Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 199)
THURSDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2007
Professor Anatol Lieven
Q180 Lord Jones:
In all of this, how malign or benign is Putin? Is he a major force
in the pressurisation, or does it just come from the bureaucracy
and the Kremlin and so on?
Professor Lieven: No, I think in the end he
is a major force. That is what I mean about there being a basic
consensus in the end—not necessarily on every issue and,
obviously, there have been moves which have been clearly driven
by sectional interests, but Putin defined Russia as a great Eurasian
power. He has always stressed that Russia is a European country,
that it must have good relations with the rest of Europe, with
the EU. He has also always stressed that Russia is a great power
within Europe. I think part of our problem is that that is a concept
which we find very difficult to get our minds round because it
is basically a 19th-century concept. On the other hand, it might
help us to get our minds round that if we recognized that, to
a considerable extent, it is also how the Turks see themselves,
one of the reasons why we find Turkey also so very uncomfortable.
The difference is, of course, that the Turks are aiming at membership
and have a more or less reasonable chance of it. I do think that
part of the key problem, as we see from the latest Turkish moves
over Kurdistan, is that the Turks are insistent upon retaining
a level of freedom of action internally and externally consonant
with their historical image of themselves but also, to be fair,
consonant with the threats that they see to themselves, which
they believe are far greater than those to any other EU member
or would-be EU member. I do think that Putin has always at one
level genuinely wanted good relationships with Western Europe.
He does not want to threaten Western Europe. He is however insistent
that the EU recognize Russia's status as a great power and not
simply a member of Russia's periphery, along the lines of Moldova
or Algeria.
Q181 Lord Crickhowell:
You have been talking about Russia's strength and power and its
ability to apply pressures on Europe. Clearly, there are abilities
to do it in short-term situations but you have said very little
about the Russian weaknesses, except to refer to the need for
investment. Of course, they have a huge demographic problem; there
has been a rapid and substantial fall in their working population,
when they economic growth demands a larger workforce. The figures
are very startling and you will be very familiar with them. At
the same time, we keep looking at the energy thing and clearly,
in the short term they can apply pressure but actually they have
a mega-problem on energy because their three major oilfields are
actually running down and they do not have the new ones in line,
they are unable to meet their own domestic supply, let alone their
external supply, Gazprom is notoriously inefficient. So there
are enormous economic and even energy weaknesses ahead of them
which they can probably only resolve with substantial contributions
from Europe. Could you just say a little more, because we really
have not touched on the fundamental underlying weakness. Putin
talks about a great power but actually, even in comparison with
Turkey, which you referred to, they are not in population terms
a vast country any more, and they have these huge problems ahead
of them because of their collapsing birth rate and the demand
for a larger workforce.
Professor Lieven: Yes. It should be said though
that the birth rate seems to have bottomed out. It has not started
increasing again but the decline has stopped. One interesting
suggestion is that this catastrophic decline in the birth rate—of
course, the other issue is the death rate, which is different—was
the product of a move from a Soviet child-rearing system, in which
everything was provided by the state, to a much more personal
and individual one. Now, as more and more of the population does
have the money essentially to take its kids on holiday over the
summer rather than send them to pioneer camp, and that is one
thing, but also of critical importance, speaking as a father,
it is predictability of future employment. If you do not know
where your job or your wage is going to come from, you are not
going to have more kids. If you are pretty confident that your
wage is secure and is even going to increase, which a great many
Russians now are, you are going to have kids, all other things
being equal. In other words, there is nothing genetic about the
decline of birth rates; they can go down and they can go up again.
From the point of view of internal political stability, this is
a good thing. Steep economic growth with a declining population
is a lot better than steep economic growth which is continually
cancelled out by a rise in population, as in India, for example.
