New Cold War? I don’t think so.

Lately there’s been a lot of news covering what the media calls ‘The New Cold War.’ Frankly, it’s not so. Russia is becoming increasingly integrated into Western markets, no matter how much the Kremlin tries to keep Russia’s assets under government control. With increasing economic interdependence, the risk of war, even if it might just be a ‘Cold War’, is drastically reduced. Furthermore, today Russia isn’t leading a worldwide communist revolution. Russia is focused on Russia’s own national interests, it’s not challenging anyone’s way of life anymore.

A lot of the negative news focuses on Kosovo, with Russia and Serbia staunchly refusing to go along with Western recognition of the new state. This position by Russia clearly shows that it has rediscovered its confidence when it comes to international diplomacy. Another issue that illustrates the so called ‘New Cold War’ is Russia’s insistence that US not deploy its proposed missile shield in Central and Eastern Europe. This shows that Russia once again (or maybe it never stopped) views the West with suspicion and distrust. The third major news item that comes to mind when describing Russia’s new confrontations with the West is its energy dominance in the European energy market. There are fears that Russia has no qualms about using its energy supplies as a political weapon, and that the Nord Stream and South Stream pipelines (from Russia to Germany, and from Russia to Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Italy, and Austria, respectively) will increase Russia’s dominant grip on the European energy market.

The third reason for expecting a ‘New Cold War’, however, seems to be misinterpreted. Does a businessman declare war on his client? Usually no! Outside of reasserting its independence from the West, Russia doesn’t want to horribly ruin its relations with the West. The European (and American) market is a huge client for Russia’s energy. And, of course, money makes the world go round. It’s not just energy that’s keeping Russia and the West interlinked. It’s also foreign direct investment (FDI) into Russia. Just today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal reported that the French auto maker Renault had purchased a minority stake of 25% worth $1 billion in the Russian auto maker Avtovaz. That was a headline story. Another story buried within the paper was that Pepsico. and its chief bottler purchased a majority stake (75% or something similar) in a Russian soft drink company worth $1.4 billion. That’s a lot of money for a country where the GDP (PPP) is around $14,600.

Even under the USSR, the GDP (PPP) per capita in 1990 was $9,211. This means that Russians today are roughly %150 wealthier than they were 18 years ago. Now, I realize that this is on average, and the the large amount of billionaires (second only to the US in this regard) and thousands of millionaires are a huge offset, but Russia’s economy is still growing at dizzying speeds. For the past six years Russia’s GDP has been growing by over 6.5% each year (sometimes reaching as high as 7.3% as in 2003). Combined with a trillion dollar economy, it is a huge growth rate. This can be seen by the construction of the new Moscow International Business Center, a $12 billion complex in the heart of Moscow. The Russians of tomorrow will be considerably richer than the Russians of yesterday.

Wealth, though, doesn’t necessarily mean that Russia is a stable country. One of Medvedev’s (Russia’s president-elect) chief policy goals will be to “increase the role of civil society.” There’s a lot of things wrong with Russia. The life expectancy for men is alarmingly short: 59 years. Russia is also facing a population implosion; it has lost about 7 million people over the past 15 years because the population is not regenerating itself. Russia’s central government is powerless in many areas of the vast country, with mafia groups or others wielding the real power. Roughly speaking, now that Russia has restored its international image as a serious player in world politics (Putin’s accomplishment), what Medvedev hopes to do is to improve civil order, health institutions, and education institutions.

Medvedev will have nothing to gain by starting a prolonged conflict with the West. That, however, does not mean that the West can ignore Russia on issues that concern it, as the West did for a decade and a half after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

All of which makes me cautiously optimistic. I don’t want a new Cold War and I want Russia to become a modern civil society, with a responsible government.

In support of the teacher’s strike in Bulgaria.

I’m very proud of what’s going on in Bulgaria right now. Right now, the country’s public school teachers have gone on strike demanding a 100% increase in wages. Their wages are measly, 185 euros a month; the lowest wages in the region for teachers. The other demand that the teachers have is that the state should allocate at least 5% of the GDP for education, up from the 1% that the state spends on education each year now.

The teachers have been on strike for two and a half weeks now, rebuffing the government’s claims that it does not have the ability to raise wages or spend so much on education. Politicians, especially the Minister of Education, Daniel Vulchev, claim that the state would be irresponsible to allow such a wage raise, saying that it would cause inflation and burden a government already in financial trouble. Maybe so, but the teachers deserve to live on more than bread and water. It seems like the government really doesn’t care about education.

The results of this negligence are obvious, students in Bulgaria rarely match up to the intellectual levels of past generations. In the university level, professors take bribes to change grades, since they’re salary is roughly half that of a professional bus driver in Bulgaria. In short, the country is turning from a source of high skilled labor, to one of unskilled labor, all because the education system has been paid very little attention to in the years following communism (in other words, for over 15 years).

