Wednesday, Dec 31, 2003
U.S. eyes Russian turf
By Vladimir Radyuhin
Russia has sent a strong signal to the U.S. that it will fight attempts to erode its position in the former Soviet states.
RUSSIA AND the United States are heading for a new spiral of rivalry as Washington moves to install pro-Western leaders in the former Soviet Republics and set up more military bases along Russian borders.
On Sunday, Georgia looks set to become the first former Soviet Republic where the U.S. has orchestrated the rise to power of a new leader. Mikhail Saakashvili, a U.S.-trained lawyer, is expected to win a snap presidential poll on January 4. It was called after Georgia's veteran leader, Eduard Shevardnadze, was forced to resign in the face of massive protests over suspected rigging in a parliamentary poll.
Russia's Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, denounced "external interference" in the crisis, while Mr. Shevardnadze directly accused the U.S. of engineering his ouster through its envoy in Georgia, Richard Miles, and the Soros Foundation. A faithful U.S. ally, Mr. Shevardnadze, was shocked by Washington's betrayal. "I was one of the staunchest supporters of the U.S. policy," he complained in an interview. "When they needed help on Iraq, I gave it. I don't have an explanation to what has happened here."
What happened in Georgia was that the U.S. dumped Mr. Shevardnadze because he failed to deliver and was suspected of squandering a good part of the $2.3 billion in American aid in the past 10 years. Mr. Saakashvili, former Justice Minister, who gained popularity exposing government corruption, is known for his anti-Russian and pro-American views. Two weeks after Mr. Shevardnadze was ousted, the U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, visited Georgia and Azerbaijan to discuss long-term access for U.S. forces.
Both countries have strategic importance for the U.S. as the sole transit route for Caspian oil and gas supplies to the West bypassing Russia. A U.S.-lobbied Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline should start pumping oil in 2005. Plans are also on to build a gas pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey. The U.S. hopes to persuade Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, where most of the Caspian energy reserves are located, to export oil and gas to Europe through these pipelines, rather than via Russia. Military presence in the region is essential for the U.S. to control the Caspian Sea and threaten Iran. Pentagon officials said plans were also being drawn up to establish a permanent military presence in the former Soviet Central Asia - in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, where the U.S. already has temporary bases set up for the post-9/11 anti-terror campaign in Afghanistan.
Moscow reacted angrily to the proposed redeployment of the U.S. forces from Germany to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. "Any plans to bring NATO's infrastructure closer to our borders evoke our understandable and legitimate concern," the Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov, said. He made it clear that Moscow saw American bases as a threat to its security. "We believe that security for one country must not be ensured at the expense of other countries."
Russia was also enraged by the U.S. demand that it withdraw its forces early from Georgia and Moldova. At an annual summit of the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe earlier this month, Russia countered the demand with its own call to NATO's new and would-be members to ratify Europe's conventional forces pact which sets limits to troop deployment on the continent.
The U.S. moves to enlarge its foothold in the Caucasus and Central Asia mean that Washington is refusing to recognise the former Soviet Republics as a zone of Russia's strategic interests. Georgia may not be the only newly independent state where the U.S. is conspiring to replace the Soviet-era leaders with pro-Western politicians.
According to the former head of Russia's Federal Security Service, Nikolai Kovalyov, Georgia's young opposition leaders, including Mr. Saakashvili, had been trained in U.S.-funded camps in Serbia along with representatives from Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and a few other former Soviet Republics. They studied the Yugoslav experience of removing the President, Slobodan Milosevic, with the help of massive public protests organised by Serbia's student movement Otpor.
"We are working with civil movements in several countries, and I don't want to name them. But Georgia is the first success story," Otpor's leader, Slobodan Djinovic, who visited Tbilisi earlier this year to share his revolutionary experience, was quoted by the BBC as commenting on the removal of Mr. Shevardnadze, who himself confirmed that he had been ousted "according to the Yugoslav scenario."
