Wild Cards

The emergent, new relationship between the United States and Russia is more than a mere "thaw" or "detente." It is a sea change of enormous significance. It goes far beyond this week's cozy amicability shared by the two presidents in Crawford, Texas, over a home-cooked fried catfish and toasts of enduring friendship.

Yet the personal aspect of the Bush-Putin summit should not be underrated. The two leaders, to quote the Russian proverb, "unbuttoned their souls." In candid talks in the spirit of compromise they have evidently established a personal relationship that already is producing concrete resuilts. The Cold War has definitely ended and with it superpower pursuit of inharmonious global ambitions that since 1917 and more directly since World War II had put "East" and "West" on a collision course.

The point of departure for the Russo-American "alliance," as it is now being called, was the catastrophe of September 11. These shocking events are historic in the same sense that the devastating earthquake was in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755 that took 30,000 lives. It left an indelible mark on the European mentality.

The new relatiomnship being nused by Presidents Bush and Putin is pregnant with the likelihood of promoting a lasting alliance that can transform the post-Cold War world in many positive ways.

Russia is the world's largest country, far richer than any other in natural resources. It is also an imposing nuclear power with warheads mounted on a variety of carriers. Total megatonnage on these awesome weapons exceeds the American. Yet this is the nation-state that is now reaching out to the leading NATO nation, the United States. It is making an obvious effort to cast an East-West bilateral relationship that has the potentiality of foreclosing any major threat to world peace, terrorism included, in the years ahead.

Russia is now willing, so indicated Putin, to see the three ex-Soviet Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania join NATO. Indeed, Russia itself would like to be part of NATO in the sense, as Putin said, of joining other European states in keeping international peace and fighting terrorism. It might itself even become a member pf tgjhe ponce anti-Soviet military alliance.

The opening phase of this Russo-American amity has taken the form of a serious, mutual effort to defeat the Al-Qaeda terrorists as well as rub out the scourge of global terrorism as a whole. The initial phase is also expected to see for the first time a truly major mutual reduction in the numbers of nuclear weapons on both sides--as anticipated, by two-thirds of their warheads.

As to the sticking point of the American plan to go ahead wth National Missile Defense (NMD), Putin has hinted that he favors "finessing" the ABM Treaty of 1972. As a leading native-Russian defense analyst, Pavel Felgenhauer, recently put it, Moscow "seeks a face-saving formula to allow NMD while at the same time pretending that the ABM Treaty is still standing." Not to be ruled out is an ultimate U.S.-Russian agreement on anti-missile defense in the form of a shield jointly shared by both countries and including Europe, a plan that was proposed, in fact, by some Russian army officers in the Russian General Staff journal, Voyennaya Mysl'.

The current warming trend in the two nations' relations has upset a number of commentators' expectations. On one hand, some observers once made dire prophecies about a Russia ruled by Vladimir Putin, the "dreaded" former KGB chief,m oujt of which nothing good would come.. Other commentators surmised that U.S. pursuit of an anti-missile shield would needlessly sour U.S.-Russian relations. They reasoned that Washington had best forgo development of NMDefense lest the program unduly upset the Kremlin and kindle a new "arms race."

Yet these doomsayers forgot that Putin has a practical outlook that avoids ideological motivations in the former-Soviet mold. Close examination of Putin's career and his choice of words in major addresses (particularly that of Nov. 10 during his talks with American journalists in Moscow) have shown him to be a leader, as Margaret Thatcher once said of Gorbachev, with whom the West "can do business." Moreover, Putin's KGB past can even be viewed as an asset instead of a liability. His country's secret police have direct access to the best information-- about other countries, their leaders and intentions.

Once international terrorism is cornered and all but eliminated--with crucial Russian intelligence and logistical help that is already forthcoming--the bilateral relationship between the two countries will be well down the road to achieving positive results in several spheres. These will likely include increased bilateral trade, more effective controls on the spread or "leakage" of nuclear and biological weapons to other countries or movements, joint efforts to defuse potentially dangerous situations (say, on the Korean Peninsula or in the Middle East), and a kind of friendly joint, modified "dyarchical" effort together with NATO to keep the peace worldwide wherever it is threatened.

All this would be a most welcome development as the Third Millennium enters its second year.

First, Moscow reports denied that anything had happened. Of course, the Soviets were busy searching for, eventually finding the black boxes--aboutwhich they kept a discreet if not inhumane silence. The pilot who shot down the brilliantly- illuminated (by a gibbous moon), white airliner, was decorated became a drunkard while remaining unremorseful, unapologetic over the "incident." Then a few days later Moscow alleged, via its Chief of the General Staff, Nikolai Ogarkov, that the airliner was on a "spy mission." All such claims have long since been exposed as fabrications. Yet some were reproduced in books published in the U.S. and Britain in the first year after the tragedy. These included the widely-read volume on the 1983 tragedy written by former< New York Times correspondent, Seymour Hersh.

Now news has come out of Moscow that the senior officer of the Soviet Far East Air Defense Command, who gave the actual crucial order to shoot down the 747, has been promoted to no less than commander-in-chief of the Russian Air forces (VS). His name: Col.-Gen Anatoly Kornukov a former Air Defense officer who was steadily promoted after 1983 to the key post of

As if to add insult to the shocking appointment (Jan. 23, 1998), the present defense minister, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, former CINC of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, fended off possible objections to Kornukov's promotion
with the Russian form of "So what?" ( "nu i shto zhe"). Kornukov, after all, he said coldly, "was merely carrying out orders."

Kornukov himself was unapologetic. The civilian casualties, he said with sanguine aloofness, "were simply the price paid for military vigilance. Sometimes at the front," he added, "whole battalions are sacrificed to save an army." This explanation was offered by the general on a Russian TV program titled, ironically, "Hero of the Day."

N.Y. Times Moscow correspondent, Michael Gordon, added to the report: "The [Russian] comments not only show how old suspicions linger within the Russian military; they also demonstrate that some key commanders were not held accountable for an episode that Mr. Yeltsin has called one of the greatest tragedies of the Cold War."

Gordon might have added, however, that it is by no means certain how much power the Russian president has when it comes to making top military appointments in Russia.