Before engaging Russia, the U.S. has to convince allies that they’re safe

By RONALD D. ASMUS

Hillary Clinton made her debut yesterday at a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels and today holds her first meeting with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva. Coming a month before Barack Obama’s inaugural presidential trip to Europe and a NATO summit, this is a chance to hit the reset button not only with Russia but with America’s closest European allies.

NATO is currently divided on two central issues. One is about finding the right balance between maintaining security on the European continent and fighting expeditionary missions in places like Afghanistan. The question is whether Washington can produce a credible strategy that allies believe can succeed and that allied leaders will be willing to invest in. At the moment, that is not the case.

The second, equally critical divide is on Russia and the future of NATO enlargement in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Georgia last summer. Some allies believe that, in the face of a more nationalistic and aggressive Russia seeking to rollback democracy and reassert its influence over its neighbors, NATO shouldn’t seek any further eastward expansion. This timidity toward Moscow has led some Central and East European NATO members to wonder whether the alliance’s security guarantees are really credible. Their willingness to contribute to Afghanistan is tied to addressing their concerns. Other allies believe those fears are overstated and stress instead the potential benefits of working with Russia on issues ranging from energy to Iran and Afghanistan.

These different impulses need to be reconciled in a new bargain across the Atlantic. To do so, it’s instructive to consider the alliance’s own history. In the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, NATO had to reconcile the need to counter the insecurity which that invasion produced with the desire to still move forward with Moscow on arms control and other issues. NATO did so by linking deterrence and diplomacy, and embracing a dual-track strategy of defense and detente. It recognized that to engage with Russia, allies had to first feel secure and that allied solidarity was central.

Today we again need to find this balance between strategic reassurance and engagement. The more secure America’s allies feel and the stronger solidarity is within the alliance, the more effective we will be in engaging Russia — on a new security charter and arms-control issues, as well as on missile defense and President Obama’s offer to reconsider the deployment of the missile shield for Russian help to stop the Iranian nuclear threat.

This means we must nip in the bud any doubts member states may have over the alliance’s collective security commitments by engaging in prudent defense planning. This includes establishing a larger NATO presence on the territory of new members consistent with the NATO-Russia Founding Act. Furthermore, NATO must strengthen the reinforcement capabilities for new members and other countries bordering Russia.

The U.S. needs to help its European allies reduce their energy dependency on Russia through projects like Nabucco, a planned pipeline that would transport gas from the Caspian region to Europe. The European Union also needs to stand up to Russian gas monopolists. The EU’s regulatory power can bring American corporate giants to their knees, but Brussels has been unable to bring it to bear to tame Gazprom. That too has to change by liberalizing the EU energy market and coming up with new ways to regulate Russian financial and commercial clout concentrated in the hands of a few firms with close links to the Kremlin. After all, our real concern is that Russia will use its economic assets to divide, manipulate and pressure Europe.

A final issue where we need to overcome our divisions is whether we should continue to work for democratic development in the region between the West and Russia, including through EU and NATO outreach and enlargement. This means coming up with new ways to expand partnership activities to deepen our ties with countries like Ukraine and Georgia as well as expanding the EU’s and NATO’s actual presence on the ground in these countries.

Particularly after the Georgia war, some NATO member states increasingly prefer backing off from such missions. But when we set out to create a new European security system in the early 1990s, a core goal was to provide equal security — a system where big countries could not beat up on little ones.

We enshrined — and Russia accepted — the core principle that any country was free to choose its own path and alliance. Russia’s invasion of Georgia broke those rules and principles. This war took place largely because of Moscow’s desire to thwart Tbilisi’s desire to be independent and to go west.

The Georgians for sure made mistakes. But the West bears its share of blame for not standing up for those core principles and not drawing red lines for Moscow. Europe and the U.S. failed to engage sufficiently in meaningful peacekeeping and conflict resolution in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

It would be short-sighted to abandon these principles out of a tactical desire to mollify Moscow or close on some short-term deal. No one today knows where Russia will be in two or even five years’ time, and whether the current financial crisis will tame or further radicalize Russian foreign policy. Working for democratic change on the West’s borders neighboring Russia — as well as in Moscow itself — remains the real key to peace and security in Europe and Eurasia.

