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04/26/2007
Sergei Ivanov
Slight change in what I was going to discuss this week, after
reading an extensive interview with Russia’s First Deputy Prime
Minister Sergei Ivanov in the Financial Times [Neil Buckley and
Catherine Belton doing the work.]
As I’ve been writing in my “Week in Review” column, Ivanov
has as good a chance as any of becoming the next president,
assuming Vladimir Putin keeps his word and bows out after his
second term. [I still have my own doubts on this.] I have also
said that in terms of U.S. interests, Mr. Ivanov could be a
rather volatile figure who is capable of bringing us back to the
days of the Cold War or a modern facsimile thereof.
Following are a few excerpts focusing on foreign policy and
Russia’s style of democracy.
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FT: You’ve said before that you don’t think Russians would
want 100 percent western democracy, but want Russian
democracy. What is Russian democracy, and why do Russians
not want western democracy?
Ivanov: The mentality is slightly different. You’ve been living
here for a long time probably. You see there is a difference in
culture and traditions. At the same time, I admit that on the
whole we are Europeans and not Asians, by culture and by
language. We are eastern Europeans, that’s the right way to
describe it. But Russians on the whole love to criticize their
authorities, but they don’t like it when foreigners do. We can say
whatever we like but when foreigners start doing this it makes us
unite immediately. Plus there’s our geography, our history.
What does western democracy mean, what does eastern
democracy mean? Is there democracy in Japan? Yes. How
many years has the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan been in
power? 60 years, without change. Is anyone going to say there
is no democracy in Japan? No. Is there Indian democracy? Yes.
In general there are few democratic countries in the world. You
can count them as being 25 or 30 out of 200.
Ivanov: What does democracy mean – a free vote. There are
principles that are indisputable. Without these principles there
will be no democracy. The free will of the people, a parliament,
changeability of power, all this is clear. How it is applied – in
Japan there is one model, in India another and in western Europe
another, and there are nuances also. In the U.S. there is
democracy. But in the U.S. is it possible that the minority of the
people can elect the president? It is possible. What would you
say or write about Russia if the same thing happened in Russia?
You would vilify us. But in America it’s possible.
Therefore, standards of democracy, general principles, should be
the same everywhere. But you can’t rake everything in and write
in a UN charter what democracy is, and force everyone to have
the same democracy. Egypt is also a democratic country, but
there are many nuances there.
FT: So is the optimal form of democracy for Russia one where
there are no elections for regional governors?
Ivanov: There are elections for governors, but they’re not direct.
It’s not the population that elects them but the local parliament
confirms or does not confirm the candidate that is forwarded by
the president. [Ed. In case you don’t know this is a joke. Putin
picks the governors and the parliament rubber stamps his
selections. Hardly democratic. Imagine if President Bush just
picked all the state’s governors in this fashion.] And as far as I
remember there were two cases in a very short period of time,
three years, when a local parliament refused to look at the
candidate put forward by the president, and he was forced to
withdraw them. And that doesn’t mean the president just says,
here’s your candidate. There have already been two cases when
they were rejected. [Ed. I’m unimpressed.]
Ivanov: And don’t forget we have a very young democracy, it is
only 15 years old. You have been living with your democracy
for centuries. And democracy is not a frozen process, but an
eternal process. You can’t just plant democracy like a potato.
And I’m not going to even begin talking about Iraq and other
beacons of democracy that we see around our borders, like
Georgia and Ukraine – which is, by the way, a total undermining
of democracy. Because people, having seen this total, excuse me
for the rude word, bardak, this total mess, will say we don’t need
any democracy at all. Appoint us a tsar, give us our wages and
stop bothering us with your democracy. It’s a total undermining
[of democracy]. And when we are told that this is an example of
democracy, then excuse me this just prompts Homeric laughter
among 90 percent of the population here in Russia, and in
Ukraine too.
FT: Do you think there is a risk of a new cold war between
Russia and the U.S.?
Ivanov: I don’t’ see such a risk because in any case, absolutely
any scenario for the development of Russia we will not enter into
another cold war. We stepped on this rake once and we will not
repeat our mistake ever again. [Ed. I need to use the rake
analogy more often it’s a good one.] For one, security is
secured not just through military methods, and secondly, yes, we
will develop our army mainly through creating effective forms of
weapons that do not need such funds and such expenditures that
were carried out in the Soviet Union. The defense budget in any
case will be lower than 3 percent of GDP. In the Soviet Union it
was 30 percent. How that all ended we saw in 1991. When the
Soviet Union’s army was the most powerful, 5 million, everyone
was frightened of it. It was a scarecrow for the outside world.
And what happened? Therefore we will ensure our defense
capability through technology and through intellect. It is not
possible to defend the world’s biggest country by area with sheer
weight of soldiers. We understood this a long time ago.
FT: What about Iran?
