War on Terrorism

Let's talk a little about the global challenge of terrorism. You alluded to the fact that in the beginning, there was a great deal of cooperation on the part of President Putin with regard to American action in Afghanistan, and this was a difficult choice for him in the context of the Russian political system.

That was a very difficult choice: before September 11th our relations were not very good. Actually, they were encountering larger and larger difficulties on strategic arms control, on NATO expansion, on the war in Yugoslavia that happened in 1999 and steered unprecedented anti-American feelings in Russian public opinion and political elite. And the failures of reform of the nineties, which, though certainly primarily the responsibility of Russian leaders, were also connected to Americans, because they supported and encouraged the reforms of the economy undertaken under Gaidar and his successors. And that proved to be a total failure and brought the great crash of 1998.

So there were many recriminations against Americans, and very strong anti-American feelings. Actually, the attitude towards Western Europe was much better than towards the United States in Russia. However, when that tragedy happened on September 11th, there was a very genuine, great feeling of sympathy among Russian people, purely on humanitarian reasons. There were many flowers that were brought by simple Russian citizens to the American embassy in Moscow. So when President Putin was deliberating on his policies, he had to take into account both the general anti-American feelings in Russia, the humanitarian dimension of the tragedy, and the future security threats that were demonstrated by terrorist acts, and which threatened, certainly, Russia, and many other countries. He made his choice in favor of full-scale cooperation with the United States, and with the West in general, but primarily with the United States as long as Afghanistan was an issue.

In that, he didn't have support of the majority of Russian public opinion. The majority of Russian public opinion, something like 70 percent, was to preserve neutrality, to keep a neutral position. "Let Americans do it if they want, but Russia will not get in Afghanistan." And, certainly, there was a very bitter experience with the war in Afghanistan during the eighties, which Russians still remember very well. However, President Putin made his choice, relying approximately on 10 percent of the members of parliament who had advised him to cooperate fully with the United States. He most probably believed that that would drastically help improve Russian - American relations, address new security threats, and also improve relations so that some other problems would be resolved on an equal and fair basis, like the ABM Treaty, the NATO expansion, economic issues, and the problem of Chechnya, which is very painful to President Putin. So that was, apparently, his calculation.

He had in this initial phase much to offer in terms of intelligence assets, and also, giving up the potential threat to Russia by the movement of U.S. forces in Central Asia to get at Afghanistan.

He had to offer a lot, certainly. Not only basing infrastructure in Central Asia, influence of Moscow with Central Asian republics, which had direct bearing on the situation in Afghanistan, but also arming and training the Northern Alliance, which consisted mostly of Tajiks and Uzbeks, and which had very close connections with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. But Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were at great confrontation with each other; those two countries had very bad relations. So it was largely up to Russia to make them come to an agreement, without which the Northern Alliance would not have been able to perform successfully.

Besides, Russia armed the Northern Alliance with Russian arms. There were massive arms transfers to the Northern Alliance. Russian instructors trained and in some cases, as far as I know, Russian officers even guided Northern Alliance interaction into combat action. That was very important, because it provided the United States with a possibility to avoid ground warfare, which is always very messy and bloody, and would certainly cost relatively many casualties to American forces. American action in Afghanistan during the active phase of the war was confined mostly to air and missile operations.

What, from your view, would a more mature response be to the threat of terrorism? You were suggesting earlier that a multilateral agenda would look for multilateral ways of dealing with the problem of terrorism, whether in a treaty, whether in definitions of who a terrorist is, and so on. What would that sort of international dialogue look like? And how could Russia contribute to that if a different trajectory was chosen for dealing with terrorism?

We need international law sections to address this issue, because what we have now are a number of conventions and agreements which are very vague as to their definition of international terrorism. To demand the requirements of nations to contribute to the struggle against terrorism, we need much more precise definitions so that the war against terrorism is not used, [even] as it protects, to justify other purposes -- domestic purposes or external purposes. This discredits the very notion of a joint fight against terrorism.

We also need mechanisms to assess the data to link particular rogue states to terrorism and take decision on punishing them collectively. The mechanisms of the United Nations, presently, are very weak with respect to that. Besides that, we certainly need many other things -- cooperation of intelligence services, cooperation of financial control services, and setting thousands and thousands of new standards on our everyday behavior. Just one example: what is the sense of having such time-consuming and thorough security procedures in American airports, when and if procedures are quite relaxed, for instance, in Italian airports, and the airplanes coming from Italy to the United States have not gone through all those procedures? I don't want to offend Italy, but it's just an example. The same relates to India, to Pakistan, to all countries which send their airplanes to the United States. You cannot cut off all those communications, either by airplanes or by other things. You cannot build an iron wall around yourself to protect yourself against terrorism.

The only way is to create a multilateral framework, both for active operations against terrorism and for defense and security procedures against terrorism. In order to do that, certainly, a leader is needed. The United States may claim to be a leader, but a leader [is needed] who is keen on working through multilateral procedures, creating consensus, creating a common approach, rather than saying to everybody, "We are so powerful, we can disregard what you think. We'll do it on our own." That approach will never work.

