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2 COMMENT The three Rs: Rivalry, Russia
and 'Ran By Robert D Blackwill
[Putin's] rise is a logical
consequence of the brutal disappointment of the
Russians with the course of events since the
collapse of communism - the hyperinflation,
political wars, crony privatization and the
financial crisis of the 1990s, along with the
humiliations - perceived and real - inflicted by
the West, from NATO expansion to endless
preaching.
Russians have clearly
embraced Putin's course, as evidenced by his
authentically high approval ratings of 70-80%.
Based on a
recent poll, one out of three
Russians would like to see Putin become president
of Russia for life. In short, there is a new sense
of dignity and confidence in Russia, and ordinary
Russians give Putin the credit as shown in the
December elections for Parliament.
Although they were certainly flawed, they
did demonstrate that Putin is the most genuinely
popular political leader in the Group of Eight. As
another premier American diplomatic figure of the
20th century recently stressed to me, "The West's
present preoccupation with Russian domestic
policies and practices would make sense if Russia
had no history and no enduring political culture."
The West must contend with the impending
reality that however Putin chooses to continue to
wield power, his economic policies and the highly
centralized political structure will remain in
place in Russia for the foreseeable future. To
remember Dylan Thomas, the Russia we now face
"will not go gentle into that good night" any time
soon. The Russia we now see is fundamentally the
Russia we are going to get. And the Russian elite
are not going to accept Western intervention into
their domestic affairs until, as they say, "the
crayfish whistles on the mountain top".
However, the West does have significant
ability, which we are currently exercising, to
sour Russia's relations with the United States and
Europe and to undermine our joint capacity to
cooperate with Moscow regarding the Iranian
nuclear threat because of our persistent public
preoccupation with the shape and substance of
Russia's domestic political practices. We should
greatly reduce the frequency and the volume of our
public pronouncements on this subject, while
privately, of course, condemning it.
Having said this about the West and
Russian domestic politics is not to underrate the
difficulties of interacting with Moscow on its
external policies and often raw pursuit of power
politics and spheres of influence. Russia's
foreign policy under Putin is in the classic
19th-century European mold and seeks to reassert
Russia's traditional role as a great power;
reestablish its dominant position in the former
Soviet sphere; and promote and secure markets for
its energy exports which advance its geopolitical
and geoeconomic objectives.
In this
circumstance and unlike during the Yeltsin era,
Putin's Russia perceives Western influence in
neighboring states as a direct threat to its
abiding vital national interests, as evidenced by
its harsh reaction toward the alleged role of the
West in "orchestrating" the Rose Revolution in
Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolution in
Ukraine in 2004 as well as continuing Western
interest in both those countries, including
possible NATO membership.
Russia is
vehemently opposed to American plans to install US
missile-defense systems in Poland and the Czech
Republic by 2012, rejecting American assertions
that Iran will possess weapons capable of directly
threatening Europe and the United States. Although
I do not agree, the Russian establishment
perceives these US systems in Eastern Europe as a
direct threat to Russian national security. Russia
has clashed repeatedly with the United States and
the European Union over the independence of
Kosovo, where Russia has continued to oppose the
"dismemberment" of Serbia.
Russia and the
West differ on the future of the Conventional
Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE). We have
disagreements with Russia within the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe on the
proper role of election observers in the former
Soviet space. We have arguments with Moscow on the
post-START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) and
post-Treaty of Moscow regime after the START
agreement expires in 2009.
We oppose
Russian arms sales to Syria and Iran. We have
disputes with the Putin government regarding
Russia's external energy policy and its sometimes
coercive character regarding its neighbors. We
haggle over the final terms of Russia's entry into
the World Trade Organization (WTO). With all these
differences presently in play, there is no doubt
that in the Kremlin, indeed within the entire
Russian national-security elite, there is a
pervasive feeling that the West is simply
unwilling to take Russia's national-security
concerns into account in any serious way.