Of course, the long-term existential threat for Russia is indeed
Chinese and Muslim immigration. I have heard concerns expressed
about Western Europe from that point of view as well. We think
we are probably going to survive, touch wood. I think the Russians
will probably survive as well. On the investment in infrastructure,
you are absolutely right, of course, but it must be said that
this is a problem that the Russians do now fully recognize themselves.
I do not know if perhaps some of you may have read the Financial
Times mini-essay on that this morning. They are well aware
of their need to invest huge sums in this. There are real questions,
of course, about competence, corruption, the role of the private
sector and, of course, the role of international investment. The
Russians, however, are well aware that the new power of sovereign
funds in Asia means that they are by no means simply dependent
on Western investment from this point of view, but I do not believe
that a state and an elite which is collectively and individually
so dependent on oil and gas production is going to allow its cash
cow to die of starvation. Historically speaking, when the Russians
think that something is very important, they usually do manage
to patch it up, while maybe neglecting other sectors. The other
thing, of course, from the point of view of dependence, a fascinating
question, is the relative balance between oil and gas in the future.
Most indications are that relative oil consumption in the world
will go down relative to gas, for ecological reasons, for reasons
of insecurity of supply from the Middle East, for reasons of price.
That makes gas even more important. Moves to clean energy may
also increase the importance of gas because of hydrogen. Russia
has 12-13% of the world's oil supplies. It has something like
27% of the world's gas supplies. Greater importance of gas means
Russia's relative importance goes up in the world, not down. That
then raises the question, of course, of how far they can actually
use this for leverage and the whole issue of a gas OPEC. That
in turn brings one to the question of how far future Russian gas
production will be directed towards liquid natural gas because,
basically, when you think about it, pipelines are stuck; you cannot
wave them around as a weapon because you cannot take them out
of the ground. In that sense they are quite different from oil.
If you can actually trundle LNG around the world, then of course
you can think much more about bringing pressure to bear on particular
markets, directing it here or there, as, of course, in the past
the Gulf states did.
Q182 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
Lord Crickhowell has really taken almost all my questions. The
GDP for Russia, we read somewhere, is the equivalent of Belgium
and Holland stuck together. The population figures we were given—and
can you confirm these—now 140 million, dropping to 110 million
over the next 20 years? Fundamentally, the repeated point that
Lord Crickhowell made, the reason why the GDP is going up is because
the oil price is going up, not because they are producing any
more oil. This emperor really does not have any clothes. I understand
what Putin is playing at; he wants to rebuild a great feeling
of nationalism and pretend they are a superpower. They are not
a superpower and they are going the wrong way, and one day reality
has to dawn, has it not?
Professor Lieven: They do not want to be a superpower.
They are very clear about that. Superpower for them implies what
the Soviet Union was in the world, what America is today. They
have given that up. They know they have no significant role in
Latin America, Africa, etc. They are determined to be a great
power on the territory of the former Soviet Union and, of course,
from that point of view, you get into the question of relative
strength. In the end, all real power in the world is relative;
it is to do with power relative to other people. They are a great
power relative to Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and they are also
a great power in military terms relative to us. That is more ambiguous.
Q183 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
They are not spending as much money as us.
Professor Lieven: No, but then they do not need
to, in terms of purchasing power.
Q184 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
If I can just pick that up, we could beat them in a conventional
war tomorrow.
Professor Lieven: I do not think so.
Q185 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
We certainly could, because our technology is miles ahead of theirs.
Professor Lieven: Who would we beat them with?
Q186 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
We would beat them in the air because our avionics are just of
a different dimension.
Professor Lieven: It is a question of where
we fight them. That was my whole point about borders.
Q187 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
Wars are won in the air.
Professor Lieven: I happen to have just been
reading Robert Pape's book about air power and I have to say that
I think the historical evidence suggests that is a very questionable
proposition. The point is that on the ground ... Firstly, let
me say very clearly—I warned against catastrophism—I
do not think we are going to fight them.
Q188 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
I am not saying that but I am just saying, in terms of our relative
military positions, we could beat them.
