Delovoi Vtornik
Talking up the Caspian Boom
One of the last moves Tony Hayward made before stepping down as BP chief executive was to sign an agreement in Azerbaijan to develop Asiman and Shafag, an offshore oil block in the Caspian Sea. But why exactly are the Anglo-American oil majors so desperate to secure themselves a foothold in the Caspian?
This is certainly a backbone strategy pursued by the United States and NATO, which have always viewed oil as a geopolitical issue. Now with things not going well in relation to Iran, and with their general strategy in both Iraq and Afghanistan clearly a fiasco, they simply cannot afford to distance themselves from the Caspian as well, because it would mean a collapse of their entire geopolitical strategy in the region.
BP's management never misses a chance to emphasize the importance of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) and Shah Deniz oil and gas projects, as well as of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Officials in London and Washington understand perfectly that the ACG project is a bonanza that should not, under any circumstances, be lost. Oil business in the region is too profitable to allow that.
Therefore, it is quite logical that foreign oil barons are using the Pentagon's powerful arsenal ever more frequently to gain a foothold in the Caspian. The general Western strategy is aimed at preventing the five Caspian states - Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Russia - from settling their differences and agreeing the legal status of the Caspian Sea. They sow mistrust and suspicion among countries in the region, fuelling the arms race by ensuring that all those petrodollars are channeled into military projects rather than towards raising people's living standards.
The Caspian Guard project, launched by the Pentagon in 2003, involves two countries: Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. It is aimed at strengthening their navies in order to fight terrorism and boost control over the sea and airspace in the region. As a result, the two Caspian states have spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying used warships, doubling their number in the region.
Tensions have also grown across the region, with a dangerous incident at sea flaring up between Iran and Azerbaijan. The Pentagon is using Azerbaijan in its campaign against Iran, so it has provided $30 million to upgrade the country's coast guard and to build two radar stations there. In addition, NATO troops have been deployed to the region.
Iran responded by increasing its military presence in the Caspian as well. Incidentally, it is worth remembering here that the Caspian Five signed a declaration a few years ago banning any military forces from non-Caspian states from the region and the use of force to resolve local issues.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
President's new thinking
In late August or early September, the presidential modernization commission will meet again. This time it will discuss education. Commission members will decide how to pave the way for cultivating inventive talent and creating an innovative mental approach. Western universities are ready and willing to help Russia with the problem.
President Dmitry Medvedev planned to tackle education a long time ago, at the March meeting of the commission. But more urgent things relating to innovation continued to intervene. The president is now getting to grips with the education of future generations just ahead of a new academic year.
Education Minister Andrei Fursenko will set the tone at the meeting. In his report he will describe the current implementation phase of the project Our New School. Under the project, young people must learn to live in the environment of an innovative economy. One of its basic aims is to develop students' initiative, to cultivate their ability to think creatively, to find non-standard solutions to problems, to choose a career path, and to be ready to learn all life long.
The Our New School national project, approved by President Medvedev, says that 21st-century education should be concerned not only with past achievements, but also with future technology. It must involve students in research and teach them to invent, understand and master new things.
Valery Fadeyev, director of the Public Projects Institute, says that Russian secondary schools have a clear competitive edge here. "If we compare them with higher education, we see that they are in much better shape. Russia has dozens of world-class secondary schools, where students from leading Western countries come to study." He says these schools are absolutely innovatory, though sometimes they use methods developed in Soviet times: "There were many pioneering teachers in those days. The achievements demonstrated by their pupils are considerable and significant," he says. Fadeyev believes that the main objective is to replicate them: "It will not be difficult to turn several dozen forward-looking schools into several hundred," he added.
Higher education is different. Its main problem is the lack of demand for highly trained specialists. "In Soviet times the defense industry was a powerful incubator combining education, creative ideas and production. Its emergence was due to demands from certain economic sectors," he said. Today, there is no such large-scale need, the expert says, and this explains why education today is so unstructured: "The goal is to awaken those sectors of the economy that may require innovation specialists and managers able to turn knowledge into business."
Rossiiskaya Gazeta
Medvedev's administrative shake-up
An administrative revolution is gathering momentum in Russia right in front of our eyes. President Dmitry Medvedev has taken to changing top officials in the regions with unprecedented vigor. In the past two and a half years, one third of regional heads have been replaced, which is more than in the previous 10 years.
Some of the officials left because their term in office expired; others were forced to submit their resignations or left of their own accord. The reason behind this is certainly not Medvedev's love of change for its own sake. The fact is that there have been no changes in regional governments for a long time and many heads have served four or even five terms of office.
Three years ago there were twelve political giants who had reigned over their regions since 1990 or 1991. Only three of them have remained until today, including 70-year old Leonid Polezhayev in the Omsk Region, 61-year old Viktor Kress in the Tomsk Region, and 73-year old Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
It is easy enough to imagine the political status of a governor or president after 20 years in office. There have been great changes in the country since the early 1990s: privatization, wild business of the 1990s, Putin's stabilization and Medvedev's modernization.
Most regional heads resign to an honorable reserve bench - the Federation Council, which increasingly resembles an ex-governors' club.
