| WASHINGTON - Thirteen days after Sept. 11 Russia's
president, Vladimir Putin, met with 21 leaders from the Duma and
the Presidium of the State Council to determine Russia's response
to America's war on terror.
"One of the participants advocated support for the Taliban,"
reports Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the democratic reform party,
who was present, "while 18 participants proposed that Russia
remain neutral in the fight between America and the terrorists.
Only two said that Russia should participate in the antiterrorist
coalition."
Putin sided with the two, which instantly became the majority.
(For Yavlinsky's idealistic vision of how this could grow into
a Russian-U.S. alliance, try www.eng.yabloko.ru/) Putin then seized
the opportunity to abandon long-held strategic positions without
humiliation and to gain a superpower ally in Russia's inexorable
rivalry with China.
Remember last year's hand-wringing by France's Jacques Chirac
and Germany's Gerhard Schröder about that cowboy Bush's insistence
on a missile defense? Recall their panicky prediction that his
withdrawal from the ABM treaty would surely start a new arms race?
Then Bush abrogated, the Chinese hyperventilated, and Putin all
but genuflected.
Remember the horror of our accommodationists at the East-West
"collision course" sure to be caused by expansion of
the NATO alliance to include nations flush against Russia's borders?
Strange as it seems, many members of the old Soviet Warsaw Pact
have already joined, and soon the three Baltic nations will be
welcomed. Putin has been pacified with regular NATO consultation.
Remember the elite derision at how (yecch!) unilateralist it
sounded when Bush said he would reduce the nuclear missiles we
have deployed by two-thirds no matter what the Russians did? In
Moscow this weekend, Putin will blandly go along with that cut,
and in return for codifying both in a three-page treaty will not
object to our keeping undeployed nukes in our attic.
Ordinarily, these happy developments would cause a paroxysm
of gloating by hard-liners, but we are denied our deserved nyah-nyahing
by the same device Putin used on his score of Russian naysayers:
Sept. 11 reshuffled the deck. Diplomatic circumstances changed,
and so mistaken predictions cannot be held against the muddled
multilateralists.
No longer does Putin fear humiliation if he gives way on armaments
he cannot afford. Russian pride was salved by the injury inflicted
on the U.S. and our need for intelligence help in the terror war,
as well as public buttering-up by an avidly trusting Bush. Putin's
"turn to the West" - more to the U.S. than Europe -
does not seriously undermine his popularity at home.
After welcoming Bush to Russia tomorrow and following the usual
signing, embracing and cold-war-is-over effusion, the Russian
will get to the point: His nation needs capital investment as
well as entry into the World Trade Organization.
We know his population is down to half the U.S. size and his
economy is half as big as that of Portugal, the poorest country
in Europe. But Putin will remind us he is sitting on the world's
largest oil and gas reserves, which could break the OPEC cartel.
Bush, one hopes, will stress the need for sanctity of contracts
and the end of wholesale bribery to attract investors. He should
tell Putin his stranglehold on the mass media makes a mockery
of political freedom, and point out that a war on terror is not
a free pass to continue to brutalize Chechen civilians. Then to
the big one. For
a whopping fee, Russia is helping Iran construct a 1,000-megawatt
nuclear reactor at Bushehr (a name George W. can easily remember)
with a uranium conversion facility able to produce fissile material
for nuclear weapons.
At the same time, hundreds of Russian technicians are helping
Iran develop the Shahab-4 missile, range over 1,250 miles, to
carry a nuclear or germ warhead anywhere in the Middle East and
into Europe.
Iran's terrorist arm is Hezbollah. If its agents are armed with
a weapon of mass destruction, and if that weapon is used against
the U.S. (and our defeatist F.B.I. director tells us to get used
to it), then we would have to retaliate against the terrorists'
sponsors and suppliers. Thus for Russia to help Iran empower Hezbollah
is hugely detrimental to Russia's interests.
Bush should make clear it would be the end of a beautiful friendship.
See also:
Russia-US
relations
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