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The world's largest building, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is
workshop no. 55 here at Sevmash, an off-limits shipyard in Russia's far north
that built some of the biggest submarines, including the ill-fated Kursk.
Everything about this sprawling city-within-a-city, with 25,000 workers and
dozens of huge workshops and floating docks, seems vastly outsized. It is a
classic example of the former Soviet Union's fixation with gigantism,
demonstrating national power by making the biggest examples of everything. In
its time, the USSR constructed the most enormous hydro-electric dam, the
roomiest hotel, the tallest TV tower, the largest transport plane, the
heaviest battle tank, and the mightiest particle accelerator. A popular joke
from the 1980s went that the Soviet computer industry produced "the world's
biggest microchip."
But managers here at Sevmash aren't laughing. They say their experience at
constructing on a vast scale is key to the forthcoming operation to salvage
the Kursk, which sank during Arctic war games a year ago with the loss of all
118 crew members. They hope publicity surrounding the effort will help save
the shipyard from bankruptcy by showing the world that Sevmash can do much
more than just build warships and atomic subs.
Inside the cavernous, hangarlike shop 55 - on the same slipway where the
Kursk was launched six years ago - a giant steel pontoon is being built in
what engineers here say is record time. Along with a sister pontoon taking
shape in a nearby building, it will be strapped to a lifting barge in
September and deployed to raise the Kursk from its resting place on the sea
bed a few hundred miles to the north.
"No other shipyard could have built these pontoons to this huge scale on such
a tight schedule," says Sevmash director David Pashayev. "This should play a
major role in changing Sevmash's reputation."
More than half the 250 nuclear-powered submarines launched by the USSR during
three cold war decades came from Sevmash. But the facility fell on cruel
times after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Military orders plunged to
near zero, though at least one late-generation atomic sub is still under
construction here. The company's main work over the past decade has been
dismantling the atomic warships it built in the past and chopping them up
according to specifications laid down by Russian-US arms control agreements.
Managers here concede the US had to supply the precision cutting equipment
for that job since, they joke, Sevmash isn't much good at making things
smaller. "We have great capabilities, but not enough work," says deputy
director Oleg Korotkov. "We need more opportunities to show what we can do."
Sevmash and a smaller shipyard are the only industrial plants supporting
Severodvinsk, a city of 250,000 that was built in the 1930s on the shore of
the remote White Sea to service the Soviet Navy's northern fleet. The entire
area is still an officially closed military zone, and foreigners require
special permission to visit. That secret status has hampered the shipyard's
attempts to broaden its production and reach out to world markets.
"Things are getting a little bit better in Severodvinsk now, but it's still
hard going," says Anatoly Yefremov, governor of the surrounding Archangel
region. "Back in 1998, workers at Sevmash were owed 18 months back pay, and
they were living on the potatoes they grew in their kitchen gardens."
Since Vladimir Putin became president last year, wage arrears have been paid
and military orders have increased. Sevmash also has landed a few commercial
contracts that include construction of giant floating fish farms for a
Norwegian company, huge high-speed aluminum ferries for the 2004 Olympic
Games in Athens, and a couple of oil tankers.
But managers say they could do much more. For instance, they are masters at
building colossal floating docks, which could be used in any part of the
world.
Another area Sevmash is itching to get into is production of oil-drilling
platforms. "There is an Arctic oil boom coming, and companies will need
really big, strong rigs to withstand the weather and ice pressure," says
Vyacheslav Popov, the company's deputy head of international contacts.
"Sevmash is right here, on the edge of the Arctic, with the right experience
and equipment to provide everything that will be needed."
Of course, Sevmash's high hopes may ride to some extent on the success of the
Kursk operation, which is reportedly falling far behind schedule. In the
latest delay, the vice admiral in charge of the recovery said this week that
plans to use remote-controlled robots to cut holes for lifting cables in the
sub's thick steel hull were being scrapped. Instead, divers would have to
perform the difficult and risky operation by hand.
"Building the means to recover the Kursk is a sorrowful responsibility for
us," says Sergei Kolovangin, manager of workshop 55. "That submarine was a
child of our shipyard, and it does not feel strange that its destiny has
become entangled with ours."
TOP OF PAGE
These days Moscow and Washington are celebrating the tenth
anniversary of the signing of the first and the only operating
treaty, under which the two nuclear powers began for the first
time in history to cut their atomic arms arsenals. At the 1991
summit in Moscow USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and US
President George Bush signed the Treaty on the Reduction and
Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, which is known today as
the START-I Treaty. At that time it was simply called the START
Treaty. Later, with the commencement of the negotiations on the
subsequent document in the sphere of the reduction and
limitation of strategic offensive systems, both treaties began
to be called the START-I and the START-II Treaties.
Today, ten years later, the significance of this Treaty is
again becoming extremely topical in the general international
context and within the framework of bilateral relations between
Moscow and Washington. However, whereas only positive aspects
were emphasised in 1991, the tone of the talks about strategic
nuclear issues in 2001 has become increasingly negative. The
reason for that is the US desire to get rid of the 1972 ABM
Treaty, on the basis of which the Kremlin and the US White
House have been able in subsequent years at first just to limit
and then reduce their nuclear arsenals. Incidentally, the
START-I Treaty, as its preamble explicitly says, is also based
on the commitments of Moscow and Washington arising from the
1972 ABM Treaty.
In actual fact, the START-I Treaty is the only document
today that really works in the sphere of the strategic
offensive arms reduction. The START-II Treaty signed by George
Bush Sr.
again and Boris Yeltsin on January 3, 1993 has not yet entered
into force since the US Senate has not ratified it to this day.
