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Edited by David Johnson
| ISSUE #32 | January 22, 1999 |
The CDI Russia Weekly is an e-mail newsletter that carries news and
analysis on all aspects of today's Russia, including political, economic,
social, military, and foreign policy issues. With funding from the Carnegie
Corporation of New York, CDI Russia Weekly is a project of the Washington-based
Center for Defense Information (CDI), a nonprofit research and education
organization.
#1
Russia: Security Discussions To Top Albright's
Agenda
By Julie Moffett
Washington, 22 January 1999 (RFE/RL) --
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright says security issues, primarily
arms control, will be at the top of
the agenda during her upcoming trip to
Russia.
Albright made the statement Thursday during
a speech at the Center for
National Policy in Washington. She is
expected to be in Moscow on Monday.
Albright said that discussions will focus
on the Conventional Forces in Europe
(CFE) agreement, and how it will be affected
by the expansion of NATO. She
also said she will be briefed about the
status of the START II treaty which is
currently under debate in the Russian
Duma.
Albright said she will urge the Duma to
ratify the START II treaty and clear
the way for talks aimed at deep reductions
in both Russia's and the U.S.'s
nuclear arsenals.
Albright said she will also discuss steps
to prevent the "destablizing
transfer" of arms and sensitive missile
and nuclear technologies. But she
added that this problem is not isolated
only to Russia, but nations worldwide.
She explained: "We provide material or
technical assistance to more than two
dozen countries to enhance the effectiveness
of their export controls. We also
share information. These efforts, although
rarely publicized, have prevented
numerous transactions that would have
threatened our allies or friends or
ourselves."
Albright said that while working with Russia
to halt proliferation, the U.S.
will also strive to ensure that America's
own technology is not compromised.
She said that U.S. export control requirements
are the world's "most
stringent," and that the Departments of
State and Defense will seek to ensure
that export controls remain closely tied
to U.S. foreign policy and national
security interests.
Albright said that as a result of "increased
threats of missile
proliferation," the U.S. is now studying
the development of a national missile
defense. She said she will discuss with
her Russian counterparts how such a
defense system might affect the Anti-Ballistic-Missile
(ABM) treaty.
She explained: "We have believed and continue
to believe, that the ABM treaty
is central to our national interest and
to our arms control. The ABM Treaty
has been amended before, and I think it
will be essential to look at how it
will be affected. It has been possible
before to abrogate the ABM Treaty if
there is supreme national interest."
But Albright said she will assure the Russians
that the U.S. is simply
studying a national missile defense and
had not found any reason to amend or
invalidate the treaty.
U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen made
the announcement Wednesday that the
U.S. was taking steps to deploy a missile
defense network designed to protect
Americans at home and troops stationed
abroad from the threat of weapons of
mass destruction.
Cohen told a news conference in Washington
the system was not intended to
counter the Russian nuclear arsenal, but
was aimed to address threats that
come primarily from rouge states such
as North Korea.
Albright said regional conflicts would
also be the focus of several
discussions in Russia, particularly the
recent U.S. bombings in Iraq, and the
current crisis in Kosovo.
In a surprising turnabout, First Deputy
Prime Minister Yury Maslyukov has
admitted that the technologies behind
nuclear weapons and ballistic
missiles have been leaking out of Russia
to Iran and other points foreign
as part of a brisk world arms trade.
Maslyukov - a top Russian economic policy-maker
whose roots in the
military-industrial complex run deep -
said on RTR television's Podrobnosti
program that American fears about the
proliferation of Russia's nuclear
secrets and ballistic missile technology
were "entirely justified."
Last week the U.S. White House imposed
sanctions on several Russian
companies and scientific institutes for
allegedly exporting weapons
technologies to Iran. The U.S. government
has also threatened to ban
launches of U.S.-made satellites on Russian
rockets, a business that
annually generates tens of millions of
dollars for Russia's cash-starved
space industry.
Russian officialdom was unanimous in hotly
denying the American allegations
- until Wednesday, when Maslyukov said
on RTR, "Some of the cases that they
[the Americans] have presented have turned
out to be true."
That admission comes as the administration
of U.S. President Bill Clinton
is suddenly talking of pulling out of
a 27-year-old treaty that has been a
cornerstone of the Cold War-era disarmament
process: the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
The ABM treaty forbids either Moscow or
Washington from developing an
umbrella of national defensive missile
systems, largely on the grounds that
one superpower that felt immune to nuclear
attack might be tempted to
launch a pre-emptive strike against the
other.
But this is an age when full-scale nuclear
war between superpowers seems
less worrisome than a single warhead on
a single missile in the hands of
some rogue state or terrorist group.
So suddenly former President Ronald Reagan's
"Star Wars" ideal of a missile
umbrella is again hot in Washington -
where officials have ordered cruise
missile attacks in recent months against
sites in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Sudan, seen terrorist attacks in Sudan
and Kenya against U.S. embassies and
watched nervously as potential hostile
states like Iran and North Korea
have made headway developing weapons and
missile delivery systems.
