Should This Man Be Leading the G-8?
Russia's Putin may be an issue at July's summit
MOSCOW--Russia's former imperial capital, St. Petersburg, is romantic in the summer when the "White Nights" twilight casts an otherworldly glow on the city's ornate buildings and scenic waterways. But when western leaders join President Vladimir Putin at an old czarist palace in mid-July for the Group of Eight summit, the vibes will be more like those between a couple who have forgotten why they ever fell in love.
These annual summits are a three-decades-old tradition among leaders of the most advanced economies and powerful democracies. Until the 1990s, the elite club had seven members--Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, and the United States. But amid the drama and hope of the Soviet collapse, Russia was invited first to sit in, then to join. This year, for the first time, Russia gets the honor of playing host.
Which would be fine but for one basic question: Does Russia under Putin belong in the G-8? After all, Russia's economy ranks only 12th in the world, after Brazil, and that high only owing to its oil and gas sales. Russia hasn't opened its economy enough to qualify for membership in the World Trade Organization, and when it comes to preventing corruption, it ranks 126th out of 158, alongside the likes of Albania and Sierra Leone, according to Transparency International. (The United States is No. 17.)
Disharmony. On the other qualifier, democracy, Freedom House, another nongovernmental watchdog, ranks Russian politics "not free" and estimates media freedom just under that of Haiti. As for working to "harmonize attitudes to acute international problems"--one of the goals listed on the official G-8 website--Moscow has spent most of this year making waves. The Kremlin supports the radical Palestinian group Hamas, while opposing sanctions against Iran for its presumed nuclear weapons program, and Putin publicly supports dictators like Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.
So? Sen. John McCain suggests President Bush boycott the St. Petersburg summit, although he's an outlier among Washington officials, who mostly see value in not alienating Russia. But so does Andrei Illarionov, Putin's former G-8 adviser, who resigned in protest last November over diminishing freedoms and the rising power of state corporations. Attending the summit, he wrote in April, would be a demonstration of the West's "indifference to the fate of freedom and democracy."
Things have changed in the five years since Bush described peering into Putin's soul and liking what he saw. Today, Washington seems to think Putin barely has a soul. The Russian leader--who razed the Chechen capital of Grozny, snuffed out independent media, and emasculated opponents--is considered more than just a menace on his own territory. His petrodollar-fueled government is accused of being increasingly bearish abroad--such as by temporarily cutting off natural gas supplies to Ukraine in a price dispute and laying out the welcome mat for Uzbek President Islam Karimov on the first anniversary of a massacre by soldiers in the eastern Uzbek city of Andizhan. According to Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking in May in ex-Soviet, now NATO-member Lithuania, "opponents of democracy in Russia" are on the march.
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