><http://www.stratfor.com>
The Russia Problem
>By Peter Zeihan
>
>For the past several days, high-level Russian and American
>policymakers, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
>Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Russian President Vladimir
>Putin's right-hand man, Sergei Ivanov, have been meeting in Moscow
>to discuss the grand scope of U.S.-Russian relations. These talks
>would be of critical importance to both countries under any
>circumstances, as they center on the network of treaties that have
>governed Europe since the closing days of the Cold War.
>
>Against the backdrop of the Iraq war, however, they have taken on
>far greater significance. Both Russia and the United States are
>attempting to rewire the security paradigms of key regions, with
>Washington taking aim at the Middle East and Russia more concerned
>about its former imperial territory. The two countries' visions are
>mutually incompatible, and American preoccupation with Iraq is
>allowing Moscow to overturn the geopolitics of its backyard.
>
>The Iraqi Preoccupation
>
>After years of organizational chaos, the United States has
>simplified its plan for Iraq: Prevent Iran from becoming a regional
>hegemon. Once-lofty thoughts of forging a democracy in general or
>supporting a particular government were abandoned in Washington well
>before the congressional testimony of Gen. David Petraeus.
>Reconstruction is on the back burner and even oil is now an
>afterthought at best. The entirety of American policy has been
>stripped down to a single thought: Iran.
>
>That thought is now broadly held throughout not only the Bush
>administration but also the American intelligence and defense
>communities. It is not an unreasonable position. An American exodus
>from Iraq would allow Iran to leverage its allies in Iraq's Shiite
>South to eventually gain control of most of Iraq. Iran's influence
>also extends to significant Shiite communities on the Persian Gulf's
>western oil-rich shore. Without U.S. forces blocking the Iranians,
>the military incompetence of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar could be
>perceived by the Iranians as an invitation to conquer that shore.
>That would land roughly 20 million barrels per day of global oil
>output -- about one-quarter of the global total -- under Tehran's
>control. Rhetoric aside, an outcome such as this would push any U.S.
>president into a broad regional war to prevent a hostile power from
>shutting off the global economic pulse.
>
>So the United States, for better or worse, is in Iraq for the long
>haul. This requires some strategy for dealing with the other power
>with the most influence in the country, Iran. This, in turn, leaves
>the United States with two options: It can simply attempt to run
>Iraq as a protectorate forever, a singularly unappealing option, or
>it can attempt to strike a deal with Iran on the issue of Iraq --
>and find some way to share influence.
>
>Since the release of the Petraeus report in September, seeking terms
>with Iran has become the Bush administration's unofficial goal, but
>the White House does not want substantive negotiations until the
>stage is appropriately set. This requires that Washington build a
>diplomatic cordon around Iran -- intensifying Tehran's sense of
>isolation -- and steadily ratchet up the financial pressure.
>Increasing bellicose rhetoric from European capitals and the
>lengthening list of major banks that are refusing to deal with Iran
>are the nuts and bolts of this strategy.
>
>Not surprisingly, Iran views all this from a starkly different
>angle. Persia has historically been faced with a threat of invasion
>from its western border -- with the most recent threat manifesting
>in a devastating 1980-1988 war that resulted in a million deaths.
>The primary goal of Persia's foreign policy stretching back a
>millennium has been far simpler than anything the United States has
>cooked up: Destroy Mesopotamia. In 2003, the United States was
>courteous enough to handle that for Iran.
>
>Now, Iran's goals have expanded and it seeks to leverage the
>destruction of its only meaningful regional foe to become a regional
>hegemon. This requires leveraging its Iraqi assets to bleed the
>Americans to the point that they leave. But Iran is not immune to
>pressure. Tehran realizes that it might have overplayed its hand
>internationally, and it certainly recognizes that U.S. efforts to
>put it in a noose are bearing some fruit. What Iran needs is its own
>sponsor -- and that brings to the Middle East a power that has not
>been present there for quite some time: Russia.