The START-I treaty, the protocols, coordinated statements,
annexes and the memorandum to it, which are its integral part,
include three volumes and a total of about 600 pages. They
stipulate in detail various restrictions, which the parties
undertake, and also the mechanism of cuts, inspections,
statements, notifications, etc.
Pursuant to the basic provisions (stipulated, in
particular, in article II), Russia and the USA must have by
December 2009 and thereafter no more than 1,600 pieces of
delivery vehicles, i.e.
inter-continental ballistic missiles, sea-launched ballistic
missiles and heavy bombers and 6,000 units of charges carried
by the deployed inter-continental ballistic missiles,
sea-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers.
Apart from that, there are restrictions for the
production, testing and deployment of new types of ballistic
missiles. In particular, the Treaty fully prohibits heavy
inter-continental ballistic missiles, "the vehicles, including
missiles, for injecting nuclear arms or any other type of mass
destruction weapons into the near-Earth orbit or partly the
near-Earth orbit," air-to-surface ballistic missiles,
long-range airborne nuclear cruise missiles carrying two and
more nuclear charges.
Incidentally, these restrictions can become an obstacle on
the way of new research projects by the US Defence Department.
In particular, the last week's sensation, the space bomber, the
programme of the creation of which the Pentagon, according to
its press-secretary Craig Quigley, intends to develop, will
fall under the START-I restrictions, if, naturally, we presume
that this horror craft becomes a reality. So, the START-I
Treaty largely foresaw, ten years before the US returned to the
space bomber project, the possibility of the creation of such
weapons and thus placed a complete ban on its creation and
testing.
Bush Jr. says that the ABM Treaty has become outdated;
however, he has not made any similar statements in relation to
the arms reduction treaties. The strategic offensive arms
reduction has been proclaimed a strategic goal of the
Republican President.
No less important is the fact that given the US unilateral
withdrawal form the ABM Treaty, the START-I Treaty will cease
to exist. This was repeatedly stressed at the highest level.
In general, the Treaty signed ten years ago between the
USSR and the USA became an important component of the entire
package of accords in the sphere of strategic stability, which
had worked without any failure all these years and enabled
Moscow and Washington to proceed with further nuclear arms
cuts. However, with the accession of the new administration to
power, the entire system has been put in question.
TOP OF PAGE
The Moscow School for Political Research and the Center for
European Reform (London) have conducted a seminar on how the European
Union (EU) can help Russia. Prominent Russian and foreign political
analysts who attended the seminar expressed a number of valuable
ideas.
The occasion for the discussion was a new publication by
prominent British diplomat David Gowan on the state of EU-Russia
relations.
Gowan feels quite free to assess Russia's relations with the EU.
But at the same time, he stresses that only his personal point of view
is being represented, not to be taken as the official stance of the
British government. For instance, Gowan believes that Russia's policy
on the EU is only rhetoric, without any substance.
Many prominent Russian political analysts and sociologists
attended the seminar: Yelena Nemirovskaya, Vladimir Mau, Dmitry
Trenin, Yury Levada, and others.
Yelena Nemirovskaya, head of the Moscow School for Political
Research, said: "The Western world has not lost interest in dealing
with Russia."
Dmitry Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Center in Russia,
said: "Russia won't be able to become part of Europe until it stops
seeing itself as a great power." In his opinion, "there are too many
priorities in Russia's foreign policy." On the one hand, we declare
that we want to restore the greatness of Russia, in the best sense of
the term, i.e. we want Russia to be one of the centers of a multi-
polar world. On the other hand, we try to blackmail our Western
partners - threatening to turn our Asian back on them if they do not
accept our terms. Simultaneously, Russia announces that it wants to
become a European nation.
According to Trenin, it is impossible to make Russia a European
nation solely through negotiations with Brussels. He says that for
this purpose, Russia should first solve its domestic problems, like
Chechnya. The current situation in the North Caucasus shows Russia as
a European nation which has remained somewhere in the Middle Ages.
Participants in the seminar also noted that the EU cannot do
without Russia either - since the EU can only be equal to such global
centers of power as the US and China if it includes Russia, with its
vast territory and enormous economic potential.
Meanwhile, the first precept of the market is that there is no
mercy for rivals. Won't Europe invade Russia's domestic market and
oust Russian producers?
Russia is a unique country, and it cannot develop in accordance
with any of the existing models, whether European, Chinese, or
Islamic.
(Translated by Kirill Frolov)
TOP OF PAGE
At the Genoa G-8 summit, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin gave President
Bush a priceless going-away present: implicit acceptance that Moscow will not
let the Antiballistic Missile Treaty stand in the way of building a missile
defense shield around the United States. But little in this world is free,
especially in dealing with the Russians. Putin expects to be paid. And,
within limits, Bush should do so.
Unlike his predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, Putin seems to know what he wants
for Russia and, as an old KGB operative, has a good sense of tactics in
dealing with the West. Blocking all U.S. work on national missile defense is
not high on his wish list. Why should it be? Following the May visit to
Moscow of a high-level Washington team to describe the U.S. program, Putin
obviously concluded that, as of yet, "there is no there there"--that the U.S.
is technically incapable of deploying a robust defense system that could
seriously affect the Russian offensive nuclear arsenal for a decade or more.
