Johnson's Russia List
#6399
13 August 2002
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org
[Contents:
1. The Globe and Mail (Canada): Marck Mackinnon, In the shadow of nuclear
catastrophe. The area around Russia's Mayak reactor is one of the most
toxic on the planet. In one village, 'everybody is just waiting to die.'
2. AP: Russia Marks 2nd Kursk Anniversary.
3. RFE/RL: Gregory Feifer, Russia: Country Marks Second Anniversary Of
'Kursk' Sinking.
4. Luba Schwartzman: ORT Review.
5. gazeta.ru: Election boss wants PR firms licensed.
6. Moscow Times: Boris Kagarlitsky, An Unsettling Trip to Minsk.
7. Marilyn Young: New journal Controversia: A Journal of Debate and
Democratic Renewal.
8. Chris Mahon: Peace Corps.
9. Moscow Times: Victoria Lavrentieva, Direct Investment, Exports Tumble.
10. Insight: Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Highway Robbery. Was the Russian free
market looted by a Harvard team of reformers?
11. The American Prospect: Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, One-Day Wonder.
The dangerous absurdity of the Bush-Putin arms treaty.]
*******
#1
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
August 12, 2002
In the shadow of nuclear catastrophe
The area around Russia's Mayak reactor is one of the
most toxic on the planet. In one village, 'everybody
is just waiting to die.'
By MARK MACKINNON
KARABOLKA, RUSSIA -- When he looks around, Mors Abdrakhimov sees that he is
among the living dead.
In his bedraggled village of 460 people, just east of Russia's rugged Ural
Mountains, there are seven overflowing graveyards -- a reminder of a time,
not so long ago, when the Tatar community was 10 times its current size.
Those still alive, even those in their 30s and 40s, have a habit of talking
about their imminent deaths. Few residents expect to see 50.
At 61, Mr. Abdrakhimov has lived longer than most in Karabolka, but even in
his job as director of the village's only school, he sees little reason to
hope for its future. When he started teaching 40 years ago, the school had
nearly a thousand students. Today, there are 55. And none, according to Mr.
Abdrakhimov, has a clean bill of health.
"There are no healthy people in this town, and no healthy children in the
school," he said simply. "Everybody is just waiting to die."
Mr. Abdrakhimov is not alone in his pessimism. Walk around the empty streets
of this farming community and almost everyone you meet seems to share the
same outlook. Death is coming. Soon.
The harbinger can be seen a few kilometres south, along a bumpy road, in the
form of two smokestacks stretching skyward over a cluster of trees. It is the
Mayak nuclear operation, site of the first successful Soviet nuclear tests
and some of the worst environmental catastrophes in history.
Because of the plant, Karabolka, its neighbouring villages and the regional
centre of Chelyabinsk, home to more than a million people, are ranked among
the most dangerous places on the planet to live. In the region surrounding
Mayak, estimates of the number of people affected range as high as 450,000.
Those living closest to the nuclear complex -- 28,000 in all -- received
doses of radiation as much as 60 times higher than seen during the 1986
Chernobyl explosion.
For all its dangers, Mayak is just one of dozens of aging nuclear facilities
that dot the former Soviet Union, each posing the risk of another Chernobyl.
In Russia alone, 10 cities are still closed to the outside world because of
the nuclear work that goes on there. The number of people across the former
empire who have died or are suffering from radiation-related illnesses is
believed to be in the millions.
At Mayak, cleaning up the mess would take decades and cost the Russian
government many millions of dollars -- money it says it does not have. But
instead of beginning the long task, President Vladimir Putin's government
wants to bring thousands more tonnes of nuclear waste here, importing it by
rail from neighbouring countries and processing it at the creaky facility.
In the early days of the Cold War, the work being done at Mayak was so
secretive that residents of the surrounding villages did not know the massive
nuclear complex was there. When one of its reactors exploded in September of
1957, after a cooling system failed in a storage tank containing radioactive
waste, many villagers looked at the horizon and thought they were witnessing
a giant forest fire.
What they were seeing was a blast equal in force to 70 tonnes of TNT. But
unlike the Chernobyl explosion, when winds carried the fallout across a large
chunk of Eastern Europe, approximately 90 per cent of the radioactive
material released in the Mayak disaster settled in the immediate vicinity.
The Soviet government of the day quickly began a cover-up, keeping the
accident a secret even as they began removing and eventually resettling many
of those who lived in the path of the fallout. But when officials got to
Karabolka, which then had more than 5,000 residents, a strange and still
unexplained decision was made in the resettlement program: The smaller part
of the village where ethnic Russians lived was moved. The larger part, known
as Tatar Karabolka, was left behind.
Mr. Abdrakhimov was 16 at the time. He remembers a day, soon after the 1957
accident, when he and other high-school students, including the woman he was
later to marry, were marched out to the fields where Russian Karabolka once
stood and ordered to plant trees. As their teachers instructed students to
dig into the soil and cover up the remains of the Russian half of the
village, no one spoke about the dangers of radiation.
Today, Mr. Abdrakhimov suffers from a list of symptoms common to almost the
entire population of Tatar Karabolka. High blood pressure. Severe headaches.
Anemia. Crippling arthritis. A tumour. His wife, Maysufa, ticks off the same
conditions, which are simply referred to here as the "soup mix." Their
35-year-old daughter has breast cancer. Their 30-year-old son has a tumour
but can't afford to travel to a hospital to find out whether it's malignant.
The fate of Mr. Abdrakhimov's three young grandchildren is a constant worry.
"People die young here," said Gulfira Sahilova, the only paramedic in the
village. "I think it's definitely because of the radiation, the ecological
situation. It's not normal for young people to be dying like this."
Ms. Sahilova works out of a grim one-room office. At 48, her hands are badly
gnarled by arthritis. And like many here, she is suspicious of why the Muslim
section of the village was left behind.
"I think we were left here as an experiment. I think they are surprised we
are still living at all, that we are not dead."
The experiment, many believe, is continuing. Locals testify that a tiny creek
flowing through the centre of the village rises sporadically even on days
when there has been no rainfall or melting snow. They believe Mayak is
dumping nuclear waste into the creek.
Last year, a 13-year-old girl died mysteriously, three days after wading into
the creek. Those who were with her just before she died say her skin had
blackened and in places was being eaten away.
The Russian government now plans to turn the region into a nuclear dump for
domestic and foreign waste, with as much as 20,000 tonnes of spent nuclear
fuel expected to be imported from around the world. The reward could be as
much as $21-billion (U.S.) for Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, known as
Minatom, a highly independent organization that effectively runs the closed
cities. But for the residents of this region, it has been taken as one more
sign that the authorities are willing to take enormous risks with their lives.
"As a human being, it's easy for me to see we don't need this waste. We've
got plenty of our own," complained Yarifula Khabibulin, a 55-year-old farmer.
Of the 38 people in his graduating class from high school, 35 are dead, most
of them from cancer. "Nobody cares about this dying village," he said.
A short drive south from Karabolka, just on the Asian side of the Urals, is
Muslemovo, another Tatar village that was left behind in 1957 while the
ethnic-Russian communities around it were relocated. The Mayak explosion
touched every life, but it isn't the main nuclear tragedy people talk about.