Washington officials said this week that
Clinton has sent a letter to
President Boris Yeltsin requesting amendments
to the ABM treaty to allow
for limited umbrella missile defenses.
The U.S. defense secretary has already
suggested this week that the United
States could just pull out of the treaty
unilaterally if Yeltsin and the
Russian parliament gag on those amendments.
Yeltsin has had no public
response, but Russian defense officials
attacked Clinton's proposal in
interviews.
"Once [the Americans] become sure that
they can defend themselves
effectively from our missiles they will
start speaking to us from a
position of strength," warned General
Yury Lebedev, an expert with the
Moscow-based RAU think tank who 10 years
ago was the head of the military
delegation of the Soviet Union's START
I negotiating team.
In addition to scrambling to open an umbrella
against the rest of the
world, U.S. officials have fought to cut
off the rain at its sources. That
means Russia - where, according to Maslyukov,
representatives of the
often-lawless North Caucasus region, and
also of other former Soviet
republics, are often the middle-men in
a world trade in Russian weapons
knowledge.
Maslyukov said on RTR that the Americans
only know part of the story,
saying, "We sometimes catch more [people]
red-handed than they do."
The scandal over technology leaks to Iran
and the proposals for umbrella
defense systems follow on the heels of
Clinton's offer in Tuesday's State
of the Union speech of financial aid to
secure Russian nuclear safety.
All of that will surely be on the table
next week when U.S. Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright arrives in Moscow.
Albright will be meeting with
Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, Foreign
Minister Igor Ivanov and possibly
with Yeltsin.
Even as she arrives to discuss these new
developments, old business like
the START II treaty still languishes before
the State Duma.
START II picked up a new opponent Thursday,
meanwhile, when Krasnoyarsk
governor and former army commander Alexander
Lebed wrote in Nezavisimaya
Gazeta that the treaty was already too
dated. Lebed said Russia and the
United States should instead negotiate
new, deeper cuts under START III.
Other Russian military experts said neither
START II nor III ought to be
ratified unless Washington pledges not
to undercut the ABM treaty.
"The existing system of international security
will be undermined if the
Americans walk out of the [ABM] treaty,"
said Lieutenant General Nikolai
Zlenko, deputy head of the Defense Ministry's
international affairs
department.
"It is the cornerstone that ensures U.S.-Russian
parity," Zlenko said,
noting that the START I and START II reductions
of Russian and U.S.
strategic nuclear arsenals "were made
possible only thanks to that treaty."
The START I treaty, which was signed in
July 1991, reduced nuclear arsenals
in the United States and the Soviet Union
by more than a third, to a total
of about 9,000 warheads on each side.
Under START II, the United States and Russia
would further slash their
deployed strategic warheads, to a maximum
of 3,500 each.
Advocates of START II - including Maslyukov,
the Kremlin, and Russian
Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev - argue
that Russia won't be able to keep up
with U.S. arsenals without such a treaty.
In 345 days a tiny computer glitch known
as the millennium bug could
trigger a potentially catastrophic chain
of computer crashes, power
failures and environmental disasters that
could wreak havoc across Russia.
The head of Russia's State Committee for
Communications and Information,
Aleksander Krupnov, set alarm bells ringing
just last Sunday with
statements warning of the immense threat
to Russian national security posed
by the Y2K problem.
According to Krupnov, Russia still faces
huge problems ensuring its missile
systems are not affected by the Y2K bug.
"The Defence Ministry is facing great difficulties
with all types of
missiles. ... The technologies they have
are 20 years old," he said after a
Russia-U.S. investment symposium held
in the United States.
Krupnov's warning comes in stark contrast
to the previously dismissive
statements of Defense Ministry officials
who have insisted repeatedly that
all computer problems will be fixed in
time. And, his claims that the cost
of attempting to fix the glitch in Russia
now stands at around $1.5 to 3
billion push up his original estimate
of July last year by up to six times.
Analysts say Krupnov's wake up call to
rouse Russia from its so far
somnolent attitude to the problem may
well have come too late.
According to one Western official investigating
Russia's millennium bug
preparations who wished to remain unnamed,
Russia and the remainder of the
former Soviet Union now top a list of
the world's most potentially
dangerous Y2K disaster areas at the turn
of the century.
"Lack of awareness combined with the relatively
high level of technological
advance and the low sense of urgency with
which Russia has approached the
problem so far make Russia one of the
world's main worries," the official
told The Moscow Tribune.
The Bug -- A Hiccup in Computer Time
The root of the worldwide problem lies
at the dawn of the computer age when
the first commercial computers used holes
punched into cardboard strips to
store data. In order to economize on space,
programmers expressed years in
two instead of four digits, so that 1973
was stored as 73 for instance.
Further generations of computers preserved
this practice and stored up
trouble for the year 2000, or in computer
terms 00, when computers would
assume time had returned to the year 1900.