So Putin surely asked himself, should I continue playing the role of "bad
cop," thus letting old Cold Warriors in the U.S. use Russian obduracy to
quiet the opposition to missile defenses? Indeed, by embracing joint
U.S.-Russia discussion of both offensive and defense nuclear arms, he cedes
leadership in questioning the U.S. antimissile program to the allies, the
Chinese and members of Congress. And now the price. That derives from what
Putin really wants to achieve as Russian president, about which he has made
no secret.
He wants to keep the Russian Federation together and to convince the West,
especially the U.S., to do no more about Moscow's war in Chechnya--an "object
lesson" to other minorities in Russia thinking about independence--than to
hector him from time to time. He wants to re-centralize as much authority as
possible in Moscow and in himself as a latter-day czar, and he is making
significant progress. He wants to set the Russian economy firmly on an upward
path--the prerequisite for his other goals and his own political survival.
And, for good measure, he would like Russia to be seen as a significant
player on the world scene, when today it is, at best, a medium-sized power.
Putin gains such added stature simply by the United States paying court to
him over the ABM Treaty. But why does it do so? After all, the administration
has a point: With today's relatively benign U.S.-Russia relationship, nobody
would think of negotiating such a treaty afresh. Further, there is almost
nothing Russia could do if the U.S. simply walked away from the ABM Treaty.
Yet doing so would cause a rumpus with most of the civilized world. Thus the
Bush administration has chosen to negotiate with Putin, and he is playing it
for all it's worth. He will, no doubt, also try to gain slackening of U.S.
interest in inviting the three Baltic states to join NATO at the November
2002 Prague summit.
What the Russian leader really wants from the U.S. and the West is support
for Russia's still-flagging economy. It has had a bump with today's high
world oil prices, but oligarchs, including those in charge of natural
resources, continue to wield inordinate power. Economic problems are not
Russia's only ones: Disease, notably once-defunct killers like tuberculosis,
is on the rise; and Russia is the only non-African country that is
depopulating, at a rapid clip.
It was no accident that Putin first showed Bush some flexibility on the ABM
Treaty at their June meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and in exchange the U.S.
president endorsed Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization; or that
the only tangible bilateral agreement at Genoa was to start a Russian-U.S.
business dialogue.
Given that U.S. missile defenses are a long way off--and probably even then
no real strategic challenge to Russia--it was not rocket science for Putin to
trade flexibility on the ABM Treaty for economic benefits. Even so, he can be
expected to bargain hard on the details, to remind the European allies about
his concerns over NATO's expansion and role in the Balkans and to get as much
as he can of the benefits of trade, investment and inclusion in the global
economy.
Likewise, given that the U.S. does want the Russian economy to succeed,
paying just this part of Putin's price is not a bad deal for Bush. What would
remain is for the U.S. to decide whether it really wants national missile
defenses and at what cost in money and relations with countries besides
Russia.
TOP OF PAGE
Authorities yesterday broke up a march designed to highlight the plight of
Chechen refugees -- just minutes after participants started out on their
planned route from Ingushetia to Moscow. It was meant to be a reminder of the
predicament of the some 150,000 people who are still in Ingushetia months
after fleeing across the border to escape the fighting, and comes as the
Russian authorities are trying to persuade many to return.
Prague, 2 August 2001 (RFE/RL) -- The "March for Peace" was meant to take 70
days from the Ingush village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, near the Dagestan
border, to Moscow.
Instead, it lasted just a few minutes, as authorities moved in to disband and
-- some reports say -- arrest the marchers, claiming they lacked the papers
required for permission.
The march was designed to highlight the plight of a group of refugees on a
hunger strike since June to protest conditions at the camps in Ingushetia.
Tens of thousands of civilians fled across the border to escape the fighting
in Chechnya and are now living in makeshift, often highly unsanitary,
accommodations.
It also comes in a week of significant dates in the Chechen conflict.
It was two years ago today that Chechen rebels moved into neighboring
Daghestan, beginning a chain of events that led to Russian troops storming
back into Chechnya.
And Russian authorities are stepping up security in the region as they brace
themselves for possible separatist attacks marking another anniversary on 6
August -- the start of the 1994-1996 Chechen war. The march incident also
comes as the Russian authorities are trying to persuade many Chechen refugees
that the war is all but over and that it is safe to return home.
Yesterday, Vladimir Yelagin, the minister coordinating federal authorities in
Chechnya, said some 15,000 families could return home within the next two
months.
Jan Pazderka coordinates the Chechen program for the Czech charity "People in
Need" and has just returned from a year in the region. He is skeptical of
such official statements.
"This estimate is not realistic. Official comments like this have been coming
out for six months or a year. The Russian government is pushing for a lot of
these people to come back, but the living conditions are not good enough for
that, particularly as regards security. People are scared to go back; young
people get arrested, there's torture, sweeps that often result in loss of
property, looting, and crime is higher than in Ingushetia."
He says there is constant movement across the Ingush-Chechen border, but that
he has noticed an increase recently in the number of people coming into
Ingushetia, especially in the wake of violent raids by Russian forces on the
villages of Sernovodsk, Assinovskaya, and Kurchaloi.
Many civilians disappeared following the raids, and Russian forces faced
allegations of atrocities amid reports that troops beat and tortured
villagers.
