MARKED CARDS HAVE BEEN DEALT

Was there hope that the discussions on bilateral problems, including the deployment of missile defence systems in the Czech Republic and Poland, held between the US and Russian presidents at the American leader's family estate in Kennebunkport on 1-2 July, would end in success?

It is courageous, but not for us

The only good news is that the sides are still trying to find points of contact. Although it was clear from the very beginning that the USA would not give up on the placing of radar and missiles in these two Eastern European states. Nor would Russia pretend that it has gone along with it. In a word, what happened in Kennebunkport was quite rightly described by American and Russian diplomats as "lobster politics", referring to the food that the two generations of the Bush family offered Vladimir Putin at their Walker's Point estate. 

Push and Putin have different views on democracy, the missile defence system, the expansion of NATO at the expense of Russia's former satellites, as well as the independence of Kosovo. Both presidents are trying to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, but they have different views as to how tough they can be with Tehran and have different opinions on the extent of the Iranian missile threat.

Nevertheless, realizing that the Americans would not give up on the Czech Republic and Poland in return for the missile interception system (the Qabala radar station Daryal) in Azerbaijan, which Putin kindly offered to share with the Americans at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, the Russian president went even further. In order to increase the effect of "his sincere aspiration to cooperation, not to confrontation" within the international community, he suggested re-equipping the Qabala radar station if necessary. However, the Kremlin's initiatives did not end here. "If this is not enough, we will include in this system the early warning stations being built in southern Russia," Putin said, referring to the anti-missile station near Armavir. A Voronezh radar station is being built there. According to Russian experts, this is a station of rapid response, i.e. it can be deployed quite quickly. Its range of operation is up to 6,000km.

Moreover, Putin offered to expand the framework of consultations on the missile defence system, "using the Russia-NATO Council for this purpose". In fact, this means that the discussion of the problem would move from a bilateral to a multilateral level. There is logic in this: the Kremlin understands very well that many influential European states do not like the strengthening of the US military presence in Europe. The switch to a new format is an attempt to put a brake on the development of the process, involving it in multilateral discussions with countries with their own positions on the missile defence system - if it is not a pro-Russian position, then at least it does not coincide with the American position.

Along with the use of the early warning station being built in southern Russia, Putin noted the need to set up an information exchange centre in Moscow to work within the framework of the missile defence system. "An analytical centre could be set up in one of the European states, for example in Brussels. This could be a closed system that would be working in a real time regime," the Russian leader explained.

Bush described Putin's proposals as "a courageous, interesting and new idea" which "needs to be worked out". According to the US president, Russia has come up with new initiatives with regard to the missile defence system, which seem "innovative, sincere and strategic" to Washington. At the same time, the USA also stressed that "the Czech Republic and Poland should be an integral part of the missile defence system".

The Iranian problem and so on

Of course, Putin and Bush also discussed the Iranian problem, on which they "spent a lot of time", as they said afterwards. The presidents said that they will be working together to solve the crisis. The head of the White House stressed that he was "concerned about the possibility of Tehran creating technical innovations to create nuclear weapons" and supposed that Putin "shares these fears". "When Russia and the USA speak in the same language, this is effective, which is why I thank Russia for its position (on Iran) in the UN. We agree that we should work together and send a single signal to Iran," Bush said. He added that the USA is not against the Iranian people, but is against its leaders who have certain problems. In response, Putin thought that Russia and the USA would continue to find a common language on the Iranian problem in the UN Security Council in the future. We should remind you that members of the Security Council recently started discussing Washington's proposal to impose additional sanctions on Tehran for its refusal to freeze uranium enrichment. The Russian president also stressed that Iran has recently made some progress on cooperation with the IAEA and that the European Union's active involvement in solving this problem might yield even more positive results.

As for the remaining issues of mutual interest, they remained as they were, excuse me for tautology. The two leaders did not reach agreement on the Kosovo problem - each of them stuck to their own opinion. However, we can describe as some progress the fact that a document is being drawn up, which the US president's national security adviser Steven Headley said "will initiate TALKS (capitalized by the author) about mutual relations between our two countries on strategic nuclear forces after the START-1 Treaty expires in 2009".

Nor did they reach an agreement on democratic (or anti-democratic) developments in Russia. Putin himself described this best of all, saying that Russia will not tolerate "a mentoring tone" on this issue.

Finale

On 7 July, one week after the negotiations in Kennebunkport, US State Secretary Condoleezza Rice put another nail in the coffin, which pragmatic politicians had long expected, of hopes for an American refusal to deploy a third echelon of the missile defence system in Europe. "The USA does not agree with Russia's proposal on the missile defence system and intends to continue creating a positional area of the missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic," she said in an interview with CNBC.