After the Second World War, Mayak became the centre of frenzied work to
develop a Soviet atomic bomb to match the one the United States had just
dropped on Hiroshima. The weapons-manufacturing plant, however, had no place
to store its waste, so it poured the material directly into a nearby lake.
Today, Lake Karachai is known as the most radioactive spot on the planet,
with seven times the levels of strontium 90 and cesium 137 released by the
Chernobyl explosion.
For at least four years, from 1948 to 1952, the plant's waste was dumped into
Lake Karachai and the Techa River, which splits Muslemovo in two. It is
estimated that about 76 million cubic metres of waste, much of it
radioactive, was poured into the river system.
Not knowing they were poisoning themselves, residents swam, drank and let
their children play in the Techa. Many of them died. Half a century later, a
tiny forest of birch trees with black ribbons tied around their trunks stands
outside the city as a silent memorial to the victims of an unknowing folly.
There are now 65 trees in the Valley of Memory, each planted by a family who
believes a relative died because of Mayak.
A few years ago, the federal government warned residents that the banks of
the Techa qualified as "solid nuclear waste." Yet people here still fish in
the river and grow food on its banks.
"We have to use this water for washing and to feed to our cattle," said Raya
Khammatova, a farmer whose potato patch is separated from the Techa by only a
small barbed-wire fence. "It's the only water we have. We have no choice."
Her husband spent three years helping to build that fence, which now has
several breaks in it to allow people and cattle to reach the Techa. He is in
hospital in Chelyabinsk suffering from chronic radiation illness, with levels
of internal radiation several hundred times what doctors deem acceptable.
"Of course we are afraid," Mrs. Khammatova said. "We know we are ill, but we
live as we can."
The plant, the Atomic Energy Ministry says, cannot afford a safe disposal
system, and dumps radioactive waste into Lake Karachai.
In both Karabolka and Muslemovo, what angers residents most is the
government's refusal to adequately compensate them for what happened and what
may still be happening. Those that are recognized as victims of radiation
receive pitiful amounts of money -- sometimes just a few dollars a month, in
many cases just a few dollars a year.
Even at those low amounts, the government has been stingy in deciding who is
a victim and who isn't. In Muslemovo, families living on one side of Lenin
Street have been granted compensation, while those across the thin, muddy
lane have yet to receive anything.
But even as compensation is doled out, authorities don't like to talk about
their nuclear problem. Repeated visits to the Radiation Rehabilitation
Department in Chelyabinsk proved almost fruitless. The director is out,
journalists are told, and no one else is authorized to talk to us.
In Moscow, government officials and nuclear scientists say Russia has the
technology to store and process its imported waste. The plant's operators,
Minatom, even hope some of the money received for storing other countries'
nuclear waste will be invested in new safety standards to ensure another
accident does not happen.
The regional government in Chelyabinsk is beginning to take those risks
seriously. Though Lake Karachai is dammed, it's still an open-air nuclear
waste pit. Its levels rise every spring with the melting snow, often reaching
within 30 centimetres of the top of the dam. If the lake overflowed, it would
be "a major potential source of radiation disasters and catastrophes,"
Chelyabinsk Governor Pyotr Sumin wrote in a letter last year to Prime
Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. The radioactive waste would pollute dozens of
Russia's rivers that eventually make their way to the Arctic Ocean, the
letter warned.
There are even some in the federal government who warn of a looming disaster.
Yuri Vishnevsky, Mr. Putin's official nuclear watchdog, recently wrote that
the Mayak plant was unsuitable to handle foreign waste for several reasons,
including the fact the plant was not up to international safety standards and
continues to dump waste into the open environment. He even questioned whether
taking on the waste would end up being a profitable endeavour, once all
factors were taken into account.
An examination of the facts, Mr. Vishnevsky wrote, "confirmed the
impossibility of receiving foreign spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing."
Nonetheless, the waste-importation plan is scheduled to go ahead, provided it
receives approval from the United States, which controls, legally and
contractually, most of the world's nuclear waste.
For residents, however, the very thought of an agreement is at once
infuriating and perplexing: The government knows the risks, has seen the
damage done in the past, and is willing to gamble again. "I don't understand
their chain of thoughts," said Venera Khayazova, 63, of Muslemovo, whose
family members are almost all suffering from chronic radiation disease or
other illnesses she believes are linked to the Techa River.
As Mrs. Khayazova spoke, her grandson Denis stared out the window of their
tiny four-room wooden home. Born with cerebral palsy, he is now 16 and
attending a special school in Chelyabinsk while his family fights for
compensation. Both his father and grandfather were diagnosed as having
chronic radiation illness.
Self-conscious of his awkward manner of speech, Denis is nonetheless a
passionate orator when the subject is the Mayak plant, which he blames for
his illness.
"I feel humiliated. They hurt me to make nuclear bombs," he said after a long
pause to search for the right words. "They are not human beings who did this."
********
#2
Russia Marks 2nd Kursk Anniversary
August 12, 2002
By ERIC ENGLEMAN
MOSCOW (AP) - Grieving relatives gathered in churches and cemeteries across
Russia on Monday to mourn the deaths of 118 crewmen in the sinking of the
Kursk submarine two years ago, as officials in Moscow unveiled a bronze
monument.
Russia's Northern Fleet lowered its flags to half-mast and people in the
arctic port of Vidyayevo, from which the Kursk departed on its final, doomed
voyage, prayed at a black granite memorial and threw red carnations into the
murky sea.
In Moscow, a military band played solemn music and weeping family members
looked on as navy officers marched in lockstep to lay flowers at the base of
the new monument, a towering bronze sailor, cap in hand, standing over a
submarine plunging into the ocean depths.
Nearby, the city's Armed Forces Museum opened a small exhibit devoted to the
Kursk, with photos of crew members and pieces of corroded equipment that were
salvaged from the sunken vessel.
Galina Loginova, whose son Sergei died aboard the Kursk, clutched a handful
of carnations and struggled to hold back tears as she watched the monument
unveiling in Moscow.
``We're satisfied with what they've done here, so it all won't be
forgotten,'' Loginova said. ``But we're not satisfied with the official
account of what happened.''
The Kursk, one of Russia's largest and most advanced submarines, was felled
by two powerful explosions during exercises in the Barents Sea. The second
blast had the power of a mild earthquake.
There were no leading political figures at the ceremonies Monday, and
President Vladimir Putin made no public comments about the Kursk disaster.
Putin was criticized for failing to quickly end his vacation when the Kursk
sank, and Russia's government was reluctant to quickly accept Western aid
while Russian submersibles spent days vainly attempting to hook up to the
stricken submarine's escape hatch. When the government finally invited
foreign divers, they opened the hatch within a few hours.
Russia's top prosecutor announced last month that a leaky torpedo propellant
- hydrogen peroxide - had caused the explosions, closing the books on the
lengthy official investigation.
The Russian navy has withdrawn from service all missiles of the type that
exploded on the Kursk, but many relatives say they don't believe the
government hasn't revealed the full truth about what caused the disaster.
Some relatives say the seamen had talked about a torpedo flaw before setting
out to sea. Nadezhda Tylik, mother of Lt. Sergei Tylik who died in the
control room, said people at the submarine base told her after the disaster
that the torpedo had been accidentally dropped before being loaded aboard.
Tylik is preparing to sue the military for damages. Other relatives have
hired a lawyer to help them weigh legal action.
