The year has been ushered in
with a warning signal. There is no mistaking the
fact that the statement issued by the US State
Department in Washington on January 1 was not just
about natural gas or Ukraine or the biting cold of
Europe's winter.
It had as much to do with
a return to the "the proud tradition of American
foreign policy" under Harry S Truman and Ronald
Reagan, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
recently wrote in an article.
Rice
revealed that soon after assuming charge in the
State Department, she hung a portrait of former
secretary of state Dean Acheson in her office.
Truman, Acheson, Reagan - Rice was
writing about a pantheon
of American heroes to make the point that no
matter what it takes, US foreign policy in the
period ahead will focus on "building a more
lasting and durable form of global stability: a
balance of power that favors freedom".
It
has been abundantly clear for some time already
that the United States' battles of freedom and
democracy will be fought in the air, on the
beaches and in the hills of the countries of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The
Middle East's topography lacks such variety in its
landscape.
The expectation was that the
first major battle would be fought in March when
Belarus holds presidential polls - a country that
has been described with a dramatic touch by
American spokesmen as "Europe's last remaining
dictatorship".
Meanwhile, Russia's spat
with Ukraine over gas shipments to that country
presented itself as a trial run for the shape of
things to come in Belarus. Russia of course
blindly walked into a classic bear trap. Moscow
overlooked a fundamental point in international
relations, that over and above the right or wrong
of the issues of economics and politics involved,
it allowed itself to be seen as "bullying" a
small, vulnerable neighboring country that was
until the other day a family member too.
In the process, Ukrainian President Viktor
Yushchenko has been presented with a golden
opportunity to whip up anti-Russia sentiment that
could pay electoral dividends against his main
political rival, Viktor Yanukovich, who is
perceived to be "Russia-backed" in the elections
in March. Opinion polls show that Yushchenko has
been badly trailing Yanukovich in popularity, and
was having a hard time catching up.
Thus,
even when President Vladimir Putin came up with
reasonable compromise proposals on the price of
gas transported to Ukraine - that Russia would
advance a large commercial loan to Ukraine to fund
higher costs, and, second, that any price rise
could be delayed to the second quarter of 2006 -
Yushchenko rejected the offers.
Nevertheless, Russia's decision within 48
hours of its previous decision to cut gas flows to
Ukraine and backtrack toward the status quo ante
and reopen negotiations with Ukraine may deprive
Yushchenko the opportunity to make more political
capital at home out of the crisis. [1] But from
Russia's point of view too, these past few days
should come as a wake-up call.
Several
angles to the complex architecture of
trans-Atlantic ties, Russian-American relations,
Russia's cooperation with Europe, which lay
submerged in diplomatese, came into view. First,
Washington has shrewdly exploited the developments
for claiming the privilege to speak on behalf of
Europe.
It is a sort of deliberate attempt
to stage a comeback to the mode of the
trans-Atlantic relationship that had prevailed
during the 40-year Cold War era, when the US
leadership role was built into the relationship
itself.
The US State Department statement
of January 1 admonished Russia on behalf of
Europe, regardless of whether the European
countries sought such US intervention. More
likely, Washington simply reasserted its
leadership role, confident that the issue involved
(gas cutoff) was of widespread European concern.
Beyond that, the US statement also raised
some broader questions about "the use of energy to
exert political pressure" and of "energy security
and predictability" for energy suppliers, transit
countries and consumers.
So far, Russia's
vastly expanding energy cooperation with European
countries has been on a bilateral basis. The US is
not party to it - and has been uneasy about it.
The heavy dependence of the pro-American countries
of "new Europe" on Russian energy supplies (as
much as 50%) is a matter of added concern to
Washington.
Quite clearly, the US would
like to see that at a minimum Russia is made more
"accountable" as an energy supplier for the world
economy. And, if the controversy generated by the
cutoff had continued for a few more days or weeks,
European public opinion would have become a
forceful factor too. Russia seems to have seen
through the US ploy and swiftly restored the gas
supplies.
Besides, what made Russia
particularly vulnerable was that it had declared
that it intended to place energy as a top agenda
item for the Group of Eight (G-8) during Russia's
rotating presidency.
