#9
strana.ru
October 24, 2001
Gleb Pavlovsky: "Are We Prepared to Wait until the
Enemy Hits Us as It Hit America?"
The U.S. and Russia need an absolutely new approach to threats and alliances
By Gleb Pavlovsky, Strana.Ru correspondent reporting from Washington
Gleb Pavlovsky is in Washington with an official delegation representing practically all the factions in the State Duma (lower house of the Russian parliament) and a broad public spectrum. He managed to take time out of his busy schedule to talk to Strana.Ru last week. The commentary that follows is a transcription of what his remarks.
"Politicians both in Washington and Moscow are making the same mistakes, when the U.S. and Russia should unite against a common enemy", Gleb Pavlovsky said in a telephone conversation from the Russian Embassy in Washington. Preparations are underway for Vladimir Putin's visit to the U.S. for a further deepening of allied relations with a country that is at war.
No one should have any doubts that America is our ally. And we have come to America to understand whether everything is being done here to localize and destroy the enemy. But we must also realize that our ally is in a very difficult position today.
But it seems as if this is not understood in the Russian government, where there are some whose thinking is stuck in "the backwoods" or "pre-September".
The United States today is unrecognizable - it is another country. The September attacks on America were too powerful and precise. And now bio-terrorism has actually opened up "a second front" inside America itself.
The fact is that this heavily armed country is at a loss - it is striking out blindly and is building dubious coalitions. American notions about being prepared for symmetrical military threats have been turned upside down.
Russia must understand that America is not in a position where retreat is an option. Russia was in such a state in the fall of 1999 and if we had retreated then, there would be no Russia as a state today.
Russia must appreciate America's will to fight and it must support that will with all sensible means. But today America is actually on the defensive.
We must understand that America's enemy is also our enemy - an enemy that we came face to face with in the 1990s, an enemy that in 1996 almost placed under control the adoption of state decisions at the very highest level.
That enemy today has grown; it has become stronger and smarter. That enemy has seized and is holding the initiative, employing a new type of weapon - a "combinational weapon" that, as we see today, can be successfully employed against a big nuclear power.
During his visit to the U.S., Vladimir Putin must by all means take a look at ground zero - the place of the terrorist attacks in Manhattan. For it is precisely here that he will see what place the terrorists are preparing for Russia in their "new world."
All disputes about precisely who is employing that weapon, i.e., who is upsetting the existing symmetry of forces in the world, are not that important.
Anyone who uses or is ready to use these technologies, irrespective of whether he resorts to hijacking planes, employing anthrax bacilli or simply a Kalashnikov assault rifle is the enemy.
If today we are unable to swiftly check his attempts to interfere in the symmetry of armaments, then it is inevitable that tomorrow, such a method of waging warfare will be used by everyone.
This will be something horrible - a world built not on a symmetrical balance of armaments and international law, but rather a world built on subversive operations that are planned with utmost cynicism, so as to cause the maximum moral damage to the other party.
The war today is being fought so that all of us are not plunged into a new hell of hostilities. Russia is not more powerful than America. And if the enemy that today is engaged in a war with the Americans, unleashes attacks against us - that wouldn't be difficult because "the combinational weapon" is a cheap weapon - then we shall be swiftly deprived of all that we take pride in: stability, civil peace in the country and guarantees for economic growth.
Russia is defended against symmetric armaments, but it is vulnerable to asymmetric armaments. The enemy is interested only in our vulnerability, and that being the case, only an armed world is possible for Russia.
The war will be difficult and protracted. During this period, the world will take on different contours. Not all the states that exist today will be preserved.
Terrorist regimes like the Palestinian and Iraqi regimes will either cease to exist, or they will get rid of their leaders - like "Maskhadov's Chechnya,' which no longer exists and like the Taliban state, which will soon go the same way.
We, here in Russia, do not have to fall in love with America because a war is going on - this is not the time "to make love."
America is doing a mass of ridiculous things. We should not be interested in "the cockroaches" in the heads of certain Washington fools. Moscow has enough of its own fools.
We should be interested only, in how during the period of this war, Russia will be able to position itself in the new changed world.
And for this, there is no need for Russia to enter the "Washington Coalition", where it will rub shoulders with old friends of the terrorists such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Georgia and even Poland, which openly helped Maskhadov.
Russia is waging war just like America is. And what we should be talking about here is the formation of a direct alliance between our two countries - a military and political alliance.
NATO could become the basis of such an alliance, but for that - and here we agree with the Europeans - NATO must be transformed and beefed up with new armaments, with new balances of forces as a system for really repulsing the new enemies of European peace.
The war will be a long one, and what we are witnessing today is just the beginning of deployment for battle. Russia, together with America, must have a plan of action for the next 3-5 years, as well as a list of their own demands with respect to the new, joint Russian-American agenda. And here it is necessary to admit that we are not ready for that.
In particular, the Russian foreign ministry is catastrophically lagging behind the swiftly changing international relations and it is this that jeopardizes Russia's national interests.
The Russian foreign ministry is worried about "unfinished business" such as the Balkans, the entry of the Baltic States into NATO and proving that Russia is acting correctly in Chechnya.
But all that has lost its value in view of the collapse of the former "symmetrical" architecture of security. The defining of criteria and dialogue with friends in time of war is determined by the whereabouts of the enemy: who is fighting on our side is a friend, and who is scheming behind our back is the enemy's accomplice.
Yes, Russia will not be complacent if it suddenly sees that America has decided to flirt with the enemy, and in particular, to make use of the upset symmetry of forces - whether regional or global - for its own narrow interests.
That would jeopardize allied relations. For example, if in a year's time while accepting new members into NATO, the motive is the same petty intriguing game against Russia (that led the U.S. national security system into a blind alley and placed America under the September attacks), this would mean that the USA had actually gone over to the side of our common enemy.
By entering an alliance and being inside that alliance, Russia will demand honest rules of the game. Russia would take the same attitude towards attempts to exchange Israel's security for Arab support of these or those actions of the USA.
Incidentally, I do not think that such a risk is real today.
America today urgently needs help. America understands this and it must receive such help from Russia - its natural European ally.
The following question should be addressed to the Kremlin and the Russian government: do we intend, in the face of the enemy and his inevitable strikes in the near future, to remain alone and wait until that enemy hits us just as "seriously" as he hit America? Does Russia need real allies or is it not yet ready for that?
All these questions have to deal with real technologies- diplomatic, military-political - for which we shall have to provide the answers within the next few weeks.
The absence of answers would mean that Russia is rejecting membership of the club of world leaders, and this would be an additional, unprecedented success for international terrorists -something that they did not dare to dream of.
Next Article