Medvedev: Russia To Rearm Fleet, Army From 2011
Mar 17, 2009
MOSCOW (AFP)--President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was still seeking to expand its physical presence near Russian borders and ordered a "large-scale" Russian rearmament from 2011.
"From 2011 a large-scale rearmament of the army and navy will begin," Medvedev was quoted by news agencies as saying at a meeting of military chiefs in Moscow.
He called for a renewal of Russia's nuclear weapons arsenal and said NATO was pursuing military expansion near Russia's borders.
"Analysis of the military-political situation in the world shows that a serious conflict potential remains in some regions," Medvedev said.
He listed local crises and international terrorism as persistent security threats and also stated: "Attempts to expand the military infrastructure of NATO near the borders of our country are continuing.
"The primary task is to increase the combat readiness of our forces, first of all our strategic nuclear forces. They must be able to fulfill all tasks necessary to ensure Russia's security," Medvedev said.
The comments came despite statements by the Russian leadership suggesting a thaw in relations with the U.S. following the end of the George W. Bush administration and the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
Some analysts have detected a softening of U.S. support for NATO enlargement to ex-Soviet countries on Russia's borders such as Georgia and Ukraine.
The Obama administration has said it is weighing what to do about a Bush-era project to build missile defense facilities in eastern Europe that has angered Moscow.
Russia, the world's largest country and one of a handful of nuclear-armed states, is attempting to slim down and improve its military, which currently numbers about 1 million personnel.
At Tuesday's meeting Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said a host of non- core activity, from guest house management to weapons repair and food production, would be transferred from the Defense Ministry to a state-owned civilian company, Oboronservis.
Showing posts with label russia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label russia. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Medvedev Urges Russia's Richest To Return "Moral Debts"
Medvedev Urges Russia's Richest To Return "Moral Debts"
Mar 15, 2009 11:13
MOSCOW (AFP)--President Dmitry Medvedev Sunday urged Russia's largest businesses to return "moral debts" during an economic crisis which he called " cleanup time."
"Nowhere in the world perhaps has the development of entrepreneurship in recent times happened as quickly as in our country.
"People simply have been getting very rich in a very short time," Medvedev said in an interview to be broadcast on national television later Sunday..
"Now it is time pay off debts, moral debts because the crisis is a test of maturity," he said.
Medvedev said the current crisis, Russia's worst economic collapse in a decade, was the time for the richest businessmen to embrace social responsibility and put interests of their employees before their own.
"If a person has really become a genuine businessman he can appreciate his employees," he said in comments released by the presidential administration.
"He will perhaps try to put off part of his proposals, part of his ideas or personal consumption, save his staff, pay them salaries, save what he's been doing in recent years."
Many of Russia's richest people earned fortunes through controversial loans- for-shares privatization in the 1990s and an economic bonanza fueled by high oil and gas prices gave birth to yet more tycoons.
Today Russia's richest are struggling to pay off billions of dollars in debts built up in better times, while the government has said businesses shouldn' assume there would be a blanket bailout of all.
"In this sense, this is probably cleanup time: he who survives the crisis conditions will be an effective entrepreneur, an effective manager in a good sense of the word," Medvedev said.
(END)
Mar 15, 2009 11:13
MOSCOW (AFP)--President Dmitry Medvedev Sunday urged Russia's largest businesses to return "moral debts" during an economic crisis which he called " cleanup time."
"Nowhere in the world perhaps has the development of entrepreneurship in recent times happened as quickly as in our country.
"People simply have been getting very rich in a very short time," Medvedev said in an interview to be broadcast on national television later Sunday..
"Now it is time pay off debts, moral debts because the crisis is a test of maturity," he said.
Medvedev said the current crisis, Russia's worst economic collapse in a decade, was the time for the richest businessmen to embrace social responsibility and put interests of their employees before their own.
"If a person has really become a genuine businessman he can appreciate his employees," he said in comments released by the presidential administration.
"He will perhaps try to put off part of his proposals, part of his ideas or personal consumption, save his staff, pay them salaries, save what he's been doing in recent years."
Many of Russia's richest people earned fortunes through controversial loans- for-shares privatization in the 1990s and an economic bonanza fueled by high oil and gas prices gave birth to yet more tycoons.
Today Russia's richest are struggling to pay off billions of dollars in debts built up in better times, while the government has said businesses shouldn' assume there would be a blanket bailout of all.
"In this sense, this is probably cleanup time: he who survives the crisis conditions will be an effective entrepreneur, an effective manager in a good sense of the word," Medvedev said.
(END)
Friday, March 13, 2009
How the Obama Administration Should Deal with Russia's Revisionist Foreign Policy
How the Obama Administration Should Deal with Russia's Revisionist Foreign Policy. By Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.
Heritage Backgrounder #2246
March 12, 2009
See full article w/references here.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden will address the challenge posed by an increasingly autocratic and bellicose Russia by pursuing a new, comprehensive strategy that advances American national interests without compromising our enduring principles.
—"Meeting the Challenges of a Resurgent Russia" http://www.barackobama.com
President Barack Obama has expressed concerns over Russia's increasingly truculent behavior and the threat it poses to the current international system. These concerns are valid and the threat of a resurgent Russia is palpable.[1] Moscow's efforts at carving out a "sphere of privileged interests" throughout Eurasia and rewriting the rules of European security have negative implications for U.S.– Russia relations, international security, the autonomy of the newly independent former Soviet states, and Europe's independence.
Despite these circumstances, the Obama Administration seems to be rushing ahead with a "carrots-and-cakes" approach to the Kremlin, judging by Vice President Joe Biden's recent speech at the annual Munich international security conference. In this speech, the Vice President outlined the Obama Administration's foreign policy vision for the first time on the world stage and suggested that America push "the reset button" on relations with Russia.[2] Notably absent from this speech was any mention of recent events in Eurasia.
While in Moscow, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns mirrored this approach. Burns stated that the U.S. was willing to review "the pace of development" of its missile defense shield in Europe in exchange for Russian cooperation on dissuading Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, and downplayed the importance of a U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan from which the U.S. military has just received an eviction notice.3 Other diplomatic efforts to thaw U.S.–Russian relations are underway as well.[3]
According to The New York Times, President Obama sent a secret, hand-delivered letter to President Dmitry Medvedev one month ago. The letter reportedly suggests that if Russia cooperated with the United States in preventing Iran from developing long-range nuclear-missile capabilities, the need for a new missile defense system in Europe would be eliminated—a quid pro quo that President Obama has denied. The letter proposes a "united front" to achieve this goal.[4] Responding to the letter, Medvedev appeared to reject the offer and stated that the Kremlin was "working very closely with our U.S. colleagues on the issue of Iran's nuclear program," but not in the context of the new missile defense system in Europe. He stated that "no one links these issues to any exchange, especially on the Iran issue." Nevertheless, Medvedev welcomed the overture as a positive signal from the Obama Administration.[5]
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, in Geneva on March 6, following a gathering of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.[6] President Obama is also likely to meet President Medvedev in London at the G-20 summit in April.[7] These meetings occur in a context where both the Obama Administration and Russia want a new legally binding treaty for limiting strategic nuclear arms. Ostensibly, this new treaty would be designed to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).[8] START is scheduled to expire late this year, which both Washington and Moscow see as problematic.
Recent Russian media leaks seemed to reciprocate American overtures and suggested that the Kremlin may not deploy its Iskander short-range missiles in Kaliningrad. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's statements in Davos onJanuary 28 that great powers need to cooperate to find an exit from the current global economic crisis may be signals that Moscow is exploring ways to improve relations with Washington, albeit driven by the plummeting economy at home.[9]
While an improvement in U.S.–Russian relations is certainly desirable, haste is ill advised for the Obama Administration, which has not yet announced its key officials in charge of Russia policy, nor conducted a comprehensive assessment of U.S.–Russian relations. Foremost, the Obama Administration must not allow Moscow to rewrite the geopolitical map of Europe or to pocket the gains that it has recently made in Georgia, including expanding military bases on its territory and evicting the U.S. from an air base in Kyrgyzstan.
Privileged Sphere of Influence
Since the watershed war with Georgia last August, Russia has been on the offensive across Eurasia and has been seeking to re-impose itself over much of the post-Soviet space. So concerned is the Kremlin with the expansion of its "privileged" sphere of influence that even the severe economic crisis—which has sent the ruble plunging 50 percent against the dollar and dropped Moscow stock market capitalization 80 percent—has not slowed Russia's push into the "near abroad."
Currently, Russia has a number of military bases in Europe and Eurasia. (See Map 1.) The Russian military recently announced the establishment of three military bases in the secessionist Abkhazia (a naval base in Ochamchira, the Bombora air base near Gudauta, and an alpine Special Forces base in the Kodori Gorge) and is building two more in South Ossetia (in Java and in the capital, Tskinvali). (See detail of Map 1.)[10] Not only do these deployments violate the spirit and the letter of the cease-fire[11] negotiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy after the 2008 Russo–Georgian war,but they extend Russia's power projection capabilities into the Southern Caucasus, threatening the already precarious position of Georgia and the East–West corridor of oil and gas pipelines and railroads from the Caspian Sea to Turkey and Europe.[12]
[map 1: Russia's Expanding Military Presence in Eurasia]
More recently, Washington received an eviction notice for the U.S. military by Kurmanbek Bakiyev, president of Kyrgyzstan. With Russian President Medvedev at his side, Bakiyev announced in Moscow last month that he wants the U.S. to leave Manas Air Base, a key military cargo hub at the airport of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek used by NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan since 2001.[13] With this move, the Kremlin signaled the West that to gain access to Central Asia, Western countries must first request permission from Moscow and pay the Kremlin for transit. This stance further reflects the thinking behind Russian calls for an "exclusive sphere of interests"—geographically undefined— formulated by Medvedev during his August 31, 2008, televised address.[14]
Closing Manas Air Base for the U.S. military will complicate efforts to send up to 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan—a key objective of the Obama Administration. Russia's pressure on the Kyrgyz government to evict the U.S. from this base raises questions about long-term strategic intentions of the Moscow leadership and its willingness to foster a NATO defeat in Afghanistan.
Russia has taken additional steps to secure its clout from Poland to the Pacific. It initiated a joint air-and-missile defense system with Belarus, which may cost billions, and initiated a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Rapid Reaction Force (RRF), intended to match the forces of NATO's Rapid Response Force. The CSTO's RRF not only could be used to fight external enemies, but is likely to be available to put down "velvet revolutions" and quell popular unrest.[15] Russia also announced the creation of a $10 billion stabilization fund for the seven countries that are the members of the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), most of which ($7.5 billion) Moscow will front.[16] The reason for the spending spree is simple: Money and weapons consolidate control over allies.
Russia's effort to secure a zone of "privileged interests" is consistent with policies formulated almost two decades ago by Yevgeny M. Primakov, leader of the Eurasianist school of foreign policy, Boris Yeltsin's intelligence chief, later a foreign minister, and then prime minister. In 1994, under Primakov's direction, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service published a report calling for Russian domination of the "near abroad"—referring to the newly independent states that emerged from the rubble of the collapsed Soviet empire.
Since the Iraq war, the Kremlin championed the notion of "multipolarity," in which U.S. influence would be checked by Russia, China, India, and a swath of authoritarian states. Today, Putin and Medvedev are calling for a new geopolitical and economic architecture—not only in Europe but throughout the entire world—based on massive spheres of influence.
Global Revisionism
Despite the economic crisis that provided a reality check for Moscow, Russia is doing its best to continue a broad, global, revisionist foreign policy agenda that seeks to undermine what it views as an U.S.-led international security architecture. Russia's rulers want to achieve a world order in which Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela will form a counterweight to the United States. Moscow is doing so despite the dwindling currency reserves and a severe downturn in its economic performance due to plummeting energy and commodity prices.[17]
In December 2008, the Russian navy conducted maneuvers in the Caribbean with Venezuela, while the Russian air force's supersonic Tupolev TU-160 "Blackjack" bombers and the old but reliable TU-95 "Bear" turboprop bombers flew patrols to Venezuela, as well as close to U.S. air space in the Pacific and the Arctic.[18] Russia is also developing the Syrian ports of Tartus and Latakia in order to manage an expanded Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean, and may possibly revive an anchorage in Libya and Yemen. (See Map 2.)[19] These are only some examples of how Moscow is implementing its global agenda. While some of these moves may be mostly symbolic, combined with a $300 billion military modernization program they signal a much more aggressive and ambitious Russian global posture. Russia is also overtly engaging the Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations.
[map 2: Russian Bases in the Middle East]
If Moscow's vision were to be realized, given the large cast of state and non-state "bad actors" currently on the international stage, Russia's notion of "multipolarity" would engender an even more unstable and dangerous world. Additionally, the very process of trying to force such a transition risks destabilizing the existing international system and its institutions while offering no viable alternatives.
Russia's Strategic Energy Agenda
On the energy front alone, the Obama Administration will face a multiplicity of challenges emanating from Moscow. The Bush Administration signed a "123 agreement" on civilian nuclear cooperation and non-proliferation with Russia in May 2008, before the war in Georgia. The 123 agreement, so called because it falls under section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, is necessary to make nuclear cooperation between the countries possible.The agreement would facilitate Russia's foray into the international nuclear waste management and reprocessing business by potentially providing Russian access to U.S. commercial technologies.[20]
The agreement, however, ran into severe congressional opposition: Representative John Dingell (D–MI), then-chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, announced that, "Even without Russia's incursion into Georgia, Russian support for Iranian nuclear and missile programs alone is enough to call into question the wisdom of committing to a 30-year agreement to transfer sensitive nuclear technologies and materials to Russia."[21] As the Obama Administration is signaling a new thaw in the relationship, senior Russian officials hope that the Administration will revive the agreement, which could bring billions of dollars to the lean Russian coffers.[22]
Europe's Dependence on Russian Gas. The Europeans, especially the Germans, are concerned with carbon emission reductions, while downplaying nuclear energy and coal as alternative sources of energy to natural gas. Russia is the primary source of Europe's gas habit. Thus, an environmental concern becomes a major geopolitical liability. Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Finland depend on Russian gas for up to 100 percent of their imports, and are not pursuing alternatives, such as liquefied natural gas (LNG). Germany depends on Russian gas for 40 percent of its consumption, a share that is set to increase to 60 percent by 2020.
Russia strives to dominate Europe, particularly Eastern and Central Europe, including Germany, through its quasi-monopolistic gas supply and its significant share of the oil market and of other strategic resources. (See Map 3.) Russia controls a network of strategically important pipelines and is attempting to extend it by building the Nord Stream pipeline along the bottom of the Baltic Sea to Germany, building the South Stream pipeline across the length of the Black Sea, and even controlling gas pipelines from North Africa to Europe.
[map 3: Primary Russian Oil and Gas Pipelines to Europe]
Moscow has shown a pattern of using revenues from its energy exports to fuel its strategic and foreign policy agendas. It grants selective access to Russian energy resources to European companies as a quid pro quo for political cooperation and government lobbying on the Kremlin's behalf. It has selectively hired prominent European politicians, such as former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and former Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, to promote Russian interests and energy deals and has offered positions and lucrative business deals to other European political heavyweights, such as former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi.
Russian energy giant Gazprom has been on a shopping spree, acquiring European energy assets. Europe is projected to be dependent on Russia for over 60 percent of its gas consumption by 2030, with some countries already 100 percent dependent on Gazprom.[23] Russia has shown a willingness to use this dependency and its energy influence as a tool of foreign policy, shutting down or threatening to shut down the flow of gas to countries perceived to be acting against Moscow's interest, as in the cases of Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.
The Kremlin is in the process of creating an OPEC-style gas cartel with Iran, Qatar, and other leading gas producers, to be headquartered in Moscow. This cartel would allow Moscow and Tehran to dictate pricing policy, weigh in on new projects, and oppose any new pipelines they want. This may bring about even greater domination of Europe's gas supply than they currently enjoy, and eventually, domination of the global LNG markets as well.[24] Any EU dependence on such a cartel will diminish its ability to support gas-exporting countries whose pipelines bypass Russia, will challenge EU energy liberalization and gas deregulation policies, and may have dire foreign policy consequences.
The U.S. certainly should explore all available diplomatic avenues to curb Russian anti-American policies, yet the new Administration must be prepared for the contingency that the United States may have no choice but to counter Russian revisionism through disincentives, rather than limiting itself to trying to persuade the Kremlin to embrace the international system.
Russia Policy for the Obama Administration
To meet today's challenges and preserve the security of Europe and Eurasia, the Obama Administration should conduct a comprehensive assessment of U.S.–Russian relations and then prepare a detailed foreign policy agenda that protects American interests; checks the growing Russian influence in Europe, the Middle East, and Eurasia; deters aggression against the U.S., its allies, and its strategic partners; and encourages Russia to adhere to the rule of law at home and abroad and to act as a responsible player in the international system.
