By Gordon M. Hahn
Dr. Sestanovich argues that the Obama administration needs to be "candid" and realistic about "what it will take to strengthen the independence of Russia's neighbors." States are either independent or not – and Russia's neighbors are independent states (with the possible exception of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are now deeply penetrated by Russia's civilian and siloviki bureaucracies and dual citizenships).
But Dr. Sestanovich did not have South Ossetia or Abkhazia in mind. Therefore, if he had been candid, then he would have written what he really means: Washington must continue to be aggressive in pursuing the shrinking of Russia's relations with its neighbors and maximizing Western influence in the former Soviet Union with total disregard for Russian interests and perceived security needs.
This policy has been the basic problem in U.S.-Russian relations in the last dozen years. Washington has sought to maximize its influence in Russia’s perimeter using two tools. The first is democratization of Russia, which is fine as long as methods aren’t destabilizing to Russia’s duly elected and quite popular government. The second and more problematic policy has been the expansion of NATO, the world history's most powerful military alliance along Russia's borders, at the same time rejecting or doing nothing to bring Russia into the alliance.
Great distrust that has been created in U.S.-Russian relations is a result of this policy in addition to other Western policies (as well as Russia's frequent but usually understandable overreactions to them). It needs to be stated that the U.S. promised in 1990 not to expand NATO beyond reunified Germany. Thus, there is an extraordinary high level of distrust in U.S.-Russian relations. In this poisoned atmosphere, no matter how much Russian policy makers have seen of U.S. policy, it is too early for them, as Dr. Sestanovich asserts, "to know that Washington's guiding thought is not how to bring Russia to its knees."
Putting aside the fact that knowing that “bringing Russia to its knees is not the guiding thought” behind U.S. policy may not be entirely reassuring to the Russians. According to this phraseology, it theoretically might be the second or third policy principle or goal. It is. in fact, NATO expansion and the West’s excessive efforts to maximize its influence – regardless of the costs this policy has for Russian interests and security.
One minor example mentioned many times here is that NATO expansion to Ukraine – a country where the majority opposes NATO membership – will require Russia to afford a new naval base for its Black Sea Fleet, and it could spark civil war in neighboring Ukraine due to its millions of ethnic Russians (and Ukrainians) with relatives in Russia.
More importantly, the Obama administration has not renounced either this policy goal or bringing Georgia into NATO. This is despite the fact that neither Washington nor Brussels recognizes Abkhazia’s or South Ossetia’s independence from Georgia – and that Moscow has recognized their independence and has pledged to defend it by force of several thousands Russian troops now stationed in both breakaway republics.
Yet Dr. Sestanovich asserts that “President Obama accorded Russian leaders a degree of deference that even close allies have been denied.” However, America’s NATO and other allies have not been surrounded by NATO’s new members and bases and do not have nuclear arsenals arrayed against the U.S. This makes for a different relationship altogether, does it not? It is hard to expect Moscow to forego the demand for some “deference” facing this rather different security calculus.
Deference is no more an apt description of President Obama’s stance on arms control and missile defense than it is on NATO expansion. President Obama is pursuing a larger disarmament and non-proliferation agenda separate from the issue of U.S.-Russian nuclear competition, and he is only reviewing whether the anti-missile defense systems slated for deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic are necessary.
Dr. Sestanovich claims there are no internal constraints keeping Moscow “from pummeling Georgia again if the opportunity arose.” Of course, there is no internal constraint preventing Moscow from occupying or making Tbilisi look like pre-reconstruction Grozny – and driving Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to a Western professorship. Yet Moscow has not done this to date, even though Moscow controls the air, and has to this day thousands of troops but 25 miles from Georgia’s capitol. Why? Here Dr. Sestanovich betrays a real misunderstanding of what Moscow is about.
Moscow still believes there is a chance for it to integrate with Western interests and institutions and does not want to jettison that possibility. Once NATO tries to expand to Georgia and Ukraine, Moscow will abandon that hope, and that will prompt Moscow to use the opportunity that currently avails it, but of which it refuses to take advantage.
Dr. Sestanovich derives satisfaction that the “geopolitical tide” is moving in favor of the West as “(a)lmost all” the former Soviet republics are the states of the former Soviet Union are already “working with Western governments…to increase their independence from Moscow.” So much for the West’s rejection of “19th century geopolitical” and “zero-sum” thinking that Western politicians and pundits are constantly claiming Russia has failed to get over. Let’s be clear: the words “independence from” here means “closer relations with the West rather than with neighboring Russia.”
Moreover, it is not so clear that Dr. Sestanovich should be so sanguine. When Kyrgyzstan changed its mind over canceling the U.S. Manas base lease, it agreed in principle to host a base for the CSTO rapid reaction force Russia proposed, meaning Bishkek will have two military bases with Russian troops deployed on them. Uzbekistan refuses to join that rapid reaction force because it envisions itself, not Russia, China, or the U.S., as the eventual hegemon in Central Asia. Armenia’s courting of Georgia is Yerevan’s response to Moscow’s courting of Turkey and Azerbaijan. Turkmenistan’s invitation to “American and European companies to help break Gazprom's grip on its energy exports” will likely end as Kyrgyzstan’s original decision to terminate the U.S. base lease; with the small state playing the competing powers off against each other in order to garner benefits from them.
