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Russia flirts with US's axis of
evil
By Ehsan Ahrari
As the
United States becomes increasingly assertive about the
use of its military muscles in different parts of the
world, Russia is also determining its own zones of
cooperation and competition with that lone superpower.
Russia will cooperate on issues that it regards as part
of its zone of comfort. On issues that fall in the zone
of competition, it will almost invariably choose its own
courses of action regardless of whether this will put it
at odds with Washington.
Russia may not yet know
fully what its status is likely to be in the expanding
pax Americana, whose borders are getting closer to its
own from all directions, through the expansion of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization and through the
"Partnership for Peace", but Moscow has no problem in
determining the issues on which it will cooperate with
the United States and on which it will compete.
Cooperation against transnational terrorism
definitely falls into Russia's zone of comfort, since it
serves its own objective of dealing with Chechen
separatists. President Vladimir Putin knows that he has
ample leeway in brutally dealing with the Chechen
secessionists, whom he has been calling "terrorists". He
also knows that the Bush administration is not going to
be bothered with the details of his brutalities in
fighting those "terrorists", as long as America's own
military campaign against al-Qaeda continues in
Afghanistan and other parts of the region.
But
on President George W Bush's axis of evil countries -
Iran, Iraq and North Korea - Putin has unmistakably
decided to compete with Washington without indulging in
contentious rhetoric. Let's examine the evidence.
Iran
Russia has maintained a long and
uninterrupted policy of aiding Iran in its endeavors to
develop its nuclear program. One has to go as far back
as 1993, when former president Boris Yeltsin refused to
abandon selling nuclear technology to Russia's neighbor.
Even though later on under his presidency Russia agreed
to cooperate with the US to a certain extent - for
instance, giving Washington a detailed list of
nuclear-related technology transfer to Iran - Moscow
never shared Washington's insistence that Iran was
indeed bent on developing nuclear weapons. Under Putin,
that overall policy toward Iran continues with steadfast
resolve. As recently as July 2002, Russia announced that
it intended to build five more nuclear power reactors in
Iran over the next decade, which was, indeed, a pointed
broadening of the scope of its persistent cooperation
with Tehran, in defiance of US pressure to the contrary.
Iraq
Iraq is another country with
which Russia has consistently maintained a perspective
in marked contrast to that of the United States. While
Washington labels Iraq as part of the evil trio, Moscow
seeks strong trade ties. In fact, even during Operation
Desert Storm in 1991, when Russia sided with the United
States, it never really abandoned the option of a
negotiated resolution of the Iraqi withdrawal from
Kuwait. It was generally believed then that Moscow did
not prefer to see destruction of the Iraqi military
infrastructure, since Iraq manifested every intention of
continuing huge military purchases from Moscow after the
settlement of the Iraq-Kuwait dispute. Iraq was reported
to have owed Moscow close to US$20 billion for
pre-Desert Storm transactions.
During the
Clinton and Bush years, Russia has insisted that the
issue of the United Nations inspection of Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction sites should be linked with the
lifting of economic sanctions. It was only after
extracting Russia's consent in March 2002 that the US
succeeded in pushing through the UN Security Council the
notion of "smart sanctions" against Iraq. But when the
Bush administration intensified its rhetoric on toppling
Saddam Hussein through military actions, Moscow made
clear its disapproval of such measures. That
announcement left the US with the option of either
toppling Saddam unilaterally, or negotiating its
modalities with Russia within the framework of the UN.
There is little doubt that a unilateral military action
against Iraq is becoming increasingly unpopular
worldwide. Even the United Kingdom, America's closest
ally, expressed its disapproval, as criticism of Prime
Minister Tony Blair inside that country was getting
increasingly voluble. However, if the US were to
approach Russia with a view to negotiating the
modalities of a potential military action against Iraq,
there is little doubt that Moscow would reject it out of
hand.
To further clarify its opposition to
military actions against the Saddam regime, the
government of Vladimir Putin has been negotiating a
substantial trade deal with Iraq. However, as the talk
of US attacks on Iraq continue to heat up, one wonders
why Russia has gone ahead with a reported $20 billion,
or even $100 billion deal. Sources inside Moscow
speculate that regardless of whether Iraq is attacked,
Russia is determined to safeguard its economic
interests. The thinking inside the Kremlin is reported
to be that if a large trade deal with Iraq is signed
before military invasion of that country, the chances
are Russia would not be frozen out from massive
reconstruction of Iraq during post-Saddam years.