>
>Option One: Parity
>
>The Russian geography is problematic. It lacks oceans to give Russia
>strategic distance from its foes and it boasts no geographic
>barriers separating it from Europe, the Middle East or East Asia.
>Russian history is a chronicle of Russia's steps to establish
>buffers -- and of those buffers being overwhelmed. The end of the
>Cold War marked the transition from Russia's largest-ever buffer to
>its smallest in centuries. Put simply, Russia is terrified of being
>overwhelmed -- militarily, economically, politically and culturally
>-- and its policies are geared toward re-establishing as large a
>buffer as possible.
>
>As such, Russia needs to do one of two things. The first is to
>re-establish parity. As long as the United States thinks of Russia
>as an inferior power, American power will continue to erode Russian
>security. Maintain parity and that erosion will at least be reduced.
>Putin does not see this parity coming from a conflict, however.
>While Russia is far stronger now -- and still rising -- than it was
>following the 1998 ruble crash, Putin knows full well that the
>Soviet Union fell in part to an arms race. Attaining parity via the
>resources of a much weaker Russia simply is not an option.
>
>So parity would need to come via the pen, not the sword. A series of
>three treaties ended the Cold War and created a status of legal
>parity between the United States and Russia. The first, the
>Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), restricts how much
>conventional defense equipment each state in NATO and the former
>Warsaw Pact, and their successors, can deploy. The second, the
>Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), places a ceiling on the
>number of intercontinental ballistic missiles that the United States
>and Russia can possess. The third, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
>Forces Treaty (INF), eliminates entirely land-based short-, medium-
>and intermediate-range ballistic missiles with ranges of 300 to
>3,400 miles, as well as all ground-launched cruise missiles from
>NATO and Russian arsenals.
>
>The constellation of forces these treaties allow do not provide what
>Russia now perceives its security needs to be. The CFE was all fine
>and dandy in the world in which it was first negotiated, but since
>then every Warsaw Pact state -- once on the Russian side of the
>balance sheet -- has joined NATO. The "parity" that was hardwired
>into the European system in 1990 is now lopsided against the
>Russians.
>
>START I is by far the Russians' favorite treaty, since it clearly
>treats the Americans and Russians as bona fide equals. But in the
>Russian mind, it has a fateful flaw: It expires in 2009, and there
>is about zero support in the United States for renewing it. The
>thinking in Washington is that treaties were a conflict management
>tool of the 20th century, and as American power -- constrained by
>Iraq as it is -- continues to expand globally, there is no reason to
>enter into a treaty that limits American options. This philosophical
>change is reflected on both sides of the American political aisle:
>Neither the Bush nor Clinton administrations have negotiated a new
>full disarmament treaty.
>
>Finally, the INF is the worst of all worlds for Russia.
>Intermediate-range missiles are far cheaper than intercontinental
>ones. If it does come down to an arms race, Russia will be forced to
>turn to such systems if it is not to be left far behind an American
>buildup.
>
>Russia needs all three treaties to be revamped. It wants the CFE
>altered to reflect an expanded NATO. It wants START I extended (and
>preferably deepened) to limit long-term American options. It wants
>the INF explicitly linked to the other two treaties so that Russian
>options can expand in a pinch -- or simply discarded in favor of a
>more robust START I.
>
>The problem with the first option is that it assumes the Americans
>are somewhat sympathetic to Russian concerns. They are not.
>
>Recall that the dominant concern in the post-Cold War Kremlin is
>that the United States will nibble along the Russian periphery until
>Moscow itself falls. The fear is as deeply held as it is accurate.
>Only three states have ever threatened the United States: The first,
>the United Kingdom, was lashed into U.S. global defense policy; the
>second, Mexico, was conquered outright; and the third was defeated
>in the Cold War. The addition of the Warsaw Pact and the Baltic
>states to NATO, the basing of operations in Central Asia and, most
>important, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine have made it clear to
>Moscow that the United States plays for keeps.
