Makarov went further, telling di Paola that Russia
was now ready to work with NATO "to pool efforts to find solutions to
contemporary challenges and threats to international security". Di Paola
welcomed the Russian general's offer, assuring him that NATO views
Moscow as a "strong strategic partner, not as a threat or an enemy". He
spoke vaguely about new members having to "meet NATO standards",
avoiding the U(kraine) and G(eorgia) words during their press
conference. Russian and NATO experts will draft a joint action plan for
2011 within the next few months, he said.
Russian NATO Ambassadoor Dmitri Rogozin
recently boasted that "Russian helicopters will ideally fit Afghan
conditions: they are easy to operate, reliable, efficient and known by
Afghan pilots." He offered to train Afghan pilots in addition to the
Afghan policeRussia is now helping train. Makarov even offered
"consultancy in military and combat training based on our Afghan
experience, including our mistakes". The deal is estimated at $300m
though Rogozin hinted that a discount beyond the three free copters was
possible and that Russia could kick in another 19 in 2012. So, if I
understand this correctly, Russia's Afghan communist allies from the
days of Soviet occupation are
now going to man the same old Russian
helicopters to kill yet more Afghan patriots, the only difference being
the language the occupiers speak and their capitalist pedigree.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko
is also feeling the chilly wind of Russia-US detente these days. The
Russian state-owned NTV, watched by millions of Belorussians, broadcast a
scathing two-part documentary "The Belarusian Godfather" last week as
the Kremlin was hosting leading Belarusian opposition figures, in a
campaign to unseat their troublesome ally in the presidential elections
next February. The Russian ire peaked last month over unpaid gas bills,
disagreements over the proposed new customs union with Kazakhstan, and Lukashenko's refusal to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia,
as it, like Russia, seeks to curry favour in Brussels. Upping the ante,
a sympathetic interview with Russian nemesis Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was broadcast on Belarusian TV and Lukashenko is currently hosting deposed Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Bakiyev's overthrow was approved if not abetted by Moscow, and the
comparison of Lukashenko and Bakiyev in "The Godfather-II" is a stark
warning to Lukashenko that his days are numbered.
What accounts for this sudden effusion of East-West
friendship, after years of complaining about NATO encirclement and
missile bases in Poland?
Obama's more accommodating tone and NATO's pause in
its eastward march has clearly mollified the Russians. It also looks
like disagreements over Ukrainian/ Georgian membership in NATO and South
Ossetian/ Abkhazian independence are all on the backburner now as the
US sinks deeper and deeper into its Afghan quagmire. Russia backs the
losing war there because it is very worried about the prospects of a
Taliban victory. Better a pro-US dictatorship than another Islamic
neighbour. Besides, the helicopter deal (and who knows what else?) will
replace its $1 billion loss on Iranian missile sales.
But Afghanistan is not Belarus, and rather than moving forward and trying to reach an accommodation with Afghanistan's popular resistance movement,
Russia is ignoring the lesson it learned with such pain two decades
ago, gambling that the US can produce a miracle where it failed. It is
also gambling that the US and NATO are too preoccupied -- and grateful
to a newly nice Russia -- to try to pull off another colour revolution
in Belarus, where Russia is counting on a largely pro-Russian nation
finding a replacement to Lukashenko who will not cause the headaches
that he, the orange, rose and tulip revolutionaries have caused.
Whatever happens in Afghanistan and Belarus,
Medvedev's two greatest wishes now are to get SALT through the US senate
and to pave the way for Russia to join Europe. To clinch this westward
reorientation, there are now signs that Russia will do the unthinkable:
work with the US on missile defence. In a New York Times oped,
ex-Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov and ex-German US ambassador
Wolfgang Ischinger, co-chairmen of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative
Commission, joined former senator Sam Nunn
in calling for "North America, Europe and Russia to make defence of the
entire Euro-Atlantic region against potential ballistic missile attack a
joint priority". They propose the creation of a "more inclusive and
better-defended Euro-Atlantic community ... what national leaders in
their moment of hope at the Cold War's close spoke of as a 'Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals whole and free for the first time in 300 years'."
Acceding to US plans for missile defence will kill Medvedev's two birds with one stone. The NYT
oped panders to Russian self-image by calling for the US, EU and Russia
to "undertake as equal parties to design from the ground up a common
architecture to deal with the threat". It soothingly assures us that a
joint Starwars will "aid progress in bolstering the nuclear
nonproliferation regime". Left out of the equation is the glaring fact
that a world encircled by hair-trigger missiles is more likely to be a
trigger for war than peace, that the whole point of Starwars is to
create facts-on-the-ground for the US empire which will allow it to
dictate just what kind of world order is acceptable. As for boosting the
NPT, the only way to discourage countries from emulating the nuclear
powers is for them to give up their deadly weapons and stop threatening
the world with them. It is naive of Russia to think it will be able to
veto, say, a
war on Iran
or some other "offender" of what the US deems to be OK, or that
countries threatened by US invasion will stop trying to acquire weapons
that will make the US think twice.
This new accommodating Russia is very much in the US global interest and Obama is sure to keep courting Medvedev,
despite attempts by Cold Warriors to undermine the budding friendship,
as witnessed in the mock spy scandal last month. Given the new westerly
wind blowing out of the Kremlin, geopolitical logic could mean an end to
Brzezinski-like plans to encircle Russia. Much better to leave the problems of a remote Kyrgyzstan
to a friend. Let it deal with complex ethnic and economic problems
which
Americans can't hope to understand or solve, using a Russian (NATO?)
military base as the occasion demands rather than maintaining an unpopular US one. Ukraine? Georgia? Bela-who? Afghanistan is what's important, if it can be secured in the Western fold, with Russia in tow. And Starwars.
The goal of Obama's imperial team is to rally Russia
to the US (oops, I mean NATO) flag and push on. Ivanov et al explain
that if all goes well, soon along with China, we "can explore
cooperation on the role and place of missile defense in a multipolar
nuclear world." It looks like Medvedev has opted for US empire even as
it implodes. Will Hu get the hint?