October 2, 2001

This Date's Issues:   5471 • 5472

Johnson's Russia List
#5471
2 October 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AFP: Rights activists mark Chechen anniversary amid fears of Russian crackdown.
2. Reuters: IMF calm on Russia oil fallout, likes reforms.
3. UPI: Ariel Cohen, Forthcoming Crisis in Central Asia - PART TWO of TWO.
4. RFE/RL: Breffni O'Rourke, Putin's Brussels Visit Underscores EU Ties, Chechnya Focus.
5. Christian Science Monitor: Peter Grier and Dante Chinni, In new fight, shades of cold war. As in its battle with communism, US may come to see all priorities through a single lens: containing terrorism.
6. Hudson Institute: RUSSIA: Its Place in the 21st Century and the Implications
for the United States. (Three paper: David Satter, INTERNAL POLICY PANEL;
Richard Pipes, FOREIGN POLICY PANEL; and Keith Payne, MILITARY/SECURITY PANEL]

*******

#1
Rights activists mark Chechen anniversary amid fears of Russian crackdown

MOSCOW, Oct 1 (AFP) -
Chechnya marked the second anniversary of Russia's war against rebels in the
breakaway republic amid fears that Moscow could exploit the US-led campaign
against international terrorism to launch a fresh crackdown in the north
Caucasus.

Human rights activists have criticised Russia for its apparent unwillingness
to prosecute soldiers suspected of carrying out arbitrary arrests, torture
and murder ever since Moscow launched its self-styled "anti-terrorist"
campaign in Chechnya on October 1, 1999.

The Russian rights watchdog Memorial estimates that more than 400 children
have been killed, and 2,000 others orphaned during the course of a brutal
conflict that has seen the Chechen death toll rise to around 30,000,
according to the rebel leadership.

But Memorial activist Eliza Musayeva warned Monday of a possible upsurge in
human rights abuses in Chechnya if Russia launched a new offensive under the
guise of joining the international alliance against terrorism in the wake of
last month's attacks on New York and Washington.

"Since the attacks in the United States, the Chechens fear more than anything
that the Western countries will ease up in their pressure on Russia," she
said.

The two-year war was relegated to the bottom of the agenda at last week's
parliamentary session of the Council of Europe, which adopted a "more
measured position on Chechnya, according the Kremlin's human rights envoy
Vladimir Kalamanov.

"If the Americans launch an anti-terrorist operation against Afghanistan,
Russia could exploit the fact that the rest of the world is looking elsewhere
to deliver a killer blow to the rebels, with little for the fallout among the
civilian population," Musayeva said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, directly
linked Monday events in Chechnya with the US-led campaign against
international terrorism, in rejecting an offer by Georgian President Eduard
Shevardnadze to mediate the conflict.

Russia "would appreciate Georgian efforts contributing to the world campaign
against international terrorism, in particular ... by taking measures to bar
Chechen terrorists and mercenaries on its territory," he told AFP.

Unemployment, poverty and violence have become the staple ingredient of life
in Chechnya's towns and villages, where many civilians are caught up in the
crossfire between "mopping-up" raids carried out by Russian troops and the
widespread use of landmines by the rebels, experts say.

Chechen lawyer Abdollah Khamzayev, who recently prosecuted a Russian army
officer for the murder of an 18-year-old Chechen girl "cannot see how the
situation in the republic could get any worse."

"The number of criminal investigations is ridiculous in comparison with the
number of crimes that have been committed. Chechens cannot count on anything
or anybody, least of all the Russian legal system," Khamzayev added.

Only 11 Russian soldiers have been convicted of crimes against Chechen
civilians, while more than a thousand complaints have been registered with
the authorities.

International observers have also highlighted the prolonged misery and
suffering of around 140,000 Chechens who are preparing to spend their third
winter in makeshift camps in the neighbouring Russian republic of Ingushetia.

"Their situation is all the more difficult as they do not have any hope of an
end to the hostilities in the near future," said Jean Tissot, the head of the
Danish Refugee Council in Ingushetia.

Nor are conditions much better for those who have fled the troubled north
Caucasus and settled in Moscow only to be stopped and interrogated regularly
by the city police because of their Chechen appearance, according to
activists.

Russia launched its military intervention in the southern republic of
Chechnya on October 1, 1999, after Moscow blamed Islamic separatists for a
wave of terror attacks that killed almost 300 people in Russian cities.

******

#2
INTERVIEW-IMF calm on Russia oil fallout, likes reforms
By Patrick Lannin

MOSCOW, Oct 1 (Reuters) - The economic gains Russia has made in recent years
are safe so far despite the recent slide in oil prices, the International
Monetary Fund's (IMF) representative in the country said on Monday.

Poul Thomsen added that the Fund, its role now as an adviser after years of
post-Soviet change when it regularly had to bail out Russia's stop-start
economy, was in favour overall of the current reforms being pursued under
President Vladimir Putin.

"Clearly the low oil price means that the balance of payments will be less
strong, but it is still fundamentally strong," Thomsen, IMF senior resident
representative for Russia, told Reuters in an interview.

"I do not think the decline in oil prices we have seen in any way threatens
the macroeconomic stability that has been achieved," he added.

He said that as the economy was heavily dependent on oil the situation had to
be kept under review, but added: "So far I do not see anything that would be
a cause for major alarm."

Oil price fluctuations tend to cause alarm among Russia watchers as the
country depends for three quarters of its export revenues on oil, gas and
metals.

Global oil prices have slipped by around 20 percent since the September 11
attacks on the United States as worries a

Global oil prices have slipped by around 20 percent since the September 11
attacks on the United States as worries a bout world recession have
outweighed fears of supply disruption as a result of conflict in the Middle
East.

The Moscow government has said its finances are on target, including next
year's budget, a tough package which includes the first planned budget
surplus. It also includes the building of a reserve to meet a 2003 peak of
$19 billion of debt repayments.