>
>The Americans see it as in their best interest to slowly grind
>Russia into dust. Those among our readers who can identify with
>"duck and cover" can probably relate to the logic of that stance.
>So, for option one to work, Russia needs to have leverage elsewhere.
>That elsewhere is in Iran.
>
>Via the U.N. Security Council, Russian cooperation can ensure Iran's
>diplomatic isolation. Russia's past cooperation on Iran's Bushehr
>nuclear power facility holds the possibility of a Kremlin
>condemnation of Iran's nuclear ambitions. A denial of Russian
>weapons transfers to Iran would hugely empower ongoing U.S. efforts
>to militarily curtail Iranian ambitions. Put simply, Russia has the
>ability to throw Iran under the American bus -- but it will not do
>it for free. In exchange, it wants those treaties amended in its
>favor, and it wants American deference on security questions in the
>former Soviet Union.
>
>The Moscow talks of the past week were about addressing all of
>Russian concerns about the European security structure, both within
>and beyond the context of the treaties, with the offer of
>cooperation on Iran as the trade-off. After days of talks, the
>Americans refused to budge on any meaningful point.
>
>Option Two: Imposition
>
>Russia has no horse in the Iraq war. Moscow had feared that its
>inability to leverage France and Germany to block the war in the
>first place would allow the United States to springboard to other
>geopolitical victories. Instead, the Russians are quite pleased to
>see the American nose bloodied. They also are happy to see Iran
>engrossed in events to its west. When Iran and Russia strengthen --
>as both are currently -- they inevitably begin to clash as their
>growing spheres of influence overlap in the Caucasus and Central
>Asia. In many ways, Russia is now enjoying the best of all worlds:
>Its Cold War archrival is deeply occupied in a conflict with one of
>Moscow's own regional competitors.
>
>In the long run, however, the Russians have little doubt that the
>Americans will eventually prevail. Iran lacks the ability to project
>meaningful power beyond the Persian Gulf, while the Russians know
>from personal experience how good the Americans are at using
>political, economic, military and alliance policy to grind down
>opponents. The only question in the Russian mind pertains to time
>frame.
>
>If the United States is not willing to rejigger the European-Russian
>security framework, then Moscow intends to take advantage of a
>distracted United States to impose a new reality upon NATO. The
>United States has dedicated all of its military ground strength to
>Iraq, leaving no wiggle room should a crisis erupt anywhere else in
>the world. Should Russia create a crisis, there is nothing the
>United States can do to stop it.
>
>So crisis-making is about to become Russia's newest growth industry.
>The Kremlin has a very long list of possibilities, which includes:
>
>Destabilizing the government of Ukraine: The Sept. 30 elections
>threaten to result in the re-creation of the Orange Revolution that
>so terrifies Moscow. With the United States largely out of the
>picture, the Russians will spare no effort to ensure that Ukraine
>remains as dysfunctional as possible.
>
>Azerbaijan is emerging as a critical energy transit state for
>Central Asian petroleum, as well as an energy producer in its own
>right. But those exports are wholly dependent upon Moscow's
>willingness not to cause problems for Baku.
>
>The extremely anti-Russian policies of the former Soviet state of
>Georgia continue to be a thorn in Russia's side. Russia has the
>ability to force a territorial breakup or to outright overturn the
>Georgian government using anything from a hit squad to an armored
>division.
>
>EU states obviously have mixed feelings about Russia's newfound
>aggression and confidence, but the three Baltic states in league
>with Poland have successfully hijacked EU foreign policy with regard
>to Russia, effectively turning a broadly cooperative relationship
>hostile. A small military crisis with the Balts would not only do
>much to consolidate popular support for the Kremlin but also would
>demonstrate U.S. impotence in riding to the aid of American allies.
>
>Such actions not only would push Russian influence back to the
>former borders of the Soviet Union but also could overturn the
>belief within the U.S. alliance structure that the Americans are
>reliable -- that they will rush to their allies' aid at any time and
>any place. That belief ultimately was the heart of the U.S.
