March 12, 2001   

This Date's Issues:   5145 • 5146

Johnson's Russia List
#5145
12 March 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. MSNBC: Dana Lewis, Russia suspends dismantling weapons. A response to Bush's campaign for missile defense system.
2. The Guardian (UK): Ian Traynor, Russia starts to make a legend. Praise the face, the name, the very footsteps of Putin.
3. RIA: DON'T ROCK THE BOAT, SAYS MP TO DOWN-WITH-CABINET CALLS.
4. RIA: RUSSIA OBJECTS TO NATO APPROACHING ITS BORDERS. (Yavlinsky)
5. Washington Post: Robert Kaiser, Documents Detail U.S. Intelligence Insights, Mistakes. Experts Note Tardy Recognition of Gorbachev's Significance, Errors' Lack of Dire Consequences.
6. Moscow Times: Russell Working, Lessons of the China Model.
7. Moscow Times: Stephen Shenfield, The Approaching Age of Mud.
8. The Russia Journal: Andrei Piontkovsky, A meeting of minds. (re missile defense)
9. RIA: NATO Enlargement Aims to Win East European Arms Market- MP.
10. Lloyd's List (London): John Helmer, RUSSIAN OFFICIAL WARNS AGAINST
CASPIAN DEAL WITH IRAN.
11. UPI: Russian, U.S. experts to discuss national missile defense.
12. Newsweek International: Fred Guterl, The Legacy of Mir. Russia's space station is not just a bucket of bolts. It's a high point in space exploration.]

******

#1
MSNBC.com
Russia suspends dismantling weapons
A response to Bush's campaign for missile defense system
By Dana Lewis
NBC correspondent Dana Lewis is based in Moscow.

MOSCOW, March 11 - Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended the
dismantling of nuclear warheads called for under the START II treaty with
the United States on President Bush's inauguration day, NBC News has
learned. And Russian officials insist that Moscow will end cooperation on
nuclear disarmament if Washington presses forward with plans to build a
national missile defense system.

"IF THE NMD (national missile defense) is deployed in the United States,
we will have to forget about reductions of strategic offensive weapons,"
said Yuri Kapralov, director of Russian Security and Disarmament.
Russia also has rolled out its counter-threat, the Topol-M missile.
Although it is ostensibly a single-warhead intercontinental ballistic
missile, experts believe it could be converted to carry several warheads,
which would violate the Start II agreement.

Under the arms-reduction pact, which the United States and Russia
signed in 1993, both countries committed to eliminating missiles with more
than one warhead.

"The Topol-M already has the capability to overcome any anti-missile
defense," said Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, commander of Russia's rocket forces.
He added that the next move was up to the United States.

HIGH-STAKES BATTLE

In the high-stakes game of sword vs. missile shield, Putin has mounted
a diplomatic offensive, arguing that North Korea and Iran are not as great
a threat as argued by the United States. He's even proposed a limited
missile defense plan for Europe.

"The 1972 ABM treaty is like an axis to which a whole series of
international security agreements is attached," Putin said last week. "As
soon as we pull out this axis, all of them will automatically fall apart.
The whole of today's international security system will collapse."
Former President Mikhail Gorbachev - who confronted the Reagan
administration's campaign on behalf of the "Star Wars" defense shield - has
warned that the U.S. system would spark a new arms race - "a new spiral of
militarization with unpredictable consequences."

Critics say the Kremlin is reverting to Soviet-era tactics, using the
missile shield to try to drive a wedge between Washington and its European
allies. But the Russians counter that the real risk is to advances made
through arms control over the past three decades.

******

#2
The Guardian (UK)
March 12, 2001
Russia starts to make a legend
Praise the face, the name, the very footsteps of Putin
Ian Traynor in St Petersburg

In Vladimir Putin's native city Alexander Palmin spends most of his time
among the heroes of Russian history. His studio by the banks of the Neva is
crammed with icons and statues, busts and torsos representing the Russian
pantheon.

There is Peter the Great and Alexander Nevsky, Pyotr Stolypin and Fyodor
Dostoevsky. But taking pride of place on a black pedestal, incongruous
among the historic images, sits the chalk-white face of President Putin,
the only likeness of a living man in the studio.

The incongruity is lost on Mr Palmin, a patriot who regards the president
as the first Russian leader in his lifetime worthy of the name.

"Putin is a historic figure, too. He has already gone down in history," the
sculptor enthuses at a studio table laden with hors d'oeuvres and vodka.

"Unlike the rest of my work, this," he says, pointing to the 25cm (10in)
bust, "is not a memorial. It's a tribute."

Less than a year after his election as Russia's second president, Mr Putin
is already being cast in bronze. He is also being immortalised in oil on
canvas and in children's schoolbooks.

Village mayors commemorate his fleeting visits with "In Putin's Footsteps"
tours of the muddy streets where the president trod.

Ski slopes are to bear the president's name, and there is talk of churches
being blessed with it too.

Spin doctors say that Mr Putin is the only actor on Russia's political
stage. Newspaper polls are organised to reveal that Russian women think Mr
Putin the sexiest man in Russia. The pollsters liken him to a doctor with
the Russian people as his patients.

In short, the phenomenon of Mr Putin, an unknown bureaucrat as recently as
two years ago, is acquiring the proportions of a personality cult.

"We supported him, we support him now, and we will continue to support him
unconditionally," says Viktor Yurakov, a St Petersburg politician who is
the local cheerleader-in-chief for the president.

The myth-making that surrounds his inscrutable character echoes for many
the personality cults erected around the Soviet Union's communist
dictators: figures such as Lenin and Stalin acquired iconic quasi-religious
status in a society that was officially atheistic.

The veneration of Mr Putin, whether genuine or engineered, is particularly
evident in St Petersburg.

While Mr Palmin transforms his Putin bust from plaster to wax and then
bronze, a local businessman has just discovered that Mr Putin planted a
maple tree by the city's Canadian consulate nearly six years ago, when he
was a city official.He has slapped a brass plaque on the tree which reads:
Planted by V Putin October 7 1995.

