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Obama has an opening with Russia, but at what price?
By Steve Biegun
Unlike the clumsy and ill-timed blast that Russian President Medvedev launched at the United States on the day after Barack Obama was elected president, the Russian government now appears to be trying to make more of the opportunities presented by Obama's inauguration. To wit, Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have both welcomed Obama's arrival as an opportunity to undo NATO's decision to proceed with a Central Europe-based missile defense system (to defend against a potential threat from Iran) and to hold back Ukrainian and Georgian ambitions to join NATO. Most recently, sources within the Russian Ministry of Defense appear to be hinting at a retreat from their plan (which Medvedev announced in his November 5 speech) to deploy Iskander short range missiles closer to Central Europe, in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
Good news? Perhaps. Here are a few things to consider:
1. The Russian government can and should use the opportunity presented by the U.S. election to arrest the downward spiral in U.S.-Russian relations. Driven by a general American difference toward Russia's concerns in the world (right or wrong) and an exaggerated sense of injury and overt anti-Americanism by Russian leaders, with a little effort, Medvedev and Obama should be able to show whether there is still a reasonable basis for U.S.-Russian cooperation on many issues.
2. The Russian government is hardly in a position to spend the vast sums necessary to deploy costly new missiles in Kaliningrad as a symbolic gesture against the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. In effect, the Russian government -- with its economy in tatters and hemorrhaging badly -- may be making a virtue out of necessity by walking away from this ill-considered deployment.
3. President Obama should move in a measured but sincere way to strengthen U.S. relations at every level -- including at the top -- but the top means President Medvedev. It is an objective fact that, today, Putin is the most powerful politician in Russia. Even with the election of Medvedev last year, it was not possible for President Bush to shift the locus of relations away from Putin, who had been his interlocutor for seven years. Now, with Obama in place, the United States can truly test the degree to which Medvedev can be the leader of Russia -- and whether his instincts run any closer to the liberal political and market thinking that Washington hopes for.
4. Obama has to beware that the Russian piper will want to be paid. During the campaign, Obama fudged questions on the NATO missile defense by saying he wanted to be sure the system was first viable before moving to construct it. Those evasions will not work for long as president: Either the system will have to be built or the Czech and Polish governments, which committed to its construction at significant political risk, will have to be cut loose. All of this is complicated of course by Iran's continued aggressive pursuit of both a nuclear weapon and a long range missile delivery system (and Russia's unhelpful role in ending those pursuits).
5. The Russian government's other demand is to reject Ukrainian and Georgian desires to join NATO. For nearly two decades, the United States has held inviolable the right of all European nations to make a sovereign choice of the institutions (e.g. NATO) that they will join to ensure their security. To rebuff outright the Ukrainian and Georgian desires to join NATO is likely to have a steep cost both in terms of the message it sends to struggling democracies in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the encouragement it gives to Russian irredentists.
So, it is a good thing the Russian government is signaling a desire to ease tensions. And both we and Russia are better off if the Iskander missiles are not deployed to Kaliningrad. But it should also be understood that this is still the preliminaries -- positioning in advance of the three, real conversations that are likely to take place in the coming year between Medvedev and Obama (in London at the G-20 Summit in April, in Italy at the G-8 in July, and in Singapore at the APEC Summit in September).
Bottom line: Central and Eastern Europeans beware. Early handicapping is that the NATO missile defense system is dead and that Ukrainian and Georgian ambitions to join NATO will be on the slow boat to China.
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Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition.
This bothers me. We're
This bothers me. We're dismantling a potential ABM system in Eastern Europe which is already starting under way, in exchange for the Russians promising to not deploy missiles that they haven't deployed yet. Not exactly quid pro quo.
What we need to do is change the security situation vis a vis Russia. I'm tempted to offer them an invitation into NATO, on the condition that they agree to a new ABM arrangement (where the US has inviolable right to build ABM on its own territory and in space, and to deploy sea-based ABM in the Baltic Sea), and agree to a final negotiation on borders with all the Eastern Europeans plus Ukraine and Georgia.
Well, that's the idea. As is, we should rebuff any open rejection of letting the Ukrainians and Georgians into NATO, and offer to remove the ABM only if the Russians give us guaranteed access to that other radar they offered. I'm hesitant to do even the latter - it's not the US's fault that Russia made a piss-poor investment in its ICBMs at the same time that ABM technology and implementation was developing rapidly.
A Bad Idea is Still a Bad Idea
The fact is that NATO expansion to include Ukraine and Georgia as well as building a missle shield in Central Europe were bad ideas to begin with. We shouldn't push forward with them just because doing so would appear to be caving to Russian pressure.
