Closer US Russian ties?

[ken hanly <khanly@xxxxxxx>]

Wonder what Chris Doss thinks of this?

Cheers, Ken Hanly

http://atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FI08Ag01.html

Russia forced to rethink US ties
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Already coined as Russia's September 11 by various Russian pundits and
editorials, the tragic slaughter of hundreds of innocent people in a middle
school in Beslan has the potential to trigger a major tremor in the foreign
policy charted by President Vladimir Putin, perhaps even as far as heralding
a new chapter in US-Russia relations, much to the chagrin of the so-called
Eurasianists around Putin who have for a long time been advising him to
steer clear of the US's "war on terrorism".

In his first post-Beslan interview, Putin, in a tone reminiscent of
President George W Bush's post-September 11 behavior, has declared Russia to
be in a "war" with enemies that his defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, has
branded as "unseen" and "borderless". Cognitively then, the mass killings in
Russia, including the victims of downed Russian airplanes and Moscow subway
commuters, have seemingly spurred a politico-ideological turn around
vis-a-vis the US, viewed with suspicion by the Kremlin for exploiting the
September 11 tragedies for geopolitical gains at Russia's doorsteps in
Central Asia and elsewhere in the Middle East, prompting Russian
policy-makers to rethink their cynical gaze at the US war on global
terrorism, eg, the same Ivanov has been on record for making paranoid
statements about a post September 11 "dense ring of military and
intelligence gathering installations belonging to the US". In the light of
the severity of the Chechen-led terrorist attacks, reportedly with
participation by members of al-Qaeda, Ivanov and other like-minded people
around Putin are likely more apt to make similar statements about the threat
of Islamist terrorism.

Does this mean that we are about to witness a foreign policy
"re-orientation" in Russia featuring Moscow's new willingness to join
Washington's war on global terrorism and to make the foreign policy
adjustments deemed necessary for such an alliance? While we must await the
passage of time to furnish the answer, the current milieu in Russia, wrought
with a governmental crisis in combating terrorism, is clearly pregnant with
such a possibility.

So far, Putin has offered little beyond a "tactical" partnership with the
US's "war on terror", refraining from a "strategic" alliance in the light of
his criticisms of Bush's invasion of Iraq and the US military's
post-September 11 base-building in Iraq, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan
and Azerbaijan. But adopting an evolutionary perspective, Putin has of late
toned down his anti-US rhetoric, exploring the option of dispatching Russian
troops to Iraq and extending the areas of security cooperation between
Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), notwithstanding
the open agenda of the Russia-NATO Permanent Joint Council shaped in part by
Putin's, and before him Boris Yeltsin's, singular emphasis on Russia's
European identity.

This, in turn, raises the question of what specific adjustments Putin needs
to make above and beyond his hitherto difficult balancing act between the
two powerful impulses of "globalists" and "Westernists" on the one hand and,
on the other, the "nationalists" and the "Eurasianists"? After all, with its
20 million plus Muslim inhabitants, Russia relates to and even absorbs part
of the Islamic east, most vividly reflected in Russia's recent observer
status at the summits of the Organization of Islamic Conference, OIC, and
Russia's recent accession to the regional organization, Central Asia
Cooperation Organization; the latter initiative has been a part and parcel
of a Russian "Eurasian renaissance" reflected in the development of
transportation networks linking Russia to the West on the one hand and to
Asia on the other.

Contrary to some of his advisors, including in the military, Putin has until
now hedged his bets on a multi-faceted foreign policy geared to Russia's
national interests and reflective of Russia's European-Asian ramparts,
whereby he could maintain Russia's independence, particularly from the undue
encroachments by either NATO or the US superpower, while enhancing economic
and financial relations with Western countries and, simultaneously, pursuing
Russia's "eastern" objectives; the latter include low-security cooperation
with China through the "Shanghai Six" and escalating arms sales to China,
India and Iran, among others.

Yet the anti-American confrontational edge of Putin has by all indications
hit a tall wall. On the one hand, this has negatively contributed to the
Western participation in the Russian oil industry, particularly in the
Caspian Sea, putting a question mark on the future of oil exports from
Russia's second energy hub (after Siberia). Victor Kalyuzny, who was until
recently Putin's point man on the Caspian Sea, recently dismissed the notion
that the US has any interests in the Caspian Sea, and Putin's removal of
Kalyuzny can be fairly certainly interpreted as a sign of Putin's decrease
of his anti-US tendency and simultaneous increase of his other tendency to
project the image of Russia as a reliable ally of the West capable of
underwriting security in the fractured Central Asia-Caucasus.

