Johnson's Russia List
#6244
15 May 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

********

TOPIC: A PREVIEW OF THE BUSH-PUTIN SUMMIT

PARTICIPANTS: ZEYNO BARAN, DIRECTOR, CAUCASUS PROJECT; ROBERT EINHORN, SENIOR ADVISOR, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM; SARAH MENDELSON, SENIOR FELLOW, RUSSIA AND EURASIA PROGRAM; CELESTE WALLANDER, DIRECTOR, RUSSIA AND EURASIA PROGRAM

Center for Strategic and International Studies
www.csis.org
WASHINGTON, D.C.
MAY 13, 2002

Transcript by:
Federal News Service
Washington, D.C.
[for personal use only]

DR. WALLANDER: All right. I think we'll begin, to try and stay on schedule and to make sure we have enough time to address all the issues you would like to raise. 

I'd like to welcome you to CSIS for a discussion of what we are likely to see at the Bush-Putin summit next week, May 23rd through the 26th, in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. And also we'll try to talk about -- we need to talk about the implications of the summit for U.S.-Russians relations beyond what will actually be achieved and discussed at the summit itself. 

I'm Celeste Wallander. I'm the director of Russia and Eurasia program here at CSIS. You have bios for our panel, so I won't go through extensive introductions. I'm going to speak first about strategic issues, the broader strategic context and also, of course, the agreement that was announced this morning. 

Sarah Mendelson, who is a senior fellow with the Russia and Eurasia program, is going to address the domestic scene in the sense of how what goes on inside Russia is actually a security issue very important for U.S.-Russia relations -- in particular about Chechnya, but also the broader domestic context of security and U.S.-Russian relations. 

Zeyno Baran, who is a fellow with the Russia/Eurasia program and director of our Caucasus Project and the Georgia Forum, will talk specifically about the Caucasus and about Georgia and Russia in the context of U.S. policy. 

And Robert Einhorn, who is going to join us in just a moment, as soon as he extricates himself from an interview outside, is going to address nonproliferation and in particular talk about Iran, but the broader issue of nonproliferation and U.S.-Russian policy. 

So, with that, let me begin, and not waste time. I think that the broad point to keep in mind is that on the strategic front, the summit has the potential to establish a coherent and sustainable basis for where U.S. and Russia belong in one another's national interests and foreign policy. So instead of focused on a central threat or a main problem, or a single solution to one another's post-Soviet array of security, economic and political issues, both countries now are beginning to feel out and work out, in a practical and realistic way, just how they can contribute to one another's national interests, be those security interests, political interests or economic interests. 

Now first and foremost, that does mean dealing with some legacies of the Cold War. And that's why I think we're all so interested in the announced arms control agreement -- the announcement this morning. It is a fact that despite the Cold War having been gone for 10 years, there remain important legacies that affect the national-security interest of both countries. 

So let me give you my thoughts on what -- although I haven't -- I don't -- I haven't seen actual reports on the details of what has been agreed, from what I understand about what has been agreed and my interpretation of what's happened, the first important thing to notice is that the president
-- U.S. President Bush announced that there will be a treaty signed at the summit. That is important, because one of the sticking points is the Russians were insisting on a treaty -- that is not merely a signed agreement, not merely an executive agreement, which is under most interpretations binding under international law, but an actual international treaty would be subject to ratification of legislatures -- the Senate in the United States and the Duma in Russia -- of both countries. 

Why is that important? That is important because a stable, verifiable treaty was important to the Russians, because their nuclear forces are going down, anyway. And they wanted to have a basis for defense and military planning over the next 10 to 20 years -- not only for strategic forces but also to be able to tackle the problem of conventional military reform that the Russian military essentially has not been able to do during the 1990s. 

Conventional military reform in Russia is going to be extremely expensive, it's going to be politically contentious, and it's going to be tough, because you're going to be shifting from a Soviet military that was designed for war in Europe to -- if the Russian military's successful -- a more mobile, modern military that can deal with Russia's real security threats, which lie to the south and to the east. That's going to cost a lot of money. It's going to mean shifting to a more professional army instead of -- military instead of from a conscript-based military to do that -- to be able to invest the resources, economic and political. For that kind of undertaking you need a long time frame. 

And that's what the Arms Control Agreement Treaty gives the Russian security establishment and military that a mere agreement would not. That's part of what the announcement -- the significance, I think, of the announcement this morning. You probably already know the treaty is set to limit warheads to 1,700-2,200 operationally deployed -- that is, actually deployed warheads. But the agreement or treaty will not constrain either side -- but effectively speaking, the U.S. side -- from being able to hold in reserves additional warheads that might be redeployed to deal with future unspecified contingencies. 

I think it must also be the case -- although I haven't seen a specific report on this -- but just figuring it out from what has been reported this morning, it must be the case that the Russians are not insisting in the treaty -- have given up on the earlier insistence that there be strong limits on the number of launchers that the United States can keep, as well. One of the issues in negotiation the last couple of weeks has been whether the United States will also have to destroy launchers -- that is, the launch vehicles that are used to deliver the warheads. And to have to destroy those launchers would mean that the United States wouldn't have much of a reconstitution capability, which is why the Bush administration was resisting that provision. 

My guess is that this may have been the trade-off. It may be the trade-off that the Russians get an actual treaty and the United States is going to be able to go forward with its preferred defense planning, which involves this reconstitution capability. 

The agreement as was being negotiated is going to be linked to the START I treaty, in particular to the verification regime established under the START I treaty. This is also very important for both sides because the verification regime has become not so much a mechanism for Cold War counting, but actually a mechanism for transparency, confidence-building, creating relationships at the political and military level that have helped to move both the United States and Russia down the path away from Cold War assumptions to thinking about a new security environment. I think that's all we know. I could speculate more, and I will if urged, but I think I'll leave that at that. 

