Russia's Putin bringing geopolitical 'change' while U.S. candidates talk
Thursday, February 21, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
UNITED NATIONS — While calls for “change” have been a potent part of the American presidential primary contest, a world away Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is affecting some of that very change many people may prefer not to see. In the course of a week, Putin has threatened neighboring Ukraine with missiles, scorned the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, and has engaged in crude intimidation towards Poland and the Czech Republic, over missile defense radar sites. U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice called Putin’s threats “reprehensible.”
While much of this can be characterized as high octane Russian rhetoric echoing the former Soviet era, the deeper reasons rest in Vladimir Putin’s confident calculation that Russia is a reinvigorated and revived State. In my opinion his bluster, threat and probing actions are not just part of Moscow’s boorishness but a calculated chess move on the geopolitical board. Putin’s game plan, invigorated by an influx of petrodollars to Kremlin coffers, served by a web of energy pipelines supplying heat and fuel acting as an undeniable noose to European Union supplies, and propelled by a self-righteous political desire to revive the control over of former Soviet satraps now becomes clearer.
Ukraine, now independent and sovereign but Moscow’s sorely missed “heartland,” got the frontal blast. In a Kremlin meeting between Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko, Russia warned that it may target its missiles on Ukraine if its neighbor joins NATO. Meantime the Ukrainians have nervously stressed that “everything Ukraine is doing in this area is certainly not aimed against and third country, especially Russia.” Yet the frosty ties between Moscow and Kiev could become colder if Russian energy giant Gazprom decides to interfere with Ukraine’s energy supplies as it did a few years ago.
Russia has rhetorically backed up its “little brother” ally Serbia in Belgrade’s last ditch- bid to hold on to the majority Albanian province of Kosovo. Sergei Ivanov, a former Defense Minister warned that international recognition of Kosovo’s independence (by the Americans and Europeans) would “set a dangerous international precedent. Decrying the UN actions he claimed “that would definitely be beyond international law” and added that “it would be close to opening a Pandora’s Box.”
Russia’s representatives in the UN Security Council have provided Serbia with rhetorical cover fire for keeping Kosovo, and have echoed Putin’s most recent warning that recognition of an independent Kosovo would be “immoral and illegal.”
Russia has equally warned the U.S. that Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia endangers international stability. Comments by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov , came in the aftermath of Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia.. The USA and key European states have since offered diplomatic recognition to Kosovo.
By now some readers are saying, Yes, but Putin will soon step down from the Presidency. Elections in a few weeks however will install his dutiful successor Dmitri Medvedev. Putin, an ex-KGB man after all, is expected to rule from the shadows. Medvedev in the meantime once directed Gazprom, an organization the Financial Times dubbed editorially as not a commercial enterprise but “ It is the single most important instrument of the resurgent Russian state.”
British author Edward Lucas brings a poignant focus to the new Russia’s plans; “Communism is gone but in its place has come ‘sovereign democracy’ a potent cocktail of self-righteousness, nationalism and xenophobia that fuels the Kremlin’s power grab abroad. In the swing states of Eastern Europe — Bulgaria, Latvia and Moldova — we are already losing the new Cold War.” In his book “The New Cold War, How the Kremlin menaces both Russia and the West,” Lucas adds, that Russia’s friends are a “rogues gallery” of tin-pot despotisms.
Yet Moscow’s wider international actions are focused for the fear factor. A few weeks ago during combined naval and air maneuvers in the Atlantic, two Russian TU-160 “Blackjack” nuclear-capable bombers flying in “international waters,” according to Moscow military officials, fired missiles in the Bay of Biscay — just off the western coast of France! Days later a lumbering Tupolev 95 bomber intruded into Japanese airspace near the island of Sufugan — Japan scrambled fighter interceptors and the Tokyo lodged an official protest. Both probes were deliberate and meant for effect.
As interestingly and largely unreported, Russia has written off Iraq’s $12 billion dollar debt, a sum incurred when Saddam Hussein’s regime was an eager buyer of Soviet arms. Baghdad’s debt to Moscow, long seen as a key reason why Russia supported Saddam to the last moment, was written off in exchange for Russian firms including Lukoil being allowed to invest, prospect and develop the Qurna oil fields, one of Iraq’s largest. The deal quietly returns Russia to Iraq as a key player in the petroleum game.
Russia’s increasingly assertive foreign policies and probing are part of Vladimir Putin’s ongoing legacy. With a renewed and more vigorous Russia on the horizon, American and European policymakers must adapt and adjust to this geopolitical change.