Western governments have been grappling
with the nightmares the bug could
unleash for at least five years now and
have spent billions of dollars in
attempting to avert widespread computer
failure.
Software systems are being checked and
updated to make them compatible with
the year 2000 and so-called "embedded
microchips" or switches used in basic
infrastructure systems such as oil and
gas pipelines, electrical power
systems and even traffic lights are being
traced and replaced.
But this has only been the case in the
West where UK telecommunications
company British Telecom is reported to
have spent $500 million in updating
its systems alone.
However, according to Graeme Finch, tax
partner at the KPMG accountancy
firm, research companies are predicting
a bankruptcy rate of between 1 per
cent and 10 per cent of companies worldwide.
Information about the state of affairs
in Russia has so far been hard to
come by. And, in the traditionally secretive
Ministry of Defense, the
response till now has been nonchalant.
Strategic rocket force commander
Vladimir Yakovlev said just last month
that solving Y2K would cost his
forces only 10 million rubles (less than
half a million dollars).
But the onset of 1999 appears to be forcing
the Defense Ministry to take a
more realistic look at the problem.
According to U.S. Pentagon officials, Russia
finally gave the green light
on Monday to the creation of a US-Russian
consultative council on defense
aspects of the bug.
Too Little, Too Late?
Analysts say a last minute flurry of activity
in Russia is unlikely to
alleviate the situation when Western governments
have been diligently
developing solutions since 1993.
"Russia is only just starting to check
equipment and there is not enough
time to start implementing solutions.
The program should have been
initiated in 1995 at the latest," Ron
Lewin, managing director of the
computer company Terralink and Y2K advisor
to the American Chamber of
Commerce in Moscow told The Moscow Tribune.
"The best thing we can hope for now is
the development of effective
contingency plans should the worst happen,"
he said.
Claims that the low level of computer automation
in Russia compared with
the West means there are fewer systems
to be checked, may be merely
comforting myths, Lewin said.
"There are indeed still many systems in
Russia such as lifts, heating and
ventilation systems that are electromechanical
and not yet computerized as
in the West," Lewin said.
"But the fact remains that major infrastructure
systems such as the power
grid, air traffic control, trains and
probably defense systems are
computerized. Lack of time, resources
and awareness means that the Russian
environment also brings critical disadvantages,"
he said.
Doomsday Scenario?
One saving grace for Russia may be the
fact that many computer systems
within private businesses and banks were
installed only recently, ensuring
that the majority of software is Y2K compatible.
"Awareness about software problems within
the financial sector is
relatively high. And, it is expected that
most of them should be ready for
the year 2000," Lewin said.
But, according to the Western official,
Russia is way behind in checking
out the embedded microchips in basic infrastructure
systems 6 and it is
this factor that could spark off a series
of disasters as Russia enters the
next millennium.
The difficulty in tracing the original
manufacturers of microchips that now
lie in pipelines, electricity grids and
simple systems such as traffic
lights means that nobody knows exactly
what will happen when midnight
strikes on the eve of the year 2000.
If the chips go haywire, then they may
either stay switched "open" or
"closed." If they remain "open" in a pipeline,
oil spills would be a
serious threat.
In case of power blackouts, nuclear reactors
would still be expected to
fail safe, but crucial back-up power would
be required to keep the reactor
cool.
According to the official, a similar disaster
was only just averted at an
atomic power station in the northern Kola
peninsula in the early nineties
when diesel generators initially failed
to operate.
"There is so far no evidence that Russia
has begun checking these systems
or begun developing contingency plans.
Safety culture in Russia is
minimal," he said.
"But considering Russia's financial situation,
lack of progress is to some
extent understandable," he said.
"If there was a problem that may or may
not happen but could incur massive
costs to solve, then I'd also be inclined
to keep my head down and ignore
the problem given the complete lack of
budgetary resources to even begin
dealing with the bug in Russia," he said.
International Affairs, a periodical published
in Moscow, deals, according
to its subheading, with "World Politics
and Diplomacy and International
Relations." Originally founded in 1954,
shortly after Stalin's death, it
has served for a long time as a Soviet
propaganda outlet for the Soviet
line in the Cold War. During the past
several years, it has turned into a
serious academic journal, not unlike our
own Foreign Affairs, that
addresses a broad range of international
issues, ostensibly without
espousing a particular point of view.
Reading the latest issue, however, I was
struck by two aspects of its
contents that suggest to what extent,
despite democratization, Russia's
political culture remains rooted in its
recent past.
America as Russian interloper
For one, not a single one of the 21 articles dares to criticize the current
Russian government. Polls indicate that
only between 1% and 2% of Russians
hold a favorable view of President Boris
Yeltsin, and yet reading this
publication, one would suspect nothing
of the kind.
Are old Soviet traditions returning?
All the policies of the regime -- diplomatic,
economic and military -- are
approvingly commented upon or, at any
rate, not questioned. This is very
much in the old Soviet tradition, contrasting
sharply with practices in the
West, where political commentators go
to great lengths to avoid conveying
the impression that they are government
spokesmen.
