Printer-friendly formats:    Web Page    Rich Text Format    Plain Text Contents 1. AFP Bush vows to drop ABM 'on our timetable.'   2. UPI Joseph Boris Analysis: Wide river between U.S., Russia.   3. Christian Science Monitor Scott Peterson Jaded hope: Russia 10 years later. A decade after the Soviet collapse, weary Russians look again to an old-style strong hand.   4. Vremya Novostei Yekaterina Kats THE DRAGGED-OUT ROMANCE. The Russian-American plutonium program has been postponed.   5. www.americans -world.org American public attitudes on Russia   6. MSNBC Michael Moran Dangerous liaison. A new pact between Russia and China begs more scrutiny.   7. The Russia Journal Andrei Piontkovsky Russian elite tires of Eurasian fantasy. Jiang Zemin’s visit was the beginning of the end of the ‘strategic partnership’   8. Christian Science Monitor Scott Peterson Russian Air Force stalls tailspin. Russia wheels out its best jets for foreign buyers, hoping to bolster its ailing aviation industry.   9. Irish Times Editorial Poised For Growth   10. Japan Times Gwynne Dyer Say it again, the Soviet system was a waste   11. St. Petersburg Times Dmitry Furman What Lost Opportunities?   12. AFP Putin praises "strategic partnership" with Ukraine

#1 Bush vows to drop ABM 'on our timetable' CRAWFORD, Texas, Aug 23 (AFP) - President George W. Bush vowed Thursday that the United States would drop a key arms pact "on our timetable" in order to forge ahead with a missile shield Russia says it staunchly opposes. "We will withdraw from the ABM treaty on our timetable," he said of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile accord, which prohibits the kind of missile defense he says Washington must deploy to blunt attacks by so-called "rogue states." But Bush also said he had "no specific timetable in mind," a day after US officials scrambled to deny reports that Washington had given Moscow until a November summit here to agree to changing the pact. And he emphasized that he had "made clear" his position -- that the treaty is a Cold War relic that hampers the United States' ability to defend itself from so-called "rogue states" -- to Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I have made it clear that treaty hampers our ability to keep the peace, to develop defensive weapons necessary to defend America against the true threat of the 21st century," said Bush. Russia is bitterly opposed to the US plan to scrap or sideline the ABM in order to establish a missile shield. China also opposes the plan, and several key US allies worry it could spark a new arms race. But time appeared to be running short for Putin to agree to scrap or modify the accord, with US officials saying it is a matter of "months, not years" before efforts to develop a missile shield will infringe on the treaty. Speaking after arms talks in Moscow, US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton said Wednesday that the two leaders "would be disappointed in us if we didn't have something for them to consider" at the November summit. And the accord, the cornerstone of arms control efforts by the United States and then-Soviet Union, calls for six-months' notice prior to withdrawal. Bolton, who was to meet Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, also downplayed the impact of a unilateral US withdrawal, telling a Moscow radio station: "that will not be the end of all arms control agreements." The US envoy, who this week held three days of talks on strategic defense with Russian officials, was to meet with Ivanov around 0700 GMT Friday, a Russian foreign ministry official said. The visit is the third by a senior US administration official seeking to persuade Russia to accept Washington's plans to set up a missile defence shield since Putin and Bush met at a July Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy. At the time, Bush agreed to tie mutual cuts in the former Cold War antagonists' nuclear stockpiles to negotiations on the ABM treaty in an effort to mollify Putin. Washington says the shield is necessary to protect it from purported threats coming from so-called "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iraq. Russia has reaffirmed its adherence to the treaty, saying that present consultations on possible cuts in nuclear arsenals are conditional on the ABM treaty being maintained in its present form. Senior Russian military officials have stated that specific talks with Washington on the missile defense issue are unlikely before next year. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #2 Analysis: Wide river between U.S., Russia By JOSEPH BORIS WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- Russia's and America's respective views of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty are about as fundamental a difference of opinion on a global strategic issue as exists today. For two nations "no longer enemies," as President Bush and others in his administration have repeatedly pointed out since taking office, Russia and the United States have far different notions of whether the treaty, which has done much to preserve the world's nuclear balance of power for three decades, has a purpose in an age when fear of mutual annihilation felt by ideological opposites is no longer the linchpin of international security. Russian officials have been telling the Bush people, and Bill Clinton before them, that the end of the Cold War is not sufficient reason to tear up what Moscow regards as a still-crucial agreement-at least not without a frank discussion on how Washington would avoid making the world even more dangerous by building a missile defense system. The hoped-for system, still early in the R&D stage, is the administration's justification for seeking Russian assent to amending the treaty or, failing that, as Bush has made clear, abandoning it unilaterally. But the Russians, while holding firm to their contention that the 1972 treaty must be preserved, also have warmed to the idea of sharing in the "shield" Bush says he wants constructed to protect U.S. allies. Russia has been described by administration officials, mostly in the context of missile defense and the United States' goal of unbinding itself from the ABM treaty, as "not an enemy." Russian suggestions in taking up the United States' so far somewhat vague offer to cooperate in a "new framework" for security have begun to take on some solidity. Bush's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Genoa, Italy, in late July has been followed in the past few weeks by further Cabinet-level meetings, or --as the U.S. administration calls them-- "consultations". But a powerful example of the ongoing spin and confusion surrounding these contacts came this week in Moscow, when Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a top U.S. arms control negotiator, suggested in an interview Wednesday with a Moscow radio station that Russia ought to strike a deal on assenting to a U.S.