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Putin’s Russia Armed With Oil Menaces West

February 5, 2008

The big question about Russia these days is whether her domestic backsliding and international obstreperousness are transitional or terminal: Is this a bend in the road to democracy or journey’s end?

Edward Lucas, an Economist correspondent who specializes in Russia, gives a pessimistic answer in his book, “The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West.”

Russia in his view has embarked on a course of authoritarian, nationalist rule. Antagonistic to open debate and determined to keep Eastern Europe in its sphere of influence, Vladimir Putin’s government retains the old Soviet desire to drive a wedge between Europe and the U.S., Lucas says.

Only the means have changed, he argues: Kremlin leaders today are simply hoping to secure by economic muscle oil and gas what they failed to achieve by ideological exports and military bullying, though there could be some of the latter, too.

Upheaval was of course unavoidable after the fall of Soviet communism. And the craziness under former President Boris Yeltsin — notably how he sold off utilities for derisory sums and enriched the oligarchs — has given freedom a bad name.

But how eager were Russians for the real thing? Lucas says many are comfortable with an old-fashioned, autocratic, chauvinistic regime, complete with a father figure, who in this case presides over a rising standard of living.

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