Re-admit Russia to the G7? It should be expelled outright
If reports are to be believed, the recent G7 summit was a tense affair, mainly thanks to Donald Trump.
From being the only head of government to miss a meeting on climate change, to pitching his own Miami hotel resort for the next G7 summit, the US President kept the other world leaders constantly on their toes.
But one major flashpoint appears to have been all but forgotten now the summit is over: Trump’s insistence that Russia should be re-admitted into the club, from which it has been suspended since the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The fact that Russia was in the G8 (as it then was) in the first place is remarkable. The original Group of Six, formed in 1975, was conceived as a gathering of like-minded liberal democracies – the founding members were France, Italy, Japan, West Germany, the US and the UK, with Canada joining a year later.
You could have just about have described Russia as a democracy when it entered the G8 back in 1998 under Boris Yeltsin. However, Vladimir Putin’s ascent to the presidency quickly put paid to any notion that Russia might embrace western-style governance.
For while the headlines often focus on the Kremlin’s meddling abroad, it is worth remembering the effects of Putinism on his own country.
There is now a dense literature on the damage that the former KGB man has wrought in almost two decades of rule. Books such as Luke Harding’s Mafia State and Arkady Ostrovsky’s The Invention of Russia meticulously detail how Putin has turned a global power into his personal fiefdom.
The Russian President is often described as a leader, strategist, and master of global statecraft. He is all of these things, but above all he is perhaps the world’s most accomplished thief.
By bringing swathes of the Russian economy under government control, Putin has created a kind of state capitalism in which he and his associates, including childhood friends, are the chief beneficiaries.
The scale of their larceny is astonishing. It is tricky to work out exactly how much has been stolen, but in his recent book Russia’s Crony Capitalism, Swedish economist Anders Aslund writes that a “reasonable assessment is that private Russian assets held anonymously abroad are about $800bn”.
As Aslund notes, Russia might have the trappings of western-style capitalism – a McDonald’s here, a Gucci handbag there – but it’s really more akin to an aristocracy, particularly in the way that those in Putin’s inner circle are able to pass on jobs and favours to their children.
For a while, with the economy buoyed by high commodity prices, Putin could get away with it. Ordinary Russians saw their living standards improve substantially in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, and he was credited with bringing not only prosperity but stability after what most saw as the chaos of the Yeltsin era.
Since then, however, the economy has been stagnant, with many of the brightest young Russians opting to leave the country.
While it is incidents like the Salisbury poisoning and the accusation of interference in the 2016 US election that make the headlines, we should not forget that the biggest victims of Putin’s rule are arguably the Russian people themselves, many of whom put up with a level of poverty and despair that is almost incomprehensible in a country of such vast natural wealth.
A standard Kremlin response to complaints is to accuse critics of “Russophobia” (even when they are themselves Russian). But contempt for the government is not the same thing as contempt for the country or its people – indeed, many of Putin’s most vocal critics love the nation deeply.
There is also the small matter of the countries on Russia’s periphery, not just Ukraine but also Georgia and the Baltic States, which have come under attack, both military and cyber, from the Kremlin.
Emmanuel Macron has said that resolving the conflict in Ukraine would be a “magic wand” that would let Russia back into the club, but if he envisages Putin relinquishing control of Crimea, the French President is more delusional than optimistic.
It might arouse scorn in the west, but the annexation was wildly popular in Russia, where many think of the peninsula as theirs by right, and boosted Putin’s own personal ratings.
The idea of using entry to the G7/8 as a bargaining chip to resolve the Ukraine conflict is wishful thinking. There is a stronger argument that the appropriate response to the Russian government’s behaviour is not readmission to the G7, but outright expulsion.
That would be a signal of western support for Ukraine, and also for the Russian people who are starting to realise the extent to which their President is at fault for their suffering.
Some may ask whether it really matters if the G7 becomes the G8 once more. After all, Putin himself seems pretty indifferent to the annual gatherings, often asserting that the real decisions are made at the G20.
But following Trump’s chosen path would send the message that Russia can act with complete impunity and still be allowed a seat at the table. The rest of the G7 should resist Trump’s overtures and keep Putin at arm’s length.
Main image credit: Getty