To Be Sure!

This strikes me as a curious way to end a column about how Russia's ability to threaten cutting western Europe off from its gas supplies is making it extremely powerful:

German officials don’t really think Russia is about to turn off the gas if it doesn’t get its way on some issue. After all, it never did that during the old cold war, and Russia today is much more dependent on Western markets. But still, centuries of uneasy relations between Europe and Russia make German officials queasy about how dependent they’ve grown on the Kremlin to heat their homes and offices. Queasy or not, one thing they know for sure: Russia is back. The gas man cometh.

That Russia never did this during the Cold War seems like a good reason to think they won't do it in the future. And if Germans don't "really" think Russia will turn off the gas, then what's the significance of the gas man comething? Russia seems to be "back" primarily in the sense of not being as economically devastated as it was when I visited in the late Yeltsin years. And that I'd have to judge as a good thing; the human suffering involved in Russia's botched post-Communist transition was enormous.

Comments

Well, Russia was already economically devastated in the pre-Yeltsin years. The only way you can call the Russia of 1998 "economically devastated" is if you are completely ignorant of what life was like 10 years earlier. You should have seen, for example, Ivanovo in 1989. The human suffering in the "botched post-Communist transition" was mostly a result of how botched the Soviet system was. Any increase in suffering under Yeltsin was more psychological than physical - for most people the absolute quality of life as measured in things like range of food stuffs and clothing improved significantly during the Yeltsin years, although I grant that relative quality declined for many who lost meaningful jobs and had to do demeaning things to make money (e.g. history professors selling Snickers). And it is not clear to me that life under Putin is really that much better than the post-Yeltsin years once you get out of the major cities. Life in rural and small town Russia is still miserable.

Posted by vanya | October 25, 2006 9:32 AM

"Russia seems to be "back" primarily in the sense of not being as economically devastated as it was when I visited in the late Yeltsin years."

I think the current Russo-phobia has lots to do with Russia moving toward away from free markets and toward a more fascist system. I think it has almost nothing to do with a fear of Russia having higher living standards.

Posted by Petey | October 25, 2006 10:44 AM

Of course Russia is also losing large ammounts of population due to AIDS, and economic depression (i.e. it's driving people to suicide or vodka) and it's such that current projections show a substantial decrease in actual population rates greater than say the rest of Europe or non-immigrant America.

Posted by MNPundit | October 25, 2006 10:47 AM

The column may be misguided, but the Flanders and Swann song, the gasman cometh, to which it alludes, is wonderful. Check it out if you don't know it.

Posted by J | October 25, 2006 10:59 AM

Short Friedman, once more: Another potential threat to global corporate hegemony which must be viewed with alarm.
The truth about Russia, that's an awful place ruled by an evil dipstick, but that he poses no threat to American interests and there's nothing we could do about it if he did, is not some Friedman would ever admit to himself, let alone put in print.

Posted by JMG | October 25, 2006 11:58 AM

That Russia never did this during the Cold War seems like a good reason to think they won't do it in the future.

I don't think this is necessarily right.

To take just one point: natural gas is now a much more important energy source for Western Europe than it was during the Cold War. That means that a threatened cutoff of natural gas during the Cold War would have had much less leverage then; thus, there was a lot less incentive for the USSR to do it.

Posted by Al | October 25, 2006 12:01 PM

That Putin dramatically turned off the spigots to Ukraine on New Year's Day 2006 is something of a reason to think they might do so now. The current spurious bans on the imports of Georgian and Moldovan wines are also signs of willingness to engage in economic warfare.

Posted by Doug | October 25, 2006 3:52 PM

I agree with Al, the end of the Cold War doesn't necessarily make Russia less likely to do this sort of thing. The most obvious difference is that America is no longer reflexively and bitterly anti-Russia in all disputes. In fact, America needs Russia's help in a variety of areas, chief among them Iran. So, particularly assuming some sort of quasi-legitimate cover story on Russia's side, it's not clear how strongly America would support Germany in such a dispute. Certainly America would support Germany with a certain amount of rhetoric and bluster, but how much farther would they go? And of course the thought in the back of every foreign country's mind in these post-Iraq-invasion days is: let's say America does oppose our actions. What, exactly, can they do about it?

Posted by OhioBoy | October 25, 2006 3:59 PM

MY, the idea that this is a binary issue -- that either Russia may "turn off the spigot", or it won't, in which case any increased dependency of Western Europe on Russian gas is irrelevant -- is simplistic and unworthy of you. Obviously, high natural gas prices reflect the fact that natural gas is harder to come by in the world -- that there is lots more demand and not so much supply as there was a few years ago. That enhances the bargaining power of suppliers in all kinds of ways. You would certainly accept this argument with regard to Iran and oil prices; why not with regard to Russia and natural gas?

Posted by brooksfoe | October 26, 2006 7:00 AM