In October Mr Yurakov handed out a cartoon booklet to the city's infants on
their first day at primary school with snapshots from the president's
childhood.

"No one knew he would be president," the booklet gushed. "But all the boys
and girls knew that Volodya Putin was a real pal you could count on. Then
he grew up, studied and worked hard, helped good people and did not like
bad people at all."

Vladimir Ivchenko, who helped design the booklet, says: "We just wanted to
show our pride that a good lad has taken over. He's good, he's strong, he's
decent, he's ours and he's president now."

Outside St Petersburg, the little village of Izborsk was the site of an
unscheduled stop by the presidential motorcade last August.

Visitors to the village are now treated to a walking tour which marks the
spots "where Putin bought a cucumber", "where Putin took off his jacket and
tried water from a spring", and "where Putin touched a tree and made a wish".

But if St Petersburg is leading the presidential myth-making, Moscow, too,
is doing its part.

A gallery in the capital recently mounted an exhibition of presidential
portraits, entitled Our Putin, featuring the leader as a stiff-jawed
visionary.

Nikas Safronov, one of Moscow's most popular painters, is churning out oil
paintings of a steely-eyed president peering out into Russia from the
Kremlin's walls. They combine Stalinist socialist realism with Russian
heritage kitsch.

Nostalgia, mood music, and popular psychology are clearly key ingredients
in Mr Putin's recipe for success.

He has publicly discouraged the hero worship, telling Russian interviewers
in December: "I understand that when somebody does such things, he or she
is probably guided by the best of intentions, and that he or she thinks
well of me.

"I would like to thank them, but ask them not to do this. [But] I cannot
actively stop this."

Mr Yurakov has been reprimanded by the Kremlin for being too crude in his
hero-worship. But he attributes that to Muscovite jealousy and the
traditional rivalry between the two cities.

"Putin just said thanks, but I don't need this. He's modest. He didn't
criticise us. He can't forbid us loving him."

Whether throwing combatants on the judo mat, leaping into jet fighters or
cutting a dash down the ski slopes of Austria or the Caucasus, Mr Putin,
despite his coyness, is acutely aware of cultivating the image of an action
man on Russia's television screens.

His KGB past, too, however uneventful, is milked for all its mysterious
allure.

In St Petersburg, Mr Palmin is plotting a little private party to unveil
the first bronze Putin later this month, marking the president's election
last March.

"Putin is the first living politician I've done. I'd refuse to do Yeltsin
or Gorbachev," he says. "Maybe it recalls the Soviet era, but that's not so
bad. Not everything was bad in Soviet times."

*******

#3
DON'T ROCK THE BOAT, SAYS MP TO DOWN-WITH-CABINET CALLS

MOSCOW, MARCH 11 (from RIA Novosti's Galina Filippova) - Numerous
parliamentary forces are out to vote no confidence in the federal cabinet,
with prospects for parliament disbanded and an early election called. "A
politically destructive initiative to nip trends toward social and economic
stability," says Anatoli Aksakov, Political Council vice-president of the
public political movement, People's Deputy, and member of the State Duma,
parliament's lower house.

"We are not going to waste our time and national money on it," he remarked
to newsmen, pointing out that an early poll will cost more than two billion
roubles, never earmarked in the year's budget. The sum can be obtained only
by cutting other federal expenditures, in particular, hitting social
welfare, badly underpaid as it is.

People's Deputy MPs do not share an opinion that the present-day Duma is
harassing legislative work necessary for Russia's progress. In fact, all
essential bills offered by the President last year went through parliament
without a hitch thanks to Rights, Lefts and Centrists alike.

A political crisis is whipped up to involve the President, the Cabinet and
the Duma. Growing public political apathy and discontent with whatever
regime will be its only fruit to torpedo the world's trust in Russia as
reliable economic partner, and so to bring a shrinkage of overseas
investment and another resultant economic depression, warns Mr. Aksakov.

Cabinet performance certainly leaves much to be desired, but President
Vladimir Putin's political goodwill is enough to improve it, points out the
MP.

Launched by Communists, the initiative for a cabinet no-confidence vote is
unexpectedly backed by the pro-Kremlin Unity parliamentary group, as it
looks forward to the Duma disbanded and the nation going to the polls ahead
of schedule. The matter will come under debate at a house plenary session
of March 14.

******

#4
RUSSIA OBJECTS TO NATO APPROACHING ITS BORDERS

LONDON, MARCH 11, RIA NOVOSTI - Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the Russian
right-wing movement Yabloko, has proposed that the process of NATO
expansion should not be encouraged now that many important international
problems remain unsettled. In his view, the alliance's approach to Russian
borders runs counter to "our interests." Just one reason for Russia's
growing concern is NATO's recent aggression against Yugoslavia, which
proved "politically dubious," Yavlinsky noted.

On the other hand, Russia has nothing against the expansion of the European
Union and, what's more, welcomes its coming closer to Russian borders, said
Yavlinsky. In addition, Moscow is ready for efficient partnership with the
European Union as regards, for instance, Kaliningrad. The above is said in
Yavlinsky's memorandum, circulated on Sunday among participants in the
London conference of the Trilateral Commission, a non-governmental forum
uniting many prominent politicians and businesspeople.

*******

#5
Washington Post
March 11, 2001
Documents Detail U.S. Intelligence Insights, Mistakes
Experts Note Tardy Recognition of Gorbachev's Significance, Errors' Lack of
Dire Consequences
By Robert G. Kaiser
Washington Post Staff Writer

PRINCETON, N.J., March 10 -- What's the return on an investment of hundreds
of billions of dollars over 45 years to collect intelligence on your enemy in
a mortal battle for world domination? Some useful information, and some big
mistakes -- some insights, some reassurance, and lots of bureaucratic
infighting.

All of that was evident here this weekend in a conference organized by the
CIA, and in 19,160 pages of Cold War intelligence documents released for the
meeting. Scores of old intelligence agents and about two dozen current ones,
joined by academics and journalists, heard boasts of success and confessions
of failure. Some of the exchanges were emotional. According to Douglas J.
MacEachin, former deputy director of the CIA for intelligence, these gave
conference participants a sense of what the bureaucratic battles were like
during the Cold War years.

