#10
Asia Times
August 28, 2002
Russia flirts with US's axis of evil
By Ehsan Ahrari
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is a Norfolk, Virginia, US-based strategic analyst.

As the United States becomes increasingly assertive about the use of its military muscles in different parts of the world, Russia is also determining its own zones of cooperation and competition with that lone superpower. Russia will cooperate on issues that it regards as part of its zone of comfort. On issues that fall in the zone of competition, it will almost invariably choose its own courses of action regardless of whether this will put it at odds with Washington.

Russia may not yet know fully what its status is likely to be in the expanding pax Americana, whose borders are getting closer to its own from all directions, through the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and through the "Partnership for Peace", but Moscow has no problem in determining the issues on which it will cooperate with the United States and on which it will compete.

Cooperation against transnational terrorism definitely falls into Russia's zone of comfort, since it serves its own objective of dealing with Chechen separatists. President Vladimir Putin knows that he has ample leeway in brutally dealing with the Chechen secessionists, whom he has been calling "terrorists". He also knows that the Bush administration is not going to be bothered with the details of his brutalities in fighting those "terrorists", as long as America's own military campaign against al-Qaeda continues in Afghanistan and other parts of the region.

But on President George W Bush's axis of evil countries - Iran, Iraq and North Korea - Putin has unmistakably decided to compete with Washington without indulging in contentious rhetoric. Let's examine the evidence.

Iran

Russia has maintained a long and uninterrupted policy of aiding Iran in its endeavors to develop its nuclear program. One has to go as far back as 1993, when former president Boris Yeltsin refused to abandon selling nuclear technology to Russia's neighbor. Even though later on under his presidency Russia agreed to cooperate with the US to a certain extent - for instance, giving Washington a detailed list of nuclear-related technology transfer to Iran - Moscow never shared Washington's insistence that Iran was indeed bent on developing nuclear weapons. Under Putin, that overall policy toward Iran continues with steadfast resolve. As recently as July 2002, Russia announced that it intended to build five more nuclear power reactors in Iran over the next decade, which was, indeed, a pointed broadening of the scope of its persistent cooperation with Tehran, in defiance of US pressure to the contrary.

Iraq

Iraq is another country with which Russia has consistently maintained a perspective in marked contrast to that of the United States. While Washington labels Iraq as part of the evil trio, Moscow seeks strong trade ties. In fact, even during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when Russia sided with the United States, it never really abandoned the option of a negotiated resolution of the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. It was generally believed then that Moscow did not prefer to see destruction of the Iraqi military infrastructure, since Iraq manifested every intention of continuing huge military purchases from Moscow after the settlement of the Iraq-Kuwait dispute. Iraq was reported to have owed Moscow close to US$20 billion for pre-Desert Storm transactions.

During the Clinton and Bush years, Russia has insisted that the issue of the United Nations inspection of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction sites should be linked with the lifting of economic sanctions. It was only after extracting Russia's consent in March 2002 that the US succeeded in pushing through the UN Security Council the notion of "smart sanctions" against Iraq. But when the Bush administration intensified its rhetoric on toppling Saddam Hussein through military actions, Moscow made clear its disapproval of such measures. That announcement left the US with the option of either toppling Saddam unilaterally, or negotiating its modalities with Russia within the framework of the UN. There is little doubt that a unilateral military action against Iraq is becoming increasingly unpopular worldwide. Even the United Kingdom, America's closest ally, expressed its disapproval, as criticism of Prime Minister Tony Blair inside that country was getting increasingly voluble. However, if the US were to approach Russia with a view to negotiating the modalities of a potential military action against Iraq, there is little doubt that Moscow would reject it out of hand.

To further clarify its opposition to military actions against the Saddam regime, the government of Vladimir Putin has been negotiating a substantial trade deal with Iraq. However, as the talk of US attacks on Iraq continue to heat up, one wonders why Russia has gone ahead with a reported $20 billion, or even $100 billion deal. Sources inside Moscow speculate that regardless of whether Iraq is attacked, Russia is determined to safeguard its economic interests. The thinking inside the Kremlin is reported to be that if a large trade deal with Iraq is signed before military invasion of that country, the chances are Russia would not be frozen out from massive reconstruction of Iraq during post-Saddam years. However, if there were no attack on Iraq, Moscow would continue to extract huge financial benefits from trading with Iraq.

