Democracy Decreases in Russia as Oil Prices Rise

“The Really Cold War”
Thomas L. Friedman
October 25, 2006

In an op-ed in The New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman argues that due to
rising oil costs and gas pipelines to Western Europe Russia’s power, importance,
and influence in Western Europe is increasing, which subsequently allows the
country to neglect human rights.  Friedman calls Russia a “petro-authoritarianism”
state and concludes that “as the price of oil goes up the pace of freedom goes down.”

Friedman believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been emboldened by
large gas and oil profits and “is crushing domestic opponents, renationalizing major
energy companies, throwing out Western human rights groups and generally making
himself the big man on campus in Europe.”  Friedman also provides quotations from
EU officials who say that due to Western Europe’s reliance on Russian-supplied gas
and oil, political leaders  in the region seem to be willing to turn a blind eye to Russia’s
human rights abuses.  Friedman doesn’t believe that Russia is going to deprive Europe
of gas and oil, but fears that this dependence could allow Russia to “play a much more
domineering geopolitical role in Europe.”

Friedman cites what he calls “‘the First Law of Petropolitics,’ which posits that the
price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse relationship in petrolist states
” to describe the current political climate in Russia, which many are characterizing as
decidedly undemocratic.  In recent weeks there has been a spike in extreme nationalist
sentiments and race-related hate crimes, a deportation of hundreds of Georgians living
in Russia, and a suspension of foreign nongovernmental organizations working in the country.  Additionally, there have been no arrests made in both the murders of renowned journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a vocal critique of the Putin regime (especially its alleged involvement in torture and kidnapping in Chechnya), and Andrei Kozlov, a Central Bank employee who fought against money laundering, who was killed a few weeks before Politkovskaya. 

Friedman’s op-ed concludes his analysis by warning: “Russia is back.”
 
[See also Russian Correspondent Michael Mainville’s special report to the Toronto Star for a
thorough account of current human rights abuses in Russia.]