We need to engage Moscow. Yesterday’s agreement to resume the NATO-Russia dialogue was an important step. But we also need to pursue a strategy of supporting the kind of democratic change that will truly make Europe a better and safer place. It is that kind of transformation, not acquiescing to Moscow’s demand for spheres of influence, that will produce real partnership and security. So let’s get better, smarter and more realistic about how to pursue these goals, not abandon them. Here, too, we need a reset of Western policy as part of a new bargain across the Atlantic.

Mr. Asmus is executive director of the Brussels-based Transatlantic Center and in charge of strategic planning at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. These views are his own.

republished from wall street journal

NO!  The country not the state!  If you will recall there was some incident where Russia attacked some area know as South Ossetia.  Well, there seems to be a new twist in the situation, as reported in the NY Times.

Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion.

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has characterized the attack as a precise and defensive act. But according to observations of the monitors, documented Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, Georgian artillery rounds and rockets were falling throughout the city at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between explosions, and within the first hour of the bombardment at least 48 rounds landed in a civilian area. The monitors have also said they were unable to verify that ethnic Georgian villages were under heavy bombardment that evening, calling to question one of Mr. Saakashvili’s main justifications for the attack.

Neither Georgia nor its Western allies have as yet provided conclusive evidence that Russia was invading the country or that the situation for Georgians in the Ossetian zone was so dire that a large-scale military attack was necessary, as Mr. Saakashvili insists.

With a paucity of reliable and unbiased information available, the O.S.C.E. observations put the United States in a potentially difficult position. The United States, Mr. Saakashvili’s principal source of international support, has for years accepted the organization’s conclusions and praised its professionalism. Mr. Bryza refrained from passing judgment on the conflicting accounts.

But wait!  Was the Russian invasion yet another lie?  Looks like it.

Kommersant: Cheney’s trip to Baku “failed”

Vice President of the USA Dick Cheney completed his trip to the South Caucasus targeted at strengthening Washington’s positions in the struggle for Caspian energy resources. Kommersant Daily qualifies the outcome of Baku talks as “failure.” The daily accounts that President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev did not offer to the US guest a warm reception, hinting that Baku was not intending to support the idea of retracting energy carriers’ flows to bypass Russia.

The daily details: “Dick Cheney’s visit to Azerbaijan proved utterly unsuccessful for Washington. The high-ranking guest, who was visiting Baku for the first time, was not met by either President Ilham Aliyev or even Prime Minister Artur Rasizade. Instead, the Vice President was welcomed by First Deputy Prime Minister Yagub Eyyubov and Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov. What about Ilham Aliyev, he was not in a hurry to receive Mr. Cheney. So the latter first headed to a meeting with President of BP Azerbaijan Company and top management of Chevron’s Azerbaijan subsidiary, proceeding then to the US embassy to Baku to converse with Ambassador Ann E. Derse. To the Azerbaijan President’s residence Dick Cheney made it toward evening.” As sources in the President’s administration commented to Kommersant, the talks were rather difficult, although Dick Cheney and Ilham Aliyev have had confidential relations from the times when Mr. Cheney used to be employed by Halliburton and Mr. Aliyev as Vice President of the state-run oil company SOCAR. The sides conferred on the war in Georgia and prospects of Nabucco gas pipeline construction.

According to Kommersant’s information, “Dick Cheney informed Ilham Aliyev that the USA were going to firmly support their allies in the region and intended to further extend the trans-Caspian gas pipeline circumventing Russia. Ilham Aliyev, however, hinted that, despite his high esteem of relations with Washington, he was not going to quarrel with Moscow. It essentially meant that, in the current situation, Baku decided to wait and see rather than accelerate realizaiton of Nabucco.” Kommersant sources in President’s administration accounted that Dick Cheney was highly irritated with the talks’ outcome — he even refused to attend a ceremonial supper given in his honor.

