Transcript

Host: This is “On The Line,” and I’m Eric Felten.

With a presidential election scheduled for March 2nd, Russian officials have thrown roadblocks in the way of European efforts to monitor the balloting. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said, “Our country is a sovereign state, and we will not allow the conduct of the election campaign to be corrected by anyone from the outside.” Mr. Putin’s handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, is expected to win the election campaign.

Complaints about the election come in the midst of ongoing tension between Russia and the West. British cultural affairs offices in Russia were recently forced to close. Britain and Russia have been sparring over charges that a former KGB officer murdered a Russian dissident in London with radioactive poison in 2006. And Russian officials continue to make threatening statements about plans for Poland and the Czech Republic to join the U.S. in building a limited missile defense system in Europe.

Asked about Russia at a press conference in December, President George W. Bush wondered, “What will the country look like ten years from now?” He said he hoped Russia would understand “there needs to be checks and balances and free and fair elections and a vibrant press.” Mr. Bush said that “Western values based upon human rights and human dignity are values that will lead to a better country.”

Joining me to talk about the challenges facing the U.S. in its relations with Russia is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, David Kramer. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Kramer: Pleasure. Thank you.

Host: Let’s start by talking a little bit about the election coming up in Russia. Popular support for Vladimir Putin and his anointed successor, very high -- seventy to eighty percent according to polls in Russia, and yet the Russian government has felt the need to force out just about the only competitors in the race, to limit media coverage, to block election monitors. Why, in the midst of an election that they would appear to be able to win handily, the need to cut down on what appears to be free and fair campaigning?

Kramer: There is little suspense involved in this so-called election. It’s more of a managed succession process. And, as you point out, Eric, I think few people doubt that Dmitry Medvedev is going to win this election. When President Putin, on December 10th, decided that Medvedev was his preferred candidate, it seems as if that was when the decision was made. That’s when the key vote was cast. What we have been seeing, I think, of late in Russia is a rather heavy-handed approach by the Kremlin, by the government, to ensure that there are absolutely zero risks involved here. Eliminating any potential threats that might come about, minimal though they may seem to us, seems to have been what the Kremlin decided early on in this process. And when you go back to the government’s efforts to control the media from the early years up until the present time with difficulties of opposition forces to register their parties in the Duma election in December or, more recently, for the presidential election, the Kremlin’s leaving nothing -- nothing -- to chance.

Host: What does this tell us about the state of freedom of speech and freedom of press in Russia more broadly?

Kramer: We need to be clear that we’re not talking about the Soviet Union. We are talking about a country that does have freer media than it used to, certainly, in the Soviet times. But I think we’re also talking about a country that has seen rollbacks on the democratic front, and those include pressure on independent media organizations, pressure on individual journalists, the murders of a number of journalists that many of which remain unsolved. We have seen pressure on NGOs and on governmental organizations, pressure on opposition parties and opposition leaders. And so I think what that suggests is that there has been an erosion of any democratic growth that we had seen in the 1990s, and that, I think, is a cause of concern for us.

Host: How far does that concern go? Does how Russia runs its election affect relations between the U.S. and Russia?

Kramer: I think there is certainly an effect that we see in Russian foreign policy based on how the internal developments are shaping up. Certainly, how Russia evolves in its political system is up to Russia to decide. It’s up to the people to decide. It’s up to its leadership to decide. But I think there are certain common features of democracies that it is important for the United States, as well as key European allies, as well as the rest of the G8 as a whole, need to stand up for, and those include a free press. It includes freedom of speech. It includes freedom of assembly. It includes having free and fair elections. It includes good governance and independent institutions such as an independent judiciary and legislature. It includes having a robust civil society. And I think on a number of those measurements, we see Russia falling short.

Host: Are the U.S. and the European Union on the same page with regard to concern about where Russia is on this?

Kramer: I think over the past year in particular we have seen the views of Russia between the United States and European allies come closer together. I think we have seen that evolve with Russian cutoffs of gas to Ukraine in 2006, oil to Belarus in 2007, but also in terms of the development of Russia internally, where we have seen growing concern about the developments inside Russia reflected in London, in Paris, in Berlin, in Brussels. You mentioned in your opening comments the problems that the British have had with the British Council, which I think has been an unfortunate development that exposes both societies to each other’s cultures -- a very good thing, but there seems to be a crackdown by Russian authorities against what the British Council is trying to do, and I think that is a regrettable development.

Host: You mentioned the Ukraine and Belarus incidents, where I believe it was natural gas in the case of Ukraine and oil in the case of Belarus cut off by Russia. The U.S. National Director of Intelligence, Michael McConnell, recently told Congress that there was a significant threat that Russia could use its energy leverage as an economic weapon against the U.S. and against the West more generally. How do you measure that problem?

