February 17, 2007 (the date of publication in Russian)

Anton Krayev

THE SKILL OF PARRYING BLOWS

The arabian context of Putin's Munich speech

A FIGURE IN BRACKETS

Ostensibly, Vladimir Putin did confront the global community with any new arguments in February. Criticism of "certain forces", unable to admit the fact of the world's multipolarity, was expressed by him many times before the speech in Munich, which aroused an international media furor. Other top Russian officials, including First Vice Prime Ministers Sergey B. Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev, used the same argument many times before – at least since July 2006, when the audience of the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg had an opportunity to listen to a "politically incorrect" forecast of the fall of today's world financial system, and emergence of new regional currencies. Russia's intention to withdraw from the INF Treaty was formulated several months ago by then-Defense Minister Sergey B. Ivanov. Similarly adamant have been Russian politicians on their attitude towards NATO's enlargement. Therefore, it was quite obvious that the latest US agreements on deployment of ABM systems with Poland and Czech Republic would not be welcomed by the Russian leadership.

Still, Vladimir Putin's speech at the February 11 International Security Conference in Munich, as well as the following moves of Russian diplomacy, was perceived as a sign of a dramatic change in Moscow's policy line – both by the domestic and international audience. Attacks followed not only from the United States, to which the Russian leader's reproofs were mostly addressed, but from the Western media community in general. Moscow's behavior was evaluated in a range from "self-assured behavior" to an image of a "roaring louse". Further political moves of Russia were now interpreted with increasing suspicion. In particular, the previously scheduled and ordinary meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, India and China was interpreted in London's Times as an evidence of conspiracy among the three "rising giants" against Washington (in this case, the term "louse" already did not surface, despite strong itching).

Witnesses of Putin's Munich speech indicated that while US officials were listening to it with a sardonic smile, high representatives of Western Europe went pale and covered their faces with hands. In Germany, Die Welt daily promptly reiterated the opinion of US Senator John McCain that with his verbal offensive, Vladimir Putin would not split the Western world – which he supposedly is eager to – but instead, motivate the whole West to unify before "the new Russian threat". Tagesspiegel, in its turn, compared the Russian leader with Afghani field commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

It is true that some of Putin's arrows targeted the West in a whole. These theses of a cautiously prepared presentation concerned not only military strategic but economic issues. Putin was speaking of discrimination of Russian corporations, entering the Western markets. To make this argument convincing, he reminded the audience that the investments of Western capital into Russia are fifteen times smaller than Russia's involvement in Western economy.

This reproof was also not new, at least since Russia's declared intention to develop the gas deposits of the Arctic shelf independently, without Western partners who demand too much in exchange. Still, this subject appeared to be especially sensitive – though French press criticized Putin not so strongly than major German media. One more pretext for anxiety concerned Russia's domestic affairs: the Western press, admitting that the method of defense, chosen by Vladimir Putin at the Wehrkunde Konferenz (in its original meaning, Wehrkunde is "skill of parrying a blow"), was impressing, and would be definitely perceived with delight by the Russian popular audience.

Still, this nervous reaction was caused not only with a too painful treatment of the West's policy sores and not only with substantiated forecasts of a positive response to the speech inside Russia. Putin's polemic with the Western community as a whole implicitly involved a "third side". The Russian leader identified it with a seemingly vague term "everyone": "Security and prosperity... should benefit not only a selected circle, but everyone". One more reference to the "third side" was contained in the appeal to elevate the role of the United Nations.

Western response to Putin's speech also involved a vague reference to the invisible "third side". Displaying "disappointment", observers stated that from now on, Russia definitely won't belong to the "community of democracy". Which means that if Russia enters some community, that would be a different one, with other kinds of values and traditions, categorically and irreversibly alien to the alpha and omega of the political and cultural customs of the West.

Leading analytical and media resources of the Western community were aware of the Vladimir Putin's diplomatic plans immediately following the Munich visit: his next point of destination was Saudi Arabia. One could admit, with a high probability, that precisely this sequence made the US strategists red in their faces, and the West Europeans pale. The increasing irritation of the Western press during the next days indicated that its addressee was not only Putin but also the "third side" of the global energy debate – the Arabic East.

 

THE MULTIPOLAR AXIS

In case Vladimir Putin chose some different place to travel from Germany than Riyadh, his Wehrkunde speech would not be followed with such a nervous reaction. Similarly, his tour across the Persian Gulf would not attract so much attention if his Munich speech were more "correct", that is smooth and humble.

