It’s difficult to avoid the impression that with Russia, we may be gravitating toward a new cold war.  Flush with cash as a result of soaring energy prices, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin behaves like a man who is utterly unconstrained by “world opinion” (however defined), or the possibility of incurring Washington’s wrath. We see Russia’s use of heavy-handed coercion against neighboring countries, most of them democracies; and a willingness to undercut U.S. foreign policy interests time and again in dealing with rogue states like Iran and Syria and with terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas.  Russia has joined with China to push for the closing of U.S. military bases in strategically critical Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.  Moscow and Beijing, who have been cooperating on military intelligence matters since the end of the Cold War, have started conducting joint military exercises—which they claim are not aimed at any other country—reassurances that aren’t taken too seriously in Washington or Taipei. And Moscow is helping fuel Beijing’s military buildup, selling it submarines, jet fighters, destroyers and other advanced weaponry.

While cultivating Beijing, Putin, a man who describes the fall of the Soviet Union as “the geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” has become increasingly shrill in his attacks against Washington.  In a Feb. 10 speech to an international security conference in Munich, he delivered a searing, almost Orwellian attack against the United States. Putin painted a picture of an increasingly brutal, violent world, suggesting that the United States, and not terrorist groups or despots, was to blame. He complained that “unilateral” solutions to problems (in other words, American policies) had resulted in a situation in which principles of international law were disdained in a world in which “nobody felt safe.” Why, he asked, “is it necessary nowadays to start bombing and shooting on any given occasion?”

The Russian leader attacked the idea of expanding NATO eastward and accused the United States of triggering an international arms race. “One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way,” Putin said. “This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law. This is nourishing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons.” (It’s no great leap to say that, in Moscow’s view, Ayatollah Khamenei and Kim Jong Il don’t want nuclear weapons in order to intimidate other countries, but because they feel a genuine need to protect themselves from Bush Administration bullying.)

In an effort to respond to Putin’s concerns, Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week offered to share a missile defense system with Russia—much as President Reagan offered to share the Strategic Defense Initiative with the Soviet Union. On Thursday, Putin responded by freezing Moscow’s commitments under the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which was negotiated right after the Cold War. Gen. Yuri Balulyevsky, the Russian military chief of general staff, warned that Russia might launch a military attack on components of the missile defense system deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The threats from Moscow escalated to the point where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—who can ordinarily be counted on to go out of her way to try to smooth over any rough patches with Putin—spoke bluntly about how absurd Moscow’s stated objections to the system have become. She alluded to the fact that the interceptors are well suited to countering a small-scale missile attack from a country like Iran, but would be useless against Moscow’s much larger missile arsenal. “The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous and everybody knows it,” Rice said April 26. “The Russians have thousands of warheads.”

Russia’s opposition to missile interceptors is just one part of Putin’s aggressive behavior toward Russia’s neighbors. He tried, thus far unsuccessfully, to prevent democratic revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. Moscow has also sought to use its economic muscle in areas such as oil and gas development, energy pipelines and the supply of electricity to remind Russia’s smaller, democratic neighbors who the dominant power in the region is.

One area in which Moscow’s behavior is most troubling has been its approach towards the Middle East—in particular, the rogue-state allies Iran and Syria. In the case of Iran, Putin inherited a strong relationship from President Boris Yeltsin. Under Yeltsin Moscow made a number of large-scale arms sales to Iran, which included tanks, submarines and planes. And Moscow began building Iran a nuclear reactor at Bushehr. Under Putin, military ties between the two countries increased substantially. Shortly after taking office in 1999, Putin abrogated an agreement signed by Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin requiring Russia to end arms sales to Iran by 2000.

