Читаем Putin's Wars полностью

Another initiative that needs to be mentioned here is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). This forum also has its origin in the Yeltsin era. “Steps toward a closer Russian-Chinese relationship were outlined in March 1992 in a policy paper by Yeltsin’s former political advisor, Sergei Stankevich.”^[40] It led to the foundation, in 1996, of the Shanghai Five, consisting of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan and emerged from the border talks between China and the Soviet successor states. It was—again—Vladimir Putin, who took the initiative to expand this organization and give it a more powerful structure. In 2001, when Uzbekistan joined the organization, it got its new name and began to implement many activities, ranging from fighting terrorism and drugs trafficking to economic and cultural cooperation and the organization of joint military exercises. Pakistan, India, and Iran were invited as observers, while the United States was refused observer status. The SCO proudly claimed that—including the observer states—it represented “half of humanity.” The organization has an undeniable anti-US and anti-NATO focus. Used by Putin to project Russia’s power in the region, it is, however, a double-edged sword, and for Moscow it also brings inconveniences. Although it may be instrumental to the Kremlin’s objective of keeping NATO and the United States out of Central Asia, it simultaneously facilitates the Chinese penetration of the Central Asian republics. This penetration has for the moment a predominantly economic character, but it will undoubtedly soon acquire more political dimensions. For this reason two opposition politicians, Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov, severely criticized Putin’s China policy. “It would be more appropriate to call Putin’s policy toward China ‘capitulationist,’” they wrote. “In the years of Putin’s rule the Russian military-industrial complex has, in particular, armed the Chinese army.”^[41] In the medium term, and certainly in the long run, the SCO could, indeed, become an asset for Beijing more than for Moscow, and their struggle for influence, markets, and energy, in the countries of Central Asia could soon become a zero-sum game.

BRIC, BIC, BRICS, or BRIICS?

Putin has “made clear that Russia has no intention of joining anybody else’s ‘holy alliances,’” wrote Eugene Rumer.^[42] This is, indeed, true. Putin prefers to build his own organizations. He is a staunch organization builder and undertakes initiatives in all possible directions, building organizations when only the slightest oportunity arises. An example is the first BRIC summit convened in Yekaterinburg on June 16, 2009. BRIC is a term coined by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs to indicate the four most important emerging economies in the world: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. It was meant by him only as an investment term and had nothing to do with politics. Putin, however, jumped at the opportunity, seeing another prominent role for Russia in a global forum. The first meeting of the presidents of the BRIC countries immediately exposed their fundamental differences. Two of them, Brazil and India, are democracies. The other two, China and Russia, are non-democratic dictatorships. While the first two are in effect newly emerging powers, the other two are already long-established and recognized powers on the world scene, both being permanent members of the UN Security Council. The four disagree on most issues: human rights, democracy, trade, climate change, and the reform of global governance. The year in which the first BRIC conference took place was also the year in which the term “BRIC”—in itself already an artificial construction—lost the last remnants of its initial meaning of fast-growing emerging economies: while in the crisis year 2009 the other countries continued to grow, Russia’s GDP plunged 7.9 percent—which was the worst performance among the Group of Twenty leading economies. Participants at a business conference in Moscow in February 2010, therefore, ironically, suggested changing the name from BRIC into BIC.^[43] This did not prevent the BRIC from organizing its second conference in Brazil’s capital Brasilia in April 2010. Even if Russia, with its inefficient state capitalism, cronyism, and rampant corruption, remained the economic dwarf of the four, the BRIC format offered Moscow an extra forum to project its political influence on the world stage.