Ivanov: Iranian medium-range missiles also won’t reach central
Europe in the foreseeable future. Yes, Iran has medium-range
missiles. And this arouses concerns for us because their rockets,
medium-range, and not intercontinental, will reach us. They
won’t reach you, but they will reach us. And we proposed to
NATO five years ago that we create a joint anti-missile defense
system. There’s the S-300 and the Patriot. Now we have the S-
400. We could ward off this threat this way. But Iran says
publicly that Europe is not the enemy. Israel is the enemy. They
say this openly, and we are categorically against this. We say
consider this a deeply incorrect policy of the leadership of Iran.
But look at where Israel is and where Poland is. Any military
man would tell you the ends just don’t meet.
During this public polemic, one argument appeared that was
absolutely incorrectly interpreted in the west – on medium range
missiles. Firstly, we had said earlier, before the appearance of
U.S. plans to create a strategic anti-missile defense in east
Europe, that we don’t like the situation with the Soviet-U.S.
agreement on liquidating medium-range missiles. We said this
before. Why don’t we like this? Because in the past 15 years
these missiles have appeared in many countries. And in Munich,
the president named them for the first time. North Korea, China,
Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, Iran, Israel – and all of
them are close to us. And the misinterpretation lay in the fact
that you think we said that if that’s the case, then we will leave
the agreement and create our own medium range missiles and
direct them at you. We don’t need this. We have different
threats. At the end of the day, what is happening? Now any
country in the world, whether it’s Vanuatu, or whether it’s Fiji, if
it wants, and has money, it can produce a medium-range missile.
And only two countries in the world – we and the U.S. – don’t
have the right. This is an injustice. If no one had the right, this
would be a different conversation. This was how it was in 1987.
The Soviet Union and U.S. liquidated them and no one had them.
But 20 years have passed and what do we have now? This is
what worries us.
FT: What do you consider might be the real or hidden aim of
siting [sic] the missile defense system in eastern Europe?
Ivanov: The question occurs to us and our military that if there’s
no need to intercept medium-range missiles from Iran or even
more so from North Korea – and Iran is definitely not going to
have ICBMs in the foreseeable, that’s for sure. Believe the
specialists. Creating ICBMs needs a totally different level of
economic and technical development of the country. Dozens of
sectors need to be highly contemporary to make a single ICBM –
that means guidance systems, space technology, it’s a lot .
And 10-anti-missile interceptors won’t solve the problem it if is
aimed at us and at keeping us in check. But understand that it
starts to undermine the strategic balance of forces. Today, a
balance exists between us and the U.S., and no longer in the
number of missiles. We stopped a long time ago using the Soviet
method of calculating, that if the U.S. has 10,000, for instance,
China has 1,000, Great Britain 500, France 500, then we put it
together and decide we should have 15,000. The Soviet Union
counted this way. The Soviet Union considered we should have
the same number of weapons as the whole of the rest of the
world together. We have stopped thinking this way a long time
ago. The main thing is quality, and guaranteed non-interception
of missiles. Let’s have 1,000, and not 15,000 .Philosophically,
whenever the shield is strengthened, the sword is strengthened
afterward. This is the eternal competition. And here there is
never going to be a winner.
FT: Do you think there will be attempts to destabilize the country
before the election?
Ivanov: There could be attempts, or the desire to do so. But
nothing will come of this. The economic and political situation in
Russia today is very stable. There could be attempts, but this
will be money thrown into the wind. It will be spent in vain.
There will be no dividends.
FT: So the main thing is to ensure continuity of power?
Ivanov: Yes. I can’t foretell the opinion of the Russian people.
But my feeling is, it seems to me that the majority of Russians
will be for continuing the course of Putin. Because no matter
what you say there are concrete results. Look at the economy.
Look at the gold and hard currency reserves; and look at the
stabilization fund. Look at industry, the army and judge [for
yourselves] And any person with common sense will judge on
objective criteria. Of course there are many problems in Russia.
There is a huge gap in incomes between the rich and the poor,
there is a huge gap between the regions. I traveled a lot across
Russia as defense minister and now as vice premier and of course
people in the Far East and Siberia and even 300km from Moscow
live very badly, and the gap is even visible, you have probably
seen it. The gap is colossal. There is such a saying, “Moscow is
not Russia,” and this is correct.
FT: So in your opinion even if the president does not remain in
power there is no risk that the next president can change the
course of the country completely?
Ivanov: There are always risks. You can’t guarantee this 100
percent. This is democracy. The people will decide how much
one candidate or another will convince the people of something
or not. You can’t foretell this. But I have a feeling that any
candidate who will run for the presidency will hardly speak from
the platform that everything Putin did was bad, and everything
needs to be done differently, and everything needed to be
different. Such a candidate wouldn’t have the slightest chance.
There could be some kind of marginal figure, a clown. But they
would get 1 percent of half a percent of votes.
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Hott Spotts returns next week.
Brian Trumbore
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