Russia: Other Points of View

MOSCOW'S MOMENT OF TRUTH ABOUT TEHERAN

COMMENTARY

by Gordon M. Hahn

Time is running out for the Kremlin in its up again down again relationship with the mullahs in Teheran.  Moscow has enjoyed fairly good relations with Iran, especially when it comes to trade.  However, the deteriorating relationship between Iran and the rest of the international community is putting the squeeze on Russia’s sometimes troubled, sometimes smooth, relations with the Iranian regime.

To be sure, some progress has been made during the Obama administration in getting Russia to join with the U.S. and other Western and concerned nations to contain the Iranian menace.  Moscow has agreed more than not, to join in voting at the U.N. in favor of sanctions against Teheranm, than for its refusal to come clean about its illegal nuclear weapons program.  Moscow has also cooperated with the sanctions regime.  Last year President Dmitrii Medvedev issued an order ceasing all weapons sales to Teheran, including blocking delivery of the S-300 air defense system contracted earlier.  It also long delayed loading fuel into Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant that went on line this year.

VIDEO and TRANSCRIPT OF VLADIMIR PUTIN'S INTERVIEW WITH CNN's LARRY KING

Putin's interview with Larry King

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT as provided by the Russian prime minister's website

TIME TO REVISE RUSSIAN RESET POLICY?

ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Response to the Heritage Foundation "Time to Revise Obama's Russian "Reset" Policy" by Ariel Cohen, October 26, 2010

by Gordon Hahn 

The article reviewed below was written for the Heritage Foundation by Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., who is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Policy at the Katherine and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Policy at The Heritage Foundation.  Cohen regrets “U.S. concessions on New START, limitations on missile defense, and hands-off policies in Eurasia” because supposedly they “did not prevent Russia from pursuing policies that are often harmful to U.S. interests.”  He proposes a return to a hardline in U.S. policy towards Russia.  Our footnote commentaries assess the veracity, comprehensiveness, and practicality of the author’s policy critique and recommendations.

To access the full analysis, click Download Heritage_Cohen_26_Oct_2010

US-RUSSIA RELATIONS

REPRINTS

U.S. - Russia Relations in Pre-Summit Flux

This report is republished with express permission of STRATFOR http://www.stratfor.com

Just days before the NATO summit in Lisbon in which Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama will meet, Medvedev has postponed his annual State of the State address from Nov. 22 to Nov. 30 to account for a possible shift in U.S.-Russian relations, according to STRATFOR sources in Moscow.

Over the past six months, Moscow and Washington had set many of their disagreements aside to achieve more critical goals. Russia wanted aid on its modernization and privatization programs, a cessation of Western support for Georgia and Ukraine, and a freeze on ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans in Russia’s periphery. The United States wanted Russia to sign onto sanctions against Iran and to drop support for Tehran, as well as provide increased logistical support for the war in Afghanistan. On all these issues, there was some sort of common ground found, meaning that Moscow and Washington seemed to have struck a temporary detente.

THE THIRD TURN

ROPV CONTRIBUTORS

by Patrick Armstrong

The hypothesis of this essay is that the conventional Western view of post-Communist Russia has passed through two cycles and is entering a third. While the first two were grounded mostly on what observers wished to see, the third is shaping up to be based more on reality.

Little Brother

As Tom Graham wisely observed some years ago: while no one will take seriously a country with a declining GDP, no one can ignore one whose GDP is rising. When the USSR fell apart in 1991, its extraordinarily centralised economy, whose links were now were blocked by new national borders, choked and died. Living standards sank, inflation exploded, the tax base collapsed, state employees went months without pay, factory employees were paid in kind, the social support system failed and the demographic decline that had begun in the Khrushchev period accelerated. All indicators worsened at once. This was the time when “free fall” was a favourite descriptor. A reminder of this period was a piece that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 2001, starkly entitled: “Russia is Finished.” Still available on the Net, it makes curious reading today.

U.S. LAUDS RUSSIA ON BARRING ARMS FOR IRAN

REPRINTS

New York Times, Sep 22, 2010

by David E. Sanger and Andrew. E.Kramer

UNITED NATIONS — The White House praised Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, on Wednesday for publicly barring the shipment of an advanced antimissile system to Iran, even as American diplomats here discussed a plan to reopen negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program. 

