http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/08/13/001.html
Should Putin Fear a Kerry Victory?
Friday, August 13, 2004
President Vladimir Putin doesn't get to vote in the U.S. elections in November, but it's clear he'd cast his ballot for George W. Bush if he did.
The conventional wisdom is that Democratic candidate John Kerry would be more critical of the constraints Putin has put on democratic freedoms. Bush, a Republican, meanwhile, is a fellow warrior on terror who treats Putin with respect.
Yet it's overly simplistic to assume that a Kerry victory would signal a return to the eat-your-spinach days of the Clinton administration.
In speeches and interviews, Kerry and several of his foreign policy advisers have indicated that security cooperation, not concern for human rights, would be the centerpiece of his Russia agenda.
Kerry's policies, therefore, are likely to have more in common with those of the Bush administration than with those forged under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, when circumstances in Russia and the world were much different.
The real cleavage on foreign policy is not between parties but between liberals and realists within the two. Realists see the world in terms of national security threats and power, while liberals emphasize cooperation and principles.
The prevailing assumption in Moscow that Republican administrations are easier to work with likely dates back to the era of detente under U.S. President Richard Nixon, a Republican who signed arms control agreements and recognized the Soviet Union as a great power
Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Fond Politika think tank, who has advised Putin on foreign policy, voiced a view common in conservative Moscow circles that the Democratic establishment is "genetically anti-Russian." He pointed to the prominent status of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, both of whom were born in Eastern Europe.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan was a Republican, but a Wilsonian liberal, in the phrasing of political science. Alongside arms control agreements, he spoke more about democratic values than any president before or since.
Kerry, meanwhile, is a realist. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine published July 26, he spoke of his respect for Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state.
He has criticized the Bush administration for not doing more to help keep Russia's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists.
On this front, he has said he wants to boost cooperation under the Nunn-Lugar programs, which have been held up by the Bush administration's insistence that Moscow be liable in the event of an on-site disaster where American disarmament contractors are working.
In a June 1 speech in Florida, Kerry specifically addressed the need to secure Russia's nuclear arsenal.
"At my first summit with the Russian president, I will seek an agreement to sweep aside the key obstacles slowing our efforts to secure Russia's nuclear stockpiles."
Kerry noted that Russia still has nearly 20,000 nuclear weapons and enough nuclear material to produce 50,000 more Hiroshima-sized bombs. He said he would push for the removal of nuclear material from sites if they cannot be "adequately secured" within four years.
"At the current pace, it will take 13 years to secure potential bomb material in the former Soviet Union. We cannot wait that long," he said.
His full official position statement on Russia is just four sentences long and deliberately vague. Kerry and his staff want to stay on the offensive, making the election a referendum on Bush's record, rather than open Kerry to attack on hypothetical policy details.
It's not that he is not thinking about these things. Behind the scenes, a group of Russia specialists, many of whom served in the Clinton administration, meets regularly in Washington, chaired by Harvard professor Graham Allison, a former dean of the Kennedy School of Government.
And that's only one of the two dozen working groups whose hundreds of members offer foreign policy advice to Kerry's campaign.
The big-name stars in that constellation are people like Richard Holbrooke, who was Clinton's envoy to the United Nations and is often named as a leading candidate to be secretary of state in a Kerry administration, along with Senator Joseph Biden, with whom Kerry served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
If Kerry wins, his policy course will in large part depend on who holds which top jobs in his administration.
Someone like Rand Beers, a top foreign policy aide for the Kerry campaign who served on Bush's counter-terrorism staff before he quit in 2002, for example, might take a different approach from James Rubin, who was a top deputy to Albright under Clinton.
Policies could change, too, under a second Bush administration, since Cabinet officials often step down between terms.
Yet regardless of who is in the White House, little is likely to change for Moscow because the debate in Washington is less what should be on the Russia agenda than whether there is a Russia agenda at all.
"When there's no substance, there's no possibility for relations to change dramatically in any direction," said Lilia Shevtsova, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
The energy dialogue meant to boost Russian oil supplies to the United States and launched with much fanfare in 2002 has since shriveled away, as progress stalled on new export pipelines.
And economically, the two countries are not interdependent. The U.S.-Russia Business Council puts bilateral trade at about $4 billion, approximately on the same level as 10 years ago.
When Bush entered office in 2000, he eliminated the senior director for Russia policy position on the National Security Council and the State Department position of deputy secretary for the Newly Independent States, the job once held by Strobe Talbott. The top Russia post on the NSC, held by Thomas Graham Jr., was only restored to the senior director level in March.
Over the past four years, Putin has never seemed particularly thrilled with Bush's policies, like his one-sided withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and his bypassing of the UN Security Council for the Iraq war.
Kerry shares some of these unilateral leanings. He has said that the United States does not need a green light from other nations to use force, as part of his effort to combat the notion that Democrats are soft on national security issues. But his worldview is less America-centric, having grown up partly in Europe as the child of a diplomat, and he has said his approach to foreign affairs would be more multilateral.