Most of these substantive differences
between Moscow and Western governments shrink in
centrality when compared to the short- and
long-term costs that the West would incur through
a war with Iran or Tehran's possession of a
nuclear arsenal. And therein lies our current core
problem: Persuading Russia to cooperate fully
regarding Iran. Do we in the West really believe
that we can acquire Russian cooperation on issues
that matter most to us, while ignoring issues that
matter most to them? Do we actually think that is
the way things work between and among strong
nation-states? That is certainly consistent with
neither my reading of history nor my long
experience in government. As Winston Churchill
once emphasized (and current Western leaders could
usefully take note), "However beautiful the
strategy, you should occasionally look at the
results."
Let me stress here that I am not
suggesting that the West give Russia a free hand
in neo-imperialist instincts that Moscow might
have in the former Soviet sphere, allow Western
security policy to be designed by Russian
intelligence or permit Russia to take unimpeded
advantage of current US difficulties in the
Greater Middle East. Of course not. But there are
strategic priorities, tactical trade-offs and
creative compromises possible here that need to be
considered by Western governments.
Cannot
the West adopt flexible and moderate compromises
on at least some of these disputatious issues we
presently have with Moscow: The timeline of US
anti-ballistic missile deployments to Eastern
Europe; the issue of entry of new NATO members
from the ex-Soviet space; the status of Kosovo;
the contours of the CFE; the future of
strategic-arms control; Russia's entry into the
WTO and so forth? Is there no give in Western
policy on any of these issues? If not, why not?
Any of these moves on the West's part
would not be offered up unilaterally with the hope
that Russian policy toward Iran would inevitably
and fundamentally toughen. Rather, they would be
explicitly linked to a Russian approach to Tehran
in step with Western strategy. This is
particularly urgent because Russia and the West
currently differ so significantly on the issue.
This past October, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov told his Japanese
counterpart that "North Korea poses a fundamental
threat, but Iran does not". It seems doubtful that
the Russian government actually believes this.
Moscow's intelligence on Iranian nuclear
activities is probably at least as good as that of
the United States. When he met with French
President Nicolas Sarkozy on October 10, Putin
stated: "We don't have information showing that
Iran is striving to produce nuclear weapons.
That's why we're proceeding on the basis that Iran
does not have such plans." Putin then visited
Tehran and repeated the same point publicly.
When asked about whether Russia would
support tightening economic sanctions on Iran, in
the aftermath of the announcement of new
unilateral US sanctions, Putin replied, "Why
worsen the situation by threatening sanctions and
bring it to a dead end?"
Nevertheless, the
Kremlin agrees that a nuclear Tehran would be a
real danger. After meeting with Sarkozy, Putin
conceded that not only is a nuclear-armed Iran not
in Russia's interest, but opined that it would
pose a greater threat to Russian national security
than to European or US vital national interests.
So it is up to the West to convince Russia
that, regarding Iranian nuclear ambitions,
Moscow's long-term equities are best served by
comprehensive and full-fledged cooperation with
the West. But we only have a chance of doing that
if we substantially narrow our policy differences
with Russia on many of these other matters.
In the end, this strategy might not work.
Moscow may currently be too defiant to collude
with the West. It may decide that its long-term
relationship with Iran trumps Western nuclear
preoccupations. Putin and company may conclude
that it is inevitable that Iran will acquire
nuclear weapons and that joining Washington and
its allies in a self-defeating enterprise makes no
sense.
Moscow may wonder if the next
American president will follow the same muscular
policies regarding Iran as the current one. So
such a Western initiative could well fail. But
given the stakes involved, it is worth a try. The
new NIE has given us somewhat more time to avoid a
war with Iran. We should use it, including in
Moscow.
Robert D Blackwill is
the president of Barbour, Griffith and Rogers
International, a Washington government affairs,
consulting and lobbying firm. He was the deputy
national security advisor for strategic planning
and the US ambassador to India, 2001-2004.
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