The documents and discussion provided new information about how the CIA
reacted to perhaps its most dramatic opportunity, the rise of Mikhail
Gorbachev, who, in nearly seven years as leader of the Soviet Union, ended
the Cold War for which the CIA was created and ultimately dismantled his own
country and its empire.

Former intelligence officers who had participated in debates about Gorbachev
revealed that the CIA analysts who took his reforms most seriously were often
at odds with colleagues and superiors who refused to sign off on analyses
that credited Gorbachev with bold intentions or recognized the constraints he
was under. Acknowledging excessive caution in estimates about Gorbachev,
Fritz W. Ermarth, chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 1988
through 1993, said one contributor to the incorrect estimates was
then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who did not share his private
conversations with Gorbachev or his assessments of them with intelligence
analysts such as Ermarth.

Jack F. Matlock, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow when Shultz was secretary of
state, said Shultz was afraid to speak frankly about his views on Gorbachev
because he knew his rivals in the Reagan administration -- particularly
Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and national security adviser Robert
M. Gates, a former CIA specialist on the Soviet Union -- would accuse him of
being "hopelessly naive" if he did. Matlock and Ermarth noted that Shultz and
President Ronald Reagan went ahead and made deals with Gorbachev based on
their confidence in him. The deals helped end the Cold War.

The documents released for the conference -- just a fraction of the total CIA
output, but more than have been released before -- implicitly confirm that
the big events of the Gorbachev years virtually all caught the CIA by
surprise. There is no evidence that the agency anticipated the Soviet
withdrawal from Afghanistan, the release of dissident physicist Andrei
Sakharov from internal exile, the effective end of most Soviet censorship,
unilateral cuts in the Soviet armed forces, Gorbachev's willingness to accept
huge reductions in conventional armaments and missiles or his acquiescence in
the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe.

Ermarth and others saw a silver lining in their failures: They produced no
"serious deleterious consequences," as Ermarth put it. He was one of several
former officials who rejected the criticism made in the early 1990s by
then-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) that a more timely appreciation
for what Gorbachev would bring would have allowed the United States to save
many billions of dollars spent on defense in the 1980s. Intelligence
officials here said they doubted Congress or the executive branch would have
cut defense spending then on the basis of CIA estimates, no matter what they
said.

Others have disagreed. Another former CIA analyst, Melvin A. Goodman, wrote
last year that missing the significance of Gorbachev until late in his tenure
cost the United States unnecessary defense spending, delayed arms control
agreements and "squandered [the] opportunity to influence developments in the
Russian federation." Goodman has accused the agency of failing to rise to its
most important challenge by not recognizing the significance of Gorbachev
until nearly the end of his time in office.

Some of the documents released for this conference demonstrate the agency's
caution. One example was an analysis written shortly after Gorbachev's speech
to the United Nations on Dec. 7, 1988, when he announced a unilateral cut of
500,000 men in the Soviet army, the withdrawal of six tank divisions from
Eastern Europe and that the Soviet Union was renouncing the use of force to
settle international disputes. He also declared the end of jamming of foreign
radio broadcasts to the U.S.S.R. and said there was no longer any ideological
basis for international tension.

Two months later, CIA analysts began a paper on Gorbachev's foreign policy
with the observation that his "broad strategy is in the Leninist tradition:
it calls for weakening the main enemy -- the United States -- by exploiting
'contradictions' between it and other centers of capitalist power." The paper
said Gorbachev was still interested in "weakening American global political
influence, 'decoupling' Western Europe from the United States, preserving, in
some form, Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe" and, generally, in trying to
"promote the interests of the USSR at the expense of the United States and
other 'enemies.' " The same paper credited Gorbachev with interest in making
changes, both at home and in foreign policy, but it gave no hint that the
Soviet leader had decided to fundamentally change the superpower
relationship. Nine months later, the Berlin Wall fell.

In a speech to this conference, the current deputy director of the CIA, John
E. McLaughlin, cautioned that "our country is vulnerable -- if our
intelligence analysts are not ready for something completely different" from
what they have experienced in the past. The newly released documents on the
Gorbachev era suggest how difficult it can be for intelligence analysts to
achieve that kind of intellectual freedom from their own predilections.

So, for example, in early 1989 -- after the Soviets had withdrawn from their
naval installation in Vietnam, from the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean
Sea, and ceased most active participation in Third World conflicts of all
kinds -- a CIA analysis described "Moscow's intention to expand its role as a
global actor, a role that is the basis of its claim to superpower status.
Consequently, the Soviets have tried to avoid being seen as retreating from
the Third World in the face of U.S. pressure."

Other newly released analyses show that the CIA had a keen appreciation for
the extent of Gorbachev's domestic reforms. The agency kept a close eye on
the changes in Soviet newspapers and magazines, and on the shifting cultural
policies under Gorbachev that made many previously banned movies and plays
available to the public. And from the beginning of the Soviet leader's
economic reform efforts, the CIA's economic analysts understood and reported
the enormous difficulty Gorbachev faced in trying to make the Soviet system
more efficient. They repeatedly predicted, accurately, that his ambitious
economic targets would likely not be met.

MacEachin, who headed the CIA's office of Soviet analysis for five years
during the '80s, recounted how difficult it was to get cautions based on
Soviet economic difficulties into the National Intelligence Estimates on
Soviet military programs. In an interview, MacEachin said "we gave up on the
[National Intelligence] Estimates after '86 or '87" because it was so
difficult to get realistic assessments into them. In 1986, MacEachin tried to
attach a CIA "dissent" to the NIE, with the agency noting that the continued
Soviet arms buildup predicted by the NIE was greater than any known Soviet
buildup since the '60s and would cost far more than the Soviet Union could
afford to invest in arms. The dissent was not included, though its suggestion
that such a buildup would not occur proved to be accurate.

