For the first time ever has U.S. President George W. Bush (left) stated that the Russian democracy may differ from the American one. Russian President Vladimir Putin is standing at the right.
Photo: Ilya Pitalev
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Full Fuel Approval
// The United States has chosen between the Russian oil and the Russian democracy
The Friendship of Nations
The American Enterprise Institute, close to the White House, hosted late last week in Washington the international conference headlined Russia: Today, Tomorrow – and in 2008. The new policy of the Bush administration in relation to Russia was voiced here for the first time. No longer considering relations with Moscow a priority, the States will give the Kremlin a carte blanche for the kind of policy that does not affect the stateside interests and won’t pedal the democracy issues in Russia. Kommersant correspondent in Washington Dmitry Sidorov has the details.
George Bush Gives the Go-Ahead
The conference held in Washington on Friday received an unexpected tone by the statement President Bush had made a day earlier. Asked about the relations with Russia, George W. Bush reminded that he has “good relations” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country has established “working relations with Russia”. He also breached upon quite a delicate subject between Moscow Washington – the Russian democracy. The head of the White House was even as vague as possible. George Bush told the Americans that he certainly “reminds Russian partners of the importance of democracy” but, at the same time, he tried to dot the i’s and warn the press against over-high expectations. “I understand that democracy in Russia may differ from the democracy in the United States. We don’t expect all countries to look just like ours.”
The head of the White House has mentioned the differences of the Russian democracy for the first time. Quite on the contrary, the U.S. administration has so far stressed the universality of democracy principles, which displeased Moscow that claimed that Washington is discontent because it does not understand the specific character of the Russian democracy. So, now it seems that Washington has decided to assume the rules of the game the Kremlin offered. Russia: Today, Tomorrow – and in 2008 conference, devoted to the political and economic situation in Russia and the outlook of the political process before the 2008 presidential elections, was designed to shape the conceptions of the new American policy in its relations with Moscow.
Russia Is Between China and Kuwait
The list of American participants of the conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute was quite impressive. The floor was taken by the U.S. President's National Security Advisor Thomas Graham, a member of the National Intelligence Council Angela Stent in charge of Russia, the director of the IMF’s European Department Michael Deppler and the head of the Cambridge Energy Research consulting company Daniel Yergin. The Russian party was represented by the director of Levada Center Yury Levada, the head of the World Security Institute, the Russian program in Washington, Nikolay Zlobin, Carnegie Center Moscow expert Liliya Shevtsova and political scientist Andrey Kortunov from Evrazia foundation.
The animate discussion lasted nearly seven hours. The floor in the first part of the conference was given to Chris de Muth, the AEI president, Yury Levada, Nikolay Zlobin and Liliya Shevtsova. Chris de Muth, who opened the session, was rather blunt and did not evade sore subject. He claimed straightaway that “compared with the times of Yeltsin, Gaydar and Khodorkovsky, the situation in the country looks gloomy now”. The Russian participants who followed him did not mince with words either. Yury Levada, for example, stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to be friends with the West “without sticking to the Western democratic values. Levada believes that “in terms of policy, Vladimr Putin places Russia somewhere between China and Kuwait, moreover, real politics in the country is substituted for political technologies”. The audience applauded this comment of Yury Levada’s.
The American Administration’s New Russian Program
Thomas Graham, the advisor of President Bush, took the floor in the second part of the conference. Mr. Graham’s speech, which attracted the audience of the AEI-sponsored event most, can be viewed as the White House’s program in the relations with Russia. “Russia is no longer in the center of the foreign policy of the United States. Russia is not an enemy of America and does not pose a threat for us, which was the case with the USSR,” the president Bush’s advisor underscored. Yet, he said that he did not consider the current developments in Russia as a turnaround to the Soviet past.
The mood of Thomas Graham’s speech differed strikingly from the tone of the beginning of the conference. Carefully pronouncing every word, the director of Russia and CIS-countries department of the National Security Council paid special attention to “achievements of the White House in the Russian direction”. Among them, Mr. Graham said, are the talks on Iran and North Korea, the security measures at Russian nuclear sites (achieved with the U.S. help, he claimed) and the exchange of information between intelligences of the two countries. However, Mr. Graham did not specify what he meant by the progress on Iran talks where the discord gap seems to be increasingly widening.
Thomas Graham pointed to the importance of the energy cooperation and said that the United States “would like to see Russia a reliable supplier of energy resources on a commercial basis”. This was, probably, about the talks that will be held in Washington today involving US Secretaries of Commerce and Energy Carlos Gutierrez and Samuel Bodman, Russiab Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko, Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller and LUKOIL president Vagit Alekperov.
Speaking about problems in the bilateral relations, Thomas Graham mentioned slow progress in the energy dialog, the concerns of the U.S. administration over the growing concentration of power in Russia and the Kremlin’s policy in relation to CIS countries. “The United States supports the independence and territorial integrity of the countries on Russia’s border as well as in any other place in the world,” Thomas Graham said. He was quick to assure his Russian counterparts that “the actions of the United States in the CIS do not hide any conspiracy”.
The keynote of Thomas Graham’s report was the thought that the relations of Moscow and Washington will not change “if the basic interests of the United States are not damaged”.
Five employees of the Russian Embassy to Washington, who Kommersant correspondent spotted in the hall, were most attentive to Thomas Graham’s speech and wrote down every word of his.
Dmitry Sidorov
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 17, 2005
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