In Need of 6-Year Plans

The ripples from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have reached the Kremlin. President Dmitry Medvedev said: “After such accidents, people will definitely direct their intellectual potential toward creating alternative sources of energy. And they will create them, rest assured.” In other words, the oil spill threatens not only to put BP out of business, but Russia as well.

In Medvedev’s vision of things, Russia is confronted with a stark choice: modernize or perish. In some sense, his words are echoes of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Oval Office speech of June 15. The oil addicts have to change their ways and so do the pushers.

But to create what Medvedev calls a “highly technological economy” takes time. How much time does Russia need? And, more important, how much time does it have?

We live in an age of contagion. Sentiments — especially panic — travel at the same electronic speed as information and capital. The fates of nations pivot with breathtaking swiftness. On the same day as Greek bonds were reclassified as “junk,” $1 trillion worth of mineral wealth was revealed to lay beneath the surface of Afghanistan. Suddenly Europe looks shaky, while desolate Afghanistan has a future.

Since situations can change with such alarming speed, an ideal leader is one who can respond with the appropriate combination of deliberation and dispatch. Former U.S. President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney are obvious examples of leaders who reacted too quickly without good information, whereas Obama creates the impression of someone who ponders too much when he should be quicker off the mark. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Medvedev reacted too quickly in Georgia but bided their time intelligently last week when the Kyrgyz provisional government called for Russian military intervention.

To create that “highly technological economy” requires long-term planning and intelligent investment. Education becomes vital to national security. Meanwhile, Russia’s cadre of excellent teachers is dwindling, and it is not clear how replacements will be found when there’s more money, prestige and security in other professions.

There are no quick fixes to the problem. Solutions can’t be imported, but Russia has some time. If the country is going to be based on a “power vertical,” that vertical must also assume some of the responsibilities that come with power. To some degree, the Soviet vertical did just that. The Soviet Union produced plenty of good scientists and plenty of good teachers to train subsequent generations. In an open letter to Medvedev earlier this year, 400 scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences warned: “If young people are not brought into science in the next five-to-seven year period, plans to create an innovative economy can be forgotten.” Let’s call “five to seven” six.

What Russia needs now are six-year plans. A six-year plan will, of course, coincide with the new length of the presidential term. A presidential candidate will run not on vague promises and rousing rhetoric but on a specific set of programs designed to avert the doom Medvedev foresees and even recapture some measure of national greatness. That six-year plan will, at the end of a leader’s term, serve as a measure of his achievement or failure.

But the country needs reforms that change society. Producing a high-tech economy is not enough. Otherwise, the result may be no more than a modernized Russia where you can pay bribes with your cell phone.