Thus, without doubt the terrorist-related setbacks faced by Putin, whose
confidence in his charted course of action has now been seriously
undermined, underscore the need for a new era of partnership by Russia in
the global campaign against terrorism. This may, in fact, lead Putin to
reverse course on Chechnya, solidly regarded until now as an internal
problem, by instead seeking to internationalize the problems faced by Russia
in Chechnya, such as the growing role of outside forces fueling Chechen
separatism. Concerning the latter, the dominant wisdom in Moscow until now
has been that Chechen separatism may be motivated by religious principles,
but is primarily driven by political goals. The "shock of Beslan" may be
precisely in revising this perception and thus closing the mental gap
between Washington and Moscow.

But for this gap to close altogether, there are other important
prerequisites, above all the US's willingness and ability to put to rest
Moscow's lingering suspicion that Russia's separatist movements are
exploited by the US to weaken Moscow, particularly in its resolve to steer
an independent foreign policy, and, even worse, to "dismember Russia". After
all, commensurate with Putin's criticisms of the US's Iraq policy, there has
been a reciprocal criticism of Russia's Chechen policy, after a temporary
hiatus after September 11 when Russia was "given the green light" on
Chechnya after it endorsed the invasion of Afghanistan and the hunt for
al-Qaeda. The short-lived honeymoon, replaced by growing acrimony over Iraq,
is now potentially resurrected in a more forceful union in case the few
remaining obstacles pertaining mostly to political psychology than to actual
policies, are mutually removed. Take the case of the latest "presidential
elections" in Chechnya for example, blasted by members of the US Congress as
a "total sham", yet without drawing even half as much criticism from the
White House, which has been equally silent with respect to growing reports
(eg, by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) of widespread human
rights abuses by the Russian military in Chechnya.

Old habits die hard, on the other hand, and this much is clear in Putin's
rather xenophobic post-Beslan speech warning of "others" who help the
separatists "because they think that Russia, as one of the greatest nuclear
powers in the world, is still a threat, and this threat has to be
eliminated. And terrorism is only an instrument to achieve these goals."
Indeed, what can a content analysis of this speech reach other than the
conclusion that Putin is making one last-ditch effort to ignore the
inevitable, that is, the terrorist-induced march to a new, and more
energetic, common cause with the US. In the same speech, Putin failed to
mention that what is necessary in combating the evil of terrorism is more
than a "unified society", or a fortress Russia, but rather a unified world
community.

Thus the "lessons of Beslan", so to speak. Admitting that "we showed
weakness", Putin has vowed to reorganize Russia's anti-terror system and to
set up a new crisis-management system, indeed a remedy too late for the
Beslan victims and their relatives, who may have benefited from a more
patient counter-terrorist strategy which proved rather successful in 1996
when the Chechen rebels invaded the Dagestan towns of Kiziliar and
Pervomaiska and held some 2,000 hostages. whom they freed after two weeks of
negotiations. Instead, the Beslan tragedy turns out to be the recycling of
another botched rescue attempt - in June 1996 when some 150 hostages held by
Chechens in a hospital in Budennovsk were killed.

This aside, with Putin's Chechen plans in pieces, he is under tremendous
pressure to apply even greater military pressure on Chechens to break their
will to independence, this while what is really needed is a more prudent
policy that requires a deft mixture of soft and hard approaches, including
the use of international mediators, such as OIC and OSCE (Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe) recently expelled from Chechnya, and
perhaps even the United Nations, for the fact of the matter is that what the
Chechen crisis and its spillover effects inside Russia clearly demonstrate
is the limits of military power and the urgent need for a more civil Russian
approach vis-a-vis its irredentist pressures.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in
Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and "Iran's Foreign Policy Since
9/11", Brown's Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with former deputy
foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003, and "Khatami and OIC Mediation in
Chechnya", Iranian Journal of International Affairs, No 3, 1999. He is
currently working on a book on conflict