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A SENSE OF ASIA

Putin's new power vs. U.S. Central Asian strategies


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By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Sol W. Sanders

December 11, 2003

Secretary of Defense RumsfeldÕs early December brief Georgia stopover was one more sour note in Russian-U.S. relations, notwithstanding Presidents Bush and Putin having established what the American president described as a soulful understanding. Rumsfeld forthrightly warned Moscow should live up to its post Soviet-breakup pledge to withdraw its old Soviet era troops. He hinted the U.S. would continue to help Georgians build their own security forces, originally conceived when Russia alleged Chechen terrorists used Georgia as sanctuary.

While Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov was personally helping ease out his old Soviet predecessor Georgian President Shevrenadze, Moscow was wining and dinning three Georgian separatist groups. Just as in Moldova across the Black Sea, the Russians are reasserting hegemony in former non-Russian territories. And the tactics are old Tsarist/Soviet imperialist, playing ethnics off against one another.

Ivanov insinuated the whole Georgian fracas was American interference in GeorgiaÕs internal affairs. Washington had, indeed, unsuccessfully plumped for free elections [and sponsored active NGOs]. But fraud spiked a long simmering crisis with tired old MKVD/KGB alumnus, Shrevrenadze, giving up with only a whimper. His secret police successors, the FSB now dominating the PutinÕs Kremlin, have other plans.

They are openly supporting a Moslem warlord in Adzharia, GeorgiaÕs Turkish border province, who used the crisis to maximize his independence of the central government.

Washington sees Georgia as critical to a whole strategy in the Caucuses and Central Asia where backed by huge unexploited Caspian Basin oil and gas reserves the U.S. hopes to build a band of moderate Moslem states. Ambitious, perhaps, but the U.S. hopes to get fossil fuels to world markets with pipelines through Georgia and Turkey. That would skirt the more obvious route through Iran to the Indian Ocean or the expanding network of Russian oil and gas pipelines to Germany. The former, of course, would increase the influence of the Tehran mullahs on Islamicist radical minorities in the region. And avoiding Russian infrastructure would insure the vast Central Asian reserves as counterfoil to both the Persian Gulf and growing Russian exports.

After 9/11, PutinÕs first reaction, despite professing comradeship with his own terrorist problems, was to oppose the U.S. thrust into Central Asia. But he quickly accepted it along with the American campaign against the Taliban and the Al Qaida in Afghanistan. The Central Asians, led by former Communist secularists, were happy to see a U.S. military presence against Islamicist guerrillas who have dogged them since the Soviet collapse Ñ and as tool against return of the Russians. The promise of American aid, too, was welcomed in their efforts to reverse the long decades of Soviet colonial exploitation.

Recently Moscow has been reasserting its role in the area. It established a new military base not far from an American Òlilly padÓ in Kyrgyzstan. A public row has ensued over withdrawing Russian border forces in Tajikstan [80 percent Tadjik ethnics], originally offering a defense against the proselytizing efforts of the neighboring Afghanistan Taliban. In Azerbaijan, where the U.S. footprint has been heaviest with its huge potential oil exports, there is nervousness about MoscowÕs collaboration with neighboring Iran as Baku struggles with a ÒdynasticÓ change with a new leader.

Having just masterminded a fraudulent parliamentary election [and looking like a shoo-in in the presidential election next spring], the new Tsar has almost unlimited power to dictate Russian policy. Putin ranged Russia with Germany and France in the UN showdown before military action in Iraq. And more Russian carping is likely with the Pentagon insisting U.S. taxpayersÕ gifts to the Iraqis to rebuild their country will not pay for contracts [or old debts] of those who oppose WashingtonÕs policy. Moscow continues as ChinaÕs principle source of high tech weaponry [even though the threatening Far East demographics are so grim that Moscow suggests taking 200,000 North Korea refugees off ChinaÕs hands as Siberian settlers].

Of course, U.S. and Russian policy concerns range far beyond KremlinÕs attitudes toward its old, inherited Asian problems: continued dismantling of RussiaÕs nuclear arsenals ø including decrepit nuclear powered war vessels ø for which the U.S. is picking up a substantial check; responses to NATO expansion into the former Russian Baltic satrapies; cooperation in a joint effort to disarm the North Korean WMDs; and collaboration in the war against terrorism.

The latest terrorist bombing in central Moscow is more evidence of the failure of PutinÕs promise to bring the Chechnya war to settlement which helped get him into power. He has had the excuse until now of a divided government, a struggling economy, his own efforts to get his administrative house in order. Now having mauled opposition centers in the media and the oligarch businessmen, and rigged the Duma [parliament], he faces policy choices. The nagging leftover issues of Soviet empire on his southern border where U.S. interests are now also engaged could be a place to start.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

December 11

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