``They want to protect the navy's top brass,'' she said in a telephone
interview from her home in the southern city of Anapa. ``The evidence is
buried somewhere in their files, and they will never tell us the truth.''
Over the past few days, Russian television has aired several programs and
documentaries devoted to the disaster that include home video footage of the
crew before the voyage and excerpts from a farewell letter written by one of
the sailors who survived the initial explosions only to die later in the
submarine's rear compartment.
An international salvage operation raised the bulk of the Kursk last fall and
recovered 115 bodies. Russian officials have said they will scrap the
submarine and dismantle its twin nuclear reactors.
They also plan to blow up remnants of the mangled bow of the Kursk, which was
left on the ocean floor out of fear it could have destabilized the lifting
operation. The bow will be blown up later this month, the Interfax-Military
news agency reported.
*******
#3
Russia: Country Marks Second Anniversary Of 'Kursk' Sinking
By Gregory Feifer
Russia today marked two years since the "Kursk" nuclear submarine sank in the
Barents Sea, killing all 118 men on board. Officials appeared eager to put
the controversial incident to rest, organizing numerous commemoration
ceremonies and unveiling a monument in Moscow. But many people continue to
denounce what they see as the government's mishandling of the tragedy. They
say an official report on the matter issued last month fails to reveal the
entire truth behind the sinking of the "Kursk."
Moscow, 12 August 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Russians today marked the second
anniversary of the sinking of the "Kursk" nuclear submarine by attending
church services and military ceremonies.
During commemorations in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the port town of
Vidyaevo on the northern Barents Sea, tearful family members and fellow
sailors and officers praised the bravery of the "Kursk's" crew of 118 who
perished on 12 August 2000 when the nuclear submarine -- one of the navy's
largest and most advanced -- sank after fuel in one of the sub's torpedoes
leaked and ignited during naval exercises in the Barents Sea.
In the capital today, officials unveiled a bronze monument depicting a sailor
standing with his head bowed next to a ruined, listing submarine.
Andrei Shatorenko, a Northern Fleet captain who knew many of the men who died
on the "Kursk," remembered the crew in a speech at the monument's unveiling.
"The tragedy took away one of the best crews of Russia's missile-submarine
fleet. Loyal to their military oath, the sailors fulfilled their duty to the
end. Their courage and heroism is a vivid example of self-sacrifice and
unselfish service to the motherland," Shatorenko said.
The accident shed unwelcome light on the plight of the once-mighty Soviet
military, which has decayed dramatically due to lack of funds and discipline
in post-Soviet Russia.
According to an official report published last month, the tragedy began with
an explosion that sparked a fire, setting off the submarine's ammunition. A
second blast ripped through the vessel's forward sections, killing most of
the crew. A handful of survivors gathered in the submarine's ninth
compartment to wait for a rescue attempt that came too late.
The government and President Vladimir Putin came under severe criticism for
their response to the crisis. Putin continued a vacation on the Black Sea and
did not return to Moscow, while officials initially turned down help from
abroad even as Russian rescue efforts failed.
Top-ranking naval officers came out with different versions of events, at
first claiming that the crew was still alive, and later blaming the incident
on a collision with a foreign sub. The press was kept at arm's length.
A chastised Putin later promised to raise the submarine, a dangerous and
expensive effort completed last October after the vessel's ruined nose was
cut off underwater. Parts of the front were later raised, and officials say
they plan to blow up what remains on the seabed.
In its final report, the Prosecutor-General's Office blamed the tragedy on a
torpedo that leaked highly explosive hydrogen peroxide propellant.
Pavel Felgenhauer is a Moscow-based independent defense analyst. He sees the
publication of the report as a positive move. "This cleared the situation up
a bit. It at last officially laid to rest all this talk about foreign
submarines attacking the 'Kursk' or ramming the 'Kursk' or mines from the
Second World War and things like that. And now the Russian authorities
officially say that all those reports were all baloney, which is, of course,
a step in the right direction," Felgenhauer said.
Questions, however, remain. Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov said last
month that no one was to blame for the explosion. But news agencies reported
naval officers and relatives of the "Kursk" crew as criticizing the
government for failing to apportion blame for the accident and covering up
possible wrongdoing.
Reports have claimed the faulty torpedo was mishandled before the "Kursk's"
final voyage. The navy has also been criticized for continuing to use
dangerous hydrogen peroxide fuel, which Western countries have long since
abandoned.
Felgenhauer said the government, which is still under fire for its slow
response to the "Kursk" sinking, is looking to put the matter behind it as
quickly as possible. "Well, of course the 'Kursk' is an issue that has been
embarrassing Putin and the Russian authorities already for two years. So they
can't just simply pretend that it didn't happen, but of course they would
like to leave the thing to rest. They'll say it's all over and that, well,
they'll open a monument and so on. But, of course, they don't want to
emphasize it, or they want to emphasize it as little as possible,"
Felgenhauer said.
Some relatives of the "Kursk" victims said last week they had not been
invited to attend the unveiling of the "Kursk" monument in Moscow. Top
officials themselves appeared to steer clear of today's commemorative events.
Neither Putin nor Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov showed up for the
monument's unveiling. Most other top officials, including Defense Minister
Sergei Ivanov, also stayed away.
During the event, the navy chief of staff, Admiral Viktor Kravchenko, said
one of the Northern Fleet's best submarine crews went down with the "Kursk."
Interfax news agency cited Kravchenko as saying, "This is a monument to
bravery, heroism, and tragedy."
*******
#4
ORT Review
www.ortv.ru
Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba_sch@hotmail.com)
Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information, Moscow office
WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS,
Saturday, August 10, 2002
- Street racing is the new dangerous sport for Moscow's adrenaline hunters.
- A new magnet-driven monorail train was tested in Moscow. The first line
will be opened next year - it will run between the VDNKh and the
Timizerevskaya Metro Stations. The monorail train will have up to 10 cars,
carrying up to 40 people each, and the cost of a ticket will not exceed a
bus or metro fare.
- Forty-four people have died in the flooding in Russia's southern region
and dozens are still missing. Many of the victims had been camping in the
region. Restoration work continues and train traffic is expected to be
restored by the end of the weekend.
- Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, Deputy Emergencies Minister Yuri Vorobiev
and Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko met with Russian President Vladimir
Putin and reported on conditions and restoration work. President Putin
urged closer cooperation among different ministries and agencies.
- Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov chaired a meeting on the progress
of restoration - the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Mayor of Sochi, the
directors of Railways Ministry Departments and the State Construction
Committee, as well as representatives from transportation, medical and
educational agencies, from social service organizations, and from emergency
and epidemic-rescue services were invited.
- Officers from the directorate for the fight against economic
counterfeiting sealed off a large amount of goods at a storage facility used
by Vietnamese traders. The salesmen came out to protest the arrest of the
goods and additional OMON special reaction groupings were called in, but, by
morning, about 2,000 Vietnamese immigrants gathered forming a live chain to
block off the exit and keep trucks from leaving. A representative from the
Vietnamese embassy arrived at the scene, but was unable to resolve the
conflict.
- Dozens came to the grave of St. Petersburg's first Mayor Anatoly Sobchak
to commemorate what would have been his 65th birthday.
- A traditional 40th-day mourning ceremony for the 71 victims of the
Bodenskoe Lake catastrophe was held in Ufa.