Having been sidelined by Bush, European allies could be given more say under a Kerry administration in decisions regarding Iraq and other issues of global concern, and this prospect of greater inclusiveness, theoretically, would appeal to Putin.
Over the next four years, Washington may pay more attention to Russia if its arms sales to China come to be seen as a threat to American interests, said Dimitri Simes, the president of the Nixon Center in Washington.
Washington will also face a tough decision of which side to support if tensions with Georgia turn into an armed conflict.
Within both parties, there are those who accept Russian predominance in its former Soviet backyard, similar to U.S. predominance in Latin America, and those who think that such lingering imperialism must be rolled back.
Bush endeared himself to Putin by not lecturing him on Chechnya or Yukos despite pressures from the opinion pages of major newspapers and lawmakers on Capital Hill, Simes said.
Twice in June, Putin offered support for Bush's re-election. At the Group of Eight summit he is said to have remarked that, thanks to Bush's good stewardship, the U.S. economy was picking up.
And out of the blue during a visit to Kazakhstan, Putin said Russian intelligence had corroborated Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein was planning an attack on the United States, though it is not clear what he could have been referring to.
Russia is not an issue in the campaign, but that does not mean Putin could not try to influence its outcome. Some have speculated that he could use the spigots of the world's No. 2 oil exporter to help drive down gasoline prices before American voters go to the polls on Nov. 2, much as Saudi Arabia is reportedly on track to do.
This has not gone unnoticed by the Bush administration, which said Thursday that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had called Putin's chief of staff, Dmitry Medvedev, to register concern over the Russian government's handling of the Yukos affair. Other top U.S. officials have come out urging "consistency and predictability" for the sake of oil markets.
Yukos notwithstanding, in the contest for Washington's time and resources, Russia cannot compete with hot spots like the Middle East, Central Asia and even China.
Disengagement seems to suit Putin, who is glad for the laissez-faire treatment. But, Bush's Democratic critics ask, why hasn't his friendly relationship with Putin been converted into greater cooperation on a range of fronts -- like protection of intellectual property rights or diversification of the U.S. energy supply -- that are in the United States' national interest?
"A good rapport should be a means to an end, not an end in itself," said Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who specializes in U.S.-Russia relations.
Democrats say they would put relations on a stronger footing after a period of drift and indifference. And if they criticize, it's because they care.
"Bush is ignoring the fact that we're not on the same wavelength," said Toby Gati, a senior State Department and National Security Council official in the Clinton administration who, like McFaul, is an occasional adviser to the Kerry campaign.
The Bush administration's Russia policy is like a twist on the old Soviet joke, she said: "We pretend we're partners. They pretend to cooperate."
Should Putin Fear a Kerry Victory?
Friday, August 13, 2004
President Vladimir Putin doesn't get to vote in the U.S. elections in November, but it's clear he'd cast his ballot for George W. Bush if he did.
The conventional wisdom is that Democratic candidate John Kerry would be more critical of the constraints Putin has put on democratic freedoms. Bush, a Republican, meanwhile, is a fellow warrior on terror who treats Putin with respect.
Yet it's overly simplistic to assume that a Kerry victory would signal a return to the eat-your-spinach days of the Clinton administration.
In speeches and interviews, Kerry and several of his foreign policy advisers have indicated that security cooperation, not concern for human rights, would be the centerpiece of his Russia agenda.
Kerry's policies, therefore, are likely to have more in common with those of the Bush administration than with those forged under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, when circumstances in Russia and the world were much different.
The real cleavage on foreign policy is not between parties but between liberals and realists within the two. Realists see the world in terms of national security threats and power, while liberals emphasize cooperation and principles.
The prevailing assumption in Moscow that Republican administrations are easier to work with likely dates back to the era of detente under U.S. President Richard Nixon, a Republican who signed arms control agreements and recognized the Soviet Union as a great power
Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Fond Politika think tank, who has advised Putin on foreign policy, voiced a view common in conservative Moscow circles that the Democratic establishment is "genetically anti-Russian." He pointed to the prominent status of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, both of whom were born in Eastern Europe.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan was a Republican, but a Wilsonian liberal, in the phrasing of political science. Alongside arms control agreements, he spoke more about democratic values than any president before or since.
Kerry, meanwhile, is a realist. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine published July 26, he spoke of his respect for Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state.
He has criticized the Bush administration for not doing more to help keep Russia's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists.
On this front, he has said he wants to boost cooperation under the Nunn-Lugar programs, which have been held up by the Bush administration's insistence that Moscow be liable in the event of an on-site disaster where American disarmament contractors are working.
In a June 1 speech in Florida, Kerry specifically addressed the need to secure Russia's nuclear arsenal.
"At my first summit with the Russian president, I will seek an agreement to sweep aside the key obstacles slowing our efforts to secure Russia's nuclear stockpiles."
Kerry noted that Russia still has nearly 20,000 nuclear weapons and enough nuclear material to produce 50,000 more Hiroshima-sized bombs. He said he would push for the removal of nuclear material from sites if they cannot be "adequately secured" within four years.
"At the current pace, it will take 13 years to secure potential bomb material in the former Soviet Union. We cannot wait that long," he said.
