By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, December 2, 2008; Page A21
"Nyet! Nyet!" That's what a Russian bodyguard told a McClatchy news
reporter when the latter asked for comment on an incident aboard the
Admiral Chabanenko, a Russian destroyer that carried President Dmitry
Medvedev to Venezuela last week. Following the pomp, circumstance and
21-gun salute that are mandatory at such meetings, there was, it seems,
a bit of a misunderstanding. As Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez boarded
the vessel, his beefy bodyguards tried to follow him up the gangplank.
They were stopped by their equally beefy Russian counterparts. The
Venezuelans, who presumably spoke no Russian, tried to push their way
through. The Russians, who presumably spoke no Spanish, fought back.
It was all over quickly. "Everything is fine," a Russian official said
afterward. And indeed it was: The rest of Medvedev's visit to Latin
America proceeded smoothly. During his trip to Venezuela, Medvedev
reportedly added a couple of passenger planes to the $4.4 billion worth
of military hardware Russia has sold to Venezuela since 2005. In Cuba,
Medvedev met the ailing Fidel Castro and went sightseeing with his
brother Raúl. Yesterday, Russian ships began exercising in the
Caribbean. But more than weapons and armies were at stake in this visit.
As Chávez himself said a few months ago, the whole show was designed to
send "a message to the empire": Russia is back, and it can play the
imperial game as well as the United States can.
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And yet -- the lingering image of those thuggish bodyguards, shouting at
one another in mutual incomprehension, remains weirdly appropriate. For
Medvedev was in Cuba and Venezuela last week in part because he wouldn't
get that warm a welcome in Tbilisi or Kiev, let alone in Warsaw or
Prague -- and also because Russian foreign policy is, at the moment,
based on a strange paradox. On one hand, the Russians have returned to
the language, iconography and even historiography of imperialism. With
every passing year, the anniversary of the end of World War II -- and
the moment of the Soviet Union's greatest imperial triumph -- is
celebrated more elaborately. Soviet songs and symbols are back; threats
to deploy nuclear missiles are frequent; Russian leaders refer to
themselves as "global players."
But on the other hand, the Russian political system is uniquely
unattractive in the one sphere of influence that Russians have always
cared about most: Europe. There are, it is true, Russian-speaking
minorities across the eastern half of the continent who rely on Moscow
for financing and political support. There are also extremely powerful
European business lobbies, notably in Italy and Germany, that can be
counted on to praise Russia's leaders, whatever they do. But the Russian
political system -- based on crony capitalism, democratic rituals
without democracy itself, heavy media controls, omnipresent criminality
-- isn't of interest to anyone, and the Russians have trouble creating
an empire around it. During the Cold War, there were European (and
American) communists who admired the Soviet Union and whose support
really could be manipulated for Soviet ends. By contrast, I'm not aware
of a single popular movement in any European country, east or west, that
is calling for a greater economic role for a Russian-style oligarchy, or
more Russian thugs of the sort who were lurking on the gangplank of the
Admiral Chabanenko last week.
Some dictatorships to the east are more amenable, of course: Many
Central Asian regimes do operate on something like a Russian model, some
without the elaborate democratic facade. But influence in those
countries doesn't give the Russian ruling class the sense of importance
it craves or the domestic legitimacy it needs to survive. Hence
Medvedev's need to travel somewhat farther afield. Venezuela and Cuba
may not be as significant as Germany or Georgia from the Russian
perspective, but the image of Russians in Cuba evokes a certain
nostalgia. At the very least, it proves that Medvedev, like his Soviet
predecessors, can play games in America's back yard.
One only hopes that President Barack Obama will have the good sense to
ignore the whole affair, as President Bush has apparently done. In fact,
the best way for the United States to deal with this particular Russian
escapade is to treat it as the public relations exercise it was designed
to be. Let Russian ships practice all they want in the Caribbean, let
Russian and Venezuelan thugs fight it out on gangplanks, let Medvedev
spend as much time with Chávez and the Castros as he desires: Their
friendship won't last if oil prices stay low, anyway. A Russian visit to
Venezuela isn't a Cuban missile crisis, even if it is supposed to remind
us of one -- just as Medvedev isn't Khrushchev and Castro isn't quite
what he was 50 years ago. History repeats itself, as Marx said -- but
the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
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