Professor Lieven: Where? We would beat them
in Poland, yes, because the Poles would fight like crazy. We would
lose in Ukraine. We would have a hostile population at our back
and we would be hopelessly outnumbered on the ground but, above
all—and I am sorry to say this to an EU Committee—our
gallant European allies would not fight. There have been melancholy
examples within the British military experience of my parents
of the British Army relying on flanking European forces which
failed to live up to their role. We should not fantasise about
a European defence of Ukraine, which is not going to happen. We
should do nothing predicated on the idea that it is going to happen.
That is very, very dangerous. I would also say it is immoral.
It is immoral to give security guarantees that you do not intend
in fact to keep or cannot keep.
Q189 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
That is a separate issue.
Professor Lieven: On the demographic issue,
I am really not sure any more that it is going to go down to 110
million. 130 million, maybe 125 million, yes, but do not forget
the Ukrainian population is also falling and the Baltic population
has been falling very steeply indeed. So within the territory
of the former Soviet Union, it is not just Russia that is going
down.
Q190 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
How significant is emigration?
Professor Lieven: From Russia? Not so very significant
any more. It is significant and damaging at the intellectual level.
They have lost a good many of their best intellectuals, some of
whom may now go back but it must be said, of course, that has
been countered to some extent by a very large number of immigrants
from the former Soviet Union, especially Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia,
going to Russia to work, including some highly educated ones.
The Russians cannot challenge America on the world stage but if
one gets into the whole business of who is a great power and who
is not, South Africa is not a great power on the world stage but
it is a great power within southern Africa, and it is a question,
once again, of where precisely one is confronting Russia.
Q191 Lord Truscott:
Professor Lieven, if I could return to the issue of energy, there
has been a great deal of talk around the political use of energy
exports as a weapon. You referred to it yourself in the case of
Poland. We have had Dick Cheney talking about it in terms of blackmail,
Russia using its energy resources to blackmail its neighbours.
Putin himself in his PhD thesis, as you know, talked about exploiting
Russia's natural resources to restore its great power status and,
whilst I accept what you say about superpower status, Russia cannot
be a superpower any more, I think Putin does want to see Russia
as a great power on the international stage. I think that is why
he is so keen on fora like the G8 and why Russia is keen to get
into the WTO. One of my Russian friends, interestingly, said,
"Who needs tanks when you have oil and gas?" You also
mentioned mutual dependence and there was a case of Gazprom cutting
off the gas to the Ukraine, and they said that was purely a commercial
decision rather than a political decision. What is your view in
terms of the balance between commercial and political interests
in the energy sphere or are they so inseparable that you cannot
really say that they fit into separate compartments?
Professor Lieven: I am very glad you mentioned
the WTO. I should have mentioned that. That is one area, of course,
where we do have a real capacity to bring pressure to bear on
Russia. It is not quite as strong as some people in the West think
that it is because the Russians are more ambiguous on the subject
than may initially appear. I had a meeting with some Russian small
businessmen recently who were very doubtful about WTO membership
from their point of view, but the Russian top establishment, being
dedicated to Russian exports, really is interested in the WTO,
and we can bring pressure to bear there. On the political uses
of energy, I always remember that Dean Acheson, the American Secretary
of State, was once asked in condemnatory tones whether American
oil companies were not agents of American political power and
influence in the Middle East, to which he replied, "Of course
they are", as if there was no serious question on the matter.
The Russians do not see themselves as acting in outrageous moral
terms in the view of modern history by treating their own energy
companies in this way. As far as Ukraine is concerned, the other
thing to remember is, not just from the Russian point of view
but in reality, that what the Russians have done is cut their
energy subsidy to Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus as well, an energy
subsidy which, to Ukraine, on an annual basis, dwarfed Western
aid to the country, $3-$5 billion a year. The Russians are correct
in saying that there is no way that the United States, for example,
or any other major power would continue to give subsidies without
expecting real geo-political benefits in return. They just would
not. So undoubtedly Russia is going to go on playing that card.
