http://www.moscowtimes.ru/opinion/article/382371/index.html
The Real Enemy Is Ethanol, Not NATO 07 September 2009 By Richard Lourie The French have a saying: "If you talk about Christmas long enough, Christmas will come." That seems to be the case with the developed world's independence from oil. The Chevrolet Volt was recently introduced with much fanfare and the promise of some 98 kilometers per liter. Entrepreneurial inventors are experimenting to derive cheap, clean energy from stale beer, garbage and other various materials. Wired magazine notes that it was 150 years ago, on Aug. 27, 1859, that the first commercial well began producing petroleum in Pennsylvania. The article quotes experts as arguing that we are now once again in the midst of an "energy transition" and points out that while nothing can replace oil, everything might. Since nearly two-thirds of Russia's exports are gas and oil, Moscow should be more worried about ethanol than NATO. And how is Russia preparing for a future in which its main commodity may be rendered obsolete? Not well at all, judging by the way it is dealing with its infrastructure in general and its roads in particular. Russia has less than 800,000 kilometers of roads it needs and many of those it has are of poor quality, costing the country 3 percent of gross domestic product per year. In 2008, when the country was flush with oil revenues, Russia built 2,200 kilometers of new roads. That's what China builds every 10 days. And because of corruption and ineptitude, the cost to build roads in Russia is nearly four times higher. The long-predicted implosion of the rickety Soviet infrastructure may have begun with the recent disaster at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power plant. Chechen terrorists have claimed the incident as sabotage on their part. It probably wasn't, but a deteriorating infrastructure could be an easy target for actual terrorist attacks. As the Kremlin continues to try to modernize the country's infrastructure, there will be more disasters like Sayano-Shushenskaya. This is what happens when Russia tries to impose a new system on an old one. The Soviet Union collapsed when Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform it, and the old Soviet infrastructure is collapsing as Russia attempts to repair it. On the spiritual side of the ledger, things don't look too promising either. Russia did not produce the renaissance in art and culture that many expected would occur when the Soviet lid was lifted. That's not necessarily bad, since cultural flowerings can just as easily emerge from decadent phases in a nation's life as it does from healthy ones. Russia's real cultural failure is more anthropological than artistic. Post-Soviet Russia is about to turn 18, yet it has no definite and discernible identity. It is still a country without vision and values, still a country without its own anthem and flag. (The anthem is a rewrite of a Soviet rewrite, and the flag belongs to late tsarist Russia.) When Soviet Russia turned 18 in 1935, there was no question of what it was. And six years later, Red Army soldiers went into battle shouting, "For the country and Stalin!" It would be difficult to imagine today's soldiers streaming into Georgia with a cry of "For Gazprom and Putin!" These problems of economic direction and social identity - difficult as they are - could be aired in a free and open mass media. And they could be resolved, however imperfectly, by a political system that offered real choice and a legal system that provided a modicum of justice. But Russia has none of the above, while "Christmas" is getting closer all the time. Richard Lourie is the author of "The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin" and "Sakharov: A Biography." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