The social problems in Bulgaria seem to have been masked by the country’s recent successes, getting into the European Union and NATO, its high GDP growth rate, the real estate boom, growth in tourism, etc. But the fact of the matter is, the country still has a lot of issues that it needs to deal with. When I was in Bulgaria this summer, for example, many people commented that, “In other countries, a mafia exists, in Bulgaria, the mafia has a country.” What the people mean is that once lawmakers get elected to Parliament, they immediately strike a deal with some mafia group or other and immediately forget about their electorate. Or, another version, is that the politicians are incompetent (“There is no more government in Bulgaria), leaving the people open to be exploited. For example, the country couldn’t put out its own forest fires over the summer, and had to ask Russia for help. Those are the pessimistic views in Bulgaria.

I’m a little on the more hopeful side. The people there seem to finally be aware of the simple truism that if you want your lot to get better, you have to work for it. And if your life is made miserable by the way that the state is set up, then perhaps the state should be changed in order to better the condition of daily life. The rector of the state university Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski’ recently said “I don’t care about the financial instability of a state full of weak minded people. We want a country of spirit, a country of competence, in which young people would like to live.” The professor is completely correct, and I believe that the university should receive the 26 million euros it’s asking from the Bulgarian government as a subsidy to help keep its doors open.

Like I said before, it seems like the conditions in Bulgaria are improving. We’re finally seeing the broad resentment against the current status quo, which leaves the everyday person stuck on a measly salary, in a country where the state does not care about the individual. I hope that the state finally begins to work for Bulgarians, and not for a small group of greedy individuals.

The Russian gamble for a European sphere of influence

One of the things that has been bugging me lately is Russia’s vehement opposition to America’s plan to set up a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Their argument seems convincing at first; they claim that the shield is meant to contain Russia, and not rogue states like Iran. They even went as far as offering a radar system in Azerbaijan to prove how the Americans are lying about the intent of the missile defense system. Incidentally, the Azerbaijani base is inadequate geographically. First, it is too close to Iran to effectively shoot down any Iranian missile. Second, Iran is not the sole possible threat. What if Syria, or Gaddafi’s Libya, suddenly follows Iran’s model? How could a base in Azerbaijan counter a strike from Libya?

So are the Americans lying about the true intent behind these military installations? First, I think we should take a look at what the military purpose of these installations is. They would be installed, first and foremost, to defend America’s allies (and NATO member countries) in Eastern Europe from missile attack. Now really, does it matter who the attack is from? Both Poland and the Czech Republic, not to mention other Eastern European nations like Slovakia, Hungary, and the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), willingly joined the NATO alliance. All are allies of the United States right now, and as such, the United States is seeking to protect it’s allies. Does it really matter who America would be protecting them from if an attack ever came?

But what of Moscow’s complaints that the execution of this plan tips the balance of power in Europe? I’m sorry to remind Russia that it lost the Cold War, with two decades of post-Communism fast approaching Eastern Europe. The balance of power has already been tipped, and tipped so far that even former Soviet states like the Baltic nations are now NATO members, and others, such as Georgia and Ukraine, aspire to join the alliance. Russia also claims that the USA is seeking to become dominant in this region of the world. Perhaps it is so, but it is only with the willing cooperation of Eastern European states. The few thousand men who are to be stationed in Romania and Bulgaria, combined with the radar bases in the Czech Republic and Poland pose no threat to the national sovereignty of any of the nations.

No, what seems to be really happening right now is that Russia is once again trying to carve out a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, with strength found from Putin’s vigorous rule and vast petroleum reserves. Moscow seems intent on keeping Eastern Europe a ‘buffer zone’ between Russia and the West. Eastern European states are to be effectively neutered if Moscow has its way. The purpose, according to Russia’s current pravda, of former Soviet states like the Ukraine and Georgia is to be vehemently pro-Russian and to never ever even hint that they might have some semblance of independence in foreign affairs. Why? What does Russia have to fear? Is the European Union so terrifying? Is the United States still an archenemy?

The sad part of the whole charade, though, is that Russia has successfully painted itself as the victim in this scenario. After all, America is the arrogant nation, placing radar systems and a handful of mid-range missiles in countries close to Russia, right? Wrong! For starters, neither Poland nor the Czech Republic even border the vast Russian federation (the three Baltic nations, on the other hand do, and theoretically, are more vulnerable to Russian attack; yet the Russians seem to forget that in their claims that the Americans are lying). Second, it is Russia who is seeking to meddle in the internal affairs of other countries at the moment, forcing its own national interests to the front, while virtually ignoring the national interests of its smaller neighbors. And, worst of all, Russia has promised to point its nuclear arsenal at Europe and threatened to use conventional military force to defend its national interests. Talk about fighting back with a sword when tickled with a feather!

One thing is certain, if America’s plan to install a missile shield goes through, and it can only do so with the backing of the host states, Eastern Europe will show, quite definitively, that they have stepped out of the long shadow of Russian dominance. A precedent will be set, the correct precedent that will later allow Eastern European countries more freedom when conducting their foreign affairs. I’m not against Russia or Russians, what I’m against is one nation muscling another into accepting its demands. One of Russia’s top generals, Yuri Baluyevsky, claims that if Russia does not receive a response to its offer of an Azerbaijani radar, it would mean that the actual target of the system would be Russia. Such twisted logic seems to be caused by the Russian predisposition to believe that the US is necessarily an enemy. Perhaps it’s time that the Russians stopped being afraid of specters from the past.