-based missile defense system by November, when Bush and Putin are to meet at Bush's Texas ranch. The State Department's press office quickly put the word out that there was not "deadline" per se for reaching an understanding on the treaty, but stressed that Foggy Bottom would prefer for the Russians to agree to scrap the 1972 agreement. "I imagine the presidents will be disappointed if by this time we haven't achieved meaningful progress" on missile defense by then "and they have anything to talk about at the meeting in Texas," Bolton said, according to a transcript of his interview posted on the radio station's Web site and translated from Russian. "But we are not looking at this as an official, extreme deadline. We will try to achieve as much as possible." Bolton, repeating a frequent administration line, said the United States was prepared to pull out of the treaty if it could not reach agreement with Russia. "If - although we would rather this not happen - we are not able to come to an agreement with Russia, then we will be have the right as stated in the treaty, not to violate it, but to withdraw from it," Bolton was quoted as saying by the station, Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow). The treaty allows either side to withdraw with six months' notice. Firm or not, the suggestion of a deadline clashes with Moscow's consistent assertion that the ABM should not be touched. In a statement, Russia's Foreign Ministry said its delegation at the Bolton meeting had "reconfirmed its principled stand in support of the ABM Treaty" and would consider cuts in offensive weapons on condition of "the preservation of the ABM Treaty in its present form." Last week, after a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Putin confirmed his government's interest in an out-and-out linkage between reductions in the offensive weapons of both sides and any consideration of changes to the 29-year-old ABM treaty. But Putin called for specifics on the Bush Administration's "new framework". And later Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and other Russian officials made it clear that they have not been convinced by Washington's argument that the constrains the United States from developing even a limited missile defense to counter what it says are potential threats from volatile countries at varying stages of missile development (China, North Korea, Iran and Iraq). "I'm afraid not," Ivanov, with Rumsfeld at his side, said in Moscow when asked if he had come to accept the Bush administration's view. "We still consider the ABM Treaty to be one of the key elements of the body of international treaties on which strategic stability is based. And one cannot discuss the ABM Treaty separately from many other agreements, including those on offensive weapons that exist today." Successive senior administration officials say their consultations-not negotiations, they insist-with Russia as address a multitude of complex and often intertwined issues aimed at redefining the former rivals' relationship. Russian officials, at the side of their U.S. colleagues after these meetings, join in both the upbeat assessments and the acknowledgement that brass-tacks negotiating did not take place. Once the joint appearances are over the participants dig in their heels and reveal why the gulf between their countries on the ABM treaty is genuinely wide - with U.S. officials threatening an eventual exit from the treaty, as each party is legally entitled to do, with notice, and the Russians vowing they will never agree to scrap the agreement. Russia says the treaty's demise, and the missile defense its absence would permit, would logically require Moscow to pull back from important agreements with Washington on offensive weapons. Further, it fears that the United States, free of the limits of the ABM treaty, would have unchecked power to intervene militarily in Russia's affairs if it wanted. Of course, a war between the world's two best-equipped nuclear powers is highly unlikely with or without the ABM Treaty, but Russia's point is that its traditional sphere of influence, mainly the other former Soviet republics outside the Baltic states, would be compromised. "Until recently, no member of the nuclear club (to which Russia belongs) has had to fear an external invasion aimed at stopping violations of basic human rights," which has been accepted by many Western countries as justification for military action, wrote Russian journalist and scholar Alexander Altounian recently in the Washington Post. "Successful future deployment of a national missile defense could change this reality." Despite such fundamental objections, the Russians, as evidenced by Putin's recent affirmation, have embraced the U.S. offer to link missile defense with prospective reductions in each country's arsenal of nuclear warheads. Toward that end, Russian officials have been eager to begin crunching numbers, while the U.S. side's typical spin from one meeting has been to announce the next round of talks, indicating that nothing concrete has been discussed. Jon Wolfstahl, who studies arms-control issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a left-center think tank in Washington, sees one of two scenarios being played out at the current round of U.S.-Russian talks on the ABM Treaty. "The first is that the consultations are a smokescreen, and that could mean (the Russians) will decide, 'There's no details, we can't move forward,'" he said in an interview. "Cynics could say this is just a 'box-checking exercise' for the administration to satisfy our European allies (many of whom object to Bush's missile defense plans): 'Right, we've gone to the Russians, they've said no, so now we have to move forward.' "On the other hand, and this is what I think is far more likely, is that the Russians are far more concerned that their refusal to negotiate on ABM will result in the U.S. simply broaching the treaty unilaterally," he said, which would leave Moscow empty-handed if it held out. That outlook is shared by Baker Spring, a national-security scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, though he believes the game is Russia's to direct even though the United States is the one proposing the changes. "The U.S. has told Russia that its plans are still under review, and I really believe they'll get more from the U.S. if they don't force a unilateral exit. The ball is in the Russians' court as much as they want to play." But while the prospects for reaching a deal-at a time when the idea of bargaining is not in the news-briefing lexicon of U.S. officials - are uncertain, there will be no shortage of chances to try. After Bolton leaves this week, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov are due for a meeting next month in New York, while Rumsfeld and Defense Minister Ivanov plan to meet again, in Naples. These contacts will be capped by a get-together at the very top, when the third meeting between mutual admirers Bush and Putin takes place at an Asian economic conference in Shanghai in October. And in November when the two meet at Bush's ranch. No doubt they'll hope to have more to chew on than Texas barbecue. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #3 Moscow Times August 23, 2001 Keep Deterrence By Pavel Felgenhauer It has been a hot summer this year in Moscow, but many diplomats in the U.S. Embassy have been working without much rest because of the constant file of security VIPs arriving from Washington. In less than a month: White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and, this week, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton. Each time, the local staff has had to prepare meetings and do the groundwork in the simmering heat while decent people were at their dachas. And all the good work has been in vain: The U.S.