The newly released documents are available online at www.foia.
ucia.gov/historicalreport.htm

******

#6
Moscow Times
March 12, 2001
Lessons of the China Model
By Russell Working

DALIAN, China - One evening in this former Russian port once known as Port
Arthur, I wanted to find a street lined with popular restaurants. I had
dismissed my translator, and experience suggested that waving maps in the
faces of cab drivers would only baffle them.

Suddenly I recalled that there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise on
the street. In my notebook I sketched the face of the chain's goateed
founder, Colonel Sanders. For good measure, I drew a plucked hen steaming
on a platter. Then I hailed a cab and showed the driver my artwork. "Take
me here," I demanded in English.

Giggling the whole way, the driver raced down alleyways crowded with
fishmongers' stalls. We stopped by a restaurant where a life-sized plastic
Colonel Sanders stood by the door, beaming in approval. It was the wrong
street, but never mind. I had established an essential point.

The market economy has caught hold in communist China. You see the evidence
of the boom in Starbucks coffeehouses, in purple buses labeled "Yahoo.com,"
in the department stores with entire floors dedicated to foreign perfumes,
in the Internet cafe where a red-lighted household god glows in the corner.
The Chinese leadership's forecast last Monday - that economic growth for
the next five years would fall from 8.3 percent to a mere 7 percent - only
underscores the point. There are nations that would sell their souls for
7-percent growth.

Yet Dalian sparks uncomfortable questions for visitors from China's
neighbor to the north. Why isn't Russia seeing the same boom? Must the
Russian Far East forever satisfy itself with membership, along with North
Korea, in a club known as the hoboes of Northeast Asia? Why have Russia's
economic reforms failed?

The Chinese answer would be disturbing for those who love liberty: Moscow
got it right by launching the economic restructuring of perestroika, but
blew it by permitting glasnost, which undermined Party discipline and
therefore unleashed anarchy and gangsterism. Stated differently, the 1989
shooting of students in Tiananmen Square saved China from a future of
blackouts and unpaid wages.

But if authoritarianism were the missing ingredient, then the Russian Far
East should be booming. Yevgeny Nazdratenko, the former governor of the
Primorye region, seized control of the media and harassed non-Orthodox
religious sects in a matter that would make Beijing proud. Yet the Primorye
region became synonymous with administrative incompetence, and Nazdratenko
became the most despised man in the region (do not believe the central
media when they suggest that Vladivostok's yahoos revere Nazdratenko.
Reporters who write such things should be sentenced to interviewing 1,000
random Primorye citizens about their ex-governor, noting whether anyone
fails to use the word "mafia" in the first sentence).

Russia's and China's divergent paths have been analyzed by experts far more
knowledgeable than I, and answers will include references to China's
Confucian work ethic and Russia's suffocating bureaucracy that dates back
through centuries of tsarism. But one lesson is obvious: Russia tolerates
corruption. China does not.

In Russia, as I have noted before, Nazdratenko, accused of looting his
region's budget and crippling its industry, was promoted to head the State
Fisheries Committee. In China, a governor charged with such crimes would be
shot. I am not arguing for the instigation of firing squads to settle
accounts (Russia has seen enough of that). But the different responses are
instructive.

So are the differences in how business is done. In Dalian, hundreds of
businesspeople from throughout China showed up at a recent banquet for New
York businessmen, thrusting cards and brochures into the hands of the
Americans. An hour later, the hall was empty.

Vladivostok would have been more gracious. Such visitors would have been
treated to hours of bliny and caviar, of vodka toasts, of long soaks in the
sauna. Awakening with blazing heads, the foreigners would think, "Ah, at
last I have experienced the soul of Russia." But when it came time to do
business, they would be invited to hand over suitcases full of cash that
would vanish into bank accounts in the Bahamas.

And imagine drawing Colonel Sanders for a cabbie in Vladivostok. Most
likely, he would respond with a blank stare. Or perhaps he would giggle,
speed you through the streets, and deposit you at a monument to another
goateed innovator: Vladimir Lenin.

*******

#7
Moscow Times
March 12, 2001
The Approaching Age of Mud
By Stephen Shenfield
Stephen D. Shenfield is an independent researcher based in Providence,
Rhode Island. His latest book is "Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies
and Movements." He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.

Around the North Pole there is now a stretch of open sea where the ice cap
has melted. Global warming is already making itself felt and is proceeding
even more rapidly than previously expected. That is the gist of the latest
research on the subject, summarized for us by the world's scientists in the
Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
released earlier this year.

Russia too is a bit warmer than it used to be. Or let us say - in deference
to the Siberians freezing in unheated apartments - that Russia is a bit
less cold. The year-round average temperature of the country has risen by
more than 1 degree Celsius since the mid-1960s and now stands at minus 5 C.
Russian winters especially have been less cold in recent years - up to 2.5
C less cold than in the late 1960s. The area under snow cover has
contracted by about 10 percent since the 1970s. In places the permafrost
has begun to thaw.

According to projections made by the Climatic Research Unit at the
University of East Anglia in England, Russia's year-round average
temperature may rise by as much as another 5 C by 2060, bringing it all the
way up to the freezing point. Winter temperatures on the Arctic coast, now
typically between minus 40 C and minus 10 C, may be 10 C higher in the
2050s. A substantial proportion of Russia's permafrost will thaw. Ice-free
navigation will become possible in the northern seas, lakes and rivers, at
least during the summer months.

Perhaps Russia could do with some warming. True, it isn't exactly what is
needed in the southern Russian steppe, where temperatures topped 35 C
during the 1999 drought and which in some places (notably Kalmykia) is
rapidly turning into desert. But surely the inhabitants of central, and
especially of northern, Russia would appreciate the prospect of shorter and
less harsh winters, together with longer and warmer summers?

Yes, conditions will become easier - in some ways and in some places. But
not in all ways and not everywhere. As always, there are snags.

For example, warmer summers are not so good for the trees in Russia's
forests. Warm weather brings out pests like the destructive spruce bark
beetle, which emerges when the temperature reaches 10 C and multiplies
faster and faster as it gets warmer.