I'll leave the issue of the START -- of the arms control treaty at that, and point out that in your attention to the arms control treaty this week, don't forget that another important political security agreement is potentially going to be achieved, and that is on the nature of a NATO-Russia Council, a Council at 20. The foreign ministers are meeting this weekend at Reykjavik, and they are hoping that they will be able to come to an actual agreement on just what this NATO at 20 Council, a council that includes the 19 current members of NATO as well as Russia for political discussion of issues such as counterterrorism, humanitarian missions, missile defense in the European context, and some practical matters, such as joint airspace management, whether that actual agreement will be achieved in time for a NATO summit at the end of May to inaugurate this NATO- Russia Council, or this Council at 20. 

This is important on a military level because some of the ideas for what could be achieved through this council are practical military programs for joint planning and joint exercising that have practical benefit and also engage the Russian military in a way that is constructive and productive in the European context but is also very important on a political level because, in my view, this council can anchor Russia. As the arms control agreement and the verification regime anchors Russia in Western security and in a productive relationship with the U.S., the NATO-Russia Council can anchor Russia in European security and in transatlantic discussions in a way that doesn't -- that isn't achievable within the realm of NATO membership, since Russia does not have good prospects for becoming a NATO member any time soon. 

The last point I want to make is, though, in our attention this week -- which is unavoidable because of these two sets of agreements that are likely going to be achieved -- in our focus on these two military security traditional issues, NATO and arms control, we not lose sight of the real criteria for whether this will be a successful summit, which is whether the summit can advance the U.S.-Russia relationship to deal with security and stability and development in Eurasia, part of which is involved in counterterrorism, part of which is engaged with the U.S. military presence in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, but which is a broader scope of issues, including managing China's role in Eurasia and in Asia, and involves development of these countries in Central Asia so that they don't become the swamp, the terrorist swamp or area of instability and insecurity for not only Russia, but the United States. 

And the second pillar for this looking forward is the economic relationship. A lot of the economic relationship, the potential lies in the energy field. Russia is one of the leading exporters of energy. That's very important in Russia's relations with Europe -- our allies -- and also with Russia's relations in Asia -- some of our allies -- Japan and South Korea, but also again this question of where China is going. China, Japan and South Korea are looking to Russia as a very important source of energy. 

But it goes beyond the energy issue, as well, to engaging other sectors of the Russian economy in the international economy to work with the high-tech sectors of the Russian economy to engage those young, new entrepreneurs who truly are post-Soviet Russians and are interested in World Trade Organization membership not only so that Russia opens to Western investment and Western interests, but so they can get involved in the international economy and look for markets and partnerships outside as well. The real success on the strategic level, from my point of view for the summit, would be if it advances the U.S.-Russia relationship on this issue of Eurasian security and stability and on the economic front as well. 

With that, I'd like to turn to my colleagues. And first, Sarah Mendelson. 

DR. MENDELSON: Thank you, Celeste. 

There are important issues in Russia that affect U.S. national security interests that are not getting enough attention and that are likely not to have a prominent position on the summit agenda. The Putin and Bush administrations are focused at the moment on arms control, and that's fine, it's important, but it's only part of the picture. The political trajectory of Russia continues to be a U.S. national security issue. There are many disturbing trends in Russia that are simply not on the Bush administration's radar screen, or the administration has chosen not to focus on them. 

What do I mean by this? Media outlets are especially targeted by the Russian state. Less often talked about are the folks who have been investigated, intimidated, interrogated, jailed, accused of treason, beaten by federal authorities. Who are these people? These are journalists, they're environmentalists, they're human rights activists. They're students, they're academics. They're Russians, they're Americans, they're Europeans. In other words, they're colleagues. 

Why is this happening? The short answer is an increase in the status of the security services inside of Russia. This is, in a word, not good for democracy in Russia. 

It's worth spending a few minutes talking about the war in Chechnya, which is ongoing. The U.S. continues to be, quote, "concerned" about the way the Russians are using force in Chechnya; but this concern should have some consequences. 

At the moment, it's pretty meaningless for the Russians, and by that, I mean both to the Putin administration a nd to our friends inside Russia who want these abuses stopped. 
There are national security reasons to be concerned and for Russian actions to have consequences. The Russian use of force in Chechnya leads not to the containment or deterrence of terrorism, but to extremism. In other words, it's not only their problem, it's our problem. 

The scale of abuse by federal forces is quite vast. Federal forces have repeatedly violated both the Geneva Convention and the International Declaration of Human Rights, with the indiscriminate targeting of civilians. We have death squads. We have mop-up operations that regularly involve looting, ransom and rape. We have forced disappearances. According to the Russian organization Memorial, we have over 2,000 disappearances that have occurred, of civilians.

The abuses are, again, ongoing, and they've been well documented, and they have a direct relationship with developments inside of Russia and specifically inside the Russian media. The Kremlin and federal and local authorities have specific media strategies having to do with Chechnya. They exercise enormous amounts of control over this topic, and thus they're able to keep issues that Russians do care about out of the media. This avoids protest. In the words of one Kremlin pollster, if the subject exists in the mass media, it exists in public opinion. If it doesn't, it doesn't exist in public opinion. 

The Putin administration has actually been extremely successful in compartmentalizing the Chechen conflict in the minds of Russians. While Russians in the abstract are concerned about torture and arbitrary arrests, they don't associate these things with Chechnya, despite the fact that we have enormous amounts of evidence that these things occur there. 

