PERVOMAISKOYE: ‘IT TAKES A VILLAGE…’

(Washington, D.C.): The title selected by
Hillary Rodham Clinton for her new book would be a good
prescription for her husband in considering the
implications of Moscow’s genocidal destruction of the
Russian village of Pervomaiskoye over the past four days:
A Russian government inflicting such brutality is one
reverting to form. In fact, the restoration of
totalitarian imperialism in Moscow has now become
unmistakable. Any lingering notions about Boris
Yeltsin’s democratic proclivities and reliability as a
partner in international affairs have been shown to be
unwarranted, and increasingly dangerous,
delusions.⁽¹⁾

Unfortunately, the Clinton Administration continues
to indulge in just such delusions. The State Department
spokesman yesterday could muster no more than moral
equivalence to complain about the behavior of both the
Russians and the Chechens. Meanwhile, in one of the most
callous, morally bankrupt and reprehensible utterances by
an American official in recent memory, Secretary of
Defense William Perry yesterday declared:

“…We believe the Russian government is
entirely correct in resisting this hostage-taking
effort and resisting it very strongly…We would
have, to be sure, had we been asked to conduct such
an operation…chosen a surgical operation rather
than the massive, frontal use of force. But I
don’t want to put myself in the position of
second-guessing the Russian military. It’s a very
difficult situation there and I wish them
well.” (Emphasis added.)

Secretary Perry justifies this outrageous statement
on the grounds that “we reject the right of any
group to take hostages as a means of implementing their
policies.” It is hard, however, to see the Russians
interpreting the Secretary’s blanket endorsement of their
action as other than a green-light for continuing the
campaign of terror in Chechnya that precipitated the
hostage-taking in the first place. At the very least, it
is outrageous that an Administration currently taking
credit for stopping further bloodletting in Bosnia (after
sitting on its hands while some 250,000 were murdered
there) is now applauding acts of genocide by Serbia’s
ally, Russia.

On ‘Wishing Them Well’

The Russian military that Secretary Perry is
declining to “second-guess” and is
“wishing well” is, of course, taking its orders
from a Russian Cabinet now purged of all reformers and
dominated by hard-line thugs like the newly appointed
Foreign Minister (Yevgeny Primakov), Chief of Staff
(Nikolai Yegorov) and head of foreign intelligence
(Vyacheslav Trubnikov). As the Center for Security Policy
noted in a Decision Brief issued last week href=”96-D5.html#N_2_”>⁽²⁾ on the occasion
of Primakov’s ascension:

“Yevgeny Primakov is a man as committed to
restoring the Soviet Union (or at least its key
components) as [former KGB head and Communist Party
General Secretary] Yuri Andropov was to preserving
it. Toward this end, he will seek to reestablish
Moscow’s control over the ‘Near Abroad,’ notably the
Caucasus and Central Asia. He will also continue the
process of building or reinvigorating Soviet-style
strategic partnerships with the most dangerous
nations in the world.”

What’s Really Afoot Here

In particular the appointments of Primakov and
Trubnikov — two long-time KGB operatives with
substantial experience in the Middle East and East Asia
— signals a major shift in Russian foreign policy
orientation. Henceforth, priority attention will likely
be given to cultivating good relations with former Soviet
clients like Iraq and Syria, creating a new (although
probably ephemeral) strategic partnership with Iran and
fostering a rapprochement with China. Make no mistake
about it, such ties will be advanced at the expense of
U.S. and Western interests.

It suits the Russians’ strategic purposes for the
United States to be preoccupied with the crisis in
Bosnia. Indeed, within the past week, Primakov reportedly
told participants in negotiations concerning the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that Russia had special
responsibilities in Central Asia (read, domination of the
so-called “Near Abroad”) as the U.S. has its
hands full in the former Yugoslavia. News articles in
today’s Washington Post highlight the potential
for mischief-making by Russian troops now in Bosnia href=”96-D5.html#N_3_”>⁽³⁾ — a prospect
the Center has long warned of and a valuable tool in the
hands of Primakov and Company should they need to
distract Washington further from their agenda elsewhere.

