set of countries so there must be a conspiracy and this is the russian view behind all that to get at russia in some sense and i agree with that but there seems to be be interesting what alexander thinks about whether it's going to change an assumption that the west is out to get at russia for some reason but of course excuse me excuse me the west has been mishandling policy towards russia take nato now after the call everybody accepts the 37:04 cold war is over why should nato be expanding eastwards nato was especially promising it was created well the promise exactly because russia because these countries felt threatened by russia and the more that russia says it is impermissible primacosts for it it is impermissible for you to join nato and as soon as someone says it's impermissible for you to put a burglar alarm in your house you start thinking how safe is my heart let's go back this wouldn't have happened we should have in 1991 there was a big decision taken i think a wrong one for bureaucratic and cautionary reasons to go on with nato and expand it or to go to csc ocs osce to actually change the security management of europe organizational security to no longer have standing alone the warsaw pact it dissolved itself it had collapsed to have nato and the decision was taken to expand nato now that militarizes relationships which was totally unrealistic 38:02 nato was there was no decision made then to expand nato and for years nobody wanted to expand nato at all the whole idea of bringing former soviet countries into nato it was regarded with horror by most native members what made it happen was developments in russia that made these countries feel nervous but you recognize that russia has a certain security preoccupations in its former soviet republic i agree but i've interviewed an estonian spy who was spying for the russians he was a very senior estonian official the russian spy masters tasked him with finding out the secret nato plan to attack russia from estonia and he said there isn't one and they said look harder in fact the truth was at the time there wasn't even a nato plan to defend estonia from russia because nato was so keen that russia shouldn't think there was any kind of military military threat and i think that kind of exemplifies the way russia looks to russia thinks there must be some kind of hidden agenda they must be able to but of course there is a hidden you cannot extend a bloc which was created to to defend europe from the soviet union and 39:02 insist doggedly that all those republics are feeling they're in danger first republics first of all are playing their own games don't forget this georgia georgia was playing a game and if you tell me that that the georgian troops attacked abrasive without american permission i would laugh they didn't attack them i would laugh i said but i said sorry in 2009 russia had major military exercise in 2009 ladoga and these exercises the scenario was the invasion occupation oh you don't know this first of all exercises are carried out across the world everywhere so this is this is childish to say like that no no no no the important point is this when the cold war ended nato said that's it done we are no longer enemies and then immediately practically immediately started pushing eastward and exactly 40:00 was it not the nato started as an organization first of all it's not a block it's not organized from one centre it is it's not just allies it's a consensus driven organization is not a block though it's natural first we've seen it in iraq this consensus yes that wasn't nato is that nato america and britain are nato fundamental point which i think if you have a nation-state prone to fear of threats and paranoia and because of historical keeping going a military block which was founded to oppose that state is going to invite threat perceptions and you're right they are exaggerated estonia is conspiring this is conspiring ladies and gentlemen is conspiring why we don't get rid of the military nature of our relationship in europe with russia it puzzles me andrew this is true this was it was supposed to keep the germans down and the russians out but the germans also also hopefully divided yeah um so today you mean no then well so what's the point of the military of course it's a dimension of course it is a different uh situation of course 41:04 uh russian perceptions are understandable um if factually mistaken of course we've all got to to try to develop new perspectives whether it's in in moscow or in italian or in london or whatever that ought to be a proper process the the expansion of nato um actually militarily has weakened the alliance not not strengthened but i agree with that now to go beyond the immediate and nato into the broader middle east where that's where apparently the disagreement is and historically the cold war as well there's also a bit of neglect that russia alex you were talking about the history that it had history with the ottoman empire in turkey it does feel there's a threat from a growing turkey from a destable iran from the nuclear issue from the so-called islamic expansion issue so all of these things are important for russia and it perhaps it does have 42:02 a a right to put it it's it's foot down when it comes to major changes in that i don't know about the right but it has vital interests and and europe could claim just about having vital interest