Simply put, the lack of critical media in Chechnya has taken a toll. Numerous Russian and foreign journalists have spoken about the difficulty of reporting, how Chechnya is treated by editors as if it were a black hole, how one cannot write about what goes on without fear of punishment. We believe we're seeing the consequences from this absence of reporting.

So those who want to see democracy develop in Russia because in it's the U.S. national security interest ought to be concerned. Increasing the demand for the protection of rights in Russia should be a priority. I'm running several surveys in Russia and have found that there's currently very little demand for the protection of rights inside of Russia, despite the fact that we've got lots of evidence that there's been an increase in abuses in parts of Russia. 

The U.S. government has a role to play in all this. Why should we be surprised that the demand for the protection of rights inside of Russia is not very great if the international community and the United States are not expressing the need for the protection of these rights? 
At the policy-making level -- and I mean at the presidential level -- these discussions should be public and not private. The message is not getting out that the U.S. and our allies care about these issues. One way to do this and one way that might resonate with the Russian public is actually to focus on the rights of soldiers. Our evidence suggests that the majority of Russians -- 68 percent of Russians -- are concerned with casualty rates of the Russian military. 

This may explain why we see different numbers coming out of the Russian government when they talk about how many Russian military have died. So for example, the minister of defense says 2,300; the head of the Kremlin press says 3,500. Independent organizations say anywhere between 7,000 and 10,000 soldiers have died. But this is an issue that clearly resonates with the Russian public. So rather than having the Russian -- the U.S. president come over and say "You're abusing rights" -- which is true -- focus on the rights the Russians care about. 
President Bush has an opportunity to be clear also that the way the Russians have fought in Chechnya has a negative impact on our common war on terrorism. With the coalition against terrorism and the active support of the Russians, the U.S. has a national security interest in making clear that unintended consequences -- the way the Russians have fought in Chechnya. They've inflamed extremism, not stopped terrorism. The "destroy it in order to save it" strategy has simply destroyed much of Chechnya. The approach that makes everyone a possible suspect or target or that uses torture leads to extremism. 

Concretely, President Bush should be meeting with people who work on democracy and human rights in Russia. There are many organizations, such as Moscow Helsinki, Memorial, which in part received funding from Western organizations and which are very reputable, have good reputations. They could tell President Bush another side of what is going on in Russia that he is likely to hear from the Kremlin. And I underline, underscore their work is based on evidence -- that is, data. 

At present this is all very confusing to President Putin. It seems that you can let your military disintegrate; you can institutionalize human-rights abuses; you can perpetrate a war against your own citizens, which is characterized by torture, ransom and disproportionate force; and there are, frankly, no costs or consequences in your relationship with the United States. Instead, the U.S. leader, in fact, embraces you. I'm suggesting this is a confusing message to President Putin, and President Bush ought to use the personal chemistry that he has developed with President Putin in Slovenia, in Texas, and use it in Moscow and Petersburg to make this relationship actually matter -- to advance this relationship so that instead of just talking about issues that are in some ways safe, they're talking about the really hard issues. 

If we're going to see the U.S.-Russian relationship truly advance beyond post-Cold War issues and get into the post-post-Cold War era, then we need to address the issues that are of concern to us both and which the Russian administration is involved in. 

Thank you. 

DR. WALLANDER: Thank you, Sarah. 

Next, Zeyno Baran. 

MS. BARAN: Thank you, Celeste. 

I want to talk about the Caucasus in the U.S.-Russia relations. The Caucasus region is strategically important for both the United States and Russia as a key region on the East-West corridor between Europe and Central Asia. New Caspian oil and gas pipeline projects will traverse Azerbaijan and Georgia before reaching Turkey, and stability of this region is therefore very important. President Putin clearly wants to cooperate with the United States, and especially on economy areas, and therefore seems to understand that it is also in Russia's interest to favor stability in the Caucasus. Many Russians, however, still have difficulty seeing an independent, stable Caucasus in their interest, and still consider the region to be their "backyard". The tension is especially high when it comes to Georgia, which I believe will be an important issue discussed at the summit. 

In fact, I believe that without a long-lasting improvement in Russian-Georgian relations, U.S.-Russia rapprochement can only go up to a certain point. The main issue of the Bush administration is to find a way to help Russia and Georgia improve their relations. President Bush is committed to Georgia's territorial integrity and stability, which is in part due to Georgia's strategic location, but also because its President Eduard Shevardnadze is considered to be a very important hero in the end of the Soviet Union period as the Soviet foreign Minister.

And that, in part, has been one of the reasons why Russia has been so harsh on Georgia and the relations have been very, very tense. And they've gotten especially tense after September 11. Russia has accused Georgia of harboring international terrorists and even dropped bombs on its territory, and assumed that since the U.S. was going after terrorists in Afghanistan, it was going to be okay for them to go after terrorists in Georgia. Russian leadership accused Georgia of harboring Chechen terrorists and even Al Qaeda in the Pankisi Gorge, which is northeast of Georgia and the only international border Chechnya has. Indeed, thousands of Chechens have fled Chechnya with the start of the second Chechen war and took refuge in Pankisi. Some of these Chechens are fighters, and some may have links to terrorist groups, and according to U.S. intelligence possibly even Al Qaeda.  From Russian perspective, all of these Chechens have been labeled as "terrorists," but the U.S. is trying to make a clear distinction between refugees and terrorists. 

The U.S., also at more or less each conversation with Russia raised Georgia. And I can say that if the U.S. wasn't very clear on Georgia's importance, we would have seen a different development in the Caucasus. And I think the need to see continued improvements in Russia-Georgia relations will come up in the summit and dealing with the U.S. Train and Equip (T&E) program is going to be an important issue for the Russians. 