- Ilya Shabalkin, a representative of the North Caucasus regional
anti-terrorism headquarters reported that a relative of Chechen field
commander Shamil Basaev has voluntarily put down arms and returned to
civilian life.
- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov declared that the problem of the
presence of rebels in the Pankissi Gorge can only be solved by force.
- Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told US Secretary of State Colin
Powell that the actions of the Georgian authorities are at odds with their
statements regarding the fight against terrorism.
- The preliminary results of the large-scale military exercises in the
Caspian are in. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov suggested that a
military grouping of Caspian Sea Nations could be created in the future.
- Fifty years later, the then-ignored Russian champions of the 1952 Olympics
were honored at the Luzhniki Tribune on Athlete's Day.
Sunday, August 11, 2002
- A hotel for pets has been opened in Nizhny Novgorod - owners can request a
variety of activities for their pets.
- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov visited Daghestan, to review
military exercises, then flew to Mozdok, to visit the Itum-Kalininsk Border
Troops Division with Border Troops Commander Konstantin Totsky and
personally inspect the situation on the Chechen region of the
Russian-Georgian border.
- The 503rd motorized artillery division has been dispatched to Ingushetia
to reinforce the border with Georgia and prevent rebels from entering
Russia.
- Chechen rebels attacked a patrol of six contract soldiers with artillery
and grenades. Four of the soldiers were seriously injured.
- The relics of the venerable Fedor Ushakov were ceremonially brought out at
the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
- Primorsky Krai border guards arrested a South Korean vessel that was
illegally fishing for squid.
- The number of victims of the flooding in the Black Sea region has reached
58.
- The Ussuriisky Dragon kite-flying festival was held in Khabarovsk.
- President Putin congratulated construction workers on their professional
holiday.
*******
#5
gazeta.ru
August 12, 2002
Election boss wants PR firms licensed
By Maria Tsvetkova
Spin-doctors have hard times ahead of them. Russia’s chief electoral
official Alexander Veshnyakov intends to radically cut down on the number
of political image-makers by introducing licensing for PR-companies. In
line with Veshnyakov’s designs the licence will be awarded only to firms
with impeccable reputations, those who have not been caught forging voters’
signatures, disseminating defamatory materials or applying some other kind
of dirty PR tricks.
Chairman of the Central Election Commission Veshnyakov announced his new
idea during a meeting with the candidates for the governor’s post in the
Krasnoyarsk Region last week. Even though, as the CEC chief himself
admitted, the electoral campaign in the region is no worse and to a certain
extent is even better than election campaigns held in other regions.
Nevertheless, the regional electoral authorities have already received some
200 complaints about violations of electoral regulations.
The first to propose such stringent measures in order to curb the use of
dirty tricks was one of the hopefuls in the Krasnoyarsk election, Taimyr
governor Alexander Khloponin. There are several PR-teams in Russia who work
in the regions and we all know them, he said, suggesting that a special law
be adopted imposing certain restrictions on image makers, and even
introducing criminal liability for those who fail to abide by the rules.
Khloponin’s proposal to jail spin-doctors did not seem to receive
Veshnyakov’s approval, but he hailed the idea to introduce licensing for
PR-firms. He agreed with the Taimyr governor and admitted that some
PR-agencies ''have grown to pose a danger to the electoral process…this
needs to be changed''.
To this end, in the opinion of the CEC chairman, it will also be necessary
to introduce amendments to the law on mass media in order ''to curb the
freedom of lies and of earning money by foul means''. As for licensing, the
draft law to that effect must be submitted by the future head of
Krasnoyarsk, Veshnyakov said.
However, officials who were asked to comment on the new initiative of Mr.
Veshnaykov immediately detected flaws in the new method of fighting
unscrupulous spin-doctors.
''Firstly, no (PR) firms make ‘black PR recommendations’ openly. I do not
think that official contracts for discrediting rivals exist,'' the deputy
chief of the governmental administration Alexei Volin told RIA Novosti news
agency.
Besides, the idea so warmly welcomed by Veshnaykov runs counter to the
government’s policy aimed at cutting down the number of licensed
activities. ''In this case soon it will be necessary to license services of
carpenters and gardeners,'' said Volin sarcastically. He called the CEC
chief’s plan ''to put it mildly, unreasonable and unrealistic''.
For their part, the spin-doctors suspect Veshnyakov of foul play. ''Such a
position may have been lobbied by companies close to the CEC, that strive
to monopolize the consulting services market,'' said the chief of the
centre for political consulting ‘Nikkolo M’ Igor Mintusov in comments for
Gazeta.Ru. ''I think it is a weak, not to say, stupid idea. I can say so
boldly – it is stupid, since the CEC and Veshnyakov have made a
considerable contribution to improving the electoral law and most of their
actions were justified and reasonable.''
Moreover, the opponents of the CEC chief’s new initiative are convinced
that the use of dirty tricks cannot be eradicated through licensing.
''Violations during election campaigns occur not because of some wild
agencies working at elections, but because of the inaction of executive
power,'' said Mr. Mintusov. ''If they want elections to be held without
violations, it is necessary to see to it that the authorities do not
violate the law in the first place,'' he added.
The government, in the person of Volin is even less optimistic: ''Practice
shows that if there is a demand for some kind of service, it will be
satisfied without fail, regardless of whether someone’s permission has been
given or not.''
********
#6
Moscow Times
August 13, 2002
An Unsettling Trip to Minsk
By Boris Kagarlitsky
I love trains. You leave Moscow in the evening, and the next morning you
arrive in another city where you don't even have to worry about finding a
hotel room. You've got an overnight ticket home in your pocket. In the
compartments people drink tea, munch on cookies and talk about life. There's
no need for double-dealing here. After all, in the morning your fellow
passengers all head off in their different directions, never to meet again.
In the course of one evening all will be revealed -- life, problems at work
and family feuds.
That's why I love riding the rails. Where else in this day and age can you
talk openly with total strangers?
On a recent journey I rolled out of Moscow on the overnight train to Minsk,
where I was to give a lecture at the university the next day. Trips to
Belarus always leave me with a very strange sensation, as if I were traveling
not through space but through time. It's not that you're returning into the
Soviet past, but heading into some parallel world where you glimpse a
strange, alien version of your own existence. Or a nightmare in which
everything seems totally normal, but in fact operates according to an
entirely different set of rules. The Moscow-Minsk train doesn't take you to
another country. It takes you to another world beyond the looking glass.
This time around I shared a compartment with two Belarussian "Gastarbeiters"
and a quiet woman with a small child. The workmen were bringing home the
money they had earned on job sites in Russia. They were drinking beer and
spoke exclusively about money. Soon they set off for the restaurant car in
search of vodka.
The woman put her child to bed and then started -- in accordance with all the
rules of the genre -- to complain about her life. She lives in the north, in
the Komi republic.
Why do you Muscovites think they pay good money to workers in the north? Her
husband is a policeman and earns chicken feed. Not like Moscow, where the
cops get fat extorting "tributes" from unregistered "guests of the capital"
and from grannies who peddle their wares on street corners without a license.
Her mother-in-law is, of course, a "mean old shrew" who has never come to
terms with her son's decision to marry. Though there is an aunt in Belarus
whom she gets along with fairly well.
