In pursuit of a stronger and more assertive position in the global community, Russians gave Vladimir Putin virtually his fourth straight mandate ― including four years of regency ― in Sunday’s presidential election. Putin can extend his rule till 2024, but all will depend on how fast the opposition will be nourished by public desire for reform and democracy.
Opposition rallies denouncing what they claimed was election rigging across the country ― one example: nearly 100 percent Putin votes with almost 100 percent turnout in the Chechnya region ― will continue for weeks in Moscow. Yet, the 63 percent support chiefly from the working class will provide stability as the new Putin presidency takes off in May.
The Putin-Medvedev monopoly of power is extraordinary, hardly imaginable in any other polity, and the Russians deserve special tribute or commiseration for allowing it in the 21st century. Whatever assessment political scientists may have about it, the perpetuation of leadership offers one significant advantage for its neighbors, including Korea: diplomatic predictability.
Korea normalized relations with the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, a year before the birth of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Under the new world order that followed the end of the Cold War, Seoul initiated what was dubbed the “four-power diplomacy” concentrating on the United States, China, Japan and Russia in a sort of containment policy against North Korea, as Pyongyang accelerated its nuclear armament.
In June 2000, shortly after Putin started his first presidential term, Moscow manifested the desire for equal participation in the process of resolving the problem of the Korean Peninsula together with an equidistance policy toward Seoul and Pyongyang. In August that year, Russia and North Korea signed the “New Treaty” to replace the 1961 Mutual Aid, Cooperation and Friendship Treaty, deleting the clause on military cooperation in the old pact.
Through the Putin and Medvedev administrations, Moscow showed growing interest in cooperating with South Korea for the development of Siberia and Far East Russia, particularly with the long-conceived projects of connecting the trans-Siberian railway with a trans-Korean railway and laying a gas pipeline across the Korean Peninsula through North Korea. In the year before his death, Kim Jong-il gave his consent to Moscow on the cross-peninsular pipeline project and Russia began railway repair work between the border cities of Hasan and Rajin.
Russia is to host the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vladivostok in September and Moscow is expected to use the occasion as a great opportunity to raise regional interests and attract investment in its development projects in the eastern region. In his third presidency, Putin will be compelled to step up efforts for the stability of Northeast Asia, which is vital for his economic plans.
The six-party talks for the denuclearization of North Korea, now entering their 10th year, will be yet another arena where Moscow will seek to play a more positive role. Russia, being among the parties to install a new leadership (second after North Korea), is hoped to join the United States and other participants in taking practical steps to bring about substantial progress, preferably with economic incentives to the North to gain greater leverage.
The Nuclear Security Summit to be held in Seoul later this month could be the first major international event where Premier-cum-President-elect Vladimir Putin will represent Russia. Through top-level diplomacy on the multilateral and bilateral levels, Seoul needs to convince the Russians of the importance of expanding security and economic cooperation between their reemerging country and one of the most dynamic economies in Northeast Asia.
The two countries share vast and boundless areas of cooperation, including commerce, science and technology ― particularly in aerospace and arms development, culture and the arts. Putin will soon understand how absurd it is for Moscow to try to keep the southern and northern halves of the Korean Peninsula at equal distance.
