Russia 100203 Basic Political Developments
The Moscow Times: Obama’s Pro-Russia Policy
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The Moscow Times: Obama’s Pro-Russia Policyhttp://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/obamas-pro-russia-policy/398882.html 03 February 2010 By Nikolai Zlobin The one-year anniversary of U.S. President Barack Obama in office has been noted all over the world. Of particular importance is the fact that almost one-third of Obama’s supporters have abandoned him as they change their view of him as president of hope to the president of disappointment. And it’s true: Obama’s position is extremely difficult now. He is spending his political capital rapidly, pressure from the Republican Party is mounting as it re-establishes its position, and the array of problems facing him is growing. Republican Scott Brown’s successful bid to replace the late Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts now means that Democrats no longer have 60 seats in the Senate — the threshold that allows a party to pass legislation on a “fast track” by depriving the opposing party of its ability to filibuster. This means that it will be far more difficult for Obama to win congressional support for his policies. At the same time, however, the Brown victory restores the balance of powers in Congress. This balance is healthy for the U.S. political system because it forces both parties to compromise. Obama’s greatest challenge now is to find his new place in the U.S. political spectrum because protest against former President George W. Bush — something that helped Obama win the presidential vote in 2008 against Senator John McCain — is no longer synonymous with a mandate for his “radical” liberal agenda. National security continues to be the No. 1 foreign policy concern for most Americans. Obama promised to maintain the same level of security that Bush achieved, but Obama wants to use entirely different methods. The terrorist close-call on Christmas Day revealed glaring oversights in the country’s security and intelligence operations. Obama’s political capital in the global arena will depend on the extent to which he is able to depart from the methods of his predecessor while at the same time ensure a high level of U.S. security. Obama has improved U.S.-Russian relations on many fronts — above all, canceling plans to deploy a U.S. missile shield in Central Europe, putting a hold on plans to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and sharply reducing its criticism of Russia’s human rights record. But building an agenda for bilateral relations requires initiatives and compromises from both sides. Russia itself should take advantage of the U.S. president’s sincere desire to “reset” relations. Moscow definitely needs to have stable and friendly relations with Washington based on equality and mutual respect. Russia needs this relationship far more than the United States does. Most important, Obama’s overtures toward Russia create new opportunities for the Kremlin to strengthen and institutionalize its relations with the United States. This would be clearly more productive and efficient than the ad hoc, improvisational style that defined bilateral relations in the past. In addition, Moscow could take steps to bring Russian and U.S. civil societies closer together and to strengthen civil institutions. The U.S.-Russian governmental commission on civil society headed by Michael McFaul, director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs on the U.S. National Security Council, and Vyacheslav Surkov, deputy head of the presidential administration, is an excellent platform for making civil society an important component of U.S.-Russian relations. On Jan. 27, the commission met in Washington and discussed ways to jointly battle corruption and how to better monitor the process of adopting Russian children. For these types of cooperation measures to work, however, Russian authorities would have to make a firm commitment to curtail its anti-U.S. propaganda that has a direct impact on the country’s public opinion, political culture, the media and the political elite. Moscow needs to maintain a position that protects its national and strategic interests, but they need to be based on cooperation — and not confrontation — with Washington, while understanding that the United States will insist on defending its own national interests, just as it always has. The balance that the two countries would strike as they uphold their respective interests is likely to make them partners and not adversaries. That, in turn, would increase Russia’s influence in the world, and in particular, in the former Soviet republics. Nikolai Zlobin is director of the Russia and Eurasia Project at the World Security Institute in Washington. This comment appeared in Vedomosti. Barentsobserver: Carl Bildt: - Withdraw tactical nukes from Kolahttp://www.barentsobserver.com/carl-bildt-withdraw-tactical-nukes-from-kola.4742394-116320.html 2010-02-03 Sweden and Poland’s Foreign Ministers urge Russia to withdraw its tactical nuclear weapons from both Kaliningrad and the Kola Peninsula. - We understand that Russia is a European power, but urge Moscow to make a commitment to the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from areas adjacent to European Union member states. We are thinking of areas like the Kaliningrad region and the Kola Peninsula, where there are still substantial numbers of these weapons, writes Sweden’s Carl Bildt and Poland’s Radek Sikorski in an up-ed in the New York Times. They suggest such a withdrawal could be accompanied by the destruction of relevant storage facilities. On the Kola Peninsula, storage facilities for naval tactical nuclear weapons exist. The actual numbers of such nuclear warheads are held secret and not accounted for in international treaties. The START treaty and the soon-to-come follow-up treaty only count strategic nuclear weapons.