>containment strategy during the Cold War. Damage that belief and the
>global security picture changes dramatically. Barring a
>Russian-American deal on treaties, inflicting that damage is once
>again a full-fledged goal of the Kremlin. The only question is
>whether the American preoccupation in Iraq will last long enough for
>the Russians to do what they think they need to do.
>
>Luckily for the Russians, they can impact the time frame of American
>preoccupation with Iraq. Just as the Russians have the ability to
>throw the Iranians under the bus, they also have the ability to
>empower the Iranians to stand firm.
>
>On Oct. 16, Putin became the first Russian leader since Leonid
>Brezhnev to visit Iran, and in negotiations with the Iranian
>leadership he laid out just how his country could help. Formally,
>the summit was a meeting of the five leaders of the Caspian Sea
>states, but in reality the meeting was a Russian-Iranian effort to
>demonstrate to the Americans that Iran does not stand alone.
>
>A good part of the summit involved clearly identifying differences
>with American policy. The right of states to nuclear energy was
>affirmed, the existence of energy infrastructure that undermines
>U.S. geopolitical goals was supported and a joint statement pledged
>the five states to refuse to allow "third parties" from using their
>territory to attack "the Caspian Five." The last is a clear bullying
>of Azerbaijan to maintain distance from American security plans.
>
>But the real meat is in bilateral talks between Putin and his
>Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the two sides are
>sussing out how Russia's ample military experience can be applied to
>Iran's U.S. problem. Some of the many, many possibilities include:
>
>Kilo-class submarines: The Iranians already have two and the
>acoustics in the Persian Gulf are notoriously bad for tracking
>submarines. Any U.S. military effort against Iran would necessitate
>carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf.
>
>Russia fields the Bal-E, a ground-launched Russian version of the
>Harpoon anti-ship missile. Such batteries could threaten any U.S.
>surface ship in the Gulf. A cheaper option could simply involve the
>installation of Russian coastal artillery systems.
>
>Russia and India have developed the BrahMos anti-ship cruise
>missile, which has the uniquely deadly feature of being able to be
>launched from land, ship, submarine or air. While primarily designed
>to target surface vessels, it also can act as a more traditional --
>and versatile -- cruise missile and target land targets.
>
>Flanker fighters are a Russian design (Su-27/Su-30) that compares
>very favorably to frontline U.S. fighter jets. Much to the U.S.
>Defense Department's chagrin, Indian pilots in Flankers have knocked
>down some U.S. pilots in training scenarios.
>
>The S-300 anti-aircraft system is still among the best in the world,
>and despite eviscerated budgets, the Russians have managed to
>operationalize several upgrades since the end of the Cold War. It
>boasts both a far longer range and far more accuracy than the Tor-M1
>and Pantsyr systems on which Iran currently depends.
>
>Such options only scratch the surface of what the Russians have on
>order, and the above only discusses items of use in a direct
>Iranian-U.S. military conflict. Russia also could provide Iran with
>an endless supply of less flashy equipment to contribute to
>intensifying Iranian efforts to destabilize Iraq itself.
>
>For now, the specifics of Russian transfers to Iran are tightly
>held, but they will not be for long. Russia has as much of an
>interest in getting free advertising for its weapons systems as Iran
>has in demonstrating just how high a price it will charge the United
>States for any attack.
>
>But there is one additional reason this will not be a stealth relationship.
>
>The Kremlin wants Washington to be fully aware of every detail of
>how Russian sales are making the U.S. Army's job harder, so that the
>Americans have all the information they need to make appropriate
>decisions as regards Russia's role. Moscow is not doing this because
>it is vindictive; this is simply how the Russians do business, and
>they are open to a new deal.
>
>Russia has neither love for the Iranians nor a preference as to
>whether Moscow reforges its empire or has that empire handed back.
>So should the United States change its mind and seek an
>accommodation, Putin stands perfect ready to betray the Iranians'
>confidence.
>
>For a price.
>
This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to
Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at
<http://www.stratfor.com/>www.stratfor.com....