#12 - RW 274
Rossiiskaya Gazeta
September 18, 2003
BETWEEN THE CIS AND THE US
Is where the key to the success of Russia's foreign policy is hidden Russia is unlikely to send its peacekeepers to Iraq
Author: Vitaly Tretiakov
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

THE SUCCESS OF RUSSIA'S FOREIGN POLICY, ESPECIALLY IN RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES, DEPENDS TO A CONSIDERABLE EXTENT ON THE SUCCESSES OF ITS POLICY IN THE CIS. WHAT DOES THE UNITED STATES NEED FROM RUSSIA NOWADAYS? ACTUALLY, NOT VERY MUCH.

A CIS summit takes place in Yalta tomorrow. President Vladimir Putin will meet with George W. Bush in the United States next week. George H.W. Bush himself visited Putin recently. This visit by the father to a leader scheduled to meet with the son is hardly a coincidence. The father must have come on a fact-finding mission.

What does the United States need from Russia nowadays? Actually, not very much. What it needs is the help of the United Nations (and Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council) to shift responsibility for the ill-fated occupation of Iraq from the Americans and their allies to all of the international community.

Russia is unlikely to send its peacekeepers to Iraq, either in the capacity of troops or police. Deterioration of relations with the Arab world, the threat of terrorism expanding on Russian territory, and the prospect of having hundreds of officers and soldiers killed (in addition to the casualties in Chechnya) - all these are sufficient and sound reasons not to help George W. Bush extricate himself from the blind alley of his own making. As for support of the new resolution of the US Security Council, legalizing the presence of occupiers in Iraq - Russia's support should be sold profitably. It should be sold for what Russia needs: Washington's withdrawal from its positions in the CIS.

The Iraqi trap the Americans set up and walked into, despite numerous warnings (from Moscow as well), provides a perfect opportunity to try to explain to Washington that the burden of responsibility for global stability is something beyond the strength of any single world power. And that Russia (in cooperation with the United States and the European Union) can ensure this stability on post-Soviet territory. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to back up these assurances with examples of effective stabilization, and a display in which the majority of post-Soviet countries would demonstrate their willingness to see Russia playing this role in the CIS.

From this point of view, the importance of the upcoming CIS summit cannot be overestimated. Its success or failure - especially the success or failure of the plans for a united economic zone of Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus - will decide whether Putin has another ace to play in his talks with George W. Bush.

In fact, Russia's role in the CIS - or rather, how this role is perceived by Washington - is the major issue in Russian-American relations, the foremost criterion of how Washington perceives Moscow: as a tactical ally to be summoned every now and then, or a serious partner in implementing Washington's plans for establishing a liberal world order. The CIS is the region where Russia can and should demonstrate the validity of its claims. But the experiment must be pure. The Americans will not agree to it just to please Moscow; especially if Moscow itself demonstrates to them its failures in the CIS.

In short, the success of Russia's foreign policy (its American sector, actually) is 90% dependent on the successes of Russian diplomacy in the CIS.

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