The Russian announcement and the effort to revive a diplomatic engagement that fell apart a year ago came as President Obama arrived in New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly and laid out what he called an ambitious new approach to American development assistance for the world’s poorest countries. 

“The days when your development was dictated by foreign capitals must come to an end,” Mr. Obama said from the well of the United Nations, the first of two speeches there over two days, drawing applause from nearly 190 nations attending the Millennium Development Goals summit meeting. 

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Luzhkov. The number one story in Moscow these days is the future of Mayor Luzhkov. It is highly probable that the present campaign against him is blessed by the Kremlin. It is rumoured that the object is to get him to go quietly. Luzhkov is a powerful man but that’s a lot of pressure. I expect that he will “retire at his own request for personal reasons” as they used to say (vide Ilyumzhinov). There is a style to the way the Team handles these problems: Nazdratenko was ousted as governor in 2001 with the excuse of poor handling of power failures and appointed head of the State Fishing Commission (where he served at Putin’s pleasure); that pleasure ended in 2003. The Team evidently agrees with Lyndon Johnson’s advice on tents. Nazdratenko is still in the tent, but far off in the corner. What’s happening here I think (most commentators didn’t notice Ilyuzhinov’s departure) is that, bit by bit, the Team is getting rid of people who thought they had jobs for life (and, of course, who aren’t as loyal as they might be. But that’s politics and power the world over.)

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Corruption. I believe that the single greatest problem in Russia today is corruption. I wouldn’t try to estimate how great a proportion of GDP is “taxed” this way, but it is very large. (Others don’t hesitate: 40% or 50%. Surely too high: if that much went to corruption, the only industries left would be brothels and fast cars!). Reducing corruption is said to be a high priority of the government, but how effectively is it being done? According to the Interior Ministry, 8000 people in the first 6 months of the year were prosecuted: among them 4 deputy governors, 3 regional ministers, 8 parliamentarians, 12 heads of municipalities and deputies and 15 heads of local executive power structures. You can’t say that that is nothing, but you can wonder if it goes high enough: as I’ve said before, the anti-corruption campaign will really bite when someone in an office near Medvedev or Putin is arrested. But bit by bit: recently a senior policeman was arrested and 4 Moscow policemen detained on suspicion of kidnapping. In an interesting approach, Sberbank posted a list of employees fired for breach of duty: “We do not want them to work in the banking system again”.

RUSSIA'S POLICY 'THAW' AND AN OBAMA TRIUMPH

COMMENTARY

By Gordon M. Hahn

Russian officials are making statements to the effect that Moscow considers any sale of its S-300 air defense systems to Iran to be banned by the new UN sanctions against that country for its nuclear weapons program.  An unidentified Kremlin source traveling with Russian president Dmitrii Medvedev told RIA-Novosti on Friday that the sale of the S-300s do fall under the new sanctions.  Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) also announced: “An analysis of the provisions of the UN Security Council Resolution 1929 adopted on June 9, 2010, conducted by the FSMTC experts, shows that the restrictive measures contained in the document apply to the delivery of S-300 air defense systems to Iran as well.”  State Duma Foerign Affairs Committee Chairman Konstantin Kosachev, who is close to the Kremlin and a member of the ruling United Russia party, reiterated this view.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov simply cautioned that it was up to the president to make the final decision to be reflected in a presidential decree. (“UN sanctions mean Russia cannot sell S-300 missiles to Iran – officials,” RIA Novosti, 11 June 2010).

UNITED RUSSIA?

REPRINTS

by Paul J. Saunders

www.nationalinterest.org 

Obama administration officials have focused intently on working with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, both in the nuclear talks that led to the new START agreement and now in discussions of United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iran. And they have dismissed the idea that concentrating on Medvedev—at the expense of working with the more influential Prime Minister Vladimir Putin—could put U.S. goals at risk, claiming that “there was not daylight” between the two in the arms control negotiations and that Medvedev and Putin were “in perfect lockstep every step of the way.” Today’s meetings between Putin and the leaders of Iran and Turkey at a regional security forum in Istanbul should raise questions about basing American policy on this assumption.

Putin met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the margins of the “Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia” conference, an 18-nation gathering originally launched by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Ahmadinejad also used the opportunity to praise Turkish leaders for their strong statements in Turkey’s ongoing confrontation with Israel over nine deaths during Israel’s commando attack on a Turkish-sponsored flotilla seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.