Adding insult to injury, there is reason to believe
that the Clinton Administration is paying through the
nose to be exposed to this classic Kremlin gambit. In an
op.ed. article published on Tuesday in the Washington
Post, Peter Rodman affirms that:

“President Clinton and his associates have
assured the Russian government that if Russia
cooperates with us in Bosnia, NATO enlargement will
remain on the back burner….The same Russian sources
for this report also suggest that the American
assurances are interpreted as extending beyond the
Russian election into a second Clinton
term.” (Emphasis added.)

In other words, it appears that Moscow may be able
to parlay token — and probably increasingly problematic
— Russian “cooperation” on Bosnia into U.S.
acquiescence to its revanchist agenda in both Central
Asia and Eastern Europe.

Watch This Space

If Russia gets away with completing its ruthless
genocide in Chechnya, it is predictable that the next
steps in their assault on the “Near Abroad”
will include another assassination attempt against
Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev (likely attributed to an
internal power struggle but actually executed by Russian
security services or their surrogates).

Moscow’s next target of opportunity will likely be
President Heydar Aliyev of Azerbaijan. He has, after all,
committed the ultimate offense against the Kremlin —
giving priority to his own nation’s interests over
those of Russia with respect to the secure transport of
Caspian Sea oil to international markets.

The Bottom Line

In short, those who have long cautioned against a
resurgent Russia with anti- Western impulses are being
vindicated even as those who have made careers of
apologizing for Moscow have been shown, once again, to
have erred. This predictable — and predicted — turn
of events suggests that a Clinton policy toward Russia
largely formulated and executed by the likes of Strobe
Talbott is incapable of understanding, let alone
curtailing, the Kremlin’s true, hegemonic and
authoritarian character.

Congress must, consequently, step in to induce an
urgent course correction. Hearings on the fundamentals of
U.S.-Russian relations are required as well as a
“bottom-up” review of the implications of the
hard-line foreign policy shift now clearly underway in
Moscow. The following are among the steps in order — at
least until such a review is completed:

• Senate insistence upon reviewing and putting
  on hold changes being made to the Conventional
  Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty — changes that
  have the effect of enabling Russia to maintain
  larger numbers of equipment and personnel in the
  Caucasus region for the purpose of crushing
  autonomous regimes there and thwarting the free
  flow of Caspian Sea oil to Western markets.
• Blocking the pending disbursement of a $9
  billion loan to Russia by the International
  Monetary Fund — some $2 billion of which is
  American taxpayer money.
• Stopping the $12 billion U.S. purchase of
  highly enriched uranium from Russia, thus denying
  Russia’s notorious MINATOM what amounts to
  bridge-financing needed to help underwrite its
  deplorable nuclear power plant sales to Iran and
  Cuba. And
• Intensifying U.S. support for endangered
  former Soviet republics that have displayed a
  determination to build genuine free market and
  democratic institutions and to pursue pro-Western
  foreign policies.

(1) This point is powerfully
underscored in an article in the current edition of the New
Republic authored by one of the few competent
Kremlinologists, Dr. Peter Reddaway. He warns that the
Russian leader is molting into “Yeltsin Mark V,
restyled as a nationalist and authoritarian. In earlier
lives he was an orthodox communist, a renegade communist,
a democrat and a tentative autocrat.”

(2) See Restoration Watch
#7: Primakov’s Promotion Marks Major Step on the Road
‘Back To the USSR’ (No. 96-D
2, 10 January 1996).

(3) For example, the Post
quotes a “senior NATO officer [as calling] Maj. Gen.
Nikolai Staskov — who is outside the chain of command
originally agreed to by Moscow and Washington — a ‘loose
cannon’ with the capacity to wreak a lot of damage in
very little time.” Another U.S. officer is quoted as
saying “This has the potential to go so sour, so
sour.”