Page 4 of 4 In the trenches of the new
cold war By M K Bhadrakumar
the first step in a carefully
thought-out US strategy toward overcoming the
mutual strategic deterrence that formed the basis
of Russian-US strategic stability in the Cold War
era.
They estimate that Washington's
unilateral withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty
formed part of a series of unilateral actions in
simultaneously building up the United States'
offensive forces (not
only
nuclear but also non-nuclear precision attack
systems) and active defense assets, including
missile-defense systems. In short, they apprehend
that the US is aiming at replacing the "balance of
terror" with total military superiority.
Besides, Russian experts estimate that the
Bush administration has created a selective
arms-control situation. Writing in the Russian
military journal Nezavisimoye Voyennoye
Obozreniye, the influential director of the USA
and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, academician Sergei Rogov, made out last
month in a lengthy article that the Bush
administration has been selectively abrogating
arms-control treaties that it considers as
interfering with the United States' "military
organizational development".
"But if
agreements limit Moscow to a greater extent than
Washington, then they continue to be in force, ie,
strategic stability based on 'mutual nuclear
deterrence' is being impaired gradually, step by
step," Rogov wrote. That is to say, the Bush
administration has been "building up US military
superiority and weakening Russia's nuclear
deterrence potential".
However, Rogov
pointed out, "The deployment of space-based
weapons cannot begin earlier than the second half
of the next decade. On the whole, the echeloned,
multi-tiered strategic missile defense system,
including relatively effective ground-based,
sea-based, air-based and space-based intercept
assets, will take on real outlines in the 2020s,
but the process of its formation most likely will
drag on right up until the middle of this century.
We will repeat that all this will require a
solution to a large number of very difficult
technical problems as well as a manifold increase
in funding."
Rogov noted that Moscow
already has its own missile-defense system with
100 interceptor missiles, and its S-300 and S-400
air-defense assets also have specific capabilities
for intercepting missiles. In other words, Moscow
can draw comfort that the situation of "mutual
assured destruction" will prevail for at least the
next 10-15 years in Russian-US relations. Rogov
argues that in the interim, instead of knee-jerk
reactions or resorting to "a ruinous arms race",
Russia must coolly ensure through mutually
reinforcing politico-diplomatic and
military-technical steps that the overall
strategic balance with the US based on "mutual
nuclear deterrence" is preserved.
From
this perspective, Rogov proposed several measures
in the nature of Russia accelerating its program
for outfitting its Strategic Nuclear Forces with
weapons systems capable of penetrating the US
missile-defense system. He suggested that the
road-mobile Topol-M ICBM must be fitted with MIRVs
(maneuverable re-entry vehicles). Again, Russia
must concentrate on precision air-launched cruise
missiles (ALCMs) capable of destroying
missile-defense facilities. Russia's present fleet
of Tu-95MS and Tu-160 strategic bombers and
Tu-22M3 medium bombers are potentially capable of
carrying about 1,500 ALCMs. Rogov argued that
measures such as these will be cost-effective
insofar as mass production of ICBMs and ALCMs will
cost less than US$1 billion per year - a tiny
fraction of the US expenditure in developing the
missile-defense system.
Rogov also called
for an "auditing" of the arms-control agreements
that Russia inherited from the Soviet era so that
a cool assessment is made as to how Russia's
interests will be served by the preservation of
these agreements in their present form. He wrote,
"Who needs such selective arms control? We will
support 'mutual nuclear deterrence', playing a
game without rules like the Americans, as at the
height of the Cold War before 1972."
Talking to the Russian media on Thursday
after Gates' talks in Moscow, Rogov said Russia
and the US "are still hostages of mutual nuclear
intimidation ... We are on the brink of a new
'cold war' if one looks closely at our present-day
relations." He warned that unless the negative
tendencies in Russian-US relations are arrested
soon, "I do not rule out that at the 2008
presidential elections in the US, both Republicans
and Democrats may bring forward a thesis on the
need for a Russia-containment policy."
The new cold war Moscow has
repeatedly warned in the recent period that enough
is enough and that it is not prepared to be pushed
around anymore. There is deep resentment over
NATO's continued expansion in contravention of
promises held out to Moscow that this wouldn't
happen. But ignoring Russian sensitivities on this
score, Bush signed a new law on April 10 (the NATO
Freedom Consolidation Act of 2007) urging
admission of Albania, Croatia, Georgia, Macedonia
and Ukraine into the alliance and authorizing new
funding for military training and equipment for
them.