02 February, 2010, 14:56 The head of the State Duma committee for international relations Konstantin Kosachev has called the request of Poland and Sweden to withdraw tactical nuclear weapons from Russia’s EU border illogical. Earlier, the foreign ministers of both countries Radoslav Sikorsky and Carl Bildt, published in the New York Times a call on Moscow to remove its nuclear weapons from the Kaliningrad region and the Kola Peninsula. However, Moscow thinks that such an initiative has the right to exist, but doesn’t have grounds for realization until security in Europe will be collective, integrated and indivisible. In an interview to Interfax news agency, Konstantin Kosachev also reminded that Moscow’s initiative to create an international agreement on European security has been ignored by both Poland and Sweden. The head of the Russian State Duma Committee for international relations has also stressed that, for the European Union, NATO remains the main force to ensure security in the region: “Until all the forces of ensuring European Security will be united, only nuclear weapons will be able to sustain the global strategic security balance of the continent. And in this regard, the decision on the quantity and the geographical location of the nuclear arms will remain between the two nuclear powers Russia and the US – whether the third parties like that or not.” Many analysts think, however, that the timing of the Polish-Swedish initiative is not accidental, as it coincides with the new round of US-Russia talks in Geneva concerning a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. However, Vladimir Yevseyev from the Center of International Security in Moscow thinks that neither Sweden nor Poland expected an immediate action on their initiative: “Tactical nuclear arms withdrawal from European territories is not the most topical issue at the moment. As for Sweden, even though it’s not a NATO member, it’s really difficult to imagine that it will ever be attacked by either Russia or the US. Sweden came up with this initiative as it is more worried about the environmental damage that such arms may cause. As for Poland, it just used this moment to distract attention from the expansion of its own arms.” Earlier, Moscow expressed concerns about Poland’s plans to deploy American antiaircraft Patriot missiles close to its border with Russia, just 100 kilometers from the Kaliningrad region. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has asked Warsaw for an explanation, as such an act is seen by the Kremlin as Poland increasing its military arsenal against Russia. Viktor Litovkin, Editor-in-Chief of the “Independent Military Review” thinks, Poland used this initiative as another opportunity to cast another stone towards Russia: “This is very typical of Poland. You know this Russophobia is their historical illness, and there is really no cure for that.” In their letter, the ministers of Poland and Sweden have, however, not only pointed their finger at Russia, but also called on the US to withdraw their arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons from the European territory. Citing a recent report by the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, the ministers mentioned that 200 out of 500 US active warheads are stored in Western Europe, whereas the vast majority of Russia’s 2,000 warheads are stored in the western part of the country. However, the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine “Russia in Global Politics” Fyodor Lukyanov thinks that such initiative has been coordinated with the US. In an interview to Russian radio station Echo Moskvy, he said that the current US-Russia talks are only about strategic nuclear weapons, which are not stored in Europe by Russia. The US however has long wanted to include tactical warheads in the dialogue and this was an indirect way of pointing at this issue. He says that – since Barack Obama is organizing a so-called nuclear summit in April this year, and then in May there will be a conference on nuclear non proliferation – Obama wants (and needs) to come up with some important initiatives in this sphere.
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