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Washington Post
November 4, 2001
A New Alliance Could Nudge Aside the Old
By John Newhouse (jnewhouse@cdi.org)
John Newhouse is a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information.
The terrorist threatlaid bare on Sept. 11 is transforming global security arrangements. Already, it is pushing Washington and other major capitals toward a historic makeover of the security system the United States and its European allies have relied upon for half a century. And much of the energy for that push is coming from an improbable source: Russia -- or, more precisely, its president, Vladimir Putin.
Putin's broad purpose -- to link his ailing, self-absorbed country to the United States while moving it into the European mainstream -- has been gathering force for some time. Even before Sept. 11, he was taking a more accommodating line on PresidentBush's foremost priorities -- missile defense, modification of the ABM Treaty, and further enlargement of NATO, the Western security alliance. Since the attacks, the Russian's tone has become even more acquiescent, enough to raise concerns in Western capitals that he has maneuvered himself far in front of his national security apparatus and political base. When he meets withBush in Washington and Crawford, Tex., later this month, the two men can be expected to start a process aimed at moving their countries into a shifting strategic environment. And that move could edge NATO, the centerpiece of America's security relationship with Europe, to the sidelines.
Well before Sept. 11, NATO was the object of some tough questions: Did it still have a purpose? Was there a role in it for Russia, and if so, how central a role? A few Western leaders, starting with Britain's Tony Blair, had in one degree or another concluded that Western and Russian strategic interests had converged, and that collective security arrangements that lacked Russian participation no longer made sense. But if anyone was shuffling the new deck after Sept. 11, it was Putin. Hewas the first to call Bush after the attacks. He agreed not to oppose the use of bases in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia for strikes against the Taliban. He visited German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and wowed the Bundestag with a speech delivered in fluent German, studded with quotations from Goethe and Schiller, that portrayed Russia as rooted in European values.
On Oct. 3, Putin had a long private meeting in Brussels with NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson, with whom he enjoys discussing security issues. Soon thereafter, I was shown an official account of what the two men said. The conversation pointed up Putin's resolve to anchor Russia to the West, and the intensity of his hatred of the Taliban and radical Islam.
In the meeting, Putin cited nuclear proliferation as the main threat confronting the world. He said there was a plot afoot to kill Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. If that happened, he wondered, who would control Pakistan's nuclear weapons? And he answered his own question in stark, if peculiar, terms: Osama bin Laden, he said, calling the terrorist leader "the defense minister." As for the Taliban, he said it would be a great mistake to remove the leaders but leave the Taliban in power. The Taliban is Afghanistan, he declared, and proposed a conference to bring together all the anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
But Topic A was the Russian link to NATO. Neither man saw any reason Russia shouldn't be a member. Noting that Robertson was the first to understand that Russia poses no threat to the alliance, Putin said his country should be a primary NATO ally. But he said that Russia would have to be consulted on common security issues, or it would be isolated on the periphery of security, which would be in no one's interest. He wasn't asking for membership as such, but rather a central political involvement.
Putin declared that Russia would not stand in the queue to be admitted into the alliance, like countries on whose membership nothing depends. Robertson replied that he understood this, but he saw no reason Moscow shouldn't apply. Both sides, he said, needed to stop the diplomatic sword dance over Russian membership. Putin restated his reluctance to wait in line, but said he did want a full-fledged, mature relationship with NATO. He wondered if Robertson and Russian experts could work jointly on the question.
The Russian president tried to highlight the opportunity he was offering the West by telling Robertson that he expected to be in office only four years at most. All his values, he said, were Western. But he warned that his successors may have a different view of European security -- thereby underlining up the developing gap between him and other key players in Moscow.
Robertson noted that the two sides could focus on a few specific areas of cooperation -- terrorism, air-sea rescue, Kosovo and Bosnia. He also raised the idea of a conference on military responses to terrorism jointly sponsored by NATO and Russia, an idea Putin liked. The conversation ended with Putin, perhaps revealingly, asking Robertson to pass on his regards to Bush, whose name had not arisen.
We should hear loud echoes of this meeting in Texas. There, Putin can safely agree to enlarging NATO yet again. Before Sept. 11, he deplored this idea, especially the prospect of admitting the Baltic nations, because he and his advisers saw it as bringing NATO into space that Russians are accustomed to influencing, if not controlling. But this concern becomes moot as he moves to acquire a serious role in revised Western security arrangements and to segue into Europe on his own.
Moreover, a bloated alliance operating by consensus will not be close to the center of political action. More and more, the center will lie wherever the key players, notably the United States and Russia, locate it. Today's security threats are not military, and NATO is not equipped to help much in the struggle against terrorism and weapons proliferation. Counterterrorism, for example, is much more of an intelligence and police function than a military one, and Washington will be increasingly reluctant to rely on NATO for other than peacekeeping tasks. NATO itself could become absorbed in solving problems between its members.
Although Putin won't be deflected, he will have to show critics at home some return on his bold move toward the West. Embedding Russia in the world economy isprobably his first priority. But accomplishing this will require Russian membership in theWorld Trade Organization, even though well-positioned Russians seethe organization as a conspiracy of multinational companies to exploit Russian assets. Putin also wants and probably needs a trade agreement with the European Union. Members are sympathetic, but unlikely to grant one unless and until Putin has maneuvered WTO membership. They need to see Russia establishing itself as a serious player and fully capable of living up to commitments.
The meeting with Bush could help anchor Russia to the West, politically and probably economically. Putinmay expect Washington to advance his WTO prospects by asking EU governments to join in pushing to relax the standards for Russian membership.
Putin may not object -- at least not strongly -- to the Bush plan for a national missile defense if he convinces himself that the project may eventually fall of its own weight. Agreeing to kill the ABM Treaty, as distinct from amending it, would be very tough for him. While the treaty is about arms control, it is also seen in Moscow as an agreement between great powers and, as such, of great political value. If he and Bush were to produce a new and verifiable bilateral agreement dealing with steep reductions of strategic weapons, it would play very well in Moscow. Prospects for an agreement of that kind are good, although just how binding it might be is unclear, and the importance Russians attach to locking the United States into a formal agreement cannot be overstated.
The shell of the egg won't be filled overnight. Putin's romancing of major Western capitals will have to be accompanied by internal reforms, including democratic ones. And he will have to hold up the Russian end of any bargain, especially by helping to discourage the proliferation of truly frightful weapons and playing a full part in interconnected programs aimed at curbing organized crime, drug trafficking and money laundering, etc. Also, in most Western capitals, including London, there are senior bureaucrats who resist major change, especially change that benefits Russia and appears to weaken NATO. France, for one, may have mixed feelings about NATO, but it will see stronger Russian involvement as accelerating movement of the center of political gravity eastward, a shift that has been underway since German unification.
Change is nonetheless underway, as Secretary of State Colin Powell made clear in Shanghai last month, when he ventured the lapidary phrase: "Not only is the Cold War over, the post-Cold War period is also over."
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