Washington is also aggressively
pursuing a policy of rollback of Russian influence
in the former Soviet republics. On the same day
that the new law on NATO expansion was signed, US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the media
that Washington has "tried to make very clear to
Russia ... that the days when these [Commonwealth
of Independent States] states were part of the
Soviet Union are gone, they're not coming back."
Already by the end of 2007, Georgia is poised to
start its NATO-membership program. Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili has said, "We expect
to receive the status of an official NATO
candidate in the next few months."
Again,
Washington's line on the status of the breakaway
Serbian province of Kosovo has hardened. Senior US
officials have threatened that no matter Russian
opposition, and regardless of whether the United
Nations Security Council agrees or not, Washington
proposes to go ahead and recognize Kosovo's
independence. There is also a distinctly familiar
pattern in the sustained political turmoil in
Kyrgyzstan bankrolled from Washington. The
instability in Kyrgyzstan has added significance
for Russia insofar as Bishkek is expected to host
the next summit of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization.
Moscow maintains an air of
passivity but is deeply concerned. In a thinly
veiled reference to the US backing for the
so-called "color revolutions", the secretary
general of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization, General Nikolai Bordyuzha, said in a
speech in Almaty on April 19, "Today, it is not
only Afghanistan that the entire post-Soviet space
is concerned about. There is a problem of the
export of revolutions - the problem of attempts to
intentionally bring about their elements. And we
can see it. Today, there are recognizable people,
exporters of revolution, the so-called
contemporary revolutionaries - new Che Guevaras -
in the post-Soviet space."
The change of
leadership in Turkmenistan has opened a window of
opportunity for the US to make overtures to
Ashgabat. Significantly, the new Turkmen leader,
Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, chose Saudi Arabia
for his first visit abroad. The EU has already
offered to the new Turkmen leadership 1.7 million
euros ($2.3 million) for undertaking a feasibility
study on a trans-Caspian gas-pipeline project that
would obviate the need for Turkmen gas to be
exported via Russia.
The US is using the
EU to curry favor with Uzbekistan and somehow let
bygones be bygones. The EU is showing signs of
getting down from its high horse and unilaterally
dismantling its sanctions regime that it imposed
on Uzbekistan after the Andizhan incidents in May
2005. Again, the US is relentlessly working at
loosening Russia's grip in the South Caucasus -
Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
But the
ferocity with which the US has reacted to the
revival of Russian influence in Ukraine has no
precedent. The Ukraine developments show that
Washington is determined at any cost to surround
Russia with a ring of countries that are hostile
to it. Washington has assessed that if only by
subverting the constitutional processes and by
discrediting the fledgling political institutions
(which are actually a legacy of the "Orange
Revolution"), the US can bring about "regime
change" in Kiev, so be it.
The present
turmoil began soon after Yulia Timoshenko, the
darling of the "Orange Revolution", visited
Washington two months ago and was received by
senior US officials, including Rice. The stakes
are indeed high in Ukraine. Unless Kiev is brought
back under a subservient pro-American setup, how
can Ukraine possibly become a NATO member or how
can the US missile-defense systems be deployed on
Ukrainian soil, given the widespread opposition to
the idea among the people of that country?
Professor Stephen Cohen, the venerable
doyen of Sovietologists, recently surveyed the
topsoil of the newly dug trenches in Russian-US
rivalry. He said: "Relations between Russia and
the United Sates are very bad at present. I think
we're already seeing a cold war. At least, that is
America's policy on Russia. Your country [Russia]
is being fairly passive. Understandably, the
Kremlin doesn't want to escalate tension again.
But it isn't clear that the Kremlin is capable of
preventing that. Much will depend on how NATO's
relations with Ukraine and Georgia develop. This
is the new front of the new Cold War."
It
is in the fitness of things that the working group
set up on Thursday as a joint initiative by Putin
and Bush, against the backdrop of these growing
tensions, to focus on relations between the two
great powers, will be headed as co-chairmen by two
formidable veterans of the Cold War era - Henry
Kissinger and Yevgeny Primakov.
Yet the
People's Daily might well have had a point when it
commented last week with an acerbic tone of
detachment and disdain, "The core of the
US-Russian oral spat is a conflict of interests.
Naturally, both countries want maximum benefits.
That explains why the US supports anti-government
forces within Russia, promotes 'democracy' - a
one-sided wish - in foreign lands, continues to
support eastern expansion of NATO, and asks for
missile-defense deployment in Eastern Europe,
while Russia exercises a measured US policy. It
can be predicted that, facing US attacks,
Russian-US ties featuring both contention and
cooperation will not change in the short term."
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).
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