The other striking feature of the journal
is its anti-American tone --
muted, to be sure, compared with what
it was in the days of the Cold War,
but still unmistakable and almost equally
invidious.
The lead article written by Sergei Rogov,
the director of the Institute of
U.S. and Canadian Studies in Moscow, called
"Russia and the United States:
Test by Crisis," notes that a good share
of the assistance earmarked for
Russia by the Agency for International
Development went not to Russia but
to American organizations working on behalf
of economic reform there. Rogov
suggests that this reform was bungled
by the employment of "second-rate
professors," presumably Americans sent
to help guide Russia to democracy
and a market economy.
"The Clinton administration is not an onlooker:
upon the disintegration of
the Soviet Union, Washington assumed the
role of a Moscow mentor in the
political and economic reforms," Rogov
writes. "To a great extent, the
United States are responsible for the
results of the 1990s in Russia."
Another anti-American accusation
A second noteworthy article was written
by an equally prominent Russian
commentator on world affairs, Sergei Kortunov,
counselor to the head of the
office of the president of the Russian
Federation. His contribution bears
the title "Is the Cold War Really Over?"
In his analysis of the Cold War,
the author claims that U.S. foreign policy
aimed not so much at defeating
communism as at breaking up and weakening
the Soviet Union along
ethnic/territorial lines.
Such (alleged) American plans, he writes,
"in effect did not in any way
differ from the plans of the German Nazis.
... [I]n this context we can say
that in 1945, the world anti-Russian center
moved from Berlin to Washington."
One rubs one's eyes in disbelief reading
such Stalinist accusations. As
someone who since the 1950s has been deeply
involved in the study of Soviet
nationality problems and who tried, throughout
the Cold War, with little
success, to make Washington aware of their
importance, I can state
categorically that breaking up the Soviet
Union along ethnic or territorial
lines was never U.S. policy.
Quite to the contrary. Fearing the destabilization
of Eurasia, Washington
actively discouraged the claims of the
Soviet nationalities to sovereignty.
Some things never change
At no point in the Cold War did Washington
call for the break-up of the
Soviet state. As late as August 1991,
when the USSR was well on its way to
self-destruction, the then President George
Bush delivered in Kiev a speech
that was widely interpreted as urging
the Ukrainians to refrain from
claiming independence.
Blaming the United States for the failures
of Russian reform attempts and
comparing it to Nazi Germany carries ominous
overtones. Such irresponsible
talk suggests that not only communist
and nationalist politicians but also
Russian establishment intellectuals have
not yet matured to the point where
they can assume blame for their own mistakes
-- and be prepared to learn
from them.
Richard Pipes is a professor of history
and has previously served as
director of Russian studies at Harvard
University. He is a contributing
editor of IntellectualCapital.com.
Washington is preoccupied with the impeachment
of the President and seems
to be paying very little attention to
what goes on in the world. After the
end of the Cold War and seven years of
unprecedented economic growth the
American political class is fully absorbed
in a masochistic show. Only when
American politicians emerge from the trenches
of the presidential
impeachment hearings do they remember
that there is a crisis in Kosovo and
Iraq or that another "emerging economy"
is headed for bankruptcy. They
respond to these international crises
by launching cruise missiles or
ordering the IMF to undertake a new bailout.
Shortly thereafter the world
is assumed to stop so that the public
striptease can resume.
Meanwhile Russia is in the midst of an
extremely painful historical
transformation. Since the dissolution
of the USSR the Russian Federation
has had to redefine its identity, institutionalize
political democracy,
create a market economy and integrate
into various international systems.
Unfortunately the political elite of post-Soviet
Russia failed to find
efficient ways to manage the difficult
transition. The mismanagement of
privatization provided the Russian bureaucracy
with huge opportunities for
corruption. The nouveax riches "the
new Russians" who overnight
acquired huge assets practically for free,
used them to get even richer and
transferred the capital abroad. The rest
of the population won nothing but
lost Soviet-style social protection and
even found themselves without their
meager regular wages. Most of the Russian
enterprises were forced to switch
to barter primitive natural exchange
of goods and services. The bulk of
the Russian economy was de-monetized.
With the government treasury empty and
with no capital to invest, the
economy went into a long decline. As in
other countries in transition from
state-owned to market economies the Russian
recession was probably
inevitable, but the depth and the harshness
of the economic crisis in
Russia was to a great extent man-made.
While still the largest and the
richest country in the world, the former
superpower has been unable to cope
with the enormous challenges of post-Soviet
reform.
The August 17, 1998, unilateral "temporary"
default and the devaluation of
the ruble by the Russian government pushed
the Russian economy to the brink
of a meltdown. This financial crash was
the result of irresponsible and
incompetent policies of the so-called
young reformers in Russia, encouraged
by the West and especially by the IMF,
which promoted the
"non-inflationary" strategy of further
reduction in government expenditures
and continued borrowing on the domestic
(state treasury obligations) and
foreign markets. The governments of Gaidar,
Chernomyrdin and Kiriyenko
failed to collect taxes from the barter
economy and simply did not pay
their bills. This limited the money supply
and thus contributed to
unprecedented inflation, which reduced
by 55 percent the GDP of the Russian
Federation in 1991-1997 and by an additional
8-10 percent in 1998. Further
decline of about 10 percent will probably
follow in 1999.
