by Gordon Hahn
The present ‘spy’ scandal is a tempest in a teapot that will have no effect on the thaw in U.S.-Russian relations, the balance of power within Russia’s ruling tandem of President Dmitry Medvedev and Premier Vladimir Putin, or the Barack Obama administration’s credibility.
Both Moscow and Washington have gone out of their way to downplay the arrest of 10 Russian operatives in the U.S. and one in Cyprus, who seem to have acquired no intelligence, done little in the way of attempting to do so, and were not even charged with espionage. The Robert Hanssen case in 2001 did little to undermine the brief Putin-Bush romance at the beginning of their respective tenures. This mini-event will leave not a trace on the U.S.-Russian relationship.
Neither Russia’s ruling tandem nor the Obama administration will be significantly affected. Alexander Konovalov, president of the independent Institute for Strategic Assessments in Moscow, asserts that the “scandal shows Medvedev as not so tough, not so experienced as the former intelligence officer Putin.” “So, objectively, this can only play directly into Putin's hands.” The fact is that the tandem’s unity remains tight; both Medvedev and Putin support the domestic and foreign policy thaw they both designed. Moreover, there is no reason why the scandal should discredit one more than the other. The duration of the ‘spies’ presence in the U.S. suggests this keystone cops-style operation was implemented when Putin was president. The only real casualty, however, might be SVR chief and former premier Mikhail Fradkov.
The Obama Administration’s credibility, which is being undermined by more serious problems, will not be affected. The view so predominant among Russian politicians and analysts that the scandal was manufactured by conservative elements in the U.S. opposed to Obama’s ‘reset’ with Russia, is absurd. It is more likely that the timing of the arrests was delayed on President Obama’s instructions so they would not cast a pall over President Medvedev’s visit to the U.S. This is why one of the arrests had to occur in Cyprus, as U.S. law enforcement was forced to delay detaining the operative thiough he was leaving the country.
An equally unlikely conspiracy theory holds that Putin (or Russian hardliners in the secret services) provoked the arrests by having the closely-watched operatives begin to leave the country, prompting U.S. to move in before the operatives had engaged in anything approaching espionage.
Finally, the main reason why this scandal is much ado about nothing is that everyone knows that Russia and the U.S. continue to spy on each other. Given the overwhelming preponderance of U.S. power over Russian power, it is certainly understandable that Moscow would seek to redress the imbalance through intelligence gathering. Indeed, even allies have been known to spy on each other.
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