Russian roulette (opinion by the UK Financial Times)
By Robert Cottrell
news.ft.com
As the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks approaches, old problems are re-emerging in Russia's relations with the United States.
They include Russia's insistence on maintaining close relations with Iran, Iraq and North Korea, countries that the US calls an "axis of evil". Perhaps more ominously still, tensions are spilling over again from Russia's civil war in Chechnya. The durability of the new US-Russian partnership, forged when Vladimir Putin, Russian president, backed the US-led assault on the Taliban, is being tested.
Russia has denied responsibility for a bombing raid last week on villages in northern Georgia, across the border from Chechnya, that killed one person and wounded seven. Sergei Ivanov, Russia's defence mister, has suggested Georgia's own forces might be to blame. But the US, an ally of Georgia, holds Russia responsible. Washington says it is "deeply concerned" by "the violation of Georgia's sovereignty".
The incident has reduced Russian-Georgian relations, always fractious, to one of their lowest levels in a decade. Georgia's parliament has called on Eduard Shevardnadze, its president, to start pulling out of the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States and has demanded the closure of the last Russian military bases left in Georgia from Soviet times.
The US has said it does not want this dispute to threaten its generally good relations with Russia. In some practical ways those relations are still improving. Last week Russia and the US co-operated in a dramatic operation to remove enriched uranium from a disused nuclear reactor in Serbia. But the tensions along the Russian-Georgian border may not easily be contained.
Russia's argument is that Chechen rebels are taking refuge and resupplying themselves in the wild border regions of Georgia close to Chechnya. The alleged bombing raid last week was against targets in one such region, the Pankisi Gorge. Georgia says Russia is greatly exaggerating the problem. But Russia goes further. It says that if Georgia cannot secure its own border regions, it should let Russian troops do the job.
The brutality of the Chechen war made it a defining issue in Russia's relations with the west when fighting began in 1994 and again in 1999 when Mr Putin, then prime minister, launched a second campaign. The war has destroyed Chechnya's economy and infrastructure, scattered its population and radicalised its separatists. Russia calls the rebels "bandits and terrorists". It says they have links to al-Qaeda, making the fight against them part of the west's war against terrorism.
After September 11, the US and Europe muted their criticism of the Chechen war for fear of angering a Russia whose help was needed elsewhere. But now, as the situation in central Asia stabilises and yet Chechnya remains a battleground, concern and criticism are resuming.
Even if the west partially accepts Russia's view of the war in Chechnya as an "anti-terrorist action", extending that war into Georgia would mean spreading the chaos, rather than containing it.
Chechnya is not the only problem now reasserting itself in US-Russian relations. Russia's refusal to reduce ties with Iraq, Iran and North Korea is also starting to irritate Washington. Last week Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, said Russia was damaging its interests by "parading" its friendships with "terrorist" countries.
But the underlying problem here may be less than meets the eye. It is true Russia has dismayed the US by preparing to sign an economic agreement with Iraq, under which Iraq is promising $40bn or more in contracts to Russian companies over the next 10 years. But this may also be Russia's way of putting a price on its economic interests in Iraq. It may be indicating that, as long as these are respected and protected, it will accept a US ousting of Saddam Hussein.
Similarly, by offering publicly in July to build five more nuclear reactors in Iran, in addition to one already under construction, Russia may merely be raising the "sticker price" of ending its nuclear co-operation there, in line with US demands.
As for North Korea, Russia has placed a modest diplomatic bet that seems to be paying off. By courting Kim Jong-il, the North Korean dictator, Russia has partially displaced China as Pyongyang's main ally. North Korea has recently proposed its first economic reforms and is said to have asked for Japan's help in improving relations with the US. Mr Putin can claim much of the credit for coaxing North Korea out of its shell.
It is hard to imagine any similarly optimistic scenarios for the Chechen problem, based on current trends. The destruction there is already so complete, the hatred between Russians and Chechens so deep, that the two sides have locked themselves into a near-medieval fight that other countries can only view with horror and thinly disguised disgust.
Oleg Mironov, Russia's human rights ombudsman, returned from a trip to Chechnya last week saying it was hard to tell Russian soldiers from Chechen bandits. "The most appalling thing is that, by their actions, the soldiers swell the ranks of the militants," he said.
Perhaps the only hope for Chechnya may come if Russia can bring itself to reassess the damage the war is doing to its economic and social fabric, and to relations with the west, in the context of a supposedly pro-western foreign policy. Russia cannot hope to be trusted completely by western countries as long as it demonstrates, through the conduct of a scarcely controlled civil war, that it differs from them in fundamental ways.
Mr Putin's bid to align Russia with the west reduces the question of Chechnya to a relatively simple dilemma. Either a continuing Chechen war can harm Russia's rapprochement with the west, or Russia's rapprochement with the west can help stop the Chechen war. The second of those outcomes implies an arrangement for Russia to receive international help, both military and financial, to resolve what it has so far defended as an internal affair.
This week the Financial Times suggested that the west save Russia from itself by offering so much aid to reconstruct Chechnya, under direct international supervision, that Russia simply could not afford to refuse. The idea has made front-page news in the Russian press.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a conservative newspaper, under the headline "Farewell the Caucasus", reported the FT's proposal as evidence that plans were being drawn up for the US to take control of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Chechnya.
The prospect of foreign peacekeepers, administrators, accountants, builders and engineers thronging Chechnya would be viewed by many Russian politicians as an outrage to Russian sovereignty, however close the co-operation with the Russian government. The sceptics would probably include high-ranking people close to Mr Putin, including Mr Ivanov, his own defence minister, who initially opposed the US presence in central Asia last year.
But the more important domestic consideration would be the effect of such a plan on Russian public opinion. Parliamentary and presidential elections are approaching in 2003-2004. Would voters approve?
Given Chechnya's isolation from the rest of Russia, and given the fatigue and indifference with which most Russians have come to view the war there, it is hard, in principle, to imagine why they should suddenly be outraged by plans to bring peace instead.
That would be especially true if Mr Putin presented a rebuilding of Chechnya with western money as the logical triumph of his own diplomacy. He promised an end to the war when he was first elected president in 2000. Who could fault him now for going out and finding the resources to keep that promise? |