This quiet woman worked as an assistant to a municipal prosecutor.
Prosecutor's offices in Russia have long been run almost exclusively by
women. Not because emancipated women took one of the instruments of power
into their own hands, but because men prefer to earn the big money as defense
lawyers. Putting people behind bars is a woman's work. Getting criminals off
the hook is a man's work. Call it division of labor.
The prosecutor's assistant carried on complaining about her life. Her husband
had been sent to serve in Chechnya shortly after the birth of their child.
This was illegal, but nothing could be done about it. They were lucky -- her
husband came home alive. On another occasion, almost the entire detachment
sent from their town had been executed by Chechens.
She concluded her monologue with an unexpected solution to the Chechen
problem. "They should all be killed, children included," she said. "But what
about the law?" I asked. "You're a prosecutor. You're saying that people
should commit war crimes!" "There's no law in war," she replied. "Everything
is allowed in war. Our boys don't understand that yet, and that's why they're
losing."
There was no point in arguing. I wished the woman good night, turned over and
tried to get to sleep.
I've always loved falling asleep to the clickety-clack of the wheels. But on
this occasion I couldn't sleep at all. When I arrived in Minsk I was
shattered. Some friends fed me blini with jam and complained about Lukashenko
and, in the same breath, about the Americans, who are cutting back funding
for the opposition. ("The State Department closed more independent newspapers
in Minsk than Lukashenko has during his entire time as president.") In the
evening, students thronged the university auditorium to hear a lecture on
anti-globalism.
On the trip home I took a special train called the Belarus. The tickets are
more expensive, and the passengers are different. The car was filled with
Belarussian business managers -- the hired guns of Russian capital. They took
their places in silence and sat reading the financial papers. During the
entire trip not a single word was uttered.
I arrived in Moscow well rested and in excellent spirits.
Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist.
*******
#7
From: Marilyn J. Young [myoung@garnet.acns.fsu.edu]
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002
Subject: announcing a new journal
The International Debate Education Association is pleased to announce the
inaugural issue of Controversia: A Journal of Debate and Democratic
Renewal. The journal is edited by David Cratis Williams, University of
Missouri at Rolla and Marilyn J. Young, The Florida State University. It
will be published semi-annually and will feature essays by prominent
scholars from around the world, book reviews, and a Forum for discussion of
pertinent issues in a shorter, more informal format. Selected essays will
be published in both Russian and English.
The Table of Contents for Vol. 1, No. 1 is:
"Introducing Controversia" David Cratis Williams
Marilyn J. Young
(Translated into Russian by Svetlana Kalinskaya)
"Democracy and Argumentation" Frans H. van Eemeren
University of Amsterdam
"The Argumentation Theorist in Deliberative Democracy" William Rehg
St. Louis University
(Translated into Russian by Svetlana Kalinskaya and Michael Launer)
"Manifest Destiny on a Global Scale: Carol Winkler
The U.S. War on Terrorism" Georgia State
University
"Foreign Policy Challenges and the Historical 'Anchors' of
Alexei M. Salmin
the Russian Federation Foreign Policy after September 11, 2001" President,
Russian Public
(Translated into English by Michael Launer) Policy Center
Institutional memberships in IDEA include a subscription to Controversia
[www.idebate.org]; otherwise, Individual Subscriptions are $35 a year and
Institutional Subscriptions are $90 a year. Subscriptions can be ordered
directly from IDEA.
Please contact:
Nina Watkins
International Debate Education Association
Open Society Institute
400 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019
Tel: 212-547-6918
Fax: 212-548-4610
nwatkins@sorosny.org
Payment may be by check, purchase order, Mastercard, Visa, or American
Express. Please make checks payable to "International Debate Education
Association." When ordering subscriptions please include the following
information: your name, title, organization, address, telephone numbers,
fax number, and email address.
Marilyn J. Young, Ph.D.
Wayne C. Minnick Professor of Communication
Dept of Communication - 1531
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306
Office Tel: 850-644-8757; fax: 850-644-8642
Home Tel: 850-562-8671; fax: 850-562-8717
*******
#8
From: Chris Mahon (chrismahon@mail.utexas.edu)
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002
Subject: Peace Corps
As a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Ryazan, Russia, I would like to comment
about current visa problem.
It's ridiculous.
This is the worst sort of example of the lingering Soviet mentality that
still
exists within the bureaucracy of the Russian Federation. The charge that
Volunteers are "absolutely not qualified" is a curious one indeed. It begs
the
question: what sort of qualifications should they have? I had a BA and three
years of foreign language teaching experience before I began my service.
Perhaps a PhD in Russian Studies would have been enough, but probably not.
(Maybe they should just carry around certificates with a stamp that
says "professional." After all, if it has a stamp, it must be official. And
if it's official, it must be true.)
Mr. Sedalev's claim that, "we have to educate them about our teaching
methods"
seems to miss the whole point of the value of an education. Learning. One
thing I learned is that as far as math and sciences are concerned, the
Russians
blow us out of the water. At my school, they began physics around the 5th
grade. And in America we wonder why our students consistantly perform
pathetically on standardized tests in such subjects.
It all comes down to the Russians' hubris. So long as they cling to it,
nobody
wins. The Russians have a lot to be proud of about their culture, but to say
they have arrived at some sort of endpoint does no good. Societies and
cultures change over time and the Russians are no different from the rest of
the world. Nobody is above learning about another culture.
*******
#9
Moscow Times
August 13, 2002
Direct Investment, Exports Tumble
By Victoria Lavrentieva
Staff Writer
Two high-profile summits with the world's largest financial powerhouses and
a pledge by both the United States and the European Union to designate
Russia's economy a free market has done little to boost the nation's bottom
line.
Investment and trade figures for the first half of the year show that
Russia continues to be a net exporter of capital; foreign direct investment
remains miniscule; most foreign money entering the country is in the form
of loans; and the overall trade surplus is falling.
The figures, published Monday by the State Statistics Committee, known as
Goskomstat, show that while total foreign investment rose 25.2 percent to
$8.4 billion in the first six months of the year, direct foreign investment
shrank by 25.4 percent to just $1.9 billion. And of the $8.4 billion,
three-quarters came in the form of loans and corporate bonds, half of which
should be repaid in less than one year.
In addition, the committee said exports in the period dropped 7 percent to
$46.7 billion, while imports rose 5 percent to $20.5 billion, giving Russia
an overall trade surplus of $26.1 billion, down 14.7 over the first half of
2001. It also said energy resources accounted for 56.1 percent of total
exports to non-CIS countries.
"The picture is very sad," said Yevsei Gurvich, an economist with Moscow's
Economic Expert Group. "Russia still lacks long-term money and foreign
investments," he said, adding, "the most important thing about the latter
is not the money itself but mainly managerial experience and technology,
which Russia needs most."
Alexei Moiseyev, an economist at Renaissance Capital, agreed that at
present, inward financial flows are less important than "expertise and
equipment, which is what Russia needs most."
Moiseyev also said Goskomstat's numbers could be misleading. "There were
several projects announced this year that have not yet led to real
investments," he said.
One such deal was Dutch beer behemoth Heineken's agreement in February to
purchase St. Petersburg brewer Bravo for $400 million. And a month later,
global mining and resources giant Anglo-American agreed to pay $252 million
for a 68.5 percent stake in leading paper producer Syktyvkar Forest
Enterprise.
