#5
The Russia Journal
October 19-25, 2001
A look at tomorrow’s geopolitical
landscape
By ANDREI PIONTKOVSKY
Imagine it’s mid-November. Allied bombings of Taliban infrastructure and terrorist camps have gone on for a month now, caused significant "collateral damage" and brought no political or military results.
The expected offensive by the Northern Alliance isn’t possible without considerable support from frontline aviation and helicopters. But, under pressure from Islamists, the government of General Pervez Musharraf hasn’t allowed the United States to use bases on Pakistani territory.
With the voluntary help of politically correct CNN and BBC, the terrorists’ propaganda arm, TV company Al-Jazeera, has been inciting hatred toward the West in the Muslim world with well-honed professionalism. Scenes of destruction and victims of the bombing have interchanged with hours-long appeals by Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar to annihilate the infidels.
The leaders of moderate Muslim states have called on the United States to end the bombing and the whole anti-terrorist operation. More cautious statements in the same direction have come from a number of European NATO member states following a wave of anti-globalization demonstrations in European capitals.
But if the allies wind up their operations and leave Central Asia, this would mean political humiliation for the United States and Great Britain and de-facto capitulation to the terrorists. At the same time, it would pose a mortal threat to the C.I.S. countries in Central Asia. Russia would not be able to deal with this threat on its own because all its combat-ready units are stuck in Chechnya.
Tensions have increased sharply on the domestic political scene in Russia. The political "elite’s" dissatisfaction with President Vladimir Putin’s choice has become more and more overt.
It has become eminently clear that Russia has joined a coalition that could lose, and that has already lost the propaganda war. Some of the politicians who publicly burned their Communist Party cards in 1991 have already demonstratively had themselves circumcised live on TV political-analysis shows.
The fast-growing "Scythians of Russia" political movement has put forward a radical program – "Through our narrow eyes, we watch the mortal battle rage from afar." The time has come for the Kremlin to make its final choice.
After an all-night Security Council meeting in November, with breaks only for telephone conversations with Washington and London, the Kremlin announces that George W. Bush and Tony Blair are flying to Moscow the next day. Putin personally meets them at the airport and they drive straight to the Kremlin. A few hours later, the resulting Moscow Declaration is made public:
"We, the leaders of Great Britain, Russia and the United States, having discussed the new challenges to global security in the 21st century, conclude that we share fundamental long-term political and military-strategic interests.
"Our nations are committed to the values of freedom, democracy, the value of the individual, security and social justice.
"At an hour when the forces of world evil are challenging these values, we are conscious of the responsibility we hold toward our peoples and the world community to eradicate international terrorism.
"We therefore request our governments to prepare as soon as possible the text of a Treaty on Military-Political Union between Great Britain, Russia and the United States and introduce it to our national parliaments. The treaty’s central provision will concern the mutual commitments of our three countries to defend our citizens’ security, our territorial integrity and the inviolability of our borders.
"This union will be exclusively defensive in nature and will not be directed against any country. This union will not affect international and legal commitments already made by our countries. On the contrary, we believe that it will form a natural complement to the already-existing system of security treaties among democratic nations.
A. Blair, V. Putin, G.W. Bush."
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