[R-G] Russia throws a wrench in NATO's works

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JC15Ag01.html

    Mar 15, 2008
	
	
Russia throws a wrench in NATO's works
By M K Bhadrakumar

For the first time in the 60-year history of the North Atlantic Treaty  
Organization (NATO), Russia will attend the alliance's summit meeting  
on April 2-4 in Bucharest, Romania.

It is clear that NATO will defer to a future date any decision to put  
Ukraine and Georgia on its Membership Action Plan. This means  
effectively that the two former Soviet republics cannot draw closer to  
NATO for another year at the very least, which in turn implies that  
the earliest the two countries can realize their membership claim  
would be in a four-year timeframe.

That is a huge gesture by NATO to Moscow's sensitivities. Conceivably,  
it clears the decks for what could prove to be a



turning point in Russia-NATO relations. Russia may be about to join  
hands with NATO in Afghanistan. A clearer picture will emerge out of  
the intensive consultations of the foreign and defense ministers of  
Russia and the United States within the so-called "2+2" format due to  
take place in Moscow from Monday through Tuesday next week. From the  
guarded comments by both sides and the flurry of US diplomatic  
activity, it appears highly probable that Russia is being brought into  
the solution of the Afghanistan problem, along with NATO.

According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant and the Financial Times  
of London, the initiative came from Russia when its new ambassador to  
NATO, Dmitry Rogozin - erstwhile Russian politician with a  
controversial record as a staunch Russian nationalist who routinely  
berated the West - signaled a strong interest in this area at a recent  
meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at Brussels. The plan involves  
Russia providing a land corridor for NATO to transport its goods -  
"non-military materials" - destined for the mission in Afghanistan.  
Intensive talks have been going on since then over a framework  
agreement.

 From the feverish pace of diplomatic activity, the expectation of the  
two sides seems to be that an agreement could be formalized at NATO's  
Bucharest summit. In an interview with German publication Der Spiegel  
on Monday, Rogozin confirmed this expectation, saying, "We [Russia]  
support the anti-terror campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. I  
hope we can manage to reach a series of very important agreements with  
our Western partners at the Bucharest summit. We will demonstrate that  
we are ready to contribute to the reconstruction of Afghanistan."

Russian diplomats have been quoted as saying that Moscow is engaged in  
consultations with the governments of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as  
regards the proposed land corridor to be made available to NATO.

Given the complicated history of Russia-NATO relations, the issue is  
loaded with geopolitics. Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted as  
much at a joint press conference with visiting German Chancellor  
Angela Merkel in Moscow last Saturday. He said, "NATO is already  
overstepping its limits today. We have no problem to helping  
Afghanistan, but it is another matter when it is NATO that is  
providing the assistance. This is a matter beyond the bounds of the  
North Atlantic, as you are well aware."

Putin also took the opportunity to harshly criticize NATO's expansion  
plans: "At a time when we no longer have confrontation between two  
rival systems, the endless expansion of a military and political bloc  
seems to us not only unnecessary but also harmful and counter- 
productive. The impression is that attempts are being made to create  
an organization that would replace the United Nations, but the  
international community in its entirety is hardly likely to agree to  
such a structure for our future international relations. I think the  
potential for conflict would be only set to grow. These are arguments  
of a philosophical nature. You can agree or disagree."

The implications are obvious. Russia would be willing to cooperate  
with NATO, but on an equal and comprehensive basis, and, secondly, the  
sort of selective engagement of Russia by NATO that the US has been  
advocating will be unacceptable to Moscow. Significantly, Putin  
frontally questioned the standing of NATO's monopoly of conflict  
resolution in Afghanistan.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has also separately signaled  
Russia's readiness to provide military transit to Afghanistan for NATO  
provided "an agreement is concluded on all aspects of the Afghan  
problem between NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization  
[CSTO]". Significantly, Lavrov was speaking immediately after the 7th  
session of the Russian-French Cooperation Council on Security Issues  
in Paris on Tuesday. He asserted that "most NATO members, including  
France", favor Moscow's idea of a NATO-CSTO cooperative framework over  
Afghanistan. Lavrov all but suggested that Washington was blocking  
such cooperation between NATO and the Russian-led CSTO.