"But what worries me more is the significant increase in corporate debt,"
Moiseyev said.
Russian companies have issued a total of about $2 billion in Eurobonds
between January and June.
"From one point, this is good, because it allows companies to expand
production." Moiseyev said. "But as far as corporate governance and
transparency, Russia remains weak, and this might lead to corporate
insolvency in the future," he added.
Niclas Sundstrom, Russia analyst at Citibank group in London, said federal
authorities should take more control over corporate debt issues. "I think
it would be a very good idea if the Finance Ministry, as a part of
debt-management reform, would more actively monitor the private sector," he
said.
Economists polled said the considerable outflow of money is also a
troubling sign, reflecting not only economic reality but also the lack of
good investment opportunities and low productivity. However, if reforms
continue, productivity will increase and capital will come in, Sundstrom
said.
One largely untapped source of investment is the savings Russians
notoriously keep under their mattresses, which are estimated to be in the
range of $80 billion.
"Russia's savings ratio is 33 percent to 35 percent of gross domestic
product, but domestic investments make for only about 10 percent of GDP,"
Sundstrom said. "The banking sector is often criticized for not
transforming savings into investments, but [in a way] it does, though it is
mostly transforming domestic savings into foreign investments instead of
local investments," he said.
Another development not reflected in Goskomstat's numbers is the increased
interest foreign investors are showing in Russia.
Citibank has seen recently "quite a significant pickup in interest from
serious foreign direct investors," Sundstrom said. "In our experience, it
takes 18 to 24 months for this interest to transform into real money," he
said.
"A lot of people are waiting for Putin to be re-elected and will start to
commit resources after that," he added, referring to the presidential
elections scheduled for March 2004.
In terms of accumulated foreign investment by countries, Germany leads the
way, having invested a total of $7.2 billion in Russia in the last decade,
followed by the United States' $5.4 billion and Cyprus' $4.8 billion.
Oddly, Goskomstat figures show that in the first half of 2002 alone,
Russian investments abroad totaled $10 billion, with the United States
accounting for just over half of the total -- $5.6 billion -- roughly
equivalent to all the money invested in Russia by Americans in the last
decade.
However, analysts were quick to point out that this figure was most likely
due to Goskomstat methodology, which counts trade credits as investments.
For example, Goskomstat, using so-called "double accounting," counts the
money companies prepay for goods as an investment even if the goods are not
received.
The European Union remains Russia's top trading partner, accounting for
37.6 percent of all trading volume, down from 38.4 percent in the same
period of 2001.
Although Russia's total bilateral trade volume with the EU was unchanged at
$25.3 billion, its traditional trading partners lost market share to fellow
union members -- namely the Netherlands, which saw its trade turnover with
Russia jump by 60 percent to $3.9 billion.
Trade with Germany, for example, dropped 7 percent to $6.6 billion, while
trade with Italy fell 3.8 percent to $4.5 billion. Turnover with Britain
was down 16 percent to $2.1 billion, with Finland trailing close behind at
$2 billion, which was 13 percent lower than in the year ago period.
Trade turnover with fellow CIS nations was $11.4 billion, while with
Central and East European countries it amounted to $8.6 billion. Trade with
China, the United States and Japan totaled $3.8 billion, $3.1 billion and
$1.2 billion, respectively.
*******
#10
Insight magazine
September 2, 2002
Highway Robbery
Was the Russian free market looted by a Harvard team of reformers?
By Kelly Patricia O'Meara (komeara@insightmag.com)
Kelly Patricia O'Meara is an investigative reporter for Insight magazine.
Americans are becoming only too aware of the financial tricks and deceit in
which some of the nation's largest and most respected corporations engaged
during the Clinton administration to pump up stock prices with fraudulently
inflated profits. When the huge bubble no longer could be sustained the men
and women at the top would bail out of their stock and pocket millions,
leaving pensioners and other investors holding an empty bag. To market
insiders these are known as "pump and dumps."
While federal investigators are looking into the corporate malfeasance at
Enron, WorldCom, Qwest Communications, AOL Time Warner and Adelphia
Communications, to name just a few, little attention has been paid to
similar financial shenanigans perpetrated by alleged American and Russian
"reformers" in the former Soviet Union during the same period. To those who
have studied these "assistance" programs, which were led by Harvard
University's best and brightest, what happened was just short of the
financial rape of Russia.
Little more than a decade ago Americans sat transfixed in front of their TV
sets watching the Evil Empire implode and full of hope that Russians would,
like Americans, take up the mantel of freedom. Unfortunately, say
authorities on contemporary Russia, what happened more closely resembles
the contemporaneous looting of corporate America and has left the Russian
people disillusioned and angry at what they presume is the American way.
No sooner had the dust of communism settled than advisers recommended by
the U.S. government descended on what remained of the former Soviet Union.
The vision was as simple as it was promising: Communism was dead and
something had to take its place. Why not American-style capitalism?
From 1992 to 1997 nearly $60 million was appropriated to the Harvard
(University) Institute for International Development (HIID), and was
distributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), to
help "countries of the former Soviet Union carry out political and economic
reform in support of open markets, including establishment of transparency
in regulatory and other governmental decisionmaking."
This political and economic "reform" was paid for by American taxpayers and
placed in the hands of Russian-born emigre and Harvard professor Andrei
Shleifer, the project director and principal investigator for the program,
and Jonathan Hay, the general director in charge of the Moscow offices.
With the support of higher-ups in the Clinton administration, including
Harvard men and Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers,
Shleifer and Hay and their hand-picked Russian agents — the "dream team" as
they were referred to — took free-market capitalism to a new low.
The federal government now is suing Shleifer, Hay and Harvard University
for "false claims submitted by Harvard University to the United States
Agency for International Development, USAID." The lawsuit alleges that Hay
and Shleifer violated the terms of their agreement with the USAID by
participating financially in the businesses they were sent to Russia to set
up and advise.
Specifically, the government alleges that the defendants "not only violated
the express requirements of the Cooperative Agreements with USAID, their
conduct sent exactly the wrong message about how open and transparent
markets should function, and undermined the objective that they were hired
to pursue in furtherance of the United States' strategic interests in
Russia."
How did Shleifer and Hay send the wrong message? The Department of Justice
action, filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, provides examples:
"In July 1994," the government alleges, "Shleifer agreed to invest $200,000
in Russian equities through a company known as Renova Invest. Shleifer
arranged the initial details of the investment and was identified in the
documentation as the owner. The $200,000 came from his wife Nancy
Zimmerman's account, but the profits from these investments were returned
to Zimmerman and Shleifer's joint account."
"Beginning in the summer of 1994 Shleifer transferred at least $99,000 in
funds from his own account, and $165,000 in funds from his joint account
with his wife, directly or indirectly, to Channel Island accounts for the
purchase of Russian oil stocks. The stocks were purchased with those funds
but registered in the name of Shleifer's father-in-law, Howard Zimmerman.
Shleifer personally solicited Hay's participation in these investments and
asked for and received from Hay a check for $66,000 in 1994 for that purpose."
"In late 1995 Hay invested $20,000 in the Flemings Russian Securities fund
managed by Elizabeth Hebert (now Hay's wife). That fund focused exclusively
on Russian equities, and its stock selections were managed by Hebert."