As a result, the Russian economy is in
free fall, while the federal budget
has collapsed. If in July 1998 the federal
government collected about $3.5
billion (at the ruble exchange rate of
6:1) in revenues, since then its
revenues dropped to less than $1 billion
(with the exchange rate dropping
to 23:1). It is clear that the Russian
government can not settle 70 billion
rubles in State treasury bills, known
as GKOs, on which it defaulted last
year. And the federal government also
owes about 25 billion rubles in
unpaid salaries (4 months of average wages)
to the employees of state
enterprises, teachers, doctors; 15 billion
to military officers; and even
more to pensioners, children, etc.
Meanwhile the sovereign foreign debt of
the Russian Federation jumped to
about $155 billion, while debts of Russian
commercial banks and companies
have reached $60 billion. Russian sovereign
debts include loans by the IMF
and the World Bank, bilateral intergovernmental
credits, London and Paris
clubs debts, and some loans by German
and other Western banks. Moscow has
already missed some of its foreign debt
payments in the second half of 1998
and does not have $18 billion to service
its sovereign debt in 1999.
It is clear that the second tranche of
the IMF loan -- even if it is
released despite failure to fulfill its
terms -- will not resolve the
Russian debt problem. The Russian government
will not be able to repay its
debts according to the schedule and urgently
needs a long-term of debt
restructuring (at least 10 years). Additional
borrowing will only add to
the debt burden, and by delaying the overdue
reorganization of the Russian
economy, deprive it of any chances of
recovery.
The Russian debt is in a way the price
for the Soviet Union’s defeat in the
Cold War. The Russian Federation inherited
much of the cost of Soviet
support of "wars of national liberation,"
the elimination of the
accumulated nuclear, chemical and conventional
weapons, the social
rehabilitation of the decommissioned military
personnel, etc. Similar to
Weimar Germany after the World War I,
Russia can not cope with this
enormous burden alone.
The rescheduling of Russian foreign debt
is a necessary component for the
recovery of its economy. Eliminating barter,
which accounts for 75 percent
of the Russian economy, will help secure
the necessary private investment
and restore the tax base of the government.
It will probably take 18 to 24
months to halt recession and stabilize
the situation, followed by at least
three years to monerize the barter sector
and bring the entire Russian
economy to market conditions. Only after
that can one expect the ground to
be prepared for fast economic growth.
Unfortunately President Yeltsin is not
able to cope with the situation.
Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov, who is
de facto running the country, has
been able to stabilize the political situation
but can not produce any
quick miracles. While his government is
not responsible for the mess
created by its predecessors, Primakov
is preoccupied with immediate
economic challenges. It will take six
to 18 months to stop the recession,
followed by several years to restore the
market infrastructure, change the
tax system, monetize the barter sector,
and prepare the necessary legal and
economic environment necessary to attract
investment.
Of course, only Russians can advise Russia’s
recoverery. Nobody else can do
this job. And sooner or later Moscow will
again be a major international
player. It has a creative and dedicated
people, enormous natural resources,
huge (although obsolete) industries, impressive
nuclear capabilities and
occupies a strategic position in the middle
of Eurasia. Russia is a giant
that has always had the power and tremendous
capacity for good or bad. That
is why it matters whether the Russia Federation
will come back as a
responsible international player, contributing
to global prosperity and
international peace. The alternative is
for Russia to bear grudges against
the new world order, considering it detrimental
to its legitimate interests.
Many in Russia today blame the West for
Russian misfortunes, accusing the
United States in particular of harboring
sinister intentions. That is
unfair and untrue -- the CIA could never
harm Russia as much as its own
Russian leaders have. But that does not
mean that the United States is
without blame. Apparently Washington failed
to develop a meaningful
strategy for the integration of Russia
into the post-Cold War international
community.
The strategic partnership proclaimed by
"friend Bill" and "friend Boris"
was never institutionalized. A partnership
can not exist without a
mechanism for common decision-making.
While the Clinton Administration
rejected the advice of those who believed
that Russia should be weakened as
much as possible, apparently the Clinton
team felt that there has been no
need to gain Russian support to do what
has been considered necessary to
advance American national interests.
There was no reason to expect Moscow to
welcome Washington’s decision to
expand NATO and absorb former Soviet satellites.
Taking into account that
the North Atlantic alliance instead of
the OSCE has become the backbone of
post-Cold War European security, nobody
expects the Russian Federation to
be invited into NATO. And if NATO decides
to use military force, as the
Americans did in Iraq without an explicit
UN mandate, Russia, which still
is a permanent member of the Security
Council, will feel even more humiliated.