North Korea

Putin agreed to a hurriedly scheduled trip by President Kim Jong-il of North Korea, which ended at the weekend. There appear to be two strong rationales underlying this meeting. First, and specifically, there is the fact that Russia wishes to enhance its trade with North Korea, which is reported to have plummeted by 80 percent, to a low of $115 million in 2001. Moscow aims to reap "billions of dollars in transit fees once North Korea opens its part of the railway and South Korean goods start pouring into Europe across Russia," as one analyst says. Second, Russia clearly intends to signal to the rest of the world, but particularly to the United States, that its decision to cooperate with the US since September 11, indeed has limitations and exceptions.

There is little doubt that the Bush administration is annoyed with Russia's unabashed embrace of the axis countries. North Korea recently added another irritating wrinkle when Washington announced that the marketing arm of Changgwang Siyong Corporation, a company in North Korea, had sold Scud missile components to Yemen. That Persian Gulf state is reported to have 18 Scud missiles in its arsenal. Given that al-Qaeda has been very active in Yemen, Washington views this development with grave concern.

The nuclear arms negotiations also clearly fall into the zone of competition, and Moscow has been consistently proving that point. On June 15, Russia pulled out of the START II treaty. Realistically speaking, this was not a major negative development because the legislatures in Washington and Moscow ratified different versions of that treaty, thereby preventing it from entering into force. From the symbolic perspective, however, this was a significant measure. Putin has been coming under strong pressure from Russian nationalist and hardline groups for being overly conciliatory to his friend George Bush on arms control.

It should be noted that the United States' decision to unilaterally withdraw from the 1972 ABM Treaty was begging for a Russian response. However, since Putin is doing his own calculations of what his next move on that issue has to be, pulling out of the START II treaty emerged as an ideal response; it also enables Russia to allow the American and Russian hardliners to draw complementary conclusions. The Bush administration is likely to find solace by pointing out that the Russian withdrawal lacks any major political meaning to overall US-Russia ties, thereby muting the criticism of American conservatives. Thus, even by making a substantive decision on START II, Russia remains well within its own comfort zone. However, the Russian hardliners and nationalist groups may view the same decision from the perspective of "tit-for-tat" and draw comfort from the fact that their country stood up to the United States. In other words, they are likely to consider it as an integral part of the competitive zone in which Russia - as a "wannabe" superpower - is still defying the United States.

An important Russian decision on its strategic missiles also falls well within the competitive zone. Russian Defense Minister Igor Ivanov announced that his country had decided to "extend the service life of some strategic missiles equipped with multiple warheads, which had been due to be taken out of service". Russia is also of the view that the new generation of Topol-M missile "can defeat any missile defense system envisaged by the United States ..." The US government uses this very same claim to assure Moscow that "its limited shield will prove no threat to Russia's deterrent".

But Russia's main source of comfort related to Bush's decisions to abandon the ABM treaty and proceed with the national missile defense (NMD) systems is the fact that, technologically speaking, the NMD is not yet a reality. When the credible technology to defend against ballistic missiles emerges, Russia is also confident that through the process of "overwhelming" any antiballistic missile systems, its nuclear deterrence would still prevail. In fact, there are reasons to believe that both Russia and China are assiduously working on developing sophisticated countermeasures to any antiballistic missile systems.

Such latent and unequivocal tit-for-tat measures underscore the fact that as great powers, Russia and the United States are likely to maintain their competitive relationship for quite some time. Whether the cooperative aspect of this relationship continues its high visibility has a lot to do with whether the United States continues to enjoy its current ample advantage over Russia in terms of economic and sheer military power. In the meantime, Russia will fully exploit issues from its zone of competition, and will even work to widen their scope.

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