By PHK
I can’t help wondering who’s really in charge of America’s relations with Russia and what their motives are.
After reading the non-reports of Putin’s fishing expedition off the coast of Maine – or the "lobster summit” as the media dubbed the meeting between Russia’s president and George W. Bush in Kennebunkport just before W gave Scooter Libby a “get out of jail free card” which resulted in that subsequent media blitz over the Fourth of July - I began to question whether there had been a substantive reason for the US-Russian bilateral lobster quadrille at all.
In a July 3, 2007 interview at the Council on Foreign Relations, CFR Russian expert Stephen Sestanovich characterized the overall US-Russian relationship as ‘incoherent’ but observed “that the two countries are putting increased emphasis once again on nuclear issues.”
Putting Coherency into an “Incoherent” situation
Well, maybe – and maybe those and other outstanding security issues could be dealt with in a coherent fashion if the Bush administration decided to put aside other differences for the moment and began to negotiate with the Russians on such weighty issues that affect the existence of the planet. Such talks did have lengthy precedent in US-Soviet relations.
As CKR recently pointed out, this is being done with others. We’re talking – finally - to the North Koreans about their ceasing and dismantling their fledgling nuclear weapons program – but in so doing, we did not insist they change their internal political system as a precondition or throw up other barriers that could not be met by a dictatorship clinging to power by the barrel of a gun.
As a result, there’s now very good news for Americans on the North Korea nuclear reactor front. All it took was a change in US policy and people that resulted from the departure of obstructionists John Bolton, Robert Joseph and Donald Rumsfeld and the arrival of the realist Bob Gates. Let Bolton and Joseph fulminate at AEI as well as on the pages of the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal – better than allowing them to continue to play block and tackle in sensitive government posts.
I trust there are at least some people in the US government prepared to engage in bilateral nuclear weapons negotiations that could begin to clear the troubled air – like extending the START Treaty that has underpinned the US-Russian relationship for years and that is set to expire 18 months from now. Seems to me this should be a major priority for both them and us.
Or agreeing to negotiate the de-targeting of the intercontinental missiles that we both still have aimed at each other's cities – now 16 years after the end of the Cold War.
It’s also clear, however, that other American so-called foreign policy experts will never be amendable to such diplomatic responses - particularly those still co-habiting the Vice President’s tent and their departed colleagues now camped out back at the American Enterprise Institute. From the neocon perspective, no treaty is a good treaty because treaties ipso facto hamper that hallowed (to them) tenant of US unilateralism that has "served" us so well since 2000.
Pavlovian response
These are, after all, some of the same people who brought us Missile Defense and the requisite unilateral withdrawal from the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Never mind that Missile Defense technology is years from working and, in my view, a large waste of the national treasure that foremost enriches certain US defense contractors. Placing ten Missile Defense interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic - countries that not only bordered the Soviet Union but until 1989 were its allies, however, is bound to provoke a Russian backlash. It’s Pavlovian. How would the US like it if the Russians decided to negotiate a similar agreement with the Canadians, the Mexicans, or the Venezuelans? Didn’t we almost go to war over a Russian attempt to place missiles in Cuba in 1962?
It didn’t help that the US failed to consult the other NATO members before announcing this latest hard-line Central European missile defense “coup” to the world either. This was just another of those stealth “fait-accomplis” so reminiscent of the way Cheney and the neocon cabal conduct business. But this administration's latest example of needless gunboat diplomacy didn't sit well with a number of Europeans either. And apparently no one bothered to survey the less than enthusiastic Polish people either.
"Suspension" and "pull out" are not synonyms
The latest news on the US-Russian front tells us that the Russians have suspended the CFE Treaty for the next 150 days. The suspension has, however, either been ignored or characterized in sensationalist headlines in the little media reporting I’ve seen. As, for instance, the Sunday, July 15 Observer’s headline “Kremlin tears up arm pact with Nato” republished in the Guardian or the Reuters report entitled “NATO ‘Very Concerned’ at Russia Treaty Pull Out” published the same day.
At least the Reuters reporter had the wherewithal to describe the Kremlin’s decision as a “suspension” – it was the news agency’s headline writer who provided the sensationalist title - but far too much of the article focused on the Polish reaction to the Russian announcement rather than explaining the motives for Putin’s move or likely US options and reactions. Isn’t the latter, however, what a reporter is supposed to do?
The single Reuters report, by the way, was the only information on the topic printed in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Whether this means the staffs are taking the Russian decision as a grain of salt, don’t understand the reasons behind it or whether their experienced defense reporters are on holiday is beyond me.
“Tit for tat”
When I lived in Moscow in the late 1970s, it seemed to me that Soviet negotiating behavior was based on “tit for tat.” I tend to think this approach reigns today with the Russians as well.
It seems to me, then, that it’s important to place Putin’s decision to suspend the CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) Treaty in that same “tit-for-tat” context. I think that the reaction is a measured and predictable way for the Russian government to express displeasure with specific US policies – most importantly their unhappiness with the latest Missile Defense shield move but secondarily continued problems with CFE treaty approval and implementation.
The EU Observer article explains those issues far better than The Observer or Reuters. The 1990 CFE Treaty limits non-nuclear weapons and military deployments between the Atlantic and the Ural Mountains. It was negotiated between the now defunct Warsaw Pact and NATO. I remember talking with someone on the US CFE delegation in Vienna during the final stages of the talks – as the Poles, Czechs and others switched sides at the table. Since CFE was based on “bloc to bloc” negotiations, it was not easy to negotiate with a bloc that was in the process of melting away.
CFE was updated in 1999 to reflect the change in those power realities just before Putin took over from Yeltsin, but it was never signed by the US or several European countries. They tied ratification to Russia’s withdrawal of forces from Trans Dniester and Abkhazia – two respective breakaway regions from Moldova and Georgia.
Russia’s suspension of its participation in a Treaty that the US never signed means that “Moscow will no longer exchange data on its arms deployments” according to the EU Observer. This is far from the end of the world. And the 150 days suspension begs for negotiating time – if the Bush administration’s Russian experts – whoever’s in charge – will pick up the gauntlet.
Strategic and Non-strategic arms control talks are no panacea – but they can make a difference
No, such talks aren't going to change Putin’s Russia internally making it more to our liking. US-Russian arms control talks won’t resolve the latest British spats with the KGB and they're not going to get the Russians to budge on independence for Kosova - at least initially. But they might improve the climate a bit.
Couldn’t we begin by dispensing with a useless and irritating missile defense system expansion – or even turn it into a bargaining chip that might dissuade the Russians from developing one of their own - and get down to real problems now plaguing the complex relationships between our two countries?
Meanwhile, haven’t Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon already profited more than enough from the Iraq invasion/occupation fiasco and all the start-up, exploratory $11 billion a year in contracts from the Pentagon for Star Wars II? Even a bevy of experienced US arms control negotiators cost a pittance in comparison – if we still have them. Maybe whoever’s in charge of US-Russian relations might try to bolster the thinning ranks.