Some analysts have said worries over the "2003 problem" are exaggerated as it
is more of a blip higher in repayments rather than a sudden surge. Russia
must this year and next repay $14 billion in debt out of total foreign debt
of $140 billion.

REFORMS "GOOD NEWS"

Thomsen said the Fund was pleased in general with the pace of reforms under
Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. IMF chief Horst Koehler is to
visit Moscow next week to discuss the economy, although no definite date has
yet been put on the arrival of a mission to carry a full assessment.

Reforms have included tax cuts, a land reform bill, efforts to join the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) and promises to level the playing field for foreign
and domestic business.

"The structural reform measures approved by the Duma (lower house of
parliament) at the end of the spring (previous) session were indeed very
impressive," Thomsen said.

"With the approval of the land laws now and the government intentions for the
rest of the fall session suggests that this strong momentum is continuing.
This is good news, this is very good news," he added.

He said banking reform needed "increased focus" as the country needed a
proper financial sector to channel funds from lenders to possible creditors.

The central bank has suggested a broad reform strategy, criticised by some
analysts for being too slow in breathing life back into a sector yet to
recover from the 1998 financial crisis.

"The view on the central bank reform plan is that it focussed on the right
areas. It was a concept paper and now we need to wait to see the action
plan," Thomsen said.

*******

#3
Analysis: Forthcoming Crisis in Central Asia - PART TWO of TWO
By ARIEL COHEN (acohen@mindspring.com)

Moscow, Sept 28 (UPI) - The Kremlin is tracking developments in Central
Asia closely - and warily. A high level Kremlin source, speaking on
condition of anonymity, told UPI today that in the short run there is no
threat to the stability of any of the Central Asian republics. However, in
a long run things may look grim, the source said, especially if the
Northern Alliance is not brought up to speed militarily.

The Kremlin official said that the threat to Central Asian states existed
in the first few days after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S.
There was a real threat of the Northern Alliance being overrun in the
aftermath of assassination of the military leader of the Alliance, Ahmed
Shah Massoud, the source said. However, he added, there are three reasons
why things may still go south.

First, the three "frontline" states -- Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and
Kyrgyzstan, already harbor hundreds of radical Islamist fighters, organized
in underground cells or hiding amidst the vast mountain ranges of Central
Asia, such as those belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

These groups may be supported by Taliban fighters who would infiltrate into
Uzbekisan and other states amidst the flow of refugees.
Taliban is expected to stir trouble, from skirmishes and attacks on Russian
and Western forces in the region, to mass terrorism and full-fledged coups.

Secondly, the Kremlin official believes, Central Asian regimes are not
sufficiently stable. They are heavy-handed in their attitudes towards the
non-violent Moslems, and especially the clergy. The governments in the
region are too poor, too passive or too corrupt to provide ample social
services and economic development. As the result, Islamists move in and
have a strong case to make to the desperate population.

The governments in the region have not yet develop a model to allow the
moderate clergy to operate, while cracking down on real trouble makers.
These governments have no real political alternative to Hizb-ut-Tahrir
(Army of Liberation), the Islamic party which was started by a Palestinian
Arab in Jordan in 1952. The party calls not just for establishment of a
Shari'a (Islamic Law) state, but also for the re-creation of khalifat (a
vast Islamic kingdom), in all of Central Asia, and eventually throughout
the Middle East. However, the party stops short of openly advocating
violence, leaving it to the likes of the IMU.

Finally, the Northern Alliance and the Central Asian forces may not be
sufficient to oppose the Taliban. Northern Alliance commanders have no
formal military training, and are basically former tribal warlords, if not
bandit chieftains, says Col. (Ret.) Victor Gartmann, an ethnically German
ex-Soviet officer who was promoted to the rank of the General of the
Turkmen Army after he set up its officer training.

Gartmann has built, trained and advised the 18th Division of the pro-Soviet
Afghan regime, which controlled an area of over 100,000 square kilometers
south of the old Soviet-Afghan border between 1981-1984.

The veteran commander believes that only extensive training and provision
of ample firepower - primarily the old Soviet weapons such as T-55 tanks,
BTR armored personnel carriers and GRAD multiple rocket launchers can save
the Northern Alliance in the long run and pin down large numbers of the
Taliban forces. "I am willing to give up my office job at a tourism college
in the Moscow suburb and go advise my Afghan friends again," he says. He
notices that his "friends" hardly speak any Russian, let alone English.
"All they speak is Dari," he says. And there are very few Dari speakers in
the U.S. military.

Mountaineers can be some of the toughest fighters in the world, as the
Americans learned in Vietnam, the British in the subcontinent, and the
Russians in Chechnya. It is important to have at least some mountain tribes
in Afghanistan on the West's side. After all, they are all mountaineers.

The Soviets never put his tribal chiefs, who comprised the 18th Division,
through their military academies, and only few went to officer school,
Gartmann says.

"They are all self-taught men, like General Dustum and the late Ahmed Shah
Masoud. When I met them, they were just village leaders, somewhat like
bandits. Then I met them when the Afghan Army promoted them to generals.
They just know how to fight.

"Maybe this was a mistake, and we should have trained them much better,"
the veteran officer ponders. Still, he believes, that an important
ingredient of victory is reactivating the old Soviet-led tribal networks in
Northern Afghanistan and sending them to fight the Taliban.

"Three million Uzbeks cannot overrun ten million Pushtuns," Gartmann says
plainly. If the Taliban are not engaged in the South (of Afghanistan), and
are able to send sufficient firepower to the North, things will get dicey."

Under a scenario of the Taliban crossing the border of the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) along the Amu-Darya river, Russia is obliged to
act to protect the security of the treaty members.

"Moscow will have to consider throwing everything it got into the Central
Asian theater of operations, And it ain't going to be pretty," Gartmann says.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies at
the Heritage Foundation, and the author of "Russian Imperialism:
Development and Crisis," (Greenwood/Praeger, 1998).

