Former presidential aide Andrei Illarionov comments on Putin’s key-note speech delivered by the president on May 10 to Russia’s Federal Assembly. Putin’s address shows that Russia has chosen a course towards militarization and sends out a clear signal to restore Soviet-era values and prepare for confrontation with the West.
Putin’s address was full of military rhetoric, Andrei Illarionov told the Ekho Moskvy radio station. “The address contains quite undisguised hints about who now poses the main threat to Russia... We cannot but notice that the way the tasks have been formulated is unprofessional from the military point of view,” he said commenting on the president’s instruction to ensure that Russia should be capable of waging several wars at a time. It would be impossible even for the U.S. to wage several wars at a time, he added.
“This address is not for the world outside Russia, this address is for ourselves, for our own country. The address makes the militarization of life inside the country possible, necessary, substantiated and justified. And this is probably the main goal for the sake of which the statement was made,” Illarionov said.
Illarionov expressed doubt about Putin’s statement that Russia’s defense expenditure is comparable or even lower than that of other nuclear states. The expert said the purchasing power of the Russian ruble as compared to hard currencies had not been taken into account when making calculations. “Russia’s defense expenditure in 2005 amounted to slightly more than 3% of GDP, whereas in Great Britain the figure was 2.77% and 2.5% of GDP in France. Therefore, the percentage share of Russia’s defense expenditure in GDP exceeds the expenditure of Britain or France. It is not lower, as was said in the presidential address.”
“If we compare Russia’s defense budget with that of the USA, it is true that in absolute figures, taking into account the exchange rates, Russia’s military expenditure is 25 times lower than that of the USA. This only proves that the figures which we are using are absolutely the same figures that were used by the aides who were preparing these figures for the address,” Illarionov went on to say. At the same time, he added that “it would be incorrect to compare GDP and military budgets on the basis of exchange rates”.
“All comparable figures should be given not on the basis of exchange rates but on the basis of the so-called purchasing power parity. The thing is that in various countries different quantities of goods of the same consumer quality, so to speak, can be purchased for the same amount of money exchanged at a bank or a currency exchange bureau,” he went on to say. “Calculations made this way will show that Russia’s defense expenditure in 2005, according to the lowest purchasing power parity figures, amounted to approximately 45bn dollars expressed in prices as at 2002. In France, also in 2005, military expenditure amounted to 36bn dollars, also calculated on the basis of purchasing power parity expressed in prices as at 2002, which is about 20 per cent lower than in the Russian Federation. In Great Britain the figure was about 52bn dollars, expressed in the same units, which is about 15 per cent more than in Russia,” Illarionov said. Taking into account that Russia’s GDP is lower than that in France and Great Britain, it turns out that its defense expenditure is comparable to that of the above two countries. Also, Russia’s defense expenditure per capita exceeds that of France and Great Britain by almost 50 per cent, the former presidential aide said.
Illarionov said the method of calculating Russia’s defence expenditure used by the president’s aides to prepare his state-of-the-nation address did not reflect the true state of affairs. “If they have done this to distort the picture on purpose, this is either stupidity or betrayal because, in my opinion, to provide false information to a state leader is a crime,” he said.
According to Illarionov, Putin’s concern over the demographic situation was obviously prompted by the need to have enough men for the armed forces. “It seems that the Defense Ministry is the only institution that understands why it is necessary to solve the demographic problem in Russia,” he said in response to Putin’s remark that at the Defense Ministry they understand quite well the importance of such notions as love, women and children.
Illarionov said average life expectancy has been declining in Russia for the past three years. “We know for sure that this problem cannot be solved by the militaristic methods which our authorities are going to employ. Using these methods can only exacerbate the problem.” No increase in child benefits can solve the problem, he added.
The former presidential aide drew a parallel between the current state of relations between Russia and the West and the situation that took shape after World War II, when the Cold War era began. He said Putin’s current foreign policy statement very much resembled Stalin’s statements before and after Winston Churchill’s speech in Fulton in 1946. The West then interpreted Stalin’s statements as a signal that Russia had begun preparations for another war. According to Illarionov, history repeats itself now that Putin has made a foreign policy statement which can be viewed as an unfriendly response to U.S. Vice-President Richard Cheney’s speech in Vilnius and which can put Russia in opposition to the West.
“What do we see, regrettably, in today’s address? It says that we should not repeat mistakes which we made during the Cold War. In other words, the phrase ’Cold War’ is now used as a starting point for a comparison,” he said. At the same time, Illarionov denied that Cheney’s speech in Vilnius was a challenge to Russia designed to bring the relations between the two countries back to the times of cold war. He quoted the part of the speech where Cheney praised Russia as a great world power which was moving towards democracy, and offered cooperation in fighting common threats.
Illarionov said this was the first address 40 per cent of which was devoted to the armed forces and ways to strengthen them. “Indeed, there has never been an address like this before. In this respect, we are returning to another epoch in which we had lived for more than one decade,” he said.
The ongoing global conflict is not the conflict between the Christian and Islamic civilizations but between the countries which view human life and human rights as the main values and the countries which believe in the supremacy of the state in which an individual can be sacrificed, Illarionov said. “Numerous articles and speeches recently published and delivered by our leaders, including the address which the president delivered today, demonstrate the fundamental difference between our current philosophy, the philosophy of the current Russian authorities and the philosophy which initiated modern civilization and which allowed it to develop and grow strong, the civilization which is based on the individual, on the freedoms, rights and democratic development of the individual,” he said. Illarionov said Putin’s address clearly showed Russia’s choice of philosophy, “the choice — although in a slightly different ideological wrapping — which our country had been following during the pervious 70 years and which led to the greatest geopolitical catastrophe”.
As regards Putin’s proposal that the Russian ruble should be made a fully convertible currency from July 1, 2006, Illarionov said that “the task of making the ruble a fully convertible currency is not essential and not serious in any way”. “A credit history is needed to bring the Russian ruble on a par with the dollar, the euro, the pound and the yen. This history could be quite long, it could take a decade or several decades,” he said. According to Illarionov, a document authorizing the ruble’s convertibility could be signed overnight but it will not make the ruble an equal partner to other currencies straightaway. “A totally different economic policy should be pursued by the authorities, a policy which would not be perceived with apprehension by millions or tens of millions of people throughout the world,” he said.
Illarionov said the president’s proposal that an exchange should be set up in Russia to sell oil and gas for rubles in order to help the ruble become a fully convertible currency shows that the authorities fail to understand how stock markets work. From the economic point of view, it does not matter where wholesale trading in oil, gas, metals or machinery is taking place because these products are not physically involved in transactions at the exchange, he said. “Unfortunately, I should say, with regret, that this shows that the processes of modern world trade and modern world economic relations are not understood in full measure,” he said. It does not matter if Russian oil is sold for rubles or for dollars, he added.
