Special: What six more years of Putin means for the world

At the end of the Cold War, the West would have been delighted to know that 20 years hence the Communist Party would again be rejected by the people of Russia, with the non-Communist candidate winning 63 per cent of the vote. But that was at a time when Russia was a young, struggling democracy and it was far from certain that the Communists would never return to power. Today, things are very different.

Vladimir Putin's victory is, for the West, not entirely disagreeable. Rather, like the curate's egg, it is good in parts. It guarantees that for the next six years Russia will be stable and fairly predictable.

It will have, as its president, a leader who is tough and cool. He will conduct a foreign policy with which we are already familiar. It will be nationalist, but not dangerous or irrational on the supreme questions of peace and war. When you are dealing with a state that still has thousands of nuclear warheads, having Putin in the Kremlin should not cause us to lose too much sleep.

But there is no getting away from the fact that he has blocked Russia's embrace of pluralist democracy and the emergence of serious, organised political alternatives to his rule. The fact that the only opponents permitted to stand in the election were the Communists and an unelectable oligarch illustrates his commitment to the facade but not the substance of democratic politics.

Will Putin be any different in his third term? He has shown some flexibility in his response to the mass protests that erupted throughout Russia in response to the deal he did with Medvedev that the two of them would simply switch jobs. Many Russians felt humiliated at being taken for granted by their political leaders.

The police and security forces have been cautious in dealing with the mass demonstrations against him. He has announced that Russia will revert to the direct election of provincial governors, which he had abolished and which is a major concession towards pluralism.

Even when Putin bends, however, he does so in a cackhanded way. Yesterday it was announced that there is to be a review of the conviction and imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch who has languished in a Siberian prison since a blatant, politically motivated trial. I was not surprised by this. I was forewarned of it by a former Russian prime minister who I met in London several weeks ago, and who said it would lead to Khodorkovsky's release. But to announce it within hours of Putin's triumphant re-election was amateurish in the extreme. Khodorkovsky's imprisonment has always been political, despite the denials of the Kremlin. Despite the review being most welcome, its timing only demonstrates the fact.

What of Russia's foreign policy in Putin's third term? It is difficult to see any serious convergence with the West on either Syria or Iran. From any logical point of view, its current obstructionism at the UN is leading Russia down a cul de sac and doing untold damage to Moscow's relations with the Arab world. Although the Assad regime has been a close ally for years, Moscow knows as well as the rest of the world that its days are numbered. Instead of pressing the case for a peaceful change in Damascus, Russia has blocked pressure and has antagonised many Arab countries, among whom its reputation is lower than for many years.

Likewise, on any logical basis, Russia should be as alarmed as the West about an Iran with nuclear weapons. Iran is near to its southern borders and Russia has a smouldering insurgency in nearby Muslim Chechnya. The more there is nuclear proliferation, the greater the likelihood of fissile material getting into the hands of Islamic terrorists.

Putin's main problem is that he is a Russian nationalist with little imagination. These are qualities eminently suitable for the KGB officer he once was, but of little value in international relations. He appears to see foreign policy as a zero sum game and that whatever might be desired by the United States should be resisted by Russia if his country is to be respected by the world as a serious power.

That might have made sense during the Cold War. However, in the multi-polar world in which we now live, with a rising China and a confident Asia, the key to global influence for Russia, as for the United States and Europe, will be economic success and not geopolitical posturing.

Russia today does not have an impressive economy, except in energy. In the 19th century, Tsar Alexander II remarked that Russia's only friends were its army and navy. Today, they are oil and gas. Putin's real challenge is to create a Russia with a pluralist political system and a successful, modern, market economy. But if he does either, I shall eat my fur hat.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind is MP for Kensington and a former British foreign secretary.