On the other hand, as emerged very clearly from the last crises,
they have to be careful about it because, in the end, the Ukrainians,
to be blunt, if they are cut off, will steal the gas that is going
to us in Western Europe and we will howl about it. Furthermore,
if this happens often enough, we will do something, which I firmly
believe, by the way, we should be doing, which is we will start
thinking and investing really seriously not just in alternative
sources of energy, which may be a fool's errand, but in alternative
energy, which we should be doing for the sake of global warming
anyway. When it comes to the balance between politics and profit,
I think it is worth recognizing that, to some extent, individually
and collectively for the Russian establishment this is the same
thing. These people have turned themselves into great magnates,
personal magnates, very, very rich people, on the strength of
having gained control of oil and gas from the oligarchs who took
it over under Yeltsin. On the one hand, they are genuinely, I
believe, dedicated to the interests of the Russian state, as they
see it. They remind me of a saying of Keynes about Clemenceau,
that he was a completely cynical politician who had only one illusion:
France. But on the other hand, these people like to make huge
amounts of money from oil and gas for Russia but also for themselves,
and they are not going to cut their throats over that. To emphasise,
it is well worth giving the Russians very strongly the idea that
the more they play around with these issues, the stronger it makes
the impetus in Western Europe for real moves towards alternative
energy but, unfortunately, of course, there are terrible problems
on our side with this, to take only one issue, German attitudes
to nuclear energy, something which our former Prime Minister raised
in very acute form. After all, if we are going to go on depending
on Russian fossil fuels, in a way, that is our decision. We can
do something about it. It will take us a generation, a lot of
money and a good deal of discomfort but the decision is nonetheless
in our hands.
Q192 Lord Truscott:
You said the aims of profit and politics to a certain extent are
inseparable but are they? As we have said, Russia needs a great
deal of foreign direct investment to develop its natural resources.
It has clearly taken a political decision that it is going to
limit that. With Shtokman, for example, they said initially they
were going to go it alone. Later on they did bring in the Norwegians
and the French. With Sakhalin they put pressure on Western investors
there. So you could say that, in a way, to reinforce their control
over the strategic energy sector they are discouraging foreign
direct investment, which, if you had a purely open market and
you increased their foreign direct investment, that would clearly
increase the profitability and production in the gas and oil sectors.
So in a way, you could say they are putting politics before profit—not
that other countries have not done that. The Arabs did it in the
1970s, we are seeing resource nationalism in South America. It
is not new but you can argue that they are putting the emphasis
on controlling the commanding heights of the Russian economy,
ensuring the state controls that, not foreign investors.
Professor Lieven: I think a critical question,
which was raised by the Financial Times piece that I mentioned
today, is whether in fact they do extend this principle of controlling
the commanding heights from the energy sector, where indeed they
are actually conforming to the basic international pattern outside
the Anglo-American world, which is of state dominance but, if
they extend that to more and more sectors of the economy, not
just the military industrial complex, okay, that is fairly normal
as well, to transport, even to consumer goods, then yes, they
will in the end strangle not just foreign investment but domestic
investment as well. Western businessmen who I have talked to are
certainly not convinced that that is going to happen. They still
believe that there are tremendous opportunities in many fields
in Russia in the years to come. We will have to see what happens
but, clearly, we can go on and on saying to the Russians by definition,
"If you want major Western private investment, you have to
allow companies to own significant assets in any field not legitimately
defined as strategic". The other thing that I do have to
say about the whole Sakhalin business and some others is that
if you talk to oil industry people, they will acknowledge in private
that they got some very good deals during the period of Russia's
maximum weakness in the 1990s and it was always likely that the
state was going to claw that back to some extent. In other words,
they do not simply say this is a sign in itself that the state
is going to rampage around, confiscating everything, but it is
a legitimate source of concern. To some extent, one can hope,
I suppose, but the more that—and there are tremendous divisions
over this within the Russian Government, over the level of state
control which should occur—the more they come into contact
as part of their daily business and as part of their daily business
running international corporations with the international world
of business, it will not be necessary simply for Western officials
to tell them repeatedly that they risk strangling themselves in
this way; they will be told continuously over drinks by Western
business partners, which is the whole informal aspect of co-operation,
which I think we sometimes tend to forget about in concentrating
on the official and the diplomatic.
