NATO last week set back the hopes for Russia’s progress towards democracy, justice and international partnership. It was a geopolitical blunder that will surely come to be regretted in the West, but the biggest losers are ordinary Russians. By caving into most of President Bush’s demands, the United States’ European allies have supplied the Kremlin with the perfect pretext for continuing to govern Russia in the authoritarian fashion that took hold in the late Nineties, after that brief dalliance with liberal democracy.

Vladimir Putin, who steps down as President in May, hardly bothers to pretend to be a democrat any more. When standing for election in 2000 and 2004 he ensured that any serious rival candidate was vilified. He did the same on Dmitri Medvedev’s behalf this year. They showed an almost ridiculous zeal to assure their victories. This was no Mugabe-style situation. Russians vastly prefer them to what they remember of being ruled by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. All the opinion polls suggested they could win by a landslide without their supporters resorting to the black arts of what is called ‘political technology’, the monopolising of TV airtime, the killing of troublesome journalists and the bullying of media.

Benefiting from the geyser of revenues from Russian energy exports, Putin has done the minimum needed to improve general living conditions. Pensions were paid reliably. State employees such as teachers and doctors have received their salaries on time. Small shops and businesses made profits out of servicing the needs of the entrepreneurial elite.Even so, Russians are anything but content with conditions in the country. Elections are only one method of testing public opinion. As surveys have shown during the eight years of Putin’s presidency, he has disappointed most people by failing to resolve their problems. Whole regions have suffered neglect while Moscow and Putin’s own St Petersburg have prospered. Manufacturing industry has collapsed, agriculture has languished and the law courts have favoured the rich and corrupt. Street robberies have increased. If criminals want possession of an apartment in a central district of town, it is dangerous to refuse to sell up on their terms. Those who have refused to co-operate have sometimes been found dead after a mysterious fall down their stairs.

But Russians, from their present and future Presidents downwards, can see no justification for the US to turn states on Russia’s borders into engines of American regional power. Trouble last came to Russia from Poland when the Germans were in occupation of Warsaw. Now Bush wants to place advanced military technology on Polish soil, expecting Russians to accept his word that he has only Iran in his sights.With that susceptibility to conspiracy theories, the image conjured up in the Russian mind is a picture of Hitler reassuring Stalin in 1940-1941 that Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft were only overflying Soviet territory by accident. America’s NATO allies have by and large believed and supported Bush.

Former judo champion Putin is deft with the feints and hand-grapples. Ably wrestling with Bush at the NATO summit, he gained a lot to be pleased about. Bush is providing the Kremlin with exactly the international atmosphere for Putin to tell Russians that the existing ‘security state’ must be conserved. A siege mentality can now more easily be justified. Ex-KGB functionaries such as Putin can parade themselves as the country’s greatest patriots.

So a seismic shock has been delivered to European politics without preparatory discussion in parliaments or the media. Western leaders, the media and the public remain preoccupied with Iraq, for understandable reasons. But at least in the case of the Iraq war there was a long debate beforehand about international law and weapons of mass destruction. It did not stop the war, but it had the effect of delegitimising and eventually ending the premiership of Tony Blair.

Now we are blundering into trouble with Russia by choosing the wrong ground to confront its anti-democratic leadership. The NATO summit has bothered too little about genuine Russian concerns. A better strategy for handling Russia is possible and desirable. Russia’s rulers should be nailed down to the international obligations they have signed. Murmurings about the onset of a new Cold War help nobody. Ordinary Russians will only suffer if a rupture with the West were to occur.

I am not advocating gentle diplomacy. Russia badly wants to do more business in Europe and badly needs European finance. In return it has solemnly agreed to European standards on the rule of law and human rights. Russian dissenters have made use of this. They have taken their grievances to the European Court of Human Rights and won their cases. It is in everybody’s interest to sustain this process. The scorched shoots of democracy, justice and international partnership inside Russia need to be tended. - The Guardian