*******

#4
Russia: Putin's Brussels Visit Underscores EU Ties, Chechnya Focus
By Breffni O'Rourke

Relations between Russia and the European Union are set to take a step
forward with the visit of President Vladimir Putin to Brussels. Putin, who
arrives today, holds a summit with top EU officials on 3 October. He will
also be meeting leaders from Belgium, seat of the current EU presidency, and
NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson. The theme of the joint struggle
against terrorism will be a key point of discussions.

Prague, 1 October 2001 (RFE/RL) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin appears
certain to use his visit to Brussels to reinforce the message he issued in
Berlin a week ago. That is, that Russia's conflict in Chechnya is a terrorist
problem, rather than a matter of Moscow suppressing the human rights of
Chechens.

In Berlin, Putin told the German parliament that terrorism and religious
extremism have the same roots -- and bear the same fruits -- everywhere. His
remarks can be seen as an attempt to link Russia's war in Chechnya to the
terrorist attacks on New York and Washington -- attacks which have been
condemned around the world.

The theme of how to combat international terror is sure to feature in his
summit meeting on 3 October with EU officials, including EU Commission head
Romano Prodi, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, and Belgian Prime
Minister Guy Verhofstadt. The Russian leader will also take the opportunity
of his visit to Brussels to hold talks with NATO Secretary-General Lord
George Robertson.

London-based political analyst Charles Grant of the Center for European
Reform says Putin will be looking for a trade-off for cooperating with the
international community:

"There has to be some quid pro quo, and if Russia is going to be helping the
Western allies in the fight against terrorism by providing intelligence, by
providing support in the United Nations, by providing help in Central Asia,
then I think the Russians are going to say that, 'In return we want you to be
more sympathetic about the Chechen problem.' "

Grant says Putin may not stop with the issue of Chechnya but may also try to
apply pressure on such issues as further NATO enlargement -- which Moscow
opposes.

To be sure, terrorism is not the only subject of the visit. Issues likely to
arise at the summit meeting include EU energy purchases from Russia,
cooperation on crime control -- including financial crime -- and general
trade matters. The 15-member EU is a key trading partner for Moscow,
accounting for 40 percent of Russia's foreign trade and almost two-thirds of
its foreign investment.

The two sides will also discuss EU help for the Russian enclave of
Kaliningrad, which is surrounded by EU-aspirant countries Lithuania and
Poland. As Marius Vahl, senior analyst with the Center for European Policy
Studies in Brussels, puts it:

"They are trying to come to some sort of agreement about how to deal with
Kaliningrad in terms of the [EU's] enlargement; there's the question of the
movement of people, economic assistance, energy connections, electricity
grids, and different types of topics."

As to energy issues, EU Commission chief Prodi has previously suggested that
Russia and the EU work out a long-term plan for energy supplies to the EU.
Experts are now at work on this concept, and the summit will likely review
progress so far. As Vahl says:

"The energy aspect is very important. The fact that the EU will become more
and more dependent on supplies from outside the EU in the next, say, 10 to 20
years -- and Russia is certainly going to supply a lot of that -- if not all
of it, at least a big part of that."

Another of Prodi's initiatives relates to the creation of a "common European
economic space," stretching across the EU and Russia. This concept was
sketched out in previous talks but has remained vague. Vahl says the summit
may decide to appoint experts to define how such a space can be created.

Vahl sees Putin's visit as part of a consolidation of Moscow's ties with the
EU, which he calls one of the Russian leader's top priorities, along with
improving ties with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). He says:

"I see this [summit] as a continuation of a trend. In a sense it is business
as usual, because this is what Putin has been doing since he came into office
almost two years ago. He is emphasizing Europe, cooperation with Western
Europe and the EU in particular, and [this visit] fits right into this
pattern."

Before going into the 3 October summit, Putin meets tomorrow with Belgian
King Albert II and Belgian businessmen. He will also have talks with Belgian
government officials, centering on bilateral relations between Belgium and
Russia.

********

#5
Christian Science Monitor
2 October 2001
In new fight, shades of cold war
As in its battle with communism, US may come to see all priorities through
a single lens: containing terrorism.
By Peter Grier and Dante Chinni
Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - Three weeks on, it is becoming increasingly clear that the
United States' struggle against terrorism will likely be less a hot fight
than a multidimensional strategy of perseverance.
Retaliation for the Sept. 11 strikes against New York and Washington might
yet come at any moment. Osama bin Laden remains a key target for US
military forces.

But to this point, the US response to the attacks has belied the Bush
administration's initial warlike rhetoric. Official actions have emphasized
domestic security, freezing of suspects' financial assets, and the
construction of an international antiterror coalition.

The analogy seems less with the Gulf War than with the cold war - America's
long, twilight struggle against communism. As in the cold war, virtually
all the nation's priorities and commitments are being rethought, with the
containment, and eventual rollback, of an overarching threat in mind.

"The one place you can most clearly make the comparison to the cold war is
how this is going to be the central focus of US foreign policy," says
Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in
New York.

From the first, President Bush has talked about the terrorism fight as a
long and difficult one that will test the national will as much as it does
the Marines.

But the bellicose nature of some of his early remarks, such as his desire
to catch Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," implied that military moves might
be imminent. Combined with reports of troop movements, the authorization of
a call-up of the reserves, and the administration's very use of the word
"war," many Americans received the impression that the 82nd Airborne might
shortly be arriving on the outskirts of Kabul.

In reality, the emerging US strategy has two obvious layers, say officials
and experts outside government. The first is the hunt for the immediate
perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks. Rather than a quick US military
strike, this is likely to involve special-operations missions. It involves
brainpower - via intelligence and international police work - as much as
bullets.

The second is the reorganization of national life, insofar as possible, in
an effort to render Americans safe from fear of sudden attack. However
difficult the bin Laden manhunt must be, it is this secondary layer that
would require the most profound changes - in everything from the US budget
to America's relationship with Russia, or China, or Iran.