-Russian talks on a new strategic framework are getting nowhere. I was among a small group of weary Russian journalists who met with Rumsfeld at 7 a.m. one morning in his hotel. Rumsfeld was cheery as a lark and full of enthusiasm. Some of Rumsfeld's entourage told me he travels the world on a former Air Force One plane that was downgraded from use by the U.S. president and replaced by a newer version, but is still a very comfortable carrier with sleeping quarters and other niceties. In Moscow, Rumsfeld confiscated the U.S. ambassador's armored limo to go meet President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and deliver the cheerful message that the Cold War is over and between friends there is no need to have arms control treaties. Rumsfeld told reporters that there are no arms control treaties between the United States and Mexico or Canada or Britain. Why should there be any between Moscow and Washington? "The 1972 ABM Treaty is one of the least important issues in U.S.-Russian relations," he said, "and does not have any sense today. "U.S. missile defense plans are defensive in nature and should not worry anyone, only those that want to lob a missile at the U.S," continued Rumsfeld. "We want Russia to be rich, healthy and free, if that happens, we will have no security or military problems." Rumsfeld also told reporters that he did not come to Moscow to "bargain" and that Washington is not offering Moscow anything for a tacit agreement to allow the United States to build a limited missile defense shield. American strategic offensive nuclear weapons will be cut back anyway — no matter what Russia says or does — and there will be no treaties whatsoever to control how many nukes the Unite States will have. Rumsfeld was not specific on how many nukes the United States may cut. MX Peacekeeper ICBMs and "some" Trident nuclear submarines will be scrapped, but these were already planned to go some years ago. At the same time Rumsfeld insisted there is still much substance to the talks with Russian officials. He said that from a recent meeting of military experts in Washington the Russian delegation lead by General Yury Baluyevsky went home with "tons of documents." Apparently most of these documents are U.S. classified reports on how so-called rogue states are preparing missile attacks on the West. Russia has asked the U.S. to explain why the ABM Treaty needs to be scrapped, so the Pentagon is piling up proof of the imminent danger. In the spring of 1999 a commission chaired by Rumsfeld reported to the U.S. Congress that "North Korea will have missiles to attack the U.S. in five years, Iran will also have missiles to attack the U.S. in five years" and Iraq, impoverished by sanctions, will have missiles to attack the U.S. "in 10 years or maybe earlier." More than half of those five years have passed, there are no visible "rogue missiles" zeroed in on the United States in sight, but Rumsfeld told me "the report is still accurate." He said the rogue states are clever: "They are using other states to test missiles, we have evidence that chemical and biological warheads have been tested." Rumsfeld also told me: "One of the rogue states has launched a shorter-range missile from a ship at sea disguised to look like a freighter. They peeled off a cover, erected a launcher, fired the missile and put the cover back again." What nation did it is totally classified, he added. Apparently, this story, which seems to have been taken directly from the narrative of a James Bond film (say, "Doctor No"), is a sample of the evidence Washington is feeding Moscow on why it is desperate to scrap ABM. The story may in fact be true, but Russian officials are not buying it. The Russian military and most of the elite see the West as the worst potential military threat to this nation. Nuclear deterrence is seen as the best way to constrain the threat, while the balance is stabilized by arms control treaties. Hardly any Russian leader (even Putin) can today risk even tacitly supporting U.S. attempts to scrap arms control. Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #4 Vremya Novostei August 23, 2001 THE DRAGGED-OUT ROMANCE The Russian-American plutonium program has been postponed Author: Yekaterina Kats [from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html] RUSSIA IS NOT PARTICULARLY WORRIED BY THE DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED IN IMPLEMENTING THE RUSSIAN-AMERICAN AGREEMENT ON THE PROGRAM OF PLUTONIUM DISPOSAL. IT SUITS RUSSIA PERFECTLY WELL THAT THIS PLUTONIUM, AN INVALUABLE SOURCE OF ENERGY, WILL BE LEFT ALONE. Russia is not particularly worried by the difficulties encountered in implementing the Russian-American agreement on the program of plutonium disposal (the plutonium in question has been extracted from warheads). The Kremlin wouldn't mind seeing implementation of the program signed last September postponed. And its postponement is now on the agenda. Environmentalists have obtained a copy of a report by the Department of Atomic Energy of the US Energy Department. Written in February, the classified report was meant for the US Congress, but never reached its destination. Green groups interpreted it as an attempt to conceal vital information and raised an outcry. In the meantime, some figures from the report (for example, that the program will cost US taxpayers $6.6 billion instead of the initially promised $2 billion) were leaked to the media in early summer. It is also common knowledge that there are problems with funding for the Russian part of the deal. The West is supposed to provide $1.7 billion to Moscow over a decade. Russia's financial involvement in the project is being reduced. At first it was estimated at $2.1 billion, but a way of saving $300-400 million was found. Russia will process most of the plutonium, turning it into fuel for nuclear reactors, which will then be sold to the West. Thus, the overall cost of the project will be reduced. But $1 billion is needed to set the project into motion. The G-8 is supposed to meet the bill, and Russia retains the right to withdraw from the program or suspend its implementation if an installment of funding fails to materialize. Neither the agreement as such nor the addenda specify which countries are prepared to invest how much into the disposal of 34 metric tons of Russian plutonium. No state has volunteered to part with its money so far. The United States remains the only sponsor. According to Senior Deputy Nuclear Energy Minister Valentin Ivanov, Washington guarantees Russia $600 million. Congress has already approved allocation of $200 million. The G-8 failed to reach an agreement, and did its best to involve Belgium and Italy in the financial aspect of the program. The attempt failed, and the program disappeared from the G-8 Genoa summit agenda altogether. Actually, the program will be postponed even if the G-8 scrapes up the money. Under the agreement, Moscow and Washington should process plutonium simultaneously. Washington's failure to fulfill its part of the bargain will inevitably result in the Kremlin deciding to postpone implementation of its own program, and vice versa. Sources in the upper echelons of the Nuclear Energy Ministry say that the new US Administration has requested time to consider its options. The grace period expires next April. The Russian Nuclear Energy Ministry is not in the least concerned. Even when the agreement was being signed, Nuclear Energy Ministry officials all but openly admitted that the agreement was a concession to the international community, made for purely political considerations. Moreover, it suits Russia perfectly well that this plutonium, an invaluable source of energy, will be left alone. