THE COLD WAR CONTINUES

Obama’s barely coded offer to Medvedev and Putin

Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

The recent summit meeting in Moscow did not dispel the suspicion that Russia, too, has lost an empire without finding a role, as Dean Acheson said of Britain. But Barack Obama’s barely coded offer to Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin of a nuclear-shield-for-Iran deal did confirm the non-aligned movement’s rationale, which the West persistently denied, that the Cold War was more about power, influence and territory than about ideology. The contest has lost its edge but has not been put to rest. Among other results of that continuing tussle was the drift in India-Russia relations during the last few years when India sought to “reset” (using Obama’s term for his plans for Moscow) relations with the United States of America. Now, America’s example shows that it is just as important for India not to neglect Russia. Whether it is possible to do so without jeopardizing the close Indo-American ties that Manmohan Singh and George W. Bush built up will depend largely on the Obama administration, which has not so far treated India as a foreign policy priority. Medvedev’s grandiose vision — “Such powerful states as Russia and America have special responsibility for everything that is happening on this planet” — revealed Russia’s self-perception. Clearly this is not quite how the US views its partnership with yesterday’s superpower. Obama avoided Richard Nixon’s folie de grandeur in hailing the formal end of the Cold War as the beginning of the age of Pax Americana and Bush’s blunder in treating those who did not wholeheartedly support his aggressiveness as enemies. But Russian analysts found his eulogies of democracy and criticism of corruption “mentoring” and “talking down”. At times, especially when telling Russian students they would “get to decide” the future, Obama also sounded as if he was threatening regime change in Moscow too. His hosts had the last laugh when he warned that a great power “does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries”. Or that empires cannot “treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board”. Obama spoke of Georgia and the Ukraine, but Russians could have asked, “What, then, did the US do in Iraq? What is it doing in Afghanistan?” The condemnation of military power sounded especially unconvincing since US forces provide the anchor of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is being extended and strengthened while the Warsaw Pact has been wound up. Russia’s defence budget is only 11 per cent of America’s. Over 70 per cent of Russia’s 10,000 warheads are not operational. Western observers calculate that Russia will not be able to maintain more than 500 nuclear weapons by 2020. Of America’s 5,200 nuclear weapons, 2,700 are fully operational. The American economy is 14 times bigger than Russia’s and Russia’s population of 142 million is slated to fall to 107 million in the next 40 years. In the circumstances, the agreement to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty may have been a concession to Moscow. If both sides cut down 2,200 warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675, Russia will be able to get rid of an ageing arsenal without loss of either face or serious strategic advantage. Start-I would have lapsed in December in any case and a review was overdue. A politically more important gain from the visit was the agreement on 4,500 US military flights carrying men and weapons free of charge across Russian territory to Afghanistan, where Obama is making a fresh effort to defeat the Taliban and shore up Hamid Karzai’s regime in preparation for the August 20 presidential election. It can be argued that this is wasted effort. No matter what Pakistan’s rulers promise, their cooperation can never be wholehearted when the enemy is not only another Islamic entity, but one that they themselves created. The corrupt Karzai government is manifestly ineffective. The Afghan tribes always back the winning side or whoever pays them most. Helmand province, where the US effort is focussed, lucratively produces most of the heroin that makes Afghanistan responsible for 90 per cent of the world’s output. Above all, history is against the so-called International Security Assistance Force, the fig leaf for the US forces. Lady Elizabeth Butler’s painting of Dr Brydon’s arrival at Jalalabad depicts the sole survivor in January 1842 of an army of 4,500 British troops and 12,000 camp followers. They suffered the fate that was to defeat the Soviet invaders more than a century later. Be that as it may, the overflight agreement without any of the hysteria that foiled Chandra Shekhar’s similar permission in 1991 indicates an appreciation in Moscow of common political aims. An ISAF victory in Afghanistan is important to the Russians because of Muslim separatism in the southern parts of their own country. They do not want a revival of the Chechen war or a repetition of the current revolt in Xinjiang against Han Chinese rule. Fear of Islamic fundamentalism makes for strange bedfellows. That may not mean Russia subscribes to all US aims. The centrepiece of Obama’s diplomacy was to enlist Medvedev and Putin, the reputably more powerful prime minister whom he criticized only the week before as someone with “one foot in the old ways of doing business”, in persuading Iran to give up its nuclear ambition. The implicit message was that if they supported him against Iran, the US might consider abandoning the missile defence shield it proposes to instal in Poland and the Czech Republic. Obama argued that the shield is aimed at “preventing a potential attack from Iran”. Russia, which is building Iran’s first nuclear power station, is sceptical about this explanation and opposes punitive measures against Iran. Medvedev was the first world leader to meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the agonized protests against his landslide victory in the June 12 election. Moscow is convinced that far from being a deterrent against Iran, the US missile defence shield is “a direct threat” to Russia’s “integrity and existence”. US determination in pushing Nato to include former Soviet republics only substantiates Russian fears of encirclement. Historically, Russia regards the region it calls the “near abroad” as its backyard, protected by an invisible Monroe Doctrine. American recognition of Kosovo’s secession from Serbia and attempts to draw Georgia and the Ukraine into Nato are seen as modern equivalents of the provocation of Soviet missiles in Cuba. By that token, Russia’s invasion of Serbia last August could be compared to John F. Kennedy’s response to the Cuban missiles. The stalemate places Manmohan Singh in a quandary. India cannot ignore the traditional strategic partnership with Russia, for though Russia is no longer the sole supplier of India’s defence needs, Russia’s aircraft carrier and nuclear submarines are still valuable assets. India must also forge a firm and coherent response to Chinese aggrandizement. Nor is there any reason why India should gratuitously alienate an Iran whose oil and gas, common border with Afghanistan, strategic potential in respect of Pakistan, and independent foreign policy make it a desirable ally. If Iran must be ostracized for its notional bomb, Pakistan should be punished far more severely for its actual arsenal. Hillary Clinton’s belated travel plans encourage the hope that it is not impossible to reconcile these compulsions and salvage something of the trust between Manmohan Singh and Bush despite divergent positions on climate change and the World Trade Organization. India needs the US as much as ever, both for nuclear cooperation and regional security. The US, too, must know that it is absurd to imagine that a stable, democratic South Asia can rest on the pivots of two feudal theocracies without the active participation of the region’s only democracy, which also happens to be the largest in the world. Meanwhile, notwithstanding some positive results, Obama’s fencing with Medvedev and Putin confirmed that the Cold War continues in the Balkans.