Russia's partnership with the Middle East was really viewed as an undesirable development by both the United States and the EU. Western press had spent years playing upon Russian-Islamic disaccord over the war in Chechnya. Not surprisingly, crocodile tears over Chechen separatist field commanders were shed in a chorus by the European leftist and rightist establishment. The capture of Russian military specialists in Qatar attracted more attention than tortures of Western citizens by Islamic radicals in Afghanistan, Iraq and the same Chechnya.

On the contrary, Russia's official support of the US post-September 2001 antiterrorist strategy was perceived by the whole Western media community with enthusiasm, as well as the overthrowof the Taliban's government in Afghanistan. A strong and self-sufficient Saudi Arabia was even less acceptable for the political West than a stronger Russia.

Moreover, every event of the Russian-Saudi diplomacy was followed with fatal incidents. Precisely at the time when Prince Turki, Saudi's long-time intelligence director, paid a visit to Moscow, a team of bemoaned Chechen insurgents, using young girls as a life shield, overtook a Moscow theater, ceasing the play entitled Nord-Ost ("North-East"). On the eve of King Abdallah's arrival in Moscow, an unidentified person slaughtered Grigory Bondarevsky, a major Russian diplomat and Oriental expert, directly involved in the preparation of the visit as a consultant of Russia's Security Council. Ahmad Kadyrov, former Mufti of Chechnya and its first post-separatist political leader, was assassinated, again symbolically, on V-Day – shortly after a trip to Riyadh.

The Moscow-Riyadh axis was unwanted. It "should not exist because it should never exist". No wonder that Vladimir Putin's aircraft was followed in the Saudi air space with three fighters of the Crown; no wonder that the royal leaders of Qatar and Jordan chose to meet him personally, guaranteeing his security with their own physical presence.

The exceptionally friendly acceptance, which Putin enjoyed in all the three nations of the Gulf, has a lot of explanations. The most crucial of them, associated with energy, is on the surface. Even a very cautious suggestion over a possible "gas OPEC", earlier made by one of four hundred Russian MPs, echoed with a hysterical trans-Atlantic chorus, and later, with initiatives of economic sanctions against Russia.

Meanwhile, the Russian side had been expressing an increasing interest in partnership with the Arabic East. One of the key participants of the Russian delegation, Lukoil's CEO Vagit Alekperov, joined the Arab-Russian Business Council (ARDC) two years before the trip. The consistency of Russian policy was expressed also in the involvement of Igor Yusufov, today a public figure, who served as Russia's Minister of Oil and Energy in 2003, when he took part in the first Russian-Saudi summit negotiations in Moscow. The agreement between the Trade and Industry Chambers of Russia and Qatar, signed in Doha, was the concluding link of the long-time efforts of establishing and practical activity of ARDC, the idea of which belonged toYevgeny Primakov, ex-Prime Minister of Russia and today's head of Russia's Trade & Industry Chamber.

The possibility of a Russian-Arab deal in exports of oil and gas was not the only subject of fears of the Western community as a whole. For decades, the Arab East used to serve as a traditional market of armaments of both US and West European production. Meanwhile, the interest of Gulf states to Russian weapons had been increasing from year to year, and was definitely displayed especially during Vladimir Putin's February 11-13 tour across the Middle East.

One more common sphere of economic interests, equally electrified with corporate rivalry, had been – and is now – beyond the framework of expert and journalist discussion. Still, the figure of Maxim Shkadov, general director of the state-owned Kristall Plant, in Vladimir Putin's delegation, identified diamond business as one of the priority though not much disclosed aspect of Russian-Arab mutual interest.

 

"POLISHING" AS A SIGN OF WEAKNESS

The jealousness of the United States and Western Europe to Russian-Arab relations reached its peak on the background of the West's failure in the effort to resolve the problems of Iraq and Palestine – a failure well obvious but deliberately smoothedby Western press.

As Israeli media indicated with a grain of irony, the plans of Mideast reconciliation had been "multiplying" during the last months: some receipts were proposed by America, others by Europe, still others by Egypt and Jordan. However, only Saudi Arabia managed to succeed in promotion of an accord in the new government of Palestine. The agreements, signed in Mecca days before the Munich conference, suggested a rational division of influence and duties between the two leading Palestinian parties, Hamas and Fatkh. This result was essentially unreachablefor the countries of the West, which listed Hamas, the winner of democratic elections, in the list of terrorist organizations. The only side of the "quartet" of global power to politically recognize Hamas and to agree to negotiate with its leaders was Russia. Still, only Saudi Arabia had a possibility to directly influence the real leadership of this party, based in Gaza.

