Authors' Response: Russia in the Balance

Authors' Response: Russia in the Balance Anders Åslund, Andrew Kuchins Asia Policy, Number 9, January 2010, pp. 155-158 (Article) Published by National Bureau of Asian Research DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/asp.2010.0017 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/416974/summary Access provided at 8 Jan 2020 16:28 GMT from the University of Connecticut book review roundtable • the russia balance sheet past 500 years has exposed the reality of Russia’s economic underachievement. Russian living standards did improve after the Soviet Union collapsed because resources were diverted from military use, but per capita GDP in 1989–2006 was unchanged.9 There was no post-Communist Russian economic miracle, nor should one have been expected, and no one can say whether there will be one until the legacy of the 2008–10 global crisis can be assessed.10 9 Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development, 2003), and subsequent electronic updates. 10 Daniel Quinn Mills, The World Financial Crisis of 2008–2010 (Seattle: Amazon CreateSpace, 2009). Authors’ Response: Russia in the Balance Anders Åslund & Andrew Kuchins G iven the dilemma facing contemporary analysis of Russia that is laid out in the introduction of The Russia Balance Sheet—that depending on your perspective, Russia can be characterized as “a tale of two cities” and that much of what passes for analysis reflects deeply held historical, cultural, and political biases—it is not surprising that the six reviews diverge so greatly. We agree with comments of several reviewers that important topics, such as defense reform and corruption, did not receive adequate attention. It is impossible to cover the waterfront on a complex country like Russia in a book of less than 200 pages. Some of these topics we are taking up now in the second phase of the project, and we are currently just formulating our approach to the third and final phase. We thus value the reviewers’ suggestions about neglected anders åslund is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. He is a leading specialist on post-Communist economic transformation, with more than 30 years of experience in the field. He is the author of nine books, most recently, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy (2009), Russia’s Capitalist Revolution (2007), and How Capitalism Was Built (2007), and he has edited fourteen books. Dr. Åslund has also worked as an economic advisor to the Russian, Ukrainian, and Kyrgyz governments. He can be reached at <[email protected]>. andrew kuchins is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He served as Director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., from 2000 to 2003 and again in 2006, and as Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center in Russia from 2003 to 2005. Dr. Kuchins conducts research and writes widely on Russian foreign and security policy. His recent publications include “Economic Whiplash in Russia: An Opportunity to Bolster U.S.-Russia Commercial Ties?” (2009). He can be reached at <[email protected]>. [ 155 ] asia policy yet important themes. In this response to the reviews, we shall touch upon five themes: the purpose of our book, domestic politics, economic and social issues, foreign policy, and U.S. policy advice. The reviewers seem to have understood our purpose, whether they agree with it or not. Peter Rutland has expressed this purpose most clearly, namely, that our first goal is “to break out of…ideological readings of Russia’s fate…to offer an even-handed assessment of the pros and cons of Russia’s evolutionary trajectory… The book is written as a primer for policymakers, with a neutral and descriptive tone.” That was exactly what we intended to do. Our second goal, also well-noticed, was to provide the incoming Obama administration with a straight set of policy recommendations. Disdainfully, Stephen Blank complains that our book “too readily accepts the Beltway consensus.” Given that our intention was to clarify the bases and implications of this consensus, we take this criticism as a compliment. As is usually the case, Russian domestic politics and history arouse the greatest controversy. Well aware of this fact, we minimized history and domestic politics for this volume—we have discussed them amply elsewhere—trying to state the obvious facts in as neutral and descriptive terms as possible. These topics are so sensitive, however, that any mentioning arouses dissatisfaction. Yet it is incorrect to suggest, as a couple of the reviewers do, that we “overlook” history. The first chapter of the book, for example, frames Russia’s current struggles to break from traditions of centralized authoritarian political power and imperial or expansionist foreign policies through an analysis of the country’s historical roots. Jeffrey Mankoff may share our perspective, and Peter Rutland is not far from it, though he prefers more “thought-provoking and critical analysis.” The other four reviewers simply think that we have been impermissibly soft on Russian authoritarianism. Don Jensen has all along thought that Yeltsin was almost as bad as Putin. We can accept criticism for caution, but this was (as Mankoff and Rutland understand) not the point we wanted to make in this book. Authors write books for different purposes without changing their views. Mankoff summarizes Russia as a rentier state, which