Dr. Sestanovich’s bottom
line is “American support for Russia's neighbors.” But why support Russia’s neighbors while isolating Russia,
particularly if the majority of population doesn’t want NATO? There is no need
to choose one or the other, unless NATO expansion must proceed and do so
without Russia. And why back Russia’s neighbors rather than or even against
Russia given that most of them have no better or worse democracy records than
does Moscow, including Dr. Sestanovich’s Turkmentistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan
(worse), and Armenia (no better).
So is it democracy that Dr. Sestanovich’s policy would further, or is it
the hoped for “geopolitical tide”?
If it is the latter, then Sestanovich, et al, should not be surprised if
that policy meets with Russian resistance. With global jihadism, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea,
and a rising China, does the U.S. really want to create a new enemy out of
Russia?
Dr. Gordon M. Hahn –
Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; Senior
Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program and Visiting
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey
Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California; and Senior
Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis
Group. Dr Hahn is author of two well-received books, Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007)
and Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), and numerous articles on Russian and Eurasian
politics.
ARTICLE IN
QUESTION:
Washington Post
August 6, 2009
What Biden Should Have Said
STEPHEN SESTANOVICH
[The writer is a senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international
diplomacy at Columbia University. He was U.S. ambassador at large for the
former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001.]
Joe Biden has caught hell the past couple of weeks for making some fairly obvious observations to a reporter about Russia's internal problems and for implying that the interests of such a weakened country needn't worry the United States all that much. Moscow officialdom has responded in high dudgeon, and Russian commentators are insisting that the vice president has revealed the dark and irresponsible motives behind American policy. Administration spokesmen dismiss it as just another Biden gaffe.
It's no surprise that comments about Russia's demographic decline, its over-dependence on commodity exports, the shakiness of its banks and so on can be interpreted to mean that the United States intends to push the envelope at Moscow's expense -- and expects to get away with it. Yet it appears that what the reporter asked the vice president was not why America is doing so much to provoke Russia but, rather, why the United States thinks it can deter Russian power while doing so little. As a response to this question, Biden's answer sounded more like an attempt to change the subject, an uneasy way of saying that maybe the Russians, with all their problems at home, will end up deterring themselves. No need for the United States to push the envelope after all.
An uproar, in other words, about whether the United States is overreaching and disregarding Russia's interests should perhaps have been about whether America is trying to succeed on the cheap and is failing to uphold its own interests. But no matter which question the vice president was asked, the Obama administration needs a more convincing answer.
In explaining that the United States is not putting itself on a collision course with Russia, Biden could have claimed credit for what has already been accomplished. And to reassure those who think that U.S. policy is long on talk and short on action, he would have to be more candid about what it will take to strengthen the independence of Russia's neighbors.
Showing that the administration is serious about Russian-American relations is the easy part of dealing with the Biden flap. By now Russian policymakers have seen enough of U.S. policy to know that Washington's guiding thought is not how to bring Russia to its knees. The administration is not counting on Russia's backwardness to win its cooperation. It's counting on common interest.
In his visit to Moscow last month, President Obama accorded Russian leaders a degree of deference that even close allies have been denied. He went far toward building a relationship centered on the strategic nuclear balance -- the heart of Russia's claim to be a great power. He accepted a connection between arms reductions and missile defense that was probably President Dmitry Medvedev's top priority at the summit. And he went easy on an embarrassing recent example of shortsighted Russian decision-making -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's still-unexplained scuttling of 16 years of effort to get Russia into the World Trade Organization.
The administration has a good story to tell about the Russian-American relationship it is trying to build. Can it say as much about what it is doing to bolster Russia's neighbors? It's silly to suggest that Russia's weak banking system or declining population or any of its other internal problems might keep it from pummeling Georgia again if the opportunity arose. Yet there are forces at work of a very different kind that favor U.S. interests.
Almost all the states of the former Soviet Union are already working with Western governments, and with each other, to increase their independence from Moscow. When Kyrgyzstan lets the United States keep using its air base to reach Afghanistan despite Russian bribes; when Uzbekistan refuses to join a rapid-reaction military force that Russia wants to create; when Turkmenistan invites American and European companies to help break Gazprom's grip on its energy exports; when the president of Armenia invites the president of Georgia (who is still denounced by Moscow as a genocidal murderer) to receive an award -- all in the space of a few months, it's clear that the geopolitical tide is moving in the right direction.
This trend does not mean that American support for Russia's neighbors is unnecessary, only that it has a realistic chance to succeed. What Dean Acheson called "the added energy and power of America" will often be decisive. These states want military training and equipment so they can stand up to intimidation. They want the access to international markets that frees them from economic subordination. They want the diplomatic attention that allows them to resist interference in their internal affairs.
These are the practical problems on which the Obama administration needs to make progress if it wants to support the independence of Russia's neighbors. Only if it gets these problems right will reporters get a better answer the next time around.
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