I could be more clear-eyed with a year’s hindsight. Putin had had every advantage a new president could wish for. His public-approval rating reminded us of the euphoric early days of the Yeltsin Kremlin—and back then the polls in Russia could still be somewhat trusted, unlike today. The staggering devaluation of the ruble after the default of August 1998 gave a boost to Russia’s heavily export-oriented economy. And high oil prices created a hard-currency cushion not seen by any post-Communist Russian government.
And yet this huge credit was wasted. Putin’s KGB roots sadly informed a style of governance that was neither reformist nor democratic. The common thread throughout his domestic and foreign policies was his effort to trade on fear—the fears of Russians that their country was under attack from hostile external forces (Chechens, NATO, or free marketeers; usually all of the above) and the fears of Westerners that if not for a strong, pragmatic leader, Russia would again become unruly, unstable, and potentially aggressive. Fifteen years later Putin’s fearmongering tactics remain very similar, and equally effective.
Instead of beating down the real hostile forces in Russia—corruption, ignorance, a bloated state—Putin cleverly changed the rules of the game. Beneath the superficial success of Russia’s economy, structural change had yet to take place. Some reforms to the tax code notwithstanding, painful domestic reforms were buried by powerful nomenklatura lobbies, the castes of entrenched bureaucrats and officials whose power depends on powerful patrons. Corruption flourished and the judicial system remained too ineffective to be a stabilizing force. Thousands of Russian soldiers perished in the Chechen conflict, which produced uncounted victims among Chechen civilians, made ruins of Chechen cities and villages, and sent hundreds of thousands of refugees scrambling for survival. Billed as an anti-terrorist operation, Putin’s continuation of the war there turned out to be another business venture for Russian generals and their Chechen counterparts.
Putin’s new policies toward the Russian regions represented a strange mixture of Soviet Politburo and the tsarist ruling of the Russian empire. To preserve the privileges of power, Russia’s governors caved in to central authorities, gaining in exchange enhanced powers over traditionally weak municipal self-rule. Following in their footsteps, nearly all of Russia’s political leaders jumped to the support of any presidential initiative. One example: Putin’s idea to resurrect the old Soviet anthem received the support of more than 80 percent of parliament members. (Typically, Putin acted as though he was only following the will of the people. “The people and I can make mistakes” was his answer when challenged about the appropriateness of bringing back the Soviet song.)
Putin’s foreign policy doctrine was essentially a broader version of the domestic strategy and it showed the opportunistic way he would operate for the next fifteen years. Both could neatly be summed up as “Rogue State Management, Ltd.” Wherever there were trouble spots on the world stage or “threats” to Russia’s domestic tranquility, the new president was there with a lever.
He was everywhere! Worried about the North Korea nuclear program? The Russian president had already established personal relations with Kim Jong-il and was ready to play a broker role on the Korean Peninsula. Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, or Bashar al-Assad—Putin was ready to generously offer his assistance with all of these illustrious leaders. Whether he actually ever provided any assistance of value was another matter entirely.
On the familiar turf of Afghanistan, Putin offered the Russian military machine to assist in the quest for Osama bin Laden. Never mind that this presence allowed Russia’s generals to retain control of the major drug routes from Afghanistan to Europe via the Central Asian states. As the main supplier of its conventional weapons and nuclear technologies, Russia held the keys to Iran’s military ambitions, and Putin would repeatedly dangle those keys just out of the reach of American and European negotiators.
Putin’s early strategy was based on his reading of history. The see-no-evil Western approach to the Russian Civil War in 1919 and Britain’s Munich peace treaty with Hitler in 1938 paved the way for some of the most appalling tragedies of the twentieth century. In 1961, JFK recalled US airplanes from supporting anti-Castro forces, leaving them to be massacred by the Soviet-led Cuban army. Encouraged by this demonstration of weakness, the Soviet Union shipped nuclear missiles to Cuba. The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 brought mankind to the verge of nuclear Armageddon.
There were also more recent examples of the limits of Western involvement at crucial points in the development of a crisis: the initial passive approach to Saddam’s aggressive plans in 1990 and support for Yugoslav territorial integrity in 1991, to name two. In each, the moral of the story was the same: a timely response to such dangerous games instigated by the foes of democracy dramatically reduces the price to be paid for deterrence.
Putin’s December 2000 trip to Cuba to reinvigorate Russia’s friendship with the Castro dictatorship demonstrated his geopolitical strategy and knack for tactics. The year after his visit, having provoked worry in Washington, Putin announced the closure of the Lourdes spy base in Cuba, the largest foreign Russian military base in the world. Putin desperately needed to cut expenses and this was another chance to gain points with the new Bush administration while doing what he needed to do anyway. Putin did the same thing by closing the Cam Ranh Bay base in Vietnam in 2002, a base that annoyed both the US and Russia’s soon to be priority patron, China. (In July 2014, when Putin was looking for a way to antagonize the US over its support for Ukraine, he returned to Cuba to forgive 90 percent of the country’s unpaid Soviet debt and to announce the Lourdes base would reopen.)
Despite Russia’s demonstrable weaknesses, Putin would poke a finger wherever he could, especially in weak spots and old wounds. He regularly made threats and promises no one was sure he could keep, even if he wanted to. Russia still had its seat on the UN Security Council and often found an ally in China when looking to thwart American initiatives. I believe it was Andrew Ryvkin at the Guardian who cleverly referred to this technique of Putin’s as a “photobombing” foreign policy.
Some of Putin’s early maneuvers could simply be seen as shrewdly playing a weak hand, but they also reveal his real priorities in those first years. Foreign policy was secondary, almost irrelevant, to consolidating power at home. Putin couldn’t afford to lose time or influence dealing with external pressure. Making friendly overtures to the powerful leaders bought him the time he needed by exchanging real power abroad for more liberty to crack down at home. Closing the military bases annoyed Russian Communists and nationalists, but they were not yet much of a political factor and Putin soon brought many of them inside the tent. With a shaky domestic economy and a broken-down military there was little more Russia could do at the time, but it was effective in making Russia look and feel like a power on the world stage again.
Nuisances left unattended grow into real problems. The surge in oil prices would continue for seven years, putting trillions of dollars at Putin’s disposal; money he would use to crack down at home, buy influence abroad, and upgrade the armed forces. Strengthened by his friendly association with the leaders of the world’s great democracies, Putin became the de facto leader of nations that had chafed under uncontested US dominance in the 1990s. The window of opportunity to reshape the world order to favor democracy was closing. Putin, left unchecked, consolidated power at home and then graduated from photobombing to real bombing.