#6063
[Second Issue of the Day]
#7
Excerpt
Worldwide Threat - Converging Dangers in a Post 9/11
World
Testimony of Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet Before The Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence
6 February 2002
RUSSIA
Mr. Chairman, let me turn now to other areas of the world where the US has key interests, beginning with Russia. The most striking development regarding Russia over the past year has been Moscow’s greater engagement with the United States. Even before September 11, President Putin had moved to engage the US as part of a broader effort to integrate Russia more fully into the West, modernize its economy, and regain international status and influence. This strategic shift away from a zero-sum view of relations with the United States is consistent with Putin’s stated desire to address the many socioeconomic problems that cloud Russia’s future.
During his second year in office, Putin moved strongly to advance his policy agenda. He pushed the Duma to pass key economic legislation on budget reform, legitimizing urban property sales, flattening and simplifying tax rates, and reducing red tape for small businesses. His support for his economic team and its fiscal rigor positioned Russia to pay back wages and pensions to state workers, amass a post-Soviet high of almost $39 billion in reserves, and meet the major foreign debt coming due this year (about $14 billion) and next (about $16 billion).
He reinvigorated military reform by placing his top lieutenant atop the Defense Ministry and increasing military spending for the second straight year—even as he forced tough decisions on de-emphasizing strategic forces, and pushing for a leaner, better-equipped conventional military force. This progress is promising, and Putin is trying to build a strong Presidency that can ensure these reforms are implemented across Russia—while managing a fragmented bureaucracy beset by informal networks that serve private interests. In his quest to build a strong state, however, he is trying to establish parameters within which political forces must operate. This “managed democracy” is illustrated by his continuing moves against independent national television companies.
On the economic front, Putin will have to take on bank reform, overhaul of Russia’s entrenched monopolies, and judicial reform to move the country closer to a Western-style market economy and attract much-needed foreign investment. Putin has made no headway in Chechnya. Despite his hint in September of a possible dialogue with Chechen moderates, the fighting has intensified in recent months, and thousands of Chechen guerrillas—and their fellow Arab mujahedeen fighters—remain. Moscow seems unwilling to consider the compromises necessary to reach a settlement, while divisions among the Chechens make it hard to find a representative interlocutor. The war, meanwhile, threatens to spill over into neighboring Georgia.
After September 11, Putin emphatically chose to join us in the fight against terrorism. The Kremlin blames Islamic radicalism for the conflict in Chechnya and believes it to be a serious threat to Russia. Moscow sees the US-led counterterrorism effort—particularly the demise of the Taliban regime—as an important gain in countering the radical Islamic threat to Russia and Central Asia.
So far, Putin’s outreach to the United States has incurred little political damage, largely because of his strong domestic standing. Recent Russian media polls show his public approval ratings at around 80 percent. The depth of support within key elites, however, is unclear—particularly within the military and security services. Public comments by some senior military officers indicate that elements of the military doubt that the international situation has changed sufficiently to overcome deeply rooted suspicions of US intentions.
Moscow retains fundamental differences with Washington on key issues, and suspicion about US motives persists among Russian conservatives—especially within the military and security services. Putin has called the intended US withdrawal from the ABM treaty a “mistake,” but has downplayed its impact on Russia. At the same time, Moscow is likely to pursue a variety of countermeasures and new weapons systems to defeat a deployed US missile defense.
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