"In or about August 1996, Hay's father transferred $200,000 of Hay's funds
to his own account and then used these funds, together with another
$200,000, to provide startup financing for Julia Zagachin to purchase the
First Russian Specialized Depository, FRSD, from its then owners, Forum
Financial Group."
The 70-page filing concludes that "Harvard, Shleifer and Hay knowingly
caused false claims to be submitted to USAID and are therefore liable under
the False Claims Act, FCA. This is not a case where Defendants did not know
the rules — it is one where they did not care. Harvard and its employees,
no matter how brilliant, are still subject to the laws of the United States."
Like Enron and the other corporate failures, the Russian-aid program seems
to have been designed deliberately to confuse, say critics. While there is
no exact figure as to just how much assistance money was under the
influence or control of Shleifer and Hay, those who have studied the failed
reform programs think it is in the hundreds of millions — if not billions —
of dollars and resembles Wall Street schemes wherein a few on top reaped
sums stolen from the many.
Anne Williamson is a Soviet and Russian specialist and author of the
forthcoming book, Contagion: The Betrayal of Liberty, Russia and the United
States in the 1990s. She tells Insight that "it's great that the Justice
Department has brought this suit against Hay, Shleifer and Harvard, but the
problem is they're not looking at the rape of Russia. All the government is
looking at is Hay and Shleifer's personal investments and abuses of the
program the government gave them to control. The suit is just addressing a
very narrow part of a much bigger problem."
Williamson explains, "The larger issue is the amount of U.S. taxpayer money
these men had direct and indirect control over. They could funnel large
amounts of money to people who were nothing less than quislings —Russians
who were willing to sell out for money. What we did beyond the economic
abuse was we built up a very small group of people and labeled them as
reformers and great democrats. The perverse result of this was that every
other Russian reformer was pushed aside. It was the opposite of open debate
and democracy. Our money — taxpayer money — actually smothered other actors
who weren't all communists, but rather were decent people who were trying
to have input into the process in the creation of a new country, a new
government and a new way of life."
"They got pushed aside," continues Williamson, "because they couldn't
compete with the hundreds of millions of dollars the United States was
pouring into people Harvard had identified as people who would work with
them on their reform program, which really was just to loot Russia.
Harvard's mission was not to deliver all the legacy of the Russian people
into the hands of a dozen people — this is not what was sold to the
American taxpayer. I was there in Russia while it occurred. I was an
eyewitness to what happened, and every Russian knows what happened, every
Russian resents what happened and every Russian resents us for it."
Williamson concludes: "Hay and Shleifer took advantage of the opportunities
provided to them. Harvard University privatized our aid program, then they
socialized the benefits amongst themselves and their supporters in the
private investment world, then socialized the risk by dumping it on the
U.S. taxpayer when their policies failed and Russia defaulted on its loans
in 1998. We now have to deal with a large territory and significant piece
of geography that is controlled by a handful of corrupt people we support.
The issue isn't political or cultural, it's an issue of corruption. It
addresses the fact that our government, and representatives chosen by the
government, are corrupt. There are large groups feeding from the public
treasury under the camouflage of foreign aid, humanitarian work, building a
better world, exporting democracy — all phrases under which the theft is
organized. The answer is to end all foreign aid — absolutely, tomorrow,
shut it down."
Janine Wedel, professor of public policy at George Mason University and
author of Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to
Eastern Europe, tells Insight that "the U.S. supported the creation and the
thriving of the oligarchs by supporting privatization. The entire policy
apparently was to underwrite Anatoly Chubais et al., and the Harvard
clique. Much of the economic aid went to them, including USAID money and
also hundreds of millions of dollars from the World Bank and IMF
[International Monetary Fund] loans. The Harvard people were intimately
involved in the 'reforms,' and especially privatization, which were
thoroughly corrupt in the way that they were implemented. It was
devastating to many Russians."
But, Wedel says, "The damage is done. Privatization in Russia is largely
over and those who got the spoils got the spoils. These things had a
beginning and an end, but the end continues in a big way. It's very hard to
underestimate the effect of privatization on economics, politics and
society in Russia. Think of a country in which practically everything is
state-owned and all of a sudden there are all of these enterprises and
natural resources to divvy up. Just think of the politicized corrupt
processes that might go on. It's hard for us to imagine, but essentially in
Russia a few at the top got almost all of it. With this privatization the
people who got it got it forever, and realistically there's no going back."
Wedel concludes: "What happened in Russia is really egregious, and the
answer to the problem is that you can't have a monopoly on policy and
information and a clique on both sides dictating policy and information.
That's just a program for disaster. The monopoly on Russian reform was
almost 100 percent given to the Harvard/Chubais group with little
independent information being considered, and it was enabled at the highest
levels of the U.S. government. A lot of Russians believe the U.S.
deliberately set out to destroy their economy. What happened in Russia
certainly goes against the grain of any sort of reform in the traditional
sense of the word — meaning progress."
Joe Wrinn, a spokesman for Harvard, denies that the university was guilty
of any of the charges, explaining that "no one has ever criticized the
actual work that was done in Russia by HIID." Did Harvard profit from
investments in Russia? According to Wrinn, "Harvard doesn't talk about any
of the trades. We give out something called the "John Harvard Letter" and
that goes through different types of investments as opposed to a particular
company or particular stock. I don't think the Justice Department has
raised issues about Harvard Management, the university's investment arm."
True, the Justice Department hasn't raised this issue, but Harvard was one
of only two foreign entities allowed to bid in the "Loan for Shares"
program directed by Shleifer and Hay in Russia. What Harvard Management
made on those investments is anyone's guess, but Harvard's endowment went
from approximately $4 billion in 1992, the first year of HIID's contract,
to $19 billion in 1998.
Those dates cover a Clinton administration that included Rubin, a former
Harvard Management board member; Summers, a former Harvard professor and
current president of the university; and Harvard graduate Albert Gore, who
personally oversaw Clinton policy toward Russia. Despite Harvard's denials
of wrongdoing, the HIID has been renamed and put under the authority of the
Kennedy School of Government, where the university's most reliable
political clout is heavily concentrated.
While Williamson and Wedel believe Harvard is guilty of the charges against
it, both scholars say it is a sideshow to the bigger picture of the
financial raping of Russia. "Our privatization," Williamson says, "brought
forth an absolutely perverse result in that we transformed the majority of
ownership of all Russian enterprise from the Russian people as a whole to
the Russian government. Not even Stalin attempted that, but we delivered."
*******
#11
The American Prospect
Volume 13, Issue 15. August 26, 2002.
http://www.prospect.org/
One-Day Wonder
The dangerous absurdity of the Bush-Putin arms treaty
By Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay
Senior fellows in foreign-policy studies at the Brookings Institution.
This September, when the Senate returns from its summer recess, the Foreign
Relations Committee plans to vote on the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive
Reductions, which Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin signed at the
Moscow Summit in May. Bush claims the treaty "will liquidate the legacy of
the Cold War," but it does no such thing. Nor was this really his
administration's intention. Rather, the objective, which this treaty now
codifies, is to ensure that the United States retains maximum nuclear
flexibility -- by enabling it to deploy its nuclear forces in any way that it
wants. The result is a treaty that makes the world no safer than it was
before, and much the worse for failing to achieve a genuine reduction in
nuclear weapons.
