A growing bond between ‘presidents for life’
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With President Vladimir Putin signing a law last week that could keep him in power until 2036, surpassing even Joseph Stalin’s tenure in office, Russia’s foreign policy is becoming emboldened again.
Exhibit A is the Ukraine border, where Moscow has built up a force of about 25,000 troops in a major show of force. Former Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak warned last week that Moscow could intervene to help its citizens in eastern Ukraine as tensions rise in the region that has been a flashpoint since Russian-sympathising separatists seized swaths of territory there in 2014.
The build-up worries the West, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Putin to ask him to roll back Russia’s military presence on the Ukraine border. Meanwhile the US has put its forces in Europe on a higher level of alert and President Joe Biden reaffirmed his support for Ukraine’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
While the skirmishes are most likely to die down, that is by no means guaranteed. Putin’s mission since assuming power almost a quarter of a century ago has been to restore Russia’s geopolitical prominence through international gambits such as the annexation of Crimea, his intervention in Syria, and fostering joint economic activities in the disputed islands off Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido.
Another recent illustration of Moscow’s growing global ambitions was Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s tour of China, Korea, Pakistan, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar.
While Putin’s foreign policy escapades have — so far at least — generally played well domestically, they have resulted in frostier relations with the West. And a key question in coming years will be how the relationship, specifically with the US, fares under Biden, who may not seek re-election when he will be in his eighties.
The closeness of the relationship between Xi and Putin is a key reason the frost appears unlikely to thaw in Russia’s relations with the West. And in this context, Putin is increasingly asserting Russian power in other areas of the globe from Asia-Pacific to Africa and the Americas.
Andrew Hammond
The most likely outcome is continuing chilled ties, and Putin at 68 may already be thinking ahead to the next US president, or two, hoping for another maverick Donald Trump-type figure more congenial to his interests. Indeed, such is Putin’s longevity that he could yet become one of the longest serving world leaders of modern times, alongside Fidel Castro, who managed 52 years as Cuban prime minister and then president, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has been in post since 1989.
But while Putin appears to be firmly entrenched, if not politically impregnable, numerous challenges persist. The pandemic, for one, has posed a major challenge. Last spring Putin introduced a six-week lockdown that severely hurt the Russian economy. His approval ratings plummeted to a low of 59 percent and the government was forced to ease restrictions, reducing economic damage and shoring up his polling. This underlines that he is far from certain to serve until 2036, especially if his political luck finally goes south fueled by foreign policy misadventure or domestic economic travails.
To keep his hold on power, it seems likely that Putin will continue to rely on the political playbook that has served him well so far — namely forging a sense of post-Cold War patriotism fueled by a growing economy during much of the period. This could have profound implications for international politics, especially given his growing closeness to Chinese President Xi Jinping, another “president for life.”
Xi was given the green light in 2018 to remain in power for an indefinite period after the National People’s Congress approved the removal of the two-term limit on the presidency that had been in place since the 1990s. He has therefore amassed political power in his country the likes of which has not been seen since Mao Zedong.
In this context both Beijing and Moscow are working more closely together not just to further bilateral interests, but also to hedge against the prospects of a continuing chill in US ties.
The closeness of the relationship between Xi and Putin is a key reason the frost appears unlikely to thaw in Russia’s relations with the West. And in this context, Putin is increasingly asserting Russian power in other areas of the globe from Asia-Pacific to Africa and the Americas.
One of the key features of this foreign policy approach is increasing support for longstanding allies who are Western foes, including Venezuela, Syria, North Korea and Iran. On Iran, for instance, Moscow pushed hard during the Trump presidency for the continuation of the 2015 nuclear deal.
This underlines why the implications of Putin’s long period in office go well beyond the Russian domestic political landscape. With Moscow’s ties with Washington and the wider West so frosty, an even closer economic and political alliance with Xi in Beijing appears likely if both their presidencies extend into the 2030s.
• Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics
