A Scorecard for Gore-Chernomyrdin

(Washington, D.C.): Over the next two
days, largely secretive contacts that
have come to be the Kremlin’s preferred
channel for influencing U.S. policy
toward Russia will resume in Washington.
These meetings will be conducted on the
American side by Vice President Al Gore;
Moscow’s team will be led by Prime
Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. In both
nations, the principals are regarded as
political “comers”; to the
extent that Mr. Chernomyrdin’s boss is
functionally out-of-action and Mr. Gore’s
boss has studiously avoided much
involvement in day-to-day foreign
policy-making, these comers are
increasingly calling the shots in this
bilateral relationship.

As the full import of the
Gore-Chernomyrdin conversations may not
become known to the public for some time
— perhaps not until after the planned
March summit between Presidents Clinton
and Yeltsin, if then — the Center for
Security Policy believes it is important
to shed some light on the issues that should
top the agenda. In the belief that
“you can’t tell the players (what to
do) without a scorecard,” the
following topics and preferred outcomes
are offered as a basis of judging whether
the next few days’ negotiations will
actually advance, rather than
imperil, U.S. vital interests:

The Cuban Reactor Complex

In recent weeks, the Center for
Security Policy has urged renewed
opposition to Fidel Castro’s efforts to
secure help from Russia, Europe, Latin
America — and, if possible, from the
United States — to complete work on the
two irretrievably flawed, Soviet-designed
VVER-440 nuclear reactors under
construction in Juragua, Cuba. href=”97-D20.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾
These efforts — and the intense
criticism of these Cuban
“Chernobyls-in-the-making” they
engendered in Europe and Washington —
may have contributed to Castro’s
announcement on 17 January 1997 that he
was “continuing the suspension”
of construction at Juragua (a status
belied by the fact that construction
resumed in earnest last fall).

A Russian delegation is in Cuba at
this writing — evidently addressing the
prospects for continuing nuclear
cooperation. Moscow’s eagerness to help
Castro bring these dangerous reactors
on-line is perhaps a function of Moscow’s
determination to show other prospective
nuclear clients that it can deliver
completed reactors. Alternatively, it may
be seen as an essential means of ensuring
the continued — if not expanded
— operation of Russia’s invaluable
signals intelligence facility near
Lourdes, Cuba. (According to the Sunday
Times of London, the U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency estimates that Moscow
receives 75 percent of its
military intelligence on the United
States from this complex.) It is a
national scandal that ending these double
threats is not at the top of Gore’s list
of things to discuss — especially in
light of his much-touted interest in the
environment.

Recommendation: Vice President
Gore must make clear to Prime Minister
Chernomyrdin that the United States will
not tolerate the nuclear fueling, let
alone the completion and operation of
these ticking radiological time bombs 180
miles upwind from the United States.
Such an initiative by Russia — or any
other nation — would be regarded as an
extremely unfriendly act and would make
the maintenance of normal relations with
the perpetrating country impossible.

NATO Enlargement

The enthusiasm now exhibited by the
Clinton Administration for the eastward
expansion of the NATO alliance stands in
stark contrast to its initial reluctance
to endorse an initiative opposed by
Russia. The change may be
explained by the Administration’s evident
belief that virtually any further
concessions it would like to make to
Moscow can now be justified by the need
to placate the Kremlin. Prime
Minister Chernomyrdin, Foreign Minister
Yevgeny Primakov, Presidential Chief of
Staff Anatoly Chubais and others are
happy periodically to add to the list of
demands and otherwise encourage the U.S.
to sweeten the pot by denouncing NATO
enlargement. As a result of this dynamic,
American interests are unlikely to be
safeguarded in Gore-Chernomyrdin action
on a wide array of U.S.-Russian
interests.

Recommendation: No further
effort should be made to
“purchase” Russian acquiescence
to NATO’s expansion.
Specifically, Moscow must not be made —
as the Prime Minister demanded at Davos
last weekend — a “full and
equal” political member of a
demilitarized alliance. Neither can it be
offered a veto, either de jure
or de facto, over decisions
about the nations included in an enlarged
NATO. Similarly, Russia cannot be given a
say over the size, nature or disposition
of the military forces deployed as part
of the alliance’s defensive posture. Such
decisions must be made exclusively on the
basis of objective evaluations as to
whether candidate nations qualify on the
basis of a shared commitment to Western
freedoms, democratic institutions and
free market economics, and what will be
required to protect them.

