QUIET DIPLOMACY. THE KREMLIN SEEMS TO HAVE CAVED, WONDERS ERIC WALBERG
Eric Walberg
Australia.TO
Eric Walberg
A little over 40 per cent of Russians consider Russian-US relations
strained or hostile, down slightly from 2004 when 46 per cent said they
considered the US to be Russia’s adversary. United States President
Barack Obama’s world PR campaign is working, despite the issues
dividing the two countries, from Star Wars missiles in Poland and US
plans for cyber warfare, to NATO’s love-affair with Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan to name just a few of Russia’s neighbours.
So Russia’s agreement, announced at Obama’s summit in Moscow 6-8 July,
to ferry primarily US troops and arms through Russian land and air
space to Afghanistan to accelerate the slaughter there – without
any reciprocation on other outstanding issues – comes as a bit of a
surprise. Obama faces a reservoir of resentment among Russians who
believe that the US has rarely followed through on its occasional
peace gestures. "At this point, there is a little bit of hope and a
lot of distrust," said talk show host Vladimir Pozner on Channel One.
If the object is to stem the flood of opium, there is lots of evidence
that the current Afghan government and the US occupiers themselves
actually benefit from this lucrative business, and that the only
conceivable endgame which the US can salvage there – a secular
military dictatorship propped up by the US – will never deal with
this albeit serious problem for Russia. True, Russia also fears the
catalysing effect of a Taliban victory on its Muslim Central Asian
neighbours. It apparently wants any kind of secular government in
Afghanistan, come hell or high water.
But the humiliation of so directly supporting the US military campaign
in Afghanistan after the earlier US-sponsored campaign there which
destroyed the Soviet Union and led to the deaths of 15,000 Soviet
soldiers is surely not lost on the Kremlin. And to drop this plum in
Washington’s lap as it continues to insist that Ukraine and Georgia
will soon join NATO and that Poland will have its missiles looks
too good to be true from the US perspective. Maybe the Kremlin is
deriving some satisfaction from abetting the US in what it sees as
a losing battle in Afghanistan, letting the Taliban give US troops
some of the medicine inflicted on Soviet troops in yesteryear?
In addition to his meetings with President Dmitri Medvedev, Obama
met Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, though he publically scolded him
prior to the summit. "It’s important that even as we move forward with
President Medvedev, Putin understands that the old Cold War approach
to US-Russian relations is outdated … I think Putin has one foot
in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new, and to
the extent that we can provide him and the Russian people a clear
sense that the US is not seeking an antagonistic relationship but
wants co-operation on nuclear non-proliferation, fighting terrorism,
energy issues, that we’ll end up having a stronger partner overall."
This is diplo-speak for "Take us or leave us." Special assistant
to the president and senior director for Russian affairs on the
National Security Council Michael McFaul made the point less nicely
when he said, "We don’t need the Russians." This taunting of Putin
was formalised by a US suggestion to establish a Biden-Putin working
group to renegotiation the START treaty which expires in December,
named after the Gore-Chernomyrdin task force that negotiated the
1991 treaty when Al Gore was VP and Viktor Chernomyrdin was Russian
PM. That suggestion was immediately brushed aside. "I am not a vice
president," said Putin coldly.
Obama also visited Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. None of the
three presidents gave any ground on the missile bases, including
Gorbachev, who told talk-show host Pozner the missile bases are aimed
at creating a situation that makes it possible for NATO to be first
to launch a nuclear strike while staying under its own shield. "There
is a need for a common European security, which was written at a
conference in Paris in 1990." The USSR was preparing its answer to
Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, Gorbachev said. "I did
not agree then and do not agree now with the opinions that it is a
bluff and that one should not pay attention to it."
The Obama camp may not be as united on the missile issue as the
Russians are. Obama acknowledged "Russian sensitivities" in a Novaya
Gazeta interview but made clear he would not link arms-control talks
to missile defence. Grasping at straws, Medvedev said, "The current
administration is prepared for discussions. I think we are smart enough
to find a reasonable solution here. Really, to get this problem solved,
one must not necessarily cross out the decisions made earlier."