Q193 Lord Crickhowell:
Some of your recent answers you have been heading away from Russian
policies to the important question of European policies. Earlier
you talked about the need for Europe to act coherently. What should
EU policies be and how likely is it that we are going to act coherently?
Are we capable of putting together a coherent approach, on energy
particularly?
Professor Lieven: Some of the signs have been
pretty discouraging but I would hope that we are capable of acting
sufficiently coherently at least to rule out collective extreme
policies in one direction or the other. After all, there is still
a very considerable dominant weight within Europe—not necessarily,
of course, within the structures of the EU but within Europe—of
a relatively small number of economies who, if they can act together,
can in the end make their voice heard. From that point of view,
one is talking once again in Britain about British policies and
how far Britain can co-ordinate its policies with Germany, France
and Italy and, to a degree, Spain.
Q194 Lord Crickhowell:
You have already referred to the fact that Germany stands in a
rather different position on a particular interest which makes
it quite difficult to produce coherence on this particular subject.
Professor Lieven: Yes, it does and, as you know,
although testifying to this honourable Committee, I do not regard
myself as an EU expert. I have only just come back after eight
years in America. On the other hand, the EU experts who I do know,
it must be said, do not seem to have any very clear or convincing
radical answers to this question. I suppose if you break it down
into certain specific policies, either by the EU collectively
or indeed by Britain on its own, then there are various things
that we can do. In ascending level of importance but also of unlikelihood,
I think we have to go on supporting and defending human rights
in the strict sense in Russia and human rights activists. I really
question whether it makes sense to make ostentatious gestures
of support for the Russian political opposition which (a) stands
absolutely no chance of being elected, even in the most free and
fair election, by the way. The majority of Russians will not vote
for them because they identify them with the disaster of the 1990s,
but secondly, some of these people are pretty fishy. I do not
think that it was either legitimate or contributed to British
prestige and popularity to see our current ambassador in Moscow
parading in front of a line of Russian neo-fascists guarding Kasparov's
demonstration. That is unnecessary. It does nothing but annoy
everybody. Secondly, I am very strongly of the opinion that we
should not have allowed Zakayev and Berezovsky to come to this
country in the first place. Of course, we cannot hand them over
to the Russians. Berezovsky, after all, we all know what he got
up to in the 1990s. The accusations against him are entirely credible
on that score. As for Zakayev, he is not an extremist by the standards
of the Chechen separatist camp but I think we have to recognize
that if during the Northern Irish conflict Moscow had ostentatiously
hosted even a relatively moderate leader of Sinn Fein, it would
not have contributed to good relations between Moscow and London.
In my view, it would be a very good thing if these people could
be encouraged gently—not to go back to Russia and be hanged,
but Berezovsky can go to Israel and Zakayev can go to somewhere
in the Muslim world. Thirdly, Kosovo. Firstly, a change of nuance.
Too much of the language recently on the part of European countries
has suggested that this is an EU/NATO issue in which the Russians
basically have no essential say or interest and that their role
has been purely a negative one. Two million Russian soldiers died
and the Russian empire was destroyed in a war which began with
Russia coming to the help of Serbia in 1914, the First World War.
