Round two?(The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West)(Book review)

The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West, by Edward Lucas (Palgrave Macmillan, 261 pp., $26.95)

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IT'S not just the fact that Edward Lucas is a quietly proud, quietly amused holder of Lithuania's Order of Gediminas (Fifth Class) that distinguishes him from many other nonnative (he's English) commentators on Eastern Europe; it's also the depth of his interest in, and sympathy for, this long-contested stretch of territory's cultures and peoples, an interest and a sympathy that resonate throughout this fine, timely, and thought-provoking new book. It's an interest he has pursued at first hand. Lucas (whom--full disclosure--I've known for more than 20 years) spent time in Poland as a student, and has been covering the region as a journalist since the late 1980s in a career that has included stints in Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Tallinn, Vilnius, and Moscow. He is now the Central and East European correspondent for The Economist.

It's his sympathy for the nations once trapped behind the Iron Curtain, and his grasp of their struggles-past, present, and, quite possibly, future-that now lead him to warn of the danger that a revived Russia might represent not only to their independence but also, for that matter, to the West. To be sure, The New Cold War is, as its title reveals, a polemic. Obviously sensitive to accusations of hyperbole, Lucas takes care to stress that today's threat is subtler than in the days of a divided continent and Mutually Assured Destruction. Nevertheless he's out to alarm. He describes a Russia now run by, and for, its security services, a power once again on the prowl beyond its borders. Domestically it has, he shows, reverted to a form of authoritarianism, albeit one that, Lucas readily concedes, allows far more leeway than in the grim, gray, grinding Soviet past: "Never in Russian history have so many Russians lived so well and so freely."

This is not an unfamiliar tale (news coverage of Putin's rule has been more critical than Lucas sometimes appears to think), but here it's recounted with fluency, authority, and an eye for detail that, even in this book's lighter moments (of which there are a respectable number; he is a dryly amusing writer), betray its author's long experience of the ramshackle, turbulent, and bewildering space that is all that remains of the utopia that never was:

 
   I went to visit a new [Georgian] finance minister ... who was being 
   energetically promoted by the ever-optimistic American embassy. His 
   office was bright, modern, and computerized. We had an enjoyable 
   chat about e-government and zero-based budgeting.... As I left, I 
   used an old journalist's trick and asked to use the restroom, 
   saying that I would find my way out. Not only was the toilet worse 
   than a midden, but my detour to some of the other offices produced 
   a much more convincing picture: a warren of ill-lit and dingy 
   offices, each filled with rickety wooden furniture. Dumpy little 
   men in ill-fitting brown suits were engaged in chain-smoking 
   conversation with thickset men in leather jackets. Not a computer 
   was in sight. 

Clearly Lucas retains an unromantic, often skeptical view of the states that stumbled, lurched, and strode into the murky post-Soviet dawn. He's often their cheerleader, but he'll heckle too. Equally, his view of Russia is more balanced than his book's title might suggest. After witnessing the chaos, violent criminality, and, for many, penury of the Yeltsin era, he can appreciate the attraction of the (partially) restored order and increasing prosperity associated with Putin, if not their political consequences. It's telling that mounting suspicions (in Lucas's view, "the weight of evidence so far supports the grimmest interpretation") that the security services were behind the "terrorist" apartment bombings that helped pave the way for Putin's election in 2000 have done little to dent his popularity: Russians have been prepared to pay dearly for the hope that the trains might someday run on time.