In order to keep the Russians off Georgian territory and prevent a massive chaos, the United States last fall decided to help Georgia clean the Pankisi gorge area from any terrorists groups, and came up with T&E program. The T&E program will enable Georgian military to be more effective in its counter-terrorism efforts. I was in Pankisi Gorge about two weeks ago, and found that the news of T&E alone had already improved the situation tremendously. I have hosted the Georgian defense minister here last week, and he also said that the U.S. T&E program has improved the situation. The main issue in Pankisi now is law enforcement, and with increased support from the United States, as well as better equipment and training, Georgians are certainly capable of defending their own territory from terrorists and criminal groups.  

It's very important to highlight that whatever the U.S. is going to be doing in Georgia is not against Russia, but it's also in the interests of Russia because it's going to help with regional security and stability. But that goes to the core of the big question: it seems to be that there is good cooperation between Bush and Putin, and they seem to understand each other. But when it comes to very sensitive issues, like Georgia or Chechnya, it's unclear how much President Putin controls the rest of his team, especially the military and intelligence sectors. I think this issue is going to be a key question in how the U.S. deals with Russia. 

The second issue for the U.S. is to engage Russia closer to find some solutions to regional conflicts. One of them, again, involves Georgia, which is Abkhazia. Abkhazia is in northwest Georgia, bordering Russia. The Russians have been backing the Abkhaz, and increasingly the Abkhazs have been concerned that Georgia might use some of the U.S. training and military support against the Abkhaz. It is going to be very important to watch some of the statements coming out of the region and be aware that there will be a lot misinformation. The Georgians have made it very clear that none of the military support the U.S. is providing to Georgia is going to be used to solve any of these separatist conflicts. Nonetheless, the Abkhaz and the Russians claim that that's not going to be the case and there are some stories coming out of the region that misquote Georgian authorities. There is a lot of tension in Abkhazia, and this is something that Bush and Putin might discuss. 

And going back to another regional conflict -- and I'm quickly going over them, and if there is anyone interested in getting into more details, we can talk about it in the Q&A. 

The second key regional conflict is the Nagorno- Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Clinton administration and the Bush administration so far have tried to find a solution to this conflict, but without a change in Russian policy, it is not possible to really see and end to this conflict. That gets to the basic question, which is whether there really is a genuine Russian policy change and wanting to see stability in the Caucasus. 

And the third issue that's going to be important is cooperation on energy issues. Russia would like to see some joint statements, maybe a declaration of U.S.-Russia joint energy cooperation. That, of course, includes the Caspian region. From the U.S. perspective, there are some difficulties because we still see the Russian government being fairly active in influencing some of the private sector, although there has been significant improvement since Yeltsin times. Russia would also like to be more relevant as a non- OPEC oil supplier to U.S. But until and unless Russia makes some key improvements in terms of transparency and basic legal issues, we may not see significant progress.  

DR. WALLANDER: Thank you, Zeyno. That was remarkably comprehensive in your allotted time. 

Robert Einhorn. Rob? 

MR. EINHORN: Thanks, Celeste. 

I'm going to talk about two of the more important nonproliferation issues that could come up in the upcoming  summit: Iran and Iraq. Especially since September 11th, preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to states that are hostile to the United States and to terrorist groups has become a very high priority for the Bush administration. But achieving U.S. nonproliferation objectives will require very close cooperation between the United States and Russia. Unfortunately, in recent years, Moscow and Washington have found themselves on different sides of some of the critical nonproliferation issues. The upcoming summit will be an opportunity for the two presidents to try to restore some of the cooperation, some of the partnership that characterized the early dealings between the United States and the Soviet Union and the United States and Russia. 

Let me first turn to Iran. Assistance by Russian entities to Iran's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs has been one of the most contentious issues between the two governments over the last decade. 

In recent years, Russia has made some progress in halting assistance by entities in Russia to these programs, but as Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet's testimony in February indicated, the U.S. still believes that this cooperation with Iran continues and is accelerating Iran's efforts to achieve these destabilizing capabilities. 

In its first year in office, the Bush administration probably conveyed the impression to Moscow that this Iran issue was not a high priority. This was probably confirmed to Moscow at the Crawford summit, where the issue of Russian assistance to Iran was not raised. Since the State of the Union message at the end of January, it's become clear, though, that the Bush administration is placing a high priority in preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And since then, Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Secretary Colin Powell have raised this issue in forceful terms with their Russian counterparts. But the Russians will not take this issue seriously if the president does not address it and does not address it in very clear and forceful terms. 

Last week, Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Rumyantsev was here for discussions with several senior U.S. officials, particularly Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, and they discussed a wide range of cooperative U.S.-Russian activities that could take place in the future, but only if Russia terminated its cooperation with Iran. This issue is too complicated to be resolved at the upcoming summit, but it's critical that the president raise this issue directly and firmly with President Putin if this issue is going to be resolved over the next several months. 

Turning to Iraq. In recent years, Russia has been Iraq's principal supporter in the U.N. Security Council, but in recent months we've seen signs that Russia has begun to distance itself from the current regime in Baghdad. Just today, the U.N. Security Council is scheduled to adopt a resolution that would make some fundamental changes in the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program in Iraq. It would loosen controls on purely civilian goods and facilitate Iraq's import of truly civilian goods, and it would focus the sanctions regime more tightly on military items. 

This is an important step. It's a step, though, that Iraq has strongly resisted, and Iraq has put a lot of pressure on Russia not to go along. It's interesting, then, that Russia is prepared to join the other permanent members of the Security Council in adopting this new system over Iraq's very strong objections. 