Kramer: I think we have expressed concerns about Russia’s use of energy for political and economic purposes -- to apply pressure, in particular, on neighboring states. We support the end of subsidization by Russia of its neighbors in energy or in any other field, for that matter. It’s not healthy for Russia because they are supporting those countries. It’s not healthy for those countries. It is important that those countries with Russia move toward a more market-based pricing system. But it’s equally important that that move to a market-based pricing system not be abrupt and not create economic instability in those countries, and so we have called for a gradual phase-in of market pricing. We support the trends, but our concern has been that when there are disagreements, Russia, in the case of Ukraine, 2006, that you mentioned, Belarus, 2007, has resorted to the on-off switch, and I don’t think that’s the way to solve these problems.

Host: In terms of disagreements, perhaps the biggest disagreement between Russia and the U.S. of late has been over plans for a limited missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic. How big a rift is that at this point?

Kramer: There are differences, but we’re working to try to bridge those differences. There has been a view in Russia that sees our plans for Poland and the Czech Republic as a threat to Russia. It’s not. What we are trying to do is to prepare for the day when there may be a threat to Europe and to the United States emanating from the Middle East, from Iran in particular. And our hope is to work together with Russia, to cooperate with them in developing a missile defense system. We have welcomed the Russian proposals to work together at the Qabala radar site in Azerbaijan and have coordinated that with authorities in Azerbaijan. At the Armavir radar site in southern Russia, when that’s developed, our hope is to work together, because we think that’s in our mutual interests -- our interests, Russian interests, European interests. What we have in mind for Poland with the case of ten intercepted missiles, a radar site in the Czech Republic, is not to deal with a threat from Russia because we also don’t see a threat coming from Russia. The threat we see coming is from Iran. But there are other problems, too, of course. There’s Kosovo. There are differences over the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty.

Host: Well, that’s been suspended, in effect, by Vladimir Putin. Any prospect for that being resolved?

Kramer: Russia went ahead and suspended from the treaty, the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty. There have been disagreements over the way forward on the adapted version of that treaty, which dates from 1999 --

Host: Does anyone expect the suspension of that treaty to lead to any buildup of Russian forces near borders?

Kramer: I don’t think so, and the Russians have been careful in their response to it. There technically is no provision for suspension of the treaty, and we have seen that the Russians have actually not followed through on December 14th, two days after their announced suspension, with annual data exchanges and going through with inspections. Those are regrettable developments. But we continue to be prepared to engage with the Russians at any point. We expect further discussions with them sometime in February for trying to work out the differences we have so that we can pave the way for allies to move forward with the ratification of the adapted treaty, so that Russia can move forward with fulfilling what are called the Istanbul Commitments related to the presence of their forces in Georgia and Moldova, and so that we can keep Russia back in the treaty so that Russia can, for all intents and purposes, suspend its suspension.

Host: What’s your sense of issues and areas where the U.S. and Russia are able to work together well at this point?

Kramer: Important question, and I’m glad you asked it. We work very well together in areas of nonproliferation. Last summer we celebrated the 15th anniversary of what’s called the Nunn-Lugar Program on Cooperative Threat Reduction Programs. We work very well together in dealing with the problem in North Korea, where Russia’s played a very useful and productive role as part of the six-party process. We work well together on counterterrorism, where we try to fight the common threat that both countries face from extremist forces around the world. We work well together in trying to promote peace in the Middle East, where Russia has, I think, a very important role to play. And the expectation is that Russia will host a conference following up on The Annapolis Conference that the United States hosted recently. On a number of issues, our companies are doing phenomenally well in Russia. They’re very bullish in Russia. So, it is important not to lose sight amid all the differences and problems we have -- and some of them are rather serious -- that we not lose sight over the fact that we do have a number of areas in which we work well together.

Host: Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, David Kramer, thank you for joining us today.

Kramer: My pleasure. Thank you.

Host: And now I’m joined by Jonas Bernstein, Senior Research Associate at The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based research institution; and also by the editor of The National Interest magazine and a Senior Fellow at The Nixon Center, Nikolas Gvosdev. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today. We heard David Kramer talking about the things on which the U.S. and Russia are able to cooperate. Jonas Bernstein, what’s your sense -- more things that are working and cooperative in the U.S.-Russian relation or more things that aren’t working at this point?

Bernstein: I think that there are more things which are not working and that the relationship between Washington and Moscow is now more tense than it’s been probably during the last eight years of the Bush administration and the Putin administration. And that’s mainly, I think, because the developments inside Russia, in terms of the rollback of democracy, has now come home to pretty much everyone, including people who would have preferred to see something different and were giving the Russian government the benefit of the doubt. So, I think that’s added a certain strain, although that does not mean that there aren’t still large areas of cooperation between the two countries.

Host: Nikolas Gvosdev, what’s your sense on that question?

Gvosdev: What’s happened is that Russia has recovered as a great power faster than many people expected, and to the extent to which you were still operating on dealing with Russia in its 1994-1995 condition -- weak, debtor country, collapsed economy, unable to project power and influence in the world. And now you see the Russia of 2008, third largest holder of foreign-currency reserves, no longer really interested in a junior partnership with the United States and much more returning to its position as an independent actor on the world scene. Even if there had been no rollback of democracy or any of these other issues, the fact is that Russia has returned, and we weren’t really sure where Russia should fit, and friction is building up on so many of these issues because Russia has a different perspective and a different role that it wants to play, and it is no longer willing as it was, say in the 1990s, to automatically accept the U.S. or European lead on issues ranging from how to deal with Iran to how global energy markets should be structured.

