The Medvedev Doctrine

He wants to build a new security bloc and a gas cartel, and transform Moscow into a financial hub.

Just what exactly does Dmitry Medvedev want? Six months into his tenure at the Kremlin, the Russian president’s signals are so mixed, he has Western policymakers and diplomats baffled. In speech after speech, to audiences at home and abroad, he has talked forcefully of putting an end to Russia’s culture of corruption; diversifying Russia’s economy beyond the oil and gas industry; integrating Russia into the world economy; instituting the rule of law; and guaranteeing freedom of speech. He has said Russia should be a country where ordinary people take a “more active role in the country’s political life.” Yet at the same time, he has blasted Washington for destabilizing the world’s finances; blamed the United States for provoking the August war with Georgia; laid claim to Russia’s “privileged interests” in its neighborhood; and proposed a massive shift in the global “architecture,” which would give Russia a more pronounced say in world affairs.


Earlier this month, in his first state-of-the-nation address, he delivered a more passionate commitment to liberal values than his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, had ever voiced. Putin adviser Sergei Karaganov called the address “the most liberal presidential speech in Russian history.” Yet he also managed to be even more hawkish than Putin by directly threatening the West with missile deployments. The upshot is that over the last several months, Medvedev has developed his own rather radical agenda: surprisingly liberal at home, and increasingly hawkish abroad.

The Medvedev doctrine amounts to an ambitious plan for fixing Russia’s broken society at home and restoring Russia’s place in the world. At its broadest, it is a plan to redraw the world’s security and financial infrastructure, on Russia’s terms. One way to do that, Medvedev believes, is to replace at least some of America’s influence in Europe with Russia’s through a mixture of military threats and the use of Russia’s enormous gas reserves as leverage. For starters, he wants to keep America and Europe from meddling in Russia’s near abroad, and he envisions rebalancing global diplomacy by building up the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a loose body of Asian states that includes Russia and China, into a NATO-like bloc. Other goals include transforming Moscow into a world financial center, and creating a new OPEC-style gas producers’ cartel, with Russia, the world’s largest gas producer, as a leading member. “The old unipolar world is dying,” says Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Russia’s Upper House. “New power formations are appearing; besides the U.S. we see the rising power of Brazil, China, India, the EU and, obviously, Russia.”

Newsweek