The Oil Drum

Bob, while I'm no arms control expert, anti-ballistic missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic will (obviously) not go over well in Moscow. Most of the current Russian leadership is ensconced in a Cold War mentality (post-9/11 offers by Putin to overlook U.S. bases in Central Asia was perhaps the last opening we had with the Russians to alter that mentality).

Indeed, Russia's stability as a state is based upon a particular Cold War legacy: a state-centric system of resource rent distribution. In the 1990s, the distribution of resource rents was based upon private oil companies like Yukos and Sibneft, both of which have now been subsumed by the state (expropriation in the first case, a gentlemen's agreement and buyout in the second). The Putin administration has handily reasserted the state's role over resource rents and where they are diverted - thus precluding the rise of another center of power beyond the Kremlin.

The United States and Europe (belatedly) have criticized this project because it threatens our "energy security." I'm no Russian apologist, but there's a short-term historical legacy here that we tend to forget: the Russian "oligarchs" of the mid-1990s swindled the country and all but a handful of Russians (probably could count them on one hand) feel no remorse for the Khodorkovskys and Gusinskys. The newly assertive Russian state is a good thing in their eyes.

Which leads me to the final point: if Russia still operates in a Cold War mentality and its populace supports the project by which such a mentality is supported (state-centric resource rent distribution), then there are no domestic "push" factors that could potentially change Putin's thinking. ABM bases in Eastern Europe is just another in a long line of abrogations and insults (which, frankly, the Bush administration has been a little bit more than inept in managing and mitigating). Russia's cutoff of gas supplies to Ukraine last year, its cutoff to Georgia, its threats of cutoff to Azerbaijan and Belarus - in Russia's mind, these were calculated demands for market prices. The West, in our perceived zeal for the market, looked like hypocrites complaining about the way the demands were met.

It just adds fuel to the fire. Moscow doesn't trust the West - and yet they need European energy demand to fill the state coffers. Putin will continue to think in realist (yet vindictive) terms to account for past perceived injustices done to the Russian state during the 1990s.

As for war, I don't think so. I don't think the United States really wants to risk confrontation with Russia right now and I don't think its in anyone's interests to do so.