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #5 www.americans-world.org American public attitudes on Russia August 23, 2001 American public attitudes on Russia is the topic of the sixth release of the Americans and the World website (www.americans-world.org). On the website you will find a comprehensive analysis that integrates all publicly available polling data on this topic. Americans and the world is developed and maintained by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland at the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland. Briefly stated, our analysis finds that: Following a distinct cooling in 1999 and 2000, attitudes toward Russia have recently warmed so that more Americans now have a favorable opinion of Russia than have an unfavorable attitude. Few Americans see Russia as either an adversary or a partner; most see it in more intermediate terms. Likewise, the threat from Russia is seen in intermediate terms, and as being less than from China, and in terms of immediate threats, less than from terrorist groups or Iran and Iraq. Russia is not seen as inherently threatening. Today and throughout the last decade, large to overwhelming majorities have consistently viewed Russia as a vital interest for the US. Very strong majorities favor nuclear arms reduction agreements with Russia. While a majority favors pursuing a national missile defense program (NMD), a modest majority opposes proceeding with it if this would require the US to violate existing arms control treaties with Russia or if it would interfere with further US-Russian nuclear arms reduction agreements. While a strong majority of Americans supported enlarging NATO, they primarily favored doing so to remove divisions in Europe and to promote collective security, rather than as a response to a Russian threat. Overall, there is strong support for taking an inclusive approach to Russia--as evidenced by strong support for the Russia-NATO Council--and for even ultimately including Russia in NATO. In the short term most want to show some sensitivity to Russian concerns by not moving too quickly with the expansion of NATO, and by holding back from putting military forces close to Russian territory. A majority supports giving economic aid to Russia, though there is not majority support for increasing it. Over the coming weeks and months PIPA will be releasing additional reports on such subjects as global warming, international trade, international women's issues, America's role in the world, human rights, the Middle East, and many other topics. Gradually we will build a comprehensive resource on US public opinion on international issues. Our hope and expectation is that this will provide a valuable resource for policymakers, journalists, researchers, non-governmental organizations, students, and all individuals who would like to know more about American public opinion. Americans and the World is made possible by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Compton Foundation. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #6 MSNBC August 21, 2001 Dangerous liaison A new pact between Russia and China begs more scrutiny By Michael Moran NEW YORK, Aug. 21 — Those old enough to remember ringing in the New Year of 1984 also will recall a spate of stories noting that — somehow — humanity had managed to avoid the fate imagined for us by George Orwell’s book of the same title. Sure, nuclear warheads were pointed at every U.S. and Russian community of more than 100,000 souls. But at least no wars raged between great, bloodthirsty geographic blocs like “East Asia” or “Oceania.” We all breathed a sigh of relief, then a deeper one five years later when the Berlin Wall fell. But what if Orwell merely got the date wrong? OVER THE past summer, the backlash against a post-Cold War agenda which has been largely dictated by the United States has taken a new and ominous shape. Call it the armed wing of the anti-globalization movement: the Shanghai Pact, signed in June by Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. This new group proclaims a desire to cooperate on regional issues like drug smuggling, Islamic militancy and trade. But many in the West who study developments in Central Asia and the former Soviet Union see something quite different — a kind of “Monroe Doctrine” for the Eurasian landmass aimed at keeping American influence out of the last significant area on earth it has yet to penetrate. At first glance, many in Europe or the United States will shrug their shoulders and say, “So what?” The region doesn’t have a whole lot to recommend it at the moment, home as it is to the world’s two most prickly Islamic regimes (Iran and Afghanistan); its most volatile nuclear standoff (between India and Pakistan in Kashmir); its most violent separatist movement (in Chechnya) and a collection of poor and backward former Soviet republics in Central Asia. PAPER TIGER? Still, the conclusion of this agreement, which received little coverage in the United States, has sparked a debate inside the Bush administration and in the Washington defense and intelligence establishments. On one side are those who hear in this new liaison overtones of another anti-Western pact signed in Warsaw in 1955. Among them is Constantine Menges, a former national security aide to Ronald Reagan, author of an essay published in The Washington Post last month that has made the rounds in e-mail. Menges says the Shanghai Pact is something for Washington to be worried about. The pact, he writes, “explicitly seeks to promote ‘a new international order.’ Less than a month after the signing, Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Jiang Zemin met again, this time to ink a treaty of bilateral cooperation which pledges both to come to the aid of the other in case they are ever attacked. FRIEND OR FIEND? American foreign policy analysts — as well as the State Department under both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — have generally dismissed talk of a new Beijing-Moscow axis as fantasy. In 1996, a week before Boris Yeltsin and Jiang signed the first “friendship treaty” between the two nations since Stalin’s time, State Department spokesman Glyn Davis said, “We don’t have any concerns. In fact, we’ve said before that to the extent that those two nations get along better and have such contacts, I think, the region and the world is better off.” Fast-forward five years, to the signing of the Shanghai Pact, and the response is much the same: Bush administration spokesman Richard Boucher dismissed it as “a treaty of friendship, not an alliance.” Technically speaking, Boucher is correct. Even with some $50 billion in arms sales from Russia to China expected by 2005, the two nations are probably still more likely to go to war with one another than with any Western power. Their effort to build a regional group can be viewed as a positive development — and effort to create a forum to discuss disputes like the burgeoning population of Chinese in Russia’s far eastern provinces or their designs on Central Asian or Caspian gas and oil reserves. They do have legitimate regional concerns, including heroin trafficking, the Afghan Taliban and a raging Islamic civil war inside Tajikistan that spills across its neighbors’ borders from time to time. Russia recently won the right to overfly Uzbek airspace and has maintained a strong garrison in Tajikistan since the mid-1990s. To call this a flash-point is understatement. THE KOSOVO LEGACY But in a more global sense, it would be foolish to write these two agreements as mere diplomatic niceties — like some sister-city agreement between Osh Kosh and Omsk. Regardless of the motives one ascribes to American foreign policy since 1989, for much of the rest of the planet, it looks pushy at best, and imperialist or downright threatening to many. The Kosovo war — even without the accidental missile strike that destroyed China’s embassy in Belgrade — did more than strike fear into the hearts of potential American rivals. It also set them to thinking: ‘I certainly can’t beat ‘em, so who can I join?’ Theorists and writers of the past decade rightly have identified the United States as the only player capable of making or breaking an issue on the international stage by virtue of its enormous economic power and its military superiority. But this caution can’t be stated frequently enough: in historical terms, this is a temporary phenomenon. As the world’s economy slows, the “age of globalization” as defined by Tom Friedman will be put to the test. The United States did precious little during the boom years to insulate itself against the wrath of those for whom globalization is not a cure-all. Resentment runs high in many nations about the damage that Hollywood movies, Internet porn, McDonalds hamburgers and Marlboro cigarettes are doing to native health, culture and industry. Fairly or not, this is seen abroad as an American invasion — a view that presents a golden opportunity for those who wish America ill. Even if the Shanghai Pact remains a peaceful one, it is just the kind of rallying point the discredited totalitarian ideologies of the past have been yearning for since the collapse of communism in Europe. If the Cold War taught us anything, it’s that battles aren’t always won with bullets. Americans yawn at their own peril. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #7 The Russia Journal August 17-23, 2001 Russian elite tires of Eurasian fantasy Jiang Zemin’s visit was the beginning of the end of the ‘strategic partnership’ By ANDREI PIONTKOVSKY During Vladimir Putin’s first year as president, our foreign policy took on a demonstratively anti-American character. The excited state of Russia’s "political elite," with their thirst for greatness of their own, or, failing that, taking part in some other kind of preferably anti-American greatness, made it highly likely that Russia would embark on a course of military alliance and "strategic partnership" with China. (Though any serious observer knows that such a course would not only marginalize Russia but also subjugate it to China’s strategic interests and eventually lead to loss of control over the Far East and Siberia.) I remember how one of our prominent political analysts heatedly threatened his American colleague, "You’ll someday see our ships flying the Chinese flag in the Taiwan Strait." For Russia’s Eurasians, the natural development and culmination of this policy was getting Jiang Zemin to visit Moscow and sign a historic agreement on strategic partnership. The visit took place, the agreement was signed, accompanied by pompous and weighty words, and we even agreed for the first time to sell Su-30 fighter planes to China. But something gave way in our "elite’s" united Eurasian movement. Clearly, the long-awaited visit marked not so much the peak of the Eurasian pendulum’s swing as the beginning of its movement in the other direction. It looks as though over the last year or two of virtual confrontation with the West a few things have become obvious to even the most fanatic Eurasians and most seriously afflicted anti-Westerners. For a start, China is a cat that goes its own way and has done so for thousands of years. It is a self-sufficient state that, unlike the Russian political elite, does not suffer from any complexes and does not need any strategic partnership with Russia, especially not on an anti-American basis. But if these pale-faced northern barbarians, who once imposed unjust agreements on the Middle Kingdom, put so much importance on bits of paper about strategic partnership and a multi-polar world, then it’s worth signing them for the sake of securing uninterrupted supplies of state-of-the-art arms. For the Chinese superpower of the 21st century, however, relations with the United States, its main economic partner and political rival, are far more important than relations with Russia. And in building these relations, the Chinese leadership will take into account all kinds of considerations, but the complexes of Russian politicians will not be among them. For Russia, meanwhile, relations with the United States, the G7 and the West in general could be even more important again than relations with China. In any event, Russian Eurasianism has always been historically of secondary importance, reflecting wounded feelings against the West and fulfilling the role of sanitary pad for the Russian "elite" on the critical days of its relations with the West. What importance do China, India, Serbian brothers, Cuban ragamuffins and a little North Korean freak have in this context? They are no more than pretexts of the moment that the manic-depressive Russian elite needs to express its feelings toward the eternally loved and loathed West. The existential Russian question,"Do you respect me?" is addressed not to a chance drinking companion but to the heavens of the West, from which someone has to descend to look into the soul of our political elite and marvel at the unique treasures it contains. The Chinese are well aware of this, and that is why they react to Russia’s periodic overtures with skepticism and an inevitable dose of condescending contempt. Of course, it’s possible to put on a temporary show of false loyalty for tactical reasons, but it gets tiring after a while. A certain weariness with insincere embraces was tangible during the Chinese visit and in the commentaries that followed. As always in Russia, much depends on the position and mood of whoever is at the top. The supreme authority, bestowed on us in its present incarnation by the Lord God and Boris Berezovsky, is the flesh and blood of his class and, as noted above, gave tribute to all his complexes, fantasies and prejudices. But being more cynical than fanatical, the supreme authority can’t let himself drift too far from the hard realities of this world. When questioned about potential joint opposition from Russia and China to U.S. missile defense plans, Putin answered that the two countries would set their own independent policy. This sounded like the epitaph to the Russian-Chinese military-strategic union. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #8 Christian Science Monitor 24 August 2001 Russian Air Force stalls tailspin Russia wheels out its best jets for foreign buyers, hoping to bolster its ailing aviation industry. By Scott Peterson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor ZHUKOVSKY, RUSSIA - If the ability to perform airborne ballet were the only criterion, then its dramatic leaps and twirls might make Russia's experimental Su-37 "Berkut" jet fighter the industry standard. "This plane is designed to solve the contradictory problems of the air," the announcer at the Moscow Air Show last week told a gasping crowd of thousands. Russia's beleaguered aviation industry also hopes to mimic such acrobatic feats on the ground, as it tries to pull its Air Force out of a tailspin even while selling off its best planes. Reversing the downward spiral will not be easy, despite the spit and polish on display at the Moscow Air Show. Most planes there were well-known, freshly dusted Soviet models. When he opened the show last week, President Vladimir Putin promised top-level attention to a military industry forced to rely solely on exports in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov is optimistic. Noting a combination of fresh sales abroad, diversification to civilian planes, and a new joint program with European firms