On the face of it, Washington should jump at the Russian offer of  
support to the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Pakistan has proved to be  
an unreliable partner in the "war on terror". The growing political  
uncertainties in Pakistan put question marks on the wisdom of the US  
continuing to depend so heavily on Pakistan for ferrying supplies for  
its troops in Afghanistan.

US military spokesmen are on record as saying that about three fourths  
of all supplies are currently dispatched to Afghanistan via Pakistan.  
There are fundamental issues as well, such as the US's continued  
ability to influence Pakistani politics and, indeed, the evolution of  
Pakistan's political economy as such in the coming critical period.

The coming to power of the Awami National Party (ANP), an avowedly  
Pashtun nationalist leftist party, in the sensitive North-West  
Frontier Province of Pakistan, further complicates political alignments.

ANP leader Amir Haider Khan Hoti bluntly told Radio Free Europe/Radio  
Liberty in an exclusive interview this week, "Our priorities are  
clear. We first want to move toward peace through negotiations [with  
the Taliban], jirgas [tribal councils], and dialogue. God willing, we  
will learn from [failed talks and jirgas in the past] and will try not  
to repeat the same mistakes. We will try to take into confidence our  
people, our tribal leaders, and our [clerics] - and together with  
them, we will try to move toward peace through negotiations."

Hoti didn't speak a word about the "war on terror" or the George W  
Bush administration's expectations of Pakistani military operations in  
the tribal areas. It remains a riddle why the Bush administration  
should have so far kept out of conflict resolution in Afghanistan  
countries such as Russia and China, whose interests are vitally  
affected, perhaps even more immediately than the US or European  
countries. As US statesman Henry Kissinger wrote in an article in the  
International Herald Tribune on Monday, "A strategic consensus remains  
imperative ... Pakistan's stability should not be viewed as an  
exclusively American challenge."

The million-dollar question is whether there is political will on the  
part of the Bush administration to reach a "strategic consensus" over  
Afghanistan with Russia at the forthcoming NATO summit. Clearly,  
Moscow is willing. NATO old-timers such as France and Germany, too,  
are conscious that the alliance may suffer a defeat in Afghanistan,  
which would be a catastrophic blow to its standing, and that NATO and  
Russia after all share the same goals in Afghanistan.

The Kremlin has badly cornered the Bush administration. Taking  
Russia's help at this critical juncture makes eminent sense for NATO.  
The alliance is struggling to cope with the war in Afghanistan. By the  
analogy of Iraq, some observers estimate that a force level close to  
half a million troops will be required to stabilize Afghanistan, given  
its size and difficult terrain.

But cooperation with Russia involves NATO embarking on cooperation  
with CSTO and possibly with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as  
well. (Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin,  
addressing the Security Council in New York on Wednesday, proposed  
that for effectively combating drug trafficking originating from  
Afghanistan, a system of security rings promoted by Russia in the  
Central Asian region in recent years would be useful and that the  
potential of CSTO and SCO should be utilized.)

What worries the US is that any such link up between NATO and CSTO and  
SCO would undermine its "containment" policy toward Russia (and  
China), apart from jeopardizing the US global strategy of projecting  
NATO as a political organization on the world arena.

The most damaging part is that Russia-NATO cooperation will inevitably  
strengthen Russia's ties with European countries and that, in turn,  
would weaken the US's trans-Atlantic leadership role in the 21st  
century.