But the next test of Russia's attitude on Iraq will come on the question of U.N. inspections in Iraq. Iraqi leaders have been coming to New York for visits with the U.N. secretary-general, and they have tried to water down the rights that U.N. inspectors might have in Iraq. They've also tried to establish certain deadlines for how long the inspectors could take to achieve their mission, and they've wanted to ensure that sanctions would be lifted at the earliest possible day. 

It's critical that the U.N. Security Council is absolutely firm on a very rigorous inspection regime, and so it's very important that at the summit President Bush emphasize to President Putin that we need Russia's support for a rigorous inspection regime. It's important that the P-5 show unity and that Russia be part of that unity in demanding the broadest possible mandate for the inspectors and avoiding any confusing signal to Iraq that sanctions would be suspended or lifted without full cooperation and compliance by Iraq. That's likely to be the focus on Iraq at this upcoming summit. Of course, in the future, the administration will want to try to continue moving Russia away from this regime in Baghdad, because the Bush administration is committed to replacing this regime. But I don't think that's going to be a central focus of the upcoming meeting.

Thank you, Celeste. 

DR. WALLANDER: All right. I think we have a good amount of time to address your questions or follow up on your ideas. (To staff.) Can I ask you -- do we have a mike to pass around? Do we need one? 

STAFF: (Off mike.) 

DR. WALLANDER: All right. Well, we'll start without it, and then we'll go ahead. 
Can I ask you to introduce yourself also, as well? Yes, in -- 

Q   -- C&L Resources. Could you address a complementary duo here? First is
U.S.-Russian cooperation on terrorism -- counterterrorism, and secondly -- (off mike) -- this relates to cooperation or activities in Afghanistan. 

DR. WALLANDER: The track record so far is good. The immediate response to what happened in September was substantial cooperation on the part of the Russian government and Russian military and intelligence services in providing support to the United States that made the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan more effective, more fine-tuned, and to reduce the risk of casualties, not only to the United States, but I think also, the record shows pretty well, to target military operatives, rather than having to take a broad-brush approach, which would risk a greater number of Afghan civilians. 

So it's both -- it's laudable on both its military effectiveness side but also, I think, on its moral implications of cooperation. 

As both Zeyno and Sarah suggested, though, we're getting now to the harder questions. Afghanistan is, in a sense, easy. Although there are some in Russian circles who don't like seeing American military presence in Central Asia because there's a fear of being pushed out, there's a substantial and important set of leaders in the Russian security leadership that recognize that this is a major threat -- for some time major threat to Russian security and recognize that Russia wasn't -- didn't really have the capability to deal with the Taliban and have been, in fact, calling for international cooperation to deal with the Taliban. But there's not similarly cooperation in dealing with Georgia. And so the question is, can the political relationship we've referred to and the record of good cooperation in Afghanistan and in Central Asia translate elsewhere? And I think we're just seeing the first stages of that process. 

And I'll turn to Sarah and Zeyno to get maybe some specifics on what signs you would look for or however you want to address that. 

MS. BARAN: Well, actually, again, going back to the good Putin- Bush dialogue, President Putin has been very supportive of what U.S. has been doing in Georgia, but the difficulty has been to carry the rest of his team. And this is going to be the big question for me in watching what happens over the next couple of months. The first group of U.S. military trainers went to Georgia about two weeks ago, more people are coming, and how the Russian military is going to be able to deal with that is going to be the key. 

DR. MENDELSON: I'd just say very briefly, I think there are at least two faces to Mr. Putin. There's a good face, where he is picking up the phone and calling the United States right after or during September 11th -- and then there's a less-good face -- a bad face. And that's the part of Mr. Putin who is himself involved in the war in Chechnya. 

Now our response to cooperating with the Russians and cooperating with other governments in the region has been to focus on the short term, right? Get deals for basing modes and to push off the harder issues. What we're doing when we do that is, we're pushing down the road medium and long-term problems that are going to be very difficult. Every time you use the language of a security issue but what you're really doing is impinging on a wide variety of rights, you're helping to inflame extremism. And you can see the trajectory, you know -- the government cracks down, organizations radicalize. It's not the other way around. And that's ultimately pushing down the road problems we're going to have to address. 

DR. WALLANDER: I would just add one thought on that, which is that this is also going to be a problem in Central Asia, but there the problem for U.S. policy isn't necessarily the Russian government, it's the governments of the countries in Central Asia with which we are now developing security cooperation relationships. 

They have a similar problem, that they define security in terms that risks creating exactly the problem that they're supposed to be coping with, with our cooperation. So that is something that the Bush administration is -- needs to and is paying attention to as well; it's not just Russia. 

Q George Condon with Copley News Service. Let me ask you a broader question because the president, on this trip, will also be meeting with leaders in Germany, France and Italy. Can you talk for a second about what the continental -- the European attitude is toward President Bush at this point? And is the fact that he's willing to sign a treaty, which he had not wanted to do initially, with Russia on nuclear arsenals, is that likely to make the rest of Europeans feel better about him? 

DR. WALLANDER (?): A year ago, it didn't look like U.S.-Russian relations were going to be very positive, or constructive, or happy. And I would argue there are two major forces that moved us in a better direction. One is Putin's priorities for economic reform, that really have driven him to be willing to compromise on some of the security issues, that move the relationship forward. 

The other was a shift in the Bush administration's mode of operation towards a willingness to engage and look for cooperation and compromise rather than moving forward with priorities regardless of where the Russians were. And a major reason for that was exactly the European relationship and the European concern that the U.S. approach to Russia risked exactly not anchoring Russia in sets of institutions, in relationships, cooperative projects, that Europeans, frankly, from their experience in the European Union, the OSCE and other European institutions see as really central to productive relationships across a whole range of fronts. 