The Mecca accord has brought Washington in a larger confusion than the terrorist riots in Iraq. Riyadh's success revealed the diplomatic impotency of the White House, which had dispatched a whole constellation of top functionaries to the Gulf, from State Secretary Condoleezza Rice to Defense Secretary, ex-CIA Director Robert Gates. When the same Mr. Gates, speaking in Munich, re-established Russia in the list of potential military targets of the United States, he was targeting not only Moscow but rather the Moscow-Riyadh axis.

The most reliable evidence of anxiety of a political leadership is inability of an adequate and clear assessment of a foreign policy event. Immediately after the Mecca accord, the official Washington suspended the disbursement of financial assistance to Palestine. Simultaneously, US politicians and observers tried to describe the achievement of Riyadh as their own success. Los Angeles Times (where the "lousy" characteristic of Russia would later appear) carelessly reported that the Saudi Kingdom allegedly coordinates all of its diplomatic activity with Washington, while the presence of the former Saudi Ambassador at a public event of a US Jewish association was interpreted as the Saudi commitment for an alliance with the US and Israel against Iran and Syria.

Ironically, exactly at the same time Israeli military analysts, on the contrary, suspected the United States of an Israeli-unfavorable deal "in exchange for the (Palestinian) territories". In its turn, Arab News agency bluntly claimed that the Saudi people is "bored" of unilateral economic partnership with the United States.

Certainly, the talk was not only about economy. Washington's intention to drag moderate Arab regimes into a bloody Sunni-Shi'i conflict was too obvious for Arab decision makers. Ironically, it was the moderate political tradition of Gulf monarchies which played against Washington's geopolitical designs. A prospective of political destabilization, elevating radical religious parties on the top level of politics, would attract neither Doha nor Riyadh, while the supposed battlefield was staged not in a distant deserts of Afghanistan but in the very political and economic heart of the Islamic civilization.

In this context, Vladimir Putin's visit was as timely as his Munich speech. The Saudi King defined his guest as "a man of peace and justice". This characteristic was almost blacked out in the US press, which was pouring black bileon Putin's Munich theses.

Meanwhile, Vremya Novostei, a Russian daily paper with most informed sources in the Middle East, reported that exactly Prince Bandar, the former Saudi Ambassador in the US, is now tasked by the Kingdom to supervise the most crucial element of the Moscow-Riyadh strategic cooperation – namely, modernization of the Saudi ABM system, where Russian S-400 launching systems are to be combined with the earlier purchased but less efficient Patriots.

This sensitive issue remains beyond the focus of US media, as it is probably too untimely on the eve of elections – as well as the potential involvement of Russian corporations in construction of the Dolphin Pipeline, connecting Qatar with the United Arabic Emirates. The project, in which Occidental Petroleum, a US company, was sharing influence with the French Total, was viewed ambiguously by Saudi Arabia, as the pipe was going to cross the Saudi territory, where pipelines are state-owned. The very discussion of Russia's involvement tin the project is a sign of a special confidence of Riyadh to Moscow.

Projects of oil and gas cooperation, as well as military technological partnership, discussed in Amman, were equally important. Before the eyes of Western Europe, Jordan was opening its doors to Russian investments. In Jordan, Moscow's idea to prolong the Blue Flow pipeline to the Mediterranean was greeted for years. The branches of this gas pipe, according to the project, are gong to reach both Israel and Palestine – which means that Russia's diplomacy of peace is guaranteed with a real, visible, physical economic interest. This interest is perceived with more confidence than any US demagogy over freedom and human rights.

 

KEYS FOR CUPBOARDS

The level of mutual understanding between Moscow and the Arabic East, as well as its contrast with "mutual misunderstanding" between the West and the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, was displayed days before Putin's Munich speech. In his talk with Amr Moussa, an influential Egyptian politician and the president of the League of Arab States, the President of Russia firmly stated that "there is no economic and ideological contradictions" between Moscow and the Arab states of the Gulf.