In this regard, the Center welcomes a
concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 10)
recently introduced in the House of
Representatives which calls for the
Baltic States to be “invited to
become full members [of NATO] at the
earliest possible date.” Vice
President Gore should make a specific
point of rejecting a statement by Anatoly
Chubais in January. Chubias told the
Communist newspaper Trud that
steps to consolidate the independence and
institutionalizing of freedom in nations
formerly part of the Soviet empire is
part of a plan “for establishing a
kind of cordon sanitaire around
Russia, beginning with Azerbaijan and
ending with the Baltic States designed to
separate Russia from the civilized world,
to isolate it.”

Caspian Basin

Speaking of Azerbaijan, Russia is
actively working to strangle the
Azerbaijani government’s efforts to
pursue a largely pro-Western course,
specifically with respect to moving its
oil exports to market through pipelines outside
Moscow’s control. To date, the Clinton
Administration has sounded an uncertain
trumpet, alternating encouragement to the
Aliev regime with pressure on it to
accommodate Russian demands (e.g., with
respect to the stationing of Russian
troops in Azerbaijan in the context of
the changes the Kremlin is demanding
concerning deployments in the flank areas
covered by the Conventional Forces in
Europe treaty).

Recommendation: Vice President
Gore should make it clear to his Russian
interlocutor that the United States
regards access to the vast oil reserves
of the Caspian Sea basin as a vital
interest. Washington should
serve notice that it intends to extend an
immediate invitation for a state visit to
President Aliev and that it will
otherwise be active in developing the
independent economic potential of the
Caspian region. This must include
vigorous American resistance to efforts
by Moscow and Tehran to pressure the
littoral states to accept their view that
the Caspian Sea is actually a
“lake” — a formula that would
permit Russia and Iran to demand shared
control over the central deposits in that
Sea. Foreign Minister Primakov’s
aggressive agenda to break the back of
early resistance to Moscow’s version of
the “legal demarcation” of the
Sea by Kazakstan and Turkmenistan should
be pointedly and publicly
rejected by Vice President Gore. Mr. Gore
should also indicate the Clinton
Administration’s determination to seek an
end to ill-advised statutory limitations
on aid to Azerbaijan (e.g. Section 907 of
the Freedom Support Act).

Arms Control

The currency in which the Clinton
Administration appears most anxious to
pay for Russia’s acquiescence to NATO
enlargement is in terms of arms control
initiatives calculated to appeal to the
Kremlin and related concessions. These
may include such sweeteners as a START
III “framework agreement” that
will make further, potentially
destabilizing⁽²⁾
cuts in U.S. force levels in order to
arrive at a strategic posture that Russia
can afford to modernize and maintain.
Also sure to be discussed are ways in
which additional U.S. resources can be
made available in the vain hope of
inducing Moscow to halt production of and
eliminate its chemical and biological
weapons⁽³⁾
and cease the manufacture of additional
fissile material.

Recommendation: Vice
President Gore should make clear that
there will be no further arms control
concessions or financial assistance aimed
at demilitarizing the former Soviet Union
until Moscow comes into full compliance
with its existing arms control
obligations (including the 1990
Bilateral Destruction Agreement
concerning chemical weapons), ratifies
the START II treaty and demonstrates that
such funds are being used for the
intended purposes and not diverted to
activities inimical to U.S. interests
(e.g., subsidizing ongoing Russian
military activities).

Space Station

The International Space Station has
been and remains an important American
initiative. The decision to make the
faltering Russian space program part of
the space station’s “critical
path” — an ideologically driven
(i.e., since the Cold War is over, let’s
pursue symbolic programs to prove our
friendship with the Russians) and
short-sighted decision for which Vice
President Gore bears considerable
responsibility — is now jeopardizing key
milestones of the project. If Russia is
permitted to remain in a
“co-lead” role, the American
taxpayer will inevitably be asked to bear
not only the costs associated with the
serious delays knowingly inflicted by
Moscow on construction of the Service
Module; the Treasury will also have to
pay untold millions more to underwrite
Russia’s future participation.

The Center for Security Policy very
much wants the promise of America’s space
station to be realized but believes that
result will be made difficult, if not
impossible, if the Clinton Administration
proceeds with papering over Russia’s
unwillingness/inability to hold up its
end of the bargain. Doing so can only
create additional programmatic
uncertainty and risks further eroding
public confidence in — and congressional
support for — this important project.