Daniil Mesherikov at the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights watchdog, says
refugees will not return until they receive security guarantees.
"The refugees are in a desperate situation. There are no conditions for
normal life in the camps. Deliveries of food are continually being held up.
Sanitation is awful. Even though the refugees have been there a relatively
long time, little has been done to improve their lives. None of the
initiatives to return refugees have been accompanied by security guarantees.
There have been more and more frequent sweep operations in the areas where
refugees are meant to return to. So, as a consequence, they prefer to live in
these very difficult conditions, in relative safety."
The conditions include poor hygiene, sparse medical care, and frequent
outbreaks of tuberculosis and other diseases. Accommodation ranges from
organized camps, to homes of relatives or friends, to so-called "wild camps,"
where people find what refuge they can in pens originally designed for
animals.
The Russian authorities say they would be much better off back home as most
of the dwelling houses in the republic received little or no damage from the
fighting.
But Pazderka says the scale of destruction varies across the republic, and
most of Grozny is flattened. And anyway, he says, this is to miss the point.
"The main question for these people is not where to live but the fear they
have for their children, themselves, their relatives, and that's why a large
number of these 150,000 or so people are still staying in Ingushetia."
Mesherikov says the Russian authorities' attempts to encourage people to
return will fail until civilians feel sure they will not become victim to
abuses by Russian forces.
"The authorities should demonstrate their peaceable mood by ruling out the
use of force against unarmed people. Only after this, after an extended
period of calm, will people voluntarily return to Chechnya."
He says that unless the authorities start peace talks with separatist Chechen
leader Aslan Maskhadov, the refugees will assume that the conflict will
escalate and there will be a real threat to their safety.
TOP OF PAGE
An unprecedented level of openness on the size and purpose of the
conventional forces of NATO and Russia marked the monthly meeting of the
NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council (PJC) held on 18 July. Nevertheless,
Russian officials expressed reservations about encroachment from the West,
participants in the meeting told Jane's Defence Weekly.
NATO briefed Russian officials on the status of the alliance's implementation
of its new force structure, agreed in December 1998 but yet to be fully
implemented. Under that plan, NATO would have the ability to mount three
concurrent corps-sized operations, with appropriate naval and air elements,
and to sustain them for up to two years - in addition to territorial defence
and further operations of less than corps-size. NATO is preparing to name
three high readiness (0 to 90 days) corps headquarters (HQs), three separate
high-readiness maritime HQs and six lower readiness (91 to 180 days) HQs.
"What they got from us was an unprecedented briefing on the current force
structure and force posture, akin to ministerial advice," a NATO official at
the meeting told JDW.
NATO's current threat assessments do not envisage an invasion of NATO
territory, "so as far as the forces themselves are concerned, the balance
between forces optimised for collective defence and those able to be deployed
for non-Article 5 crises response operations is clearly moving in the
direction of the latter, leading to a reduction of the total number of forces
required," said a NATO PJC briefing paper obtained by JDW.
Besides an overall reduction in forces, the number of forces stationed on
other allies' territory has also decreased. For example, the paper noted, the
number of allied forces stationed in Germany has declined from 420,000 in
1990 to about 102,000 today. Further, in the last 10 years there have been
overall reductions in land forces of 34% (from about 300 combat brigades to
197); in combat ships by 34% (from 770 to 510); and in combat aircraft of 44%
(from about 5,020 to 2,810), NATO said.
"We expect this downward trend to continue in the short term as allies
continue to restructure their forces to take account of the new strategic
environment," the briefing paper said. "Our security assessment does not
point to keeping such a high level of forces on high readiness," added the
NATO official.
The Russian presentation - far less specific because NATO received a briefing
on overall Russian military structures earlier this year (down by some 30,000
'units' in the past 10 years) - focused on the northwest region near Norway
and Finland where Russian combat forces have been reduced by 40% and there
now exists no capability to mount an offensive.
"This is to show that we have no intention there to make an offensive," a
Russian official told JDW. "We do have some concern about NATO's developing
capabilities."
Under NATO's 1999 Strategic Concept the alliance does not foresee the need
now to build up forces to counter a territorial threat from the east, but
those capabilities could still be put in place. Further, it provides
consultation with any active partner member that feels its territory is
threatened by an unidentified, "large, populous and well equipped nation".
"There is only one nation like this - us - so the strategic concept allows
NATO to be involved in all countries of the former Soviet Union, right up to
our borders. This causes us concern about NATO military development and
especially enlargement," the Russian official said. He added that the PJC
talks were "the right step" towards providing further transparency and
clarification in these matters.
A co-operative joint statement on Balkans peacekeeping operations in Kosovo
and Bosnia and the smouldering situation in Macedonia, where the two sides
called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, was the only other subject
for discussion in the PJC.
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MOSCOW, Aug 2 (AFP) -
However Putin conceded that the at-times unwieldy loose grouping of 12 former
Soviet republics could not prevent member states from striking their own
economic and military accords.
Moscow has attempted to use the CIS, which excludes the three Baltic states,
as a vehicle for its post-Soviet regional ambitions but the union has been
criticized for failing to achieve any concrete economic or security results.
"The summit was very useful and very open, and we did not avoid even the most
difficult issues," Putin said following a working session of the informal
"no-ties" meet in the southern Russian resort city of Sochi.
"Basically, no one argued against the thesis that following the Soviet
Union's collapse, the CIS remains the most effective structure" for guiding
relations between the ex-Soviet republic, ITAR-TASS quoted Putin as saying.
