#13
Washington Post
November 25, 2001
Putin's Tilt to the West Riles Key Factions
Powerful Constituencies Still Distrustful of U.S.
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
MOSCOW, Nov. 24 -- President Vladimir Putin, who came to office nearly two years ago as a champion of the Russian military and intelligence agencies, has unsettled these powerful constituencies with his recent overtures to the United States on arms control and the war against terrorism, observers and government officials said.
Yet the early criticism has been muted. In a time of optimism over the economy, Putin is extremely popular and the Russian public has willingly followed his lead toward a new relationship with the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But the risk down the road is that if things go wrong at home or abroad, Putin will have made enemies. Observers recall that some leaders of the 1991 attempted coup against Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev were generals upset with his "new thinking" that led to arms reductions and reduced tensions with the United States.
"The new course is bound to provoke resistance from the very forces Putin considers the backbone of the Russian state -- officials who work out decisions in the field of foreign and defense policies, a majority of Russian generals and the most powerful heads of the military industrial complex," said Alexander Golts, a defense analyst, writing in the weekly Yezhenedelny Zhurnal.
"The whole intelligence community is raised on hate for the United States and the West," recalled Yuri Kobaladze, a former spokesman for the Russian foreign intelligence service. "The quick change on such an issue is difficult to swallow."
Only two years ago, during and after the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Russia's relations with Washington were at a low point. When Putin was elected president in March 2000, having been acting president since December 1999, he quickly embraced a doctrine of Russia as a counterweight to global domination by the United States. Under ideas that had blossomed under former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, Russia was meant to look less to the West and more eastward -- to China, and to Arab allies from Soviet times -- to build a coalition against American hegemony.
Now Russia-the-counterweight has become Russia, America's buddy. Russia adheres to a U.S.-led coalition against terrorism. Some of the potential enemies are old Soviet clients -- Iraq chief among them.
Inklings of dismay surfaced on Nov. 10 in an open letter from retired generals, which took Putin to task for a variety of Russia's ills. The letter was regarded as an assault originating with officers on active duty. "America's war is not our war. We are just making enemies needlessly," said Vladimir Volkov, a Communist member of parliament, a member of the defense committee and a signer of the letter.
Earlier, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov expressed opposition to the United States' using bases in the Central Asian countries that were once Soviet republics. Putin overruled him, and he has been mum on the subject ever since. The newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which is widely read among the military and foreign policy community here, said generals were "dissatisfied" with the Kremlin's permission to let the United States into Central Asia.
Officers in the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, also objected to Putin's post-Sept. 11 decision to close an intelligence-gathering base in Cuba, a senior government official said. They regarded it as a firm gesture in Washington's favor with nothing received in return, the official said. Putin endorsed the closure as a cost-cutting measure.
Both opponents and proponents of Putin's dealings with Washington are looking for signs of concrete benefits. In Moscow, the Bush administration's decision not to immediately pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was viewed as a positive development. However, critics viewed Bush's announcement of a unilateral cut in the U.S. nuclear arsenal as only partially satisfying. The Russian military prefers to have such decisions enshrined in a treaty -- which Bush is resisting -- because treaties provide for verification. "It's now Russia that says trust but verify, just like Ronald Reagan used to," said Viktor Litovkin, a defense writer for Obshchaya Gazeta.
Other possible benefits, such as accelerated membership into the World Trade Organization or write-offs of Soviet-era debt, remain in the hazy future, skeptics pointed out. "We have an old saying: Promises are not marriage," Litovkin said. "So far, there's a lot of promises."
Even fans of the new policy seem somewhat confused. Putin is far from a Great Communicator; during the 2000 Russian presidential campaign, for example, he declined to issue an economic platform on the grounds that it would be criticized. He has made no major policy speech since Sept. 11. There have been no major personnel shifts by the Kremlin to signal subsequent policy changes.
"It seems to have been a personal decision," said Igor Bunin, a political consultant. "Putin usually operates by consolidating relations with elites, but he worked outside of them this time."
"How this will all be taken may depend on the next phase of the war," observed Mark Urnov, also a leading consultant. "He will certainly need to consult more widely if the campaign moves on to Iraq or other places."
Kobaladze offered a psychological explanation of Putin's actions: They stem from Putin's previous career as a spy. "Spies learn to be liked by those they are trying to influence," he said. "Putin may have learned that lesson well and is applying it to Bush."
Putin also has displayed a visceral hatred for Islamic-based "terrorist" groups, Kobaladze said. Putin once said he would "wipe the outhouse walls" with Chechens who are fighting for independence for Chechnya, a largely Muslim region in southern Russia.
Golts views Putin's attitude as cautious politicking to disguise a basically pro-Western bias. He said Putin, like Gorbachev, was trying to reach a point of no return of integration with the West before anyone noticed. "The current president must be telling generals that rapprochement . . . is a tactical move," he said. "And, like Gorbachev, he does not know who he is deceiving, Western leaders or his own entourage."
For the moment, Putin can carry the policy on the shoulders of broad popular support. One recent poll, by the Public Opinion Foundation, showed that Russians supported "significant rapprochement" by 69 percent, compared with 17 percent who were opposed.
Asked whether the United States is a friendly country, respondents split evenly, with 43 percent saying "yes" and 43 percent "no." A poll conducted in February found 52 percent of those surveyed regarded the United States as unfriendly, and only 32 percent as friendly.
The pollster Alexander Oslon, who has worked closely with the Kremlin, said that Russians currently regard the United States as easier to live with because the Sept. 11 attacks showed that the world's sole remaining superpower could be hit and hurt. "The myth of American invulnerability shrank," he said.
Next Article