- As always in such cases all the participants are playing to the grandstand. Outgoing President Putin is pleased that the Bucharest summit failed to give the go-ahead to the accession of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO. Bush believes that he has resolved in his own favour all the issues discussed at the summit: he got the consent of all his NATO allies to the deployment of a missile system in Europe, persuaded them to send more troops to Afghanistan and adopt a decision in principle to admit Georgia and Ukraine to NATO, although he had to agree to postpone the time of admission. He has induced the North Atlantic Alliance to continue its transformation from an alliance intended to defend Europe into a world policeman prepared to launch military expeditions to any region of the world to assert the imperial role of the US. The Germans, French, Spaniards, Italians and Britons are also patting themselves on the backs for not having caved in to the pressure of the US which clamored for an immediate start of Georgia and Ukraine’s admission to NATO. Even Saakashvili and Yushchenko pretend to be pleased: although they were not admitted to NATO at once, they have received firm promises that it would happen soon.
- But what about the results of the Bucharest Summit in general? What message do they send to Russia?
- The results are not comforting for us. NATO continues to advance on our positions. The admission of Georgia and Ukraine has been postponed, but not for long. Some say it will happen at the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in December and some say it will happen during the 60th NATO jubilee next April. They confess that they did not want to publicly humiliate Putin at the summit not to provoke him into emotional reactions, for example, recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and not to complicate things for Bush when he discusses the deployment of antimissile defense in Europe at his meeting with Putin in Sochi. The German Foreign Minister Steinmeyer was candid in explaining that after putting Russia’s back up by recognizing Kosovo independence, stoking up further tensions with the Russians at the Bucharest Summit was not a good idea. The Georgians and Ukrainians can well afford to wait another six months. And once Putin quits they hope that his liberal successor will be more amenable.
- But Putin sounded quite resolute in Bucharest too.
- What he did was lament the behavior of his dear Western partners. He had given up the bases in Lourdes and Kam Ranh and the Baltics and paid all the Russian debts ahead of schedule, he forgave all the debts owed to the former Soviet Union under pressure from Washington and the Paris Club, he is building a massive system of pipelines to ensure Europe’s energy security at the expense of the domestic economy, he continues to dismantle our military -- all in order to make things more convenient for the West, he declared what amounts to an amnesty to our thievish oligarchs who have the backing of the leading Western concerns, he keeps the Russian armed forces on a lean diet, he has opened military transit to Afghanistan for NATO without getting anything in return with regard to our transit to Kaliningrad, he has signed an agreement with NATO that would allow its troops on Russian territory… the list goes on and on.
Being aware that society resents all this, the Russian President frets and complains. He orders the strategic bombers surviving since the Soviet times to take to the air. In response the West shrugs and continues to pursue its course. Putin declares a moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) and again it frightens no one. Even though this unequal treaty has been suspended, Russia has been unable to take advantage of the fact. It has neither the resources nor the determination for that. The overall picture is dismal.
The question suggests itself, why is all this happening? Our government seems to have been mending its ways recently, it has been thinking about its patriotic duty and so on. But one should not forget the class nature of the present Russian government. Its patriotism boils down to appeals to the West, i.e. to fellow oligarchs and imperialists, not to mistreat Russia, take at least some notice of the interests of the Russian brothers, not to consider them to be subhuman zombies. In Bucharest Putin launched a direct appeal to the rulers of the Western world: “Fellows, let us be friends, let us at long last be honest, open and fair…” But all that remains a voice in the wilderness.
- Why?
- Because the capitalist world is a world of the jungle. They are ready to go at the throat of anyone who shows signs of weakness. Take for example Taiwan. It has been separated from China for decades and is to all intents and purposes independent. There was even a time when it was a member of the UN. And yet the West has no guts to recognize it. The reason is simple: they are afraid of China and are even ready to forego their pious rhetoric about freedom, human rights and so on. Yet in the case of Kosovo they engineered its secession and promptly recognized its independence in spite of all the UN resolutions and Serbian and Russian protests. Why? Because they consider Russia to be weak, they are used to ignoring its opinion with impunity. They test the strength of Putin’s Russia all the time. And each time it trembles at the knees and succumbs because the present Russian elite is bin thrall to the West, because its patriotism is pure tokenism intended for domestic consumption while the real core of Russia’s foreign policy consists, as before, in following the policies of those countries where our oligarchs keep their capital, where they have their families and their property and which they hope to find refuge if things in Russia get nasty.
