by Cheryl Rofer
There has been a fair bit of commentary over the last week or so on what Russia’s recent actions may mean. I’ve found most of it shallow. I won’t link to all of it, because it’s not worth reading. Here’s one example, not particularly better or worse than most of the rest.
The past eight years have provided what appeared to be an easy playing-field for foreign policy commentary. There were bad guys like North Korea and good guys like us, and sometimes a waffley crew that should be ignored, like Europe, the Old Europe in particular. It wasn’t necessary to leave behind whatever attitudes one may have developed toward the Soviet Union just because it got pared down to Russia; there was that strangely democratic period during the nineties, but we could be comforted that Vladimir Putin was moving back toward autocracy. We can put them in the “bad guys” category, whew! Unfortunately, this was also the way the previous administration played its foreign policy.
Russia has been active on many fronts lately, which can seem distressing to those who would prefer that the rest of the world simply follow the leader and do what we tell them. That’s another part of the last eight years that we’re leaving behind.
But Russia has always been more complex than that, as has been the rest of the world. Russia can also play a mean great-power game when its tendency toward too-obvious propaganda doesn’t get in the way. And Russia is different in many, many ways from the Soviet Union. Fortunately, it appears that we now have a President and Secretary of State who are capable of understanding complexity and are hiring intelligent people. So let me take a serious look at the complex games Russia is playing.
That Base in Kyrgyzstan
Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan has been in the news for a month or so now. It is an important part of the NATO supply lines into Afghanistan and has become more important as the Taliban’s ability to close the Khyber Pass increased. The Kyrgyz Parliament has now voted to end the lease to the United States.
The simple interpretation, the one predominant in the media, is that this was a bidding war, and Russia won with a promise of $2.15 billion in aid to Kyrgyzstan. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has made some noises about upping the ante so that we can remain, reinforcing this interpretation. On the other hand, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been talking about allowing NATO transit through Russia. Good cop, bad cop, another easy interpretation.
None of the ‘Stans wants to be a puppet to Russia or the United States. Russia has something of an advantage, since the ‘Stans won’t be picking up and leaving any time soon. But that makes Russia all the more of a concern for Central Asia’s independence. They have recently agreed to become a nuclear weapons free zone, potentially limiting basing options by Russia or the US. And we may suspect that their leaders have heard about Russia’s financial troubles, so Kyrgyz leaders must be weighing the probability of that $2 billion actually reaching Kyrgyzstan or the value of the rubles it will likely be delivered in.
Further, we are talking not about the United States but about NATO. Or at least Russia is. We Americans take NATO for granted, like color television or macaroni and cheese. To Russia, NATO was The Enemy during the Cold War. NATO’s consideration of Ukraine and Georgia as potential members keeps Russia uneasy about NATO’s intentions. Ukraine has a number of problems just now that feed into Russia’s worries. NATO has partially included Russia in its councils, but that inclusion has to feel tokenish to Russia.
So what lever does Russia have on NATO? The supply lines to its operations in Afghanistan. Russia knows something about fighting in Afghanistan. First it was the Brits extending their empire in the 19th century. Then it was the Soviets’ disastrous intervention in the 1980s, one of the factors in the demise of the Soviet Union. NATO just might find its advice useful. And Russia would like to exert more influence. Is there a way to bring the two together? Russia would like to know.
A State Department official has been in Moscow discussing the supply-line problem. We’re not hearing much about it, but that may be a good thing, indicating that the new administration understands that negotiating sometimes needs to be done up close and quietly, not from the lecture podium.
Antimissiles and Missiles
In the strange world of Cold War nuclear deterrence, defense against nuclear-armed missiles was destabilizing because that protection could make a first strike more attractive to the protected country. So the US and the Soviet Union agreed in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that they wouldn’t do missile defense. The Bush administration shared the Reganite fondness for missile defense and withdrew from that treaty in 2002.
From Russia’s viewpoint, a treaty that stabilized a difficult relationship was gone, and the US was building a missile defense that could support a first-strike capability. The US immediately began pouring lots of money and concrete into an antiballistic missile system in Alaska. Alaska is close to Russia, as well as to North Korea, which was allegedly whose missiles were being defended against.
