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4 US missiles hit
Russia where it hurts By M K
Bhadrakumar
Condoleezza Rice to
Moscow were undertaken under pressure from
America's European allies who are unhappy about
Washington's insistent unilateralism in the
missile-defense deployments. After meeting Putin
in the Kremlin, Rice virtually let it be known
that dogs could bark, but the caravan would move
on. She said, "The US needs to be able to move
forward to use technology to defend itself, and
we're going to do that."
There has also
been a systematic attempt by Washington to
"provoke" the Kremlin. At a
time when tempers were already testy in January,
Washington criticized Moscow's decision to
increase gas prices for Belarus as "energy
imperialism", whereas the US had previously
insisted on strict market-economy principles for
Belarus. When Moscow got into a tizzy over the
Estonian government's removal of the memorial to
World War II Soviet veterans in Tallinn, Bush
rushed to express solidarity with the Baltic
state.
Gates testified before the US
Congress while presenting the Pentagon budget for
the coming fiscal year that the unprecedented rise
in military expenditure was necessitated, among
other factors, in view of "the uncertain paths of
China and Russia" as well as "the dangers posed by
Iran and North Korea's nuclear ambitions" - this
as if Russia threatened the US, or as if Russia
belonged to the so-called "axis of evil".
Again ignoring Russian sensitivities, Bush
signed a bill envisaging Ukraine's and Georgia's
membership of NATO. Furthermore, the US allocated
funds for accelerating these countries' NATO
accession. Also, Moscow realizes that the US
Congress has no immediate plans of repealing the
Jackson-Vandik amendment of 1974 imposing trade
sanctions, despite repeated Russia pleas that the
Cold War-era legislation is an aberration when the
two countries are supposedly building a
partnership.
In April, the US
administration brought out two highly provocative
reports on Russia. On April 5, the State
Department released a report titled "Supporting
Human Rights and Democracy". It contained a
scathing attack on the Kremlin, accusing it of
human-rights violations and "breaking away from
the principles of democracy". It made an
astounding claim that US support for some public
organizations in Russia had begun to yield results
and, furthermore, that such support would continue
with the objective of influencing the forthcoming
elections to the Duma (parliament) as well as the
presidential election next year.
On April
16, the State Department brought out another
report titled "Strategic Plan for the Fiscal Years
2007-2012", which declared that countering
Russia's "negative behavior" would be one of
Washington's diplomatic priorities over the coming
five-year period. This was the first time that
Washington went on record that it had been giving
financial support to political elements within
Russia hostile to the Kremlin as well as
identifying Russia's resurgence as a focal point
of US diplomatic strategy.
On May 17, the
House of Representatives Committee on
International Affairs held highly publicized
hearings in Washington under the title "Russia:
Rebuilding the Iron Curtain". Opening the hearing,
Congressman Tom Lantos, who is also the chairman
of the House committee, spoke about Putin's
leadership in highly derogatory terms. Making it
clear that he had spoken to Rice before making the
speech, Lantos declared: "I do not think Vladimir
Putin is a reincarnation of Josef Stalin. But I am
profoundly disturbed by his pattern of abuse and
repression of dissidents, independent journalists
and, in fact, anyone who opposes him. Russia's
tactic under the KGB colonel now in charge of the
Kremlin threatens to send the country back to its
authoritarian past."
Lantos continued
berating Putin in this vein in extraordinary
language throughout his speech. His vilification
of Putin reached a high point when Lantos said, "I
urge Mr Putin to rethink his skewed vision of
crime and punishment ... Putin's crackdown ... is
reminiscent of so many dark moments in Russia's
history." Lantos rounded off with an insinuation
that Putin's hand was behind the murders of
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former
Russian security-service officer Aleksandr
Litvinenko.
Evidently, somewhere along the
line, it begins to appear that Putin is somehow
the real enemy for the political class in
Washington, and not so much post-Soviet Russia.
There is no doubt that personality factors have
crept into Washington's tensions with Moscow. We
may not have heard the last word yet on Russian
ex-intelligence official Andrei Lugovoy's
sensational statement in Moscow a week ago that he
was cultivated by British intelligence with the
mission of collecting damaging information on
Putin and his family members.
It probably
annoys Washington that what matters for Putin is
that he remains a hugely popular leader for the
Russian people, with a rating that is consistently
above 70% - so popular, ironically, that if he
were to seek a third term in office, 43% of
Russia's Communist Party supporters would vote for
him rather than for their own leader, Gennadi
Zyuganov.
But other than the crushing
defeats that Putin has inflicted on US and British
business interests in the energy sector in recent
months in Russia and Central Asia, there are few
reasons for such a sustained US propaganda barrage
against the Kremlin. Indeed, Putin could be an
ideal partner for the US in the era of
globalization.
Writing in the Russian
magazine Argumenty i Fakty recently, prominent
Russian political observer Vyacheslav Kostikov
pointed out: "Putin's critics prefer to overlook
the fact that his economic policies are entirely
liberal. He is a popularly elected president. He
has never violated the constitution or torn up any
international agreements. In all his years as
president, not one Russian military division has
crossed Russia's borders. It wasn't Russian planes
that bombed Belgrade, Baghdad and villages in
Afghanistan."
Last Thursday, David Kramer,
US deputy assistant secretary of state for
European and Eurasian affairs, summed up the US
policy in an address at the Baltimore Council on
Foreign Affairs titled "US and Russia": "Cooperate
wherever we can, push back whenever we have to. If
you're looking for a bumper sticker of our Russia
policy, that's it." The idea of "selective
cooperation" with Russia has become an established
bipartisan doctrine in Washington.
Testifying in the US Congress last month,
Stephen Sestanovich, formerly US president Bill
Clinton's special envoy to the Commonwealth of
Independent States, echoed the same idea when he
said, "To set our relationship with Russia on a
more productive course over the next five years,
the US needs to send a two-part message: 'We do
not shy away either from consultation and
cooperation where they are possible or from
disagreement and even opposition where they are
necessary.'" Presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton aptly caught the bipartisan mood in
Washington when she proposed that Congress could
legislate on constituting a medal for veterans of
the Cold War.
Russia's strategic parity
with the US Moscow increasingly perceives
the propaganda attack as one part of an all-out US
political and strategic offensive that is aimed at
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