PUTIN BREAKS THROUGH THE CEILING

The desires and ambitions of politicians have been out of step with common sense for a long time. And as you observe the trends in the world community, every year you doubt more and more that those who believe in the victory of global common sense are right: what is this, a road to a biblical apocalypse?

Paradoxical though it may be, the more human society develops, the more civilized it supposedly becomes, the more it tries to break the foundations, principles, rules of the game and laws that it worked out and established itself. Not many people are concerned about the principles and declarations of the UN or about its resolutions. The organization has completely given up the initiative on world decisions and has turned into mere window dressing or a tool in the hands of the great powers. Attempts to create regional organizations, such as the OSCE, which could be more mobile and effective in their decisions and abandon the UN's organizational mistakes and its bureaucratic weight, have not achieved the desired result either. The same negative trends can be seen in interstate, multilateral treaties and agreements, which in their day were reached by states whose public saw them as an attempt to protect themselves from the flip side of their own evolution. There are many such treaties and resolutions on paper. And the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) is one of them.

On 14 July Vladimir Putin signed a decree suspending the application of the CFE Treaty "until the NATO countries begin to implement this document conscientiously".

What led to this decision? There are many reasons, and the decision is not unexpected: Putin threatened to take this step in his last message to the Federal Assembly at the beginning of May.

What is the CFE Treaty?

The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed by the Warsaw Pact and NATO countries in 1990. Twenty-eight European states are signatories to the treaty: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine and the USA and Canada. 

The treaty limits five categories of conventional weapons and hardware - tanks, armoured combat vehicles, 100-mm calibre artillery and above, combat aircraft and attack helicopters; an exchange of information and broad inspections are envisaged.

The USSR collapsed a year after the CFE Treaty was signed.

An updated version of the CFE Treaty taking account of the new circumstances was signed in 1999 at the OSCE summit in Istanbul. It provides a basis to move from the bloc structure of the old treaty to one of national and territorial levels of weapons and hardware for every participating state. The transformation of the zone grouping approach (which corresponded to the Cold War confrontation of two blocs) into a system of national and territorial levels for every state provided the totally new momentum to turn the adapted CFE Treaty into a new treaty. A network of territorial restrictions replaced the previous five geographical zones: 28 territorial levels correspond with the number of European treaty signatories and two sublevels in Russia and Ukraine.

The new system sets limits on the stationing of land weapons that come under the treaty's scope, restricts the possibilities for states regrouping them and reduces the possibility of the creation of strike groups to conduct large scale attacks. The right to "emergency temporary deployment" comes with additional control mechanisms.

The adapted CFE Treaty was open to receive any European state that was an OSCE member.

However, only four countries ratified the adapted CFE Treaty: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Georgia and Moldova refused to ratify it, calling for Russian troops to be withdrawn in line with the Istanbul agreements that were signed at the same time as the agreement on the adapted CFE Treaty. This was the reason why the NATO countries blocked the enactment of the adapted treaty too.

With many east European countries joining NATO the main principle of the treaty - the need to maintain a balance of forces - lost its relevance. The treaty was supported only through the exchange of information and inspections. Russia's position is that the obligations related to the treaty (reducing the heavy weaponry in Georgia and Moldova) were met in full in 2000-01. Moscow thinks that the time frame and conditions for the operation of Russian military bases in Georgia and the withdrawal of military property from Pridnestrovye are double-sided and cannot be a hindrance to the ratification of the adapted CFE Treaty by other countries.

Let sleeping dogs lie

Let's return to the principles that directly affected the Russian president's decision to withdraw from the CFE Treaty, in other words, to reject the ceilings imposed by the treaty on conventional weapons.

Of course, the main reason is NATO's coming closer to the Russian borders which official Moscow has found very much not to its taste. Kremlin officials think that NATO expansion has led to the alliance significantly exceeding the restrictions set by the treaty on quantities of weapons. Russia is referring to the USA's intention to deploy "substantial military forces" on bases in Bulgaria and Romania and this is forbidden by the treaty. The Western countries' failure to meet the obligations to ratify as soon as possible the agreements on the adapted CFE Treaty also played a role. Finally, Russia takes an extremely dim view of the fact that Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have yet to join the treaty, despite agreement with NATO on the eve of them joining the alliance.