"The CIS leaders also agreed that, within the union's frameworks, various
regional organizations can also develop ... to solve security, economic and
humanitarian issues," Putin said.
Yet underlining the CIS's diminishing regional role, Thursday's gathering was
snubbed by Georgian President Eduard Shevernadze and Turkmen President
Saparmurat Niyazov.
Some have dubbed the CIS as a "divorce court" for the former republics, with
Shevernadze in particular preparing his nation for a potential alliance with
the United States and NATO.
He has also been accused by Russia of sheltering guerrilla fighters from
separatist Chechnya.
Turkmenistan's Niyazov meanwhile has displayed increasingly isolationist
tendencies, much to the disappointment of Russia, which is hoping to tap his
nation's vast natural gas fields.
One of the main issues on Thursday's agenda were preparations for a formal,
grand September gathering in Moscow to mark the commonwealth's 10-year
anniversary.
During a series of bilateral meeting that were due to follow Thursday, the
heads of state were expected to tackle a mountain of regional disputes,
including a recent flare-up over the division of the Caspian Sea, and its
suspected oil reserves.
Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran approached a crisis point when an
Iranian warship approached an Azeri exploring vessel last week in disputed
waters of the Caspian.
A direct confrontation was averted, but all of the other Caspian states,
including Russia, have voiced concerns over the incident, expressing a new
willingness to finally solve the decade-old oil dispute.
Putin was expected to brief his guests on his recent talks with US National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about the US plan to set up a missile
shield, to which Russia strenuously objects.
They were also set to discuss the situation in Afghanistan -- which many see
as a source of instability in Central Asia -- and the events unfolding in the
Middle East and the Balkans.
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MOSCOW. Aug 1 (Interfax) - International corporations operating in
Russia have said they do not fear Russian anti-globalists.
Coca-Cola's Russian public relations chief said, "There hasn't been
a single case in Russia of anti-globalists attacking a Coca-Cola truck."
The most that Russian anti-globalists can do is break a bottle of
Coke, Dmitry Shulga told Interfax. "But this can't inflict any damage on
the company because one must buy a bottle before breaking it."
"We have 11 factories in the country and all of them are situated
on the outskirts, so not every anti-globalist would be able to reach
them.
"Even if anti-globalists did form a well-developed movement in
Russia, it is only fast food restaurants that would have to fear them
because [such restaurants] are located where passions are boiling."
However, a source at McDonald's Russia said there had not been a
single instance of a McDonald's restaurant in Russia being vandalized.
"There may be anti-globalist movements in Russia, but they are not as
active as in Europe and so we are not afraid of them," the source said.
McDonald's has 68 restaurants in Russia. It has opened eight
restaurants this year and plans to open another nine before the year's
end and more than 20 next year.
Earlier on Wednesday, the acting chairman of Russia's National
Bolshevik Party said it is possible but very difficult to carry out any
large-scale anti-globalism protests in Russia.
"One reason, of course, why an anti-globalist crowd of many
thousands such as that in Genoa wouldn't gather is that Russia hasn't
signed the Schengen agreement and Western anti-globalists will simply
not be let across the border," Anatoly Tishin told Interfax.
Nevertheless, he warned, the National Bolshevik Party will
definitely take some kind of action if Russia hosts international
meetings in which world leaders take part. But "ransacking McDonald's
restaurants is a stage that is long past," he said.
TOP OF PAGE
The Russian-American summit that took place in June near Ljubljana did not
vindicate pessimistic forecasts, though these were not unfounded. Here is a
typical summary, made just prior to the summit by a respected news agency,
of an analysis of assessments offered in the media of various countries: "In
the West, just as in Russia, there are no illusions regarding the summit in
Slovenia. British and American newspapers believe that the very fact that
the presidents will meet personally should be counted a success. Journalists
[after all] describe the positions of Putin and Bush as irreconcilable."
How is it, then, that this irreconcilability developed so quickly and with
such apparent ease into almost undisguised friendliness? I do not think that
the two presidents are such accomplished artists that they put on for the
whole world a beautifully acted performance that might be called "Shoots of
Friendship." No, for all the conventions of these high level meetings, and
the need for official smiles and overly long handshakes for the cameras, not
even the greatest masters of the stage--not just the political stage--could
have put on such a sincere show of mutual rapport. Objectively, the rapid
deterioration in relations between our countries, where the political elites
practically wrote each other off as potential partners in international
business, did not augur well for a favorable outcome. In decisionmaking
circles there were decidedly anti-American and anti-Russian feelings in
Moscow and Washington respectively. Giving a paper at the Gorbachev
Foundation in May this year, I offered the hypothesis, which many people did
not think justified at the time, that there may turn out to be more
subjective preconditions than objective ones for an appreciable improvement
in Russian-American relations today.
In the end, that is how it turned out. There has been a historical precedent
for this, incidentally--when amidst mutual recriminations and a high degree
of confrontation in the 1980s (suffice to recall the epithet of the "evil
empire" coined in Washington to describe the other side), Reagan and
Gorbachev managed to move towards an end to the Cold War.
