Washington Times, DC
Sept 20 2004
Response gone awry
By Ariel Cohen
Three days after the tragedy of Beslan ended, we sat for more than 3½
hours with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Between picking up the pieces of the worst terrorist attack to
date in Russia and planning a massive power consolidation, the
energetic Russian leader still found time to meet with leading
Western scholars and journalists, answering our questions at length,
totally unscripted.
Unfiltered, Mr. Putin was a strange mix of tough pragmatism and
Soviet nostalgia. He was shaken by Walkie-Talkie intercepts of
terrorists shooting children in Beslan “for fun” and by the horrible
conditions in northern Russian camps to which Josef Stalin exiled the
Chechens 60 years ago. “The first Chechen war was probably a
mistake,” Mr. Putin said. But what about the second war he started in
1999?
Mr. Putin repeatedly bemoaned the passing of the Soviet “great
power” – 13 years after its demise. He recognized Soviet ideology
suppressed real ethnic conflicts, and that new secure borders have
not been erected. Yet he also questioned the sovereignty of
neighboring countries such as Georgia. Today, Russia is slowly
absorbing its constituent parts, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while
thwarting Chechen bids to secede.
President Putin missed an opportunity to reach out to the U.S.
after the horror of Beslan. In response to my question, he launched a
long tirade about the Soviet Union and United States releasing the
jinni of terror from its bottle.
He believes the Western powers want to keep Russia down by
supporting Chechen separatism, noting Britain and the U.S. granted
asylum to some Chechen leaders, and that Western intelligence
services maintain contacts with Chechen fighters.
As an intelligence professional, Mr. Putin should appreciate the
difference between information gathering and operational support.
Instead, he overstated his view of the West’s desire to create an
irritant for Russia. In an earlier speech to the nation, Mr. Putin
went further, saying foreign powers are interested in dismembering
Russia and neutralizing it as a nuclear power. Nevertheless, he is
open to antiterrorism cooperation, and indicated “professionals” on
both sides are thus engaged.
President Putin left enough common ground to believe cooperation
is possible with the West in the war on terror. He called President
Bush a “good, decent man,” a reliable and predictable partner,
someone he can “feel as a human being.”
From his remarks, it is clear Mr. Putin genuinely likes George
Bush and wants him re-elected, something media at the event
studiously ignored. After all, doesn’t John Kerry say foreign leaders
are support him?
Mr. Putin three times mentioned Russia, the U.S. and Western
Europe belong to “Christian civilization and European culture,” to
which a prominent French writer for Le Monde commented maybe Russia
does but not the United States.
Mr. Putin has the global geopolitics right, especially when it
comes to connections between the Chechen and other radical Islamist
terrorists in the Northern Caucasus, to global jihadi sources of
funding, political-religious indoctrination and volunteer recruitment
and training.
He criticized the West for allowing fund-raising for the Chechen
cause from Michigan to London to Abu Dhabi, but seemed unaware the
U.S. Treasury recently busted Al Haramain, a Saudi global “charity”
connected to Osama bin Laden, involved in supporting the Chechens.
Mr. Putin also correctly noted the West shouldn’t want to see
terrorists come to power anywhere on Earth, should not demand anyone
negotiate with child killers, and that it is not in Western interests
to see the Russian Federation dismembered.
It is the Russian president’s actions after Beslan, more than his
rhetoric, which point to missed opportunities in the wake of Russia’s
September 11. Instead of revamping, retraining and reorganizing
Russia’s antiterrorist and security services, Mr. Putin has opted for
massively recentralizing power. In doing so, he is taking the country
back to a future reminiscent of the czarist era. Mr. Putin
essentially is applying the 19th century Russian imperial model and
the Soviet security state apparatus to a 21st century state rife with
terror and corruption.
Nostalgia for the Soviet past may beget new authoritarianism, as
Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev warned in their Sept.
16, 2004 interviews. In this crisis, the Russian president has
empowered himself and his inner circle, not the people of Russia.
Presidential appointment of Russia’s 89 regional governors instead of
popular elections, and establishment of a disempowered and toothless
“public chamber” to oversee security services instead of effective
civilian controls will not solve Russia’s terrorism problems.
The security services that failed to prevent or resolve the
Beslan tragedy and Mr. Putin has not reformed after five years in
office are still a Soviet-style, quasi-totalitarian political control
mechanism. They are not the hat Russia needs to wear in confronting
modern local and global terrorism.
Islamist jihadi terrorism is a new enemy – not the old enemy of
the Cold War. In response, Russia’s antiterror approach needs
rethinking and revamping, with new structures for the 21st century
set up to deal with global terrorism.
A new anti-terror doctrine and effective organizational structure
to coordinate intelligence and operations are needed. The U.S., Great
Britain and Israel can offer help. The time for cooperation against a
common enemy is now.
The Bush administration, however, faces a real challenge in
Russia’s questioning of Georgia’s sovereignty in the Caucausus and
playing fast and loose with her post-Soviet borders.
By trying to pull South Ossetia and Abkhazia into Moscow’s orbit,
the Kremlin also may strengthen Chechen separatism. This policy opens
the doors to revising other borders, such as Northern Kazakhstan,
Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, and even Nagorno-Karabakh.
Undermining the territorial integrity of neighbors is unacceptable to
the U.S. and dangerous for Russia.
In crises, countries and leaders fall back on their time-tested
political instincts and patterns. Mr. Putin’s recentralization proves
Russia after its barbaric terrorist trauma is no exception.
Ariel Cohen is research fellow in Russian and Eurasian studies at
the Heritage Foundation. He had tea Sept. 6 with Russian President
Vladimir Putin and a group of foreign policy experts.
