-Caveat Lector- West watches, worries as Putin takes power Friday, 31 December 1999 10:35 (GMT) Subject: West watches, worries as Putin takes power Date: Friday, December 31, 1999 10:42:57 AM EST Message-ID: West watches, worries as Putin takes power By Martin Sieff, UPI National Security Editor WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- King Log has been succeeded by King Stork. A corrupt but relatively democratic and pro-Western leader of Russia has been replaced by one who has given every indication he is likely to prove anything but. Vladimir Putin, the 47-year-old, dour, ruthless former secret police chief who has just succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president of Russia, will make no move to ideologically reimpose communism in Russia. In the West, we might very well come to wish that he would. Instead, Putin is a striking expression of the gangster values, pervading cynicism, anti-Western nationalist sentiments and utterly ruthless implementation of policies that pervades modern Russia. He is the embodiment of the new criminal-syndicalist state, a system where big business has been forced to adopt the literal practices of gangsters to survive, because the structures and procedures of the rule of law are virtually non-existent. Putin has made clear that he will retain the basic, freewheeling free market structure of Russia. But in foreign policy, he looks set to confront the United States and the West far more vigorously -- and ruthlessly -- than any leader in the past 16 years since the death of his own personal hero Yuri Andropov, who masterminded a wave of murderous international terrorism against the West. He has not even pretended to have any "personal chemistry" with U.S. President Bill Clinton. When Putin met Clinton in Oslo in early November, he was confrontational and -- deliberately -- charmless. Clinton and his press spokesmen were so taken aback that in their descriptions of the meeting, they omitted all the usual rhetorical boiler plate about "the chemistry was good" and "friendships remained strong" even if there was disagreement on every issue. Putin is no "phony tough." He really is tough. He reflects the obsession by the brutal and ferociously anti-Western wave of new nationalists in Russia with implementing the principle of U.S. President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt - "Talk softly and carry a big stick and you will go far." As prime minister, Putin already publicly threw his weight behind rapidly rebuilding Russia's mighty Strategic Rocket Forces, which even through the collapse of Soviet and Russian power have remained the most deadly nuclear strike force in the world. He has approved confrontational stunts by the Russian armed forces such as plans to fly Tupolev Tu-22 Backfire bombers armed with nuclear cruise missiles to Cuba or Vietnam next year. He won the warm support of the Russian army's top general staff command for giving them the green light to crush the secessionist Chechens, regardless of the thousands of Chechen civilians who would die. Domestically, he may well unleash a repressionist terror that would have enormous public support. Tsars Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century and Peter the Great in the 17th century both became popular figures by crushing and humiliating the boyars, the detested corrupt wealthy merchant class of their times. Putin would enjoy similar overwhelming public support if he took such actions against the billionaire oligarchs who have amassed enormous financial, energy and media empires over the past decade while the living standard of ordinary Russians has collapsed into impoverishment. Putin already has a powerful political coalition behind him. The pro-government Unity bloc won a stunning 23 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections just 12 days ago. The Union of Right Wing Forces led by his old political mentor, former Kremlin chief of staff Anatoly Chubais, won nearly 9 percent in the same election. Chubais, in the words of analyst Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, ran a shamelessly strident xenophobic and anti-Western campaign, supporting Putin's policies in Chechnya. Since then, Putin has openly signaled his warm approval of Chubais. Ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who scraped back into parliament with 6 percent of the vote, will also support Putin. He has little choice. Zhirinovsky, who has threatened to obliterate Western cities with nuclear weapons if he should ever win power, cynically supported Yeltsin in every key parliamentary vote and was rewarded by having the pro-government television networks shower favorable publicity on him in the parliamentary election campaign. He will not hesitate to applaud any and all confrontational, anti-Western moves that Putin makes. Even the majority Communists will rally behind Putin on key issues, although they loathe his free market policies. But they already support him on Chechnya and on confronting the West. And they will cheer any moves he takes against the oligarchs. The once-feared Fatherland-All Russia bloc will give Putin no real problem. It is already falling apart. Former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov is a veteran government insider with no stomach for being on the receiving end of the abusive media propaganda that Putin's supporters showered on him and his allies in the election campaign. Also, it was Primakov who masterminded the anti-Western foreign policy strategy, forging close strategic ties to China, that Putin has energetically implemented. But Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Krasnoyarsk Governor Alexander Lebed will have a joyless and worried time this New Year's Eve. In ability, power base, ambition and their own relative youthfulness, they are the nearest things Putin has to challengers and rivals. And therefore they are bound to be his first political targets. In his first weeks in office, Putin will concentrate on his election campaign. He may well present a moderate reassuring image to the West. But once he is elected as president in his own right? Watch out. -- Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved. -- ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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