MOSCOW. (Military commentator Andrei Vasilyev for RIA Novosti) - The United States has a lot on its plate.
It has to come up with a position on the statement issued by the North Atlantic Council after its meeting in Brussels, negotiations in Vienna on the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's announcement of his country's intention to join NATO.
Will the U.S. stance include a commitment to European security?
Defense and security issues are among the few in the system of international relations that hold out the promise of learning the truth about the parties' real goals and intentions. It is extremely difficult to attain this moment of truth, because real interests are the most tightly guarded secret in politics. You can speculate or guess, but only very rarely can you find out the facts.
For example, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has calculated that the U.S. defense budget reached an astronomical $528 billion in the past few years. Washington and its NATO allies, which account for 66% of the world's defense spending (Russia's share is 3%), do not believe this amounts to a resumption of the arms race. They explain their growing defense allocations by pointing out the "fight for democracy" in Iraq, the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, and other "peace" programs.
One can talk about the "militarization of the U.S. administration's mentality," but Washington will never admit that NATO's eastward expansion threatens Russia's security and is disrupting the alignment of forces in Europe. This is part of American pragmatism, which ignores the national interests of other countries as insubstantial and unimportant.
Russian officials have more than once reminded the United States and NATO about their commitment not to expand the bloc, but to no avail. Therefore, when President Vladimir Putin said he considered the CFE treaty obsolete and favored a moratorium on it, a true strategic partner would have accepted his words as a logical reaction to its actions, but not Washington.
The United States believes Moscow must withdraw its troops from the self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia and Moldova before the West ratifies the CFE treaty.
Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, made it clear in Vienna that Russia had met the requirements of the United States in Georgia, a country on Russia's southern border, but had not complied with its wishes in Transdnestr.
"They're almost there with respect to Georgia (but) with respect to Transdnestr - no, I'm afraid they're not there," Fried said. "Well, if it is a peacekeeping function, maybe we ought to consider how a modest peacekeeping function could be properly internationalized," he said, apparently referring to American involvement.
Washington's growing claims to a more active presence in Europe jeopardize the CFE treaty by violating its fundamental principles of maintaining a safe military balance and imposing limits on the amount of conventional military equipment in the area extending from the Atlantic to the Urals. Thanks to the CFE treaty, the number of troops in the area has been cut by 700,000, to 3 million servicemen.
How will the proportion change if Ukraine joins NATO? And what should Russia do about the U.S. plan to deploy elements of an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense system near its borders?
Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian parliament's lower house, said: "The intention to expand NATO and build up its armaments near the Russian borders is unjustified and contradicts the spirit of partnership." He added that Russia would cut its conventional forces in Europe only if NATO acted likewise.
In effect, solving the CFE and ABM problems depends on the United States. The other NATO members know very well that the Iranian and North Korean missile threats are hypothetical, as Chris Prebensen, secretary general of the Norwegian Atlantic Committee, recently acknowledged in an interview he granted to the Ukrainian newspaper Den.
Prebensen said the Norwegian government viewed the American plans to create an anti-missile shield in Europe as damaging to the principle of a strategic balance, since such systems would spur an arms race, which is a bad idea.
There are even harsher opinions of the matter. On June 6, The Financial Times published a letter from Robert Skidelsky of Britain's House of Lords, who speculates that the [U.S.] anti-missile program is aimed at Russia and that the purpose of this (...) strategy is to neutralize Russia's nuclear capability.
He writes: "What may have started out as President Reagan's bluff to force the Soviet Union into arms control agreements has evolved into the doctrine of American military unilateralism. If this is the game, the Russian response is understandable. Russia is playing the only card it has."
Therefore, Putin's proposal that Russia and America use the Gabala radar station in Azerbaijan as an alternative to the U.S. plans to base the system in Poland and the Czech Republic could be a solution for those who are against starting a new cold war.
It could be also a chance for Europeans to check on the purity of Washington's intentions. Does it really intend to protect Europe from Iranian or North Korean missiles, or does it simply want to strengthen its presence in Europe?
Nobody expected that question to be answered at the recent meeting of the North Atlantic Council. According to a source in NATO headquarters in Brussels cited by Russian news agency Itar-Tass, Russia and the United States should first tackle the issue bilaterally.
There may be quite a few technical problems involved, but the political difficulties engendered by Washington's desire to create a unipolar world are much more dangerous. They could prevent the two sides from reaching an equitable agreement, and Russia will neither accept anything less nor agree to play the part of Europe's "poor relation."
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