All what Putin said in Munich about the Western concept of democracy and Washington's effort to impose it everywhere, was just the development of this thesis. For the trans-Atlantic audience, the most unpleasant fact was not Putin's personal attitude but his conclusions about the impact of this dissemination of ostensibly universal but practically miserable political recipe. That is particularly true about the final conclusion that the destabilization, imposed by Washington, induces the countries of the zone of the conflict to a search of more reliable means of self-protection. As a matter of fact, this argument comprised a theoretical substantiation of the strife of the Islamic world for possession of more reliable and efficient defense systems, capable to guarantee a "catastrophic damage" to any possible aggressor. His way of "parrying the blow" produced such a strong effect because the person who parried the blow was protecting not only himself. No wonder he was rewarded both in a literal and figural sense – by those whom he protected.

In this regard, the response from Alliance for ABM, a recently established US public organization of former military servicemen, was quite natural and expectable. However, harsh arguments of the Alliance’s activists were not echoed by the White House's top officials. There was one more confusing circumstance on the scene, an additional disturbing fact, which kicked out the old universal jawbonefrom Washington's hands.

Quite accidentally, two days before the Munich conference, a real sensation surfaced in Maariv, an Israeli daily. On February 9, this paper advertised a new documentary entitled The Envoy. Its main character, now 82-old Meir Azari, once served as Israel's Ambassador in Tehran. Decades later, he confesses that the first stone in the Iranian nuclear project, which Israel is today is so loudly worried about, might have been laid by Israel itself. The "leakage", determined to topple Foreign Minister (ex-premier) Shimon Peres, served as a blow under the belt for the US establishment.

Quiet naturally, the news about the sensational documentary, which will soon be broadcasted, is surrounded with a wall of silence in the mainstream US papers. Such a slippery subject as covert Iranian-Israeli deals may turn unprecedented scandals in the pre-election atmosphere of America. The very reference to those connections revives memories of a the already "post-Shah" shadowy games of Washington, its instigation of war from both the sides of Baghdad and Tehran, and the notorious Iran-Contra case, whose heroes are still occupying cabinets in the US establishment. American officials had an additional reason for turning red and white in Munich, as Vladimir Putin could remind them about some details of the deals which he could have heard from the elder generation of KGB servicemen – particularly, from USSR KGB's last chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov.

Two months ago, defector Oleg Gordiyevsky foretasted some sensational revelations, which are facing Putin in the West. Meanwhile, Russia possesses a whole bunch of keys for cupboards, from which US skeletons may start falling out at the least acceptable moment. This understanding may add more to the spirit of cool confidence which a US observer can't help noticing.

 

TIME TO REAP FRUIT

Jurek Martin, an author from Financial Times, distinguishes Putin from the row of "lame ducks" who are going to leave the international political scene in the coming years: "He has cleared his domestic political affairs, and now gladly trouble waters in the international pond. The world listens to his presentations with greater attention than to the farewell speeches of Jacques Chirac".

By the way, Jacques Chirac, who urged the Western allies to ease sanctions against Iran, has also attracted attention of global experts – as well as Angela Merkel's appeal to activate the peacekeeping process in the Middle East. Despite botheration of the press, reflecting the interests of transnational corporations, the political priorities of America and Europe are channeling off like two halves of a melting iceberg. The recognition of the multipolar world’s reality is hauling each of the new poles to search for its identity.

Washington's weakness, revealed in Munich, Riyadh, Doha, and Amman, independently from public assessments of Russian policy, impels US politicians to a more sober view on the impact of their activity, and the Europeans – to recognition of not only economic but also political influence of Moscow. This tendency is expressed in John Negroponte advice to "better explain our policy", addressed to the White House, as well as in the reluctance of Estonia's President to support the rabid anti-Russia draft law on destruction of war memorials.

When the policy of warfare and inter-civilizational provocations is reaching a deadlock, the opposite policy gains popularity. The laurels of a pacificator, granted to Putin by the royal house of the Saudi, are getting more attractive than the alpha and omega of textbook democracy.

Jacques Chirac may be envious. Or, he may be concerned of a special character of relations with the Islamic community, which he would prefer to inherit to his nation after he leaves his post. In any case, without any prompt from the Russian side, he confirms Vladimir Putin's thesis on the irreversible ending of the unipolar world system, which has destroyed itself largely with its own careless self-assertion, intriguing obsessions, and resulting impudent and ignorant brutality in the Middle East. In case Russia is now picking the grapes of wrath, sown by America, and using it in the interests of its own, America should not blame anybody but itself. After Putin's speech, this argument does not need proof. It is an axiom.

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