The Europeans have got a rather complicated set of relations with the Russians themselves these days, and they're not really focused, interestingly, in the security realm, they are focused in the implications of the European Union enlargement, for Russia's economic presence and presence -- actual presence -- in Europe. There's concern in Russia about how the European Union's going to negotiate; how people who live in Kaliningrad, this region of Russia that's going to be encircled or encompassed or within the EU, with the EU enlargement, how people from there are going to be able to travel back and forth; what the implications are for economic relations between Russia and some of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. So the Europeans don't want -- the Europeans want the Russians to be in a positive, cooperative, integrative mood for their own agenda, as well. And so that is why an integrative and cooperative approach on the part of the United States is so central to their own relationship with Russia. 

Q But what I'm talking about, though, is the attitude toward -- there was criticism of President Bush as being a unilateralist, for just being too conservative and so on and opposing the treaty. Are Europeans feeling better about the president now? Are they likely to have criticism of him when he's there? 

DR. WALLANDER: I think the evidence is that there is underlying concern and there's a lot of attention to this issue, and simply signing an arms control treaty with Russia is not going to allay those concerns in Europe. It helps. It helps in the realm of public opinion. It helps the European governments that are in a position of arguing for continuing to cooperate with the United States, moving forward on NATO enlargement, being willing to talk about global terrorism in a European context. These are sensitive issues because European publics don't see these issues in the same way that the American public does. 

So anything that the Bush administration does to help make it easier for European leaders to argue that it's worth -- engaging with the United States is a good thing, and certainly the arms control treaty is part of that picture. 

Q Ambassador Einhorn, could you -- 

DR. WALLANDER: Could you -- I'm sorry, could you introduce -- 

Q  -- with Cox Newspapers. Could you speak to the announcement the president made today with respect to what kind of a moment this represents for arms control efforts? 

Dr. Wallander, could you amplify a little bit on what you said earlier about the remaining legacy, strategic legacy of the Cold War? 

MR. EINHORN: In terms of the -- what this means, the level of reductions is 1,700 to 2,200 operationally deployed warheads is not very different from what the Clinton administration had already agreed to several years ago. So it's clear the trajectory is downward, and the trajectory hasn't -- the slope of the curve hasn't changed very much with this agreement. But simply the ability to cooperate and work out some of these differences is a positive sign. I mean, remember what the situation was like a year ago. And I think this administration has come a long way, as Celeste has mentioned. 

I think one of the significant aspects of it is that a year ago, the assumption was that as long as the Bush administration pursued its missile defense plans, there could be no cuts in strategic offensive forces. This makes clear that the United States and Russia can continue to go toward deeper and deeper cuts, even while the administration plans to go forward and deploy a limited missile defense. I think that's one of the more important aspects of this deal. 

DR. WALLANDER: I'd clarify or expand in two regards on my comment about the Cold War legacy. One is simply the numbers of weapons that were built during the Cold War and that continue to exist in the U.S. and Russian stockpiles, or actually operationally deployed at this moment, but even more the deterrence thinking behind those weapons, which assumed a level of hostility, intent and determination to confront and challenge one another that required such enormous numbers of weapons for redundancy, for multiple contingencies, for escalation scenarios, and so on. 

So the legacy is a particular set of assumptions about hostility, confrontation and what needs to be done to constrain one another. And as long as those numbers are around, it's harder to question the military and political assumptions that were built up over the course of decades behind those numbers. I think focusing on the smaller numbers will help us, then, to change some of the thinking behind them, ironically, because of course the thinking should change first and then the numbers follow. But it's -- as we might say, referring to Cold War legacies, it's sort of a dialectical process. 

Second, I think that -- I agree with Bob that it's not the numbers that matter so much. We knew the numbers; we knew the outlines of the numbers for quite some time. What is really important is moving to an engagement process and the strategic level, or continuing one that was started in the last years of the Cold War, but an engagement process for transparency, verification, but exchange of people. When you have inspection teams coming to look at U.S. -- Russian inspection teams coming to look at U.S. facilities, and U.S. teams coming to look at Russian facilities, you build up the possibility for discussion, clarification. 

You build up a political security process that gets beyond the really focused military security process that focuses on the numbers, themselves. And that's also part of the changing thinking in political relationship that will let us move forward into other areas that I think are more important, like the economic relationship and Eurasian stability. 

Q Can either of you see a down side to the United States in accepting a treaty? Did Bush give up anything fundamental in getting a treaty -- ? 

DR. WALLANDER: Well, with the proviso that I don't actually know what the treaty consists of yet, because that hasn't been -- (inaudible) -- but the idea of a treaty, itself -- it complicates things a little bit on the U.S. side, because I'm quite sure that -- President Putin signs this treaty, it's going to sail right through the Duma. That's not a problem. It's not much of a constraint for him. But the Bush administration is going to have to -- if this is a treaty, if the reports this morning are correct, if it is a treaty, it will have to be submitted to the Senate for ratification, and there will be a process of questioning the treaty provisions. 

I don't think that the provisions, as they've been outlined, as we understand them to be -- what will be agreed upon should pose any major challenges to ratification, but there's always that possibility. 

MR. EINHORN: A treaty -- the two choices were an executive agreement, which required a majority of both houses, or a treaty, which requires two-thirds of the Senate. You have now at least a Democratically controlled Senate. Getting two-thirds is not going to be difficult on the merits, but as Celeste says, it will be an opportunity to raise some questions that the Democrats and others may wish to raise of the administration. Clearly, the Bush administration would've preferred to do without any binding agreement, but it made this initial concession a while ago, when it agreed to a binding obligation. 

