#3
Trud 7
September 12, 2002
THE MYTH OF AMERICA'S INVULNERABILITY IS BURIED IN MANHATTAN
Author: Vladimir Mikheyev
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

SEPTEMBER 11 CHANGED THE WORLD GREATLY. IT TURNED OUT THAT IT DOES NOT TAKE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY OR TOOLS TO CAUSE GLOBAL TURMOIL. THE UNITED STATES PROVED UNABLE TO ENSURE SECURITY AROUND THE GLOBE. RUSSIAN POLITICAL SCIENTIST ALEXANDER KONOVALOV GIVES HIS OPINION ON RUSSIA'S RELATIONS WITH THE WEST.

Interview with political analyst about the outcomes of September 11

Last year, two days ago before the attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a Russian analyst made a speech to European Parliament members, expressing strong doubt regarding the widespread opinion in the United States that the only "military threat" for a superpower is ballistic missiles from "rogue states". He said terrorist attacks where no nuclear warheads would be used and which would be carried out by underground groups of extremists of no particular nationality would be more probable.

That analyst was Alexander Konovalov, president of the Institute of Strategic Studies and Analysis (ISSA). He gave us an interview on the day which President George W. Bush proclaimed Patriot Day.

Question: It has become habitual to divide modern history into before and after September 11, 2001, saying that the world changed all at once. Is it really so, and if it is, what are the changes and how should we view them?

Konovalov: I would tend to agree with this statement, although it is a generalization. The world cannot change in 24 hours, but, as Zbigniew Brzezinski observes in his book "Out of Order", we live in a period of "compressed history", and if this held good in the 1990s, it is all the more true nowadays.

First of all, the world lost a guarantor. No matter what the attitude of the rest of the world to the United States was, everybody believed that using its economic and military power America would be able to ensure everything: the security of its European allies, stability of money markets and the exchange market. But suddenly it turned out that the United States is unable to provide security not only for other countries, but even for lower Manhattan.

What is the novelty of the situation? We became aware of the fact that our civilization is vulnerable. Being technologically in the vanguard, cannot guarantee the leading powers "complete security". It seemed that the United States had no equals as far as satellites, the intelligence, etc. are concerned. It became obvious that technological superiority can be dangerous in itself. Americans had been long looking for targets, but it is rather problematic to find a target for an attack in a country which has no developed infrastructure. Meanwhile, there are more than enough vulnerable targets in America like chlorine producing enterprises, bio-laboratories, river dams, nuclear power plants, etc.

What else? All international security institutions displayed absolute helplessness. The attack on the United States is a fiasco for all secretive services, including the CIA, MI-6, Mossad, the Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia) and others.

Question: Twelve months have passed since then but no evidence of al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden being responsible for that have been presented to the U.S. and the world community so far. In the opinion of some of your colleagues the former were simply "appointed" guilty ones.

Konovalov: It is true that no one can answer for sure who designed that awful plan. There can be no doubt about bin Laden's connection to the September 11 terrorist cats. But what remains to be proved is whether he was the only initiator. Meanwhile, nothing has been reported on the course of the investigation and the preparation for a trial.

The names of all the suicide hijackers are known already. The list includes citizens of Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia. The majority of them, by the way, come from Saudi Arabia, though they lived for a long time in Europe and America. Al Riyadh has its own twin towers, and it probably would have been more reasonable to bomb not the mountains of Afghanistan, but... However, at that time this idea could not be feasible for the U.S. authorities, since Saudi Arabia is rated on all lists as a very reliable ally.

No final verdict can be issued yet, since it remains unknown where the brain center of the attacks against the United States is located. It is doubtful whether it would be situated in the Afghanistan mountains at Tora Bora, where Osama bin Laden was supposedly hiding and met his death.

Question: Can the events of September 11 be regarded as a turning point for Russia? What do you think of the new priorities in Russia's foreign policy which over the last year have been determining its relations with the West, and the United States in particular?

Konovalov: I believe that the decision to enter into such comprehensive cooperation with America was the right one, it being no indication of pro-American or pro-western attitudes at that. This was a voluntary choice of President Vladimir Putin, although it proved quite unexpected for a substantial part of the Russian political elite, defense agencies and the military. It used to be claimed that Russia would better support Arabs in order to use them as a manipulation means towards the United States. But life cleared things up: previously we used to pay with blood of our soldiers, and now U.S. bombers have destroyed the training camps of al Qaeda militants and the Taliban in Afghanistan, thus eliminating a potential threat to the national security of Russia in the south. Otherwise, we would have already witnessed fighting in Ferghana Valley.

Looking at the matter in a broad context, it is clear that it is a question of whether Russia will remain a third world country which no one is concerned about, or will come to participate in a coalition of powers united by the understanding of the idea that we all are in the same boat. Our turn to the West is a completely pragmatic step, and it is this step that will allow Russia to obtain time it needs so badly to find itself on firm ground.

(Translated by Sergei Kolosov)

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