At the meeting of the foreign ministers of the alliance at Brussels on  
March 6, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner urged the NATO  
Council to "take into account Russia's sensitivity and the important  
role it plays". Moreover, he argued, relations with Russia are already  
strained over Kosovo and the US's planned missile defense shield based  
in Europe, and should not be subjected to further strain. The French  
newspaper Le Monde quoted him as saying, "We [France] think that EU- 
Russia relations are absolutely important. And France is not the only  
country wanting to maintain a relationship with Russia as a great  
nation." (France is assuming the rotating EU presidency in July.)

Indeed, France is not alone in this respect. Germany also has lately  
shifted to equidistance between the US and Russia on global security  
issues and is reaching out once again - reminiscent of the Gerhard  
Schroeder era - as a strategic partner to Russia in European Union- 
Russia relations.

Two days after her recent visit to Moscow, Merkel addressed the  
prestigious forum of the German armed forces' top brass  
(Kommandeurtagung) in Berlin on Monday, where in the presence of NATO  
Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, she brusquely proceeded to  
bury the proposals on NATO membership of Ukraine and Georgia even  
ahead of the Bucharest summit.

"Countries that are involved in regional or internal conflicts cannot  
become members," she said. Merkel added that aspiring countries must  
ensure that "qualitatively significant" domestic political support  
would be available for their accession to NATO. Germany has virtually  
blocked NATO's further expansion into the territories of the former  
Soviet Union - a declared goal of Russia.

By putting forth a bold blueprint of cooperation with NATO over  
Afghanistan, Russia has effectively challenged the US to make a  
choice. It is by no means an easy choice for Washington. How do you  
deal in the world of tomorrow with a country whose energy exports are  
close to reaching a milestone of US$1 billion per day? Russia's  
benchmark Urals crude topped a record of $100 per barrel this week and  
once it trades at $107.5 per barrel, the daily value of crude, refined  
products and gas exports will hit $1 billion. And, Russia's 2008  
budget is based on an average Urals price of $65 per barrel.

Besides, post-Soviet Russia's influence in Central Asia has peaked  
even as the first real possibility of the emergence of a "gas OPEC"  
involving Russia and the Central Asian countries has appeared. This  
may well outshine all other foreign policy legacies of Russia in the  
Putin era. Russia has been for long seeking an association of former  
Soviet gas producers and exporters on the pattern of the oil cartel.  
Russia and the Central Asian suppliers - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and  
Turkmenistan - have now agreed that starting in 2009, they will switch  
to the European price formula.

The move, which bears all the hallmarks of the Kremlin, elevates  
energy cooperation between Russia and the Central Asian producers to  
an altogether higher level of coordination and common strategy in  
foreign markets. The implications are far-reaching for European  
countries and the US. Russia has checkmated US-sponsored trans-Caspian  
energy pipeline projects.

Surely, the great shortfall in the Putin legacy has been the failure  
of his presidency to make Russia a full-fledged partner of Europe. He  
has now made an offer to NATO that is irresistible - making Russia a  
participant in the alliance's Afghan mission. The Russian offer comes  
at a time when the war in Afghanistan is going badly and NATO can  
afford to take help from whichever quarter help is available.

Washington faces an acute predicament insofar as Moscow won't settle  
for selective engagement by NATO as a mere transit route but will  
incrementally broaden and deepen the engagement, and major European  
allies might welcome it. Moscow insists on the involvement of the CSTO  
and even SCO. On the other hand, Russia's involvement could invigorate  
the NATO mission in Afghanistan and ensure that the mission is not  
predicated on the highly unpredictable factor of Pakistan's partnership.

Will Washington bite? Putin, with his trademark fighting spirit of a  
black belt in karate, could well be counting that his presidency still  
has five or six weeks to go and that is a lot of time for making  
Russia NATO's number one partner globally and ensuring a durable place  
for Russia within the common European home.

At the very least, history comes full circle when Putin arrives in  
Bucharest in the next 18 days for the gala 60th anniversary summit of  
the alliance. That would be 54 years since the Soviet Union suggested  
it should join NATO to preserve peace in Europe.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign  
Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador  
to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

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