Bush came to office committed to "leave the Cold War behind" and "rethink the
requirements of nuclear deterrence." The United States would reduce its
nuclear forces to the "lowest possible number consistent with our national
security." And it would do this through unilateral action rather than through
a legally binding agreement with Russia. Last November, then, Bush announced
the United States would reduce its strategic nuclear arsenal over the next 10
years, from its current level of about 7,200 warheads to between 1,700 and
2,200 warheads. At first, he resisted Russian demands to codify this
commitment in a formal, binding agreement. But in deciding last December to
withdraw the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Bush
agreed to soften the blow to Moscow by affirming these offensive force
reductions in a legally binding treaty.
But it is important to understand what the Moscow Treaty says -- and more
important, what it doesn't say. The only legally binding commitment the
United States and Russia undertake under the terms of the agreement is to
deploy no more than 1,700 to 2,200 warheads on "operationally deployed"
launchers by December 31, 2012. The treaty is deliberately silent on what
will happen between now and then. Moreover, at the exact moment 10 years
hence, when the limits on force levels go into effect, the treaty will
expire, unless both parties agree otherwise. In other words, the United
States and Russia are free -- except for a single day a decade from now -- to
deploy as many (or as few) warheads on operationally deployed systems as they
like. Yes, it is as absurd as it sounds.
Even worse, and directly undermining Bush's claim that it liquidates the Cold
War's legacy, the treaty is silent on what happens to the weapons to be
retired. They can be stored, put in reserve or dismantled -- whatever the
parties wish. There is no obligation to liquidate anything. The treaty also
says nothing about how many warheads a missile can carry or how many
launchers each side can have. Russia, for example, will be free to put
multiple warheads on its new land-based missile forces -- a procedure banned
by the START II Treaty that the elder George Bush and Boris Yeltsin signed in
January 1993. (START II, which never entered into force even though both the
U.S. Senate and the Russian Duma gave their conditional consent, was slated
to have been implemented by 2007.) What remains in effect is START I, a
Reagan-era arms-control document that we signed with the Soviet Union, which
stipulates force reductions that both nations have in fact already achieved.
Now this will be augmented by an agreement to reduce U.S. and Russian forces
for at least a single day 10 years from now. If either Washington or Moscow
decides it does not like that constraint, it can withdraw from the treaty by
giving 90-days notice. And this is called arms control!
To be sure, it is possible that 10 years from now the United States and
Russia will decide to extend the life of the Moscow Treaty. It is even
possible that the two nations will agree to dismantle the retired weapons.
The relationship between Moscow and Washington is changing -- and for the
better. Nuclear weapons, and joint measures to control them, are becoming a
less contentious part of their relations.
But one cannot assume that U.S.-Russian relations will grow inexorably
closer. Putin is attempting a fundamental shift in Russia's foreign policy,
one that has left much of Russia's elite grumbling. Economic hardship or
foreign-policy humiliation could produce an unstoppable demand to return
Russian policy to its traditional antagonism to the west. One role of arms
control is to guard against this danger. Yet this is precisely what the
Moscow Treaty fails to do. Remarkably, an administration that prides itself
on its hard-nosed realism is ignoring the first rule of international
politics: Hope for the best, but guard against the worst.
What accounts for this failure? The Bush administration argues that arms
control reflects old-fashioned Cold War thinking, that what is needed today
are not formal, detailed agreements about mutual obligations but informal
exchanges of intentions. As National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice puts
it, the Moscow treaty "codifies what President Bush and President Putin have
decided independently are the levels needed to defend their countries ... in
a way that doesn't look like an agreement that you would make with an enemy
like the Soviet Union, but rather more like a defense-planning guidance with
the Russians." In other words, friends don't do treaties. Putin needed a
treaty and got one, but that was Bush's only concession. In keeping with true
administration policy, the treaty's actual provisions were drafted to
facilitate a strategy that has nothing to do with arms control.
The Bush administration does not so much object to arms control per se
(although it does that as well) as it does to placing any constraints on
America's freedom of action. It believes that as the most powerful nation on
earth, the United States should not and cannot be constrained in ways that
other lesser powers can. The Bush administration has made this abundantly
clear, from the Kyoto Protocol to the ABM Treaty, the International Criminal
Court to the Comprehensive Test Ban. It rejects some treaties, withdraws from
others, and even engages in the novel practice of "unsigning" those it truly
detests.
This Thucydidean philosophy -- that the strong do as they can and the weak
suffer as they must -- is the leitmotif of the administration's foreign
policy. Thus, the Nuclear Posture Review that the Pentagon sent to Congress
in January raised the prospect of using nuclear weapons in the midst of a
conventional conflict to attack targets capable of withstanding non-nuclear
attack. This fetish for flexibility emerged even more clearly in Bush's West
Point speech in June, when he embraced a new policy of preemptive nuclear
war. The administration now proposes to "strike first" -- regardless of
whether there is political support at home or abroad for such an action, and
perhaps without proof that a threat to our safety actually exists. So much
for the Constitution and 200 years of military practice.
The Moscow Treaty elevates this flexibility fetish into the law of the land.
As a senior administration official told The New York Times, "What we have
now agreed to do under the treaty is what we wanted to do anyway. That's our
kind of treaty."
Unfortunately, it does little to liquidate the Cold War's primary legacy:
many thousands of nuclear weapons. For that, a different, more ambitious
agenda is necessary. Its central goal must be to marginalize nuclear weapons.
That requires taking the following steps:
Reduce U.S. nuclear forces to 1,000 strategic weapons. In a world in which
Russia is a friend and no other potentially hostile country has more than a
few dozen strategic warheads, 1,000 nuclear warheads would deter anyone who
can be deterred. As McGeorge Bundy recognized more than three decades ago,
"in the real world of real political leaders ... a decision that would bring
even one hydrogen bomb on one city of one's own country would be recognized
in advance as a catastrophic blunder; 10 bombs on 10 cities would be a
disaster beyond history; and a hundred bombs on a hundred cities
unthinkable." We have long lived in Bundy's real world -- and we certainly do
so now.
Complete the weapons cuts by 2004. The Moscow Treaty gives both sides 10
years to implement its reductions. But because weapons can be stored, those
reductions can be accomplished much more quickly. In nine months in
1991–92,
the United States removed more than 4,000 tactical nuclear weapons from
active duty. There is no reason why these reductions should take much longer.
Agree with Russia to eliminate all tactical nuclear weapons. The new treaty
is silent about the thousands of short-range nuclear weapons the United
States and Russia have in storage. They serve no military purpose, and they
are precisely the kind of weapons Osama bin Laden would love to obtain.
Destroy all weapons to be retired. More than 10 years after the Cold War
ended, the United States and Russia still have 30,000 nuclear weapons between
them. That is a Cold War legacy we can surely do without.
Ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This treaty would create a
worldwide system, including sensors in closed societies such as China and
Iran, for monitoring clandestine nuclear explosions. The result would reduce
the nuclear proliferation threat.
Rather than continuing with treaties that are all form and no substance,
Washington and Moscow should return to the bargaining table and come back
with a compact that truly makes major, enduring reductions in nuclear
weapons. Yes, the United States would have to sacrifice some flexibility. But
it would get something more important in return: enhanced security.
********
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