Q   -- following up on that question a little bit: If what you said about
the reports are correct, then the Russians have agreed to commit the --
(inaudible) -- stockpile the way that the administration has proposed, what can the Democrats argue against? I mean, that was their last sort of major argument against this treaty, where some agreement was. This is going to endanger deliberations -- (inaudible) -- and they can't sort of be "holier" than the Russians, I assume. 

Secondly, on the economic front, it looks like the president's going to go to Russia without a Jackson-Vanik waiver. How does that affect the outcome the summit and this kind of long-lasting relations -- 

DR. WALLANDER: Well, I guess -- you're right; those who want to argue against the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture are going to have to argue on the merits and not use the Russians as their own leverage to make those arguments. I would point out that the -- because the Russian government looks like it has agreed to a treaty which preserves the kind of reconstitution capability that the Bush administration wants to maintain does not, in and of itself, eliminate the proliferation problem inherent in that treaty, which is that one of the political prices that Putin may need to pay for the treaty is to keep a Russian reserve force. 

Even though it makes no economic sense, even though it makes little strategic sense, there is a certain political logic to reciprocity and equality. And so I think that if this treaty goes forward, as we understand that it is going to go forward, it does not only maintain but perhaps even enhances the importance of nonproliferation efforts and the importance of cooperative threat reduction programs, U.S.- Russian engagement on that front. 

Maybe I'll let you -- I'm sure you want to address that -- 

MR. EINHORN: Just a small technical point. The more Russian weapons that are stored, the more difficult it will be to work out the means of ensuring their physical security. It'll mean greater efforts will be required to go into physical protection efforts, because it's recognized that Russian weapons actually deployed on operational systems are probably protected very well. It becomes more difficult when you take them off the delivery system and try to store them separately. And I think that's one of the arguments that will be made against this approach of storing, rather than dismantling, weapons. 

DR. MENDELSON: Just on the Jackson-Vanik not being deliverable yet for this agenda, I remind you that I think President Yeltsin asked President Clinton for this in April 1993, when they first met in Vancouver. I mean, this is an issue that has been on the agenda of presidents who said, "Oh, yes, we'll make this happen," and then it hasn't happened. And of course, U.S.-Russian relations have gone on. 

I'm not actually that concerned that it -- this time it got hung up for trade reasons having to do with chicken. But I'm not that disturbed, because -- imagine President Bush making a speech where he says, "Okay, the Jackson-Vanik amendment's gone." This is a symbol of what? The human rights situation in Russia is particularly strong? No. I mean, I didn't quite know what that event was going to look like. So, you know, in the end, it may not be the worst thing. 

DR. WALLANDER: I'll just add -- I think a greater priority of the Putin leadership is the -- Jackson-Vanik's part of the package, but the other parts of the package are Russia being recognized as a market economy and moving forward on WTO membership. 

Q -  Is that the -- I mean, as far as the United States is concerned, that's the first step. 

DR. WALLANDER: Yeah. Well, there -- that's right. There -- and well, not to WTO membership itself. So my point was -- is that there are other ways to advance the economic priorities from the Putin leadership's point of view. So I agree with Sarah that it won't play probably the central obstacle role that it might otherwise have done on a symbolic level. 

Q - Patrick Jarreau, Le Monde, Paris. What's your understanding in regards to testing and developing -- (off mike) -- either on the U.S. side or the
-- (off mike) -- or on the Russian side, as there was a particular suspicion that the Russians would think of resuming some kind of testing? 

DR. WALLANDER: It would be a serious step backwards if the reports of Russian preparations to resume testing proved to be justified. I think the reports right now are too speculative, and the information we have is not nearly enough to really cause concern and cause puzzlement. For me, it would be puzzling to hear that there were plans to resume testing at the same time that there was pretty substantial compromise and concession on the Russian side to get an arms control agreement. 

I could speculate about internal compromises, in which you would agree to an arms control agreement that you didn't -- that allows the United States to keep a reserve force in a way that the Russian strategic forces and military don't like, and at the same time preparing to resume testing. But I think that that is not consistent with -- would not be consistent with what we've seen of the Putin leadership in his relations with the United States, which is to really seek to advance the relationship. And I think that the people around Putin, and Putin, himself, probably well know enough what a major problem that would be in U.S.-Russian relations at this point with -- because -- in part because the Russians now have insisted on a treaty that's going to require ratification. So, to have a ratification process in the U.S. Senate going forward while you have a resumption of Russian nuclear testing, would not be consistent with what Putin has invested in this relationship and this agreement. So we'll just have to wait and see if those reports are justified and -- 

Q  -- the Russians view the Nuclear Posture Review as -- (off mike) -- kind of new weapons for facing weapons of mass destruction and terrorism? 

DR. WALLANDER: I think the reports of the Nuclear Posture Review in the Russian context simply justified the views of those who never really believed that the United States had gotten past the Cold War thinking about Russia and about nuclear strategy, and were discounted by those who wanted to move past that relationship, who are looking for the economic basis for the relationship, were looking to reduce weapons, move on to conventional military reform. 

So I don't think the Nuclear Posture Review, as it was leaked in the U.S. press, had a major effect on thinking. It just reinforced already existing thinking. I think the Nuclear Posture Review probably has had a bigger effect on other countries, including in Europe and Asia, than it did in Russia. 

Yes? 

Q - (Name and affiliation off mike.) I wanted to ask Bob Einhorn what he felt were the prospects of implementation of the joint Russian-American statement agreed at Crawford on bioterrorism, which is one of the most difficult ones for Putin to get his hand on internally. 

And also, ask Professor Wallander whether you felt that the new NATO-Russia agreement had enough substance to actually give Putin what he wanted or what we wanted to give him, which was a dividend to the political relationship with Bush to shore up public opinion because there will be much symbolically, but as far as substance is concerned, there's not that much more -- (off mike). 