From the Russian point of view, they have every bit as good a
right to have a say in this issue as the Americans do over the
interests of Israel, for example. That is not to say that what
they are doing is necessarily correct but a change of nuance in
saying "Look, we have got ourselves into a terrible mess
here. Please help us to get out of it. Of course, you have a legitimate
say." Then, of course, the Russians start talking about the
price. Here we cannot move formally at this stage but if we could
indicate informally a real willingness to move over time on the
issue of the separate states in the former Soviet Union and recognize
that there are parallels, which there are, frankly—parallels,
by the way not just between Kosovo and Abkhazia and South Ossetia
but also parallels between Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh,
on which issue we have taken, I have to say bluntly, because of
the Armenian Diaspora in the West, a very different line from
those we have taken towards Abkhazia and South Ossetia. We have
been stressing de facto independence for Nagorno-Karabakh
as part of a common state with Azerbaijan. Here you can also start
making public indications that they if they will accept independence
with limited partition for Kosovo—in other words the separation
of Mitrovitsa, the Serbian areas— we are willing to talk
publicly about similar solutions in the Caucasus. The reason why
this is not, in my view, unethical or illegitimate or contrary,
for that matter, to basic Western or indeed Georgian interests
is that there is, in my view, no possibility whatsoever—none—that
Georgia will ever get these territories back, unless Russia completely
disintegrates as an organised state, which I do not believe is
going to happen. If one looks at recent events in Georgia, frankly,
arguing to the Abkhaz that they should come back into the state
under real Georgian authority is a bit of a joke and an insult.
So in that we would just be recognizing reality. Finally, I do
think that, for our own sake above all, at some point we have
to be willing publicly to oppose American policies and actions,
above all, once again, in the field of NATO enlargement, that
we view as reckless. One of the problems that the Russians have
with the EU, to repeat, is that again and again they have been
told in private that we think some of the things the Americans
have been doing, like abrogating the ABM treaty, for example,
in 2002, was quite wrong and illegitimate but in the end we have
never been prepared to say so in public. Finally, we could catch
them wrong-footed if we now offered to come fully into the CFE
treaty, dropping our opposition because of Russian troops in Transdniestra,
which remain, and Russian troops in Georgia, which, by the way,
have just been withdrawn. Since the Russians are now using the
CFE as a blocking mechanism over the missile defence thing, that
would at least complicate their stance, shall we say, while appearing
to make a conciliatory gesture on our part.
Q195 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
Going back to your earlier remarks about full partnership not
being possible—and I do not think anybody would deny that
today—you might not have said that though at the time of
Yeltsin, I think, and we do not quite know what is going to happen
in the future. I strongly feel that we should be very purposefully
leaving the door open, by which I do not mean we say we want to
see Russia as a member of the EU tomorrow but we should be making
absolutely clear we would like them one day, particularly as they
have a relatively small decline in population, a tiny GDP and
everything else, and they are not this great superpower they think
they are, and what we are in the business surely of doing is trying
not to feed the paranoia that there is in Russia that all foreigners
hate them. If we are actually saying "We would like to see
you one day as a member of our club", not putting any timescale
on it or anything else, would that not be a helpful gesture?
Professor Lieven: I certainly think that we
should continue to stress again and again that we want Russia
as a partner, that we do not regard Russia as an enemy, and so
forth and so on. When it comes to actual membership, I do have
to say I am very uneasy, as a British subject, at the idea of
British troops, British/European allies, guarding the eastern
borders of Ukraine. I am equally uneasy about having a European
Union border with China along the Amur River, something which,
if the demographic trends which you have described continue, could
at some point in the future become one of the most dangerous issues
in the world, especially as far as Russia is concerned. For similar
reasons, I have to say I am very sceptical about bringing Turkey
into the EU. That means a European Union border with Iraq and
Iran, and we see what is happening on the Turkish border with
Iraq at the moment. Given all the worries that we have about the
coherence of the EU and the EU's real ability to draw up and stick
to common policies, I do feel that there is something to be said
at the moment—and also given the relative decline of the
US in terms of global power and, above all, the limitations that
we have seen on real American military power—I do think
that at the moment and for a good time to come there is a real
case to be made for Western and especially European Union strategic
modesty in that regard.