Otpor-modelled student demonstrations in Moldova last month helped thwart a Moscow-brokered settlement in a decade-long conflict between the central government and the Russian-speaking Transdniestr region. Moldova's President, Vladimir Voronin, reversed his endorsement of the peace plan after students protesters, encouraged by American and European critics of the plan, vowed to bring the Government down. The U.S. objects to the continued presence of Russian peacekeepers in Transdniestr and wants them replaced by the European forces.
In the wake of the anti-Shevardnadze "velvet revolution", Mr. Saakashvili visited Ukraine to sign a cooperation pact with the Opposition movement "Our Ukraine". He thanked "Ukrainian colleagues" for solidarity and predicted that Ukraine would soon follow in Georgia's footsteps to install the pro-Western Opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, as President "in four to six months," that is, before the presidential elections scheduled for next October. Attempts by Ukrainian Opposition parliamentarians to sabotage the vote on a constitutional reform last week by jamming coins into the electronic voting system, clambering over desks, and staging fistfights were eerily reminiscent of the storming of the Georgian Parliament by Saakashvili-led protesters a few weeks earlier.
"It is to be regretted that the methods of pressure and interference in internal affairs that were used in Georgia are also being used in other countries," Mr. Igor Ivanov said.
The ex-Soviet leaders of Central Asian republics are also on the U.S. hit list. Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is the target of a "Kazakhgate" trial in New York against an American businessman accused of giving bribes to Kazakh officials on behalf of several U.S. companies. The U.S. Congress has stepped up pressure on Mr. Nazarbayev to release from prison Opposition leaders in a bid to encourage the change of elite in Kazakhstan in a parliamentary election scheduled for next year.
Detailed instructions on "How to Make a Velvet Revolution in Tajikistan" have recently been circulated in the capital Dushanbe against the backdrop of stepped up activity of the Soros Foundation and demonstrative contacts of U.S. diplomats with Opposition leaders in the poorest republic of Central Asia where parliamentary elections are due in a little more than a year.
The U.S.-masterminded coup in Georgia was met with concern in the capitals of the Commonwealth of Independent States whose leaders, like Mr. Shevardnadze, belong to the Soviet-era cadres. Expressing their shared concern, the Ukraine President, Leonid Kuchma, issued a stern statement in his capacity as current chairman of the CIS Council of Heads of State denouncing the methods of the Georgian Opposition as "categorically unacceptable to all democratic states."
Russia has sent a strong signal to the U.S. that it will fight attempts to erode its positions in the former Soviet states. A new defence policy paper published in October said Russia would view any "deployment of foreign troops ... in adjacent and friendly states" as a threat to its security.
At the same time, Russia under its pragmatic President, Vladimir Putin, has been increasingly relying on its growing economic strength to consolidate its position in the former Soviet states. Taking advantage of the heavy dependence of its neighbours on Russian energy supplies or Russian transit pipelines to export their oil and gas to Europe, Mr. Putin has encouraged Russian companies to acquire industrial assets in the CIS states. Russia already controls most of the oil and gas processing factories in Ukraine, power generation and distribution networks in Armenia and Georgia, core sector industries in Kazakhstan and Belarus, etc.
Last week, Mr. Putin met Mr. Kuchma to win his final "yes" for a free trade zone among the four most powerful former Soviet Republics - Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus - a plan vehemently opposed by the U.S. and the European Union. In a major concession to its partners, Russia has agreed to lift an 18 per cent value-added tax on its oil and gas exports. If the free trade pact takes off, more CIS states may join it.
Russia is also continuing efforts to work out constructive interaction with the U.S. in the post-Soviet space based on the common concern for stability in the region. The Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation of CIS states is reported to have prepared, for its next summit in April, proposals for military cooperation between the Russian and the U.S. air bases in Kyrgyzstan, which could become a pilot project for wider cooperation, rather than rivalry, in the former Soviet states.
Copyright © 2003, The Hindu.