But the biggest snag has to do with the thawing of the permafrost. Far from
making life in the Far North more comfortable, this will turn the areas
affected into an uninhabitable bog. The trouble is that when the ice in
permafrost melts it produces up to twice as much water as the thawed soil
is able to absorb. The result is the thick mixture of soil and water known
to laymen as mud.

Those who live in the Far North know that their brief summer, which only
just starts to thaw the permafrost, brings not only some welcome warmth,
but also mud. The mud oozes everywhere. People try to keep it out of their
houses, but they can't.

The deep and prolonged thaw that global warming holds in store will
generate oceans of mud. Plentiful rain and snow will ensure that it does
not dry out for ages to come. (Northward expansion of the taiga will
eventually help, but that may take a century or two.) The mud will flow in
broad streams down slopes and accumulate in low-lying areas. Erosion and
subsidence will lead to the formation of numerous new ponds and lakes.

The subsidence of coastal land, taken together with the rise in the global
sea level brought about by the melting of the polar ice, means that much of
Russia's northern seacoast will recede far inland. Many coastal, island and
riverside settlements will be inundated. A prime candidate for submersion
will be the geologically unstable Yamal Peninsula with its vast gas deposits.

All the residential, economic and transport structures that people have
built in the tundra - the buildings, the mining installations, the oil and
gas pipelines, the roads and airstrips - are laid straight on top of the
permafrost. They have no deeper foundations or support. As the permafrost
thaws, these structures will slide, buckle, topple over, collapse and
finally sink forever into the mud. That will be the end of a permanent
human presence in the Far North.

The indigenous people of the North will not be able to cope either. They
too - and the reindeer on which they depend - need the permafrost.

Some analysts argue that technological solutions to these problems will be
found. There are indeed ways of fortifying structures against the thaw.
Pipelines can - at enormous expense - be reconstructed to make them less
prone to break, leak or sink. New technologies may be developed in Canada
and the United States, which face the same problem in their far northern
territories. But I think that technological fixes will be effective only
during the early phases of the process. Eventually the mud will win out.
Homo sapiens is not a species that thrives in mud.

Some of the advantageous aspects of global warming appear less impressive
when the problem of thawing permafrost is factored in. It is expected, for
instance, that the northern sea route along Russia's north coast and
through the Bering Strait, currently navigable only with costly icebreaker
assistance, will be ice-free for up to 100 days a year by 2050. It may
become a major international trade route, enabling ships to sail from
European ports to the Far East in three weeks' less time than via the Suez
Canal. But what good will it do Russia? Russia can hardly use the Northern
Sea route for its own exports and imports if its Arctic ports have been
washed away and onshore industry and transport have collapsed. The route
will be used mainly by other countries for their transit traffic.

Global warming is a reality. Even were the world community to agree on
resolute counteraction - and such agreement, alas, still seems a long way
off - it would take several decades to bring the process to a halt. We will
be living - or dying - with the consequences for centuries.

What, then, is to be done?

In my opinion, the most sensible thing - for Canada and Alaska as well as
for Russia - would be to accept the inevitable, to cut our losses, and to
complete the evacuation of the Far North (already far advanced) in good
time and at the minimum possible human and economic cost. Russia is a big
country. There will continue to be large expanses between the thawing
tundra and the advancing desert where global warming will prove more of a
blessing than a curse. That is where the limited resources available for
Russia's development should be concentrated. And if Russia is forced to
become less dependent on the export of its oil, gas and mineral resources,
that may also turn out to be, in a long-term perspective, a blessing in
disguise.

*******

#8
The Russia Journal
March 10-16, 2001
A meeting of minds
By Andrei Piontkovsky

There are two things about the U.S. plan to develop a National Missile
Defense system (NMD) that have long been clear to Russian experts.

First, the United States will deploy this system. Second, these plans don't
threaten Russia's nuclear deterrent potential, which is too great for any
feasible missile defense system.

A clear understanding of these two circumstances gave Russian diplomats
plenty of room for maneuver and opportunity to find and even push through a
compromise that would have been in Russia's interests.

But over recent years, Russian diplomats have been repeating like a
rote-learned mantra the formula that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
is the cornerstone of strategic stability, never stopping to think what
these words really mean.

Leaving aside Russian diplomats, let's come back to U.S. politicians. No
matter who is in the White House, NMD is on the agenda in some way.

Former President Bill Clinton's Democratic administration took steps toward
developing an NMD under pressure from the Republican majority in Congress.
The Republican administration feels genuine ideological enthusiasm for NMD,
while the Clinton administration spent several years sincerely and
persistently trying to persuade the Russian side to accept modifications to
the provisions of the ABM Treaty that place restrictions on NMD systems.

It's possible that Russia's monotonous repetition of its ABM mantra - which
drove Clinton negotiators to desperation - was a demonstration of Moscow's
diplomatic wisdom. Moscow understood the issue thoroughly, but wanted to
wait until after the U.S. presidential election in order to conclude an
advantageous agreement with the winner.

The problem is that the official Russian position hasn't become any more
flexible since the Republicans came to power. What's more, and this is
significant, since Jan. 20, 2001, no one has been trying to persuade us of
anything. Formally, the official American position remains unchanged -
Russia is invited to enter negotiations on modifying the ABM Treaty.

But a significant and influential part - if not the whole - of the Bush
administration doesn't want the ABM Treaty modified. This concerns above
all Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his supporters. They would
rather see the United States withdraw completely from the treaty (which
they can do as long as they give six-month notice). This would leave their
hands free to pursue their plans. It's not even the military aspect of this
scenario that interests them so much as the political outcome, which would
put Russia outside any serious strategic agreements and deprive it of its
last superpower trappings.

Rumsfeld left a security conference in Munich without even staying to hear
Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov's reply and without
bothering to debate with him. This was not just because he already knew
what Ivanov would say but also because Ivanov's position suited him just
fine.

For Russia, fighting to prevent modification of the ABM Treaty amounts to
fighting to give the United States a free hand to deploy NMD. It also means
fighting to push Russia out of its prestigious and genuinely significant
seat in the club of nuclear superpowers, bound together by a system of
agreements. And it means fighting to exclude the Russian military-
industrial complex from the promising market in cutting-edge military
technology.