As the cold war was a fight against communism, the terrorist war will be a
struggle against a new "ism": radical Islamic extremism.

That makes it a war of ideas as much as a war of force, notes Michael
McFaul, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. And a war of ideas is necessarily a multifaceted one. It will
involve an effort to win the hearts and minds of at least some in the
Middle East who might otherwise be sympathetic to radical Islamists'
anti-Western message.

Force alone is unlikely to completely stamp out Al Qaeda, much less all
terrorism of global reach. Experts estimate that Al Qaeda has cells in 50
countries.

But draining sympathy for Al Qaeda's aims, while chipping away at the
willingness of nations such as Afghanistan and Sudan to be terrorist safe
harbors, can contain the threat, and perhaps begin to reduce it. "The
feeling in the cold war was if we could stop their expansion, the
communists would collapse from the weight of their system," says Mr. Mead.
"This is more of a criminal containment, with the mission being to keep
incidents at an acceptably low level."

The importance of the terrorist fight also means that henceforth much of
what the US government does will be seen through a single lens. Thus,
budget planning now revolves around the billions presumed necessary for new
military spending, as well as attack recovery.

As in the cold war, this also has meant a sudden and strict reordering of
US relationships with other nations.

It is not quite a judgment of "either you are with us or against us," to
paraphrase Mr. Bush. But it is close. Suddenly, the world is being divided
into two camps. On one are those with the US and those, such as Iran, that
the US hopes might be of some help in the future.

On the other side are nations in the crosshairs - Afghanistan being the
most obvious and notable among them.

"The effort the Bush administration is trying to launch is like the cold
war in that we have an organizing principle for foreign policy," says James
Lindsay, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "But
the strategies we use will be different."

That can be seen clearly in the allegiances that have already been pledged.
Most notably, Russia has decided that embracing US aims in this regard
serve its national interest. Only weeks ago, for President Vladimir Putin
to agree to the deployment of US forces in former Soviet republics that
border Afghanistan would have been virtually unthinkable. But Mr. Putin has
clearly thrown in his lot with the West - and in doing so, perhaps gained
some respite from US criticism of Russia's own human rights abuses in its
war against Chechnya.

Pakistan has similarly already seen a quid for its quo of signing up in the
US effort. The US has moved to lift economic sanctions on Pakistan that
were part of the US nuclear-nonproliferation effort. For the risk Pakistani
officials are taking of angering their own population's many bin Laden
sympathizers, they are further expecting millions in US aid.

Cold-war containment was ultimately successful - but it had its excesses,
too. McCarthyism spawned by the fears of the early years of communist
confrontation robbed many Americans of their basic liberties. The US
overlooked the thuggishness of many of its allies in the war against what
many officials perceived as a communist tide. The US won the cold war - but
it paid a "high price" along the way, says Mr. Lindsay.

******

#6
[three excerpts]
RUSSIA: Its Place in the 21st Century and the Implications for the United
States
A Study Group Sponsored by the Hudson Institute
www.hudson.org

INTERNAL POLICY PANEL:
Cornerstone Paper
by David Satter (satter@jamestown.org)
Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and the Jamestown Foundation: Visiting
Scholar, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies;
author, Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union (Yale, 2000)

If Putin is to play a positive role in Russian history, it will be first and
foremost as a leader who created a basis for prosperity in Russia by
strengthening the rule of law. To this end, there are several steps which
would indicate that Putin is seriously interested in creating the conditions
for Russia's resurrection:

* Progress in solving any or all of Russia's most notorious political murders
with the arrest and trial of all of those involved in the crime, the
organizers as well as the executors.

* Openness regarding the investigation into the bombings of Russian apartment
buildings in September, 1999 and a complete and credible explanation of why
the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) decided to plant a dummy bomb - if it was a
dummy bomb - in the basement of an apartment building in Ryazan.

* The arrest and trial of the financial oligarches with the publication of
full information about their ties to government officials, including members
of the presidential administration.

* Steps to memorialize the victims of political terror and to establish
museums or exhibits that describe fully and truthfully the crimes of
communism.

* The arrest and trial of the leaders of any one of Russia's criminal
syndicates with full information about their business holdings and relation
to government officials.

In the absence of these or related measures, it will be hard to avoid the
impression that Putin seeks not to establish the role of law but to achieve
economic progress with police methods, an effort that will not solve Russia's
problems but only compound them.

Implications for the United States

Unless something is done about Russia's lawlessness, the prospect in Russia
is for continued disintegration, and the more weak and unstable Russian
society becomes, the greater is the chance that the processes taking a toll
within the country will begin to pose a threat to the United States.

There are two types of dangers that face the United States as a result of the
internal situation in Russia: those arising from the actions of the state and
those arising from the actions of specific groups over which Russian state
structures have lost all control. In both cases, they are a product of the
chaos stemming from Russian society's underlying lack of moral orientation.

The principal dangers arising from the actions of the Russian state are:

Social Unrest - The failure to address Russia's economic problems could lead
to civil unrest sufficiently serious to draw in nations along Russia's long
border. More than 40 per cent of the Russian population lives in conditions
of severe poverty, and economic decline has led to a public health crisis,
alcoholism and rising rates of murder and suicide. The Russian people remain
deeply dissatisfied with the results of "reform" and this discontent could be
exploited by a demagogic leader, particularly if living standards continue to
fall.

Aggression - The deterioration of the situation in Russia could prompt Putin
or another Russian leader to launch a war of aggression against any of the
former Soviet republics to shore up popular support in the same way as the
war in Chechnya was used to help Putin win the Russian presidency. Likely
targets of a Russian war of aggression are Georgia and Azerbaijan, and even
the Baltic Republics.