Specifically, the Obama Administration should:
Maintain and expand transatlantic unity. The Obama Administration should use its political capital and show leadership within NATO. Russia is seeking to divide the United States and its European allies, not only through energy sources, but also by exploiting existing differences over missile defense, the Iraq war, and other issues. In its attempt to undermine the global posture of the U.S. and its allies, the Kremlin offers incentives for European powers to distance themselves from the United States. Germany's growing dependence on Russian natural gas and its opposition to further NATO enlargement and missile defense deployment in Central Europe is a good example. Essentially, in order for Russia to successfully carry out its foreign policy agenda it needs to delay and thwart any strong, unified energy-policy response from the United States and its allies. Moscow is seeking to gain power and influence without being countered by any significant challenge.
Refrain from resubmitting the 123 nuclear agreement with Russia for congressional approval until Russia meets the following three conditions:
Oppose the Kremlin's support of anti-American state and non-state actors (Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah). Russia's revisionist foreign policy agenda has extended to cultivating de facto alliances and relationships with a host of regimes and terrorist organizations hostile to the United States, its allies, and its interests. Even as the United States seeks Russia's assistance in ending Iran's nuclear program, Moscow is selling Tehran sophisticated air-defense systems and other modern weapons and technologies, including dual-use ballistic missile know-how, ostensibly for civilian space purposes. Russia cannot improve relations with the United States while maintaining ties with aggressive powers and terrorists. The Obama Administration should advise Russia to distance itself from the likes of Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and other troublemakers with global reach.
Undertake necessary strategic planning before initiating new strategic nuclear arms control negotiations with Russia. The White House and the Kremlin appear eager to negotiate a new arms control treaty governing strategic nuclear forces on both sides. But at this early juncture in the Obama Administration, the White House has not conducted the necessary reviews of the broader national security strategy, let alone more technical analyses regarding the future military requirements of the U.S. strategic nuclear force. At the outset, the Obama Administration needs to establish a new policy that pledges to the American people and U.S. friends and allies that it will serve to "protect and defend" them against strategic attack. The Administration, therefore, should defer negotiations on a new strategic nuclear arms treaty with Russia until after it has drafted the national security strategy and the national military strategy, issued a new targeting directive, and permitted the military to identify and allocate targets in accordance with the protect-and-defend strategy.[28]Further, the Obama Administration need not be overly concerned about the expiration of START. U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons, specifically those that are operationally deployed, will be controlled under the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT, commonly called the Moscow Treaty for the city where it was signed). The Moscow Treaty requires both sides to reduce the number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200. The treaty will not expire until the end of 2012. Thus, there is no reason for the U.S. and Russia to negotiate a new treaty limiting strategic nuclear arms against the artificial deadline of START's expiration. Indeed, it would be unwise to do so because an effective arms control treaty requires careful planning and preparation.
Maintain missile defense plans for Poland and the Czech Republic. The Obama Administration should not cancel America's ballistic defense program in response to Russian threats—or in response to recent promises by President Medvedev not to deploy short-range ballistic missiles to the Belarussian–Polish border or to the Kaliningrad exclave. To cancel this program as a concession to the Russians would send a clear signal of American weakness, encouraging further aggression against Russia's neighbors. Russia must not come to believe it can succeed in altering U.S. policy through threats, or it will continue to use these and other destabilizing gestures more consistently as tools of foreign policy—to the detriment of American and world security. Backing down on missile defense would also strengthen the pro-Russian political factions in the German Foreign Ministry, dominated by Social Democrats, in the German business community, and elsewhere in Europe. However skeptical some in the Obama Administration may be of the functionality and cost-effectiveness of the missile-interceptor system, the fact is that it is the only defense the U.S. and its allies currently have against a potential Iranian ballistic missile launch, as well as a powerful symbolic bargaining chip in discussions with Russia. The U.S. should also engage Russia in discussions on ballistic missile cooperation—without granting Moscow a veto over missile deployment in Europe.
Support Georgia's and Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. During the presidential campaign, Candidate Obama made multiple laudable statements expressing firm support for Georgia's territorial integrity, denying the validity of Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and expressing a willingness to extend NATO Membership Action Plans (MAPs) to Georgia and Ukraine (which were recently replaced by the Bush Administration with Strategic Cooperation Charters). President Obama should now provide the firm foundation for a policy devoted to deterring Russia from taking similar action in the future, for example against Ukraine or Azerbaijan. The Obama Administration should implement the Strategic Cooperation Charters signed with Ukraine and Georgia on December 19, 2008, and January 9, 2009, respectively. While there is little chance that Russia will renounce its recognition of Abkhazia or South Ossetia, the Obama Administration should explore every option for making Russia pay a diplomatic and economic price for its recent acts of aggression against Georgia's territorial integrity, its sovereignty, and against international law. To do otherwise will only invite Russia to try more of the same in the future. The White House should rethink the format of the G-8. It should expand the current G-8 to G-20, in which Russia, China, Brazil, India, and other major powers participate, while holding future meetings of the leading industrial democracies in the G-7 format. This will send a clear signal to Moscow that if it chooses to remove itself from the boundaries of acceptable behavior in the club of the largest democracies, it will no longer enjoy the benefits of being part of that club.
Boost American presence in the Arctic. Russia has designs on a great part of the Arctic—an area the size of Germany, France, and Italy combined. (See Map 4.) Recently, the deputy chairman of the Duma, the polar explorer Artur Chilingarov, announced that Russia will control the Northern Sea Route, which is in international waters.[29] The Arctic has tremendous hydrocarbon and strategic mineral reserves. Controlled by Moscow, the Artic would offer Moscow another means of consolidating Russia's global energy dominance. The United States should ensure that its interests are respected in the region by modernizing and expanding its icebreaker fleet, updating its surveys of strategic resources, and expanding efforts with NATO and other Nordic states (Canada, Norway, and Denmark, etc.) to develop and coordinate Arctic policy. As much as the Arctic may seem a distant priority given the economic and defense challenges facing the Obama Administration, the United States cannot afford to ignore this strategically vital region.
[map 4: US and Russian Interests in the Artic]
Conclusion
Russia is and will remain one of the most significant foreign policy challenges facing the Obama Administration. Despite the recent toned-down rhetoric stemming from the economic downturn, the Kremlin needs an "outside enemy" to keep its grip on power at home. Yet, this truculence clashes with Russia's need to fight the financial crisis in cooperation with major economic powers; attract foreign investment; switch the engine of its economic growth from natural resources to knowledge and technology; and ensure steady commodities exports. From the Kremlin's perspective, and due to the democracy deficit in Russia, the legitimacy and popularity of the current regime necessitates confrontation with the West, especially with the United States. The image of an external threat is exploited to gain popular support and unite the multi-ethnic and multi-faith population of the Russian Federation around Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev.
Despite the need to attract investment, the Kremlin is likely to pursue an anti-status quo foreign policy as long as it views the United States as weakened or distracted due to the combined effects of the economic crisis, U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, the presence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan, the need to deal with the fast-developing prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, and preoccupation with the Arab–Israeli conflict.
The Obama Administration must raise the profile of Russian, Eurasian, and Caspian affairs on the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Further failures to stem Russia's revisionist efforts will lead to a deteriorating security situation in Eurasia and a decline of American influence in Europe and the Middle East. If Russia, however, reconsiders its anti-American stance, the United States should be prepared to pursue matters of common interest, such as the recent agreement on military supplies to Afghanistan and the strategic weapons limitations agreement.
History has shown that the most dangerous times are the ones when new powers (or in this case, resurgent ones) attempt to overturn the status quo. The United States and its allies must remain vigilant and willing to defend freedom and prevent Russia from engendering shifts in the global power structure detrimental to U.S. national security interests.
Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. Owen Graham, Research Assistant at the Allison Center, contributed to this paper.
Heritage Backgrounder #2246
March 12, 2009
See full article w/references here.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden will address the challenge posed by an increasingly autocratic and bellicose Russia by pursuing a new, comprehensive strategy that advances American national interests without compromising our enduring principles.
—"Meeting the Challenges of a Resurgent Russia" http://www.barackobama.com
President Barack Obama has expressed concerns over Russia's increasingly truculent behavior and the threat it poses to the current international system. These concerns are valid and the threat of a resurgent Russia is palpable.[1] Moscow's efforts at carving out a "sphere of privileged interests" throughout Eurasia and rewriting the rules of European security have negative implications for U.S.– Russia relations, international security, the autonomy of the newly independent former Soviet states, and Europe's independence.
Despite these circumstances, the Obama Administration seems to be rushing ahead with a "carrots-and-cakes" approach to the Kremlin, judging by Vice President Joe Biden's recent speech at the annual Munich international security conference. In this speech, the Vice President outlined the Obama Administration's foreign policy vision for the first time on the world stage and suggested that America push "the reset button" on relations with Russia.[2] Notably absent from this speech was any mention of recent events in Eurasia.
While in Moscow, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns mirrored this approach. Burns stated that the U.S. was willing to review "the pace of development" of its missile defense shield in Europe in exchange for Russian cooperation on dissuading Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, and downplayed the importance of a U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan from which the U.S. military has just received an eviction notice.3 Other diplomatic efforts to thaw U.S.–Russian relations are underway as well.[3]
According to The New York Times, President Obama sent a secret, hand-delivered letter to President Dmitry Medvedev one month ago. The letter reportedly suggests that if Russia cooperated with the United States in preventing Iran from developing long-range nuclear-missile capabilities, the need for a new missile defense system in Europe would be eliminated—a quid pro quo that President Obama has denied. The letter proposes a "united front" to achieve this goal.[4] Responding to the letter, Medvedev appeared to reject the offer and stated that the Kremlin was "working very closely with our U.S. colleagues on the issue of Iran's nuclear program," but not in the context of the new missile defense system in Europe. He stated that "no one links these issues to any exchange, especially on the Iran issue." Nevertheless, Medvedev welcomed the overture as a positive signal from the Obama Administration.[5]
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, in Geneva on March 6, following a gathering of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.[6] President Obama is also likely to meet President Medvedev in London at the G-20 summit in April.[7] These meetings occur in a context where both the Obama Administration and Russia want a new legally binding treaty for limiting strategic nuclear arms. Ostensibly, this new treaty would be designed to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).[8] START is scheduled to expire late this year, which both Washington and Moscow see as problematic.
Recent Russian media leaks seemed to reciprocate American overtures and suggested that the Kremlin may not deploy its Iskander short-range missiles in Kaliningrad. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's statements in Davos onJanuary 28 that great powers need to cooperate to find an exit from the current global economic crisis may be signals that Moscow is exploring ways to improve relations with Washington, albeit driven by the plummeting economy at home.[9]
While an improvement in U.S.–Russian relations is certainly desirable, haste is ill advised for the Obama Administration, which has not yet announced its key officials in charge of Russia policy, nor conducted a comprehensive assessment of U.S.–Russian relations. Foremost, the Obama Administration must not allow Moscow to rewrite the geopolitical map of Europe or to pocket the gains that it has recently made in Georgia, including expanding military bases on its territory and evicting the U.S. from an air base in Kyrgyzstan.
Privileged Sphere of Influence
Since the watershed war with Georgia last August, Russia has been on the offensive across Eurasia and has been seeking to re-impose itself over much of the post-Soviet space. So concerned is the Kremlin with the expansion of its "privileged" sphere of influence that even the severe economic crisis—which has sent the ruble plunging 50 percent against the dollar and dropped Moscow stock market capitalization 80 percent—has not slowed Russia's push into the "near abroad."
Currently, Russia has a number of military bases in Europe and Eurasia. (See Map 1.) The Russian military recently announced the establishment of three military bases in the secessionist Abkhazia (a naval base in Ochamchira, the Bombora air base near Gudauta, and an alpine Special Forces base in the Kodori Gorge) and is building two more in South Ossetia (in Java and in the capital, Tskinvali). (See detail of Map 1.)[10] Not only do these deployments violate the spirit and the letter of the cease-fire[11] negotiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy after the 2008 Russo–Georgian war,but they extend Russia's power projection capabilities into the Southern Caucasus, threatening the already precarious position of Georgia and the East–West corridor of oil and gas pipelines and railroads from the Caspian Sea to Turkey and Europe.[12]
[map 1: Russia's Expanding Military Presence in Eurasia]
More recently, Washington received an eviction notice for the U.S. military by Kurmanbek Bakiyev, president of Kyrgyzstan. With Russian President Medvedev at his side, Bakiyev announced in Moscow last month that he wants the U.S. to leave Manas Air Base, a key military cargo hub at the airport of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek used by NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan since 2001.[13] With this move, the Kremlin signaled the West that to gain access to Central Asia, Western countries must first request permission from Moscow and pay the Kremlin for transit. This stance further reflects the thinking behind Russian calls for an "exclusive sphere of interests"—geographically undefined— formulated by Medvedev during his August 31, 2008, televised address.[14]
Closing Manas Air Base for the U.S. military will complicate efforts to send up to 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan—a key objective of the Obama Administration. Russia's pressure on the Kyrgyz government to evict the U.S. from this base raises questions about long-term strategic intentions of the Moscow leadership and its willingness to foster a NATO defeat in Afghanistan.
Russia has taken additional steps to secure its clout from Poland to the Pacific. It initiated a joint air-and-missile defense system with Belarus, which may cost billions, and initiated a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Rapid Reaction Force (RRF), intended to match the forces of NATO's Rapid Response Force. The CSTO's RRF not only could be used to fight external enemies, but is likely to be available to put down "velvet revolutions" and quell popular unrest.[15] Russia also announced the creation of a $10 billion stabilization fund for the seven countries that are the members of the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), most of which ($7.5 billion) Moscow will front.[16] The reason for the spending spree is simple: Money and weapons consolidate control over allies.
Russia's effort to secure a zone of "privileged interests" is consistent with policies formulated almost two decades ago by Yevgeny M. Primakov, leader of the Eurasianist school of foreign policy, Boris Yeltsin's intelligence chief, later a foreign minister, and then prime minister. In 1994, under Primakov's direction, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service published a report calling for Russian domination of the "near abroad"—referring to the newly independent states that emerged from the rubble of the collapsed Soviet empire.
Since the Iraq war, the Kremlin championed the notion of "multipolarity," in which U.S. influence would be checked by Russia, China, India, and a swath of authoritarian states. Today, Putin and Medvedev are calling for a new geopolitical and economic architecture—not only in Europe but throughout the entire world—based on massive spheres of influence.
Global Revisionism
Despite the economic crisis that provided a reality check for Moscow, Russia is doing its best to continue a broad, global, revisionist foreign policy agenda that seeks to undermine what it views as an U.S.-led international security architecture. Russia's rulers want to achieve a world order in which Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela will form a counterweight to the United States. Moscow is doing so despite the dwindling currency reserves and a severe downturn in its economic performance due to plummeting energy and commodity prices.[17]
In December 2008, the Russian navy conducted maneuvers in the Caribbean with Venezuela, while the Russian air force's supersonic Tupolev TU-160 "Blackjack" bombers and the old but reliable TU-95 "Bear" turboprop bombers flew patrols to Venezuela, as well as close to U.S. air space in the Pacific and the Arctic.[18] Russia is also developing the Syrian ports of Tartus and Latakia in order to manage an expanded Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean, and may possibly revive an anchorage in Libya and Yemen. (See Map 2.)[19] These are only some examples of how Moscow is implementing its global agenda. While some of these moves may be mostly symbolic, combined with a $300 billion military modernization program they signal a much more aggressive and ambitious Russian global posture. Russia is also overtly engaging the Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations.
[map 2: Russian Bases in the Middle East]
If Moscow's vision were to be realized, given the large cast of state and non-state "bad actors" currently on the international stage, Russia's notion of "multipolarity" would engender an even more unstable and dangerous world. Additionally, the very process of trying to force such a transition risks destabilizing the existing international system and its institutions while offering no viable alternatives.
Russia's Strategic Energy Agenda
On the energy front alone, the Obama Administration will face a multiplicity of challenges emanating from Moscow. The Bush Administration signed a "123 agreement" on civilian nuclear cooperation and non-proliferation with Russia in May 2008, before the war in Georgia. The 123 agreement, so called because it falls under section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, is necessary to make nuclear cooperation between the countries possible.The agreement would facilitate Russia's foray into the international nuclear waste management and reprocessing business by potentially providing Russian access to U.S. commercial technologies.[20]
The agreement, however, ran into severe congressional opposition: Representative John Dingell (D–MI), then-chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, announced that, "Even without Russia's incursion into Georgia, Russian support for Iranian nuclear and missile programs alone is enough to call into question the wisdom of committing to a 30-year agreement to transfer sensitive nuclear technologies and materials to Russia."[21] As the Obama Administration is signaling a new thaw in the relationship, senior Russian officials hope that the Administration will revive the agreement, which could bring billions of dollars to the lean Russian coffers.[22]
Europe's Dependence on Russian Gas. The Europeans, especially the Germans, are concerned with carbon emission reductions, while downplaying nuclear energy and coal as alternative sources of energy to natural gas. Russia is the primary source of Europe's gas habit. Thus, an environmental concern becomes a major geopolitical liability. Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Finland depend on Russian gas for up to 100 percent of their imports, and are not pursuing alternatives, such as liquefied natural gas (LNG). Germany depends on Russian gas for 40 percent of its consumption, a share that is set to increase to 60 percent by 2020.