"After the period of time during which the Russians kept saying 'no, no, no' to what we are going to do in the missile defence sphere, they have now decided to come up with some of their own ideas. Now we do not agree and we believe that we must go ahead with the Czech Republic and Poland. But we agree that this could be a sphere in which Russia-American cooperation could make a gigantic breakthrough," Rice said, explaining Washington's position.

The state secretary also said that the possibilities of US-Russian cooperation in the missile defence sphere were discussed by the two countries' presidents during their recent meeting in Kennebunkport. "We have disagreements with Russia, but at this meeting, we managed to identify potential spheres of cooperation. The problem of defence against missiles from countries like Iran and North Korea was widely discussed, and the Russians made a number of proposals," Rice said. She said that now the USA and Russia "will examine regional architecture to repel the threat of long-range missiles in the future". "Now Defence Secretary Gates and I will meet our Russian counterparts, Defence Minister Serdyukov and Foreign Minister Lavrov, in autumn to hold long negotiations on how we can move forward," the US state secretary added.

Where are they going to move forward to? It is clear that the Americans will not give in, while the Russian proposals are only an insincere (in terms of political reality) attempt to score political points. We should not forget that Russia's plans, as a source in the Kremlin said, can be implemented only if the Americans give up on their plans to create a third positional area of the national missile defence system. "The cooperation offered by Moscow should also take off the agenda the US plans to deploy a vanguard missile group in space," a member of the Russian delegation said in Kennebunkport.

Then came a clear hint at what the Americans' refusal might mean: "The Russian proposals, if they are implemented, will make it unnecessary to deploy missiles in the Kaliningrad Region and in other Russian regions close to Europe," the source said. So as we can see, confrontation on this issue will continue.

There is another aspect that seems important here. This writer considered it in the previous edition of the magazine. The issue of the US presence at the Qabala radar station was made public before the Russian president proposed it at Heiligendamm. This happened after a US military delegation visited Azerbaijan. We should add here the words of the former defence minister and now first deputy prime minister, Ivanov, that after Azerbaijan's proposal (made in 2006) to double the rent for the Daryal station in Qabala, Russia stepped up the construction of the radar station in Armavir. Thus, it is clear that the Russian lease of the Daryal radar station will probably end in 2012. Washington is more likely to replace Moscow. It is also clear that the proposal on the Qabala radar station was in fact an attempt to sell the Americans what actually does not belong to Russia any more and will probably be used by the USA anyway, regardless of Russia's opinion and desire.

The well-known Russian political expert, Ruslan Saidov, thinks that the Kremlin's statement about the deployment of tactical missile complexes with cruise missiles in the Kaliningrad Region might have serious consequences. It is not clear whom these complexes will threaten, apart from Poland and the Baltic states - perhaps Germany as well in the long-term, but not the USA. The Americans, in turn, will grab this pretext and, as a retaliatory measure, might deploy their own missiles on the territory of new and future members of NATO - the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine and Georgia. "This is the only thing that the Kremlin will achieve in the end. We cannot offer the Americans the ecstasy of cooperation against Iran and then, offended by Washington, rap out ridiculous threats against it which no-one will take seriously," the political scientist declares.

Elections are to blame for everything

Our magazine has already said that the current confrontation between Russia and the USA is of benefit to both sides. To avoid listing again all the reasons which we mention in every edition, it is better to quote the words of the Russian president's foreign policy adviser, Sergey Prikhodko, in Kennebunkport: "In the run-up to elections, political forces in both countries are increasingly tempted to use Russian-American relations as small change in their campaigns. In the run-up to the Duma and presidential elections, anti-American rhetoric is gaining momentum in Russia. Real problems will be solved only after the elections."

The situation is approximately the same in the USA - presidential elections will be held there next year. For the Democrats, and especially for the Republicans who have lost most of their polls support because of Bush's policy, the demonstration of the nation's greatness and the strengthening of the image as fighters against international terrorism and for world democracy (for example, in the same Russia) is one of the main arguments in "the domestic political tug-of-war".

Vladimir Putin uttered a sinister and quite ambiguous phrase to draw a line under his latest negotiations with his American counterpart: "The cards have been dealt, and we can start playing. I very much hope that we are playing the same game." However, there are two "buts": first, it would have been more relevant if the Russian leader had spoken not about the same game which you can play as rivals, but about a game "in partnership" with the USA, which would have sounded more logical. Or maybe the Kremlin leader let it slip by accident. Or maybe it was no accident… And second, to all appearances, we should not expect fair play with these political "cards" and this explosive "pack", especially if we bear in mind that the US and Russian leaders are holding "marked" cards, as you may have noticed…