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(Colonel Stanislav Lunev is the highest-ranking military officer ever to defect from Russia to the United States. )
Col. Stanislav Lunev
Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2001
At week’s end President-elect Bush will relocate his residence to the White House, nicknamed "Motel 1600" by cynical Washingtonians during recent years when President Clinton and his wife were renting out rooms in return for hefty campaign contributions.
Unlike his predecessor, who inherited a robust economy and the strongest military in the world, Bush has many problems left over from the previous administration to resolve.
Among them is U.S. policy toward Russia, which eight years ago was mostly friendly to the United States, but is no longer, thanks to the flawed Clinton/Gore policies.
The incoming Bush administration may soon find that the present government of the Russian Federation is very different from the previous one, and under President Vladimir Putin his country is heading toward a domestic dictatorship and to the restoration of Soviet Russia’s international influence and domination.
The new people in the White House could also soon find that Putin, who was vigorously promoted by the Clinton-Gore administration as a supporter of democracy and a free-market economy, is, in reality, as aggressive and energetic in his efforts domestically as he is in pursuing an ambitious foreign policy agenda hostile to the U.S. and its allies.
Consolidating state power in Russia and reaping the benefits of skyrocketing oil-gas prices in the international markets, Putin has spent the past several months systematically constructing a framework with which to engage the new U.S. administration. He visited North Korea, Cuba and other old Soviet satellites in an attempt to restore Russia’s relations with former allies that remain hostile to America.
He sent his Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov to the Middle East and his Defense Minister Igor Sergeev to Iran, in an effort to restore Moscow’s strategic position and to establish new military ties in violation of agreements signed by Russia’s previous government with the gullible Clinton-Gore administration.
Also in violation of previous Kremlin promises, Putin’s government said recently that Russia "cannot make full payment" of its foreign debt and requested the finance minister to begin negotiations with creditor nations, known collectively as the Paris Club, which includes the U.S.
As Russia’s ORT TV channel said, Russia’s payment in January to the Paris Club will be only about 10 percent of the originally scheduled $316.4 million, because of an alleged "dramatic decline in oil prices at the international market."
Practically ignored by the mainstream American press, this announcement that Russia will miss some first-quarter payments raised serious questions about whether the country’s economic recovery is really as strong as the Kremlin has claimed, and could potentially dampen Putin’s attempts to encourage foreign investment.
In relations with European and other Western countries, the Kremlin is using every opportunity to create a split between the U.S. and its traditional friends and allies.
Most notably, Putin has launched a broad campaign against American plans for a national missile defense (NMD) system, promoting alternative programs that include Russia’s participation, and are especially designed to undermine European public support for the NMD and cause them to challenge their governments’ support of the U.S. defense plans.
Actually there is nothing new in Putin’s tactics – this divide-and-conquer approach was exactly the method that was a favorite practice of the former Soviet leaders in dealing with NATO’s member nations in the days of the Cold War.
During his time in power Putin has worked feverishly to improve the strategic alliance with Red China and to engage India and other countries with anti-American sentiments in a some kind of coalition directed against the U.S. Moscow has already established military cooperation with Byelorussia and Central Asia’s newly independent states, based on the grounds of Russia’s military presence in those countries.
The Russian president also has stepped up pressure on other former Soviet republics, such as Armenia and Georgia, which have Russian military bases on their soil but have nevertheless leaned westward
Using a dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, Putin has also tried to increase Moscow’s influence in Azerbaijan, the only former Soviet republic in Trans-Caucasus that doesn’t have a Russian military presence on its territory.
On Jan. 10 Putin said he wanted more military cooperation with this Trans-Caucasus country. "Military cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan has been showing signs of progress lately. I think our contacts in this area may be intensified," Putin told the Azeri Parliament during his first visit to Azerbaijan.
The Russian press said that as a first step Moscow would like to re-establish its control over the Gabalinsky radar station in Azerbaijan, which was an important link in the Soviet integrated system for the national air and missile defense.
As NewsMax.com has reported, under Putin Moscow’s military preparations have increased dramatically. The whole world should be alarmed by re-deployment of Russian tactical nukes to Kaliningrad, which has undermined the global security because it signals a worrisome departure from the previous Moscow policy and a new level of brinkmanship. But it appears as if, from the beginning, the Clinton-Gore team was determined to pass the so-called Kaliningrad crisis on to the next administration.
Recently Moscow has lowered the threshold for nuclear weapons use and increased its reliance on tactical nuclear arms and hidden stocks of germ warfare and poison gas to compensate for its declining conventional forces. As Putin stated in January, his government would use "all forces and means, including nuclear weapons if necessary, to repel armed aggression."
Recent Russian military field exercises used the scenario of a NATO attack on Kaliningrad and allowed participating troops to launch mock nuclear attacks on the Europe and the U.S.
In other words, President Bush and his team may soon find that they inherited from the previous administration some very touchy relationships with Russia, which has successfully resumed alliances with such states as Red China, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Cuba. Putin has built a coalition that will counter the U.S. and try to thwart any American defense initiatives, including such extremely important strategic programs as NMD.
From now on, the future of the U.S. policy vis-a-vis Russia will depend on how well the new American president can handle Clinton’s Russian legacy to his administration – an aggressive and ambitious Russian leader of a still militarily powerful country
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You realize together, Russia and China could take the US in our present downgraded military status... thanks billy bob. Isn't social economical repression one of the main reasons you wage a war? Aren't both China and Russia experiencing this now?
Eagler
