Watch This Space: Russian Military’s Chits Being Cashed In

There is small comfort in the transparent bewilderment of Clinton Administration officials — who were, just days ago, crowing about their successful management of the Russian account — in the face of Moscow’s announced intention to veto any tightening of U.N. sanctions against Libya. After all, a group that was surprised by General Aideed’s hardball and the Haitian military’s willingness to threaten another Somalia rather than have President Aristide’s foisted upon them was bound to be flumoxed by brazen Kremlin contempt for U.S. policy preferences.

Still, if what the New York Times today called a "strongly worded [Russian] threat" to block new Libyan sanctions has the effect of compelling a long-overdue reassessment by Washington of the direction and implication of Moscow’s behavior, the thwarting of Warren Christopher’s largely ineffectual efforts to tighten the screws on Libya will be a small price to pay. Consider several other worrisome developments that also signal ominously what the Times euphemistically calls "the influence of the Russian generals who helped Mr. Yeltsin win his struggle against hard-line lawmakers":

Continuing Military Build-up

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) raised a series of questions this week on the Senate floor concerning unsettling developments in Russia’s military force posture. On 18 October, he supplied new evidence — from both American and Russian sources — that the Russian military is engaged in the fabrication and construction of new road-mobile and fixed-site land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) armed with multiple reentry vehicles (MIRVs), among other, troubling offensive activities.

If true, this would represent a modernization program that: cannot be justified on the basis of legitimate Russian defense requirements; contrasts sharply with the virtual cessation of all such U.S. activities; and, represents an outright violation of the START II treaty which bans either the United States or Russia from deploying land-based MIRV’ed ICBMs. It would also breach the conditions of the Nunn-Lugar aid program which provides U.S. tax dollars for Russian defense conversion and nuclear weapons reductions. The modernization of Russia’s strategic force, still targeted on the United States, raises serious questions about the true motivations behind Russian cooperation on such military activities.

As Sen. Stevens put it:

"[It is time] to take a breath and evaluate the progress [toward reform being] made by Russia…and the choices made by Russian leaders in the employment of scarce resources….U.S. assistance for the destruction of existing weapons may be making available the very resources employed by the Russians to construct new systems to continue the threat against us….The shift [in Russia] has been from conventional and from their normal type of defense spending to the area that is most threatening to the United States, and that is to the modernization and improvement of their ICBM force."

 

Aggressive Behavior in the ‘Near-Abroad’

Russia is increasingly asserting its right — and its intention — to use military force in areas of the former Soviet Union in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Ethnic conflicts are being stimulated or abetted by Moscow as part of a classic Stalinist divide-and-conquer strategy or as a form of Capone-style "protection" racket, or both.

Georgia’s decision to join the Commonwealth of Independent States and to request Russian military intervention is just the latest indication of the success of this strategy. Russia is bringing similar pressure to bear on Azerbaijan, Ukraine(1) and other parts of the former Soviet empire. It is probably just a matter of time before heavy-handed military threats are combined with the ongoing economic extortion being applied to other parts — like the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

In this connection, Moscow’s insistence that the limits of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty be modified so as to permit substantially larger numbers of military personnel and equipment to be deployed in the southern reaches of Russia is particularly worrisome. At risk from such deployments are not only the newly independent states, themselves, but also a key U.S. ally: Turkey.

In this context, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev’s little noted speech to the United Nations on 28 September — in which he enunciated a Russian policy reminiscent of the odious Brezhnev doctrine — is particularly troublesome. Kozyrev proclaimed that "Conscious of its particular responsibility for maintaining peace, Russia has made peacekeeping and the protection of human rights, particularly those of national minorities, key priorities of its foreign policy, first of all in the territory of the former Soviet Union." Kozyrev called on the U.N. to endorse a special "peacekeeping" mandate for Russia encompassing the countries of the "near-abroad" and to provide financial support to Moscow for this sacrifice.

‘Nyet’ on an Expanded NATO

The "new look" in Russian policy towards NATO was also on display in Boris Yeltsin’s about-face on the inclusion of Poland, Czechoslovakia or other East European countries in NATO under present circumstances. On 30 September, President Yeltsin reportedly sent a letter to France, Germany, Britain and the United States warning against the admission of any former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO under present circumstances and proposing instead a joint guarantee of Eastern Europe’s security.

The Clinton Administration esentially capitulated to Russia’s demands today, proposing instead of membership for newly democratic nations of the old Soviet empire an ambiguous "limited partnership" with NATO for virtually any country who wants one — including Russia.

Bottom Line

Russia’s threat to veto a new Libyan sanctions resolution sponsored by the United States, Britain and France — three of the countries that offered the most unconditional support to Boris Yeltsin during his show-down last month with the communist- dominated parliament — is, in short, "no accident." It is rather of a piece with the broader, dangerous foreign policy proclivities of the Russian Old Guard, an unreformed elite that continues to dominate the still-functioning Soviet military-industrial complex.

If the Clinton Administration wishes to have any hope of asserting future claims to effective stewardship of U.S.-Russian relations, it behooves the Administration to effect immediate changes in at least the following areas: the current largely unconditional aid flows (including the hundreds of millions in Nunn-Lugar monies); essentially open-ended bilateral space cooperation; virtual elimination of multilateral strategic export controls; and a Russo-centric attitude, according to which U.S. relations with non-Russian nations of the former Soviet empire are subordinated to Moscow’s sensibilities and/or dictates. It should go without saying, that U.S. defense plans and programs calling for a reckless drawdown in conventional, nuclear, and strategic defense spending should also be revisited at once.

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1. Russian diplomats have tried to discourage Western nations from sending ambassadors to Kiev, suggesting that a full embassy befitting a sovereign country will soon be unnecessary. Instead, they insinuate that a consulate will suffice.