Obama threw him a bone by reiterating his readiness to draw a line
between offensive and defensive weapons, something that Bush had
refused to do since America withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty in
2001. The sides agreed to limit their nuclear arsenals to 1,500-1,675
warheads with the cap on the number of delivery vehicles set as low
as 500-1,100 units.
No public mention was made of Georgia and Ukraine actually joining
NATO, with Obama stressing, "NATO seeks collaboration with Russia,
not confrontation." But he nonetheless sent (allowed?) Vice President
Joseph Biden to fly directly from Moscow to Georgia and Ukraine after
the summit. "We’re not going to reassure or give or trade anything
with the Russians regarding NATO expansion or missile defense,"
warned McFaul.
Here again, the US administration is not united, with Obama having
made no firm commitment to further NATO expansion. Just how much say
he actually has in such strategic decisions is a moot point.
Obama was hoping to throw the Russians another bone by assuring them
admission to the World Trade Organisation. But Putin unexpectedly
suspended Moscow’s membership bid in June, deciding to approach the
issue jointly through a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan,
without the need for US "help".
After years of increasing strain, Moscow clearly did its best to
ensure the summit was a success, giving Obama lots of rope. But
Obama’s apparent attempt to drive a wedge between Putin and Medvedev
will not bear fruit. If the US pushes ahead with its missile bases,
it is unlikely that even a cowed Moscow will go along with START II,
despite its own desire to rid itself of costly, useless weapons. Maybe
McFaul’s crack about not needing the Russians means the US really
doesn’t give a damn about START.
The new Russian WTO plan, in light of the recent BRIC and SCO summits
in Russia, suggests that the Russian government is more concerned about
putting flesh on its project of creating a multipolar world than with
confronting the US directly anymore. Perhaps planners are willing to
let the US continue its Afghan gambit, gambling that it will merely
sap US strength while helping to fill Russian coffers, a kind of poor
man’s revenge on Russia’s Cold War enemy. Analyst Fyodor Lukyanov sees
the establishing of a customs union with Russian neighbours as part
of Russian plans to "transform itself into a centre of integration."
There has indeed been a significant change in Russia’s relations with
the rest of the world in the past few years, but it is not necessarily
the one Washington would like. It’s not so much a question of Russia
ceding to US hegemony, as Obama’s hawks think, but of acknowledging
that Russia is not the powerful player that the Soviet Union was,
and that the best Russia can do is help usher in a non-US centric
multipolar world, which will include disparate allies from all but the
North American continent and act to limit the US empire’s wilder plans.
It’s one of realism on the Kremlin’s part, faced with an array of
tinpot "democracies" around it, ready to sell out to what they see as
the highest bidder. The most glaring example of this is Kyrgyzstan’s
President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who played Russia and the US off
against each other over its Manas airbase, first telling the US to
get lost when Russia promised $2.15 billion in aid, and then last
month reversing the decision and allowing the US to stay, tripling
the rent and extracting other goodies in the process. Even Russophile
Lukashenko in Belarus plays the same game with Russia and Europe. And
then there’s Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov, who said yes and
then no an agreement on the Collective Rapid Reaction Forces, not
to mention Turkmenistan, Georiga, Armenia, Azerbaijan or Lithuania,
and on and on. "A game of chance has developed in the post-Soviet
space: Who can swindle the Kremlin in the coolest way?" wrote analyst
Aleksandr Golts when news of the Manas decision broke.
Eric Walberg Russia cannot compete with NATO, certainly not without
strengthening the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and certainly not with Afghanistan
a black hole threatening to suck in its Central Asian neighbours. The
CSTO is important less as a counterbalance to NATO than as a viable
guarantor of regional security and it’s only a matter of time for
Russia’s neighbours to realise this.
It looks like Washington has won this stand-off with Moscow, getting
its Afghanistan yellow-brick road and its Polish cake. The market
value of allying with flashy but fair-weather Washington outshines
the more reliable but less alluring Moscow for the present. But
US support is for local elites willing to do its bidding. Local
populations will gain nothing, and they are wiser than their leaders,
with fond memories of their Russian bulwark. The US may have won
the battle. Let the US and NATO play out their lethal games in Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere. "Progress must be shared," Obama said in
his "Moscow speech" to university students. Let’s see what fruits
his policies bear that we can divvy up.