Russia strives to dominate Europe, particularly Eastern and Central Europe, including Germany, through its quasi-monopolistic gas supply and its significant share of the oil market and of other strategic resources. (See Map 3.) Russia controls a network of strategically important pipelines and is attempting to extend it by building the Nord Stream pipeline along the bottom of the Baltic Sea to Germany, building the South Stream pipeline across the length of the Black Sea, and even controlling gas pipelines from North Africa to Europe.
[map 3: Primary Russian Oil and Gas Pipelines to Europe]
Moscow has shown a pattern of using revenues from its energy exports to fuel its strategic and foreign policy agendas. It grants selective access to Russian energy resources to European companies as a quid pro quo for political cooperation and government lobbying on the Kremlin's behalf. It has selectively hired prominent European politicians, such as former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and former Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, to promote Russian interests and energy deals and has offered positions and lucrative business deals to other European political heavyweights, such as former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi.
Russian energy giant Gazprom has been on a shopping spree, acquiring European energy assets. Europe is projected to be dependent on Russia for over 60 percent of its gas consumption by 2030, with some countries already 100 percent dependent on Gazprom.[23] Russia has shown a willingness to use this dependency and its energy influence as a tool of foreign policy, shutting down or threatening to shut down the flow of gas to countries perceived to be acting against Moscow's interest, as in the cases of Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.
The Kremlin is in the process of creating an OPEC-style gas cartel with Iran, Qatar, and other leading gas producers, to be headquartered in Moscow. This cartel would allow Moscow and Tehran to dictate pricing policy, weigh in on new projects, and oppose any new pipelines they want. This may bring about even greater domination of Europe's gas supply than they currently enjoy, and eventually, domination of the global LNG markets as well.[24] Any EU dependence on such a cartel will diminish its ability to support gas-exporting countries whose pipelines bypass Russia, will challenge EU energy liberalization and gas deregulation policies, and may have dire foreign policy consequences.
The U.S. certainly should explore all available diplomatic avenues to curb Russian anti-American policies, yet the new Administration must be prepared for the contingency that the United States may have no choice but to counter Russian revisionism through disincentives, rather than limiting itself to trying to persuade the Kremlin to embrace the international system.
Russia Policy for the Obama Administration
To meet today's challenges and preserve the security of Europe and Eurasia, the Obama Administration should conduct a comprehensive assessment of U.S.–Russian relations and then prepare a detailed foreign policy agenda that protects American interests; checks the growing Russian influence in Europe, the Middle East, and Eurasia; deters aggression against the U.S., its allies, and its strategic partners; and encourages Russia to adhere to the rule of law at home and abroad and to act as a responsible player in the international system.
Specifically, the Obama Administration should:
Maintain and expand transatlantic unity. The Obama Administration should use its political capital and show leadership within NATO. Russia is seeking to divide the United States and its European allies, not only through energy sources, but also by exploiting existing differences over missile defense, the Iraq war, and other issues. In its attempt to undermine the global posture of the U.S. and its allies, the Kremlin offers incentives for European powers to distance themselves from the United States. Germany's growing dependence on Russian natural gas and its opposition to further NATO enlargement and missile defense deployment in Central Europe is a good example. Essentially, in order for Russia to successfully carry out its foreign policy agenda it needs to delay and thwart any strong, unified energy-policy response from the United States and its allies. Moscow is seeking to gain power and influence without being countered by any significant challenge.
Refrain from resubmitting the 123 nuclear agreement with Russia for congressional approval until Russia meets the following three conditions:
- The Obama Administration should compel Russia to discontinue support of Iran's military nuclear energy program and provide full disclosure. Indeed, it is Russian nuclear fuel that undermines Iran's claim that it needs uranium enrichment. Russia must discontinue any efforts that advance Iran's heavy-water-reactor program, enrichment activities, spent-fuel reprocessing programs, missile technology transfer, or engineer and scientist training for nuclear and missile technology. Russia must disclose its past activities in support of the Iranian program, as well as what it knows about any third party assistance. Russia should work with the United States and other nations to compel Iran to discontinue any fuel enrichment or spent-fuel reprocessing, which would give Iran access to bomb-grade material. The U.S. should use the prospect of the 123 agreement as an incentive to halt Russia's interactions with Iran on nuclear issues.[25]
- The Obama Administration should also request that Russia provide adequate liability protection for U.S. companies doing business in Russia. Even with a 123 agreement in place, U.S. companies would likely forgo commercial activities in Russia due to a lack of liability protection. Indeed, many countries use the lack of liability protection for U.S. companies as a means to protect their domestic nuclear industry from U.S. competition.[26]
- The Obama Administration should demand that Russia provide two-way market access to American companies. This agreement should not be simply an avenue to bring Russian goods and services to the U.S. market; it is equally important that U.S. companies are allowed to compete for business in Russia. While Russian nuclear technology is second to none, foreign competition will assure that the highest quality standards are maintained throughout the country.[27]
Oppose the Kremlin's support of anti-American state and non-state actors (Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah). Russia's revisionist foreign policy agenda has extended to cultivating de facto alliances and relationships with a host of regimes and terrorist organizations hostile to the United States, its allies, and its interests. Even as the United States seeks Russia's assistance in ending Iran's nuclear program, Moscow is selling Tehran sophisticated air-defense systems and other modern weapons and technologies, including dual-use ballistic missile know-how, ostensibly for civilian space purposes. Russia cannot improve relations with the United States while maintaining ties with aggressive powers and terrorists. The Obama Administration should advise Russia to distance itself from the likes of Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and other troublemakers with global reach.
Undertake necessary strategic planning before initiating new strategic nuclear arms control negotiations with Russia. The White House and the Kremlin appear eager to negotiate a new arms control treaty governing strategic nuclear forces on both sides. But at this early juncture in the Obama Administration, the White House has not conducted the necessary reviews of the broader national security strategy, let alone more technical analyses regarding the future military requirements of the U.S. strategic nuclear force. At the outset, the Obama Administration needs to establish a new policy that pledges to the American people and U.S. friends and allies that it will serve to "protect and defend" them against strategic attack. The Administration, therefore, should defer negotiations on a new strategic nuclear arms treaty with Russia until after it has drafted the national security strategy and the national military strategy, issued a new targeting directive, and permitted the military to identify and allocate targets in accordance with the protect-and-defend strategy.[28]Further, the Obama Administration need not be overly concerned about the expiration of START. U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons, specifically those that are operationally deployed, will be controlled under the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT, commonly called the Moscow Treaty for the city where it was signed). The Moscow Treaty requires both sides to reduce the number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200. The treaty will not expire until the end of 2012. Thus, there is no reason for the U.S. and Russia to negotiate a new treaty limiting strategic nuclear arms against the artificial deadline of START's expiration. Indeed, it would be unwise to do so because an effective arms control treaty requires careful planning and preparation.
Maintain missile defense plans for Poland and the Czech Republic. The Obama Administration should not cancel America's ballistic defense program in response to Russian threats—or in response to recent promises by President Medvedev not to deploy short-range ballistic missiles to the Belarussian–Polish border or to the Kaliningrad exclave. To cancel this program as a concession to the Russians would send a clear signal of American weakness, encouraging further aggression against Russia's neighbors. Russia must not come to believe it can succeed in altering U.S. policy through threats, or it will continue to use these and other destabilizing gestures more consistently as tools of foreign policy—to the detriment of American and world security. Backing down on missile defense would also strengthen the pro-Russian political factions in the German Foreign Ministry, dominated by Social Democrats, in the German business community, and elsewhere in Europe. However skeptical some in the Obama Administration may be of the functionality and cost-effectiveness of the missile-interceptor system, the fact is that it is the only defense the U.S. and its allies currently have against a potential Iranian ballistic missile launch, as well as a powerful symbolic bargaining chip in discussions with Russia. The U.S. should also engage Russia in discussions on ballistic missile cooperation—without granting Moscow a veto over missile deployment in Europe.
Support Georgia's and Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. During the presidential campaign, Candidate Obama made multiple laudable statements expressing firm support for Georgia's territorial integrity, denying the validity of Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and expressing a willingness to extend NATO Membership Action Plans (MAPs) to Georgia and Ukraine (which were recently replaced by the Bush Administration with Strategic Cooperation Charters). President Obama should now provide the firm foundation for a policy devoted to deterring Russia from taking similar action in the future, for example against Ukraine or Azerbaijan. The Obama Administration should implement the Strategic Cooperation Charters signed with Ukraine and Georgia on December 19, 2008, and January 9, 2009, respectively. While there is little chance that Russia will renounce its recognition of Abkhazia or South Ossetia, the Obama Administration should explore every option for making Russia pay a diplomatic and economic price for its recent acts of aggression against Georgia's territorial integrity, its sovereignty, and against international law. To do otherwise will only invite Russia to try more of the same in the future. The White House should rethink the format of the G-8. It should expand the current G-8 to G-20, in which Russia, China, Brazil, India, and other major powers participate, while holding future meetings of the leading industrial democracies in the G-7 format. This will send a clear signal to Moscow that if it chooses to remove itself from the boundaries of acceptable behavior in the club of the largest democracies, it will no longer enjoy the benefits of being part of that club.
Boost American presence in the Arctic. Russia has designs on a great part of the Arctic—an area the size of Germany, France, and Italy combined. (See Map 4.) Recently, the deputy chairman of the Duma, the polar explorer Artur Chilingarov, announced that Russia will control the Northern Sea Route, which is in international waters.[29] The Arctic has tremendous hydrocarbon and strategic mineral reserves. Controlled by Moscow, the Artic would offer Moscow another means of consolidating Russia's global energy dominance. The United States should ensure that its interests are respected in the region by modernizing and expanding its icebreaker fleet, updating its surveys of strategic resources, and expanding efforts with NATO and other Nordic states (Canada, Norway, and Denmark, etc.) to develop and coordinate Arctic policy. As much as the Arctic may seem a distant priority given the economic and defense challenges facing the Obama Administration, the United States cannot afford to ignore this strategically vital region.
[map 4: US and Russian Interests in the Artic]
Conclusion
Russia is and will remain one of the most significant foreign policy challenges facing the Obama Administration. Despite the recent toned-down rhetoric stemming from the economic downturn, the Kremlin needs an "outside enemy" to keep its grip on power at home. Yet, this truculence clashes with Russia's need to fight the financial crisis in cooperation with major economic powers; attract foreign investment; switch the engine of its economic growth from natural resources to knowledge and technology; and ensure steady commodities exports. From the Kremlin's perspective, and due to the democracy deficit in Russia, the legitimacy and popularity of the current regime necessitates confrontation with the West, especially with the United States. The image of an external threat is exploited to gain popular support and unite the multi-ethnic and multi-faith population of the Russian Federation around Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev.
Despite the need to attract investment, the Kremlin is likely to pursue an anti-status quo foreign policy as long as it views the United States as weakened or distracted due to the combined effects of the economic crisis, U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, the presence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan, the need to deal with the fast-developing prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, and preoccupation with the Arab–Israeli conflict.
The Obama Administration must raise the profile of Russian, Eurasian, and Caspian affairs on the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Further failures to stem Russia's revisionist efforts will lead to a deteriorating security situation in Eurasia and a decline of American influence in Europe and the Middle East. If Russia, however, reconsiders its anti-American stance, the United States should be prepared to pursue matters of common interest, such as the recent agreement on military supplies to Afghanistan and the strategic weapons limitations agreement.
History has shown that the most dangerous times are the ones when new powers (or in this case, resurgent ones) attempt to overturn the status quo. The United States and its allies must remain vigilant and willing to defend freedom and prevent Russia from engendering shifts in the global power structure detrimental to U.S. national security interests.
Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. Owen Graham, Research Assistant at the Allison Center, contributed to this paper.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Andrei Illarionov on House "From Competition to Collaboration: Strengthening the U.S.-Russia Relationship"
Testimony of Andrei Illarionov before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs' "From Competition to Collaboration: Strengthening the U.S.-Russia Relationship"
Cato Institute, February 25, 2009
Chairman Berman, Ranking member Ros-Lehtinen, Members of the Committee,
Thank you for the opportunity to share with you my views on the current status of the U.S.-Russia relationship and on possible consequences of its strengthening in near future.
Disclaimer
First of all, I would like to provide you with a necessary disclaimer:I am a Russian citizen.For number of years I worked at different posts at the Russian government and the Administration of the Russian President.Since my resignation from the positions of the Russian President’s Personal Representative to the G-8 (Sherpa) and Adviser to the Russian President in 2005 I was not employed by any Government and did not receive any payment from neither Russian Government, nor the US Government, nor any other Government.For last two and half years I do work for the Cato Institute here in Washington that is a non-partisan think tank not associated with any of political parties existed in the US or in any other country in the world. According to its Charter the Cato Institute does not accept financial support from any government, government agency or government-related program.As a Russian citizen and a Cato Institute employee I am not in a position to advice either the US Government, or esteemed members of the US Congress. Whatever I will say here today, should be considered as background information that you are welcome to use as you find it suitable. Whatever I will say here, should be considered as solely my personal views on what I see as the best interests of the Russian people on a way one day to create and develop Russia as a democratic, open, peaceful and prosperous country, respected and respectable member of the international community, reliable partner of other democratic countries, including the United States. I solely bear responsibility for everything that I say here today.
In my testimony I touch upon three issues: challenges from the past of the U.S.-Russia relationship;challenges to the Russian people, neighboring countries, and world peace from the current political regime in Russia;forecast of what could happen if the approach that is been announced and taken by the current administration will be fulfilled.
Challenges from the past of the U.S.-Russia relationship
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the formation of independent Russia two US Administrations, namely that of the President Bill Clinton and that of the President George W. Bush, began their terms with clear formulated goal — to improve the US-Russia cooperation. Each of the administrations started their terms with great expectations for fruitful bilateral relations. Regardless of their individual approaches, personal attitudes, content of issues at the agenda, both US administrations have invested heavily in terms of time, efforts, attention of their key members, including both Presidents, into improvement of the U.S.-Russia relations. Both administrations have created special bodies for development of these relations (the so called Gore-Chernomyrdin commission by the Clinton administration and bilateral Group of High level by the Bush administrations). Many delegations have crossed the ocean, many hours have been spent in the conversations, many decisions have been taken.
The outcomes of these efforts are well known. They were outright failures. Russia has failed to be integrated fully into the community of the modern democratic peaceful nations. Each US administration has finished its term in the office with the U.S.-Russian relations at much lower level than they were at its beginning. The leading feeling at the end of each Administration’s term is widely shared disappointment — both among members of the administrations and in the Russian and the US societies.
The beginning of the President Obama Administration’s term strikingly resembles the beginning of the two preceding administrations’ terms. We can see similar desire to improve bilateral relations, similar positive statements, similar promising gestures and visits. Since nothing serious has changed in the nature of political regimes in both countries it is rather hard not to expect the repetition of already known pattern — high expectations — deep disappointments — heavy failures — for the third time.
That is why before any new policy is being implemented and even being formulated it is worth to spend some time to analyze the reasons of two previous failures. To my mind, they arise mainly from the nature of the current Russian political regime, lack of understanding on the part of the US the internal logic and intentions of the current Russian leadership, inability of the democratic nations to deal with the challenges of the powerful authoritarian regimes, and a double standards approach in the US policies towards similar issues on the international arena.
Nature of the Current Political Regime in Russia
Today’s Russia is not a democratic country. The international human rights organization Freedom House assigns "Not Free" status to Russia since 2004 for each of the last 5 years. According to the classification of the political regimes, the current one in Russia should be considered as hard authoritarianism. The central place in the Russian political system is occupied by the Corporation of the secret police.
The Corporation of Secret Police
The personnel of Federal Security Service — both in active service as well as retired one — form a special type of unity (non-necessarily institutionalized) that can be called brotherhood, order, or corporation. The Corporation of the secret police operatives (CSP) includes first of all acting and former officers of the FSB (former KGB), and to a lesser extent FSO and Prosecutor General Office. Officers of GRU and SVR do also play some role. The members of the Corporation do share strong allegiance to their respective organizations, strict codes of conduct and of honor, basic principles of behavior, including among others the principle of mutual support to each other in any circumstances and the principle of omerta. Since the Corporation preserves traditions, hierarchies, codes and habits of secret police and intelligence services, its members show high degree of obedience to the current leadership, strong loyalty to each other, rather strict discipline. There are both formal and informal means of enforcing these norms. Violators of the code of conduct are subject to the harshest forms of punishment, including the highest form.
CSP and the Russian society
Members of the CSP are specially trained, strongly motivated and mentally oriented to use force against other people and in this regard differ substantially from civilians. The important distinction of enforcement in today’s Russia from enforcement in rule-based nations is that in the former case it doesn’t necessarily imply enforcement of Law. It means solely enforcement of Power and Force regardless of Law, quite often against Law. Members of the Corporation are trained and inspired with the superiority complex over the rest of the population. Members of the Corporation exude a sense of being the bosses that superior to other people who are not members of the CSP. They are equipped with membership perks, including two most tangible instruments conferring real power over the rest of population in today’s Russia — the FSB IDs and the right to carry and use weapons.