Kommersant cites sources in the State Chancellery of Georgia who said that closed negotiations between Mikhail Saakashvili and Dick Cheney in Tbilisi also had not gone smoothly. The sides mainly discussed security of existing pipelines laid through the Georgian territory round Russia, and the Nabucco pipeline project. Dick Cheney made it clear that the USA were ready to maintain security of these pipelines, however, by merely political means, so Georgia would not receive US military aid at the moment.

Cheney rips into ‘brutal’ Russians

CERNOBBIO, Italy: US Vice-President Dick Cheney has cast Moscow as a brutal regime that aims to recapture its Soviet-era dominance, as Russia threatened to increase its assistance to Iran’s nuclear program.

In the US administration’s most hawkish remarks since Russia’s five-day war with Georgia last month, Mr Cheney, speaking in Italy, reminded the West of its “responsibilities” and criticised Russia for its “chain of aggressive moves”.

Hours earlier, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had told a meeting of officials at the Kremlin that Moscow was a “force to be reckoned with”.

Mr Medvedev accused the US of rearming Georgia under the guise of humanitarian aid, after the arrival of a US navy flagship at a Georgian port close to where Russian troops are patrolling.

“I wonder how they would like it if we sent humanitarian assistance using our navy to countries of the Caribbean that have suffered from the recent hurricanes,” Mr Medvedev said.

Cheney Fails to Garner Azeri Support on Nabucco Pipeline

08 September 2008: U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has failed to win Azerbaijan’s support for the construction of a new gas pipeline from the Caspian that would bypass Russia.

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev indicated to Cheney during talks in Baku on Wednesday that he did not want to anger Russia in the wake of its invasion of neighboring Georgia, Kommersant reported, citing an official in Aliyev’s administration. Cheney was so disappointed that he did not attend an official dinner in his honor, the report said.

Azerbaijan has also increased flows of oil through a pipeline to the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, the newspaper reported, citing a Russian energy official.

Azerbaijan is the starting point for the flow of Caspian oil and gas westward to Europe, bypassing Russia. The planned Nabucco pipeline, backed by the European Union, will bring gas from the Caspian region via Turkey to Austria and Western Europe by 2013.

So much for the lame duck US attack dog, perhaps Sarah Barracuda will be more convincing.  Russia sees an immasculated bully trying ONE MORE TIME to assert its “scary tactics”.  Putin and his orchestra march to their own beat, anyway.  Cheney must embrace his new role as a has been bully.  There is a new scary thing in town, and its wearing lipstick … Whether Republicans or Democrats win in a few months, Sarah Palin, the lipstick toting attack dog, doesn’t have to snear to get the attention of Russia, we should keep her as a secret weapon.  Think of the soldiers lives we could save by just sending her over there to negotiate America’s interests … or, at least, Alaska’s interests.

The parties in power run from Washington in the US and Ukraine

Traditionally, the Bush White House has dispatched Cheney to dangerous parts of the world to stiffen the spines of nervous US allies with his tough talk and John Wayne countenance. But if not even the Republicans want to be associated too closely with the Bush administration these days, it’s hardly surprising that many US allies are reconsidering their own options.

How the West is losing the energy cold war

Boy, we have really done a great job over there!  The last eight years of this administration has created a fragile bubble constructed of lies and coercion.  How the new world unfolds will depend on the character of the next administration!

Mr Cheney aims to strengthen ties with Russia’s neighbours

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has said Ukraine has the right to live without fear of invasion, adding that the US stands by its bid for NATO membership.

Mr Cheney met both the prime minister and president in Kiev, the last stop of a tour aimed at underlining support for US allies in the former Soviet Union.

Mr Cheney reassured the president that the US had a “deep and abiding interest” in Ukraine’s security.