The other reasons are just a continuation and consequence of the main one. For example, the missile defence systems in the Czech Republic and Poland are just a continuation of long-standing Western policy. On the eve of the NATO summit in Prague in November 2002, when the alliance enlarged to include former Soviet republics, it could have been predicted that the stakes were going up with bewildering speed.

Moscow is dissatisfied not simply with the West's refusal to ratify the adapted CFE Treaty. It does not like the essence of the military and political position that unfolded in Europe and the world over the past 15 years, a time that today is referred to as the period of Russia's weakness. If this is the case, then Moscow should be expected to attempt to start a review of many military and political agreements concluded between the Russian Federation and the West during this time.

The USA finally untied Moscow's hands on 14 July when Democrats and Republicans in the US Senate unanimously supported the missile defence programme. The same day the Russian president's press secretary announced the decree on a moratorium on the CFE Treaty. The Foreign Ministry announced that Russia is temporarily ceasing the provision of information and the conduct of weapons inspections, while questions about their quantity in various regions will be dealt with unilaterally.

All recent summits and bilateral meetings involving the Russian president have clearly been held with admonitions and even threats from the Russian leadership towards what President Putin likes to call their "Western partners".

Everything became clear after the emergency conference of CFE Treaty states in Vienna on 12-15 June 2007 called by Russia. There Western countries turned down Russia's plan to "breathe new life into the treaty", the key element of which was that the adapted CFE Treaty be ratified and this was tied into Russia's fulfilment of its Istanbul obligations for the complete withdrawal of troops from Moldova and Georgia. As a result the conference could not even agree a final document.

The Russian media think that it was right after this, one month before the final decision, that a draft decree was submitted to Vladimir Putin for signature on suspending the CFE Treaty. However, it was decided to delay promulgation. First, so as not to cloud the meeting of the Russian and US presidents on 1-2 July in Kennebunkport; second, so as not to give arguments to Russia's competitors on the eve of the decisive vote on who gets the Winter Olympics in 2014.

However, straight after the failure of the Vienna conference Moscow began to prepare its Western partners for the announcement of the moratorium. In June a specious excuse was given to military delegations from Hungary and Bulgaria for the refusal to allow them to visit Russian military units. Russia also turned down an invitation to take part in joint exercises of the USA, Romania and Bulgaria. 

At last the Kremlin thought the time had come to announce the decree, Russian newspaper Kommersant reports. This is the Russian Foreign Ministry's explanation of the significance of the CFE Treaty moratorium: "We will not accept inspections at home and will not send out our groups of inspectors, we will not supply the information that we supply today, we will not be bound by size restrictions." The information accompanying the decree says that Russia took this step because of "exceptional circumstances prevailing around the treaty". It includes an explanation that the moratorium will apply "until the NATO countries ratify the agreement on the adaptations and begin to implement this document honestly". 

The question "How can the NATO countries now ratify an agreement, whose terms it is impossible to keep?" produces the logical answer that the CFE Treaty is good and buried. Even if the other post-Soviet countries adhere to it completely, and at least some participating states are saying this, would this really happen (just take Armenia as an example) if the main participant in the treaty is not playing the game? Putin accurately observed during the summit with Bush at Kennebunkport exactly two weeks before leaving the CFE Treaty, "the cards have been dealt", but Moscow and Washington are playing different games.

Have bets been placed?

Preference players like to joke "If I knew the widow, I would live in Sochi." In the same way, after looking at the cards in the hands of the West and Russia we can only guess what result the gamblers have prepared for us when the game is ending and all the cards will be shown.

It is clear that it is more difficult to guess the Kremlin's response than the West's, which has been openly playing an aggressive game for some time. 

Now that Moscow has freed itself of the CFE Treaty what will it do next? This will depend on a whole bunch of geopolitical changes and expectations which the world community is experiencing at present.

The main postulate is that from the West's serve Russia has taken the game of military technical and political confrontation along the entire front, which was to be expected.