The principal dangers involving groups, individuals, or institutions over
which there is no effective control are:

Terrorism - Because it is impoverished and heir to the military expertise of
the Soviet Union, Russia could become a base area for terrorism. Leaders of
Aum Shinri Kyo, the Japanese doomsday sect which launched an attack with
sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo metro, have testified that the production
designs for the manufacture of sarin were given to the sect in 1993 in return
for $100,000 in cash by Oleg Lobov, Russia's former first deputy prime
minister. Members of the sect, with Lobov's help, also trained on Russian
military bases and were frequent visitors to Russian academic institutes
where they studied the circulation of gases.

Organized Crime - Russian expertise has been a boon for organized crime.
There are presently about 30 Russian criminal syndicates operating in the
United States and they conduct some of the most sophisticated criminal
operations ever seen in the United States thanks to their mastery of computer
technology, encryption techniques, and money laundering facilities that
process hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Russian criminal syndicates have also established working relationships
with the Colombian drug cartels and have tried to arrange the sale to them of
sophisticated weapons including a Tango-class, diesel powered patrol
submarine to be used to move cocaine from Colombia to California. U.S. law
enforcement agencies take seriously the possibility that Russian criminal
gangs could obtain nuclear weapons.

Nuclear accidents - Russia could be the source of ecological disasters.
Outdated nuclear power stations, many of the same type as the power station
at Chernobyl, are operating with equipment that is in need of replacement. At
the same time, human error is increasingly possible because the employees of
nuclear power stations in Russia have gone as much as six months without pay,
causing workers to faint on the job and go on hunger strikes.

The nuclear material inside submarines could also cause a disaster. At
present, there are 45,000 nuclear fuel elements stored in the
Murmansk/Archangel Panhandle, 1,200 miles north of Moscow. Many are still
inside 104 submarines which are rapidly corroding. The shipyards have 1.8
million gallons of liquid radioactive waste awaiting disposal as well.
Disposal of the current supply of spent nuclear materials would take an
estimated 30 years, too long to avoid a nuclear disaster.

The Theft of Nuclear Materials - Russia has 150 metric tons of plutonium and
650 tons of highly enriched uranium stored in 400 buildings at 50 scientific
centers. Much of this supply, which is enough to make 33,000 nuclear weapons,
is not secure. Russia's nuclear sites are guarded by nearly 30,000 servicemen
but many of these soldiers have gone for long periods without pay and there
have been reports of guards leaving their posts to forage for food. In one
case, a 19 year old sailor killed eight people, locked himself in the torpedo
room of a nuclear submarine and threatened to blow up the ship. In 1998, a
soldier who was guarding a nuclear reprocessing plant in the Ural Mountains
killed two fellow guards and then fled.

At the same time, many of Russia's 20,000 nuclear scientists live in
conditions of extreme hardship and are vulnerable to recruitment efforts by
foreign powers, including North Korea which, according to an unconfirmed
report, has recruited them successfully.

Epidemics - The breakdown of the system of public hygiene in Russia has made
Russia the source of new epidemics. Among the new threats to health that have
emerged are polio, cholera and even plague. The number of new cases of
syphilis in Russia has increased 57 times in seven years from 8,000 to
450,000 in 1997. Most ominous of all, however, is the rise of drug resistant
tuberculosis, which developed in the fetid, overcrowded Russian prisons.
Persons ill with tuberculosis received only partial treatment with
antibiotics and this produced the drug resistant strain. The disease is
spreading throughout Russia as prisoners return to their communities and its
spread beyond Russia's borders is only a matter of time.

U.S. Policy

In terms of policy, there are a number of steps that the United States can
take to support a law based state in Russia.

* Make international loans contingent on realistic efforts to fight
corruption.

* Direct foreign aid toward humanitarian assistance. Russia faces a
catastrophic health care situation as reflected in falling life expectancy
and a very high death rate. Part of the reason is a shortage of medical
equipment and the unavailability of medicines due to their high cost.
American medical aid directed toward persons who would not otherwise receive
assistance, besides achieving a concrete purpose, can inspire goodwill toward
the United States and convey the message that the U.S. seeks a relationship
with the Russian people as a whole and not with any one political faction.

* Use tax incentives to encourage direct assistance to Russian regions by
private American organizations. Russians benefit from contact with
non-government organizations. Churches, schools, corporations and private
individuals who take an interest in Russia can often provide invaluable help
to individuals in need while, at the same time, helping to break the
impression, too often fostered in recent years, that America stands for
capitalism and capitalism is indistinguishable from crime.

* Fight illegal capital flight from Russia by encouraging international
efforts to crack down on offshore zones.

* Expand the Financial Intelligence Fraud Network. Russian businessmen and
criminal structures export money under the guise of paying penalties or fees
to companies which they secretly own. These front companies are registered in
offshore zones or, frequently, in Delaware, where they are often organized
into a veritable maze. The U.S. should provide the relevant government
agencies with enough resources to deny Russian criminals this means of
looting their own country.

* Keep corrupt officials and known criminals out of the United States.
Russia's corrupt businessmen and gangsters like to travel abroad. By denying
them visas, the United States can exert pressure on them and, at the same
time, disassociate itself in the eyes of Russians from their behavior.

* Provide aid to Russian law enforcement. The outstanding problem of law
enforcement in Russia is the low pay and lack of equipment of the police.
American aid to Russian law enforcement agencies can help them in what now is
a losing battle with organized crime. Among the programs which Russian law
enforcement officers most need is a witness protection program so that
ordinary Russian citizens will not be afraid to testify in court.

*Decriminalize Russian participation in American energy investments. The U.S.
should impose disclosure rules affecting joint ventures that go beyond
private company efforts. Such requirements would, for example, probably
expose criminal structures behind the existing Sakhalin energy exploitation
projects.

* Limit access to U.S. capital markets. Russian oil and gas companies or
other entities engaged in production, transportation and export should be
denied access to capital markets if there is evidence of criminalization.

In addition to its policies, the United States can affect the situation in
Russia with its rhetoric. In many respects, this is the most important
instrument of influence of all.

