Moscow has visibly hardened its stance vis-a-vis the West even as President Vladimir Putin arrived in Milan late Thursday for the ASEM summit where the Ukraine crisis and Russia’s ties with the West are major topics of discussion. Prior to his departure from Moscow, Putin made some scathing references to the US policies toward Russia calling them “blackmail” and warning that the global “strategic stability” will be imperiled unless the West made amends. Even before Putin arrived in MIlan, Russian defence minister Sergey Shoigu alleged in Moscow that the Pentagon is studying scenarios for military operations against Russia and warned that “more than one Western emperor broke his teeth over the 1152 years of Russian history. (Itar-Tass).
What provoked Shoigu’s unprecedented outburst, according to him, was an inter alia reference embedded within a speech by the US defence secretary Chuck Hagel the previous day while addressing the Association of the United States Army in Washington on the challenges facing the US military — “But we also must meet with a revisionist Russia — with its modern and capable army — on NATO’s doorstep.” (Tran). But it is highly probable that this was only the proverbial tip of the iceberg and Shoigu had other hard evidences on his mind, too, in sending such a stark message to the Pentagon. Then, there have been other tell-tale signs too pointing toward Moscow hunkering down. Putin kept German Chncellor Angela Merkel waiting for 4 hours for a scheduled meeting in Milan. The Kremlin later said there were “serious differences of opinion about the genesis of the internal UKrainian conflict as well as about the causes of what is happening there now.” (RFERL, AFP)
Meanwhile, Moscow has flatly denied that at the meeting in Paris on Tuesday at the FM level, Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry agreed on intelligence-sharing regarding the Islamic State [IS], as the latter had claimed at a media briefing later. Moscow repeated the tough line that it will cooperate with the US in the fight against the IS only on the basis of a UN Security Council mandate. (RT).
Whether all this is mere traditional foreplay before ‘East-West summits’ in Cold War history, admittedly, is one way of looking at things. However, it is entirely conceivable that Moscow made a sharp assessment, possibly with vital intelligence inputs, that the US and its European allies are not exactly caving in on the issue of sanctions against Russia and would insist on the the latter’s fulfillment of pre-conditions that Kerry conveyed to Lavrov at the Paris meeting. (See my blog US. Russia resume ‘tough love’.) Clearly, the US wants the sealing of the Ukraine-Russia border first and the holding of the parliamentary elections as scheduled, which would end the political impasse in Kiev, whereas, Moscow would want constitutional reforms in Ukraine to go ahead that would give the eastern region a veto over any decision on their country joining the EU or NATO.
The Russian assessment would have been that the West simply cannot afford a confrontation with Moscow at a time of such fluidity in the Middle East. But the Kremlin may now have drawn the conclusion that nothing need be expected in terms of a ‘reset’ of US-Russia relations in the remaining period of President Barack Obama’s presidency.
On the contrary, Moscow sees signs of renewed US hostility. The Kremlin would no doubt read meaning into the sudden free fall in oil prices as the replay of the cold-war era American strategy to reduce Russia’s income from oil exports (a strategy that brought the Soviet economy down on its heels in the mid-1980s and forced Moscow to borrow from the West and eventually sue for peace.) Of course, the situation is drastically changed today in geopolitical terms. This is not a bipolar world. On the other hand, the drop in oil price comes at a time when the Ruble currency is steadily devaluing and Russian economy is inexorably sliding into deep recession, thanks to Western sanctions over UKraine.
President Ronald Reagan’s cold-war strategy toward the Soviet Union was at its core three fold: a) US going for a mammoth arms build-up (which, perhaps, has echoes in Hagel’s speech mentioned above); b) Moscow coming under compulsion to commit huge resources to maintain strategic parity, and, c) the Soviet economy being forced to go bankrupt by creating an oil glut (which the US, perhaps, is also repeating today, thanks to the shale gas bonanza). Read the op-ed by Tom Friedman in the Times. |