Let's take the case of your own country's trying to deal with the struggle in Chechnya. I would like to draw on your experience as a parliamentarian in a new democracy, on the one hand, and somebody with an internationalist vision of the way multilateralism can work to help sort out some of these issues. Assess, for me, the failures and successes of the Russian government in dealing with their own province.

That's a very broad subject. To put it in a very simplified and concise manner, the experience of many countries, including the United States and Russia, shows that their government and organized armed forces cannot defeat armed insurgency, either in a foreign country or on one's own territory, without fulfilling two basic requirements. One, which is of utmost importance, is to deprive the insurgency of the support of the majority of the local population. The second, which is not as important, but still very important, is to isolate the area of insurgency, to blockade it, so that insurgents do not have free passage across the borders to get replenishment, reinforcement, and arms.

I cannot, for the shortage of time, go into detail to show that those two are very closely intertwined. I'll just give one example. If insurgents have freedom of passage through the borders, their tactics, usually, are hit and run. The armed forces, which are always the primary target for terror acts and attacks and ambushes and mine warfare, cannot catch those insurgents, and their retaliation mostly hits the local population, which alienates the local population and pushes it away from the legal authorities towards supporting insurgents. That's just one example of how closely those two are related. I could go on describing other aspects, but suffice it to say that experience shows that without fulfilling the two requirements or conditions that I mentioned, organized armed forces, whatever their superiority in firepower, technology, and numbers, are never able to do away, or to put under control, or to eliminate the insurgency of armed position, which uses primarily guerrilla warfare and terrorist methods of operation.

The American experience in Vietnam was a very good example. They were not able to fulfill the two requirements, to bring the majority of the South Vietnam population to the side of the Saigon regime and American armed forces, and to isolate the theater. However much they bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail, they were not able to do that. They came and they failed. They were defeated. The same goes for the Soviet operation in Afghanistan. The Soviet army was defeated because they were unable to achieve that. And the same happened during the two Russian campaigns in Chechnya, the first one in the nineties, and the second one which is still continuing now. In contrast to that, military victory in Afghanistan happened precisely because the two requirements were met. The majority of the population, in various ways, was encouraged or attracted to support the anti-terrorist coalition and to oppose the Taliban, and the theater was isolated because all the borders around Afghanistan were closed by countries joining anti-terrorist operations.

Now, in Iraq, it's not clear what will happen. There is no doubt Americans are able to defeat Saddam Hussein's army very quickly and demote Saddam Hussein. But if there is a serious insurgency and terrorist activity against American troops, American administration, and the new regime that will be installed in Baghdad, it will be impossible to achieve any kind of conclusive victory without fulfilling the two conditions.

The Bush administration has proposed for dealing with terrorism and rogue states a doctrine of preemption. The notion is that in this new world we've entered after 9/11, the greatest danger for world stability is the link between so-called rogue states, disintegrating states, and terrorist, transnational groups. And the link that is of most concern is weapons of mass destruction. From this equation they draw the conclusion that the U.S. must, if necessary, act unilaterally to anticipate and prevent the kind of threats that would emerge. Assess for us this argument from both a Russian perspective and from somebody who's thought a great deal about strategic issues.

I think that, in principle, this doctrine is quite acceptable to deal with new threats. You cannot wait until terrorists attack to retaliate, because most of the time there is nowhere to retaliate. Terrorists are not a nation with their assets which could be attacked in retaliation. They are an elusive network which envelops the whole world. So you have to find their weak points, or the most important essential points of their networks, which are most of the time associated with particular states which support terrorism. And then you have to take action, whatever necessary, even military action, in a preemptive or preventive way.

I don't have any problem with that. I have a serious problem with something else. Such actions may be effective in reaching their goal only on the basis of international cooperation, if all those states would join the common front of fighting against terrorism. Because apart from delivering ammunition to a particular target, a lot of other things are needed -- intelligence, cooperation, closing the borders, working with the local population to make it not support guerrillas and terrorists, conducting peacekeeping operations, contributing to the resolution of ethnic and religious conflicts, and many, many other functions, which neither country, however strong and powerful, can perform at a global scale on its own. And when we are talking about international terrorism, we are talking about global scale, because terrorist cells may be found everywhere -- in Afghanistan, in Chile, in Australia, in the Philippines, everywhere -- so you need, really, a global cooperation.

So if they're rogue states and they're linked to terrorists, and this is internationally recognized on the basis of persuasive facts and evidence, if there is an agreement on the necessity to take violent action with respect to a particular rogue state or a terrorist site or base, then, certainly, such actions are legitimate and good, and useful. If, on the contrary, there is no international agreement on defining particular culprits, and if there is no agreement on which methods to use against such a country, then unilateral actions actually destroy anti-terrorist cooperation, first of all, because they create great tensions among nations, which effectively stop cooperation; secondly, because they encourage a kind of free-for-all world. And Russian, French, Indian, Chinese idea of which are rogue states may differ a lot, and may in and of itself create conflicts among leading powers if they do not come to agreement on basic principles.