His full official position statement on Russia is just four sentences long and deliberately vague. Kerry and his staff want to stay on the offensive, making the election a referendum on Bush's record, rather than open Kerry to attack on hypothetical policy details.
It's not that he is not thinking about these things. Behind the scenes, a group of Russia specialists, many of whom served in the Clinton administration, meets regularly in Washington, chaired by Harvard professor Graham Allison, a former dean of the Kennedy School of Government.
And that's only one of the two dozen working groups whose hundreds of members offer foreign policy advice to Kerry's campaign.
The big-name stars in that constellation are people like Richard Holbrooke, who was Clinton's envoy to the United Nations and is often named as a leading candidate to be secretary of state in a Kerry administration, along with Senator Joseph Biden, with whom Kerry served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
If Kerry wins, his policy course will in large part depend on who holds which top jobs in his administration.
Someone like Rand Beers, a top foreign policy aide for the Kerry campaign who served on Bush's counter-terrorism staff before he quit in 2002, for example, might take a different approach from James Rubin, who was a top deputy to Albright under Clinton.
Policies could change, too, under a second Bush administration, since Cabinet officials often step down between terms.
Yet regardless of who is in the White House, little is likely to change for Moscow because the debate in Washington is less what should be on the Russia agenda than whether there is a Russia agenda at all.
"When there's no substance, there's no possibility for relations to change dramatically in any direction," said Lilia Shevtsova, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
The energy dialogue meant to boost Russian oil supplies to the United States and launched with much fanfare in 2002 has since shriveled away, as progress stalled on new export pipelines.
And economically, the two countries are not interdependent. The U.S.-Russia Business Council puts bilateral trade at about $4 billion, approximately on the same level as 10 years ago.
When Bush entered office in 2000, he eliminated the senior director for Russia policy position on the National Security Council and the State Department position of deputy secretary for the Newly Independent States, the job once held by Strobe Talbott. The top Russia post on the NSC, held by Thomas Graham Jr., was only restored to the senior director level in March.
Over the past four years, Putin has never seemed particularly thrilled with Bush's policies, like his one-sided withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and his bypassing of the UN Security Council for the Iraq war.
Kerry shares some of these unilateral leanings. He has said that the United States does not need a green light from other nations to use force, as part of his effort to combat the notion that Democrats are soft on national security issues. But his worldview is less America-centric, having grown up partly in Europe as the child of a diplomat, and he has said his approach to foreign affairs would be more multilateral.
Having been sidelined by Bush, European allies could be given more say under a Kerry administration in decisions regarding Iraq and other issues of global concern, and this prospect of greater inclusiveness, theoretically, would appeal to Putin.
Over the next four years, Washington may pay more attention to Russia if its arms sales to China come to be seen as a threat to American interests, said Dimitri Simes, the president of the Nixon Center in Washington.
Washington will also face a tough decision of which side to support if tensions with Georgia turn into an armed conflict.
Within both parties, there are those who accept Russian predominance in its former Soviet backyard, similar to U.S. predominance in Latin America, and those who think that such lingering imperialism must be rolled back.
Bush endeared himself to Putin by not lecturing him on Chechnya or Yukos despite pressures from the opinion pages of major newspapers and lawmakers on Capital Hill, Simes said.
Twice in June, Putin offered support for Bush's re-election. At the Group of Eight summit he is said to have remarked that, thanks to Bush's good stewardship, the U.S. economy was picking up.
And out of the blue during a visit to Kazakhstan, Putin said Russian intelligence had corroborated Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein was planning an attack on the United States, though it is not clear what he could have been referring to.
Russia is not an issue in the campaign, but that does not mean Putin could not try to influence its outcome. Some have speculated that he could use the spigots of the world's No. 2 oil exporter to help drive down gasoline prices before American voters go to the polls on Nov. 2, much as Saudi Arabia is reportedly on track to do.
This has not gone unnoticed by the Bush administration, which said Thursday that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had called Putin's chief of staff, Dmitry Medvedev, to register concern over the Russian government's handling of the Yukos affair. Other top U.S. officials have come out urging "consistency and predictability" for the sake of oil markets.
Yukos notwithstanding, in the contest for Washington's time and resources, Russia cannot compete with hot spots like the Middle East, Central Asia and even China.
Disengagement seems to suit Putin, who is glad for the laissez-faire treatment. But, Bush's Democratic critics ask, why hasn't his friendly relationship with Putin been converted into greater cooperation on a range of fronts -- like protection of intellectual property rights or diversification of the U.S. energy supply -- that are in the United States' national interest?
"A good rapport should be a means to an end, not an end in itself," said Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who specializes in U.S.-Russia relations.
Democrats say they would put relations on a stronger footing after a period of drift and indifference. And if they criticize, it's because they care.
"Bush is ignoring the fact that we're not on the same wavelength," said Toby Gati, a senior State Department and National Security Council official in the Clinton administration who, like McFaul, is an occasional adviser to the Kerry campaign.
The Bush administration's Russia policy is like a twist on the old Soviet joke, she said: "We pretend we're partners. They pretend to cooperate."