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COMMENTARY
Putin's tacit strategic
agenda
By Ehsan Ahrari
Russia's President Vladimir Putin is clearly
showing his frustration with the growing political
influence of the United States and its military presence
that now reaches the Russian borders with three Baltic
States - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, along with
Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania - invited to
join NATO on November 21. But Russia is determined to
make the best of a seemingly not very pleasant situation
stemming from the intermittent expansion of that
alliance, and still seeks avenues to maximize its
advantage. It is a tricky maneuver, but Putin is getting
very good at it.
To no one's surprise, President
George W Bush has adopted a pattern of single-mindedly
pursuing America's strategic interests through NATO, yet
making sure that it is done by minimizing Russia's
irritation and agony, and, more to the point, by keeping
Moscow fully engaged. Former president Bill Clinton did
exactly that throughout his presidency.
Two
Russian presidents, Boris Yeltsin and now Putin, have
had little choice but to swallow the bitter pill of
accepting the reality of NATO's growing membership. But
they have behaved differently. Yeltsin went through
tirades in expressing frustrations to Clinton, yet
making sure that the latter understood that Russia was
trying its best not to act as a sore loser. Clinton, in
turn, rebutted almost all arguments that Yeltsin
presented, but also made sure that Yeltsin's ego was
appropriately massaged in the process.
In the
grand chess game of power politics - as Yeltsin knew in
previous years, as Putin does now - Russia may no longer
be a declining power, since it already hit rock bottom
when the Soviet Union imploded, but it still has ways to
go before it becomes a rising power. Putin continues to
express his skepticism regarding NATO expansion (what
Igor Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister, describes as
that alliance's "mechanical expansion"), but said that
Moscow was not ruling out closer Russia-NATO ties.
Putin is fully aware of the fact that the United
States' star continues to rise. While begrudgingly
accepting the ascending American power and prestige,
Putin is driven by a very elaborate and shrewd agenda,
which contains the following elements.
First, he
is ensuring that Washington perceives his country as an
ally on the issue of fighting transnational terrorism.
Toward that end, he has sought to legitimize his
government's handling of the hostage crisis of October
23 when a group of Chechens took over a theater in
Moscow. Russia decided to use fentanyl - a potent
opium-based narcotic - before its special forces
conducted an assault. The result was as horrible as it
was embarrassing. It caused 115 deaths, including all
the hostage-takers. Bush was only too eager to oblige.
He pointed out that the responsibility for those deaths
should be firmly placed on the hostage-takers, and not
on the Russian government.
Second, Putin wanted
more than mere acquiescence. He was clearly interested
in widening the scope of the war on terrorism by seeking
a general Western acceptance of his repeated assertions
that the Chechen separatists and transnational terrorism
are intertwined. In the aftermath of the October 23
tragedy, no European leader was sticking his neck out by
appearing to be endorsing the Russian brutality in
ending it. But Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great
Britain lived up to the European characterization of him
as George Bush's poodle and stated, "A deadly mixture of
religious and political fanaticism is being used." He
went on to link the Chechen hostage-taking to the
terrorist attacks in Bali, and the murder of an American
diplomat in Jordan.
The Russian media are also
determined to help Putin link the Chechen struggle for
independence with global terrorism, and by underscoring
the commonality of this threat to Washington and Moscow.
Izvestia depicted it as a part of "war of
civilizations". Nezavisimeya Gazeta called it a "logical
and integral part of the link in the chain of recent
world events stretching from New York to Indonesia and
Israel" and called for an "immediate
military-police-political alliance with the United
States and Britain. Just as we did in 1941."
Third, Putin, while still opposing a potential
unilateral military action against Iraq in the event
that Saddam Hussein resorts to delaying tactics during
the UN inspection of his country's weapons of mass
destruction facilities, has supported Bush's demands for
unfettered inspection. In turn, Bush promised that
Russia's interests related to Iraq would not be
jeopardized. Considering the fact that Iraq owes Russia
billions of dollars in debt, Putin's trepidations about
the implications of a "regime change" in Iraq for Russia
are quite legitimate.
Finally, Putin took the
opportunity of Bush's short visit to Russia and the
presence of the international media to fulminate about
the Saudi and Pakistani role in the global war on
terrorism, a controversial topic from the point of view
of the United States. He said, "Now, where has Osama bin
Laden taken refuge? They say 'somewhere between
Afghanistan and Pakistan', thereby implying some sort of
knowledge, if not involvement, of the Pakistani
government." He also reminded the American president
that 14 out of 19 terrorists of the September 11 attacks
on the US were Saudi citizens. Together, references to
America's important Muslim friends also complement the
Russian twirling related to "civilizational war" and its
endeavors to underscore the linkages between bin Ladin's
al-Qaeda and the Chechen separatists.
It should
be understood that Russia is desperate to contain, if
not exterminate, the fighting spirit of the Chechen
separatists. The September 11 terrorist attacks have
conveniently placed the Chechen question in a very
positive frame from Russia's viewpoint. But it also
knows that American predilections for human rights and
rights of self-determination are too intrinsic and
powerful to be set aside for long, even in the name of
fighting terrorism. Thus, Russia must look for a
permanent basis of support, recognizing that the US
support related to the Chechen conflict will still
witness its own ebb and flow.
As Russia
envisions it, the Chechen question is only the tip of a
larger Muslim iceberg. Other Muslim states of the
Russian federation are watching with rapt attention the
unfolding of the Chechen drama. If Chechnya ends up
winning its highly coveted freedom, other Muslim states
(with a total reported Muslim population of between 16
million to 20 million) might start their own struggle to
be free of that federation, a union in the making of
which they had no say. What happens then? The Russian
leadership cannot bear to think of the answer to that
question. That is probably one of the most crucial
reasons why Putin is busy developing his elaborate, but
not so explicit, and intricate strategic agenda of
cooperation with the United States.
Ehsan
Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based
independent strategic analyst.
(©2002 Asia
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