Capture of State Power by the CSP
Since ascension of Vladimir Putin to power the members of the CSP have infiltrated all branches of power in Russia. According to the Olga Kryshtanovskaya’s study up to 77% of the 1016 top government positions have been taken by people with security background (26% with openly stated affiliation to different enforcement agencies and other 51% with hidden affiliation). Main bodies of the Russian state (Presidential Administration, Government apparatus, Tax agency, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, Parliament, Court system) as well as main business groups and most important mass-media outlets have been captured by the CSP. Since the members of the CSP have taken key positions in the most important institutions of the state, business groups, media channels, almost all valuable resources available in the society (political, executive, legal, judicial, enforcement, military, economic, financial, media) have been concentrated and in many cases monopolized in the hands of the CSP.
Mass Media
Independent mass media in Russia virtually does not exist. The TV channels, radio, printed media are heavily censored with government propaganda disseminating cult of power and violence, directed against democrats, liberals, westerners and the West itself, including and first of all the US. The level of the anti-US propaganda is incomparable even with one of the Soviet times in at least 1970-s and 1980s.
Electoral System
Since 1999 there is no free, open, competitive parliamentary or presidential election in Russia. The last two elections — the parliamentary one in December 2007 and presidential one in March 2008 — have been conducted as special operations and been heavily rigged with at least 20 mln ballots in each case stuffed in favor of the regime candidates. None of the opposition political parties or opposition politicians has been allowed either to participate in the elections, or even to be registered at the Ministry of Justice. For comparison, the Belarusian regime that is considered to be "the last dictatorship in Europe" has allowed opposition politicians to participate in the parliamentary election last September.
Political Opposition
Members of political opposition in Russia are regularly being harassed, intimidated, beaten by the regime’s security forces. Each rally of the opposition since 2006 is been harshly attacked by the riot police, hundreds of people have been beaten, arrested and thrown into jails. In April 2007 the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov has been arrested and put into jail for 5 days as he was walking along the Tverskaya street in the downtown of Moscow. The same day there was an attempt to arrest the former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
Political Prisoners
According to the human rights organizations there are about 80 political prisoners in the country who are serving their terms for their views and political activities from 2 to 9 years in the jails and camps. One of the best known political prisoners is Mikhail Khodorkovsky who has been sentenced to 9 years in the Siberian camp Krasnokamensk on the basis of purely fabricated case against him and his oil company YUKOS. The company has been confiscated and taken by one of the leading figures of the current Chekist regime who is occupying now the position of the deputy prime minister of the Russian government. Mr. Khodorkovsky has recently been transported to Moscow to be put on another fabricated trial with a clear purpose to keep him behind the bars forever. Just for comparison, the Mr. Lukashenka’s political regime in the neighboring Belarus that is very far from any notion of genuine democracy, has nevertheless released the last four political prisoners in summer 2008. It is worth to note that until recently the EU had the so called smart sanctions against Mr. Lukashenka and members of his government. As far as I know, the US still has similar sanctions against the Belarusian leadership, but not against the Russian one.
Terror
The fate of some other people dealing with the regime is even worse.
Over the last ten years tens of thousands of people have been killed in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria.
In Autumn 1999 several hundred people died in the series of apartment bombings across the country — from Moscow to Buynaks in Dagestan. In the contrast to the claims from the FSB that those bombings have been organized by Chechens, the local militia was able to detain several people who tried to bomb the apartment block in the city of Ryazan. They turn out to be the agents of the FSB. Then the FSB has announced that there were "anti-terrorist exercises" with the goal to put explosives into the basement of the apartment building. After the story became widely known, the detained FSB agents have been freed by the order from Moscow and finally disappeared, while apartments’ bombings stopped unexpectedly as they started.
Since November 1998 several presidential hopefuls, politicians, journalists, lawyers who were either in opposition to or independent of the current political regime, have been directly assassinated or died in the very suspicious circumstances. Among them are the leader of the Democratic Russia party and the member of the parliament Galina Starovoitova, journalist and editor Artem Borovik, journalist and member of the Yabloko party Larisa Yudina, the governor of the Krasnoyarsk region general Alexander Lebed who came third in the 1999 presidential election, the leader of the Army Movement, member of the parliament general Lev Rokhlin, the leader of the Liberal party of Russia Sergei Yushenkov, one of the organizers of the Liberal party of Russia Vladimir Golovlev, journalist and one of the leaders of the Yabloko party, the member of the parliament Yuri Shekochikhin, ethnographer Nikolay Girenko, journalist and writer Anna Politkovskaya, journalist and military expert Ivan Safronov, the deputy head of the Central Bank of Russia Andrei Kozlov, the member of National Bolshevist party Yuri Chervochkin, journalist, editor and one of the leaders of the Ingush national movement Magomed Yevloyev, lawyer Stanislav Markelov, journalist Anastasia Baburova.
Since March 1999 the wave of political assassinations moved beyond the Russian border. In March 1999 Vyacheslav Chornovol, leader of the People’s Ruch and a candidate for the Ukrainian presidential election that autumn, died in the car accident near Kiev that has been identified by the Ukrainian security service as the assassination organized by FSB. In February 2004 Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, the former Chechen President, and his 15-year old son have been bombed in Doha by two officers with diplomatic passports from the Russian embassy in Qatar, Mr. Yandarbiev has died. In September 2004 Victor Yushenko, the presidential candidate in the Ukrainian presidential election in November 2004, has been poisoned and barely survived. In November 2006 the former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko has been poisoned by polonium in the downtown of London and died.
Wars against other Nations
Since 2004 the Russian political regime embarked on a series of wars of different kinds against foreign nations. The list of wars waged in the last 5 years is not a short one:
Russian-Byelorussian Gas War 2004,
First Russian-Ukrainian Gas War, January 2006,
Russian-Georgian Energy Supply War, January 2006,
Russian-Georgian Wine and Mineral Water War, March-April 2006,
Russian-Georgian Spy War, September-October 2006,
Russian-Estonian Monuments and Cyber War, April-May 2007,
Russian-Georgian Conventional War, April-October 2008,
Russian-Azerbaijan Cyber War, August 2008,
Second Russian-Ukrainian Gas War, January 2009,
Anti-US full fledged Propaganda War, 2006-2009.
The Russian-Georgian War that started last year was under preparations by the Russian authorities at least since February 2003. This is one of the most serious international crises for at least last 30 years that constitutes one of the most worrisome developments of our days. This war has brought:
a) The first massive use of the military forces by Russia beyond its borders since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Afghanistan in 1978;
b) The first intervention against an independent country in Europe since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Czechoslovakia in 1968;
c) The first intervention against an independent country in Europe that led to unilateral changes of the internationally recognized borders in Europe since the late 1930s and early 1940s. Particular similarities of these events with the events of the 1930s are especially troubling.
Uniqueness of the current political regime in Russia
One of the most important characteristics of the current political regime in Russia is that the real political power in the country belongs neither to one person, nor family, nor military junta, nor party, nor ethnic group. The power belongs to the corporation of secret police operatives. The political system in which secret police plays an important role in the political system is not very special. VChK-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB in the Communist USSR, Gestapo in Nazi Germany, SAVAK in the Shah’s Iran had enormous powers in those tyrannical regimes. Yet, none of those secret police organizations did possess supreme power in the respective countries. In all previous historic cases secret police and its leaders have been subordinate to their political masters — whether they were Stalin, Hitler, or Pehlevi, regardless how monstrous they have been. The political regime in today’s Russia is therefore quite unique, since so far there was probably no country in the world history (at least in the relatively developed part of the world in the XXth and the XXIst centuries) where a secret police organization did capture all political, administrative, military, economic, financial, and media powers.
It does not mean that all population of the country or even all staff of the government agencies do belong to the secret police. Many of them are professional and honest people who genuinely alien to the Chekist/Mafiosi structures. Nevertheless, it is not they who do have control over the state, and not they who are in charge of the key decisions in the country.
Forecast
Even a brief look on the US-Russia relations over the last 10 years reveals quite a striking fact of the permanent retreat of the American side on almost all issues in the bilateral relations.
Ten years ago then the Clinton administration has expressed publicly and energetically its concern on violation of basic human rights in Chechnya. The Russian side has suggested to the partner not to intervene in the internal Russian issues. The US administration has finally followed the advice.
After that over the years the US administrations have expressed concerns, dissatisfaction, protests on number of issues: on destruction of freedom of mass media in Russia, on imprisonment of Mr. Khodorkovsky and takeover of Yukos, on destruction of the rule of law, electoral system, political opposition, NGOs, property rights, including not only of the Russian but also US companies (for example Exxon), on political assassinations, on aggressive behavior versus Russia’s neighbors, finally on outright aggression of the Russian army against sovereign state and the UN member Georgia, that led to effective annexation of two Georgian territories Abkhazia and South Ossetia, creation of the Russian military bases and deployment of regular Russian forces over there.
In all those cases the Russian side has suggested the US to shut up, and in all those cases the American side followed this advice sooner or later. There were no sanctions whatsoever for any behavior of the Russian authorities.
Recently the US has even resumed the NATO-Russia cooperation in less than 6 months after the Russian aggression against Georgia, after the rudest violation of the international law and order, the UN Charter and the UN Resolution #3314 of December 14, 1974.
The recent suggestion "to reset the button" in the US-Russia relations and "to start the relations with the blank list" is met with poorly hided joy and satisfaction on a part of the Russian Chekists. For them it means achievement of many goals that they dreamt of. This "the so called Munich statement" is interpreted by them as a de-facto acceptance by the current US administration of the idea that has been put forward by the Russian leadership last summer — the idea of the de-facto restoration of the Russian Chekists’ (secret police) influence and power over the post-Soviet space under the title of having the areas with the so called privileged interests. This idea is already being under hasty implementation with the creation of the $10 bn fund and substantial Russian credits given to Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Ukraine, recent agreement of creation of joint fast reaction troops of 7 nations of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, establishing substantial financial and personal control over mass media in the FSU countries, permanent attempts to change the political regime and western orientation of Ukraine and finishing the conquest of Georgia.
Policy of the proclaimed "cooperation", "movement from competition to collaboration", "improvement of relations" with the current political regime in Russia has very clear consequences. Such type of behavior on the part of the US administration can not be called even a retreat. It is not even an appeasement policy that is so well known to all of us by another Munch decision in 1938. It is a surrender. It is a full, absolute and unconditional surrender to the regime of the secret police officers, chekists and Mafiosi bandits in today’s Russia. It is a surrender of the hopes and efforts of the Russian democrats as well as peoples of the post-Soviet states who dreamed to get out of the system that controlled and tortured them for almost a century — back to the Chekists’ power. But it is even more. It is a clear manifestation to all democratic and liberal forces in Russia and in other post-Soviet states that on all internal and external issues of their struggle against forces of the past the United States now abandons them and takes the position of their deadly adversaries and enemies. And therefore it is an open invitation for new adventures of the Russian Chekists’ regime in the post-Soviet space and at some points beyond it.
The very term for such type of policy has not been chosen by me, it is borrowed from the title of this hearing, namely, collaboration. Therefore the term chosen for the agents of the US administration’s policy in the coming era is "collaborationists". Collaboration between two governments today could be only on the Russian regime’s terms and for fulfillment of the Russian government’s goals. From the European history of the XX century we know what means if a revisionist power has a clear-cut goal to restore influence and control over its neighbors while other powers chose not to defend victims of the attacks, but instead try to collaborate with an aggressor.
We know the consequences of the collaborationist policy — those who retreat and surrender will get not peace, but war, war with unpredictable and nasty results. It might be also not a one war.
When the world will get there, we need to remember that we had a warning.
Thank you.
Cato Institute, February 25, 2009
Chairman Berman, Ranking member Ros-Lehtinen, Members of the Committee,
Thank you for the opportunity to share with you my views on the current status of the U.S.-Russia relationship and on possible consequences of its strengthening in near future.
Disclaimer
First of all, I would like to provide you with a necessary disclaimer:I am a Russian citizen.For number of years I worked at different posts at the Russian government and the Administration of the Russian President.Since my resignation from the positions of the Russian President’s Personal Representative to the G-8 (Sherpa) and Adviser to the Russian President in 2005 I was not employed by any Government and did not receive any payment from neither Russian Government, nor the US Government, nor any other Government.For last two and half years I do work for the Cato Institute here in Washington that is a non-partisan think tank not associated with any of political parties existed in the US or in any other country in the world. According to its Charter the Cato Institute does not accept financial support from any government, government agency or government-related program.As a Russian citizen and a Cato Institute employee I am not in a position to advice either the US Government, or esteemed members of the US Congress. Whatever I will say here today, should be considered as background information that you are welcome to use as you find it suitable. Whatever I will say here, should be considered as solely my personal views on what I see as the best interests of the Russian people on a way one day to create and develop Russia as a democratic, open, peaceful and prosperous country, respected and respectable member of the international community, reliable partner of other democratic countries, including the United States. I solely bear responsibility for everything that I say here today.
In my testimony I touch upon three issues: challenges from the past of the U.S.-Russia relationship;challenges to the Russian people, neighboring countries, and world peace from the current political regime in Russia;forecast of what could happen if the approach that is been announced and taken by the current administration will be fulfilled.
Challenges from the past of the U.S.-Russia relationship
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the formation of independent Russia two US Administrations, namely that of the President Bill Clinton and that of the President George W. Bush, began their terms with clear formulated goal — to improve the US-Russia cooperation. Each of the administrations started their terms with great expectations for fruitful bilateral relations. Regardless of their individual approaches, personal attitudes, content of issues at the agenda, both US administrations have invested heavily in terms of time, efforts, attention of their key members, including both Presidents, into improvement of the U.S.-Russia relations. Both administrations have created special bodies for development of these relations (the so called Gore-Chernomyrdin commission by the Clinton administration and bilateral Group of High level by the Bush administrations). Many delegations have crossed the ocean, many hours have been spent in the conversations, many decisions have been taken.
The outcomes of these efforts are well known. They were outright failures. Russia has failed to be integrated fully into the community of the modern democratic peaceful nations. Each US administration has finished its term in the office with the U.S.-Russian relations at much lower level than they were at its beginning. The leading feeling at the end of each Administration’s term is widely shared disappointment — both among members of the administrations and in the Russian and the US societies.
The beginning of the President Obama Administration’s term strikingly resembles the beginning of the two preceding administrations’ terms. We can see similar desire to improve bilateral relations, similar positive statements, similar promising gestures and visits. Since nothing serious has changed in the nature of political regimes in both countries it is rather hard not to expect the repetition of already known pattern — high expectations — deep disappointments — heavy failures — for the third time.
That is why before any new policy is being implemented and even being formulated it is worth to spend some time to analyze the reasons of two previous failures. To my mind, they arise mainly from the nature of the current Russian political regime, lack of understanding on the part of the US the internal logic and intentions of the current Russian leadership, inability of the democratic nations to deal with the challenges of the powerful authoritarian regimes, and a double standards approach in the US policies towards similar issues on the international arena.
Nature of the Current Political Regime in Russia
Today’s Russia is not a democratic country. The international human rights organization Freedom House assigns "Not Free" status to Russia since 2004 for each of the last 5 years. According to the classification of the political regimes, the current one in Russia should be considered as hard authoritarianism. The central place in the Russian political system is occupied by the Corporation of the secret police.
The Corporation of Secret Police
The personnel of Federal Security Service — both in active service as well as retired one — form a special type of unity (non-necessarily institutionalized) that can be called brotherhood, order, or corporation. The Corporation of the secret police operatives (CSP) includes first of all acting and former officers of the FSB (former KGB), and to a lesser extent FSO and Prosecutor General Office. Officers of GRU and SVR do also play some role. The members of the Corporation do share strong allegiance to their respective organizations, strict codes of conduct and of honor, basic principles of behavior, including among others the principle of mutual support to each other in any circumstances and the principle of omerta. Since the Corporation preserves traditions, hierarchies, codes and habits of secret police and intelligence services, its members show high degree of obedience to the current leadership, strong loyalty to each other, rather strict discipline. There are both formal and informal means of enforcing these norms. Violators of the code of conduct are subject to the harshest forms of punishment, including the highest form.
CSP and the Russian society
Members of the CSP are specially trained, strongly motivated and mentally oriented to use force against other people and in this regard differ substantially from civilians. The important distinction of enforcement in today’s Russia from enforcement in rule-based nations is that in the former case it doesn’t necessarily imply enforcement of Law. It means solely enforcement of Power and Force regardless of Law, quite often against Law. Members of the Corporation are trained and inspired with the superiority complex over the rest of the population. Members of the Corporation exude a sense of being the bosses that superior to other people who are not members of the CSP. They are equipped with membership perks, including two most tangible instruments conferring real power over the rest of population in today’s Russia — the FSB IDs and the right to carry and use weapons.