The Soviet Union was based on the notion that there are no absolute standards
of right and wrong but only the interests of a specific economic class.
Unfortunately, after the Soviet Union fell, the notion of class values, in
the form of faith in economic determinism, continued to dominate on Russian
territory. If the communists held that for perfect justice, it was necessary
to put property in the hands of the state, the reformers held that all that
was required for a law based state was to give property back to private
owners. In both cases, the need to establish a legal and moral framework for
economic transformation was ignored.

In this situation, the ability of the United States to identify itself with
universal values and not with any particular organization of economic
structures can have a salutary and much needed effect.

The better we are able to identify the question of values which underlies not
only justice in Russia but stability in the world, the greater will be our
impact on the Russian population. The greater our impact on the Russian
population, the better the chances that the genuine democratic forces inside
Russia will gather encouragement and strength and begin to take steps to
reversing the process of disintegration with which their country is
afflicted. In any case, we will have taken the first step toward real
engagement with the Russian people and have avoided making enemies of a
nation whose fate is actually intimately connected to our own.

FOREIGN POLICY PANEL:
Cornerstone Paper
By Dr. Richard Pipes
Professor of History, Harvard University, author of The Russian Revolution
(Vintage, 1991)

What are the prospects for Russia's foreign policy in the years ahead?

The answer to this question depends much less on the conduct of foreign
powers toward Russia than on developments inside Russia. If the country
progresses, however haltingly, toward democracy and a regime based on law,
the contrast between it and the West will diminish and the temptation to
harass and frighten the West wane as well. If, on the other hand, Russia
reverts to its traditional authoritarianism, then the chances are that it
will once again turn its back on the West. In this case it will also feel
tempted to exacerbate relations with the West because by creating a phantom
external threat and transforming the state into a "beleaguered fortress", the
country's rulers will be able, as in the past, to justify their despotic
rule. From which it follows that it is in the greatest interest of the West
to ensure Russia continues its commitment to democracy. (Adherence to the
free market is less important because, as history demonstrates, dictatorship
is compatible with concessions to private enterprise.)

In a shorter time frame, Russia, feeling excluded from Europe by NATO's
expansion into Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, seems eager to
compensate for this rejection by fashioning a bloc of its own as a
counterpoise to NATO. One expression of this effort is strengthening CIS as a
surrogate for the lost empire. Another is to draw closer to countries outside
the western bloc. Here in the forefront stands China, with which Russia has
entered into a "strategic partnership". Iraq and Iran are also suitable
partners for this purpose.

It is questionable whether over the long run the eastward orientation will
bring Russia the desired results. In its relations with China, Russia finds
it difficult to shed the sense of being the "elder brother" even though this
attitude no longer corresponds to reality. The two nations also share a
deep-seated suspicion of each other. The principal interest they have in
common is negative, namely opposition to America's global "hegemony" and
western "interference" in what they insist are their internal affairs
(Chechnya, Taiwan and human rights). As a result, negotiations between them
are stronger on anti-American rhetoric than on substance.

As for Iraq and Iran, Russia's troubles with its own Muslim minorities also
preclude close relations. In this case, too, negative factors predominate,
namely common hostility to the West, especially the United States. An
important if imponderable factor mitigating against a genuine rapprochement
with the Middle East (as well as China) is that Russians tend to look down on
Oriental people.

Thus, in the final analysis, unless Russia adopts a firm pro-western course
in both its domestic and foreign policies, it will condemn itself to
isolation which will mean, among other things, failure to participate in the
globalization of the world's economy. It raises the prospect of it ending up
as a Third World country in a First World location.

What the West can do and what should it avoid doing in its relations with
Russia?

If the above considerations are correct, the West's ability to influence
Russia's foreign is limited. Even so, it is not entirely lacking.

Russian governments watch closely the West's reactions to their behavior: as
an aspiring world power, they care how the world perceives them, and this
sensitivity gives the West a certain leverage. Forceful opprobrium of
aggressive behavior or violations of human rights makes an impression.
Conversely, Moscow interprets feeble protests, not backed up by meaningful
action, as tacit approval. The author of these lines attended two years ago a
conference in Poland devoted to the events of December 1981 when General
Jaruzelski had imposed Martial Law on his country. The general, who took part
in this conference, declared that the failure of the U.S. government to give
him unambiguous signals that it would respond to a crackdown with severe
punitive measures helped him overcome lingering hesitations. In particular,
he had interpreted Vice-President George Bush's silence on this subject
during a meeting with his deputy in early December to mean that Washington
had no objections to the imposition of Martial Law. This incident, though it
occurred under different conditions, is a useful reminder how important it is
to speak out clearly and unequivocally when Russia or a country under its
control engages in unacceptable behavior. And if words do not produce the
desired effect, the West has at its disposal powerful financial levers.

The current campaign against Chechnya shows the counterproductive effects of
timidity. The western powers have been ineffectually protesting the Russian
army's violations of human rights in this region -- if, indeed, mass murder
qualifies as nothing more than a "violation of human rights"-- but they have
done next to nothing to back such disapproval with concrete punitive
measures. Neither diplomatic relations nor financial dealings have been
affected by Russia's appalling behavior. At a recent gathering, the Council
of Europe generously allowed Russia three more months to "pacify" Chechnya.
As for Acting President Putin, the architect of Russia's aggression,
President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright have declared him a person
they can do business with. European leaders have echoed these sentiments. At
the very time when Putin promises to "kill off" all Chechen "bandits" and
subject the conquered region to direct Presidential rule, the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development has extended a $150 million loan to
Lukoil, Russia's giant oil concern. And Prime Minister Blair, the first
western leader to meet with Putin since the latter became Acting President,
said as they parted, even though Putin had made no concessions on Chechnya,
that he had "greatly enjoyed the dialogue." "I believe," he concluded, "that
we and the European Union should never forget that a closer partnership
between the European Union and Russia is in the interest of all our people
and in the interests of the continent we share." To maintain the atmosphere
of bonhomie, Mr. Blair pointedly refused to voice in public any criticism of
Russia's actions in Chechnya.

