Tired old tricks [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

Putin's strong return appears to have experienced resistance and opposition from both internal and external forces. However, the result of the Russian presidential election was not any surprise. The only conjecture that existed was whether Putin would win in the first round or the second.

America and other Western countries tried to influence Russia's March 4 presidential election, but they didn't succeed.

I visited Russia in December 2011. From what I understand, there are some NGOs who received a significant amount of money from United States. Even the Russian government announced that the U.S. paid approximately $9,000,000 to Russian NGOs and opposition factions during the Russian parliamentary elections. This capital was used in processions, demonstrations and other activities in order to discredit the accuracy of the national election results. But so far the election results haven't been overturned.

In fact, the United States' aim is not to overturn the election result, but to erode Putin's popularity and support.

However, as a result, Putin's support in domestic circles is still very high.

Many people attribute this to Putin's strong character, which makes sense, but only on the surface. His character and Russia's internal and external environment are inseparable.

Currently Russia is disunited and terrorist attacks are a frequent occurrence. Under such circumstances, Russia, of course, needs a strong central source of power and control.

There is another important consideration: The oligarchs have deprived Yeltsin's political right hands, such as Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Potanin and so on.

The oligarchs have assumed several senior political roles. Berezovsky was not only an oligarch, but also the Russian Vice Secretary General of the Security Conference while Potanin was Russia's Deputy Prime Minister.

In this situation, the oligarchs could veto any decision Yeltsin wants to make. Putin gradually put these oligarch's assets into state-owned assets when he took office. Russia then became a country with state-controlled capitalist institutions.

Putin sent government officials to Russian state-owned enterprises to serve as Chairmen, and was able to assume complete control of the economy.

In order to overcome local division, Putin removed local leaders and replaced them with officials loyal to him.

First, Putin nominates an official and local government agrees with his suggestion. Putin maintains complete control and is entitled to remove the official from their post. Following this pattern, the transition of local government becoming subordinate to central authority occurs gradually.

Putin learned how to survive in such a political environment; but Putin wasn't always so critical of the United States. When George W. Bush became president in 2001, Bush implemented many restrictive policies against Russia. However, during this period Putin still placed a heavy emphasis on Russian-U.S. relations and maintained close ties between the two parties. After 9/11, Putin was the first foreign leader to call the White House. When the U.S. declared war on Afghanistan, Russia provided a high level of support.

What kind of response did Russia get from the United States? At the end of 2001, former President George W. Bush announced its unilateral withdrawal from the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty. In 2003, NATO absorbed three Baltic countries into its framework, and clearly focused on additional targets, mainly Ukraine and Georgia. In the same year, the so-called Color Revolutions broke out in Georgia, followed by Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan over the next few years. In Putin's eyes, these revolutions were aimed at him and Russia, and that transformed him into a strong anti-Western leader.

But what will Putin do after re-election? The next presidential term for Putin will be six years to 12 years. He once said: "Give me twenty years, and I will give you back a miraculous Russia." In my opinion, the task for Putin and the Russian government has been changed. 12 years ago, their mission was to rescue Russia from political and economic turmoil; the next 12 years should focus on maintaining a healthy level of development.

To that end, Putin has to adjust his policies to meet the changing environments on both inside and outside. In domestic politics, the most important task for Russia is to achieve democracy, including loosening registration requirements for political parties, lowering the threshold for political parties to enter the State Duma, expanding the scope of presidential candidates, and relaxing central control on local government.

However, it's not easy to achieve so many goals for a country with such high social welfare benefits. It is said that the spending of Russia's social security has accounted for nearly 50 percent of the entire state budget. Such a high level of social benefits requires a tremendous amount of money, which deeply relies on resource exports. A dependency on resource exports is a large obstacle when attempting to transform a resource-led economic system to one fueled by information and technology. Putin needs to think twice about how to boost domestic economic growth through economic restructuring while maintaining public support.

The author is the Executive Vice President of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

This article was first written in Chinese and translated by An Wei and Lin Liyao.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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