Capture of State Power by the CSP
Since ascension of Vladimir Putin to power the members of the CSP have infiltrated all branches of power in Russia. According to the Olga Kryshtanovskaya’s study up to 77% of the 1016 top government positions have been taken by people with security background (26% with openly stated affiliation to different enforcement agencies and other 51% with hidden affiliation). Main bodies of the Russian state (Presidential Administration, Government apparatus, Tax agency, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, Parliament, Court system) as well as main business groups and most important mass-media outlets have been captured by the CSP. Since the members of the CSP have taken key positions in the most important institutions of the state, business groups, media channels, almost all valuable resources available in the society (political, executive, legal, judicial, enforcement, military, economic, financial, media) have been concentrated and in many cases monopolized in the hands of the CSP.
Mass Media
Independent mass media in Russia virtually does not exist. The TV channels, radio, printed media are heavily censored with government propaganda disseminating cult of power and violence, directed against democrats, liberals, westerners and the West itself, including and first of all the US. The level of the anti-US propaganda is incomparable even with one of the Soviet times in at least 1970-s and 1980s.
Electoral System
Since 1999 there is no free, open, competitive parliamentary or presidential election in Russia. The last two elections — the parliamentary one in December 2007 and presidential one in March 2008 — have been conducted as special operations and been heavily rigged with at least 20 mln ballots in each case stuffed in favor of the regime candidates. None of the opposition political parties or opposition politicians has been allowed either to participate in the elections, or even to be registered at the Ministry of Justice. For comparison, the Belarusian regime that is considered to be "the last dictatorship in Europe" has allowed opposition politicians to participate in the parliamentary election last September.
Political Opposition
Members of political opposition in Russia are regularly being harassed, intimidated, beaten by the regime’s security forces. Each rally of the opposition since 2006 is been harshly attacked by the riot police, hundreds of people have been beaten, arrested and thrown into jails. In April 2007 the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov has been arrested and put into jail for 5 days as he was walking along the Tverskaya street in the downtown of Moscow. The same day there was an attempt to arrest the former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
Political Prisoners
According to the human rights organizations there are about 80 political prisoners in the country who are serving their terms for their views and political activities from 2 to 9 years in the jails and camps. One of the best known political prisoners is Mikhail Khodorkovsky who has been sentenced to 9 years in the Siberian camp Krasnokamensk on the basis of purely fabricated case against him and his oil company YUKOS. The company has been confiscated and taken by one of the leading figures of the current Chekist regime who is occupying now the position of the deputy prime minister of the Russian government. Mr. Khodorkovsky has recently been transported to Moscow to be put on another fabricated trial with a clear purpose to keep him behind the bars forever. Just for comparison, the Mr. Lukashenka’s political regime in the neighboring Belarus that is very far from any notion of genuine democracy, has nevertheless released the last four political prisoners in summer 2008. It is worth to note that until recently the EU had the so called smart sanctions against Mr. Lukashenka and members of his government. As far as I know, the US still has similar sanctions against the Belarusian leadership, but not against the Russian one.
Terror
The fate of some other people dealing with the regime is even worse.
Over the last ten years tens of thousands of people have been killed in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria.
In Autumn 1999 several hundred people died in the series of apartment bombings across the country — from Moscow to Buynaks in Dagestan. In the contrast to the claims from the FSB that those bombings have been organized by Chechens, the local militia was able to detain several people who tried to bomb the apartment block in the city of Ryazan. They turn out to be the agents of the FSB. Then the FSB has announced that there were "anti-terrorist exercises" with the goal to put explosives into the basement of the apartment building. After the story became widely known, the detained FSB agents have been freed by the order from Moscow and finally disappeared, while apartments’ bombings stopped unexpectedly as they started.
Since November 1998 several presidential hopefuls, politicians, journalists, lawyers who were either in opposition to or independent of the current political regime, have been directly assassinated or died in the very suspicious circumstances. Among them are the leader of the Democratic Russia party and the member of the parliament Galina Starovoitova, journalist and editor Artem Borovik, journalist and member of the Yabloko party Larisa Yudina, the governor of the Krasnoyarsk region general Alexander Lebed who came third in the 1999 presidential election, the leader of the Army Movement, member of the parliament general Lev Rokhlin, the leader of the Liberal party of Russia Sergei Yushenkov, one of the organizers of the Liberal party of Russia Vladimir Golovlev, journalist and one of the leaders of the Yabloko party, the member of the parliament Yuri Shekochikhin, ethnographer Nikolay Girenko, journalist and writer Anna Politkovskaya, journalist and military expert Ivan Safronov, the deputy head of the Central Bank of Russia Andrei Kozlov, the member of National Bolshevist party Yuri Chervochkin, journalist, editor and one of the leaders of the Ingush national movement Magomed Yevloyev, lawyer Stanislav Markelov, journalist Anastasia Baburova.
Since March 1999 the wave of political assassinations moved beyond the Russian border. In March 1999 Vyacheslav Chornovol, leader of the People’s Ruch and a candidate for the Ukrainian presidential election that autumn, died in the car accident near Kiev that has been identified by the Ukrainian security service as the assassination organized by FSB. In February 2004 Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, the former Chechen President, and his 15-year old son have been bombed in Doha by two officers with diplomatic passports from the Russian embassy in Qatar, Mr. Yandarbiev has died. In September 2004 Victor Yushenko, the presidential candidate in the Ukrainian presidential election in November 2004, has been poisoned and barely survived. In November 2006 the former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko has been poisoned by polonium in the downtown of London and died.
Wars against other Nations
Since 2004 the Russian political regime embarked on a series of wars of different kinds against foreign nations. The list of wars waged in the last 5 years is not a short one:
Russian-Byelorussian Gas War 2004,
First Russian-Ukrainian Gas War, January 2006,
Russian-Georgian Energy Supply War, January 2006,
Russian-Georgian Wine and Mineral Water War, March-April 2006,
Russian-Georgian Spy War, September-October 2006,
Russian-Estonian Monuments and Cyber War, April-May 2007,
Russian-Georgian Conventional War, April-October 2008,
Russian-Azerbaijan Cyber War, August 2008,
Second Russian-Ukrainian Gas War, January 2009,
Anti-US full fledged Propaganda War, 2006-2009.
The Russian-Georgian War that started last year was under preparations by the Russian authorities at least since February 2003. This is one of the most serious international crises for at least last 30 years that constitutes one of the most worrisome developments of our days. This war has brought:
a) The first massive use of the military forces by Russia beyond its borders since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Afghanistan in 1978;
b) The first intervention against an independent country in Europe since the Soviet Union’s intervention against Czechoslovakia in 1968;
c) The first intervention against an independent country in Europe that led to unilateral changes of the internationally recognized borders in Europe since the late 1930s and early 1940s. Particular similarities of these events with the events of the 1930s are especially troubling.
Uniqueness of the current political regime in Russia
One of the most important characteristics of the current political regime in Russia is that the real political power in the country belongs neither to one person, nor family, nor military junta, nor party, nor ethnic group. The power belongs to the corporation of secret police operatives. The political system in which secret police plays an important role in the political system is not very special. VChK-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB in the Communist USSR, Gestapo in Nazi Germany, SAVAK in the Shah’s Iran had enormous powers in those tyrannical regimes. Yet, none of those secret police organizations did possess supreme power in the respective countries. In all previous historic cases secret police and its leaders have been subordinate to their political masters — whether they were Stalin, Hitler, or Pehlevi, regardless how monstrous they have been. The political regime in today’s Russia is therefore quite unique, since so far there was probably no country in the world history (at least in the relatively developed part of the world in the XXth and the XXIst centuries) where a secret police organization did capture all political, administrative, military, economic, financial, and media powers.
It does not mean that all population of the country or even all staff of the government agencies do belong to the secret police. Many of them are professional and honest people who genuinely alien to the Chekist/Mafiosi structures. Nevertheless, it is not they who do have control over the state, and not they who are in charge of the key decisions in the country.
Forecast
Even a brief look on the US-Russia relations over the last 10 years reveals quite a striking fact of the permanent retreat of the American side on almost all issues in the bilateral relations.
Ten years ago then the Clinton administration has expressed publicly and energetically its concern on violation of basic human rights in Chechnya. The Russian side has suggested to the partner not to intervene in the internal Russian issues. The US administration has finally followed the advice.
After that over the years the US administrations have expressed concerns, dissatisfaction, protests on number of issues: on destruction of freedom of mass media in Russia, on imprisonment of Mr. Khodorkovsky and takeover of Yukos, on destruction of the rule of law, electoral system, political opposition, NGOs, property rights, including not only of the Russian but also US companies (for example Exxon), on political assassinations, on aggressive behavior versus Russia’s neighbors, finally on outright aggression of the Russian army against sovereign state and the UN member Georgia, that led to effective annexation of two Georgian territories Abkhazia and South Ossetia, creation of the Russian military bases and deployment of regular Russian forces over there.
In all those cases the Russian side has suggested the US to shut up, and in all those cases the American side followed this advice sooner or later. There were no sanctions whatsoever for any behavior of the Russian authorities.
Recently the US has even resumed the NATO-Russia cooperation in less than 6 months after the Russian aggression against Georgia, after the rudest violation of the international law and order, the UN Charter and the UN Resolution #3314 of December 14, 1974.
The recent suggestion "to reset the button" in the US-Russia relations and "to start the relations with the blank list" is met with poorly hided joy and satisfaction on a part of the Russian Chekists. For them it means achievement of many goals that they dreamt of. This "the so called Munich statement" is interpreted by them as a de-facto acceptance by the current US administration of the idea that has been put forward by the Russian leadership last summer — the idea of the de-facto restoration of the Russian Chekists’ (secret police) influence and power over the post-Soviet space under the title of having the areas with the so called privileged interests. This idea is already being under hasty implementation with the creation of the $10 bn fund and substantial Russian credits given to Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Ukraine, recent agreement of creation of joint fast reaction troops of 7 nations of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, establishing substantial financial and personal control over mass media in the FSU countries, permanent attempts to change the political regime and western orientation of Ukraine and finishing the conquest of Georgia.
Policy of the proclaimed "cooperation", "movement from competition to collaboration", "improvement of relations" with the current political regime in Russia has very clear consequences. Such type of behavior on the part of the US administration can not be called even a retreat. It is not even an appeasement policy that is so well known to all of us by another Munch decision in 1938. It is a surrender. It is a full, absolute and unconditional surrender to the regime of the secret police officers, chekists and Mafiosi bandits in today’s Russia. It is a surrender of the hopes and efforts of the Russian democrats as well as peoples of the post-Soviet states who dreamed to get out of the system that controlled and tortured them for almost a century — back to the Chekists’ power. But it is even more. It is a clear manifestation to all democratic and liberal forces in Russia and in other post-Soviet states that on all internal and external issues of their struggle against forces of the past the United States now abandons them and takes the position of their deadly adversaries and enemies. And therefore it is an open invitation for new adventures of the Russian Chekists’ regime in the post-Soviet space and at some points beyond it.
The very term for such type of policy has not been chosen by me, it is borrowed from the title of this hearing, namely, collaboration. Therefore the term chosen for the agents of the US administration’s policy in the coming era is "collaborationists". Collaboration between two governments today could be only on the Russian regime’s terms and for fulfillment of the Russian government’s goals. From the European history of the XX century we know what means if a revisionist power has a clear-cut goal to restore influence and control over its neighbors while other powers chose not to defend victims of the attacks, but instead try to collaborate with an aggressor.
We know the consequences of the collaborationist policy — those who retreat and surrender will get not peace, but war, war with unpredictable and nasty results. It might be also not a one war.
When the world will get there, we need to remember that we had a warning.
Thank you.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
WaPo: No deal on Iran and missile defense
No Deal. WaPo Editorial
Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev offer welcome clarity on Iran and missile defense.
TWP, Wednesday, March 4, 2009; A14
PROPONENTS of a diplomatic "grand bargain" between the Obama administration and Russia -- by which the United States would obtain Russian cooperation in stopping Iran's nuclear program in exchange for concessions to what Moscow sees as its security interests in Europe -- got a double drenching of cold water yesterday. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told a news conference that "any swaps" between action on Iran and a planned U.S. missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic "would not be productive." For his part, President Obama made clear that his administration's decisions on missile defense would be guided not by Russian behavior but by the threat from Iran.
As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares for her first official meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday, these were revealing and important clarifications. Vice President Biden's call for a "reset" in U.S.-Russian relations and long-standing questions about the efficacy and cost of missile defense may have encouraged Russian expectations that the new administration could be bluffed into retreating from the deals struck by the Bush administration with Poland and the Czech Republic to deploy missile interceptors and a radar station. If undertaken as a concession to Russia, any such move would have the effect of undermining the bonds between former Soviet bloc members and the United States and NATO -- which, of course, is Moscow's aim.
That's why it was important for Mr. Obama to say yesterday that his willingness to reconsider missile defense would be based on judgments about Iran, not about Russia -- and that any decision made in that context does not diminish "my commitment to making sure that Poland, the Czech Republic and other NATO members are fully enjoying the partnership, the alliance and U.S. support with respect to their security." One way to back up that principle is for the administration to make clear in public -- as it has in private -- that deployment of a U.S. Patriot missile defense battery to Poland, promised by the Bush administration, will go ahead regardless of what is ultimately decided about the larger missile defense system.
Such a statement might be somewhat out of sync with the honeymoonish tone of much of the public rhetoric between Moscow and Washington since Mr. Obama's inauguration. But as Mr. Medvedev made clear yesterday, so far there isn't much substance behind the cheery facade. He declared that Russia, which is about to complete a nuclear power plant for Iran and has repeatedly opposed tough sanctions, is "already working in close contact" with the United States on Iran. In other words, while Russia expects the new administration to "show common sense" on missile defense by proposing something that "would be acceptable to us," it shouldn't expect more help stopping an Iranian bomb. Perhaps the Kremlin leadership believes that "reset" is another way of saying "capitulate." If so, Ms. Clinton would do well to clarify the administration's policy when she meets Mr. Lavrov.
Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev offer welcome clarity on Iran and missile defense.
TWP, Wednesday, March 4, 2009; A14
PROPONENTS of a diplomatic "grand bargain" between the Obama administration and Russia -- by which the United States would obtain Russian cooperation in stopping Iran's nuclear program in exchange for concessions to what Moscow sees as its security interests in Europe -- got a double drenching of cold water yesterday. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told a news conference that "any swaps" between action on Iran and a planned U.S. missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic "would not be productive." For his part, President Obama made clear that his administration's decisions on missile defense would be guided not by Russian behavior but by the threat from Iran.
As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares for her first official meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday, these were revealing and important clarifications. Vice President Biden's call for a "reset" in U.S.-Russian relations and long-standing questions about the efficacy and cost of missile defense may have encouraged Russian expectations that the new administration could be bluffed into retreating from the deals struck by the Bush administration with Poland and the Czech Republic to deploy missile interceptors and a radar station. If undertaken as a concession to Russia, any such move would have the effect of undermining the bonds between former Soviet bloc members and the United States and NATO -- which, of course, is Moscow's aim.
That's why it was important for Mr. Obama to say yesterday that his willingness to reconsider missile defense would be based on judgments about Iran, not about Russia -- and that any decision made in that context does not diminish "my commitment to making sure that Poland, the Czech Republic and other NATO members are fully enjoying the partnership, the alliance and U.S. support with respect to their security." One way to back up that principle is for the administration to make clear in public -- as it has in private -- that deployment of a U.S. Patriot missile defense battery to Poland, promised by the Bush administration, will go ahead regardless of what is ultimately decided about the larger missile defense system.
Such a statement might be somewhat out of sync with the honeymoonish tone of much of the public rhetoric between Moscow and Washington since Mr. Obama's inauguration. But as Mr. Medvedev made clear yesterday, so far there isn't much substance behind the cheery facade. He declared that Russia, which is about to complete a nuclear power plant for Iran and has repeatedly opposed tough sanctions, is "already working in close contact" with the United States on Iran. In other words, while Russia expects the new administration to "show common sense" on missile defense by proposing something that "would be acceptable to us," it shouldn't expect more help stopping an Iranian bomb. Perhaps the Kremlin leadership believes that "reset" is another way of saying "capitulate." If so, Ms. Clinton would do well to clarify the administration's policy when she meets Mr. Lavrov.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Obama Makes Overtures to Russia on Missile Defense
Obama Makes Overtures to Russia on Missile Defense. By Michael A. Fletcher
The Washington Post, Tuesday, March 3, 2009; A02
President Obama has sent a letter to his Russian counterpart that raises the prospect of the United States halting development of its missile defense program in Eastern Europe if Russia helps resolve the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program, senior administration officials said last night.
Obama's letter, delivered to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in mid-February, "covered a number of topics" of mutual interest to the two countries, "including the issue of missile defense and how it relates to the Iranian threat," a senior administration official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.
This official and others said the letter repeated an assertion Obama administration officials have voiced in recent weeks: The missile defense system would not be necessary if the threat posed by Iran's long-range missiles and its nuclear program was eliminated.