Q196 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
We have touched on, indeed, we have really focused on quite a
lot of Russia's preoccupations in terms of foreign policy but
earlier on this morning you said that you thought the single most
fundamental issue for the Russians was peace and then you went
on to talk a bit about stability. I suppose you could say those
are the fundamental issues for virtually any country in the world.
Everyone wants peace, everyone wants stability, most of us think
prosperity is quite a good idea too, which is a concomitant of
both the other two. What else do you think motivates Russian foreign
policy? You have touched on China, briefly on India—what
sort of relationships do you think Russia wants to develop with
China, with India, with these huge emerging economies to their
east? You have talked a lot about Europe and a lot about the United
States; let us look east in foreign policy terms for a moment.
What about those countries?
Professor Lieven: When I talked about peace
as the fundamental interest, I was actually talking as much about
us as Russia, and that it is the fundamental interest of the European
continent. Once again, I do not want to be melodramatic but history
is a long business and 1939 is not that far away, nor is 1914,
nor in the context of Sebastopol is the Crimean War, although
that is a bit further back.
Q197 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
What about the future? What do they want in terms of their relationships
with those countries?
Professor Lieven: The first fundamental Russian
national interest, leaving aside issues of influence beyond its
borders, is of course territorial integrity. With regard to China,
they have deep concerns about the future, but concerns which the
Russian establishment, unlike parts of the Russian media, has
been very careful to keep private. They have been very disciplined
about that, not talking in the future, because of course they
are very afraid of Chinese immigration to the Far East. That is
one reason why they do now seem finally to be getting their act
together as far as a real programme of economic regeneration in
the Far East is concerned, but even that has dangers. Rebuilding
infrastructure needs labour, and where is the labour going to
come from? China again. The ultimate Russian nightmare is a situation
in which you have a massive Chinese population in the Far East
who essentially, not initially with China's backing, start to
assert themselves as the dominant power and then China, maybe
even without wishing to, is forced to come in on their side and
you have a situation in which the Chinese outnumber the Russian
forces already in the Far East by an order of magnitude. Once
again, it is not something the Russian stalk about but it is one
reason, though not the only one, why they are so insistent on
remaining a nuclear superpower, if nothing else. They want to
go on massively outclassing the Chinese for as far ahead as they
can possibly see. On the other hand, of course, Putin is very
insistent on this and I think it marks a certain shift in Putin's
thinking, the belief that China is a critical Russian partner
and ally, and they are clearly balancing with China against US
influence, most notably of course in Central Asia now. That is
partly balancing. It is also from the Russian point of view a
recognition of reality that China is going to become more and
more powerful on the continent of Asia and in Central Asia. If
the Russians do not want to confront them, which they really do
not want to do, they have to try to build up a co-operative relationship.
Q198 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
Do you think they feel that threatened?
Professor Lieven: Today, no. In the long run,
yes. As I say, for the demographic reasons which have been stated,
with good reason. The population of the Russian Far Eastern province
around Vladivostok has gone down from 2.7 million to 2.2 million
people. There are 74 million people at the last count just in
the two adjacent provinces of China. Go figure.
Q199 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
Let us take it in a different forum then in terms of foreign policy:
Russia's role at the United Nations, their role on the Security
Council. We hear about a crisis. We do not really hear very much
about what they are doing in the Quartet in terms of their partnership
over the Middle East peace process. There is a certain amount
of interest in their relationship currently with Iran, for very
obvious reasons. What do you think are their overriding principles
about their policies in the Middle East?