There is an internal contradiction in the very concept of the "new
partnership" of the title. It implies that there used to be some sort of
"old" partnership that was somehow forfeited. This was indeed the case in
the early 1990s when Yeltsin declared that Russia and the United States were
partners, allies and even friends. But despite such proclamations,
American-Russian relations throughout the 1990s showed consistency in only
one respect: They were consistently deteriorating. Russian politicians and
analysts became increasingly aggrieved with Western leaders for their
attempts to exclude Russia from the decisionmaking process on fundamental
European and international issues. The main reasons for this were the
selfish policy of NATO expansion (despite fierce opposition on the part of
Russia) and the use of force to resolve the Kosovo crisis, bypassing UN
procedures and opinion in Moscow. Meanwhile, Yeltsin's inconsistency in
securing domestic ratification of foreign policy agreements meant that the
West came to rely less and less on Russia. As a consequence, the whole
process of reducing and destroying weapons came to almost a complete
standstill. The use of force to resolve the parliamentary crisis in 1993,
the start of the Chechen war, and the frequent illnesses and
"disappearances" of the Russian president forced the West to adopt an
increasingly cautious--even wary--attitude to Moscow. Essentially relations
between the countries--especially after spy scandals, diplomatic incidents,
exposures and mutual expulsions--were balanced precariously on the edge of a
"cold peace," with the clear potential to descend into a farcical cold war
(there would hardly have been sufficient grounds or funds for a full-scale
cold war like that of the 1960s and 1970s).
But Putin and Bush took a liking to each other, which immediately presented
an opportunity for a constructive solution to longstanding problems. Behind
the outward displays of friendliness, of course, lay an understanding of the
fact that the absence even of pragmatic interaction (or "equal cooperation,"
as recent Russian national security documents like to put it) condemns us to
live in a much more dangerous and unpredictable world, and pushes us towards
excessive military spending.
The two presidents surprised many people by going far beyond the bounds of
the official business of making each other's acquaintance and exchanging the
views they had prepared back at home. The main achievement of Putin and Bush
was to avoid getting bogged down in the details of the mutual recriminations
that had been building up, and to talk seriously about the fundamentals of
the U.S.-Russian relationship. For decades, relations between the two
countries suffered because politicians would, for the sake of appearances,
get actively involved in secondary issues rather than solve the fundamental
issues between them. It may be said, for example, that in the context of the
problem of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which has yet to be
effectively resolved, building a missile defense system is one individual
option and certainly not the most effective way of handling this
increasingly alarming phenomenon. Or, for example, a balanced analysis of
NATO expansion would probably reveal that this is the last of a whole range
of possible instruments for encouraging the process of "expanding democracy"
to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and giving them back their
European identity.
This set approach meant that Russian-American relations were too often
teetering on the brink of crisis, and periods of declared partnership were
quickly superseded by tension. Moreover, one result of the longstanding,
unenterprising and at the same time self-centered policy with regard to
Russia was the renewed "ideologization" of relations, in the sense that any
decisions or measures taken by one party was automatically perceived
negatively by the other. Far too many unresolved problems and issues of
varying importance piled up, undermining relations; this is further evidence
of how all has not been well for a long time.
Prior to the summit, some analysts, including myself, suggested a practical
platform for future Russian-American cooperation: "To begin seeking a
consensus on the fundamental concepts in the field of politics and security,
on the priorities in terms of the threats and challenges to the security of
both countries, and on measures to tackle them together. This work should be
accompanied by dialog at all possible levels, and discussions should begin
immediately to agree on its specific forms" (see Chto delat's Amerikoi?
[What is to be done with America?], S. Oznobishchev, I. Runov, Dipkurier NG,
supplement to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, May 24, 2001). It turned out that the two
sides adopted this very principle as the basis for their initial follow-up
actions after the summit. At the postsummit press conference, President
Vladimir Putin described the understanding reached on this issue as follows:
"We must think together about the threats and concerns--we must define what
the threats are, see where they are, and then decide how to confront them.
It is better to do this together: To identify a common platform, and then
look for a joint solution." If the proposed "fundamental" approach to
building bilateral relations triumphs, then the creation of a missile
defense system and the expansion of NATO will simply be individual issues in
the context of a joint security program. And if the two sides decide to
resort to such measures, it will only be on the basis of a joint decision,
and whether they consider these actions prudent if other mechanisms for
ensuring security do not work.
It was the gap between word and deed in the 1990s that made the bilateral
"strategic partnership"--about which so much was said--impossible. It seems
that this time the opportunity is there to avoid past mistakes. This
opportunity lies in the established "vertical of executive power" in Russia,
and in the far broader opportunities the president now has for carrying out
his international promises--as we have already seen with the ratification of
the START II, nuclear test ban and "open skies" treaties, which Yeltsin was
unable to achieve over many years.
There is every reason to suppose that, however much the bureaucracy moans
and however much individual politicians pontificate, Putin will manage to
quash the domestic opposition to cooperation with the United States that has
gained force over the last few years. He will undoubtedly be helped by
pragmatic considerations: Russia, which is striving to take its rightful
place among other leading states, cannot achieve this without intensive
contacts with the West, first and foremost the United States. Possible
routes towards compromise began mapping themselves out immediately after the
meeting was over. Speaking at the press conference, Putin once again
conceded the possibility of Russia joining NATO. This paradoxical solution
may contain a way out of the impasse that has been reached: Russia's
involvement in NATO will serve to change the nature of the organization,
giving it a truly pan-European character and rendering its expansion
acceptable.
At the same time, after this European tour the U.S. position was toned down.