Russia has cooperated with Tehran on a range of issues and has often resisted Washington's tough stance toward Iran, which insists that its nuclear program is aimed at developing only cheap energy, not weapons.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders have been infuriated by U.S. plans for a missile base in Poland and radar deployment in the Czech Republic, saying that U.S.-run weapons installations so close to its border represent a threat to its national security. The Bush administration, which initiated the plans, had waved off the Russian displeasure, saying the system would protect Russia as well as NATO allies from the threat posed by Iranian missiles.
The Obama administration, however, sent signals that it intends to smooth relations with Russia. Speaking at a defense conference in Munich last month, Vice President Biden said the administration wants to "press the reset button" with Russia.
During a visit to Russia two weeks later, Undersecretary of State William J. Burns suggested that Moscow's cooperation in eliminating the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program could result in the idea of missile defense being shelved.
"If, through strong diplomacy with Russia and our other partners, we can reduce or eliminate that threat, it obviously shapes the way at which we look at missile defense. We are also open to the possibility of cooperation with Russia and with our NATO partners on new missile defense configurations which can take advantage of assets which each of us have," Burns said in an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax.
And Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said last month in Krakow, Poland, "I told the Russians a year ago that if there were no Iranian missile program, there would be no need for the missile sites."
Administration officials said Russia has not responded to the letter on missile defense, details of which were first reported yesterday by the Russian newspaper Kommersant. But Obama is scheduled to meet with Medvedev early next month in London, on the sidelines of a summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is scheduled to meet Saturday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Geneva.
Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried noted last week that, in advance of the meeting, "There have been letters between the leaders, between the foreign ministers, outlining a way forward and a positive agenda, and it is on that that we want to build."
The U.S. overtures seem to be well received by Medvedev, who told Spanish reporters on Sunday that he expected the new administration to approach the issue of missile defense "in a more inventive and partnership-like" manner.
"We have already received such messages from our American colleagues," Medvedev was quoted as saying. "I expect those messages to take the form of specific proposals. I hope that during my first meeting with Mr. Obama, President of the United States, we shall be able to discuss" the issue.
Obama and Medvedev have exchanged several letters and phone calls over the past month. Kommersant reported that the letter that outlined possible cooperation on missile defense also raised other opportunities for cooperation, including on the Middle East, Afghanistan and arms control.
Correspondent Philip P. Pan in Moscow contributed to this report.
The Washington Post, Tuesday, March 3, 2009; A02
President Obama has sent a letter to his Russian counterpart that raises the prospect of the United States halting development of its missile defense program in Eastern Europe if Russia helps resolve the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program, senior administration officials said last night.
Obama's letter, delivered to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in mid-February, "covered a number of topics" of mutual interest to the two countries, "including the issue of missile defense and how it relates to the Iranian threat," a senior administration official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.
This official and others said the letter repeated an assertion Obama administration officials have voiced in recent weeks: The missile defense system would not be necessary if the threat posed by Iran's long-range missiles and its nuclear program was eliminated.
Russia has cooperated with Tehran on a range of issues and has often resisted Washington's tough stance toward Iran, which insists that its nuclear program is aimed at developing only cheap energy, not weapons.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders have been infuriated by U.S. plans for a missile base in Poland and radar deployment in the Czech Republic, saying that U.S.-run weapons installations so close to its border represent a threat to its national security. The Bush administration, which initiated the plans, had waved off the Russian displeasure, saying the system would protect Russia as well as NATO allies from the threat posed by Iranian missiles.
The Obama administration, however, sent signals that it intends to smooth relations with Russia. Speaking at a defense conference in Munich last month, Vice President Biden said the administration wants to "press the reset button" with Russia.
During a visit to Russia two weeks later, Undersecretary of State William J. Burns suggested that Moscow's cooperation in eliminating the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program could result in the idea of missile defense being shelved.
"If, through strong diplomacy with Russia and our other partners, we can reduce or eliminate that threat, it obviously shapes the way at which we look at missile defense. We are also open to the possibility of cooperation with Russia and with our NATO partners on new missile defense configurations which can take advantage of assets which each of us have," Burns said in an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax.
And Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said last month in Krakow, Poland, "I told the Russians a year ago that if there were no Iranian missile program, there would be no need for the missile sites."
Administration officials said Russia has not responded to the letter on missile defense, details of which were first reported yesterday by the Russian newspaper Kommersant. But Obama is scheduled to meet with Medvedev early next month in London, on the sidelines of a summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is scheduled to meet Saturday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Geneva.
Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried noted last week that, in advance of the meeting, "There have been letters between the leaders, between the foreign ministers, outlining a way forward and a positive agenda, and it is on that that we want to build."
The U.S. overtures seem to be well received by Medvedev, who told Spanish reporters on Sunday that he expected the new administration to approach the issue of missile defense "in a more inventive and partnership-like" manner.
"We have already received such messages from our American colleagues," Medvedev was quoted as saying. "I expect those messages to take the form of specific proposals. I hope that during my first meeting with Mr. Obama, President of the United States, we shall be able to discuss" the issue.
Obama and Medvedev have exchanged several letters and phone calls over the past month. Kommersant reported that the letter that outlined possible cooperation on missile defense also raised other opportunities for cooperation, including on the Middle East, Afghanistan and arms control.
Correspondent Philip P. Pan in Moscow contributed to this report.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Conservative views: The Dangerous Allure of Arms Control
The Dangerous Allure of Arms Control. By John R. Bolton
Washington Times, February 27, 2009
The Ringwraiths of arms control are again with us, returned from well-deserved obscurity, and back in the saddle in Washington. Through public statements and private preparations the Obama administration is signaling clearly that its approach to Russia will center on Cold War-era arms control precepts and objectives.
Although the Washington-Moscow relationship has, at Moscow's behest, become increasingly contentious and unpleasant, arms control is an odd and backward-looking way to try to improve relations and ameliorate Russia's objectionable international conduct. A long Cold War history demonstrates that arms control tends to make the relationship even more adversarial than it needs to be, concentrates attention on peripheral issues, and fails to deliver the security that supposedly is its central objective.
The Obama arms control agenda reflects the longstanding, attractive and woefully simplistic notion that ever-lower numbers of Russian and American nuclear weapons will create a more stable strategic relationship, diminishing the threat of nuclear war. Arms controllers, relying on this superficial analysis for decades, argued that reducing weapons levels would not harm U.S. security because nuclear war was so destructive it was simply unthinkable, a concept known as "automatic deterrence." Later, they adopted a slightly more nuanced position, acknowledging the need for a small nuclear force that could survive a first strike, thus providing a "second strike" capability. These flawed theories are back from the dead.
Accordingly, we now see suggestions for U.S. weapons levels that have more to do with numerology than national security. Moreover, the Obama approach appears to ignore the 2002 Treaty of Moscow, which represented a substantial change in managing strategic relations between America and Russia, a change also reflected in U.S. development of strategic missile defense capabilities. Ironically, the treaty actually reflected the reduced role of nuclear weapons in American strategy and enhanced roles for long-range, precision-guided conventional weapons that the Obama administration now risks reversing by returning to the arms-control approach of the SALT (strategic arms limitations) and START (strategic arms reduction) models.
What should we do instead, and on what should Congress insist before the negotiations proceed beyond the point of no return?
First, we must understand that agreed-upon levels of nuclear weapons address only the most visible areas of military competition, not others that actually may be more important. This has been a central fallacy of arms control since the post-World War I naval arms negotiations, ignoring as it does wide and important variances between the United States and Russia, such as weapons production capabilities, levels of tactical nuclear weapons, intelligence assets, and total national economic strength.
Moreover, U.S. nuclear capabilities provide a deterrence umbrella for its allied countries, whereas Russia plays no such positive role.
Thus, the two countries are simply not "symmetrical," but treaties with specific warhead limits gave the illusion they are.
Second, the United States should decide what levels of nuclear forces we actually need, and make that our objective, not pursuing an arbitrary number and then trying to find national security justification for it. The latter approach is not only dangerous but opens us to manipulation by our negotiating adversaries, since under this approach one number has no greater intrinsic security value than another.
This is especially true when we understand that no current or prior arms control treaty has ever actually required destruction of existing warheads, nor do we have any known verification methodology that could actually demonstrate compliance even if we could reach agreement on warhead destruction as an objective.
Third, how we "count" nuclear capabilities is important. This is not a merely technical issue, but carries profound implications for both our nuclear and conventional capabilities. Under START counting rules, weapons levels were imputed based on the capabilities of delivery systems, rather than actual warhead levels. Thus, for example, each Soviet SS-18, capable of carrying 10 nuclear warheads was imputed to do so no matter how many were actually under the nosecones.
Counting actual numbers is far more accurate. In the Treaty of Moscow, we did so by counting only operationally deployed strategic warheads rather than using imputed levels derived from artificial counting rules. Not only was this more accurate, it freed up large numbers of delivery systems for conventional warheads, making them more useful against the non-nuclear threats we increasingly face.
Abandoning Treaty of Moscow concepts and retreating to the START approach would severely impede U.S. conventional capabilities well into the future without in any way improving the U.S. strategic nuclear posture.
Arms control is one area where there will be substantial "change" between the Bush and Obama administrations, one fraught with considerable risks, especially if future negotiations embrace, as Russia wants, missile defense and space-based capabilities.
The real arms control debate is not between those relaxed about nuclear war and those seeking to avoid it, but between those who approach the problem realistically and empirically, and those who approach it as a matter of dogma. Unfortunately, the Ringwraiths now have the upper hand.
John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI.
Washington Times, February 27, 2009
The Ringwraiths of arms control are again with us, returned from well-deserved obscurity, and back in the saddle in Washington. Through public statements and private preparations the Obama administration is signaling clearly that its approach to Russia will center on Cold War-era arms control precepts and objectives.
Although the Washington-Moscow relationship has, at Moscow's behest, become increasingly contentious and unpleasant, arms control is an odd and backward-looking way to try to improve relations and ameliorate Russia's objectionable international conduct. A long Cold War history demonstrates that arms control tends to make the relationship even more adversarial than it needs to be, concentrates attention on peripheral issues, and fails to deliver the security that supposedly is its central objective.
The Obama arms control agenda reflects the longstanding, attractive and woefully simplistic notion that ever-lower numbers of Russian and American nuclear weapons will create a more stable strategic relationship, diminishing the threat of nuclear war. Arms controllers, relying on this superficial analysis for decades, argued that reducing weapons levels would not harm U.S. security because nuclear war was so destructive it was simply unthinkable, a concept known as "automatic deterrence." Later, they adopted a slightly more nuanced position, acknowledging the need for a small nuclear force that could survive a first strike, thus providing a "second strike" capability. These flawed theories are back from the dead.
Accordingly, we now see suggestions for U.S. weapons levels that have more to do with numerology than national security. Moreover, the Obama approach appears to ignore the 2002 Treaty of Moscow, which represented a substantial change in managing strategic relations between America and Russia, a change also reflected in U.S. development of strategic missile defense capabilities. Ironically, the treaty actually reflected the reduced role of nuclear weapons in American strategy and enhanced roles for long-range, precision-guided conventional weapons that the Obama administration now risks reversing by returning to the arms-control approach of the SALT (strategic arms limitations) and START (strategic arms reduction) models.
What should we do instead, and on what should Congress insist before the negotiations proceed beyond the point of no return?
First, we must understand that agreed-upon levels of nuclear weapons address only the most visible areas of military competition, not others that actually may be more important. This has been a central fallacy of arms control since the post-World War I naval arms negotiations, ignoring as it does wide and important variances between the United States and Russia, such as weapons production capabilities, levels of tactical nuclear weapons, intelligence assets, and total national economic strength.
Moreover, U.S. nuclear capabilities provide a deterrence umbrella for its allied countries, whereas Russia plays no such positive role.
Thus, the two countries are simply not "symmetrical," but treaties with specific warhead limits gave the illusion they are.
Second, the United States should decide what levels of nuclear forces we actually need, and make that our objective, not pursuing an arbitrary number and then trying to find national security justification for it. The latter approach is not only dangerous but opens us to manipulation by our negotiating adversaries, since under this approach one number has no greater intrinsic security value than another.
This is especially true when we understand that no current or prior arms control treaty has ever actually required destruction of existing warheads, nor do we have any known verification methodology that could actually demonstrate compliance even if we could reach agreement on warhead destruction as an objective.
Third, how we "count" nuclear capabilities is important. This is not a merely technical issue, but carries profound implications for both our nuclear and conventional capabilities. Under START counting rules, weapons levels were imputed based on the capabilities of delivery systems, rather than actual warhead levels. Thus, for example, each Soviet SS-18, capable of carrying 10 nuclear warheads was imputed to do so no matter how many were actually under the nosecones.
Counting actual numbers is far more accurate. In the Treaty of Moscow, we did so by counting only operationally deployed strategic warheads rather than using imputed levels derived from artificial counting rules. Not only was this more accurate, it freed up large numbers of delivery systems for conventional warheads, making them more useful against the non-nuclear threats we increasingly face.
Abandoning Treaty of Moscow concepts and retreating to the START approach would severely impede U.S. conventional capabilities well into the future without in any way improving the U.S. strategic nuclear posture.
Arms control is one area where there will be substantial "change" between the Bush and Obama administrations, one fraught with considerable risks, especially if future negotiations embrace, as Russia wants, missile defense and space-based capabilities.
The real arms control debate is not between those relaxed about nuclear war and those seeking to avoid it, but between those who approach the problem realistically and empirically, and those who approach it as a matter of dogma. Unfortunately, the Ringwraiths now have the upper hand.
John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
U.S. Ahead of Moscow Treaty Schedule in Reducing Its Nuclear Arsenal
U.S. Ahead of Moscow Treaty Schedule in Reducing Its Nuclear Arsenal. By Walter Pincus
Washington Post, Friday, February 13, 2009; Page A03
The United States is more than two years ahead of the schedule set under the Moscow Treaty in reducing the number of its nuclear warheads operationally deployed on strategic missiles and bombers, according to congressional and administration sources.
There are fewer than 2,200 deployed warheads, the goal originally set to be reached by Dec. 31, 2012.
"The reduction was initially planned to be met in 2012, then 2010, but was achieved a few days ago," said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project of the Federation of American Scientists, who first disclosed the information on his Web site.
While not giving the exact number of deployed warheads, Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, said Wednesday, "We are in compliance with the Moscow Treaty." She said reaching that goal early could support an effort by the Obama administration to get the Russians to go to even lower levels.
The total U.S. nuclear stockpile remains above 5,000 warheads, with the majority held in strategic reserve but available for deployment if necessary. There are probably 3,000 to 4,000 more warheads in storage awaiting dismantling, according to Kristensen.
Tauscher noted that the weakness of the 2002 Moscow Treaty was that while it limited the number of operationally deployed warheads, it left out those not connected to delivery systems and in storage. She said she expects the United States to push for improvements in the Moscow agreement. "We need to broaden the definitions and work with the Russians to account for everything," she said.
Kristensen said modest reductions in deployed warheads that began during the Clinton administration were expanded under President George W. Bush. "In the past four years, they have overhauled the strategic war plan," he said. "Strategic Command believes it can adequately meet the White House guidance with far less weapons."
Some experts think the Bush administration does not get enough credit for the reductions it has made in nuclear weapons. Robert S. Norris, a senior research associate at the Natural Resources Defense Fund, said yesterday, "It is little appreciated or known that the two Bush presidencies have gotten rid of three-quarters of the U.S. nuclear stockpile."
According to Norris, the United States had about 22,000 strategic and tactical nuclear warheads at the end of the Cold War. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush ordered the withdrawal of all tactical weapons and signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), cutting the total to approximately 11,000. "His son cut it in half again by the end of his administration," Norris said, "and this will be the baseline for further reductions during the Obama administration."
As the Bush administration was reducing deployed warheads, it was pressing Congress to approve funding for development of a new warhead under the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. The RRW was to be based on an old, tested design with no new testing needed before being deployed. It was to be more secure and reliable over the next decade than today's aging Cold War nuclear warheads, even those that had been refurbished. Congress, however, eliminated funding for the RRW in fiscal 2009, with members saying they would await results of the Obama administration's nuclear posture review.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has proposed an aggressive arms-control agenda that includes reductions in nuclear weapons, Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and renewal of the verification procedures of START, which run out at the end of the year.
Washington Post, Friday, February 13, 2009; Page A03
The United States is more than two years ahead of the schedule set under the Moscow Treaty in reducing the number of its nuclear warheads operationally deployed on strategic missiles and bombers, according to congressional and administration sources.
There are fewer than 2,200 deployed warheads, the goal originally set to be reached by Dec. 31, 2012.
"The reduction was initially planned to be met in 2012, then 2010, but was achieved a few days ago," said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project of the Federation of American Scientists, who first disclosed the information on his Web site.
While not giving the exact number of deployed warheads, Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, said Wednesday, "We are in compliance with the Moscow Treaty." She said reaching that goal early could support an effort by the Obama administration to get the Russians to go to even lower levels.
The total U.S. nuclear stockpile remains above 5,000 warheads, with the majority held in strategic reserve but available for deployment if necessary. There are probably 3,000 to 4,000 more warheads in storage awaiting dismantling, according to Kristensen.
