Global Intelligence Update
Red Alert
August 6, 1998
Developments in Russia and the Persian Gulf
There have been recent developments in two of the stories that we have been
monitoring -- the growing anti-Western backlash in Russia and apparent
military preparations against Iraq in the Persian Gulf region. In Russia,
officials cited anti-American demonstrations in explaining their decision
to shift joint exercises with U.S. Marines away from Vladivostok. In the
Gulf, Iran has expanded its offer to put its military at the service of its
Arab neighbors in the interest of regional peace and stability, and Kuwait
has declared itself ready to defend against an Iraqi attack.
* Russia
Joint exercises between the U.S. Seventh Fleet and the Russian Pacific
Fleet, scheduled for August 6 and 7 in Vladivostok's Kitovaya and
Desantnaya harbors, are being relocated, following Communist-led
demonstrations. The "Cooperation at Sea 98" exercises, which were
announced in June, are the latest in a series of annual military exchanges
between the U.S. and Russia begun in 1994. Now relocated further to the
southeast, on the island of Klerka in the Amur Gulf, the two-day exercises
will simulate a disaster relief operation.
Russia's "Interfax" news agency reported that 150 demonstrators chanting
"Yankee go home" met the U.S. landing craft Germantown on August 4, as it
docked at Vladivostok. Said one of the demonstrators, "We view these
exercises as the covert, creeping intervention against the Russian people
and the Russian soul." The anti-American demonstrations were launched in
late July by regional representatives of the Russian Communist Party, the
Russian Communist Workers' Party, the Working Russia movement, and the
Union of Russian Officers, however they have not managed to muster more
than 200 protestors.
That Moscow would let 150 elderly Communists force the relocation of
military exercises, and moreover that Moscow would let it publicly be known
that all it took to undermine U.S.-Russian military cooperation was 150
elderly Communists, is a significant event. There are two alternative,
though related, interpretations of this.
First, Moscow could have caved in to the demonstrators out of fear that the
situation could evolve into a genuine threat to the Yeltsin administration.
Russia's Communists and other hard-line opponents of Yeltsin and his
Western connections have been bandying about rumors of coups for several
weeks now, and Moscow may have feared that an unforseen incident during the
exercises could be used as a catalyst to rally the opposition against the
regime.
Alternatively, and more likely, the tide is turning even within the Yeltsin
administration. As was clearly demonstrated by his actions during the
abortive coup by hard-liners against Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin knows how
to read public opinion. That opinion is now taking a decidedly
nationalistic, anti-Western turn. Yeltsin has the option of standing by
his Westernizing experiment until Russia's economy collapses around him and
he is ousted in a coup. Or he can proactively don the mantle of
nationalism and beat his opponents at their own game. The Vladivostok
incident likely reflects the evolution of this second option.
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