Analysts fear Ukraine could be the next flashpoint between Russia and the West.

“We believe in the right of men and women to live without the threat of tyranny, economic blackmail or military invasion or intimidation,” Mr Cheney said, in an apparent reference to Russia’s military intervention in Georgia.

‘Hostage’

Mr Cheney arrived in Ukraine just days after the country was plunged into political turmoil.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s party blocked a motion condemning Russia’s actions in Georgia, and sided with the opposition to vote for a curb on the president’s powers.

Members of President Viktor Yushchenko’s party walked out of the coalition government in protest, leading the president to warn that he could be forced to call a snap general election.

Mr Cheney urged the politicians to heal their divisions and be “united domestically first and foremost”.

“Ukraine’s best hope to overcome these threats is to be united,” he said following separate meetings with Mr Yushchenko and his former ally turned political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Mr Cheney expressed support for Ukraine’s bid to become a member of Nato.

“Ukrainians have a right to choose whether they wish to join Nato, and Nato has a right to invite Ukraine to join the alliance when we believe they are ready and that the time is right,” he said.

Russia is strongly opposed to any further expansion eastwards of Nato, and is furious that Ukraine and Georgia have been told that, one day, they will be offered membership.

But Mr Cheney – recognizing Ukraine’s contributions to NATO missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo – said that no country beyond NATO would be able to block Ukraine’s membership bid.

President Yushchenko says Ukraine is a hostage in a war waged by Russia against ex-Soviet bloc states.

The strategically-located country is important to Russia, with pipelines that carry Russian gas to European consumers and its Black Sea port, home to a key Russian naval base.

Russia has a powerful tool at its disposal, namely the large ethnic Russian population in Ukraine’s southern province of Crimea.

Open aggression

Mr Yushchenko has restricted Russia’s naval operations, and insists Moscow must leave when an inter-state treaty expires in 2017.

Ukraine has said it is ready to make its missile early warning systems available to European nations following Russia’s conflict with Georgia.

Mr Cheney’s visit comes at an awkward time for President Yushchenko, with the country’s largely pro-Western ruling coalition divided in its attitude toward Russia.

The leaders’ faltering relationship has now boiled over into open aggression, with Mr Yushchenko threatening to dissolve parliament and call a snap election.

The president has been a staunch supporter of his Georgian counterpart, Mikhail Saakashvili.

But Ms Tymoshenko has avoided outright condemnation of Russia, leading analysts to suggest she may be hoping for Moscow’s backing in a possible bid for the presidency in 2010.

· Report says 17 boats used

· MPs seek details of UK role

· Europe attacks 42-day plan

 Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor

 The Guardian,

 Monday June 2 2008

The United States is operating “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as “floating prisons” since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.

At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were “disappeared” to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.

Reprieve believes prisoners may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships in the Gulf of Aden during this time.

The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate’s story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. “One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo … he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo.”

Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s legal director, said: “They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.

“By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.”

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, called for the US and UK governments to come clean over the holding of detainees.

“Little by little, the truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition. The rest will come, in time. Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush’s departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11 is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism.”

The Liberal Democrat’s foreign affairs spokesman, Edward Davey, said: “If the Bush administration is using British territories to aid and abet illegal state abduction, it would amount to a huge breach of trust with the British government. Ministers must make absolutely clear that they would not support such illegal activity, either directly or indirectly.”

A US navy spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, told the Guardian: “There are no detention facilities on US navy ships.” However, he added that it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships “for a few days” during what he called the initial days of detention. He declined to comment on reports that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as “prison ships”.

The Foreign Office referred to David Miliband’s statement last February admitting to MPs that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, US rendition flights had twice landed on Diego Garcia. He said he had asked his officials to compile a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged.

CIA “black sites” are also believed to have operated in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland and Romania.

In addition, numerous prisoners have been “extraordinarily rendered” to US allies and are alleged to have been tortured in secret prisons in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.

Wow. Is it 2008 or 1808?