Recommendation: Vice
President Gore should establish a new
basis for Russian participation in the
International Space Station project —
namely as a “subcontractor” on
specific, limited and non-critical
components. A permanent work-around must
be quickly adopted to replace the Russian
Service Module and create a stable,
affordable basis for pursuing
construction of this project.

Russian Bonds

Last November, Russia successfully
issued a general-purpose Eurobond,
attracting $1 billion from U.S. and other
securities firms. This strategic
penetration of Western securities markets
came amidst a suspension of IMF
disbursements to Moscow and a
not-yet-completed rescheduling of some
$100 billion in defaulted Soviet debt to
Western governments and banks.

The Kremlin has thus further weakened
what remains of IMF discipline by opening
a huge “back door” to borrowing
undisciplined, unconditional and
uncollateralized cash. It has also
discovered a funding mechanism to
underwrite the Primakov Doctrine for
enlarging Russia’s influence at the
expense of American and Western
interests, while recruiting influential
U.S. corporations and individuals with a
vested interest in preserving the status
quo with Moscow. href=”97-D20.html#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾

Recommendation: Vice President
Gore should communicate to Mr.
Chernomyrdin that the U.S. differentiates
between the issuing of bonds by
Russian enterprises — where the
purpose of these borrowings are
transparent and rational (e.g., to
modernize production facilities capable
of expanding hard currency earnings from
which the bonds can be redeemed, etc.) —
and those general purpose sovereign
bond offerings designed to
circumvent “conditioned,”
performance-oriented Western lending
mechanisms. The latter are
especially unpalatable to the extent that
they seem likely to wind up replenishing
the coffers of undesirable elements of
the Russian power ministries and
kleptocrcacy. Clearly, the West must
oppose — not applaud — the latter sorts
of borrowing.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that the Gore-Chernomyrdin
sessions should be transformed into a
frank and transparent exchange so that
the American people and Congress can
clearly understand the true state
of U.S.-Russian relations. This would be
a welcome change from the sort of
sweetheart deal-cutting and public
relations-manipulation that have tended
to characterize past sessions of this
bilateral forum — and will likely
characterize the current session, as
well. The right place to start would be a
forthright explanation by the Vice
President and other Administration
spokesmen of precisely what transpired on
the aforementioned recommended agenda
items to the extent that they were even
raised by the American side.

– 30 –

1. See the recent
op.eds written by the Center’s Director,
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. and the Chair of
the Casey Institute of the Center for
Security Policy, Roger W. Robinson, Jr.
in the Wall Street Journal and
the Wall Street Journal Europe
entitled Stop the’Cuban
Chernobyl’ (21 January 1997
and 13 January 1997, respectively). Also,
see the Center’s recent papers entitled Where
is Pena on O’Leary’s Legacy of
Denuclearizing the U.S., Passivity on the
Growing Nuclear Threat in Cuba?
(No. 97-D 16,
29 January 1997), Guess Who
Else Was Listening to Newt Gingrich’s
Phone Call — And to Those of
Millions of Other Americans Every Day?
(No. 97-C 09, 16
January 1997), and ‘Show Me’:
The Allies Must Demonstrate Their
Commitment to Changing Cuba by Halting
the Cuban ‘Chernobyls-in-the-Making’
(No. 97-C 03, 6
January 1997).

2. An article in
this week’s Defense News featuring
an interview with the Commander-in-Chief
of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM),
General Eugene Habiger, reports that:
“Rather than increasing stability,
cuts below the 3,000 to 3,500 deliverable
nuclear warheads the United States would
be limited to under the START II treaty
could have the opposite effect….Rather
than targeting military sites, an arsenal
of less than 1,000 warheads would need to
be aimed at cities to maintain its
deterrent effect.”

3. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Russia’s Covert
Chemical Weapons Program Vindicates Jesse
Helms’ Continuing Opposition to Phony
C.W. Arms Control ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_19″>No. 97-D 19, 4
February 1997).

4. See the
Center’s papers entitled Russian
‘Bondage’: Moscow’s Financial Breakout
Gets Underway With Wildly Oversubscribed
Eurobond Sale ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-C_119″>No. 96-C 119,
26 November 1996) and The
Debate Begins Over Russia’s Financial
‘Break-Out’: Where Will It End
For U.S. Taxpayers, Interests?
(No. 96-C
110, 4 November 1996).