Professor Lieven: It is partly, once again,
retaining bargaining counters. The Russians have this fantasy,
you could call it—it might not be completely that if the
Americans get into really serious trouble in future somewhere—about
a grand bargain, at which they will sit down with the Americans
and they will give up, as they see it, some really important point,
say about Iran, in return for the Americans backing off on what
they see as vital issues, for example, supporting Georgia, aiming
at Georgian and Ukrainian membership. I sometimes call the Russians
from that point of view geo-strategic Plushkins, the character
in Gogol who hoarded everything. They are hoarding their counters.
That is the first step. They see the world in very realist terms
from that point of view. They do not always understand the immense
barriers, domestic barriers, to America doing something like that.
Beyond that, they do want to play a role as an acknowledged great
power. Once again, not a superpower but a power with real prestige
and influence on the world stage and that is partly, as it is
in many countries, for domestic reasons. That does play well to
much of the Russian population, it boosts the image of Putin or
whoever succeeds him, more or less. Thirdly, in the Middle East,
obviously, they are thinking really seriously about how Russia
can use international institutions to further leverage its power
in the energy sphere. They have not got very far with those discussions
yet, partly because, once again, the future of gas in particular
in the world is unclear. They want to oppose any further unilateral
American or Western interventions which take place without their
consent and, to be fair to the Russians, in ways which they see
as deeply destabilising. The Russians do point out, after all,
that they did warn the Americans about what they were likely to
get into in Iraq. They told them clearly "This is not in
your interests to do this" and the Americans did not listen.
"Do not blame us for what followed." As far as Israel
is concerned, first, one must say clearly that—what Quartet?
The Americans have not allowed anybody else to play a really significant
role on that issue. They are determined to dominate the agenda
themselves and, of course, can because nobody else really wants
to confront them, including the Russians. The Russians have taken
occasionally a step beyond the European Union, as, for example,
by talks with Hamas in Moscow. In any event, the Russians did
tell Hamas "You have got to recognize Israel." That
is a categorical first step towards talks. They were talking from
the same playbook essentially. The Russians certainly do not want
to go back to a situation of explicitly and categorically backing
the rejectionist camp in the Muslim world, partly because they
tried that before and it really did not get them very far. Key
elements of the rejectionist camp collapsed on them but secondly,
because they know that that would radically escalate the level
of their tension with the United States and they do not want that,
they do not see why they should do it. From the point of view
of Iran, the Russians are not indifferent to the dangers of an
Iranian nuclear force. They see those dangers, however, in rather
different terms. They do not take the threat, either of a direct
Iranian attack, which they regard as complete fantasy, or of Iran
giving weapons to terrorists as at all serious. One reason for
that, of course, is that there are very few Shia in the former
Soviet Union so there is not a threat of a Shia revolutionary
movement, except to some degree in Azerbaijan perhaps at some
point, and the Iranians for their part have been very careful
not to support or even to show explicit sympathy for the Chechens.
So the Russians do not regard Iran as a threat. The threat that
they see is that if Iran gets an explicit, a real nuclear force,
other states in the Middle East will follow suit automatically,
and then of course two things happen. One is that Russia's status
as a nuclear power is diluted, but second thing is you get more
Pakistans, in other words, you get more Sunni states with nuclear
forces which could, God forbid, at some stage collapse and then,
the Russians, like the Americans, really do begin to worry about
threats of nuclear terrorism against them. I think, as the Russians
see it, the most that realistically anyone is going to be able
to get the Iranians to do is to do what the Iranians actually
want to do, which is to get not nuclear weapons themselves but
the potential to build them, and to basically freeze the Iranians
under the NPT and hope that you can keep them there by threatening
really severe sanctions if they go further than that. Then, there
is the other factor that they do want to sell things to Iran,
especially in the nuclear field. Then there is the emotional factor,
which one should never ignore, which is that they are very tired
of being told what to do by the Americans. There is, it must be
said, an irrational emotional tendency to push back. I would not
say that that adds up to a coherent policy in the Middle East
but that is partly, as I say, at least on one critical issue because
the Americans do not really allow anyone else a coherent policy.
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