Having visited Madrid, Brussels, Gothenburg and Warsaw before Ljubljana,
George W. Bush had obviously failed to secure clear support for his missile
defense plans, which have not yet finally been formulated. It is worth
remembering that in the 1980s too, European leaders seriously toned down
attempts by the Reagan administration to erode the limitations of the
antimissile treaty.
There are still a great many steps to be taken on the road to establishing
new relations and producing a joint strategy, which the U.S. president hopes
will happen. Both leaders effectively announced a program of joint measures,
which, it is to be hoped, will be developed and enhanced from meeting to
meeting, and from summit to summit, the dates of which have also been
penciled in. It should not be forgotten that while relations can be
destroyed very quickly, improving them is a long and complex process. This
means that we will all need a great deal of patience before we can gain
confidence in each other and really learn to work together rather than
adopting diametrically opposed stances on practically every issue.
The presidents laid down their fundamental, common position: Russia and the
United States are not enemies, and are no threat to each other, but are
partners and may well become allies. What was said is nothing less than a
reversal in our mutual perception of each other. Anyone who doubts this
would do well to take a look at the national security documents of the two
countries over the last few years: The contrast in the perception and
categorization of the two sides will be truly striking.
Having once again initiated discussions of partnership, it is important that
the two sides do not limit themselves to discussions, but begin to create a
stable, positive equilibrium, moving onto concrete, practical measures. It
would seem that the two sides are set to move in that direction: Bush and
Putin agreed to instruct their ministers to continue working not only on
specific security issues, but also on other prospective issues, including
trade and economics. Here not only America but Russia too will need to do a
lot to create reliable conditions for investment and business development.
Putin acknowledged this.
In broad terms, Russia and the United States will have to do a great deal to
adjust their image in order to be seen by the other side as a real partner,
because without this it will be impossible to establish respectful and
trusting relations. Russia will have to assuage U.S. fears in respect of the
provision of basic rights and freedoms, first and foremost freedom of the
press. Attempts to "privatize" independently run media outlets by structures
controlled by the state do not reflect well on Russia's image in the West.
It should not be forgotten that for our Western arms control partners, the
level of press freedom and basic rights and freedoms are an important
element in assessing the possibility of cooperation with a particular state,
and the extent of that cooperation. Although the application of this
criterion in western politics is often relative and on a case-by-case basis,
it has nevertheless been seen to play a role in foreign policy decisions in
Western capitals on a number of occasions.
For their part, Western leaders must always be aware that while Russian
politics today is becoming more defined, it is still--just like the
country--in a state of transition where its priorities are being determined.
In this state it is very dependent on the actions of the West. In fact,
actions taken by Western leaders today, whether constructive or not, are
capable of exerting a very considerable influence on the direction of
Russian politics tomorrow.
In this context, Western politicians should understand that if they continue
the shortsighted and self-centered policies of the 1990s, they will create
huge problems for themselves in Russia and elsewhere. Only a joint
determination to eradicate the concerns of the other side will be capable of
converting the theory of partnership into practice. This summit meeting has
resurrected that hope.
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With the fall of the Soviet Union now a decade behind us, relations between
Moscow and Washington are still tense. In the second installment of a
two-part interview, The Russia Journal talks with retired Adm. Stansfield
Turner, director of the CIA from 1977-81 and a man who has seen the
friction from the inside.
Turner, who headed the agency when Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter held
the reins of power, had earlier served as commander of the U.S. 2nd Fleet
and commanded NATO’s southern flank.
During his time at the CIA, he controversially modernized its operational
methods, steering its information-gathering toward "technical collection
systems" including satellites and bugging devices, and cutting back on the
use of human operatives in a bid to get one up on the KGB.
In this interview, conducted in Washington, he discusses NATO expansion,
Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush and future relations between
the two powers.
The Russia Journal:
Russia believes that NATO expansion is a major threat
to its security. While official documents in Russia take this line, NATO is
inching closer to the country’s borders, and 2003 is set to mark a new wave
of expansion. How can Moscow resolve this issue – should it oppose NATO
politically and militarily or seek to become a member itself?
Adm. Stansfield Turner:
I personally don’t support any further NATO
expansion; I think [Russia] should have more time to adapt to this. NATO
should be more patient about enlarging its ranks. I would like this process
to be slowed down, but NATO is expanding, and it is a reality. Meanwhile,
you have to understand why the Europeans are so anxious to join NATO.
Several years ago in Prague during a conference I met former Polish
President Lech Walesa. I asked him directly: "Why do you want to be in
NATO?" And he replied almost immediately: "Because the Russians will be back".
But bear in mind, too, that there are more [ethnic] Polish voters in this
country [the United States] than there are Russian voters. And they are
influential in America, and they have more political power in the States
than Russians do.
I don’t know why NATO still exists. We created it because of a threat from
the Soviet Union. Now the U.S.S.R. doesn’t exist anymore. And, again, I
don’t like it, but I predict that NATO will continue to expand.
RJ:
During their summit in Slovenia, Presidents Vladimir Putin and George
W. Bush seemed to establish good personal relations. The Russian president
was praised at home for the way he handled his meeting with the U.S.
president, while Bush was criticized at home for being taken in by
spymaster Putin. Did the presidents really find a common language, or did
they just play to the cameras for their own PR campaigns?