to upgrade East European MIG jets to NATO standards, he says "military aviation is at last standing up off its knees." Recent contracts with China and India have pushed Russian arms exports to a post-Soviet high of $3.2 billion this year. China agreed last month to buy 38 Su-30 ground attack aircraft for $2 billion, and, in June, India made a decade-long, $10 billion deal with a large air component. But, with no other large foreign prospects on the horizon, the industry is looking anew at domestic sales. A revival could one day enable Russia to modernize its own air force, and create a new fighter to compete with the West. High oil prices - Russia is one of Europe's main suppliers - now mean the ministry of defense has more money to spend. The new 2002 budget approved by the cabinet on Tuesday allots an extra $1.5 billion in defense spending. Russia's 2001 defense budget is currently $7.3 billion, and Air Force chiefs want to earmark enough to modernize 80 percent of the fleet by 2005. Meanwhile, Russia's heaviest hitters, Sukhoi and MiG, are presenting competing designs for a fifth-generation fighter to begin production in 2010. "The aircraft are aging before our very eyes," Russia's Air Force commander Anatoly Kornukov said last Friday. "For the past 10 years, not a single new aircraft has been added to our front-line air force." Only 5 percent of Russia's planes are the "most modern," he noted. There is no fuel at 49 of the nation's 115 military airports. "They are taking graduates from air defense colleges and putting them in the infantry because they have no planes and no fuel," says Dale Herrspring, a former diplomat and Russian military expert at Kansas State University. Mr. Herrspring visited several military installations earlier this year. "These guys are in deep, deep hurt." Cut adrift from the Soviet cash cow in 1991, military design teams have also been searching for ways to streamline the military as part of a sweeping, five-year overhaul announced last month. The plan halves Russia's 1,700 military enterprises and consolidates its aviation companies into two main groups. "Putin has made up his mind that the old military-industrial complex was inefficient and corrupt, and this is a way to beat it into submission while making it more efficient," Herrspring says. "The government should take steps to support this industry, or we won't be able to produce any new generation aircraft," says Maxim Pyadushkin, deputy director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow. "We are losing our scientific potential, our researchers and designers." But some counter that the brain drain is exaggerated. "There have been rumors in the media and our factory that MIG is dead, that all the engineers have left, and that we can't build planes," says Lev Bolshakov, a senior MIG salesman, after showing off the cockpit of a MIG-29 to a prospective buyer from Southern Africa. On the open market, MIG fighters are competitive, because of their low price. "If this were the only criteria, we would have won the world," Mr. Bolshakov says. "But there are also politics." Political decisions are being made by several East European nations - who want to join NATO - about Soviet MIG fleets they inherited a decade ago. They have two choices: either upgrade MIG-29s to NATO standard (the cheaper option), or buy new or used American or Swedish planes at a steep price. Most nations seem to be choosing the more expensive Western planes, despite a joint-upgrade business formed by MIG and the West European Airbus-maker, EADS. Germany, which has dealt with Russian MIG upgrades since taking over former East German aircraft, is leading the way. "We tell [the Russians] that the only possibility to move forward is partnership with Western companies," says Wolfgang Aldag, a Germany-based EADS sales director. While experts say there are 1,500 MIGs worldwide - 400 or so of which can be upgraded this way - aspiring NATO candidates, such as Hungary, Bulgaria, and Poland, seem to be reluctant. Hungary's prime minister said its MIG-29s make it the "lame duck" of NATO. "Of course it's cheaper to upgrade the existing fleet, but with Western aircraft, they will have some kind of Western support," says Mr. Pyadushkin. "It's not a commercial choice, but rather a political one." Sukhoi, which last year accounted for half of Russia's overall arms sales, is pursuing a different tack. At the air show, it wheeled out agricultural planes, and talked up a planned $70 million supersonic business jet. It also signed a large deal last week with American airplane giant Boeing and Moscow-based Ilyushin to build civilian planes for Russia's domestic market. "We are ready to build civilian planes," says Yuri Cherbakov, chief spokesman for Sukhoi. "There are no prospects ...in the military sector." TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #9 Irish Times August 22, 2001 Editorial Poised For Growth Ten years ago this week the world held its breath as a political convulsion ran its course in Moscow. The collapse of a hardline coup d'etat on August 21st, 1991, due as much to bad organisation as to opposition from the public, ushered in an intense period of change and instability. Initially hopes were high of positive reforms, despite the demise of Mikhail Gorbachev, whose programme of change had won support from the West. Power moved rapidly to Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian component of the Soviet Union. The expectations were that movement towards democratic and economic reform would be swifter and more positive under his leadership. Mr Yeltsin proved to be extremely adept at destroying the old Soviet structures and this, it is generally accepted, was the main achievement of his presidency. His ability to put effective new arrangements in their place proved to be severely limited. In power virtually from the end of the coup until the conclusion of the century, Mr Yeltsin presided over two terrible internal wars in the breakaway province of Chechnya, in which more Russian citizens lost their lives than at any time since Stalin was in power. His presidency also saw the establishment of a corrupt system of "wild capitalism" in which cronyism dominated the procedure for privatisation of state assets and, in many cases, the Makarov pistol became an everyday business tool. In August, 1998, the economy lurched into a deep crisis. Russia defaulted on its international debt. Major banks collapsed and the emerging middle class saw its savings annihilated. The value of the rouble plummeted and for a short time the shelves on Russian food stores began to resemble those of old Soviet times. Mr Yeltsin, increasingly given to extremely unpredictable behaviour, surprised the world on the morning of December 31st, 1999, with the announcement that he was resigning his post. He appointed the little-known former KGB spy, Mr Vladimir Putin, as his successor and was immediately given an amnesty from prosecution at a time when allegations of corruption beset him and his family. The 1998 devaluation of the rouble gave the economy a boost. Mr Putin's taking over the reins of power coincided with a massive rise in oil prices and with oil exports making up 80 per cent of the country's hard currency revenues, Russia may now be on the brink of a period of strong economic growth. Economic growth for the first half of this year, for example, was more than 5 per cent. The indications are that Russia's weak economic and military position will not last forever. This is something the western powers, particularly the United States, would do well to take into account when tempted to act unilaterally. