#7
Moscow Times
February 27, 2003
Wiggling Toward Isolation
By Pavel Felgenhauer

Last Friday, speaking at a meeting of generals and officers in the Defense Ministry, President Vladimir Putin expressed his deep concern about the long-term repercussions of the present Iraq crisis and the apparent intention of the United States to invade without a clear mandate from the UN.

Putin said the "balance of power [in the world] has very clearly been disrupted, while a new security architecture has yet to be put in place." He added: "We cannot ignore the increasing aggression of very influential forces in certain countries and that, together with the reduced effectiveness of institutions of international security and conflict prevention, is a cause for concern."

In these circumstances, Putin averred, only the armed forces can guarantee Russia's national interests and thus it is important to retain Soviet-style "mobilization readiness." At the same time, Putin announced that "the capabilities and equipment of the Russian army should be adapted to perform effectively in antiterrorist operations."

Putin chose his words carefully when describing the growing aggression of influential forces in some countries. This passage could be referring to the United States or to extremist jihadists in the Muslim world. But the generals present at the meeting surely did not waver in their interpretation: They view the menace as Anglo-American.

As the current Iraqi crisis has evolved, the Kremlin has been at pains to sit on the fence for as long as possible, maintaining good relations with Washington and Berlin, London and Paris. But this week, Moscow came down decisively on one side: In the UN, Russia co-sponsored, with France and Germany, a memorandum envisaging a continuation of "enhanced" arms inspections in Iraq at least until next June and forbidding any use of force to oust Saddam Hussein.

Putin also sent one of Russia's most influential anti-American politicians and a personal friend of Hussein, former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, to Baghdad in an apparent attempt to coordinate the formation of a Berlin-Paris-Moscow-Baghdad axis.

If the Russo-Franco-German approach prevails, the present Anglo-American troop concentration in the Gulf will be disbanded with most units sent home: Neither the United States nor Britain has enough reserves for a full rotation of all forces deployed and it is impossible to keep battle-ready troops deployed for months on end in the heat of the Gulf summer without action.

The Russo-Franco-German memorandum will indeed avert war in Iraq. If adopted, it will leave Hussein and his one-party, totalitarian, genocidal regime in power for the foreseeable future. This memorandum will allow Hussein to resume production of weapons of mass destruction as soon as the inspectors are exhausted and the Anglo-American forces withdraw. It will also allow the Baghdad regime to continue to oppress its subjects.

For Paris and Moscow, this seems to be a moderate price to pay for keeping the post-World War II system of international law in place -- a system that proclaims Russia and France legally equal to the mighty United States. In fact, neither Moscow nor Paris will "pay" a price. On the contrary, Hussein will award them billions of dollars in future oil contracts as gratitude for saving his regime.

After Sept. 11, 2001, Putin definitively supported the United States in its war on terrorism and during the invasion of Afghanistan, while many in the foreign policy and defense community in Moscow believed Russia should take a more neutral stance. Today, after long consideration and much fretting, Putin seems to have decided to oppose the United States while many in the foreign policy and defense community in Moscow believe that it's futile to bat for the doomed Hussein.

Of course, Putin's new anti-American policy is halfhearted. While instructing his military last week to continue opposing U.S. global hegemony, he implied that joint antiterrorism operations might continue. It's also possible that if it comes to the crunch in the UN Security Council, Russia will wiggle away from using its veto power.

But serious damage has already been done. At a time when Moscow, in line with its long-term national interests, should have sided firmly with Washington (alongside the other nations of the "new Europe"), it sat on the fence -- a policy that will most likely leave Russia isolated and a close friend of nobody in the future.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

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