The United States did not aid Russia as
it assisted its former enemies
after the Second World War. There was
no massive infusion of American
assistance to Moscow. Russia did receive
what was less than five percent of
Marshall Plan assistance (at comparable
prices), but this help was too
little, too late and sometimes counterproductive.
The advice of Western
officials was shaped by IMF dogma and
ignored Russian realities, thus
contributing to its problems, instead
of helping to solve them.
Consequently Russia enjoyed very few benefits
but acquired additional
burdens on top of heavy Soviet legacies.
As a result both sides feel more and more
frustrated because the other side
did not live up to expectations (or illusions?).
The economic asymmetry
produces growing unhappiness in Moscow
and in Washington. The list of
Russian-American disagreements on international
issues has been growing. In
Bosnia and Kosovo, Iran and Iraq, India
and Pakistan, China and North
Korea, the two countries have begun to
take opposing positions as in the
days of the Cold War.
Arms control has come to a standstill.
Russia and the United States hardly
cooperate to manage the inevitable diffusion
of power and do little to
jointly control the transfer of arms and
dual use technology to the
challengers of the status quo. Nor is
there much cooperation in the
enforcement of the NPT, or chemical and
biological weapons agreements. The
START-2 Treaty, which was almost ratified
in December 1998, is again on the
backburner, where it may stay forever.
The efforts to change the ABM Treaty
may destroy most of what is left from
the Soviet-American arms control
regime negotiated during the Cold War.
Present developments in Russian-American
relations do not bode well for
either country. While the return to the
Cold War is unlikely, both
countries will lose as a result of a possible
disengagement and the renewal
of mutual suspicions. Lack of cooperation
between Washington and Moscow
will make it very difficult to maintain
international security and
stability and prevent efforts to abruptly
change the balance of power.
It’s time for a serious effort to put U.S.-Russian
relations on the right
track. Both sides should honestly search
for a common understanding of the
new agenda in their relationship.
The restructuring of the Russian debt can
hardly be done without the United
States, which dominates the IMF and the
World Bank. But the Clinton
Administration seems to be paralyzed by
its domestic political crisis. That
means that if Western leaders take no
initiative, Moscow will be forced to
admit the default and face the consequences,
which can push the Russian
economy to a complete meltdown.
There is an urgent need for direct discussions
of the situation between the
top leaders of the two countries. The
Gore-Primakov meeting in March may
provide this opportunity, unless Russia
and the United States are overcome
by events, whether they be domestic surprises
or new fighting in Kosovo or
Iraq.
A possible solution may be discussed at
an emergency meeting of the G-7
meeting. That will permit the Western
leaders to come to a broad
understanding with Prime Minister Primakov
on a number of issues, including
debt restructuring and European security.
The ratification of the START-2
treaty could restore Russia’s tarnished
credibility and demonstrate that
Russia can eventually implement its commitments.
As far as additional Western assistance
is concerned, it is not a
substitute for restructuring on the Russian
debt. Moscow should help itself
to create a market economy. New Western
assistance shouldn’t be used for
repayment of old debts, but targeted instead
to a few limited areas, like
the elimination of weapons of mass destruction
and providing housing and
job retraining for military officers.
Russia could also be given credits
for emergency food relief in some regions
this winter. But with the
long-term foreign debt rescheduling there
is no need for a new IMF
"bail-out". In fact any attempts by the
IMF to impose its conditions on
Russia will only bring new disasters.
If Russia understands that it is not being
treated as a defeated country,
and if the United States understands that
unilateralism can not be
successful, cooperation between the countries
could become more
institutionalized.
A reassured Russia, while renewing its
efforts to evolve into a market
economy and political democracy, will
be able to deal more realistically
with the pressing arms control issues.
Moscow would probably agree not only
to START-2 but also to much lower ceilings
in strategic and tactical
nuclear weapons. That would provide a
new life to the failing arms control
process in other areas.
Will the leaders of both countries, despite
all their domestic problems, be
able to elaborate this new agenda? If
they don’t, an historic chance might
be missed.
Vladivostok, 21 January 1999 (RFE/RL) --
Prosecutors in Russia's Far
Eastern city of Vladivostok began laying
out a treason case today in a
military court against journalist Grigorii
Pasko.
Pasko is a Navy captain and journalist
who provided Japanese media with
information on alleged environmental abuses
by Russia's Pacific Fleet. He
is officially charged with espionage and
revealing state secrets.
Pasko's trial has been compared to that
of Aleksandr Nikitin, a Saint
Petersburg Navy captain and environmentalist
who has been charged with
treason for contributing to a Norwegian
environmental group's report on the
dumping of nuclear waste at sea.
In both cases PEN International, the writers
and editors association
provided an attorney, and now Amnesty
International is championing the two
men. Earlier this week, Amnesty International
identified Pasko as a
"prisoner of conscience", saying he is
being held in detention and
prosecuted "solely for the peaceful exercise
of his right to freedom of
expression".