Tauscher noted that the weakness of the 2002 Moscow Treaty was that while it limited the number of operationally deployed warheads, it left out those not connected to delivery systems and in storage. She said she expects the United States to push for improvements in the Moscow agreement. "We need to broaden the definitions and work with the Russians to account for everything," she said.
Kristensen said modest reductions in deployed warheads that began during the Clinton administration were expanded under President George W. Bush. "In the past four years, they have overhauled the strategic war plan," he said. "Strategic Command believes it can adequately meet the White House guidance with far less weapons."
Some experts think the Bush administration does not get enough credit for the reductions it has made in nuclear weapons. Robert S. Norris, a senior research associate at the Natural Resources Defense Fund, said yesterday, "It is little appreciated or known that the two Bush presidencies have gotten rid of three-quarters of the U.S. nuclear stockpile."
According to Norris, the United States had about 22,000 strategic and tactical nuclear warheads at the end of the Cold War. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush ordered the withdrawal of all tactical weapons and signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), cutting the total to approximately 11,000. "His son cut it in half again by the end of his administration," Norris said, "and this will be the baseline for further reductions during the Obama administration."
As the Bush administration was reducing deployed warheads, it was pressing Congress to approve funding for development of a new warhead under the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. The RRW was to be based on an old, tested design with no new testing needed before being deployed. It was to be more secure and reliable over the next decade than today's aging Cold War nuclear warheads, even those that had been refurbished. Congress, however, eliminated funding for the RRW in fiscal 2009, with members saying they would await results of the Obama administration's nuclear posture review.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has proposed an aggressive arms-control agenda that includes reductions in nuclear weapons, Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and renewal of the verification procedures of START, which run out at the end of the year.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Slaying of two dissidents, Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova
Murder in Moscow, by Stephen Schwartz
Press criticism, KGB-style.
The Weekly Standard, Feb 23, 2009, Volume 014, Issue 22
Vice President Joseph Biden has told the Europeans that the new administration wishes to "reset" relations with Vladmir Putin's Russia. But the January 19 slaying of two dissidents, 34-year-old human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalism student Anastasia Baburova, 25, on a Moscow street is one of several recent reminders that Americans cannot be comfortable in Putin's embrace.
Markelov, head of the Institute for the Supremacy of Law, may well have been murdered as a result of the release from custody, one week before, of Russian army colonel Yuri Budanov, who had been sent to prison for crimes he committed while serving in Chechnya. Markelov had been crucial to Budanov's 2003 conviction in the kidnapping, torture, multiple sexual assault, and murder of an 18-year-old Chechen girl, Elza Kheda Kungaeva. Budanov, although he admitted his guilt and was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, had benefited from an early release.
On the day he perished, Markelov delivered a statement to the press. Representing the family of the Chechen female victim, he accused the Russian authorities of improperly arranging for Budanov to be let go. He then walked to a metro station near the Kremlin with Baburova. The killer, wearing a ski mask, approached from behind and shot Markelov in the back of the head. Baburova pursued the shooter, who turned and fired into her forehead. She died several hours later.
Anticipating her graduation from journalism school, Baburova was working for the daily Novaya Gazeta, which has employed a distinguished roster of liquidated investigative journalists. Novaya Gazeta is co-owned by Alexander Lebedev, an ex-KGB official and billionaire turned political reformer, who purchased the ailing London Evening Standard on January 21, only two days after Baburova's death.
As the largest individual shareholder in Novaya Gazeta--he owns 39 percent--Lebedev is responsible for a publication that has experienced the high-profile killing of several of the country's leading reporters. Anna Politkovskaya, murdered in the elevator of her apartment building in 2006, was his top staffer; she too had exposed atrocities in Chechnya, and Markelov was her lawyer. Igor Domnikov was killed in a brutal beating in 2000. His colleague Yury Shchekochikhin was poisoned in 2003.
Indeed, the poison cabinet seems to have become a favored anti-dissident weapon of the Russian state, as it was under Stalin. Politkovskaya herself was poisoned (though not fatally) in 2004 when she tried to travel to Beslan during the hostage crisis there. And less than two months after her eventual murder, Alexander Litvinenko, another former KGB agent critical of the Putin regime, was killed in a highly unusual poisoning in London.
In the aftermath of the Markelov-Baburov assassinations, the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Lebedev, perhaps spurred by his KGB experiences, had announced the intention of Novaya Gazeta journalists to petition to arm themselves if necessary. Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov denounced the Russian government for its inability to protect the press and asserted, "We have three options. The first one--to leave and turn off the lights. . . . The second--to stop writing about the special services, corruption, drugs, fascists; to stop investigating the crimes of the powerful. . . . The third option is to somehow defend ourselves."
Russian political life has increasingly assumed a pogrom atmosphere. Markelov had extended his investigation of human rights violations from Chechnya to the central Russian republic of Bashkortostan, which has a Turkic Muslim majority, but has not been the scene of Chechen-style rebellion against Russian rule. At the end of 2004, local police beat up to 1,000 people in Bashkortostan over a period of four days. Markelov had warned against "the spread of the Chechnya syndrome throughout other regions of Russia" and exposed the existence of a secret "order number 870" issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2003, which authorized the police to declare states of emergency without informing the public and to follow them up with repressive actions.
One of his closest friends, an academic named Vladislav Bugera, described Markelov as a perhaps naïve product of the old Soviet way of life. Writing in the online periodical Johnson's Russia List, Bugera called the dead lawyer a "socialist and an internationalist" whose many causes included an independent labor union, but whose socialism was "moderate . . . and reformist. . . . He was a reliable person. You could always be sure of him. . . . He is my hero."
Needless to say, a return to socialist ideals would stand no chance of protecting human rights from state abuse. Russia has been through its dark eras of internal strife and compulsory social experiment; Putinism, now aggravated by the global economic crisis, represents an attempt to revive aspects of both. The staggering challenge before Russian supporters of democracy is to find a way to construct a new and unburdened system of individual rights, secured by due process. Russian democrats and those abroad who would help them can ill afford to look away from the blood of Russian lawyers and journalists shed in the street.
Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.
Press criticism, KGB-style.
The Weekly Standard, Feb 23, 2009, Volume 014, Issue 22
Vice President Joseph Biden has told the Europeans that the new administration wishes to "reset" relations with Vladmir Putin's Russia. But the January 19 slaying of two dissidents, 34-year-old human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalism student Anastasia Baburova, 25, on a Moscow street is one of several recent reminders that Americans cannot be comfortable in Putin's embrace.
Markelov, head of the Institute for the Supremacy of Law, may well have been murdered as a result of the release from custody, one week before, of Russian army colonel Yuri Budanov, who had been sent to prison for crimes he committed while serving in Chechnya. Markelov had been crucial to Budanov's 2003 conviction in the kidnapping, torture, multiple sexual assault, and murder of an 18-year-old Chechen girl, Elza Kheda Kungaeva. Budanov, although he admitted his guilt and was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, had benefited from an early release.
On the day he perished, Markelov delivered a statement to the press. Representing the family of the Chechen female victim, he accused the Russian authorities of improperly arranging for Budanov to be let go. He then walked to a metro station near the Kremlin with Baburova. The killer, wearing a ski mask, approached from behind and shot Markelov in the back of the head. Baburova pursued the shooter, who turned and fired into her forehead. She died several hours later.
Anticipating her graduation from journalism school, Baburova was working for the daily Novaya Gazeta, which has employed a distinguished roster of liquidated investigative journalists. Novaya Gazeta is co-owned by Alexander Lebedev, an ex-KGB official and billionaire turned political reformer, who purchased the ailing London Evening Standard on January 21, only two days after Baburova's death.
As the largest individual shareholder in Novaya Gazeta--he owns 39 percent--Lebedev is responsible for a publication that has experienced the high-profile killing of several of the country's leading reporters. Anna Politkovskaya, murdered in the elevator of her apartment building in 2006, was his top staffer; she too had exposed atrocities in Chechnya, and Markelov was her lawyer. Igor Domnikov was killed in a brutal beating in 2000. His colleague Yury Shchekochikhin was poisoned in 2003.
Indeed, the poison cabinet seems to have become a favored anti-dissident weapon of the Russian state, as it was under Stalin. Politkovskaya herself was poisoned (though not fatally) in 2004 when she tried to travel to Beslan during the hostage crisis there. And less than two months after her eventual murder, Alexander Litvinenko, another former KGB agent critical of the Putin regime, was killed in a highly unusual poisoning in London.
In the aftermath of the Markelov-Baburov assassinations, the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Lebedev, perhaps spurred by his KGB experiences, had announced the intention of Novaya Gazeta journalists to petition to arm themselves if necessary. Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov denounced the Russian government for its inability to protect the press and asserted, "We have three options. The first one--to leave and turn off the lights. . . . The second--to stop writing about the special services, corruption, drugs, fascists; to stop investigating the crimes of the powerful. . . . The third option is to somehow defend ourselves."
Russian political life has increasingly assumed a pogrom atmosphere. Markelov had extended his investigation of human rights violations from Chechnya to the central Russian republic of Bashkortostan, which has a Turkic Muslim majority, but has not been the scene of Chechen-style rebellion against Russian rule. At the end of 2004, local police beat up to 1,000 people in Bashkortostan over a period of four days. Markelov had warned against "the spread of the Chechnya syndrome throughout other regions of Russia" and exposed the existence of a secret "order number 870" issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2003, which authorized the police to declare states of emergency without informing the public and to follow them up with repressive actions.
One of his closest friends, an academic named Vladislav Bugera, described Markelov as a perhaps naïve product of the old Soviet way of life. Writing in the online periodical Johnson's Russia List, Bugera called the dead lawyer a "socialist and an internationalist" whose many causes included an independent labor union, but whose socialism was "moderate . . . and reformist. . . . He was a reliable person. You could always be sure of him. . . . He is my hero."
Needless to say, a return to socialist ideals would stand no chance of protecting human rights from state abuse. Russia has been through its dark eras of internal strife and compulsory social experiment; Putinism, now aggravated by the global economic crisis, represents an attempt to revive aspects of both. The staggering challenge before Russian supporters of democracy is to find a way to construct a new and unburdened system of individual rights, secured by due process. Russian democrats and those abroad who would help them can ill afford to look away from the blood of Russian lawyers and journalists shed in the street.
Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
U.S. Congratulates Kosovo on One Year of Independence
U.S. Congratulates Kosovo on One Year of Independence. By Gordon Duguid, Acting Deputy Department Spokesman, Office of the Spokesman
US State Dept, Public Affairs, Washington, DC, February 17, 2009
The United States congratulates the people of the Republic of Kosovo as they celebrate the first anniversary of Kosovo’s historic Declaration of Independence. One year ago today Kosovo became a sovereign and independent state.
Over the past year, Kosovo has moved quickly to build democratic institutions and to implement the principles of UN Special Envoy and Nobel Laureate Martti Ahtisaari’s Plan, including strong constitutional protections for minority rights and religious and cultural heritage. Fifty-four countries from every continent have recognized Kosovo, including an overwhelming majority of EU, NATO and OSCE members. As an independent state, Kosovo has welcomed and is coordinating effectively with the EU-led EULEX rule of law mission, NATO, the EU-led International Civilian Office and other representatives of the international community, to build a sound and sustainable economy, a single and transparent rule of law system, and other institutions of a modern, multi-ethnic, European democracy.
The United States commends the efforts of the people and Government of Kosovo to promote stability in the region and work cooperatively across ethnic and religious lines to develop a secure and prosperous future. The Secretary of State looks forward to welcoming the President and Prime Minister of Kosovo to the State Department on February 26 to reaffirm our pledge of friendship and support for Kosovo.
PRN: 133
US State Dept, Public Affairs, Washington, DC, February 17, 2009
The United States congratulates the people of the Republic of Kosovo as they celebrate the first anniversary of Kosovo’s historic Declaration of Independence. One year ago today Kosovo became a sovereign and independent state.
Over the past year, Kosovo has moved quickly to build democratic institutions and to implement the principles of UN Special Envoy and Nobel Laureate Martti Ahtisaari’s Plan, including strong constitutional protections for minority rights and religious and cultural heritage. Fifty-four countries from every continent have recognized Kosovo, including an overwhelming majority of EU, NATO and OSCE members. As an independent state, Kosovo has welcomed and is coordinating effectively with the EU-led EULEX rule of law mission, NATO, the EU-led International Civilian Office and other representatives of the international community, to build a sound and sustainable economy, a single and transparent rule of law system, and other institutions of a modern, multi-ethnic, European democracy.
The United States commends the efforts of the people and Government of Kosovo to promote stability in the region and work cooperatively across ethnic and religious lines to develop a secure and prosperous future. The Secretary of State looks forward to welcoming the President and Prime Minister of Kosovo to the State Department on February 26 to reaffirm our pledge of friendship and support for Kosovo.
PRN: 133
Viktor Yushchenko: Consumers of Russian gas must show a united front
Fueling European Cooperation. By Viktor Yushchenko
Consumers of Russian gas must show a united front.
WSJ, Feb 17, 2009
For those of us who lived under the Soviet Union, there is a certain irony about energy supplies. We may have been in a Cold War with the West, but Soviet gas always flowed uninterrupted across the Iron Curtain. Nowadays, thankfully, the Soviet Union is no more -- and yet Russian gas has become a strategic weapon. Those of us who are net importers cannot help but wonder: Is Moscow saying that gas supplies will be a problem unless it can have its sphere of influence once again?
So long as those countries which rely on Russian gas are divided, we put ourselves in a dependent position. Since 2006, though, alarm bells on the gas issue have been largely ignored. Of course Russia deserves a fair price for the exploitation of its natural resources, but the relationship needs to be rebalanced. The politics need to be taken out of the equation and a more normal commercial relationship established.
Whether Moscow is motivated by political concerns or simply a desire to increase the return on its assets, it is in the interests of all importing countries to coordinate our response. Only by cooperating can we maximize our collective bargaining power and secure our individual national interests.
As significant net importers of energy, Ukraine and the European Union have a clear common interest. Energy security for Ukraine, a major transit country, is also the best guarantee of energy security for our European neighbors. The energy security of the wider European space is therefore indivisible.
A strong response to the challenge we face must have at least three elements: liberalization, diversification and conservation.
By 2030, the International Energy Agency predicts, European gas imports will double because Europe won't be able to supply its own energy needs. Much of the extra supply could come from Russia if the necessary investment is made in new production. But unless action is taken now, importers could be in a very vulnerable position.
Liberalizing its energy industry would be in Russia's own best interests. But it will probably resist appeals to do so until the European Union leads by example: encouraging network operators to invest in interconnectors to build the energy grid and pipeline networks of the future, thereby reducing the risk of one customer being played off against another. Energy independence will come through energy interdependence. We all need international trade in energy to be open, transparent and competitive.
The current economic crisis is causing considerable suffering for both households and businesses. This situation provides an added incentive to solve the problem that arises from all of us, Ukrainians as much as our European friends, being at the mercy of a self-interested monopolist.
Working together, we can secure our mutual interests -- and, in the long term, reduce unnecessary friction with Russia. A single, competitive gas market would help depoliticize the EU-Russia gas relationship, with major foreign-policy benefits for Europe. It would also improve the security of supply for all European gas consumers.
The European Energy Community is the obvious building block for this approach, but its scope needs to extend beyond market liberalization and include more proactive and practical forms of cooperation. For our part, Ukraine is determined to reform our gas sector to encourage investment, increase efficiency by upgrading the pipeline infrastructure to minimize energy loss in transmission, and create a modern EU-compatible energy sector. The EU can further those aims by helping transit countries like Ukraine to reduce reliance on Russian gas, and hence vulnerability to energy blackmail.
One way to reduce reliance on Russia, and an important part of the policy package for any country planning for the long term, is diversification. In Ukraine's case, for example, our untapped Black Sea gas reserves needed to be quantified and exploited with European cooperation. But putting all of our faith in gas is not the answer: The emphasis should be on cleaner technologies. All of us in the European neighborhood can learn from each other to increase the proportion of renewable sources in the energy mix. In other words, limiting global warming and improving our energy security can go hand in hand.
Short-term deals between Moscow and any country, including Ukraine, are no substitute for this kind of comprehensive energy security strategy. Some of the measures will take time to implement, and so it is essential that the Transit Protocol of the legally binding Energy Charter Treaty is concluded as soon as possible. Agreement and ratification would reassure investors in the pipeline network that transit would occur, and our European neighbors that gas will be delivered.
Action, not further debate, is needed. The EU in particular has the capacity to change the entire dynamic of energy relations across Eurasia. But first it must unite and lead.
Across Europe, the pace of energy reform needs to be increased. Equally, we all need to be more forthright in reacting to the use of energy as a tool of foreign policy. Ending divisions in the European house is the only way to assure energy security for our citizens and industries for the decades to come.
European solidarity can bring warm homes -- and warmer relations with Russia.
Mr. Yushchenko is president of Ukraine.