MR. EINHORN: Philippe (sp), I don't have much to say really on implementation. It was an important agreement. The Russians clearly can -- have a lot to bring to the table in terms of biodefense and helping out, you know, efforts to thwart bioterrorists. But as you say, it's a sensitive issue for the Russians. It's been hard for the Russian president for years to really get his hands on this problem and to get especially the Russian military to cooperate and to be transparent.

But I haven't seen any indications that they've made a lot of progress on this. 

DR. WALLANDER: On the NATO-Russia Council, we don't -- at least -- I didn't look for this this morning -- we don't yet have an actual agreement on the NATO-Russia Council. And I think -- and it's clear that the reason why it's going into the actual Reykjavik summit and maybe will extend beyond it, that we're still talking about an agreement on it, is the sense in the Russian leadership that the provision for retrievability of issues -- that is, that any member of the NATO-Russia Council can retrieve any issue that they feel is not going well, that there are obstacles, and that that basically means the issue would go back to NATO members alone -- that that is a recognition that it risks making the NATO-Russia Council no more significant than the Permanent Joint Council. 

That said, I think that the specific issues that are about to be -- if they are agreed upon for discussion within the council are the right ones. They're serious ones. Counterterrorism, humanitarian missions, missile defense, all these things are serious. They're big issues, but they're also specific enough that you can imagine really practical political and military projects and agreements to move forward on. 

So where that leaves us actually is with something more than the PJC because there are these defined issues and there is a mechanism for moving forward, but it leaves the NATO-Russia Council kind of a hostage to events. If for the next year there are no major crises and disagreements along the lines of Kosovo -- I can think of others -- that would lead to one of the NATO members from pulling an issue away and basically humiliating the Russians, or humiliating Putin and not giving him that deliverable, "Look, we can work together in this council," then the council ends up being no more than the PJC. But because there is the chance for practical, specific kinds of programs if we have a good year and cooperation and a building of trust and achievement on the part of not just the countries but the people who are actually responsible for working in the council, then I think we'll find a council that is something more than the PJC. 

Now, I'm uncomfortable with leaving important events like anchoring Russia into Europe, and European security, the hostage of events, but I guess the good news is it's probably an advance on what we had before, and that's maybe what we should be looking for at this point. 

DR. MENDELSON: Just 20 -- two seconds on this. There has been an overall strategy of anchoring, that you use international organizations as a way of bringing Russia into Europe, and I think it is worth thinking about whether, 10 years after, how this has worked. I mean, there are codes of conduct, there are rules and regulations of membership in many regional organizations and, specifically for Russia, European organizations, and I think we can agree that there are many instances in which the Russians have violated, have been noncompliant and there's been virtually no consequence. 

So before -- we need to be thinking along the lines of having Russia be part of this very serious organization -- what that's going to do and how we make that meaningful. 

DR. WALLANDER: We're at our official end time, but maybe we can take one more question. 

Q -  The overall talk about the president should raise this or that issue at this summit -- do you think -- is he getting tangible results after the nuclear treaty is the news of the day, or is it mainly an improvement of the personal relationship? 

DR. WALLANDER: I think it may be the case that the tangible result -- success -- I would like there to be more. But it may be that the tangible result and success of the summit is that we get agreements before the summit. And this is, ironically, how it kind of worked during the Cold War, as well -- that the date of the summit approaching is an incentive to compromise, to actually come to agreement.

So although the event, itself, perhaps, will be strong on symbolism and the nice visit to St. Petersburg by President Bush, that -- we shouldn't necessary think that the summit, itself, is not valuable, because it may have advanced the relationship in the weeks preceding the summit in a constructive way. 

And I'll just repeat the other point I made earlier: I would, though -- I think that that would not be enough, because that really is sort of nailing down the Cold War legacy, and it's creating the basis for moving forward to a constructive relationship. It's creating the basis for now addressing these tougher questions that Zeyno and Sarah have suggested, as well as the opportunities that I suggested. 

But the basis isn't good enough. It takes that high-level attention and the determination to overcome obstacles, to really move down some of these paths of opportunities or cope with these problems. So I guess it would be a "glass half full/glass half empty" kind of summit. We shouldn't disregard it, but we should probably demand more of it. 

DR. MENDELSON: Let's just let's just put it this way: We're dealing -- we have to deal with yesterday's issues. 

We have to close a loop on yesterday's issues. But at the same time, we need to be focused on today and tomorrow's issues, and I'm worried that the focus on yesterday's is eclipsing the focus on today and tomorrow. 

But I'd also say that we saw in the Yeltsin-Clinton relationship a very strong personal bond that did not always translate into dealing with the very hard issues. And I would hope that Presidents Bush and Putin will take it a step further, that if they have this strong personal bond, that they use it, rather than just avoiding the tough things. 

MS. BARAN: Following on that, I think there are some signs that the Bush-Putin good relations is starting to turn policy to what it used to be like under Yeltsin-Clinton. The U.S. administration, like in the Clinton times, has now started to turn a blind eye to some of the issues that Sarah mentioned, as well as some of the economic issues and failure of Russia fulfilling its international treaty obligations. 

And so my concern is that because there's so much interest now to translate this good presidential relationship into some broader historic change, many of the important issues Russia needs to be called on may be ignored. Actually, it is not unusual that a president may think that this time it's different, and while others before him could not succeed, his personal chemistry with a leader may make all the difference. But relying on one person, even if he is the President, historically has not worked out that well. 

DR. WALLANDER: All right. Well, thank you very much for joining us this morning, and we hope we'll all have a(n) interesting and positive experience watching the run-up to and the follow-up from the summit in the next couple weeks. Thanks. 

********

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