What worries Rumsfeld more than anything is that Russia will pull out of
this fight that has already driven our diplomacy into a dead end and will
take up a reasonable position that actually meets our interests. But after
so many years of rhetorical gymnastics and pumping up Russian public
opinion, it's not so easy for the country's diplomats to retreat to a more
constructive position without losing face.

Rumsfeld and Ivanov are confidently leading Russian-American relations
toward a new Cold War, and it's no secret what the consequences will be for
today's Russia.

(Andrei Piontkovsky is director of the Center for Strategic Research.)

*******

#9
NATO Enlargement Aims to Win East European Arms Market- MP

MOSCOW, Mar 11, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The NATO enlargement plans
are prompted by the striving for an access to the East European arms
market, chairman of the Duma defense committee Andrei Nikolayev has said.
He visited the NATO headquarters with a group of Russian parliament members
several days ago.

"It is not accidental that NATO strategists are looking at places where
Russia used to dominate," he said. "It will cost 10- 15 billion dollars to
new East European members of the Alliance to modernize their machinery and
armaments and bring them in conformity to the NATO standards."

A complete re-equipment of the troops with Western-made armaments or a
licensed production of such armaments in these countries will cost even
more, up to 25-30 billion dollars, Nikolayev said. "It is a tasty morsel
for the Western defense industries," he remarked.

*******

#10
From: "John Helmer" <helmer@atom.ru>
Subject: RUSSIAN OFFICIAL WARNS AGAINST CASPIAN DEAL WITH IRAN
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001

Coming in Lloyd's List (London), March 13
RUSSIAN OFFICIAL WARNS AGAINST CASPIAN DEAL WITH IRAN
John Helmer, Moscow

Russia's chief spokesman on Caspian Sea policy issued a warning
to arriving Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, that the Kremlin will not
[repeat NOT] accept Iran's demand for a larger share of the Caspian seabed
as part of the drawing of seabed frontiers for all five Caspian Sea states.

The surprisingly sharp statement came Sunday, on the eve of Khatami's
arrival in Moscow for the first state visit to Russia by an Iranian head of
state since the downfall of the Shah of Iran in 1979.

According to Victor Kaluzhny, Russia's former Fuel and Energy Minister and
now presidential envoy for the Caspian Sea, "it is possible to understand
Iran's concerns. But at the same time the variant Iran proposes of 20% sectors
[for each of the littoral states] raises many problems, and does not offer
a solution."

Kalyuzhny's statement confirms the decisive shift in the Kremlin's Caspian
Sea policy that has occurred in recent months, away from Iran, and towards
Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

In 1998 and 1999, when Yevgeny Primakov was Prime Minister, Russian efforts
to resolve the disputed carve-up of the sea among the Caspian states favoured
Iran's proposals for shared jurisdiction over the waters of the Caspian, an
international zone in the centre of the sea, and relatively small territorial
zones.

At that time, the Russian government opposed Azerbaijan's insistence on
dividing the entire seabed into separate national territories.

Primakov clashed with Russia's oil and gas companies on this issue; the then
prime minister was critical of the Russian companies for making commercial
deals with governments and oil interests in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and
Azerbaijian that violated the Foreign Ministry's policy guidelines.

While several Russian oil companies favoured the Azeri approach, Iran opposed
it. Part of the reason, Iranian sources have said, is because Iran's
share of the southern sector of the Caspian seabed is
believed to contain less oil and gas resources than the other proposed
national sectors; and because of unresolved territorial tension between
the Iranians and Azeris.

Russian officials acknowledge that a "modified median line" division,
agreed at a meeting in Baku in January between President Vladimir Putin and
Azeri President Gaidar Aliyev, would relegate Iran to just 13% of the seabed.

Kaluzhny also accused the Iranians of downgrading their contacts with him to
deputy minister level -- Kaluzhny's current rank -- while he was able to meet
with the presidents of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

"I was able to talk to the Kazakh and Azeri presidents directly," Kaluzhny
said, "because we had good contact with them while I was the minister of fuel
and energy. In Iran especially it was clear we cannot make much progress. I
was able to meet with the deputy ministers, but not the president or the
prime minister. But it is crucial to reach to this level because it is there
that the decisions are made."

Kaluzhny's negative tone towards the Iranians comes as a surprise, because
other officials in the Putin administration have been playing up Khatami's
visit as an opportunity to demonstrate Iran as a "strategic partner" of
the Kremlin in the region. Putin is looking to his meeting with Khatami
to gain support from a fundamentalist Islamic leader for Russia's attempt to
crush the Chechen rebellion; and to negotiate major new arms sales with
Tehran that have been criticized by the Bush Administration.

According to Kaluzhny, consensus on a final Caspian division is also being
blocked by the fifth littoral state, Turkmenistan. "This worries us,' he
said. Turkmenistan disputes several Azeri claims to promising oilfield
sites on the seabed.

Kaluzhny told Lloyd's List that Putin and Khatami will sign documents
on the Caspian Sea. But he cautioned that "they will not resolve
all the problems, and will not answer all the questions." According to
Kaluzhny, the texts will continue to declare that the Russo-Iranian
agreements on the Caspian Sea of 1921 and 1940 continue in effect. Continuity
with those pacts has been a key Iranian demand. The texts to be signed,
Kaluzhny said, will not allow fleets of third nations to be present in the
Caspian. They also require that the final status of the sea should be
decided "on a consensus basis".

Asked if his approach amounts to giving oil companies a priority
in the Caspian, Kaluzhny told Lloyd's List that a modified median line
approach should satisfy the oil companies. "Regardless of the approaches that the
states adopt, business should not suffer. I think it will be the budgets of
the Caspian countries that may have losses, but not business. So far we are
able to reach agreements, like in the case of Russia and Kazakhstan where we
have agreed that the median line will be drawn, and now we are close to
agreement on a modified median line. In this case, business will not be
harmed."

