LONDON, March 15 (UPI) -- Napoleon once said that the most important quality in his generals was to be lucky. And in Spain and Moscow, the scenes of Napoleon's two worst strategic defeats, the force of the French Emperor's remark has been thumpingly endorsed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is the luckiest leader on the planet. The horror in Madrid distracted the attention of the world's media from the unpleasant mockery of democracy that was taking place Sunday in Russia's presidential election. Moreover, the dreadful atrocity that killed 200 innocent Spanish commuters last week served as a grisly reminder that the war on terrorism must remain at the absolute top of the civilized world's priorities -- and in that war, there is little doubt whose side Putin and Russia are on.
And so, re-elected with 70 percent of the vote, Putin faces four more years as the indisputable leader of the Russian people, whatever the mutterings from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell about the conduct of the election. (A Kremlin spokesman noted waspishly that the Russian people need no lessons in democratic procedure from an administration that came to power with a minority of the popular vote thanks to hanging chads and a vote of the Supreme Court.)
Most of the independent observers from Europe and the United States concluded that the Russian election was free, but hardly fair. The Kremlin's domination of the media saw to that. In the first two weeks of campaigning, Putin was given 2 hours and 28 minutes of coverage by the news programs of the national TV channels. All of his opponents combined got 22 minutes.
Putin now dominates the Kremlin, and his elected allies in the Duma dominate the Russian parliament. His appointed regional administrators dominate Russia's regions. The former KGB official has surrounded himself and filled Russia's ministries and top ranks of the vast bureaucracy with fellow veterans of the secret police. The people Russians call the Siloviki, the forces of power, constitute the only party that matters.
Putin's critics, like the ousted and exiled media tycoon Boris Berezovsky, complain of the renewed "Sovietization" of Russia. Like his fellow tycoon Vladimir Guzinsky, Berezovsky has lost his TV stations and faces the same kind of tax evasion charges that have Yukos oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky now behind bars in Moscow, awaiting trial. No doubt if Putin could get his hands on them, Guzinsky and Berezovsky would be there too.
Putin controls the media that matters, television. (But several highly critical Moscow newspapers continue to publish, demonstrating a kind of press freedom, so long as the stuff is read by only a few hundred thousand big city intellectuals.) Putin is also running a viciously repressive war in Chechnya, and spasmodically bullies former Soviet republics like Moldova and Georgia to remind them of Russia's power.
And yet the picture is not entirely grim. Putin would probably have won a wholly free and fair election on the basis of his record. In the five years since Boris Yeltsin brought him to power, Putin has re-established the authority and cohesion of the Russian state that was collapsing into anarchy under Boris Yeltsin. Russia is being governed again.
Putin has stabilized national finances, started paying pensions on time, and presided over an economic boom. Russia's GDP has increased by close to 50 percent during his time in office. Average wages have soared and Russians are going abroad on vacations in unprecedented numbers.
Again, this has been a matter of luck. It was no thanks to Putin that the world oil price doubled between 1999 and today, transforming the prospects of the Russian economy, whose main exports are oil and gas.
And it was no thanks to Putin that the terrorist assaults on 9/11 and now on Madrid came along to make his cooperation and access to Russian airspace and central Asian bases essential for the Bush administration's war on terrorism. The oil price and the war on terror have been Putin's two most important assets, and he was lucky to have them.
But there are two other aspects to Putin, two crucial reforms for which he can take credit, that have nothing to do with luck. The first was his introduction of the 13 percent flat tax, a measure that helped stabilize the state finances, while slashing opportunities for corruption and offering real rewards to a new generation of Russian entrepreneurs. The second was the introduction of trial by jury. So far hesitant and partial, it remains an astonishing innovation in a country where "justice" has usually rested in the hands of the Kremlin.
These twin reforms, which promise in the long run to have a more profound impact on Russia's future than any number of "neutral" TV channels, mean that the jury is still out on Putin. It is too soon to tell whether this is a new Red Tsar bringing back Soviet autocracy through the back door. It is still just possible to see Putin as a Russian version of Chile's General Augusto Pinochet, who launched a bloody military coup against an elected government, slaughtered opponents by the thousand, but put Chile back on the path to becoming the prosperous and stable democracy of today.
The next four years of Putin's second term will probably reveal whether the old KGB major is a closet democrat or a Stalin-in-waiting. But it may not be wholly up to Putin. His luck will play a part. If the oil price stays high, if Russia's aid in the war on terrorism continues to be a trump card in Washington, and if the appeasement-minded Europeans learn from the grisly warning of Madrid that terrorism is their fight too, then Putin may stay lucky, and the Russian people benefit with him. We shall see.
