The Myth Of Stability; Allies must have common goals and values. Putin's Russian shares neither.

Byline: Gary Kasparov (Kasparov is the chairman of Committee 2008 Free Choice and leader of the United Civil Front of Russia.)

If we were to sum up the conventional wisdom about Russia today, it would read something like this: The Putin government is less democratic than it could be, but Russia isn't ready for full democracy. The economy, while lagging, is improving. Instead of a cold-war enemy the West has an ally in the global war in terror. If he's a little heavy-handed on his own turf it's all in the name of security and stability.

Unfortunately, that CW is as wrong today as it always seems to be about Russia. And it is not only an illusion but a dangerous one. The Russian people are ready for democracy--no less so than Iraqis. It's the Putin government that finds democracy unsuitable for its ends. The freedoms gained after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. have been steadily eroded until little remains. Putin is clamping the lid down so tight, in fact, that an explosion is inevitable. Stable? Not Russia.

Consider the supposedly improving economy. Russia is a fine place to turn a profit--if you stay on the Kremlin's Christmas-card list. Otherwise your assets are only on loan to you from an increasingly powerful and ravenous tax office. (A recent Russian spam e-mail headline: what to do if your office is raided by a government agency!) The stores are full of expensive goods, virtually none of them produced in Russia. Manufacturing exports are falling and imports are rising. The pretty GDP numbers that so impress bankers and foreign investors are based entirely on the steep climb of energy prices. Yet even this windfall is deceptive, for Russia's government is investing little in maintaining its production capacity. A falloff is inevitable. Such an economy is thus only as stable as the price of a barrel of oil--or (leading to our next topic) the barrel of a gun.

The embattled George W. Bush isn't going to pick a fight with Mr. Putin on matters of democracy and economy when these days everything is secondary to the war on terror. Here we come to the most dangerous delusion of all--that a strongman in the Kremlin is good for security and necessary for stability. What started as a separatist war in Chechnya has been transformed by the Kremlin's hard-line tactics into an increasingly radicalized jihad that now spans the entire North Caucasus. In addition to living with poverty and military abuses, locals find that the legal avenues for opposition have entirely ...