The vast majority of Russia's new regional heads are a new breed: they are a combination of businessmen and government officials. Most of them ran successful businesses in the 1990s and came into politics in the 2000s. Their biographies reflect their extraordinary talents: to set up a business in the 1990s, keep it afloat without getting either killed or jailed, and then to succeed in politics is no easy feat. To accomplish this, one needs great determination, wit, organizational talents and charisma.
Nikita Belykh, the governor of the Kirov Region, deserves a special mention. Apart from being a rich and successful businessman, he is the only Russian governor to have earlier been an opposition party leader, the Union of Right Forces.
It is clear that despite the inevitable staffing mistakes, the officials who hold the country's key positions in the regions are usually remarkable individuals.
Thus, despite popular opinion, a) government personnel is being renewed and quite vigorously so; b) regional heads are not appointed only because they are Putin's or Medvedev's friends or family members. Energetic, experienced and usually rich people are most likely to become governors.
Vedomosti
Public administration in Russia: What makes it tick?
This was one of the questions asked in an opinion poll by the Levada Center think-tank recently. The survey offered a range of 18 possible answers to choose from. The options were formulated on the basis of previous research. The choice was comprehensive and well made, because there were only 5% answers not provided for and less than 1% of refusals to answer.
The answers are interesting by themselves, but what makes them particularly significant is their comparison with a response to another question asked right after the first one: "What principles should govern administration in a country where you would like to live?" The set of possible answers was the same in both cases.
Russians believe that administration should rest on "the observance of the Constitution" (51%) and "on a state system developed and working in the interests of society" (46%). In Russia, most of its citizens answer that it rests on "the bureaucrats covering each other's backs and their corruption" (33%), on the "might of state machinery functioning only in the interest of the powers that be" (30%), and "on people brought into government on the principle of personal loyalty" (21%). Fewer than 14% ventured to say that Russian authorities "observe the Constitution."
Other answers show the same discrepancy between what people observe in life and what they would like to see. Almost one-quarter of respondents (23%) are unhappy that "public authorities are not controlled by society and disregard laws." In the country they would like to live in such a thing would not occur. There, public authorities "are controlled by society and strictly observe laws" (30%). The answer about "free people aware of their interests and able to uphold them" leaves a bitter aftertaste. In an ideal Russia they would have been one of the five main pillars of authority. In a real one, they are ranked 13th. The separation of power in an ideal country is in the top ten principles, while in real life it is placed last.
Levada Center pollsters are often asked if the authorities are ever guided by their findings. The answer is that only 5% of Russians think the Russian authorities base their actions on public opinion. Three times as many feel that the authorities manipulate this opinion.
Top officials - to the small extent to which they took part in the poll - are clearly reluctant to agree with the people they administer in the assessment of their powers. But their positions are also very characteristic. Unlike ordinary Russians, they see the main quality of the current public administration not in the absolute power and corruption of officials, but in the dependence of all bodies of authority (and all officials employed there) on the head of state (43%). In an ideal country, they place "a state system operating in the interest of society" first, not an individual person. Fewer than 6% of officials would like to be dependent ideally on an individual person, even a top one.
RBC Daily
Eastern front for investment
Every third company in Europe's German-speaking countries is willing to build an industrial facility in Russia in the next five years. It was not that long ago that German, Austrian and Swiss companies would have preferred their closest neighbors - Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. But now they are willing to go further east, driven by the desire to enter vast and dynamic markets with serious clients.
This follows research including 111 large and medium-sized industrial companies headquartered in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It turned out that 36 percent of the respondents associated their expansion plans with Russia. Only one in five companies was willing to build new plants and factories in Central Europe, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
Ukraine unexpectedly became the second most attractive destination for investors. A quarter of the respondents said they would set up production in that country. Experts say that western companies are eager to conquer the Russian and Ukrainian markets even despite the fact that legal and political conditions here leave much to be desired by comparison with EU countries.
It is worth mentioning that the financial downturn has had almost no impact on Russia's attractiveness for West-European countries. Only a handful of projects in Russia were cancelled in the downturn. Now the situation has improved.
These research results are not all that surprising since most companies based in German-speaking countries willing to set up production facilities in Central Europe have already done so, European analysts say. Direct investment in Russia is still scarce, especially in processing industries, in which German, Austrian and Swiss companies are traditionally strong.
Central Europe's decreasing attractiveness as an investment destination is a result of the region's excessively deep integration into Western Europe. The eurozone's current problems hinder the Central European countries' economic development. Thus, Europe's developed markets are losing interest in investing in their closest neighbors.
The investment attractiveness of the EU's eastern member-countries lies in cheap labor, especially in labor-intensive industries. Russia and Ukraine attract investors mainly due to the markets' scale and growth rates. As a factor, the cheap labor force has fallen by the wayside.
Russia's vast market may include large customers, something highly relevant to the automotive, metal processing and chemical industries. According to the Russian-German Foreign Trade Chamber, German companies find Russia an attractive investment option due to the country's unoccupied market niches and consumer activity as well as to relatively favorable tax policies, the existence of free economic zones and the low level of competition.
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MOSCOW, August 10 (RIA Novosti)