However, if there were no attack on Iraq, Moscow would
continue to extract huge financial benefits from trading
with Iraq.
North Korea
Putin agreed to
a hurriedly scheduled trip by President Kim Jong-il of
North Korea, which ended at the weekend. There appear to
be two strong rationales underlying this meeting. First,
and specifically, there is the fact that Russia wishes
to enhance its trade with North Korea, which is reported
to have plummeted by 80 percent, to a low of $115
million in 2001. Moscow aims to reap "billions of
dollars in transit fees once North Korea opens its part
of the railway and South Korean goods start pouring into
Europe across Russia," as one analyst says. Second,
Russia clearly intends to signal to the rest of the
world, but particularly to the United States, that its
decision to cooperate with the US since September 11,
indeed has limitations and exceptions.
There is
little doubt that the Bush administration is annoyed
with Russia's unabashed embrace of the axis countries.
North Korea recently added another irritating wrinkle
when Washington announced that the marketing arm of
Changgwang Siyong Corporation, a company in North Korea,
had sold Scud missile components to Yemen. That Persian
Gulf state is reported to have 18 Scud missiles in its
arsenal. Given that al-Qaeda has been very active in
Yemen, Washington views this development with grave
concern.
The nuclear arms negotiations also
clearly fall into the zone of competition, and Moscow
has been consistently proving that point. On June 15,
Russia pulled out of the START II treaty. Realistically
speaking, this was not a major negative development
because the legislatures in Washington and Moscow
ratified different versions of that treaty, thereby
preventing it from entering into force. From the
symbolic perspective, however, this was a significant
measure. Putin has been coming under strong pressure
from Russian nationalist and hardline groups for being
overly conciliatory to his friend George Bush on arms
control.
It should be noted that the United
States' decision to unilaterally withdraw from the 1972
ABM Treaty was begging for a Russian response. However,
since Putin is doing his own calculations of what his
next move on that issue has to be, pulling out of the
START II treaty emerged as an ideal response; it also
enables Russia to allow the American and Russian
hardliners to draw complementary conclusions. The Bush
administration is likely to find solace by pointing out
that the Russian withdrawal lacks any major political
meaning to overall US-Russia ties, thereby muting the
criticism of American conservatives. Thus, even by
making a substantive decision on START II, Russia
remains well within its own comfort zone. However, the
Russian hardliners and nationalist groups may view the
same decision from the perspective of "tit-for-tat" and
draw comfort from the fact that their country stood up
to the United States. In other words, they are likely to
consider it as an integral part of the competitive zone
in which Russia - as a "wannabe" superpower - is still
defying the United States.
An important Russian
decision on its strategic missiles also falls well
within the competitive zone. Russian Defense Minister
Igor Ivanov announced that his country had decided to
"extend the service life of some strategic missiles
equipped with multiple warheads, which had been due to
be taken out of service". Russia is also of the view
that the new generation of Topol-M missile "can defeat
any missile defense system envisaged by the United
States ..." The US government uses this very same claim
to assure Moscow that "its limited shield will prove no
threat to Russia's deterrent".
But Russia's main
source of comfort related to Bush's decisions to abandon
the ABM treaty and proceed with the national missile
defense (NMD) systems is the fact that, technologically
speaking, the NMD is not yet a reality. When the
credible technology to defend against ballistic missiles
emerges, Russia is also confident that through the
process of "overwhelming" any antiballistic missile
systems, its nuclear deterrence would still prevail. In
fact, there are reasons to believe that both Russia and
China are assiduously working on developing
sophisticated countermeasures to any antiballistic
missile systems.
Such latent and unequivocal
tit-for-tat measures underscore the fact that as great
powers, Russia and the United States are likely to
maintain their competitive relationship for quite some
time. Whether the cooperative aspect of this
relationship continues its high visibility has a lot to
do with whether the United States continues to enjoy its
current ample advantage over Russia in terms of economic
and sheer military power. In the meantime, Russia will
fully exploit issues from its zone of competition, and
will even work to widen their scope.
Ehsan
Ahrari, PhD, is a Norfolk, Virginia, US-based
strategic analyst.
(©2002 Asia Times Online
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