#7
Financial Times (UK)
18 March 2002
Putin plays a weak hand well
The Russian president's skilful diplomacy succeeds because he can play the US
and Europe off against each other
By Quentin Peel
Like all well-trained spies, Russia's President Vladimir Putin is a very hard man to pin down.
On the face of it, the former KGB apparatchik appears to be a grey bureaucrat presiding over the ruins of a former superpower. In spite of his efforts to reassert national pride, he has suffered repeated humiliation at the hands of the western powers, led by America, with whom he has tried to make friends.
That is certainly how many of his detractors in Moscow would see him. They cite US unilateral abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, Nato enlargement into central Europe, the establishment of US bases in central Asia, and most recently, American intervention in Georgia, as proof. Russia has been powerless to resist.
On the other hand, Mr Putin can be portrayed as a remarkably successful poker player with lousy cards. In spite of inheriting a ruined economy, a demoralised military establishment and a vast arsenal of rusting nuclear missiles, he has made his way back to the top table of world diplomacy.
Which image is closer to the truth? And does it really matter how Mr Putin behaves? Can Russia be written off as an irrelevance in the post-cold war world?
The Russian leader and his closest associates have no intention of letting that happen. They certainly see themselves playing a role far beyond their capacity to deliver either economically or militarily. On key questions such as the fight against terrorism, European security and the future of the Nato alliance, and peace in the Middle East - both in Iraq and Israel - they could prove pivotal players.
But two factors remain largely beyond Mr Putin's control, however well he may play his diplomatic cards. One is how President George W. Bush will react, given that he holds pretty well all the aces. The other is how the Russian economy holds up. For Mr Putin needs to show some semblance of prosperity seeping through to ordinary Russians if he is to head off any backlash against his rule.
The balancing act that the Russian leader is seeking to perform is perfectly illustrated by the recent intervention by Washington in neighbouring Georgia. It was bad enough having American troops set up camp in former Soviet central Asia, including Uzbekistan and Kyrgysztan, ostensibly to co-ordinate the campaign in Afghanistan. To have US helicopters and special forces' trainers arrive right on the border of strife-torn Chechnya was a blatant provocation.
That is certainly how Igor Ivanov, the foreign minister, initially portrayed it, not to mention most of the members of the Russian Duma. But Mr Putin has refused to be alarmed. He has even welcomed it.
The explanation is not hard to find. By intervening in Georgia as part of the anti-terrorist campaign, Mr Bush is accepting the most important part of Moscow's argument for it to be welcomed into the international coalition. He is recognising that the war in Chechnya involves international terrorists, and not simply would-be separatists.
Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, upper house of the Russian parliament, and one of the president's closest advisers, is thoroughly positive. "In Afghanistan, the Americans are doing our job for us," he says. "I hate to say this, but fortunately for us the Americans got involved.
"In Georgia, before last week it was only our question. Now it is an American question. We share the responsibility.
"We opened the first front against international terrorism in 1999 in Dagestan. Now the Americans have opened the second front. September 11 showed that we have a common enemy. Either we fight that together, or we will be killed."
Like Mr Putin, Mr Margelov used to work for the KGB. Now he sees the level of co-operation between Russian and US intelligence services in the anti-terrorist campaign in Central Asia as "very helpful in establishing new relations" between the two former rivals.
In response, Russia is showing many indications of shifting its attitudes in the Middle East, not least over Iraq. "We were never blind about Saddam Hussein," Mr Margelov says. "We don't have any illusions. But we have our interests, especially in the oil sphere, to be protected."
Russia is owed some $8bn by Iraq, and several Russian oil companies have lucrative contracts to export Iraqi oil for food under United Nations auspices. Moscow certainly does not want any action that leaves the country ruled by fundamentalists, or stokes the conflict between Kurds and Arabs. But apart from that, it sounds as if the only question is cash.
Mr Putin's advisers are also keen to present Russia as an alternative source of energy supplies to the Gulf states in Opec. "The Americans realise they are approaching a period when many Arab regimes will fall," says Sergei Karaganov, chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy. "That is where Russia comes in with its oil."
The arrival of up to 1m Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel is another factor influencing a rethink of Russian policy on the Middle East. It does not necessarily make Moscow pro-Israeli, but it shifts the centre of gravity.
Indeed, some Russian commentators see a natural affinity between the US, Israel and Russia in their hardline attitudes towards terrorism, and refusal to distinguish between global terrorists and nationalist ones, in contrast to the more equivocal approach of the western Europeans.
But what of Nato, and the apparent determination of Mr Bush to press ahead with Nato enlargement to include even the Baltic republics from the former Soviet Union? Does that at least not infuriate Mr Putin?
Not according to some. For they have realised that Nato will never be the same again. "We think Nato is part of the past, but you [in the west] need some considerable period of time to come to the same conclusion and adapt Nato to the new challenges," says one Kremlin official.
"There is a crisis of identity in Nato. It has not been used in Afghanistan because the machinery is extremely conservative. The Russians in the first stage were much more useful."
All of which suggests that in spite of having weak cards, Mr Putin has every intention of playing a mean game of poker. He still has to decide if his partner is going to be the US or Europe. It is certainly not beyond him to play them off against each other.
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