Opinion

Putin’s peril — and ours

Four years ago, Russians compared Vladimir Putin to Peter the Great. Now many are openly likening him to Leonid Brezhnev, the senile Soviet premier who had symbolized the broken-down and corrupt end-stage of Communism. Rioting in Moscow and other cities has followed a parliamentary election blatantly fraudulent even by Putin standards — but which still couldn’t give his party a win in his own home district.

Even if Putin survives the mounting discontent — and for now his election as president in March still seems a lock — the situation poses new risks for the United States.

The Obama team staked its “reset” of US-Russian relations on a broad series of understandings with Putin and his flunky, current President Dmitri Medvedev — most notably, the so-called “New START” arms-control accord. Supposed benefits to us included Russian help in keeping our supply lines to Afghanistan open and in choking off Iran’s nuclear-weapons program as well as strong cooperation in the War on Terror and even an end to Russian military adventurism, like the invasion of Georgia three years ago.

Instead, as so often happens with Russia, hopes of a thaw in relations proved unfounded; the “reset” is starting to look more like “fatal system error.”

The biggest change is the new political atmosphere in Russia. The public perception of Putin and his authoritarian regime changed drastically after the global financial meltdown of 2008-9. Russia’s economy bottomed out more disastrously than any of the other G-8; growth all but vanished. Putin’s reliance on fossil-fuel exports to maintain a burgeoning state budget only worked if crude oil prices stayed above $100 a barrel — and fossilized the economy in the meantime.

The high-tech share of Russia’s total exports, for example, comes to less than one-quarter of 1 percent. Every day Russians read about their satellites falling out of the sky and ICBM tests blowing up on the launching pad — and about a military buildup that’s stalled out due to lack of money.

One million discouraged Russians fled the country in 2010 — many of them people with the education and skills needed to revive the economy. And many more say they’ll leave if Putin becomes president again.

The discontent also has triggered a revival of atavistic groups like the old Communist Party and the radical nationalists. Putin knows his best chance to co-opt these groups, and defuse any genuine democratic change, is to turn Russia’s attention outward.

That means against the West — particularly the United States. So when Secretary of State Clinton brashly called for a “thorough investigation” of fraud in the recent election, Putin used that as an excuse to blame all the public anger on the United States, for bankrolling anti-Putin groups in Russia, and on Clinton herself for supposedly signaling the rioters to hit the streets. “They [the United States] shake us a bit so that we don’t forget who is the boss,” he scornfully told an audience of Moscow sycophants.

To keep the “blame the foreigners” act going, he’s making a big show of hitting back. He’s pushing for a big increase in Russia’s defense budget, up to $30 billion next year, and a whopping $660 billion for a complete rearmament by 2020. Russia’s NATO envoy is talking about cutting off that Afghan supply line, and at the United Nations Russia has turned its back on any more anti-Iran sanctions.

There’s even talk about pulling out of New Start, the centerpiece of Obama’s Russian policy for the last two years.

With Russia’s busted budget deficit and creaking economy, the prospects of a big military buildup look dim. But if Putin doesn’t have anything like the old Soviet military machine, he does have nukes and missiles — and his crony Medvedev is threatening to reinstall those on the border with Rumania and Poland.

We’re still a long way from a return to the Cold War. But Putin’s threats shouldn’t be taken lightly. Nor should the dangers if this administration can’t regain its traction with the man who controls the second biggest nuclear arsenal in the world — and who now sees antagonizing the United States as his ticket for retaining power.

Arthur Herman is working on a book on the arsenal of democracy.