Host: Jonas Bernstein, Western tension that Russia reasserting itself in the world?

Bernstein: No, I think that’s, no doubt, in part, true. There’s a sense that Russia followed the Western lead because it was weak and followed the Western model during the 1990s, and that, unfortunately, accounts for, I think, a rise of anti-Americanism in the Russian public, and, in a way, that is, you know, kind of an indictment of the way the Western countries and the United States approached Russia during the 1990s. But on the other hand, that is by no means a justification for what is clearly a rollback of democracy and a real tightening of the screws on the part of the Russian government vis-à-vis opponents, political opposition, and dissident groups and that sort of thing.

Host: Nikolas Gvosdev, how concerned should the West be about how Russia runs its election, how much freedom it accords the press, and opposition candidates?

Gvosdev: It’s not a question of whether we should be concerned, it’s a question of “how does this fit into the relationship?” Because it’s very clear that what we’re seeing over the last several months is Russia saying, “We don’t care what you think. We don’t care about your standards.” It’s very clear that when you had the Duma elections in December that Russia not only had the OSCE, which grudgingly asked and got only a few observers --

Host: That’s the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Gvosdev: It invited for the first time a representation group from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and it got a clean bill of health from its elections, not surprisingly, from the Shanghai grouping, and it’s clear that the attitude after was: “We’re not going to seek validation from you for how we run our internal affairs. What are you prepared to do about it?” And that, I think, is the question, then --

Host: What is the West prepared to do about it?

Gvosdev: But I’m not sure that the -- It’s very clear that the U.S. and the Europeans together, as the transatlantic relationship but also as individual countries, don’t know what to do, and Deputy Assistant Secretary Kramer noted even in the U.S. a divergence between a political community that looks quite aghast at what’s happening in Russia with regard to freedom of the press and elections and a business community which is looking at Russia now the way we looked at China a decade ago. It’s a great market. It has hundreds of millions of dollars in sovereign wealth funds that will need to be invested somewhere, and so we’re seeing, even in the U.S., a split between politicians who decry the rollback of democracy and business figures who say, “This is really a new territory for the U.S. in terms of its own economic development,” and that’s something I think, again, we’re unused to thinking of Russia as a business and economic power, and that is changing the extent to which we have leverage to make changes or to encourage Russia to make changes when it comes to things like freedom of the press or having opposition candidates be registered.

Host: Jonas, how concerned is the U.S. about Russian exertion of military power? We’ve seen not only a lot of rather heated rhetoric about in response to the proposed limited missile defense program in Poland and the Czech Republic, but we’ve also seen Russian bombers doing exercises in waters off of the coast of France. How much is Russia interested, at this point, in sort of re-establishing itself as a military power?

Bernstein: It’s certainly interested in re-establishing itself as a military power, but I, frankly, personally, don’t see that aspect as being one of -- That’s not the aspect of the relationship that’s of greatest concern. I mean, some of this is for domestic consumption. In other words, I think that the Russian government, in some respects, are more interested in showing the Russian people that they’re back and that they’re a power than they are in actually exercising military power towards their neighbors. Now, of course, there are instances in relationships where we should be concerned with potential use of Russian power. But I think the bigger concern is the treatment of -- what is essentially a tyranny of the minority. I mean, there’s no question that -- I don’t think anybody would doubt that a majority of the Russian people back the current government, and that goes back to the reasons I was saying before, before the failure of the so-called democratic experiment in the 1990s. But on the other hand, it is very disturbing when you see developments like over the last couple of days, where an opposition activist in the city of Tver was questioned about his political activities and then put in a psychiatric hospital.

Host: Nikolas Gvosdev, what about that? And we only have about a minute left, but why is it that when the ruling party has such a tremendous lead in all the polls and doesn’t seem to really have any significant opposition but yet they keep up tremendous pressure on what little opposition there is?

Gvosdev: Because the system is saying that even to be in opposition, you have to play by the rules. This is a classic corporatist, authoritarian model that says, “Even if you want to be opposition, these are the rules, and if you’re not going to play by these rules, we don’t care if you have 2 percent of support or less. You’re just not going to be allowed into the system.”

Host: And what’s your sense, Nikolas Gvosdev, on the question of whether Russia is looking to really build itself up as a military power?

Gvosdev: I don’t think they’re looking solely as a military power, but I think they want to return as a regional and global power. Military is part of it, but even more so, one of the lessons I think Putin took from his time in Germany is that economics matter, and when you have business, economic, and financial power, that can be more important than a new missile system or a bomber.

Host: I’m afraid that’s going to have to be the last word for today. We’re out of time. Before we go, I’d like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our Web site at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For “On The Line,” I’m Eric Felten.