What Russia wants ?

Dust has now settled on the Russian presidential elections, and these days the talks are about invitations to Moscow, or invitations for President 'elect' Dmitry Medvedev to other capitals. The recently concluded elections received widespread media attention, lot of editorials and op-ed columns. I don’t think this was surprising to anyone.

After my earlier post about announcement of Mr Dmitry‘s candidature for the top job, several times I tried to write on the recently concluded elections, but couldn’t. I failed to develop a coherent theme, an unequivocal summary of the elections. I can’t say that by now I have developed a coherent theme, but may be writing this piece may help in shaping my thoughts.

I tried to reason through questions, answers and few assumptions. Let me accept in the very beginning, some of these assumptions have exceptions as always.

The first question:

What is best for a country - a stable government providing stability or a government based on highest principles of democracy? Consider example of Cuba, definitely not a democratic government but one that has given stability for the past many decades, and several other benefits like good national health service, employment, etc.

The second question:

Does a pro-western government based on democratic ideals always successful? Now consider Lebanon, where a pro western government under Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was formed in July 2005. But was this government was able to keep Lebanon away from crises or away from the influence of terrorist organization Hezbollah, despite having Hezbollah members in the cabinet. Hezbollah even caused Israel to bomb Lebanon in summer of 2006.

One more, the orange revolution of Ukraine, enshrined in democratic ideals established President Viktor Yushchenko’s government. We all know what happened two years down the line. Only by the end of last year in Dec 2007, the crisis seems to have tapered off.

Now coming to Russia, elections or no elections, Putin undoubtedly is most popular. He brought stability to the country from the days when the news used to be about corruption and falling rouble. Putin harnessed the oil & gas boom and brought some of the lost prominence back to Russia. Ofcourse while doing all this, he did deviate from democratic principles, mostly in the later states of his presidentship. This is when he fell out with western countries. Though the worst fears of western countries, about Putin altering the Constitution and getting another term for presidentship, didn’t come true, but his choice for putting a puppet president didn’t go well with them.

The question which remains unanswered is, what is best for Russia? A pro-western democratic government that might not be able to provide stability or a semi-democratic government that provides stability and brings back the lost power back to Russia. What the world will be better off - a stable Russia with Putin’s form of government or a democratic government with Russia (assuming it won’t be that stable) ?

It is hard to answer this question without having the benefit of retrospective, but this answer alone will judge the legacy of Putin and Dmitry Medvedev.