Russian experts think that the moratorium will make relations between Russia and the West even tenser. The president of the Politika Foundation, Vyacheslav Nikonov, says that it's quite realistic that Russia will re-target its missiles at Europe if elements of the American missile defence programme are positioned there.

But the missile defence system in eastern Europe is not the only factor that reveals the deterioration in relations between the USA and Russia. Other issues are on the agenda too which have a strong influence on the confrontation: they are Kosovo, possible military action in Iran, which would of course mean the North Atlantic alliance moving further into territory surrounding Russia, the struggle for oil and gas regions and the spread of democracy. The list is quite impressive and, unfortunately, does not contain any points on which the Kremlin could stand shoulder to shoulder with its Western partners. 

The incipient arms race is quite clear. But a new stage of geopolitical confrontation is also beginning. 

It can be predicted fairly certainly that Russia's policy will be very simple: "whatever is bad for the West is good for us". It is clear that Moscow is beginning clear support for the USA's opponents and its allies. For example, the Kremlin will probably oppose the adoption of the next round of sanctions against Iran, thereby pushing the Americans to an unprepared military operation. Everyone understands clearly that in the current conditions the Americans would not be able to achieve their objective and would only aggravate their position in the Middle East and before the Muslim world. Moreover, systematic work is under way at present to divide the European allies and the Americans. Leaving the CFE Treaty is also increasing the concern of the European states who are less than delighted at the prospect of being targeted by Russian rockets and the lack of an opportunity to inspect the Russian army at their borders. This will probably lead to another outbreak of espionage fever, which, as we can see, has already begun.

Russia's potential military and political ally China, which is also concerned at the heightened activity of the West, is closely watching the actions of Washington. There is a clear prospect that the two states will create a strong political alliance.

If the Kosovo problem is solved in the way the Americans would like, it could have consequences that go far beyond the region. Russia, which has warned many times of the danger of the precedent for other regions where there is a problem of separatism, has real levers to show that its words are not just hot air. Recognition of the independence of Kosovo, even if Serbia is forced to do it, could lead to a chain reaction of recognition of the independence of other regions. Everyone knows Moscow's influence on the separatist regions of Ossetia, Karabakh and Pridnestrovye. And all three places have considerable interest for the West. Ossetia and Karabakh are in a zone of important economic interests for the USA and Europe and are an important bridgehead for them in the struggle for the oil and gas reserves of the Caspian. The start of the major operation of energy projects, coupled with the expectation that Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan will join them, could become an excellent stimulus for Russia to undermine stability in the South Caucasus. There are opportunities to do this and leaving the CFE Treaty removes controls over the movement of Russian troops and weapons. Pridnestrovye is right under Europe's nose. An escalation in tension could place a thick cross on plans to accept Georgia and Moldova into the North Atlantic alliance on the one hand and, on the other, increase Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas and their transit through its territory.

It should not be forgotten that if the West loses the fight for Kazakh and Turkmen oil and gas, in conditions of a growing energy crisis it will have either to try to make peace with the mullocratic regime in Iran (which is unlikely at present) or strike Iran in the near future, sacrificing relative economic stability for the present in the name of control over this state and its enormous energy resources tomorrow.

Nothing else was to be expected from Russia

This is all connected with the West's understanding of the consequences of their actions which the Kremlin could not consider friendly. The reaction to Putin's action was, therefore, quite sluggish. For some reason Moscow expected strident accusations from the West to follow the introduction of the Russian Federation's moratorium on the CFE Treaty. However, although the first Western reaction was negative, it was restrained. NATO and the EU expressed "regret at Russia's decision" as "the CFE Treaty is a fundamental document for stability in Europe". A spokesman for the US president's National Security Council, Gordon Johndroe, said: "We are disappointed that Russia has suspended its participation in the CFE Treaty, but we will continue to have negotiations with the Russians."

Washington looks to be pinning its hopes on the fact that the suspension of the CFE Treaty does not officially come into force for 150 days after Russia has informed the participating states. The White House is seriously counting on reaching agreement with Moscow and convincing it during this period not to leave the CFE Treaty for good. However, December, when the election campaign will be in full swing and as a result anti-Western rhetoric will be very popular, is not the best time for reaching agreements, quite the reverse.