ST:
I think that in this case we have two amateur politicians who came to
face the realities of their duties and the complex world around them. And
this reality is very simple: The countries should get along with each
other, talk to each other and not spit at each other. Before they met for
the first time, everybody expected that they would spit at each other. It’s
good that they talked, and that they acted as responsible leaders. They
promised to meet more, and this is good.
RJ:
Given Putin’s KGB past, will Americans ever feel they can trust him?
ST:
You remember how President [Richard] Nixon went to China in 1972 and
opened this country for America. He was a Republican, nobody thought he
could do that, but he did. I think that Putin, being a former KGB officer,
can do much more for cooperation between the CIA and KGB than any other
Russian president.
RJ:
Before the elections in the United States, George W. Bush was portrayed
in the Russian media as an ignorant politician who didn’t know the names of
world leaders and countries and almost never traveled abroad. Is he really
like that, and how will he handle relations with Russia?
ST:
Of course, Bush is much smarter than many people think. Speaking about
Russia, his background shows quite strong anti-Soviet feelings, since he
represents this wing of the Republican Party. But he is changing. He is
listening to the advice of his close teammates; he knows that it would be
bad to be in a conflict with Russia. He believes that we can trust Russia
now. We are not afraid of Russia because it is too weak, and so let’s
cooperate.
RJ:
But with all this "trust" in Russians, Bush expelled 50 Russian
diplomats earlier this year, accusing them of spying; and the action
seriously damaged relations between Moscow and Washington. Can there be any
trust between our two countries if we are still spying on each other?
ST:
You know, during the Cold War we did this kind of thing, expelling
spies from America. We expected that you were spying on us and you expected
that we were spying on you. Now that the Cold War is over, we are supposed
to spy on each other less. Ironically, it is more costly to relations
between the countries to catch spies in the post-Cold war era than it was
before.
When I was CIA director, sometimes we expelled other people, sometimes we
exchanged them for others, like it was in the case of [Natan] Scharansky,
who was exchanged for your people who were in our jail being caught for
spying.
I don’t know what real harm [Robert] Hanssen did to us, but the newspapers
wrote that he did something terrible. In this country people read these
stories and believe that this man really did something horrible. Hanssen
did something wrong being an American. But people should know that the KGB
has considerably increased the number of its people here in the States,
especially in Washington. And Americans think that has happened because of
Putin, because he is from the KGB. The U.S. president had to react to this,
and Bush did what he thought was appropriate.
RJ:
Instead of spying on each other, couldn’t our intelligence agencies
cooperate more in fighting international crime and other common threats?
ST:
Fighting international terrorism could be one of these issues.
Cooperation in intelligence is very difficult. I know about this as a
former CIA director. Special services are not willing to trust each other,
but it would be possible to cooperate in the terrorism field. Neither
Russia nor the United States can do this job on its own. How could they do
it? For example, the FSB might get a tip that a Ukrainian scientist went
for a vacation to Iraq. The Germans might find a company selling fusion
equipment to Baghdad. There could be other tips from other sources. Later,
we could analyze this information and act jointly.
In this cooperation, there should be a precondition – in order to keep the
trust between two agencies we shouldn’t try to identify our sources from
which we got this information. We just share information and cooperate,
keeping our secrets secret. So, the fight against international terrorism
is an obvious field where we could cooperate.
Narcotics are another aspect. We are vulnerable, and we could get important
information from Russia in order to fight this evil.
RJ:
Will U.S.-Russia relations be better after the Putin-Bush meeting in
Genoa, or will we still be looking at each other with suspicion and mistrust?
I think much will depend on the state of the Russian economy. If your
economy improves, that will be good. If you fail, Russia will blame the
United States for not helping. Currently, your success depends much more on
Moscow than Washington.
You know, when the U.S.S.R. collapsed, it was a big and unexpected issue
for us. Of course, we knew that the Soviet economy was in a very bad shape.
It was not a problem for the CIA to understand that. But we couldn’t
imagine that public opinion in the Soviet Union would have had the impact
it did and bring the government down.
(Yury Sigov is U.S. bureau chief for Novye Izvestia.)
TOP OF PAGE
The United States and Russia have a "window of opportunity" to take
their commercial relations to "a new level as ... recent market
reforms by the Duma and President [Vladimir] Putin take hold," said
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans in Moscow July 27.
Evans, speaking before the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia,
announced that he will be leading a trade mission to Russia in
mid-October 2001 - his first as Commerce Secretary - "to send the
signal that the time has come to expand our commercial ties here."
After praising Russia for making major reforms in fiscal policy and
cutting taxes, Evans said the U.S. Commerce Department "will continue
to work with Russia to revamp its tax system through our bilateral
commercial tax-working group."
Two other items high on the U.S.-Russia trade agenda are Russian entry
into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the need for an effective
tax and regulatory framework that would allow foreign energy companies
to enter into production sharing arrangements with Russia, he said.
Evans also explained that the top item on the Bush Administration's
trade agenda is securing from Congress Trade Promotion Authority (TPA)
-- also known as "fast track" because it would permit the Bush
administration to negotiate trade agreements that Congress cannot
amend, but can only approve or reject by a given deadline.
Evans concluded his remarks by talking about the relationship between
trade and democratic values, calling free and open trade "a foundation
for democracy and political stability."
"Just imagine what free trade could accomplish here in this vast
country of Russia," Evans said. "Think of the new jobs ... the new
wealth ... the new consumer choices ... and the new confidence that
all these things would bring. It would be a victory for human dignity,
and for human liberty."
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