america quite honestly cannot claim vital security interests its interests are in oil and in energy and in global management so russia has a legitimate interest in being a major player in the greater middle east as long as other external actors are involved there as they are and russia still remembers the great mistake of 1967. remember that it lost one hand it it finished diplomatic relations with israel and from then on suffered under the disadvantage of having americans who had both israeli and arab strings to their bows and the russians only had arab strings at the moment russia still has pretty good technical and arms relations with israel and economic relations with israel as well as trying to have relations with other arabs but that's his the point alexander perhaps you could recall that in most of these cases when it comes to iran and turkey israel and the arabs russia was always 43:05 happy in this duality of conflict among most of those who it deals with it never really wants to resolve anything it likes to manage crisis and interfere in them well i i don't think it wants to actually see conflict uh manage conflict well even manage conflict because managed conflict becomes unmanageable sometimes very quickly when did russia try to resolve any question in the global middle east well behind the scenes or a lot of times i i remember myself when we were sending uh diplomats there to talk and try to resolve issues and we see syria okay there was a delay they should have acted earlier in syria they should have gone to see assad earlier than that but that was a clear-cut case uh with libya by the way but there were extensive talks behind the scenes when russia tried to convince gaddafi to move out and no i wouldn't agree at all with that and even even the israeli-palestinian problem russia is taking uh an active stance on that so no no it's trying to help is there a legacy to be talked 44:03 about now 13 years on perhaps another four more years of putin on the foreign policy on the domestic front now would be a good time for a fresh start in fact but i think that as you can see i think the problem is that the the regime is addicted to anti-westernism at home as a kind of media trope as a way of whipping out the crowds but but it also can manage it whenever it's convenient for it but it shifts it it it closes off some options it becomes i mean they're having great difficulty at the moment because they've got an air base in ulyanovs which is helping the western withdrawal from afghanistan this is something the regime wants and because they've whipped up so much anti-westerners and the locals now saying we don't want a nato base here so there's yeah there are cost to this policy i think the key thing we should be really looking at is the um russia's ability to play divide and rule in europe i think that's the point where 44:53 these things really matter they don't have great purchase in the middle east they don't have a tremendously important relationship with the united states now 44:59 apart from some things to do with nuclear weapons where they can really exercise policy is in europe perhaps 45:05 power too with all the energy with a mixture of energy and contracts buying you know aircraft assault ships in france offering gas contracts to the netherlands in germany that's where russia is punching it about its right weight and i think that's uh and although they do this rather incompetently and often don't get good results that's that's the place that i'm most worried about i think the european yeah i think russia is essentially and always has been a european country um increasingly because of population movement west it is essentially european it does have the energy links we all know about the trade links but it's under institutionalized as a relationship and the russians traditionally have not been able to come up with the imaginative ideas we had medvedev's idea of a new european security that won't work it's up to the europeans and this is a huge opportunity to get our act together and to look at the ways in which we can create a new framework of a great europe which we include russia and ukraine and the western parts of the former soviet union that's the only way we're going to have a stable relationship this sounds very 46:04 constructive to me and i would love to end on this note very thank you gentlemen for joining empire and i'll be back with a final thought it feels like a lifetime since bush looked into putin's eyes and was able to get a sense of his soul found him straightforward and trustworthy putin had bush at privyet it was love at first sight but as in the james bond classic from russia with love smooth talk and sophisticated mannerisms only hide plots and counter plots the escalation in chechnya and georgia like iraq and afghanistan spoke louder than words and soon after obama and medvedev hardly the alpha dog duet that putin and bush projected have tried to calm the tensions and bridge the differences between the two superpowers now that putin is back in the kremlin watch not for what he and obama say watch what they will do 47:05 more tellingly listen to the silence of these two restrained political animals like speech and rhetoric silence has its rules and sometimes it can be deafening and that's the way it goes write to me at empire aljazeera.net until next time

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