[R-G] Contradictions at Heilgendamm ?

[viren]

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> A summit of diminished expectations
Vladimir Frolov



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> Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin are meeting to vent their 
> grievances and mask, through a show of camaraderie, the gaping void of 
> differences.
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> On July 1 and 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his American 
> counterpart George W. Bush at the Bush family's oceanfront summer retreat 
> in Kennebunkport, Maine. The setting implies a relaxed atmosphere of 
> boating and deep-sea fishing, which would be quite suitable for an 
> informal discussion of global affairs. Of course, George H.W. Bush will 
> drop by for a fireside chat with the two most powerful men in the world, 
> one of whom is his eldest son. No specific agreements are scheduled to be 
> unveiled at Kennebunkport. This is not accidental: the two Presidents will 
> find little substantive to agree on. They are meeting to vent their 
> grievances and mask, with a show of camaraderie, the gaping void of 
> differences.
>
> Mr. Bush invited President Putin to his family home in early June, when 
> Moscow and Washington were engaged in a war of rhetoric that was doing 
> considerable damage to the bilateral relationship. The intention was to 
> change the tone and possibly make progress on a thorny issue or two - like 
> Kosovo or U.S. missile defence in Eastern Europe.
>
> Then, after the G8 meeting in Germany during which Mr. Putin made his 
> surprise offer of shared use of the Russian ABM radar station in 
> Azerbaijan, it seemed for a while that the tide had turned and that Russia 
> and the United States were reverting to a more cooperative mode.
>
> Not-so-cordial ties
>
> But the missile defence breakthrough appears to be fizzling out. Senior 
> U.S. officials, including Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, have stated 
> quite plainly that they want to use the Gabala radar as a complement to, 
> not a substitute for, the systems planned for Poland and the Czech 
> Republic. Moscow's calculation that by offering Gabala it might derail 
> entirely the construction of U.S. missile defences in Europe is not 
> working. The statements from Russian officials reflect a growing 
> realisation that things are not going according to plan. Foreign Minister 
> Sergei Lavrov again talked of Moscow's "response at the strategic level" 
> if U.S. missile defences were deployed in Europe. Another idea that Moscow 
> appears to be pushing is to turn the proposed missile defence into a 
> multilateral international project that would deal with missile threats if 
> and when they emerge. Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed 
> Forces General Yury Baluyevsky and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak 
> made it clear at their joint press conference last week that Russia did 
> not see a missile threat from Iran as realistic and continued to hope that 
> the use of the Gabala radar would dissuade Washington from deploying radar 
> and interceptors in Europe. I am afraid this is not a viable basis for a 
> strategic compromise at Kennebunkport.
>
> The most that could be expected from the summit on missile defence is a 
> decision to form a joint task force to discuss the issue. Moscow's 
> strategy then would be to stall the work of the task force until there is 
> a change of government in Washington - which is still nearly 20 months 
> away, while the U.S. strategy would be to rush the deployment in Europe as 
> soon as possible, since the next U.S. administration may quash the missile 
> defence project. After all, it is a multibillion-dollar system of dubious 
> effectiveness. But if this happens, it will be for reasons largely 
> unrelated to Russian actions.
>
> On Kosovo, even less progress should be expected. For a while, there was 
> some hope in a proposal by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to give the 
> Serbs and Kosovo Albanians some more time to come to a negotiated divorce 
> before the Ahtisaari plan comes into effect through a United Nations 
> Security Council resolution. But then Russia publicly threatened to veto 
> the draft Security Council resolution that incorporated the Sarkozy plan, 
> since Moscow envisaged the Ahtisaari plan coming into effect if the two 
> sides failed to reach an agreement in the specified period of time. On a 
> visit to Albania after the G8 meeting, Mr. Bush wasted no time declaring 
> that "independence [for Kosovo] is the goal."
>
> It is still possible that Mr. Putin will come to the U.S. with another 
> surprise proposal, but this appears unlikely. To yield on Kosovo now, 
> while the west has shown little effort to take Russia's concerns into 
> account, does not make sense. A much more preferable strategy for Mr. 
> Putin would be "to agree to disagree," just as he did on Iraq in 2003 when 
> he told President Bush that the invasion was a mistake. Interestingly, Mr. 
> Putin is trying to win some unusual allies with this position. He told 
> Georgian President Mikhael Saaskashvili, who has long sought to regain 
> control of his country's breakaway regions, that it is inadmissible to 
> forcefully cut out a piece of sovereign territory from a country and 
> legitimise this land grab with a Security Council resolution. Mr. 
> Saaskashvili found nothing to object to. It makes complete sense for Mr. 
> Putin not to budge on Kosovo; almost everything he might do would work 
> against him. Domestically, he cannot make a concession on Kosovo for fear 
> of appearing weak and inconsistent, and internationally he knows that any 
> compromise on Kosovo would be pocketed without a thank you note. He gains 
> everything by waiting until the project goes awry.
>
> There are, of course, important areas where U.S.-Russian cooperation 
> continues to grow and progress is being made. Russia has been instrumental 
> in bringing pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear programme. And Russia 
> helped arrange the transfer of North Korean funds through a Russian bank, 
> a key North Korean demand before it starts to roll back its nuclear 
> programme. But the U.S.-Russia relationship is still heading south.
>
> President Putin took another veiled swipe at the U.S. at a recent meeting 
> with history teachers: "We have not used nuclear weapons against a 
> civilian population," he said. "We have not sprayed thousands of 
> kilometres with chemicals, [or] dropped on a small country seven times 
> more bombs than in all the Great Patriotic [War]." Mr. Putin's point: 
> don't try to impose on us a guilt complex.
>
> President Bush, inaugurating the Victims of Communism Memorial in 
> Washington, compared Communism to Nazism, prompting a furious response 
> from Moscow. Chairman of the House International Affairs Committee Tom 
> Lantos (Democrat, California) compared Mr. Putin to Popeye, eating the 
> spinach of oil revenues and seeing his muscles bulge big enough to 
> threaten his neighbours. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried 
> stated at a Senate hearing: "Russia's current political situation is 
> influenced by the lack of a free media or robust opposition that would 
> critique and critically analyse the government's performance. Russian 
> citizens who want a wider view must make an extra effort to find such 
> opinions in the remnants of the free press and local electronic media or 
> on the Internet."
>
> Obviously, all of this is unhelpful. But such is the reality the two 
> Presidents will have to deal with.
>
> Mr. Putin and Mr. Bush are meeting in very different political 
> circumstances. Mr. Bush is a highly unpopular President with approval 
> ratings below 30 per cent in a country stuck in a war it cannot win. Mr. 
> Putin is the unquestioned leader of a resurgent nation with personal 
> approval ratings around 70 per cent. Mr. Bush will never again be 
> President. Mr. Putin has that option should he so choose. He is in the 
> process of setting up a system that will continue his policies long after 
> he leaves office.
>
> Since there is little practical business to discuss at Kennebunkport, Mr. 
> Putin and Mr. Bush might just as well talk about their legacies. - RIA 
> Novosti
>
> (The writer is Director, National Laboratory for Foreign Policy, Moscow.)