- The Atlantists are on the ascendant these days in Moscow.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's hamburger lunch with United States
President Barack Obama during his visit to Silicon Valley last month apparently
left a pleasant taste in his mouth. Now relations with NATO are on the
mend, as Russia plans to send 27 Mi-17 helicopters to Afghanistan, NATO
Military Committee Chairman Giampaolo di Paola said after a meeting with
Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Nikolai Makarov last Friday.
Rosoboronexport has even offered to throw in the first three helicopters
for free.
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- Makarov went further, telling di Paola that Russia was
now ready to work with NATO "to pool efforts to find solutions to
contemporary challenges and threats to international security". Di
Paola welcomed the Russian general's offer, assuring him that NATO views
Moscow as a "strong strategic partner, not as a threat or an enemy".
He spoke vaguely about new members having to "meet NATO standards",
avoiding the U(kraine) and G(eorgia) words during their press conference.
Russian and NATO experts will draft a joint action plan for 2011 within
the next few months, he said.
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- Russian NATO Ambassadoor Dmitri Rogozin recently boasted
that "Russian helicopters will ideally fit Afghan conditions: they
are easy to operate, reliable, efficient and known by Afghan pilots."
He offered to train Afghan pilots in addition to the Afghan police Russia
is now helping train. Makarov even offered "consultancy in military
and combat training based on our Afghan experience, including our mistakes".
The deal is estimated at $300m though Rogozin hinted that a discount beyond
the three free copters was possible and that Russia could kick in another
19 in 2012. So, if I understand this correctly, Russia's Afghan communist
allies from the days of Soviet occupation are now going to man the same
old Russian helicopters to kill yet more Afghan patriots, the only difference
being the language the occupiers speak and their capitalist pedigree.
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- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is also feeling
the chilly wind of Russia-US detente these days. The Russian state-owned
NTV, watched by millions of Belorussians, broadcast a scathing two-part
documentary "The Belarusian Godfather" last week as the Kremlin
was hosting leading Belarusian opposition figures, in a campaign to unseat
their troublesome ally in the presidential elections next February. The
Russian ire peaked last month over unpaid gas bills, disagreements over
the proposed new customs union with Kazakhstan, and Lukashenko's refusal
to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as it, like Russia, seeks to curry
favour in Brussels. Upping the ante, a sympathetic interview with Russian
nemesis Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was broadcast on Belarusian
TV and Lukashenko is currently hosting deposed Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek
Bakiyev. Bakiyev's overthrow was approved if not abetted by Moscow, and
the comparison of Lukashenko and Bakiyev in "The Godfather-II"
is a stark warning to Lukashenko that his days are numbered.
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- What accounts for this sudden effusion of East-West friendship,
after years of complaining about NATO encirclement and missile bases in
Poland?
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- Obama's more accommodating tone and NATO's pause in its
eastward march has clearly mollified the Russians. It also looks like disagreements
over Ukrainian/ Georgian membership in NATO and South Ossetian/ Abkhazian
independence are all on the backburner now as the US sinks deeper and deeper
into its Afghan quagmire. Russia backs the losing war there because it
is very worried about the prospects of a Taliban victory. Better a pro-US
dictatorship than another Islamic neighbour. Besides, the helicopter deal
(and who knows what else?) will replace its $1 billion loss on Iranian
missile sales.
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- But Afghanistan is not Belarus, and rather than moving
forward and trying to reach an accommodation with Afghanistan's popular
resistance movement, Russia is ignoring the lesson it learned with such
pain two decades ago, gambling that the US can produce a miracle where
it failed. It is also gambling that the US and NATO are too preoccupied
-- and grateful to a newly nice Russia -- to try to pull off another colour
revolution in Belarus, where Russia is counting on a largely pro-Russian
nation finding a replacement to Lukashenko who will not cause the headaches
that he, the orange, rose and tulip revolutionaries have caused.
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- Whatever happens in Afghanistan and Belarus, Medvedev's
two greatest wishes now are to get SALT through the US senate and to pave
the way for Russia to join Europe. To clinch this westward reorientation,
there are now signs that Russia will do the unthinkable: work with the
US on missile defence. In a New York Times oped, ex-Russian foreign minister
Igor Ivanov and ex-German US ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, co-chairmen
of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative Commission, joined former senator
Sam Nunn in calling for "North America, Europe and Russia to make
defence of the entire Euro-Atlantic region against potential ballistic
missile attack a joint priority". They propose the creation of a "more
inclusive and better-defended Euro-Atlantic community ... what national
leaders in their moment of hope at the Cold War's close spoke of as a 'Europe
from the Atlantic to the Urals whole and free for the first time in 300
years'."
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- Acceding to US plans for missile defence will kill Medvedev's
two birds with one stone. The NYT oped panders to Russian self-image by
calling for the US, EU and Russia to "undertake as equal parties to
design from the ground up a common architecture to deal with the threat".
It soothingly assures us that a joint Starwars will "aid progress
in bolstering the nuclear nonproliferation regime". Left out of the
equation is the glaring fact that a world encircled by hair-trigger missiles
is more likely to be a trigger for war than peace, that the whole point
of Starwars is to create facts-on-the-ground for the US empire which will
allow it to dictate just what kind of world order is acceptable. As for
boosting the NPT, the only way to discourage countries from emulating the
nuclear powers is for them to give up their deadly weapons and stop threatening
the world with them. It is naive of Russia to think it will be able to
veto, say, a war on Iran or some other "offender" of what the
US deems to be OK, or that countries threatened by US invasion will stop
trying to acquire weapons that will make the US think twice.
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- This new accommodating Russia is very much in the US
global interest and Obama is sure to keep courting Medvedev, despite attempts
by Cold Warriors to undermine the budding friendship, as witnessed in the
mock spy scandal last month. Given the new westerly wind blowing out of
the Kremlin, geopolitical logic could mean an end to Brzezinski-like plans
to encircle Russia. Much better to leave the problems of a remote Kyrgyzstan
to a friend. Let it deal with complex ethnic and economic problems which
Americans can't hope to understand or solve, using a Russian (NATO?) military
base as the occasion demands rather than maintaining an unpopular US one.
Ukraine? Georgia? Bela-who? Afghanistan is what's important, if it can
be secured in the Western fold, with Russia in tow. And Starwars.
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- The goal of Obama's imperial team is to rally Russia
to the US (oops, I mean NATO) flag and push on. Ivanov et al explain that
if all goes well, soon along with China, we "can explore cooperation
on the role and place of missile defense in a multipolar nuclear world."
It looks like Medvedev has opted for US empire even as it implodes. Will
Hu get the hint?
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- ***
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- Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/
You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com
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- ***
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- References
- Atlantists http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=210
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- hamburger lunch
- http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=266
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- Soviet occupation
- http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=126
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- Lukashenko http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=87
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- new accommodating Russia
- http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=255
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- problems of a remote Kyrgyzstan
- http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=264
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- unpopular US one
- http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=262
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- Ukraine http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=221
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- Georgia http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_
content&view=article&id=231<http://ericwalberg.com/>
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