Following the Kremlin session between Putin and Khatami this week, Kaluzhny
said he will go to Kazakhstan on March 13; Azerbaijan on March 20-21; and
Turkmenistan on March 25-27; with another visit to Tehran possible at the end
of March. The objective, he said, is to arrange for a summit conference of
heads of all the littoral states in April.

Kaluzhny told Lloyd's List that disagreements may yet derail this plan, and
put off the summit meeting indefinitely.

******

#11
Russian, U.S. experts to discuss national missile defense

MOSCOW, March 11 (UPI) -- Experts from Russia's Foreign and Defense
Ministries will soon start consultations with their U.S. colleagues over the
building of a national missile defense, the RIA Novosti news agency reported
Sunday. Vice Adm. Valentin Kuznetsov, a senior official in the Russian
Defense Ministry's international cooperation section, vowed that, at the talks,
Moscow "will firmly defend" its position that finds U.S. plans to create
the NMD are "unacceptable." Kuznetsov did not say when the talks could
start.

He added that Moscow would "attentively follow the Bush administration's
future steps in relation to the missile defense,and would act in accordance
with these steps."

"So far, the Americans haven't made any firm decisions on building up
the NMD," added Kuznetsov. "All those tests that the United States has
already carried out in this area eventually failed, and produced more
questions than answers to the task of building an effective national missile
defense." Kuznetsov predicted that the Bush administration could at one time
realize that the original concept of creation of NMD was nothing more than a
"soap bubble."

Such realization, argued Kuznetsov, could prompt President Bush and his
aides to "rectify the NMD architecture that had been proposed by the Clinton
(administration), and even consider designing a new concept of the NMD
architecture."

Russia insists that Washington's unilateral creation of the national
missile defense would undermine the basic principles of global strategic
stability that had been laid out in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of1972.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an online press
conference that the ABM Treaty was the cornerstone of global security whose
destruction would entail grave consequences.

"The moment we take this ... out, the whole system automatically falls
apart," warned Putin.

U.S. advocates of a national missile defense say that Moscow itself has
been violating the 1972 ABM Treaty for decades.

******

#12
Newsweek International
March 19, 2001
The Legacy of Mir
Russia's space station is not just a bucket of bolts. It's a high point in
space exploration
By Fred Guterl

People who have lived on the Mir space station say that things seem
particularly three-dimensional up there. The main living quarters, about
the size of a Greyhound bus, are decorated with carpeting on the floor and
lights on the ceiling, but weightlessness belies these conventions.

WHEN YOU CAN SLEEP comfortably suspended upside down, the notion of
floor or ceiling loses its meaning. A glance out the window reveals not
merely a landscape, but an immense blue-white orb inexorably pulling the
station toward a 250-mile-deep atmosphere. Sergei Krikalev found himself
contemplating this lonely scene when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He
had to postpone his return for six months while Russia and Ukraine bickered
over his replacement.

Since then Mir has become an even lonelier place. Last June three crew
members slithered through the docking tunnels into the cramped Soyuz
getaway capsule and sealed the hatch for the last time. They left behind a
desolate, forsaken hulk. Sometime in the next week or two, an engineer at
Mission Control in Korolev, near Moscow, will push a button, causing a
rocket engine to fire three short bursts. Then, according to plan, perhaps
the most significant achievement in the history of space exploration,
rivaled only by the Apollo moon program, will burn up in the atmosphere and
rain down on the South Pacific as so much debris.

SO MUCH DEBRIS

To many people outside Russia, that's what Mir has been for years: so
much debris. By appearances, that's not far from the truth. Fifteen years
of continuous operation, the longest run any spaceship has ever had, has
left it battered and scarred. Priroda, one of several research modules that
stick out like nodes of a Tinkertoy, is crumpled like a junkyard Ford. (A
wayward supply ship struck it in 1997, puncturing its hull and almost
killing the crew.) Over the years there have been fires and leaks, power
failures and life-support malfunctions. Because the interior walls have
never been properly scrubbed (a flaw of design, not hygiene), a biological
slime of some sort exudes an odor of dirty socks or musty basement.
"There's old stuff floating around," says Jerry Linenger, who had the
misfortune of being onboard when a fire raged for 14 minutes in 1997.
"Being there is like swimming through kelp beds. It's like scuba diving.
There is a module designated for astrophysics, but when you float in you
realize it's just being used to store garbage."

In Linenger's view, it's time to bring Mir down. "You can't be
sentimental about technology," he says. He's not the only one who thinks
so. For years NASA has been pressuring the Russians to ditch Mir so they
can concentrate on contributing to the spanking new-and far more
costly-International Space Station. Even Yuri Koptev, the head of the
Russian Space Agency, has been lobbying for months to ditch the station.
With a space budget about 20 times smaller than NASA's, how can Russia
possibly support two space stations? "We do not have the money to carry out
restoration work on Mir," he says.

But Mir doesn't deserve a bad reputation. Long ago it outlived its
original design life of three years. Most of its recent troubles stemmed
from Russia's lack of funds rather than from its technology or its age.
That these snafus have been well covered in the press hasn't helped Mir's
public image. It's hard to remember, but when the Soviet Union launched Mir
in 1986, it was an object of fierce national pride, and rightly so. It was
the latest in a line of three military and seven civilian space stations,
the high point in three decades of the Soviet space program. It was-and for
the time being, still is-the largest structure ever to be assembled in
orbit, a feat that called for unprecedented hours of manual labor in
space's vacuum. As an assembly project, it will take the ISS, with its main
truss and big solar arrays planned for 2002, to surpass Mir.

