Resetting The "Reset" Button?

Life is getting tougher for the Guy In The Oval in the old foreign relations corral.  You know matters are heading down the tubes when Afghan president Hamid Karzai demands--in the WaPo no less--that the US, in a term beloved by noted pundit Sarah Palin, "cease and desist" in executing the highly successful nighttime raids on suspected Taliban and Haqqani sites.

Admittedly this latest twist in the Saga of Hamid puts one in a position of accepting the diagnosis of manic-depressive psychosis once offered by Ambassador Eikenberry.  In the real world the probability of the hours of darkness operations taken always in conjunction with Afghan National Force members being halted is somewhat less than Ron Paul voting to expand the powers of the Federal Reserve System.  Hitting the heavyweights, the hard core of an insurgent group with a rapid tempo is a highly effective means of degrading both the combat efficiency and political will of the target groups.

The fact that some Afghans are bothered by the notion of women and children being rousted by Americans whose combat kit makes them look about as sympathetically human as the Imperial Stormtroops of Star Wars fame is a case of TS.  A few hurt Islamic sensibilities is a small cost to pay for the prospect of genuine lowering of the violence, the blood and death which falls disproportionately on the same civilian population.  Even Karzai must be aware of this governing reality and its necessary corollary: You can't be president of anything if the purveyors of violent political Islam take over or even remain as a viable, nascent threat to the Kabul regime.

The takeaway from the latest gust from the mouth of Hamid is simple:  This too will pass.  Swiftly.

The same realistic optimism cannot be applied to the growing frictions between the Obama administration and the Dynamic Duo in the Kremlin.  The festering issue of American ratification of the pending new START is developing with the rapidity of a case of gas gangrene.

Senator Jon Kyl, (R) Arizona, who is the point man for the GOP on the START ratification, has cut Mr Obama off at the knees.  Obama was so ill-advised (or so unrealistically certain of his own political juice) that he assured Russian president Medvedev that the treaty would be brought to a successful conclusion during the lame duck session.  Kyl has demurred.  This means the treaty in all its contentious whole will linger on until the next Congress with the increased Republican presence in the Senate.

The administration has attempted to sweeten the deal--or, more accurately--has genuflected to Republican fears that the new version of START will limit the capacity of the US to upgrade and modernize its rather elderly nuclear arsenal.  The difficulty comes in that the money pledges are scheduled over a ten year period with no enforceable means of assuring that future administrations and congresses will honor the promises.  Kyl and other Republicans want more money upfront so that work can be started and a dynamic created to make future funding more probable.  On this the current administration has dragged its collective feet.

Overall, the new START is a decent treaty.  It does, as usually has been the case in this sort of matter, give advantages to the Russians.  However none of these seriously alter the balance of terror which has worked so well so long to keep the peace between Russia and the US.  Ratification would provide a reasonably firm basis for other agreements on "tactical" nuclear systems, for example, or a new and more comprehensive test ban understanding.  It might even serve to increase mutual confidence such as to allow the Kremlin to work with the US in the anti-ballistic missile arena.  A creative and mutual understanding in this area would serve both countries' interests in a measurable way.

When the proposed treaty is finally brought to the Senate, the debate may be quite contentious.  There are more than a few Republicans there who are unreconstructed Cold Warriors who seem to believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union was some sort of shrewd commie plot.  There is a bit of truth here, but not in the way presumed.

Vladimir Putin shows both his age and background in his fundamental distrust of the US.  The current prime minister and past (as well as possible future) Russian president is rather much of the Cold Warrior himself albeit in more nationalistic ways than his predecessors of the pre-1991 sort.  That is why he has so obviously left the America brief in the hands of Medvedev.  Putin anticipates failure and is not going to have the tar of catastrophe sticking to his hands.  The Bare Chested Man On Horseback sees the US as the Main Enemy to this day and his attitude is not going to change for the better.

This is another good reason to ratify START.  A quick and relatively low contention ratification process will weaken Putin's hold on the internal levers of power in the Kremlin coterie.  The relative reduction of the power of Putin's anti-American view will enhance the possibilities of enhanced cooperation in the myriad of matters of coinciding national interest which rest on the table currently.

Putin's suspicions about and distrust of the US received a shot of steroids with the sudden, unannounced rendition of Viktor Bout by the government of Thailand.  Bout, a long time international dealer in weapons whose favored customers were rogue states and insurgent or terrorist groups, was indicted for violation of US law following a Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation.  Arrested in Thailand the legal wrangle was finally settled in favor of the American demand that the man be extradited for trial in the US.

When the rendition went down the Russians screamed bloody murder.  It was an unusual event.  Even the Russian foreign minister got into the act.  Rarely, if ever, has an international criminal received such massive and vocal support from the government of a major state.

To the Russians--who had used any amount of pressure and inducement to free Bout from the clutches of the Thais--the extradition as well as the process leading to it were redolent of American arrogance, of the sort of unilateralism regularly decried by Vladimir Putin back in the days of George W.  His foreign ministry and other organs of official opinion singled out the unwillingness of the American side to put its case on the table for mutual examination and joint determination.  This perspective is not uniquely Russian but the passion with which it is stated is as Russian as Ivan the Terrible.

There is, of course, more than insulted Russian national ego involved in the Bout Affair.  Faced with a horrific number of years as a guest of the Bureau of Prisons, there is a chance that Viktor will have an attack of the Talking Disease.  Certainly there are a lot of questions the US would like to place before the one time Russian air force interpreter.  We would like to know just how he got his hands on the more major weapons he peddled.  And, it would be interesting to determine who authorized the use of Russian Air Force transports to carry his "private enterprise" cargo.  The list goes on at some length but you get the point, eh, bucko?

Bout knows where the bodies are buried.  He knows just how ranking the buried bodies are.  He has a set of very good reasons to dime out anybody and everybody.  This gives Viktor a great capacity to produce fear in major sections of the Russian elite both in and out of the government and military services.

Coming hard on the heels of the revelations regarding the defection of a very high ranking spook in the successor agency of Vladimir's alma mater KGB, the prospects of the damage which a fast talking Bout might do is and will cause sleepness nights in the Kremlin and its ancillaries.  Both the Bout Affair and its spook community predecessor have heightened the Putin fear and loathing of the US.  Any delay or modification of the proposed START ratification process will do the same only more so.

President Obama will be meeting the "good cop" of the Dynamic Duo in the context of the upcoming NATO conference at which the top topics will be Afghanistan and the (not officially of course due to Turkish sensibilities) anti-Iran missile defense system.  Both subjects would be benefited greatly by Russian cooperation.  At this juncture, due to the ability of Mr Obama to promise what he cannot deliver and the bonfire of the Bout Affair, this cooperation is less rather than more likely.

In terms of US national interest Medvedev is greatly to be preferred as an interlocutor over his higher profile and nominally junior prime minister, Putin.  It is important, therefore, that both Mr Obama and the Republicans understand this as well as the ground truth that Russia is not going to go away.  It is not and never has been--pace the unfortunate and misguided remarks and policies of George W. Bush and, later, Joe Biden--one with Nineveh and Tyre.

The Russians and the Russian leadership are both insecure and possessed of a prickly sense of national pride. In all diplomatic doings including presidential promises this foundation reality must be kept in mind.  Russia is, at least in the minds of Russians high and low, a Great Power, and it is an absolute imperative that the US treat it as such in all matters, great and small.  Only by doing so with the utmost of sedulousness can the US hope to accomplish critical matters of central national interest.