Putin stated at a
security meeting in Moscow on December 22 devoted
to Russia's role in ensuring energy security:
"Essentially, a steady energy supply is one of the
conditions for international stability as a whole.
The availability of well-balanced and regular
sources of energy is undoubtedly a factor in
global security. And we must leave our descendants
a global energy system that will spare them from
conflicts and non-constructive ways of struggling
for energy supplies. For this reason, it is so
important to find common approaches towards
providing civilization with effective energy
supplies in a long-term perspective."
Russia's Achilles' heel is going to be its
G-8 presidency lasting through 2006. It ought to
have been Russia's crowning glory - that it is
finally being accorded full status within the G-8.
But G-8 presidency also calls on Russia to conduct
itself as a "Western country". Apart from "freedom
deficit" or the Iran nuclear issue or regime
change in the CIS countries, energy security can
now be added as an issue where the US will demand
that Russia conforms to Western concerns and
approaches.
There have been orchestrated
calls already for a boycott of the G-8 summit in
St Petersburg by Western democracies. Things may
not go to such a pass, as happened during the
boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. But the
temptation to deny Russia its triumphant hour has
been a constant feature of the US mindset.
The administration of President George W
Bush went to enormous lengths to be a "spoiler" at
the 60th-anniversary celebrations over World War
II held in Moscow last May. What rabbit will Uncle
Sam pull out of his hat between now and the St
Petersburg summit for the sake of embarrassing the
host country remains to be seen.
It is in
this context that Rice's invocation of Truman,
Acheson and Reagan in her article sounds ominous.
In an astounding statement, Rice wrote: "Since its
creation more than 350 years ago, the modern state
system has always rested on the concept of
sovereignty. It was assumed that states were the
primary international actors ... Today, however,
we have seen that these assumptions no longer hold
... [Moreover], fundamental character of regimes
matters more today than the international
distribution of power ... The goal of our
statecraft is to help create a world of
democratic, well-governed states that can meet the
needs of their citizens and conduct themselves
responsibly in the international system."
The agenda is tailor-made for attempting
regime changes in the CIS countries, including
Russia. Last year, US diplomacy left behind a
patchy record in the CIS. Washington could claim
at best as marginal success the "color" revolution
in Ukraine. As for Kyrgyzstan, actually, the
country simply became volatile as compared with
its past "false stability" (to use Rice's words).
It cannot be regarded by a long shot as a US
trophy.
On the other hand, Uzbek-US
relations were a disaster. Kazakhstan and
Tajikistan raised barricades against US support to
their "civil societies". Turkmenistan remained
impassive to US wooing. Azerbaijan foiled, with
the help of Russian intelligence, a coup attempt
against the regime. Baku promptly announced that
it would not countenance the presence of US troops
on Azerbaijani soil.
More important, the
US failed to arrest the ascendancy of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization. As Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov recently wrote in an
article, "Russia actively helped to develop the
SCO, which is becoming a system-forming factor on
the Asian continent, and then in the world context
too."
All indications are that the Bush
administration is not prepared to accept a
crystallization of the prevailing trends in the
CIS. The alacrity with which Washington stepped
into the Russia-Ukraine standoff showed that the
struggle over the post-Soviet space might actually
intensify through 2006.
The United States'
estimation is that any Russian climb-down over
Ukraine or Belarus will be widely perceived in the
post-Soviet space as the ultimate futility of
resisting US pressure. Thus Russian diplomacy will
come across some tough challenges.
Russian
diplomacy has consistently eschewed confrontation
with the US while substantially consolidating
influence in the CIS countries. Therefore, the US
ploy will be to poke a stick into the corner, as
it were, where the bear sits in deep hibernation,
until it rises up in fury over the needling -
whereupon, to slam its head with a hammer.
Note Russia and Ukraine
reached a deal on Wednesday in the gas dispute
that has hit supplies to Europe for two days. The
deal came just hours before European Union
emergency talks to discuss their concerns over
stable energy supplies, including from Russia.
Full details of the deal have not been released,
but it is believed to be for five years and based
on a price of US$230 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas
- up from the $50 Ukraine has been paying.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for
more than 29 years, with postings including
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
(Copyright 2006 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing
.)