Consumers of Russian gas must show a united front.
WSJ, Feb 17, 2009
For those of us who lived under the Soviet Union, there is a certain irony about energy supplies. We may have been in a Cold War with the West, but Soviet gas always flowed uninterrupted across the Iron Curtain. Nowadays, thankfully, the Soviet Union is no more -- and yet Russian gas has become a strategic weapon. Those of us who are net importers cannot help but wonder: Is Moscow saying that gas supplies will be a problem unless it can have its sphere of influence once again?
So long as those countries which rely on Russian gas are divided, we put ourselves in a dependent position. Since 2006, though, alarm bells on the gas issue have been largely ignored. Of course Russia deserves a fair price for the exploitation of its natural resources, but the relationship needs to be rebalanced. The politics need to be taken out of the equation and a more normal commercial relationship established.
Whether Moscow is motivated by political concerns or simply a desire to increase the return on its assets, it is in the interests of all importing countries to coordinate our response. Only by cooperating can we maximize our collective bargaining power and secure our individual national interests.
As significant net importers of energy, Ukraine and the European Union have a clear common interest. Energy security for Ukraine, a major transit country, is also the best guarantee of energy security for our European neighbors. The energy security of the wider European space is therefore indivisible.
A strong response to the challenge we face must have at least three elements: liberalization, diversification and conservation.
By 2030, the International Energy Agency predicts, European gas imports will double because Europe won't be able to supply its own energy needs. Much of the extra supply could come from Russia if the necessary investment is made in new production. But unless action is taken now, importers could be in a very vulnerable position.
Liberalizing its energy industry would be in Russia's own best interests. But it will probably resist appeals to do so until the European Union leads by example: encouraging network operators to invest in interconnectors to build the energy grid and pipeline networks of the future, thereby reducing the risk of one customer being played off against another. Energy independence will come through energy interdependence. We all need international trade in energy to be open, transparent and competitive.
The current economic crisis is causing considerable suffering for both households and businesses. This situation provides an added incentive to solve the problem that arises from all of us, Ukrainians as much as our European friends, being at the mercy of a self-interested monopolist.
Working together, we can secure our mutual interests -- and, in the long term, reduce unnecessary friction with Russia. A single, competitive gas market would help depoliticize the EU-Russia gas relationship, with major foreign-policy benefits for Europe. It would also improve the security of supply for all European gas consumers.
The European Energy Community is the obvious building block for this approach, but its scope needs to extend beyond market liberalization and include more proactive and practical forms of cooperation. For our part, Ukraine is determined to reform our gas sector to encourage investment, increase efficiency by upgrading the pipeline infrastructure to minimize energy loss in transmission, and create a modern EU-compatible energy sector. The EU can further those aims by helping transit countries like Ukraine to reduce reliance on Russian gas, and hence vulnerability to energy blackmail.
One way to reduce reliance on Russia, and an important part of the policy package for any country planning for the long term, is diversification. In Ukraine's case, for example, our untapped Black Sea gas reserves needed to be quantified and exploited with European cooperation. But putting all of our faith in gas is not the answer: The emphasis should be on cleaner technologies. All of us in the European neighborhood can learn from each other to increase the proportion of renewable sources in the energy mix. In other words, limiting global warming and improving our energy security can go hand in hand.
Short-term deals between Moscow and any country, including Ukraine, are no substitute for this kind of comprehensive energy security strategy. Some of the measures will take time to implement, and so it is essential that the Transit Protocol of the legally binding Energy Charter Treaty is concluded as soon as possible. Agreement and ratification would reassure investors in the pipeline network that transit would occur, and our European neighbors that gas will be delivered.
Action, not further debate, is needed. The EU in particular has the capacity to change the entire dynamic of energy relations across Eurasia. But first it must unite and lead.
Across Europe, the pace of energy reform needs to be increased. Equally, we all need to be more forthright in reacting to the use of energy as a tool of foreign policy. Ending divisions in the European house is the only way to assure energy security for our citizens and industries for the decades to come.
European solidarity can bring warm homes -- and warmer relations with Russia.
Mr. Yushchenko is president of Ukraine.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Germany, Russia, and US foreign policy
The New Ostpolitik, by Melana K. Zyla
America's German problem.
The Weekly Standard, Feb 16, 2009, Volume 014, Issue 21
No sooner had Russia turned off the gas flowing through Ukrainian pipelines in the first days of the new year, sending tens of thousands of Europeans into a deep freeze, than German economy minister Michael Glos pointed out that "if we already had the Nord Stream pipeline," which would bypass Ukraine, flowing from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, "then we in Germany, at least, would be a little more reassured."
The official desire to replace the current Russia-Ukraine pipeline with a Russia-Germany pipeline says a great deal about how Germany sees the gas dispute, and other global issues as well: Get the small fry--Balts, Poles, Ukrainians, and other former Russian suzerainties--out of the way and let Moscow and Berlin restore some Ordnung to things. In the January crisis, Russia cut off gas heading west to Ukrainian pipelines after Ukraine and Russia disagreed over what penalty Ukraine owes Russia for disputed late payment fees, and what the price of the gas should be now that global prices have fallen.
Glos's comment underscores to what degree Berlin has entered a new era of shared interests with Moscow and divergence from Washington. Incoming administration officials would be wise to recognize that on issues ranging from the gas dispute to Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and Iran, the Germany of today is not the partner the United States once had.
President Bush learned that lesson the hard way. His administration at first hailed Germany's Christian Democratic Union chancellor, Angela Merkel, as a foreign-policy soulmate, akin to France's Nicolas Sarkozy. But on issue after issue, she fell short of expectations.
Consider Bush's efforts to expand NATO. In the run-up to a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels in early December, Merkel publicly torpedoed Ukraine and Georgia's chances to proceed towards membership. Her government did the same last spring, ahead of the Bucharest NATO meeting. Both times, news of Germany's opposition coincided with Merkel's visits with Russian leaders, who vociferously oppose Ukraine and Georgia's inclusion in NATO.
Russia's influence "is unfortunate because all of us have said no third party gets a veto" in NATO matters, says Daniel Fata, deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy during Bush's second term. As for Afghanistan, Germany in October announced the withdrawal of its only combat troops there--some 100 special operations soldiers. It plans to expand only its NATO peacekeeping force, to 4,500, and thereby add to the risk of creating what Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called a "two-tier alliance," in which only the United States and a few other NATO countries do the fighting. Germany's own soldiers don't think much of their restricted, noncombat missions, with Ger-many's top special operations general, Hans-Christoph Ammon, calling his country's training of an Afghan police force a "miserable failure" and adding that at Germany's current rate of effort and financing, "it would take 82 years to have a properly trained Afghan police force." Indeed, the United States has had to take over Germany's police-training mission.
Merkel supporters try to explain her weakness as a result of her sharing power with the left-leaning Social Democratic party. Yet Labour-led Britain has 8,050 troops in Afghanistan, many of them in combat roles.
Which raises the question: With German conservatives like these, who needs Socialist pacifists? In 2006, after a newly elected Merkel gave a tough speech on making the trans-Atlantic relationship her priority, "we had hoped that we would see a big change" from the anti-American politics of the outgoing Social Democratic chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, says Fata. Instead, "there was a lot of disappointment on our side."
And there's the prospect of more disappointment to come. Merkel is now in an election year in which she will face off against Frank-Walter Steinmeier, her foreign minister and vice-chancellor from the Social Democratic party. Until the September vote, she's likely to channel Steinmeier's views, particularly the pro-Moscow ones. That's because she wants "to avoid having Russia [be] a topic of the election campaign," says Joerg Himmelreich, transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
German voters don't like Vladimir Putin, says Himmelreich, a former policy-planning staffer at the German foreign ministry and banker in Moscow. But as Fata puts it, "Germany and Russia are always going to have a special relationship," not least because of Germany's dependency on Russian energy and large amounts of trade with Russia.
Of course, Germany's Christian Democrats often showed great solidarity with Washington, even in the face of solicitousness from Moscow, during the Cold War. But even if Merkel's party regains a majority in 2009, that tradition may be gone for good. For one thing, the party's base is German industry, which is now heavily invested in Russia and dependent on Russian gas. Germany gets one-third of its gas from Russia, and will be dependent on that source for years--even if it does develop alternatives. Moreover, German companies and the political class are heavily tied to the Nord Stream pipeline project, which is controlled by Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom.
Indeed, gas is the leading means through which Moscow manipulates Berlin. Gazprom's gas cutoffs this January, like those in 2006, prompted Germans and other West Europeans to see Ukraine as an unstable partner that gets in the way of their economic needs: Cut Ukraine out of the relationship, and things will be golden is the message from Moscow.
In Russia's gas politics with Germany, the most powerful connection of all is between Gazprom and former chancellor Schröder. He chairs the $16 billion Nord Stream project, which is 51 percent owned by Gazprom. Schröder's service to Gazprom may be the most disturbing illustration of Moscow's influence on German elites ("It has never happened in German history that a chancellor acts as an agent of a foreign company that doesn't always follow the interests of Germany," says Himmelreich), but it's hardly the only one. Himmelreich says Berlin's foreign policy think tanks are pressured by Moscow. Even the prestigious German Council on Foreign Relations, he says, has been pressed not to invite Putin critics or Russian opposition voices to its events.
The head of the Council's Russia program, Alexander Rahr, confirmed that there have been occasions when "official Russia criticized us," but added, "we never adjusted our themes and seminars to their wishes."
Beyond Russia, there's a gap between Germany's tough rhetoric and action on Iran as well. While Merkel and Steinmeier have been critical of Iran's nuclear ambitions and blocked Germany's biggest banks from doing business there, Germany's economic relations with Iran continue to grow. With annual trade between the two now over $7 billion, Germany is Iran's biggest EU trading partner.
Berlin's interests now diverge from Washington's on several key issues. The new administration's best chance to lead on issues of concern to Europe will therefore be to play Europeans off each other the way Moscow does, Himmelreich says. For example, "German policy towards Russia will be considerably weakened if the United States succeeds in getting Sarkozy onboard for a new Russia policy." The United States should support energy transport routes for Europe that bypass Russia, such as those that tap Central Asian energy, and be wary of Gazprom's efforts to gain control of gas interests in North Africa, which remain an alternative source for Western Europe. Himmelreich says the United States should also push Europeans to improve their military capabilities.
On NATO, the United States will need to continue to push to bring Georgia and Ukraine into the fold. Otherwise, Russia will control the issue, using Germany to represent its interests. How strongly Berlin will ultimately embrace Moscow isn't clear. But as the gas and NATO disputes show, the two are now more tightly linked than they have been in decades.
Melana K. Zyla is a reporter in Washington.
America's German problem.
The Weekly Standard, Feb 16, 2009, Volume 014, Issue 21
No sooner had Russia turned off the gas flowing through Ukrainian pipelines in the first days of the new year, sending tens of thousands of Europeans into a deep freeze, than German economy minister Michael Glos pointed out that "if we already had the Nord Stream pipeline," which would bypass Ukraine, flowing from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, "then we in Germany, at least, would be a little more reassured."
The official desire to replace the current Russia-Ukraine pipeline with a Russia-Germany pipeline says a great deal about how Germany sees the gas dispute, and other global issues as well: Get the small fry--Balts, Poles, Ukrainians, and other former Russian suzerainties--out of the way and let Moscow and Berlin restore some Ordnung to things. In the January crisis, Russia cut off gas heading west to Ukrainian pipelines after Ukraine and Russia disagreed over what penalty Ukraine owes Russia for disputed late payment fees, and what the price of the gas should be now that global prices have fallen.
Glos's comment underscores to what degree Berlin has entered a new era of shared interests with Moscow and divergence from Washington. Incoming administration officials would be wise to recognize that on issues ranging from the gas dispute to Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and Iran, the Germany of today is not the partner the United States once had.
President Bush learned that lesson the hard way. His administration at first hailed Germany's Christian Democratic Union chancellor, Angela Merkel, as a foreign-policy soulmate, akin to France's Nicolas Sarkozy. But on issue after issue, she fell short of expectations.
Consider Bush's efforts to expand NATO. In the run-up to a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels in early December, Merkel publicly torpedoed Ukraine and Georgia's chances to proceed towards membership. Her government did the same last spring, ahead of the Bucharest NATO meeting. Both times, news of Germany's opposition coincided with Merkel's visits with Russian leaders, who vociferously oppose Ukraine and Georgia's inclusion in NATO.
Russia's influence "is unfortunate because all of us have said no third party gets a veto" in NATO matters, says Daniel Fata, deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy during Bush's second term. As for Afghanistan, Germany in October announced the withdrawal of its only combat troops there--some 100 special operations soldiers. It plans to expand only its NATO peacekeeping force, to 4,500, and thereby add to the risk of creating what Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called a "two-tier alliance," in which only the United States and a few other NATO countries do the fighting. Germany's own soldiers don't think much of their restricted, noncombat missions, with Ger-many's top special operations general, Hans-Christoph Ammon, calling his country's training of an Afghan police force a "miserable failure" and adding that at Germany's current rate of effort and financing, "it would take 82 years to have a properly trained Afghan police force." Indeed, the United States has had to take over Germany's police-training mission.
Merkel supporters try to explain her weakness as a result of her sharing power with the left-leaning Social Democratic party. Yet Labour-led Britain has 8,050 troops in Afghanistan, many of them in combat roles.
Which raises the question: With German conservatives like these, who needs Socialist pacifists? In 2006, after a newly elected Merkel gave a tough speech on making the trans-Atlantic relationship her priority, "we had hoped that we would see a big change" from the anti-American politics of the outgoing Social Democratic chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, says Fata. Instead, "there was a lot of disappointment on our side."
And there's the prospect of more disappointment to come. Merkel is now in an election year in which she will face off against Frank-Walter Steinmeier, her foreign minister and vice-chancellor from the Social Democratic party. Until the September vote, she's likely to channel Steinmeier's views, particularly the pro-Moscow ones. That's because she wants "to avoid having Russia [be] a topic of the election campaign," says Joerg Himmelreich, transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
German voters don't like Vladimir Putin, says Himmelreich, a former policy-planning staffer at the German foreign ministry and banker in Moscow. But as Fata puts it, "Germany and Russia are always going to have a special relationship," not least because of Germany's dependency on Russian energy and large amounts of trade with Russia.
Of course, Germany's Christian Democrats often showed great solidarity with Washington, even in the face of solicitousness from Moscow, during the Cold War. But even if Merkel's party regains a majority in 2009, that tradition may be gone for good. For one thing, the party's base is German industry, which is now heavily invested in Russia and dependent on Russian gas. Germany gets one-third of its gas from Russia, and will be dependent on that source for years--even if it does develop alternatives. Moreover, German companies and the political class are heavily tied to the Nord Stream pipeline project, which is controlled by Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom.
Indeed, gas is the leading means through which Moscow manipulates Berlin. Gazprom's gas cutoffs this January, like those in 2006, prompted Germans and other West Europeans to see Ukraine as an unstable partner that gets in the way of their economic needs: Cut Ukraine out of the relationship, and things will be golden is the message from Moscow.
In Russia's gas politics with Germany, the most powerful connection of all is between Gazprom and former chancellor Schröder. He chairs the $16 billion Nord Stream project, which is 51 percent owned by Gazprom. Schröder's service to Gazprom may be the most disturbing illustration of Moscow's influence on German elites ("It has never happened in German history that a chancellor acts as an agent of a foreign company that doesn't always follow the interests of Germany," says Himmelreich), but it's hardly the only one. Himmelreich says Berlin's foreign policy think tanks are pressured by Moscow. Even the prestigious German Council on Foreign Relations, he says, has been pressed not to invite Putin critics or Russian opposition voices to its events.
The head of the Council's Russia program, Alexander Rahr, confirmed that there have been occasions when "official Russia criticized us," but added, "we never adjusted our themes and seminars to their wishes."
Beyond Russia, there's a gap between Germany's tough rhetoric and action on Iran as well. While Merkel and Steinmeier have been critical of Iran's nuclear ambitions and blocked Germany's biggest banks from doing business there, Germany's economic relations with Iran continue to grow. With annual trade between the two now over $7 billion, Germany is Iran's biggest EU trading partner.
Berlin's interests now diverge from Washington's on several key issues. The new administration's best chance to lead on issues of concern to Europe will therefore be to play Europeans off each other the way Moscow does, Himmelreich says. For example, "German policy towards Russia will be considerably weakened if the United States succeeds in getting Sarkozy onboard for a new Russia policy." The United States should support energy transport routes for Europe that bypass Russia, such as those that tap Central Asian energy, and be wary of Gazprom's efforts to gain control of gas interests in North Africa, which remain an alternative source for Western Europe. Himmelreich says the United States should also push Europeans to improve their military capabilities.
On NATO, the United States will need to continue to push to bring Georgia and Ukraine into the fold. Otherwise, Russia will control the issue, using Germany to represent its interests. How strongly Berlin will ultimately embrace Moscow isn't clear. But as the gas and NATO disputes show, the two are now more tightly linked than they have been in decades.
Melana K. Zyla is a reporter in Washington.
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