Our Vladivostok correspondent reports that
Pasko was visibly agitated as he
left the court filled with agents of the
Federal Security Service (FSB),
the successor to the KGB.
Pasko and his lawyer, Anatoly Pyshkin,
indicated they had low expectations
for a fair trial in the military court.
Pyshkin noted that the court
refused to release Pasko after the first
trial was suspended in October. He
also referred to subsequent attempts to
prevent Pasko from obtaining
qualifying documents for a recent failed
race for a City Duma seat.
Prosecutors plan to finish reading the
case tomorrow and begin calling
witnesses from "Boyevaya Vakhta," a newspaper
where Pasko worked as an
editor and reporter.
Prosecutors and the military judge, Dmitry
Savushkin, have refused to speak
to the press on the case.
Viktor Kondratov, President Boris Yeltsin's
regional representative and a
FSB general, said the case has nothing
to do with Pasko's environmental
activities.
Pasko came under suspicion in November
1997 when customs officials seized
documents from him as he was heading for
Japan. When he returned a few days
later, he was arrested. His lawyers have
noted that Pasko willingly came
home even though his papers had been seized
-- which they say is an
indication he was innocent. And they insist
the records he provided to the
Japanese were public.
A Vladivostok military journalist, who
spoke on condition of anonymity,
told our correspondent that Russia has
an enormous backlog of documents
that haven't been declassified since the
Soviet era, even though the
information they contain has already been
made public. The journalist said
Pasko's documents could have been of this
type.
Pasko's trial opened in October but was
immediately suspended. The matter
was referred to the Supreme Court, which
ordered Pasko to remain behind bars.
Since his arrest, Pasko has sued NHK, a
Japanese station he was
free-lancing for, claiming they used some
materials without his permission.
NHK disputes that charge. Although it
has a bureau in Vladivostok, NHK has
never sent reporters to cover the trial.
Yury Maksimenko, a representative of the
Veterans of the Fleet Council who
was permitted to sit in on the trial,
said the case was flawed. He said:
"there are so many assumptions, and not
much proof." He added that
prosecutors "keep saying that Pasko sold
information, but this is what
every journalist does."
As the hearing began, Pasko's wife, Galina
Morozova, was expelled from the
courtroom. Morozova has been limited to
one visit a month with her husband.
Amnesty International, citing Pasko's
lawyers, have expressed concern about
his deteriorating health and said he has
not been receiving adequate
medical treatment.
Reporters have been unable to talk to Pasko
except in passing. Eduard
Vorotnikov, a Vladivostok television reporter,
said he believes the Pasko
case has worrying implications for other
Russian journalists.
(Russell Working is a regular contributor
to RFE/RL, based in Vladivostok.
Nonna Chernyakova contributed to this
report.)
U.S.-Russian relations reached a new low
last week when President Bill
Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy
Berger announced economic
sanctions against three Russian scientific
institutions for allegedly
leaking nuclear and missile technology
to Iran. The announcement of
sanctions was followed by a more serious
threat - to cancel the launches of
American satellites by Russian space rockets.
Similar sanctions were announced last summer
against several other Russian
institutions, but that time public reaction
was muted, most likely because
those institutions were obscure scientific
outlets nobody knew anything
much about. This time, two well-known
public universities have been
blacklisted - the Moscow Aviation Institute
and the Mendeleyev Chemical
Technical University. Thousands of students
and professors will be affected
and many Moscow families may be punished
by the United States for no good
reason. Russia's public universities have
never been seriously involved in
designing Russian weapons of mass destruction
and could not have possibly
passed any forbidden technology to Iran.
Of course, sanctions against institutions
cannot in themselves cause a
major shift in Russian foreign policy.
But if the threat to cancel launches
is made true, irreversible damage may
be done.
Military and high-tech cooperation with
Iran has for some time been a hot
issue behind the scenes in Moscow. In
the '80s, during the Iraq-Iran war,
the Soviet Union sold arms to Iraq on
a huge scale, but not to Iran. But
after the cease-fire that ended the war
in 1988, the Soviet Union swiftly
moved in to supply modern arms that Iran
desperately wanted, including
MiG-29 fighters, new jet bombers and Kilo
class submarines. Russia helped
build a modern tank factory in Iran that
is today busy making T-72 tanks
under license. The license agreement envisages
the production of 2,000 T-72
tanks in Iran, and Iranian crack tank
divisions are now equipped with these
Russian-designed weapons.
Iran has purchased more than $5 billion
worth of Russian arms and military
technology since 1989. However, in 1995
this trade was curtailed when U.S.
Vice President Al Gore and then Russian
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin
signed a memorandum that pledged that
Russia will not sign new arms
contracts with Iran, but will honor old
ones.
Immediately after the signing of the memorandum,
Russia's defense industry
began clamoring for it to be scrapped.