- It is significant that NATO had the gall to warn the Russian President to tone down his rhetoric in Bucharest and not to behave like he did in Munich. He is said to have agreed and tried to leave a good impression of himself, he was afraid to antagonize Bush during their conversation in Sochi. Was it worth it?
- The result in Sochi is somewhat dubious too. All that has emerged is a general document, a “declaration on the strategic framework of Russian-American relations.” Not much, let us be frank about it. Both sides had to admit that differences between Russia and the US still remain. But they tried to look optimistic and said that they might come to some final agreements a little later. In the meantime, they say, they have summed up all the positive achievements of recent years, especially in the sphere of security, nuclear non-proliferation, the fight against terror and the development of business cooperation. Some have hastened to declare the document to be a “road map” for major advances of strategic partnership.
I am skeptical about it. There have been many such documents in the history of our relations with the US, some of them more impressive than the present one. But they only made a difference when the Americans felt that they could not afford to ignore them. Now the situation is different, they are sure they can get away with anything and that Russia must obey them and toe their line. That is Washington’s idea of partnership with Moscow. In Sochi, the two leaders waxed lyrical about the fact that differences on some issues do not influence the overall state of affairs and other areas. I do not know of a single case when America took heed of our objections to its plans. And conversely, the Americans usually get all they want from us. It is a one-way street.
- But the press reports that the key issue in Sochi was the deployment of missile defense in Europe and that on that issue Russia allegedly is adamant, which prevented an agreement from being reached.
- I want you to note that the Bucharest Summit approved the American plans to deploy the missile defense in Europe. A treaty on the building of a radar station in the Czech Republic has been concluded in spite of the widespread protests among the people there. And now read what Putin said in Sochi. He has “guarded optimism” about final agreements. Why? He is convinced that the Americans understand our concerns and sincerely seek to address them. Allegedly, it is all about details and it is important that our experts agree on confidence measures and how to implement them in practice. “If we manage to work together on the global antimissile system at the expert and then at the political level in the same way as we are now reaching an agreement on theatre missile defense in Europe it would be the key and the most important result of all our previous work”, Putin says. From this one can readily conclude that Russia no longer objects to the deployment of the American missile defense in Europe. Attention is to be focused on the so-called “confidence measures”. The chances are that after a bit of bargaining with the Americans the Kremlin will gain some symbolic consolation prize, for example, a promise to allow our inspectors to the Czech Republic and Poland, not to target the radar in our direction, for now, not to put interceptor rockets in silos in Poland, etc. It means that we will cease to object to the deployment of the American missile defense in Europe whose aim is to neutralize our Special Missile Forces. It is amusing that the Americans seemed to have prevailed upon Putin to lift his objections not only to theatre missile defense, but also to the deployment of the American global missile defense. Little wonder that Bush was dancing to the strains of a Cossack band after the talks.
- Other reasons why he was dancing may have been the fact that the decision to admit Ukraine to NATO has been made in principle and that Russia, while it threatens that it could trigger a crisis in its relations with Ukraine and NATO, nevertheless says that to join or not to join NATO is the sovereign right of Ukraine and it would respect the results of a Ukrainian referendum on the issue, whatever they will be.
- Obviously NATO will try to drag Ukraine into its fold very soon. It can only be prevented by a powerful popular resistance in Ukraine supported by a similarly powerful resistance on the part of Russia. Failing that, Russia will most probably “surrender” Ukraine to NATO. We should induce the Russian government to fight and resist NATO not in words, but in deed. We have no time to lose on empty talk and discussions. It is clear that Eastern and Southern Ukraine as well as the Crimea, do not want to join NATO. We must support them, help them to organize and decide their further destiny, that is, to achieve self-determination. It would be a grave and unpardonable crime to surrender Ukraine to the Kiev heirs to SS thugs, the US and NATO minions in Galicia and to allow them to set the Ukrainian and Russian peoples against each other.
The CPRF is ready to do everything in its power to prevent it in alliance with all the honest and responsible politicians in Ukraine.