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #10 Japan Times August 22, 2001 Say it again, the Soviet system was a waste By GWYNNE DYER Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. LONDON -- It's 10 years this month since the failed Communist coup against President Mikhail Gorbachev marked the effective end of the old Soviet Union. The predictable rash of articles lamenting its loss has started showing up on editorial pages, written mostly by the usual suspects. How awful it is there now. Maybe the standard of living in the "motherland of socialism" was low, but at least it was reliable. Russian democracy is a sham, and its capitalism only serves the rich. So it's time to say it again: the Soviet Union deserved to die. It deserved to die even though it put the first man into space, guaranteed all of its citizens enough to eat (albeit often only sausages and cabbage) and kept the worst kinds of thuggery under control (more or less) by recruiting the biggest bullies into the party. The miseries that have followed the Soviet Union's fall have more to do with the nature of the old Communist system than with the nature of market capitalism. There are as many excuses for communist regimes as there are naive outsiders who want to believe in heaven on earth and cynical insiders who want to hang on to power. A prize example was Chinese President Jiang Zemin's warning to journalists from the New York Times: "Should China apply the parliamentary democracy of the Western world, the only result will be that 1.2 billion Chinese people will not have enough food to eat. The result will be great chaos, and should that happen, it will not be conducive to world peace and stability." Why can't China be a democracy? Maybe China's problem is sheer diversity, although India, with a billion people and 14 official languages, has been a democracy for over half a century. Average Indian incomes are below China's and the gulf between the rich and the poor in India is even wider, but current trends are closing both those gaps. And while India can be a pretty rough place if you're poor, it has not murdered tens of millions of its own people. So are the Chinese just so disorganized that they cannot cope with democracy? Of course not. Jiang is simply protecting his own position and that of his fellow Communist bosses by claiming that ordinary Chinese cannot do without them. Oligarchs always talk like that. Come back to the case of the old Soviet Union. Gorbachev's aim back in the 1980s was to "reform" Communism in the direction of democracy and fix the economy without destroying the party's "leading role" in society. In other words, he wanted to turn a fish into a bird and teach it to ride a bicycle -- underwater. It couldn't be done, because the old Soviet system was fundamentally based on force, lies and lawlessness. What was necessary for democracy, or even for long-term economic growth, was the destruction of the entire communist system. The subsequent decade has been hard on most citizens of ex-communist countries, but that does not mean the change was a bad idea. It just means that after a lifetime of dealing with a brutal and corrupt system, people's attitudes and habits were not well fitted for dealing with the problems and choices that democracy and a market economy brought them. It won't be easy for China to democratize either. Twenty years of market-oriented reforms may have given ordinary Chinese people a better grasp of how free economies work than the Russians had 10 years ago, but there are huge upheavals and great pain ahead as the hundreds of millions who still live in the old command economy are forced into the market one. Moreover, most Chinese are as unfamiliar with the ethics and norms of democracy as Russians were in 1985, before the Gorbachev reforms began. So it will be a hard transition for China too, but it will come. When a communist party starts seeking capitalist entrepreneurs as members (Jiang's main ideological innovation), you can safely say that its beneficiaries won't let it lie down. The notion that some cultures are naturally better at democracy than others is a temporal fallacy. But Jiang can't admit that, any more than he can admit that the whole half century of Communist rule in China was a horrible waste of time, money and lives, just like the Soviet "experiment." But then, Mikhail Gorbachev can't bring himself to admit that even 10 years after the fall of Communism in Russia. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #11 St. Petersburg Times August 21, 2001 What Lost Opportunities? By Dmitry Furman Dmitry Furman is a research fellow at the Institute of European Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The complete version of this article appeared in the Rodina history magazine. THE 10th anniversary of Russia without the Soviet Union and without the all-powerful Communist Party makes a great pretext for reflection on the past decade's missed opportunities. When we speak about "missed opportunities" we usually mean the good options that have been missed. But at any given moment of a country's history - just as in the life of an individual - there is a whole range of options, only one of which becomes reality. Usually, it is not the best one, or the worst. The range of Russia's options during the past 10 to 15 years has been relatively narrow. In 1985, when perestroika began, Russia was a mature organism whose national psychology, memory of its past and old habits had already been formed. Nonetheless, it had certain choices. To compare our history since Mikhail Gorbachev with a gamble: We won the whole pot in the beginning. Soviet power was doomed. But the collapse of Soviet power could have taken various forms. When Gorbachev emerged at the top and for six years proceeded to dismantle the system, it was a huge stroke of luck. An extremely improbable option. Six years of Gorbachev's reforms prepared the people for the fall of the totalitarian regime. I believe that the fact that we still have many achievements of democracy is largely due to those years of preparation. Could Gorbachev have stayed in power? He could have, but only at the expense of a radical slowing down or even complete freeze of the democratic process. I think that would have been a better option than the one that was realized, because slow progress - or even a halt in progress - is better than a rapid leap leading to a backlash. Revolutionary achievement of freedom by an unprepared country necessarily leads to a loss of this freedom. Tyrannies brought to life in such a way are usually worse than the old regimes. The semi-constitutional monarchy of 1905 to 1907 was not a democracy, but it was immeasurably better than the tyranny that took hold after a short outburst of freedom in 1917. Six years of Gorbachev's rule were the preparation, without which the downfall of Soviet power could have become a real catastrophe. There was one option, however, that definitely never existed. Gorbachev could not have led an absolutely unprepared country to real democracy, which presumes an opposition capable of gaining power and the rotation of various political forces in the government. At best, he could have created a "semi-democratic" regime with a renamed Communist Party as the only ruling party, with weak right-wing and left-wing oppositions that would have gradually carried out market reforms and dismantled the Soviet Union. In this case, we could have avoided much bloodshed and disillusionment. The privatization process would have been