Dmitri Trenin: Putin has 12 years of looking back to move forward

One issue has now shot to the top of Russia’s political agenda: Eurasian integration. In early October, Mr Putin wrote a newspaper article that proclaimed what appears to be his foreign-policy goal: a Eurasian Union of former Soviet states.

Mr Putin wants even more: a “Eurasian Schengen” (free movement of people among the three countries, built on the example of the European Union) by 2015, followed by a currency union and, ultimately, full economic integration.

Indeed, he wants to restructure Russia’s relations with the former Soviet states to create not merely a bigger market, but an economic bloc-cum-security alliance.

The feasibility of this plan is not to be taken for granted. Since the Soviet Union broke up 20 years ago, there has been much talk about reintegrating the successor states. Little has come of it, owing mainly to Russia’s reluctance to support the other countries financially.

At the same time, the other countries have maintained an overriding focus on their own state-building and independence vis-à-vis Russia. Both factors, however, may now be changing.

Russia, which a half-dozen years ago abruptly ended its energy subsidies to Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and others, is now expressing interest in supporting some of its struggling neighbours in exchange for some of their most lucrative assets.

For Russia’s partners, too, the current forms of integration, such as the customs union and the forthcoming single economic space, are pragmatic arrangements.

The Russian market is also attractive to many others, from tiny Kyrgyzstan to sizable Ukraine. In the latter’s case, for example, the prospects of closer association with the EU have dimmed recently, owing to the EU’s internal difficulties, as well as to the Ukrainian authorities’ politically-motivated prosecution of former prime minister, Yuliya Tymoshenko.

In his much-quoted newspaper piece, Mr Putin denied that his new integration plans are aimed at restoring the Soviet Union under another name. This is a credible claim, for three reasons: the evaporation of Russia’s imperial élan, its unwillingness to pay other countries’ bills, and the new countries’ unwillingness to cede too much sovereignty.

Consequently, Russia has been strict about the terms of its financial assistance to Belarus, pressing its government to open up its economy to Russian business.

And, for all their interest in the Russian market, neither Belarus nor Kazakhstan has acceded to Russia’s desire that they recognise the independence of Georgia’s breakaway regions.

Mr Putin is ambitious, but he is also cautious. He probably sees that only mutual economic interest can do the trick. Creating a new Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon, the Soviet-era trade bloc), or a new Warsaw Pact, is as impossible as a latter-day Soviet Union.

Eurasian economic integration, if it stands a chance, must follow a different path.

If all parties concerned join voluntarily, and proceed in a step-by-step manner, as with the EU or the North American Free Trade Agreement, Eurasian integration will benefit all of those involved. However, it will fail if Russia’s partners see the process as Moscow’s attempt at political domination.

In the West, Mr Putin’s best-remembered statement about the Soviet Union described its end as the “greatest catastrophe of the 20th century.” But Mr Putin’s other comments, less familiar to Western readers, refer to the Soviet system as “unviable.” In his ruthless judgment, those who want the USSR back “have no brains”.w

Twenty years after the loss of its 20th century empire, Russia is ready to move toward a new kind of integration with its ex-provinces. This is not intended as a threat; rather, economic integration is a test of how much Russia has learned since 1991.

• Dmitri Trenin is director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre. His latest book is Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story.