Russian arms production chiefs told
me bitter stories of how much time and
money they put into preparing new
deals with Iran, only to suddenly learn
that the Americans had left them
out in the cold. The pro-Iran lobby in
Russia is strongly supported by
influential regional governors and by
many State Duma deputies. Iranian
orders could create thousands of jobs
in depressed regions. The Russian
government and the Kremlin are under constant
pressure to renege on the
Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement and resume
full military-technical cooperation
with Iran, while Iranian officials constantly
signal that they have a long
shopping list for Russian arms and technology.
The pro-Iranian lobby in Russia is not
particularly afraid of sanctions
since the United States is not buying
their weapons. On the contrary,
sanctions promote anti-American feelings
and so help the pro-Iranian cause.
Nor is the lobby overly eager for Russia
to obtain further loans from the
IMF. A constantly falling ruble only makes
arms exports more profitable,
and if consumer goods imported from the
West dry up in the future, all the
better for the defense industry since
it will be able to market offset
goods supplied to Russia in exchange for
weapons by Iran and other countries.
Still, pro-Iranian pressure has so far
been unable to change official
government policy because of strong anti-Iranian
lobbying. Powerful
financial institutions (the pro-Western
oligarchies) and the space-rocket
industry want to make money with the West
- not against it. The allocation
of satellite launches to Russia was, in
effect, an unofficial part of the
Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement.
However, the pro-Western oligarchies have
lost sway while Washington is
threatening sanctions against the space
industry, its last serious ally in
Russia. Kremlin officials say that they
hope the United States is bluffing,
that negotiations on allocating new launch
quotas are continuing and that
there is still time to clinch an agreement.
But those officials will only
remain in office until elections, most
likely dominated by anti-American
rhetoric, bring new people into the Kremlin.
Pavel Felgenhauer is the chief defense correspondent for Segodnya.
NORWEGIAN MISSILE LAUNCH A "ROUTINE" EVENT
THIS TIME. In a matter-of-fact
statement, the chief spokesman for the
Strategic Missile Force announced
yesterday that Russian early-warning sensors
had that day both detected the
launch of a Norwegian research ballistic
missile and confirmed that the
missile's trajectory posed no threat to
Russia. A similar event four years
ago nearly triggered a nuclear war (Russian
media, January 21).
In January 1995 Norway launched a research
rocket from northern Norway in a
joint U.S./Norwegian project to study
the Northern Lights. As in the recent
case, Norway had notified Russia before
the launch. In 1995, however, that
information was somehow lost in the Russian
bureaucracy and apparently never
reached the missile force's command center.
When Russian ABM radar detected
the rocket, computers identified it as
a combat missile, perhaps a Trident
nuclear-armed missile launched from an
American submarine patrolling in
either the Norwegian or Barents Sea. Later
reports indicated that President
Boris Yeltsin's "nuclear briefcase" was
activated and that he was poised to
authorize a retaliatory nuclear strike.
The matter was fortunately resolved
when the missile splashed into the Arctic
Ocean near Spitsbergen, more than
1,000 kilometers from Russia (The Economist,
July 13, 1998).
This relatively close call fueled Western
concerns about the deteriorating
state of Russia's nuclear command and
control system. Yesterday's statement
indicates that some things have improved--such
as the lines of communication
between the foreign and defense ministries.
It would also appear that the
early-warning computers can now better
distinguish between friend and foe.
DIMMING PROSPECTS FOR START II RATIFICATION.
Two
announcements yesterday threw more water
on flickering hopes that the State
Duma might ratify the 1993 START II nuclear
arms reduction treaty. The first
was a statement by former general, Krasnoyarsk
governor and presidential hopeful
Aleksandr Lebed that ratification of the
treaty would cause "irreparable damage" to
Russia's national security (Russian media,
January 21). The second was the
revelation that President Bill Clinton
had written a letter to President
Yeltsin proposing that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) treaty be
renegotiated (New York Times, January
21).
Of the two, the second is the most serious.
Russians of all political
stripes have long held the ABM treaty
sacrosanct. It is regarded as the
cornerstone of all subsequent nuclear
limitation and reduction pacts.
Attempting to significantly tamper with
it, they say, would bring the entire
edifice down. Legislators in the State
Duma will surely want to wait until
the status of the treaty is clarified
before considering START II again.
Lebed called for bypassing that treaty
and proceeding to the even more
radical reduction of weapons which had
been envisioned for START III. At
their 1997 Helsinki summit, Yeltsin and
Clinton agreed on a ceiling of
2,000--2,500 warheads for the new treaty.
Lebed would like to see that
number lowered to 1,500-1,700. He also
expressed particular concern about
the air and naval components of Russia's
nuclear triad, and suggested that
each country should be able to apportion
its warheads among its components
as it saw fit. Many Russian politicians
agree with Lebed's concern that the
START II limits are too high, but the
United States has shown no willingness
to move on to further cuts until the 1993
treaty is ratified. Defense
Minister Igor Sergeev yesterday again
urged the State Duma to ratify the
treaty quickly, calling it "necessary
and beneficial" (Russian media,
January 21).
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