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2 A grand bargain Russia might just
refuse By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
"We should offer Russia a grand bargain:
we delay our plans for missile defense in Eastern
Europe, while the Russians agree to back stronger
sanctions against Iran." These are the words of
Joseph Nye, a respected political scientist at
Harvard University and a former top US official
known for his works on "soft power". He is letting
us know that soft power almost always has elements
of hard power in the wings, to paraphrase noted
historian Howard
Zinn.
This may not exactly be friendly behavior,
as Russian President Vladimir Putin bitterly
complained at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in
Germany last week, but then again, Putin knows
best that old habits, particularly relics of the
Cold War won by the US, are hard to kick. The US
has disregarded Russia's strong objections and is
"proceeding with its plan", according to US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
That
means there will be no "freeze" in the planned
stationing of US missile interceptors in Poland
and a large radar system in the Czech Republic,
one that "will be capable of scanning a space up
to the Ural Mountains", per the words of Sergei
Ivanov, Russia's first deputy foreign minister.
Russia is developing new nuclear missiles and,
according to the right-wing Washington Times, this
"shows the urgent need to deploy missile defenses,
including in Europe".
Not everyone in
Europe is convinced by the US justification of the
defense system, including the Czech parliamentary
leadership, which has questioned it - in sharp
contrast to government leaders, including Prime
Minister Mirek Topolanek. He has expressed
"certainty" that the US missile system will be a
part of "the NATO missile-defense system". Not
sharing this certainty, Norwegian Foreign Minister
Jonas Gahr Store told the Russian news agency
Interfax that some North Atlantic Treaty
Organization members "are more critically minded".
One of the unclear issues is how the
installation of the defense system will impact
Washington's commitment within the framework of
NATO-Russia cooperation. At present, discussions
are under way between Russia and NATO on a
non-strategic missile defense in Europe. But in
the aftermath of the G8 summit, another Russian
deputy foreign minister, Alexander Grushko, stated
that this interaction could become "problematical"
if Russia's concerns are disregarded.
Another Kremlin official, Sergei Ivanov,
expressed "dismay" that his boss's proposal for a
joint US-Russia defense system based in Azerbaijan
"was perceived in the West as a sign of
recognition by Russia of the existence of a real
threat from Iran".
That is precisely the
spin that newspapers such as the Wall Street
Journal have been putting on this matter: "In
offering to help, Moscow is acknowledging what
most of the rest of the continent figured out long
ago: that Iran's nuclear program and growing
missile capability are a potential threat," said
an editorial. This ignored the fact that Putin and
his men have been openly questioning the United
States' perception of an Iranian missile threat by
pointing out that Iran has no intercontinental
ballistic missiles now nor will for the
foreseeable future.
A NATO official, on
the other hand, dismissed Putin's suggestion of
using the existing radar system in Azerbaijan by
calling it "too close to the rogue states in
question". Even in Azerbaijan, in spite of a
rather enthusiastic initial response by
Azerbaijani officials, not everyone is in favor. A
statement by the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan
criticized the existing Gabala radar station,
rented out to Russia for some US$7 million a year
and capable of covering areas as distant as 7,000
kilometers, as anti-ecological.
For now,
Russia has merely managed to force a consultation
role for itself on an issue considered
"unrevisable" by, among others, the president of
the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus. Putin may be
disinclined to go along but, in the end, he may
revise himself and echo his ambassador to NATO,
Konstantin Totsky, who told Interfax in March that
the US plan "poses no serious threat to Russia".
Conversely, should Putin persist in his
adamant objections of the past several weeks, then
instead of a "grand bargain" between the Kremlin
and the White House, we may witness a new arms
race. This is given Moscow's criticisms of NATO
members' failure to ratify the CFE (Conventional
Forces in Europe) Treaty and NATO's criticisms of
Russia's failure to honor some of its own
commitments under that treaty, such as complete
troop withdrawal from Georgia and the
Transdniestria territory in Moldova.
"The
missile-defense system is a problem between Russia
and the US, and does not affect Iran directly," an
Iranian politician, Hamid Reza Taraghi, of the
powerful Moatalefe Party, has reacted. Another
analyst, Mohammad Ali Ramin, opined that Putin has
shown "the green light" to the US with his
proposal of joint cooperation with the existing
system in Azerbaijan.
This might be
stretching it and discounts Putin's diplomatic
maneuver, ie, the likelihood that he had already
factored in the United States' eventual dismissal
of his idea and was geared more toward the
European capitals. Still, there is a grain of
truth
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