The president of Syria spent two days this week in
Russia with a shopping list of sophisticated weapons he wanted to buy. The visit may prove a worrisome preview of things to come.
If Russia’s invasion of Georgia
ushers in a sustained period of renewed animosity with the West,
Washington fears that a newly emboldened but estranged Moscow could use
its influence, money, energy resources, United Nations Security Council veto and, yes, its arms industry to undermine American interests around the world.
Although
Russia has long supplied arms to Syria, it has held back until now on
providing the next generation of surface-to-surface missiles. But the
Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad,
made clear that he was hoping to capitalize on rising tensions between
Moscow and the West when he rushed to the resort city of Sochi to meet
with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev.
The
list of ways a more hostile Russia could cause problems for the United
States extends far beyond Syria and the mountains of Georgia. In
addition to escalated arms sales to other anti-American states like
Iran and Venezuela, policy makers and specialists in Washington
envision a freeze on counterterrorism and nuclear nonproliferation
cooperation, manipulation of oil and natural gas supplies, pressure
against United States military bases in Central Asia and the collapse
of efforts to extend cold war-era arms control treaties.
“It’s Iran, it’s the U.N., it’s all the counterterrorism and counternarcotics programs, Syria, Venezuela, Hamas
— there are any number of issues over which they can be less
cooperative than they’ve been,” said Angela E. Stent, who served as the
top Russia officer at the United States government’s National
Intelligence Council until 2006 and now directs Russian studies at Georgetown University. “And of course, energy.”
Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor and the chief Russia adviser for Senator Barack Obama,
the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said Russia appeared
intent on trying to “disrupt the international order” and had the
capacity to succeed. “The potential is big because at the end of the
day, they are the hegemon in that region and we are not and that’s a
fact,” Professor McFaul said.
Russia may yet hold back from some
of the more disruptive options depending on how both sides play these
next few weeks and months. Many in Washington hope Russia will restrain
itself out of its own self-interest; Moscow, for instance, does not
want Iran to have nuclear weapons, nor does it want the Taliban to regain power in Afghanistan. Dmitri Rogozin, a hard-liner who serves as Russia’s ambassador to NATO,
told the newspaper Izvestia this week that Moscow still wanted to
support the alliance in Afghanistan. “NATO’s defeat in Afghanistan
would not be good for us,” he said.
Moscow may also be checked by
the desire of its economic elite to remain on the path to integration
with the rest of the world. The main Russian stock index fell sharply
in recent days, costing investors $10 billion — many with close ties to
the circle of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.
Still,
although the confrontation over Georgia had been building for years,
the outbreak of violence demonstrated just how abruptly the
international scene can change. Now Russia is the top focus in
Washington and some veteran diplomats fret about the situation
spiraling out of control.
“Outrage is not a policy,” said Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Clinton and is now the president of the Brookings Institution.
“Worry is not a policy. Indignation is not a policy. Even though
outrage, worry and indignation are all appropriate in this situation,
they shouldn’t be mistaken for policy and they shouldn’t be mistaken
for strategy.”
For Washington, there are limited options for applying pressure. Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, wants to throw Russia out of the Group of 8
major powers. Such a move would effectively admit the failure of 17
years of bipartisan policy aimed at incorporating Russia into the
international order.
Yet Washington’s menu of options pales by
comparison to Moscow’s. Masha Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow
Center, said “there’s a lot more” that the United States needed from
Russia than the other way around, citing efforts to secure old Soviet
nuclear arms, support the war effort in Afghanistan and force Iran and
North Korea to give up nuclear programs. “Hence Russia has all the
leverage,” she said.
In forecasting Russia’s potential for
causing headaches, most specialists look first to Ukraine, which wants
to join NATO. The nightmare scenario circulating in recent days is an
attempt by Moscow to claim the strategic Crimean peninsula to secure
access to the Black Sea. Ukrainian lawmakers are investigating reports
that Russia has been granting passports en masse to ethnic Russians
living in Crimea, a tactic Moscow used in the Georgian breakaway
republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to justify intervention to
protect its citizens.
Arms sales, as Mr. Assad’s visit
underscored, represent another way Russia could create problems.
Israeli and Western governments have already been alarmed about reports
that the first elements of the Russian-built S-300 antiaircraft missile
system are now being delivered to Iran, which could use them to shoot
down any American or Israeli planes that seek to bomb nuclear
facilities should that ever be attempted.
While Mr. Rogozin
expressed support for assisting NATO in the war in Afghanistan, other
officials have warned darkly about cutting off ties with NATO. The two
sides have already effectively suspended any military cooperation
programs. But Russia could also revoke its decision in April to allow
NATO to send nonlethal supplies overland through its territory en route
to Afghanistan.
Russia could also turn up pressure on
Kyrgyzstan to evict American forces that support operations in
Afghanistan and could block any large-scale return to Uzbekistan, which
expelled the Americans in 2005. “The argument would be, ‘Why help
NATO?’ ” said Celeste A. Wallander, a Russia scholar at Georgetown’s
School of Foreign Service.
Even beyond the dispute over Iran,
Russia could obstruct the United States at the United Nations Security
Council on a variety of other issues. Just last month, Russia vetoed
sanctions against Zimbabwe’s government, a move seen as a slap at
Washington.
“If Russia’s feeling churlish, they can pretty much
bring to a grinding halt any kind of coercive actions, like economic
sanctions or anything else,” said Peter D. Feaver, a former strategic
adviser at the National Security Council.
Russia
could also accelerate its withdrawal from arms control structures. It
already has suspended the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty to
protest American missile defense plans and threatened to pull out of
the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. Renewed tension could
fray a recently signed civilian nuclear cooperation agreement and doom
negotiations to extend soon-to-expire strategic arms control
verification programs.
“Ironically, since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, there’s always been the concern about Russia becoming a
spoiler,” said Ms. Stent, of Georgetown, “and now we could see the
realization of that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/world/europe/22policy.html?hp