Then the US decided to put an antimissile radar station in the Czech Republic and missiles in Poland, two new NATO members who used to be part of the Warsaw Pact: NATO again. Insult upon injury. So Russia countered by threatening to put missiles in Kaliningrad. None of the people who live in those potential target areas are particularly pleased.
Now President Medvedev is saying that they probably won’t put those missiles in Kaliningrad after all, since President Obama is rethinking the antimissile system. This could be another invitation to talk. In response to the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, Russia withdrew from the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. Both of these withdrawals were destabilizing in that they remove some of the means for communication between the two and some of the basis for trust. Plus the danger of rearming with Europe as the center. We might just talk about this.
Nuclear Talks
The Bush administration didn’t like treaties. So when George Bush and Vladimir Putin agreed to further decrease their nuclear arsenals, Putin had to insist strongly on a treaty, and the one he got (Moscow Treaty) wasn’t much more than the handshake that George Bush preferred. Hey, we’re friends now, right? Friends don’t have to keep track of stuff like nuclear weapons!
The sketchy nature of the Moscow Treaty made it necessary to use the instructions in the START I treaty for counting and verifying nuclear weapons. START I lapses at the end of this year. The Russians have wanted to have talks to extend it for the past few years. The Bush administration has been playing games; the talks have been on and off. Whether this represented attempts to manipulate Russia or simply confusion and infighting among adminstration factions is not clear.
We’ve heard recently that Henry Kissinger was in Moscow in December to discuss decreasing the numbers of nuclear weapons, at Barak Obama’s request. Kissinger is known to the Russians and a notable figure, which must have been reassuring to them. This wasn’t very well reported in the US media (Telegraph, Dublin Independent, Moscow Times).
There are signs that the Russians want to decrease their nuclear holdings, but only in concert with US reductions. But with a weak conventional army, they also are motivated to lean on nuclear weapons. Their nuclear complex is aging, and its environmental problems are severe. (The same could be said about the US.) Educated young people aren’t entering the nuclear weapons field as a career, educational institutions are in trouble, and the financial future looks bleak, particularly with oil at $30 - $40 a barrel. So decreasing the costs of maintaining a nuclear arsenal can be attractive.
A Grand Bargain?
That phrase has been used a lot, perhaps too much, in reference to Iran. Trita Parsi argues that for effective diplomacy with Iran, we must define in our own minds what we want Iran’s role in the world to be while recognizing that Iran has its own interests. This is excellent advice for diplomacy with any nation.
So what do we want Russia’s role to be in the world? Our hated enemy of the Cold War? Sorry, that isn’t going to happen again. Russia is not that powerful, except in its holdings of nuclear weapons, and its ambitions are not those of the Soviet Union. Russia badly needs better economic integration with the rest of the world, and its neighbors in particular. It needs to recognize that those neighbors have their own interests. NATO is a big part of the relationship with Russia. We’ve got to decide what its mission is, twenty years after its enemy disappeared, and what its relationship with Russia should be.
We’ll need to understand, too, what Russia wants its role in the world to be. Russia sees its recent actions as justifiable responses to abrupt and aggressive moves on others’ part. They’re not entirely wrong about the others’ moves. The appropriateness and effectiveness of their responses need to be topics of discussion between Russia and the rest of the world.
Coda
Here are some of the better recent commentaries, and, of course, what we’ve been saying at WhirledView.
Strobe Talbott has some useful suggestions.
Olivia Ward in The Toronto Star gives some background on Central Asia.
Joe Klein gets a few things right, but not everything:
Paul Goble reports some of the fine structure that can help in understanding what’s going on in Russia. He tends to be critical of Russia, but he reads widely in the Russian media and provides material that isn’t available elsewhere. Russia has many internal problems just now.
Recent WhirledView posts:
23 January: Supply Lines
11 February: Russia and the West under Putin and Obama
12 February: The Continuing Saga