Russia hasn't and can never have a veto over who gets into NATO, but we also shouldn't push that much harder for Ukraine and Georgia to get in just to prove this point to the Russians. Neither country even remotely qualifies for NATO on the merits, and it's hard to see what NATO or the U.S. would gain from having Ukraine or Georgia in the alliance, other than constant headaches. Sure, we bent the standards a bit (or a lot) in order to invite Croatia and Albania, but no one can doubt that NATO, Europe and the U.S. all benefit from the additional stability brought to the Balkans by having Croatia and Albania join NATO. With Ukr. and Geor., you could argue that inviting them to join NATO would only create instability as we add further fuel to the fire with Russia. Also, in Ukraine at least, only 20% of the population supports joining NATO - in the end, we can't want it more than they do. In Georgia, over 90% of the population supports joining NATO, but it's (very) hard to see what NATO would gain by letting Georgia in. In any event, NATO's consensus-based decision making structure pretty much guarantees that neither country will get into NATO in the short run, because more than a few of the allies oppose letting them in.
As for missile defense, it seems more like an (unproven) solution in search of a problem, rather than a critical need. Are the Czechs and Poles really under that much of a threat from the Iranians? When is the last time the Iranians threatened to wipe the Czech Republic off the map? I understand that we've already asked the Czechs and Poles to go out on a limb in support of this idea, but it was a bad idea to begin with - we should kill it now, rather than waste billions more on unproven technology to face a dubious threat.
One side-effect of killing missile defense and stopping pushing so hard for Ukraine and Georgia for NATO could be to buck up Medvedev a bit. Putin thrives off of continued conflict with the U.S., and Putin himself has been a main reason for the downward spiral in relations. Missile defense and NATO expansion only aggravate Putin's already exaggerated claims that Russia is threatened by the U.S. We shouldn't call off NATO expansion or missile defense just to appease Russia, but we also shouldn't be above using a slowdown or calling off of those initiatives as a positive gesture towards Medvedev. Such moves might give Medvedev more cred with elites in Russia, particularly now that the low price of oil will wreak havoc with Russia's budget and seriously crimp Putin's sabre rattling.
It would be a strategic
It would be a strategic mistake if Obama backed away from the MDS in Czech and Poland without major concessions from Moscow, mainly regarding Iran's nuclear program. I personally heard the president of Poland state the importance of the US-Poland partnership for his country. It must not be forgotten when the Czech and Polish governments signed the agreement into law: right after Russian tanks entered Georgian territory. A US MDS retreat, combined with a complete fallback on Ukraine/Georgia NATO membership, would hand an aggressive Moscow key victories for what? 'Peace in our Time'? Obviously the situation is not WWII dramatic, but we need to play from a hand of strength, not weakness.
It would be a strategic
It would be a strategic mistake if Obama backed away from the MDS in Czech and Poland without major concessions from Moscow, mainly regarding Iran's nuclear program. I personally heard the president of Poland state the importance of the US-Poland partnership for his country. It must not be forgotten when the Czech and Polish governments signed the agreement into law: right after Russian tanks entered Georgian territory. A US MDS retreat, combined with a complete fallback on Ukraine/Georgia NATO membership, would hand an aggressive Moscow key victories for what? 'Peace in our Time'? Obviously the situation is not WWII dramatic, but we need to play from a hand of strength, not weakness.
What good do we get from an
What good do we get from an ABM system that does not work?
As for ukraine/georgia NATO membership, why not go whole hog and also invite russia into NATO? We have so many NATO members that can't really pull their weight, it might help to get one that can.
your agenda re NATO
Hey Ford Motor, congrats, someone is reading your posts! Republicans like you will do whatever you can to pin the failure of NATO to accept Ukraine and Georgia on the Obama administration. Nice try. (1) Georgia will NEVER be allowed to make another formal step toward NATO as long as Saakashvili is in office. He is considered by everyone in Europe and everyone in the US except a few former Bush administration officials (and presumably you) to be a dangerous nutbag. Correctly so. Giving an article 5 guarantee to this guy would be insane and Europe would not allow it to happen. (2) It is accepted by every political leader of any significance in Ukraine that it will not join NATO without a referendum. And it is guaranteed that such a referendum will not pass. It would get the support of maybe 20-25% of the population -- Western Ukrainians -- but the people in Kiev and Central Ukraine, as well as young Ukrainians, who make up the swing vote in presidential elections are against NATO. The idea that Obama should be wasting political capital with his European allies (as Bush did in spring 2008) to pressure them to let these two countries into a NATO Membership Action Plan is nutty. But you people will try to blame him for it. Spend less time laying the groundwork for attacks on Obama, and more trying to avoid us taxpayers having to bail you out, please.