slower, but less of a robbery. The impoverishment of the population would have been lessened. By now, we would have been somewhat closer to a democratic norm. The collapse of communist power in our situation - with a total absence of civil society, developed parties and democratic traditions, and with the people used to obeying the authorities blindly - would have inevitably led to presidential authoritarianism. Of course, somebody "more decent" than Boris Yeltsin could have popped up, and we could have avoided the bloody coup of 1993. Some form of conflict between president and parliament was inevitable. It was conceived in the unclear separation of legislative and executive powers inherited by the new Russian state from the Soviet constitution. It could still be worse than it was. But under any scenario, we would have shifted to an authoritarian presidency. When the power is seized by a group of people who are restrained by neither party discipline nor democratic procedures, the privatization process could not have turned into anything but plundering of state property. Perhaps I lack imagination, but I don't see any major options for a different development. And I don't think that the absolutely worst option has become a reality. Of course, some of the relatively favorable options have been missed as well. Not so long ago, we could almost have elected - for the first time in Russia's history - a person not appointed from above as head of state. When Yeltsin wavered in choosing a successor, the elite began to organize itself and nominated its own candidate: Yevgeny Primakov. If the circumstances had been slightly different - say Primakov was a different kind of man or Yeltsin had postponed his choice even further -we would have had two candidates from the "party of power" and something very close to democratic elections. Apart from this unlikely option, any Yeltsin appointee would have become president. Our party system and political watersheds are such that any opposition candidate, right or left, is a greater evil for the majority of the population. Such is the political culture and psychology of the majority, formed during the course of our whole history. Our majority always prefers the certainty of powers-that-be to the uncertainty of freedom. What would be different if we had another president today? Not much. Vladimir Putin, I think, is not the best option, but not the worst one either. Of course, he has introduced some changes in "style" - both good and bad changes - into politics. But his main task has been to put the system "in order." To make it manageable and fight the forces that were born of the revolution: separatism and the oligarchs. All the while, he gradually distances himself from the revolutionary past and establishes himself as "normal." Obviously, the present regime of a chosen, rather than freely elected president, will not last forever. It is one of many transitional, "semi-democratic" steps that emerge in countries that are psychologically and culturally unprepared for democracy. Ultimately, a crisis is inevitable. It will bring new options and form a bridge to genuine democracy with choices. But it won't happen soon. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    NEXT SECTION #12 Putin praises "strategic partnership" with Ukraine KIEV, Aug 23 (AFP) - Russia and Ukraine are linked by a "strategic partnership" which is important for Europe and the world, Russian President Vladimir Putin said here Thursday. "Our strategic partnership is good for the Commonwealth of Independent States, a united Europe and the world," Putin said, addressing a reception marking the 10th anniversary of Ukraine's break from Soviet rule. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is the loose association of 12 sovereign countries that were once Soviet republics. "The common future of Russia and Ukraine is that of two very closely linked European countries," Putin stressed, on the first day of a two-day visit to the Ukrainian capital. Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma urged more frequent Russian-Ukrainian summits: "We see each other too rarely," he said: "There are so many problems and of such a kind that they cannot be resolved without meetings between the two presidents." Together with Russia, Ukraine was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union until the collapse of the latter in 1991. Bilateral relations warmed when Putin came to power early last year. Observers say Putin is trying to strengthen links between former Soviet republics, especially between the Slavonic states Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. On Friday, Ukraine's national day, Putin was scheduled to attend a military march-past and the inauguration of a new monument celebrating national independence. Ukraine is currently being courted both by Moscow and the West, with NATO Secretary General George Robertson last month describing the country as "one of the keys of European stability." It last month joined in a series of military exercises involving nine NATO members and four NATO partners and hosted a two-day defence symposium sponsored by the western alliance. The two countries have inched towards a broad agreement on the issue of Ukraine's gas debts that have poisoned relations between the two countries since the break-up of the Soviet Union a decade ago. Russian firms have become increasingly well established in Ukraine, winning several contract in the country's strategic industries. Anti-Russian feeling is now largely a thing of the past, except in nationalist circles which continue to denounce Kuchma for getting cosy with the Kremlin. Under Putin, Russia has become increasingly conscious of Ukraine's strategic importance. "The Russians know that without Ukraine they will never manage to re-create a military pole in Europe capable of counterbalancing NATO," a leading alliance official said recently. Kiev has not applied to join NATO, partly in consideration for Moscow's feelings, but has not ruled out doing so in the long term. But analysts believe Russia would be delighted to see Ukraine sign on to join the embryonic Russia-Belarus union. As relations between Moscow and Kiev have warmed in recent months, those between Kiev and the West have cooled. Kuchma's "authoritarian tendencies", with or without official involvement, alleged but unproven, in the killing of an opposition journalist, have caused serious concern in western capitals. Overt criticism by the European Union and the United States has been muted, given a desire to avoid driving Kiev into the arms of Moscow, and in June US President George W. Bush urged the Europeans to ease Ukraine's transition to democratic reforms. The strength of western interest in the Ukraine can be gauged by the fact that Robertson was accompanied on his visit to Kiev last month by US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and the EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana. Flattered to find himself the centre of so much attention, Kuchma sought to reassure his northern neighbour. "The development of relations with the Russian Federation is complementary to our rapprochement with the European Union," he said, displaying a keen sense of realpolitik. Ukraine is dependent on Moscow for nearly 70 percent of its energy supplies and for 40 percent of its export sales. TOP OF PAGE    CONTENTS    TOP OF SECTION    CDI RUSSIA WEEKLY HOME    CDI HOME CENTER FOR DEFENSE INFORMATION 1779 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036-2109 Ph: (202) 332-0600 · Fax: (202) 462-4559 info@cdi.org