A recent article titled “A Tale of Two Allies” which was published in the American newspaper Christian Science Monitor has sparked furore in the Romanian media. In brief the article accompanied in the electronic edition of the Christian Science Monitor by an interview with A. Wess Mitchell, Director of Research at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington D.C. analyzes the way in which the United States of America deals with its allies in Europe. The article basically argues, using Poland and Romania as examples, that the United States of America classifies its allies in two categories: mature allies-partners which do not require coaxing, as the article argues and another category (which I call it allies of opportunity, since the article fails to give a proper category) with which the United States has a relation based on reciprocity.

Wess Mitchell argues that this sort of relation is employed by United States in dealing with less important allies, while at the same time it expects from mature allies such as Poland or Britain to support the US foreign policy without quid pro quos. The latter type of relation is criticized as alienating important allies and reinforcing the perception that the US does not take into consideration the interests of its allies. In Wess Mitchell’s opinion this type of thinking with regard to mature allies has developed after the Cold War as a result of the American unipolar moment.

The US-Romanian relation is described as being carefully cultivated by American policy makers in Washington, with the US being careful to reciprocate any concession made by the Romanian government and maintain the appearance of a balanced alliance, not an asymmetrical one. The article does not criticize Romania in any way instead it focuses its criticism on the US, arguing that the same type of relation based on reciprocity must be employed towards older and far more important allies so as not to alienate them.

What then caused the swift reaction of the Romanian media? Well this article came at a delicate moment. Romania is in the midst of a political crisis which pits against each other president Traian Basescu and prime-minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu. Romanian foreign policy has also been affected by this political crisis, as the president is a staunch Atlanticist, while the prime minister favours a foreign policy aligned more with the positions of the European Union. Furthermore the publication of the article coincided with the visit of Russian president Vladimir Putin to Bulgaria, which resulted in the energy agreement between Russian and Bulgaria that virtually compromises the Romanian sponsored Nabucco project. The article also contains a quote form an undisclosed Pentagon source which describes Romania as a minor American ally over the long term. Last but not least in recent time the US-American relation has come under scrutiny as a result the handling of incidents involving US diplomats as well as the long deployment of Romanian forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is evident that the Romanian press overreacted over the meaning of the article published by the Christian Science Monitor. Nevertheless it also raises questions about the nature and utility of American and Romanian relations. The United States remain at the moment the most important ally Romania has and the alliance has been instrumental for Romania in gaining NATO membership. From the American of view Romania proved to be a staunch ally that supported US foreign policy after 9/11 and allowed access to US influence and power in the Black Sea, a region which has been until recently impervious to American foreign policy. As such the relation represents a stable partnership; however it might be threatened by the current unstable climate in Romanian politics, a rise in anti-American feeling in the country and the inability of Romanian authorities to explain the importance of this alliance to the Romanian public.

George VIŞAN

by Parul Gupta

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Japan’s bid for a strategic partnership with India aims to counter China’s rising influence, with Tokyo omitting Beijing from its vision of an Asian ‘arc of freedom’, analysts said Thursday.

The highlight of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s three-day visit to India was the signing of a roadmap for strategic and global partnership between the two Asian giants.

Abe called for greater political, security, defence and trade relations.

 Read it all:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823/wl_
sthasia_afp/indiajapandiplomacychina_
070823122502

Related:
Japan Worried By North Korea, China

BANGKOK, Thailand: Thailand’s government said Tuesday that it may not allow a group of ethnic Hmong asylum-seekers from Laos to go to third countries, despite their U.N.-certified status as refugees and offers of resettlement abroad.

Some 149 Hmong recently staged a hunger strike to protest the harsh conditions under which they are being held at the immigration detention center in Nong Khai, 500 kilometers (310 miles) northeast of Bangkok, where they have been held for nine months.

The Hmong say they fear political persecution in Laos. ….

Read the Rest:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/21/asia/AS-GEN-Thailand-Hmong-Refugees.php