Putin also cemented Moscow’s role in running diplomatic interference for Iran against U.S. efforts to impose sanctions against its illicit nuclear weapons programs.  Following a Nov. 24, 2005 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Russia signed a $1 billion arms deal with Iran, which included $700 million for surface-to-air missiles that could be deployed to protect Iran’s nuclear installations. On April 21, 2006, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Nicholas Burns called on Moscow to stop providing weapons to Iran and to end assistance to the Bushehr nuclear project. Russian officials rejected Burns’ request, stating that the projects would go on unless the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions—something that is highly unlikely given the efforts by Moscow to thwart any international sanctions against Iran. (An excellent resource on this question is Dr. Robert Freedman’s July 2006 paper, “Russia, Iran and the Nuclear Question: The Putin Record,” published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.)

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Moscow cut off arms sales to Syria, which had accumulated billions of dollars in unpaid debt for Cold War-era arms purchases. Nonetheless, Russia resumed arms sales to Syria during the late 1990s. Moreover, the arms supply relationship between the two countries has expanded in the wake of President Bashar Assad’s January 2005 visit to Moscow, where Putin agreed to write off nearly three quarters of Syrian debt.

There is also evidence that Russian arms sold to Iran and Syria have “trickled down” to Hezbollah. During last summer’s war, Israel Defense Force troops in Lebanon found evidence that Russian-made Kornet-E and Metis-M anti-tank systems had been provided to the Lebanese terrorist group. After 24 IDF soldiers (relative to population, it would be the equivalent of 1,200 American GIs dying in a single battle) died in the final hours of the war trying to capture the Lebanese town of Ghanouriyeh, they found Syrian-supplied hardware near a Hezbollah outpost: eight Kornet anti-tank rockets. The London Telegraph reported that written beneath a contract number on each casing were the words: “Customer: Ministry of Defense of Syria.

Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.”  On March 2, Ivan Safronov, military correspondent for Russia’s Kommersant Daily, reportedly “committed suicide” under mysterious circumstances circumstances. He was working on a story about Russia’s plans to sell modern MiG-29 fighter jets, Pantsir-SI anti-aircraft systems and Inskander surface-to-air missiles to Syria through Belarus.

The Putin Government treats that Palestinian terror group with extraordinary respect.  Several months ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hosted Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Moscow—the second time in a year that he has received that sort of red-carpet treatment from Russia. Lavrov tried to spin the meeting as a success, claiming to have obtained confirmation from Meshal that Hamas would stop firing rockets at Israel. The events of this past week—when Hamas announced it is ending a five-month-old “ceasefire” during which it attempted to fire hundreds of additional rockets into Israel—show the absurdity (or mendacity) of Russia’s diplomatic efforts on behalf of Hamas. Putin says he does not view Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.

Clearly, for all the problems that exist, Russia still has a number of interests that militate against going too far in aligning itself with radical Islamists, anti-Semites and enemies of the United States. For example, Hamas expresses solidarity with the Chechen separatists who are Moscow’s mortal enemies. If Putin goes too far in embracing Hezbollah or Palestinian terror groups, he jeopardizes what has become a thriving economic relationship with Israel. Russia has thus far declined to sell Syria a top-of-the-line air-defense system, the S-300. Lately, it has been feuding with Tehran over payment for the Bushehr reactor. It is therefore not beyond the realm of possibility that Iran may at some point decide to embrace the Chechen radicals in a show of “Islamic solidarity.” But these are the exceptions. Right now, the factors that encourage Russian hostility to, and differences with, the Western democracies far outweigh their common interests. For Putin, one of Moscow’s primary interests is remaining a dominant military power in Eurasia, and another is making Russia a major geopolitical factor in Middle East once again—mainly by cultivating the Arab/Islamist/anti-Israel bloc.

At the same time, Putin is also making noises about forming a natural-gas cartel a la OPEC. Earlier this month, Iran, Russia, and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan regime attended a conference in Doha, Qatar to discuss formation of such a cartel—something that has been strongly advocated by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It will be very interesting to see if Putin joins Iran in using natural gas to conduct low-level economic warfare against the West.

 

Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.

Share This

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

About the author

1 Comment for Back to the Cold War? Putin’s Policies Head in a Dark Direction