EXTRAORDINARILY ROBUST

Mir's reputation in the West as an accident-prone station is especially
unfair. Mir's hardware has been extraordinarily robust. For 15 years Mir
has withstood exposure to the sun's unshielded rays, bitter cold and
barrages of tiny meteorites. "The most amazing thing about Mir is that it
is still up there," says Jonathan McDowell, an aerospace engineer at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. For the early part of its life
Mir suffered the elements gracefully, but the collapse of Soviet-style
space budgets began to take its toll in the middle 1990s. By the time
Americans began pulling up in their shiny, technologically pristine space
shuttle, Mir had had spotty routine maintenance for years. As will happen
on any car that doesn't get an oil change now and then, things began to go
wrong. With American astronauts residing on the station and the American
media paying close attention, Mir's travails reached a comic pitch. Toward
the end of the decade Russia even had trouble mustering its Progress ships
to refuel the station. Several times Mir sank dangerously close to the
upper atmosphere before a ship would arrive to boost its orbit. Somehow,
money was found and a rocket always arrived in the nick of time. "The
Russians have kept Mir going with what amounts to a Third World economy,"
says Gregory Bennett, vice president of Bigelow Aerospace and a former ISS
design engineer. "That's an impressive accomplishment."

Not having to pay their workers a decent Western wage certainly
helped the Russians keep Mir going, but clever engineering and a pragmatic
philosophy also played a big role. Russian designers have never had the
luxury of using the best possible technology. This might make something
like Mir seem clunky and outdated, especially compared with the latest
billion-dollar NASA project, but it leads to big cost savings. Consider,
for example, Mir's pressure vessels-the units that house the crew. They are
basically big tanks of heavy steel-far thicker and heavier than the
advanced materials used in the pressure vessels built for NASA's part of
the ISS. Since they're made with ordinary materials and technology,
however, they cost much less to develop and build.

Being heavy, the vessels also cost more to launch: more fuel is
required to lift them to low Earth orbit. But here again, Russia's low-tech
approach saves money. While the U.S. space industry is forever developing
new and better booster rockets, Russia has been using the same Proton
rockets since the 1960s. When the Russians need more, they simply build
more of the same. They never have to retool factories or employ teams of
engineers to develop prototypes or spend millions blowing new rockets up on
the launch pad. So what if the pressure vessels are a tad heavy? Russian
rockets are cheap. "The American way of doing things is, every gram is
precious, so we're going to launch the most sophisticated equipment, we're
going to use the most advanced, superthin titanium materials, and we're
going to make them to the precise tolerance that we need," says McDowell.
"The Russian approach is, we'll build it out of steel, make it twice as
heavy and just launch it on a bigger rocket."

HEAD OF THE CLASS

Hardware is the least of Mir's legacy. When it comes to the human
experience of coping with the vicissitudes of long spaceflights, Mir puts
the Russians at the head of the class. Since 1978, cosmonauts have held all
records for endurance (Valery Polyakov's record of consecutive days in
space stands at 438). That stands in marked contrast to NASA's experience
with the space shuttle, where a typical mission lasts a fortnight. Short
flights are relatively easy to script down to the smallest detail. For each
shuttle flight, NASA rehearses every motion ahead of time, which takes
months of astronaut training. When you're sending a cosmonaut to Mir for
more than a year, who knows what will happen in that time? Choreographing
every finger motion is impossible.

To cope with uncertainty, the Russians have developed a freewheeling,
seat-of-the-pants space culture. To Western sensibilities, this way of
working can appear reckless. "The Russians like to figure it out as they
go," says Bennett. "To my American-trained mind, it sounds like a really
dangerous thing to do. But they haven't killed anybody. It works, or
they're the luckiest people in the world."

Over the years, this approach has served cosmonauts well, especially
when things break down-as they inevitably do on long-duration flights, and
as they eventually will on the ISS. When the Priroda vessel was struck and
Mir began to lose pressure, the cosmonauts onboard responded quickly to
identify the problem and improvised a procedure to make repairs. They
showed the same sort of moxie when the station would lose power, or when
arriving crew members would open the hatch and find the station frozen, the
heating system broken. Once, when the station began drifting out of
alignment so that its solar panels were no longer properly oriented toward
the sun, the crew, in an unorthodox move, manually fired the
attitude-adjustment rockets to put things right.

WHERE'S THE SCIENCE?

The Russians, of course, haven't done nearly as well in space science.
Despite the years cosmonauts have logged in space, they've managed to come
back with precious little physiological data. This is due partly to the
lack of medical facilities on Mir, partly to the attitude of cosmonauts.
"We never did get much science out of Mir," says Laurence Young, director
of the Space Biomedical Institute, a NASA-funded group. "In terms of life
sciences, they really got most of their measurements before and after
flights." The scientific method apparently favors the procedure-bound
American approach to things.

When it comes to engineering and operations, however, the Mir
experience has turned out to be crucial in the building and assembling of
the ISS. Many of NASA's key people on the ISS spent time on Mir in the late
1990s. And Sergei Krikalev, the cosmonaut stranded when the Soviet Union
collapsed, is currently on the ISS as a member of its first crew. The
Russian Zarya module, launched in July 2000, was the first component of the
ISS, and the Zvezda service module acts as the ISS control center. Each
module amounts to a somewhat improved version of Mir's core module, right
down to the heavy steel walls. (While Zvezda was being built in Moscow,
engineers hung a sign on it that read: mir II.) And for the past few
months, and until Houston takes over later this year, Moscow is even
running most of the show from the ground. Newsweek.MSNBC.com
For Russian cosmonauts, however, Mir doesn't get nearly the credit it
deserves. Many of them are still smarting over NASA's relentless lobbying
to have the station brought down. Last year the quasi-private space firm
Energiya, which operates Mir, was trying to persuade NASA to launch the
first components of the ISS in an orbit that would have brought it close to
Mir. If NASA had done so, perhaps some of the valuable equipment aboard Mir
could have been ferried to the ISS. It was not to be. NASA, apparently
determined to keep Russia captive to the ISS, delayed its launch long
enough to place the two in separate orbits. Instead, Mir's solar arrays,
life-support system, pressure vessels and 13 tons of scientific equipment
already in position in Earth orbit will soon crash and burn.

Vasily Tsibliyev, who commanded the Mir crew during the disastrous year
of 1997, recognizes the need to let go of Mir and move on. "We're not
taking a step backwards by getting rid of Mir," he says, "but it is still
very sad. The fact that Mir flew not just five years, but 15 years, I
consider to be one of the greatest technological accomplishments of the
20th century."

With Eve Conant in Star City

*******

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