Such tacit endorsement has two effects, both of them adverse. It signals to
Moscow that the West, for all its hand wringing, really does not care what
happens inside Russia. At present this sentiment affects Chechnya, but
potentially it can extend to the suppression of freedoms and civil rights in
Russia proper. It encourages Moscow in the belief that as along as it
refrains from overt aggression abroad and duly services its debts, what it
does at home is its own business. Such a way of thinking completely misses
the close link between Russia's domestic and foreign policies, and ignores
that, sooner or later, undemocratic Russian governments turn anti-western.

Secondly, western passivity discourages the democratic, pro-western
intelligentsia in Russia. This group is relatively small, comprising perhaps
no more than 10-15 percent of the electorate, and it concentrates in the
large cities. Nevertheless, it constitutes an important ally that ought not
to be abandoned. We have seen what an effect the minuscule dissident movement
had on the Soviet dictatorship.

The current western policy toward post-Yeltsin Russia shows disturbing
parallels with the "soft" approach to the Soviet Union popular during the
Cold War. Then as now, the proponents of "detente" and "Ostpolitik" acted on
the premise that given Russia's geopolitical position and nuclear arsenal it
was imperative to "get along with it," whatever its regime and the regime's
treatment of its own citizens. The supreme objective was "stability." This
approach was proven wrong for the simple reason that then as now the roots of
Russia's aggression lay in its internal condition, i.e. that its foreign
policy was (and is) determined by its constitution. The confrontational
policy of President Reagan, which proceeded on this premise, contributed far
more to the end of the Cold War than the accommodation advocated by his
critics.

The events of the past several years indicate that Russia's attempt to adopt
democracy has failed -- at any rate, for the time being. Russia today stands
at a crossroads. Its temptation is to revert to "strong" i.e. arbitrary rule
with all the adverse consequences this has for Russia's domestic and foreign
policies. The West can influence these choices only indirectly: but such
influence as it has, it should not hesitate to exert.

In summary:

* The West should never lose sight of the fact that there exists an intimate
bond between Russia's domestic and foreign policies, the latter being a
function of the former; hence that it is a mistake to ignore internal
conditions in the hope of gaining a more conciliatory Russian foreign policy;

* The West should unequivocally condemn any Russian interference with the
sovereign rights of its one time Soviet republics (euphemistically called
"the near abroad"): the latter should not be treated as Russia's legitimate
sphere of influence but be given such assistance as they require to secure
effective independence from their one time imperial master; if Russia manages
to reincorporate in some fashion its former colonies, this will surely whet
its appetite for further encroachments along its frontier.

* The West has potent leverage in its financial resources and it should not
hesitate to withhold loans, investments and other economic benefits if Moscow
violates democratic standards at home or behaves aggressively abroad;

* At the same time, the West should take into consideration Russia's
national sensitivities and abstain from actions in and near Russia which
bring home its impotence, such as expanding NATO to the Baltic republics or
engaging in military exercises near its borders. The more reasons the
Russians have to feel powerless, the stronger the impetus to sacrifice
everything to regain the status of a Great Power with all that this implies.

MILITARY/ SECURITY PANEL
Cornerstone Paper
Keith Payne
President and founding research director at the National Institute for Public
Policy and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and Southwest
Missouri State University; editor in chief of Comparative Strategy: An
International Journal

Russian security policy has been formulated to support Russia's perceived
need to deter and confront the status quo power, i.e., the United States.
Nuclear weapons are increasingly accepted in Moscow as the only guarantee of
Russian national security and as the foundation of Russian military strategy.
The Russian Federation reportedly still possesses about 4,500 accountable
strategic nuclear weapons and about 1,000 operational long-range ballistic
missiles. Less certain is the number of tactical nuclear warheads in Russia's
arsenal, with estimates beginning at six thousand warheads and quickly rising
to tens of thousands. Unclassified U.S. intelligence estimates suggest that
in the coming decade, Russia will be hard pressed to maintain an arsenal of
1,500 strategic warheads. Informed Russian sources echo that analysis, some
suggesting that Russia may only have a force of several hundred strategic
systems at its disposal.

Despite the fact that Russia's ability to maintain a strategic nuclear force
clearly is eroding, Russia has nevertheless increasingly focused its
post-Cold War defense strategy around its status as a nuclear power. In 1997,
Russia rejected its earlier "no first use" pledge, and in a draft Security
Concept stated that Russia would use whatever means were at its disposal,
including nuclear weapons, if the survival of the Russian state were
threatened by aggression.

The Security Concept approved by Acting-President Putin in February 2000 is
similar to the 1997 draft. It appears, however, to lower the threshold for
nuclear use. Where the 1997 draft referred to the survival of the Russian
state as the stakes making nuclear use acceptable, the 2000 Security Concept
refers to a broader threat category of "armed aggression" as justifying
nuclear use. It also explicitly identifies the U.S.-led West as a threat to
Russia's security, a new development in a document that otherwise focuses on
internal threats like domestic instability, organized crime and corruption.

Russian officials have denied that this amounts to a liberalization of the
circumstances under which nuclear weapons might be used. However, Col. Gen.
Vladimir Yakovlev, the head of Russia's Strategic Missile Troops has said,
"Russia is compelled to reduce the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons
and to extend nuclear deterrence to conflicts of lesser scales and to openly
warn about that."

Russia's approach to military spending has confirmed this priority for
nuclear weapons. Funding for Russia's strategic nuclear forces has been
"fenced off' by the lower house of Russia's parliament and a classified
minimum funding criterion established. Until the most recent budget, Russia's
only fully funded military acquisition program has been the new TOPOL M ICBM
that has been entering the service at a relatively slow pace of ten missiles
per year. Other spending on strategic systems includes a new ballistic
missile submarine and SLBM, as well as improvements to Russia's nuclear
command-and-control systems.

