#7
Newsday
December 14, 2001
Withdrawal Imperils U.S.-Russian Bond
By Paul J. Saunders
Paul J. Saunders is director of The Nixon Center in Washington, D.C.
PRESIDENT George W. Bush's announcement that the United States will withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is hardly the disaster some have sought to portray.
However, the president's decision to pull out of the treaty, which has been met with disappoinment but little surprise in Moscow, does represent a lost opportunity in America's evolving ties with Russia. Keeping those ties on track toward the "new relationship" the Bush Administration has called for will require serious effort.
Taking into account the possibly catastrophic consequences of a missile attack, no reasonable measures to defend American lives and property should be rejected. The treaty was a clear obstacle to such efforts and had outlived its usefulness.
President Richard Nixon, who signed the agreement with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1972, concluded almost 20 years later that "the time has come to move beyond the ABM Treaty." Developments in Iraq and North Korea, not to mention India and Pakistan, only strengthened the case against the treaty in the intervening years.
Nevertheless, the Bush administration's failure to reach an understanding with Russia on modifying or replacing the treaty is an important lost opportunity. The U.S.-Russian relationship has improved substantially since the first meeting between Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in June. The improvement has markedly accelerated since Sept. 11, as each side has focused on the shared objective of destroying the al-Qaida terrorist network and Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
But continued improvements in the relationship are not foreordained: Both sides will have to work at the relationship, and both presidents will face challenges in doing so. An agreement on missile defense would have paved the way for broader cooperation. Now, U.S. withdrawal from the treaty will ultimately make it more difficult.
The Kremlin's pragmatic and relatively quiet reaction- Putin called the decision "mistaken" - should not be misunderstood. From the Russian perspective, the withdrawal is likely to raise important questions about U.S. intentions. Putin is already far in front of Russian public opinion on relations with the United States.
There is little doubt the announced end of the treaty will increase the gap and put pressure on him to demonstrate that closer relations with America will bring tangible benefits to Russia. In the absence of such benefits, it will become increasingly hard for him to accommodate U.S. preferences on other issues, such as the post-Afghanistan phases of the war on terrorism, Iraq and NATO enlargement.
This is where the challenges to the United States become more difficult. Improving the U.S.-Russian relationship was relatively easy during the war on the Taliban, whose brand of Islamic extremism Moscow has long considered a serious threat to not only the stability of Muslim states on its southern perimeter, but also to Russia's own internal security (such as in Chechnya). Now that the war seems to be winding down, our list of common interests will be shorter - and the list of divergent interests may grow, especially as Washington likely pays greater attention to Iraq.
Moving the U.S.-Russian relationship forward in such an environment will require greater sensitivity to Russian interests and a serious effort to help Putin show his people how cooperation with Washington can benefit them, directly and unambiguously. This is by no means an insurmountable problem, but if it is to be addressed successfully, it must be recognized as a problem and approached accordingly.
Reassuring Russians that the United States wants a close and strong relationship with their country - through actions, not words - can help ensure that America's withdrawal from the treaty is little more than a bump on the road to that new relationship. Failing to do so risks making the treaty's collapse into the first in a series of wrong turns and disappointments.
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