If Americans are entitled to hit Iraq unilaterally, then why isn't Russia entitled to the same with respect to Georgia? Why is China not entitled to the same with respect to some other neighboring country which, according to Chinese views, may be supporting insurrection in Tibet or Shenyang? Why, say, India is not entitled to hit Pakistan, which openly supports terrorists in Kashmir and which has nuclear weapons, and which has a very fragile domestic situation under which fundamentalists any day can come to power, in particular after the war in Iraq, if it starts and provokes a massive wave of Muslim fundamentalism and radicalism?

If somebody from the Bush administration were in this discussion, they might say, "Yes, but really the problem is one of definition, which then is part of the political struggle. If we take the time to fight about definition and circumstance, we're watching the already lit fuse shorten and shorten."

So, for example, your country's relations with Iran in the trade in nuclear technology: claims are made on the U.S. side about the potential danger there, about whether Iran is a rogue state, about how dangerous that situation is. My point is not to take sides one way or another, but to say that this definitional issue, the label we'll attach and this notion of action, is very complicated in international politics. The Bush administration feels that time is running out. Comment on that. First of all, since the Black September, already a year and a half elapsed, and that's enough time to reach an agreement on very important and complicated issues if there is a will and desire to find consensus. If there is a will to do everything unilaterally, then ten years would not be enough. But if there is a will and understanding that cooperation and consensus is essential, a year and a half is enough time.

Secondly, there is no other way to build and fortify coalitions but to negotiate such things and come to an agreement. The only other way is a free-for-all, and that may destroy the anti-terrorist coalition and greatly enhance activities of terrorists and rogue states, which would be able to play on controversies among leading powers. And that, certainly, would create great conflicts between leading powers.

Just one example: According to Russian threat perceptions, it's not Iraq but rather Pakistan which is a major, potential threat. Russia is trying to maintain good relations with Pakistan, and recently, the Pakistani President visited Russia. But in Russian political and strategic communities, there is great fear of Pakistan. Pakistan is not only supporting guerrillas in Kashmir against India, but Pakistan is known for supporting terrorist organizations. In the past, that was Taliban, and Pakistan supported it, together with Saudi Arabia. Now Chechen terrorists and armed insurgents have financial and material support from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some other countries. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons, and Pakistani missiles already cover a large part of Russian Siberia. So what is Russia to do? Is Russia entitled to apply its own strategy with respect to Pakistan, like Americans are doing with respect to Iraq? I do not think this is right. I think that on Iraq and on Pakistan and on many other issues, we'll have to act in a cooperative joint manner, on the basis of consensus. For that, there is no other way but to negotiate. The difficulty of negotiations is largely being exaggerated by those who, in principle, do not want negotiations, who want to do everything in a unilateral way.

During the times of the Cold War, when we were split by ideological, military, and political contradictions which were very acute and very deep, we were still able to reach an agreement on many very complicated issues. So now, after the end of the Cold War, which when we are not split any longer, it's only the will which is required to fix all those important issues.

When you talk about the dangers of weapons of mass destruction, what invariably comes up is the danger of "loose nukes" and concerns about the security of the arsenal of the former Soviet Union, now Russia. What is your assessment of that danger? Not that Russia would do something, but the security of its own decaying weapons as a potential problem? And how satisfactory has been U.S.-Russian relations in dealing with that problem?

Russian nuclear weapons are pretty secure, both strategic and tactical. There are very thorough procedures and technologies used to make them safe. In that respect, Russians, during the nineties, certainly were very much helped by American aid through the Nunn-Lugar program, and we are grateful for that. Nobody in Russia, even experts and politicians, which might have very aggrieved feelings, a lot of grievances and hostility towards the United States, but still nobody, even of those groups, would say something bad about this particular program and this positive effect. In this sense, that was a great achievement and an exception from other areas of our relations, both security and economic, which are a subject of a lot of recriminations in Russia and, as far as I know, in the United States as well, although for different reasons.

Now, nuclear materials are not as safe as nuclear weapons, as long as we're talking about spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors. The nuclear materials which are received after dismantling nuclear weapons are not as secure. A lot needs to be done to provide secure storage, maybe a non-retrievable form, maybe another form, so that highly enriched uranium and plutonium do not get into the hands of international terrorists, of which those having enormous financial resources could create crude nuclear weapons and use them in their terrorist plans. It's possible to hire experts. There are a lot of loose experts, not only loose nukes around the world -- those who lost their jobs after the end of the Cold War when their expertise was no longer needed for a central arms race, and those could find new contracts with rogue states and terrorist organizations, which have no shortage of money to do that. I think this is a very serious problem.

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