#5
Moscow News
April 2-8, 2003
The Pitfalls of Confrontation
By Ivan Safranchuk, director of the Center for Defense Information Russian office

The issue of alleged Russian arms sales to Iraq, raised by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, brings to mind the late 1990s low in U.S.-Russian relations, when a number of Russian companies were slapped with sanctions for purported cooperation with Iran.

The Russian side rejects these charges, and it has a good case. First, most experts are sure that such sales could not have made it past the official Russian export control system. This system is rather tough, well up to international standards.

Second, large Russian companies would hardly have sold military-technical systems directly to Iraq for purely selfish considerations. The fact is that the military export sphere has in recent years come under scrutiny of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the ruling establishment as a whole. Businessmen in this sphere are anxious to show their loyalty to the Kremlin. Meanwhile, any attempt by private business to sell military hardware to Iraq would have meant setting up the country's political leadership which maintains that Russia is religiously following the sanctions regime. Shipments through third countries cannot be ruled out, though. The Americans have yet to produce any evidence. Normally, such secrecy is observed when charges are based on covert intelligence so as not to compromise the sources. Can they be trusted? They cannot be ignored of course. But putting more trust in agents - however reliable they might seem - than in a real, avowed partner in an anti-terrorist coalition, this approach is rather dubious.

Could we see a recurrence of the 1998 and 1999 scenario and a sharp deterioration of the Russian-U.S. relations today? I for one do not think so. Both Bush and Putin would be hard put to declare that a burgeoning partnership has failed: This would be fraught with internal political complications. Besides, there is no need to overstate the case: Even if Iraq does have some modern Russian military equipment, it will not be crucial to the outcome of the battle. So it is unfair and politically dubious to unleash a high-pitched propaganda campaign, to the effect that Russian weapons are killing U.S. boys. Morally speaking, of course, this is very unpleasant. But even on the "moral field" Russia has a good case to argue: A U.S. volunteer in the ranks of the Chechen militants, who, even if he did not kill Russian boys directly, was definitely helping get them killed. What is more, he took no punishment for that back home and even made money on it by writing a book.

So on any field, whether legal or political or even moral, Russia has plenty of argument. There is yet another weak point about the U.S. charges: Why were they made only now? The problem seems to date back to last August.

The theory that the Bush administration chose to use charges against Russia to cover up its own setbacks in Iraq explains the timing of the claims but does not fit into the broader context of bilateral relations.

As a matter of fact, these charges have deeper roots. And they are more unpleasant for Russia. There are plenty of Cold War veterans in the Bush administration. Many of them are still suspicious (to put it mildly) of Russia. It is just possible that the real reason is internal squabbling both within the administration and within the Republican Party itself. Its main target is not Moscow but Bush himself who was expected to see through the duplicity of Putin as a sneaking Saddam sympathizer.

The issue of purported arms sales to Iraq reached a political - presidential - level, clearly inappropriate for such cases. Why did the Russian intelligence services, diplomats, or presidential staffers not address U.S. concerns "on the working level"? This is not the first time that U.S. and Russian officials are unable to resolve an issue, leaving it to the two presidents to deal with. It is not until after they discuss it that their staffs get sufficient impulse to work on it.

The conclusion to be drawn from this story is that partnership should go beyond the limits of presidential relationships. The spirit of cooperation should at last get through to their staffs as well.

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