makes a lot of sense. Steven Rosefielde calls Russia “an authoritarian martial police state.” We take the dispersed criticism as an indication that we succeeded in fulfilling our intent, but such criticism also shows how difficult it is to write about the last two decades of Russian domestic politics, even when trying to avoid disturbing anybody. Moving to the economic and social affairs, disagreement falls by the wayside. Nobody can dispute the tremendous impact of energy on the Russian economy. [ 156 ] book review roundtable • the russia balance sheet This is Mankoff ’s forte. Most agree that the oil price is of vital importance for the country’s economic and political development. Mankoff, Jensen, and Rutland say so explicitly. Nobody can quarrel with our devastating demographic chapter drafted by Judyth Twigg; one can only wonder “why…Russian leaders [have] not been able to tackle these problems,” as Rutland does. Our chapter on trade policy seems too obvious that nobody questions it, and Blank concurs. Strangely, though, Stephen Blank questions whether Russia is in fact a market economy without making a strong case. Steven Halliwell claims that we have “a Panglossian view of a deeply troubled economy,” which was a surprise to both of us. How sharp does he really want us to be? Somewhat surprisingly, the reviewers are not all that critical of our point that Russia is post-imperial rather than neo-imperial, although a few quibble a bit. Halliwell claims, in line with the current U.S. embrace of East Asia, that our presentation of Russia is “Eurocentric.” But we cannot disregard the facts. The politically most sensitive Russian export is gas, and virtually all the gas exports go to Europe through pipelines. Europe attracts more than half of Russia’s foreign trade, and the vast majority of Russians live in Europe. Needless to say, the dominant religion, the orthodox creed, is European as well. Russia is European in every relevant regard, even if Putin has said a few positive words about China, and Russia is considering the possibility of building a pipeline or two to China in the next decade. So far, Russia belongs to Europe, and if we want to be realistic about the country, we had better realize that fact. An obvious purpose of this book, which was published as the new Obama administration was being formed, was to offer concrete and realistic policy advice. When offering such advice, one either accepts the main line of argument of the incoming administration (which we did) or one opposes this argument altogether. Clearly, people in the second category will not approve of the suggestions of people in the first category. Knowing what policy line the Obama administration was about to adopt, we have tried to push it further on various points. The two points where we might have lost the battle are European security and European energy—in other words, on European issues, where neither the U.S. administration nor the Kremlin have been as interested as we would like. However, we are happy to see that the Obama administration has been successful in moving forward. At the time of writing in December 2009, the United States and Russia unquestionably have better bilateral relations than when the Obama administration took office. To expect a near-term transformation is unrealistic, as we argue in The Russia Balance Sheet, and the [ 157 ] asia policy Obama administration certainly does not premise the success or failure of the “reset” on such an expectation. As to our contention about the correlation between the price of oil and a more or less accommodating Russian foreign policy, we can only say now that the price of oil did not stay low long enough to reliably test the hypothesis that a more forthcoming Russian foreign policy is to be expected during a protracted economic downturn. As Sergei Guriev and Aleh Tsyvinski argue in the second book from the Russia Balance Sheet Project, Russia after the Global Economic Crisis (forthcoming in June 2010), the current oil price of $70–$80 per barrel predicted by Igor Sechin at the June 2009 St. Petersburg Economic Forum is a recipe for stagnation akin to Brezhnev’s Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, Rutland, with his keen intellect, challenges us by suggesting that a scenario exercise would have been more exciting than a balance sheet. That is a good point, but we would argue that both approaches are useful. One of us last did a scenario exercise in late 2007.1 A scenario ending with the murder of then president Putin on Christmas night in the Christ Savior Cathedral in Moscow was wrongly presented as a “prediction” on the front page of one of Russia’s leading “liberal” newspapers. This caused a tremendous stir and resulted in excessive publicity of the kind one would not like to arouse in Russia. In the end we are left with three over-grasping issues. First, Russia has made tremendous progress in the last two decades, and those who do not recognize that are left behind. Second, at present Russia is in a serious dilemma, which Russians tend to describe as a dead end. The question is whether this suboptimal equilibrium will last. Finally, will the economic situation become so bad that Russia will be forced to reform once again or will a high oil price save the Russian elite from inconvenient truths?  1 Andrew C. Kuchins, Alternative Futures of Russia to 2017 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007). [ 158 ]