Although Russian nuclear forces are facing an austere budget climate, their
relative health when compared to Russia's conventional forces is clear. In
terms of conventional forces, Russia's army has scaled back to approximately
1.2 million men, of which perhaps as few as 200,000 could be considered
operational. The Russian Defense Ministry has reportedly concluded that "the
average Russian soldier is only marginally combat capable." There may in fact
be no full-strength units at the divisional level. According to Defense
Minister Igor Sergeyev, 30 percent of Russian weapons are not combat-ready
and 70 percent of the Navy's ships are in need of repair. As a consequence of
these deficiencies, Russia has only limited capabilities to project
conventional military power beyond its borders.

In the context of the current Chechen conflict, the Russian General Staff's
response to this state of readiness is to only move troops forward after an
area has been thoroughly destroyed by artillery, air and missile strikes.
Russian military leadership has clearly improved between the 1994-1996 war
and the present conflict, and morale is likely also improved over the first
war where young conscripts often were not even told they were heading into a
combat situation. However, despite Russia's "success" in prosecuting the
current war, the state of her conventional forces remains poor.

It appears that Russia hopes to rely on its nuclear shield during the longer
and more expensive process of building up a modem conventional military
capability. While this strategy has limits (e.g., Chechnya), its economic
advantages are clear. The current Russian budget, if carried out, represents
not only an overall increase in spending, but conventional as well as nuclear
force acquisition monies. In addition, strategic nuclear capability is the
only claim Russia has to its former status. In the words of retired paratroop
General Alexander Lebed, a former head of the Security Council, "the only
thing for which Russia is respected in the world and which makes us worthy
partners ... is our strategic rocket forces." Indeed, President Yeltsin's
remarks about a potential "world war" and the retargeting of nuclear weapons
at NATO countries in response to NATO bombing of Serbia are evidence that
Russia recognizes its dependence on nuclear weapons to get the West to pay
attention. From this Russian perspective, only nuclear weapons offer Russia
influence on a global scale. Reestablishing such influence on a global scale
is precisely the objective of this non-status quo power, and numerous senior
Russian civilian and military leaders openly advocate a major expansion of
Russia's strategic nuclear capabilities, including the equipping of new
land-based ICBMs with multiple warheads.

How this Russian dynamic may play out in coming years must, of course, be
speculative. But the recent past offers some plausible suggestions. We may
expect limited, but slowly growing Russian challenges. Unable to compete with
the United States directly, Russia is likely to challenge Western policies
and actions indirectly, and by using proxies, particularly in regions on the
periphery of NATO's likely areas of operation.

In a future acute regional crisis, for example, Russia may challenge Western
actions more resolutely than it has in Kosovo, including the delivery of
military aid that could make Western air operations more difficult (e.g. the
S-300 air and missile defense systems). In an escalating regional conflict in
which Russia has staked out a stridently anti-Western position, Russia may
resort to thinly-veiled nuclear saber rattling. There already are some recent
precedents for such Russian behavior, in addition to the unfortunate example
for the Russian leadership of explicit Chinese nuclear threats to Washington
over the issue of Taiwanese independence. Informed Russia analysts have even
suggested that in extreme cases, such as the deployment of nuclear weapons to
the new NATO countries, Russia would promote the transfer of weapons of mass
destruction (WNM) to regional "rogues" in support of their challenges to the
West.

How should the United States respond if Russia continues in this trend toward
an authoritarian, militarized, non-status quo power that identifies the U.S.
as the enemy? The United States should, of course, assist Russia when
possible should it choose to discard authoritarian controls on its society
and economy. Russian movement toward a market-oriented democracy should be
abetted whenever practicable.

However, the United States must no longer make policy based on the assumption
that concessions to an authoritarian Kremlin now will preserve some seed of
democracy for the future. Concessions now may well have the perverse effect
of confirming for many in Moscow the wisdom of their course toward
authoritarian rule, expansionism, and remilitarization.

If current trends hold, U.S. strategy should seek to contain renewed Russian
expansionism. With nationalism and anti-Western sentiment as their political
instruments, successful territorial expansion could serve only to enhance the
legitimacy of Russia's nationalists. Similarly, Washington should cease
pandering to Moscow in the area of strategic arms. There is no apparent
reason for Washington to continue to pace the size of its strategic forces
with the erosion of Russia's forces. The concept of "parity" as a goal for
U.S. strategic forces is a vestige of the Cold War and lacks logical
integrity.

The United States also should be prepared for Russia to pursue "asymmetric"
or indirect challenges to U.S. influence. And, of course, reliance on nuclear
threat is the most obvious "asymmetric" response to U.S. conventional
preeminence. Given Russia's current economic weakness and inability to
confront U.S. global power directly, Russia may also use manpower (e.g.,
technical expertise or training cadres), technology transfer, and diplomatic
assets to complicate the U.S. strategic environment. The "strategic
partnership" with China clearly reflects these components. Moreover, the
China partnership demonstrates that Moscow is willing to run long-term risks
(transferring technology to a formidable future competitor) for the sake of
near-term gains. If emerging trends continue, Russia may be more risk
tolerant than was the Soviet Union.

Despite extreme social and economic disruptions, Russia has the human and
industrial potential to pose a serious mid-to-long term threat to the United
States. Russia's return to authoritarianism and militarism would undoubtedly
exploit that potential. Washington's discounting of this very plausible and
serious future threat carries the seeds of equally plausible and serious
regrets down the road. In fairness, there is the possibility that the
traditionally resilient Russian people may stiff retain an interest in
democratic freedoms that could ultimately survive current trends. However, at
present, developments in Russia seems to point more in the opposite
direction-- that Russia will move increasingly toward authoritarianism and
confrontation with the U.S. The analogy to the Weimar Republic of the late
1920s and early 30s can easily be overdrawn, but there are some strikingly
similar elements at play in Russia. For the sake of both countries,
Washington should recognize this trend and cease all behavior that panders to
and rewards this dangerous direction in Russian development.

*******

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