KavkazCenter - Report: Pentagon's boss Gates about Russia

Report: Pentagon's boss Gates about Russia

After Russian invasion into Georgia and subsequent events have shown that the West has become to act more sensibly towards Moscow. A period of "amorousness" into Russian democracy has passed. Animal grin of Russian revanchism became visible to even the most desperate optimists.

Kavkaz Center offers to its readers the excerpts of speech of US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at an international conference organized by consulting firm Oxford Analytica at Blenheim Palace (Oxfordshire, England, 19 September 2008) dedicated to Russia.

Robert Gates: ....The period following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War unleashed old ethnic, religious, and nationalist hatreds and rivalries that had been largely buried since the Great War: The ethnic and religious slaughter in the Balkans; Russia's seeming return to Czarist habits and aspirations; the fault lines between Sunni and Shia in Iraq and across the Middle East. The cast of characters sounds disturbingly familiar even at a century's remove.

So history - in all of its contingent and tragic aspects - plainly did not die with the end of the Cold War as one American wrote, but has emerged again with a vengeance. It has returned to a world far more interdependent than the worlds of 1914 or 1938. And the monsters and pathologies of a long ago world have been joined by new forces of instability and conflict - terrorist networks rooted in violent extremism; rising and resurgent nation-states with new wealth and aspirations; proliferation of dangerous weapons and materials; authoritarian states enriched with oil profits and discontented with their place in the international order.

Still, even given the jaded disposition of an old spy, there are ample grounds for optimism. First and foremost is the extraordinary growth of political and economic freedom around the world since I last served in government 15 years ago.

But to secure these remarkable gains, and protect our most vital interests and aspirations in this global environment, the next American administration, working with our allies and partners, will need to employ a pragmatic blend of resolve and restraint to deal with the threats that confront us.

This applies to choices we face with regard to Russia. At this point I should note that for the first time, both the US Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense have doctorates in Russian studies. A fat lot of good that's done.

Three post-Cold War U.S. presidencies have endeavored to build closer ties with Russia based on a belief that whatever our differences, we shared basic economic and security interests.

Starting last fall, Secretary Rice and I began what we hoped would be a long-term strategic dialogue with our Russian counterparts. As part of that effort we:

Supported Russian accession to the World Trade Organization; Promoted cooperation with Russia on missile defense; and Engaged on a range of areas, as outlined at the Sochi summit last April by President Bush.

Russia's recent behavior raises questions about how successful we can be in trying to pursue a constructive relationship.

Now it is true that even authoritarian regimes have legitimate security interests. But Russian claims that 10 ballistic missile interceptors in Central Europe undermine their strategic nuclear arsenal, or that NATO democracies on their borders represent a cordon sanitaire, strain credulity and smack of old Soviet agitprop. I stand by what I said in Munich at the Wehrkunde Conference last year. I took the podium after President Putin gave a speech that sounded like something out of a 1950s Communist Party Congress. My response was: "one Cold War was enough."

In reality, Russia's policies are borne of a grievance-based desire to dominate its "near abroad," not an ideology-based effort to dominate the globe. And Russia's current actions - however egregious - do not represent the existential and global threat that the Soviet Union represented. Instead, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday, Russia is trying "[to draw] benefits from international norms, and markets, and institutions, while challenging their very foundation" - but, ultimately, a "19th century Russia and a 21st century Russia cannot operate in the world side by side."

As someone who used to prepare estimates of Soviet military strength for several American presidents, I can attest that despite all the recent improvements and ongoing modernization programs, Russia's conventional military remains a shadow of its Soviet predecessor in size and capability. The images of the Russian armor and artillery overwhelming Georgia's tiny military - an active force of fewer than 30,000 troops - does not reverse that basic reality.

For more than four decades, American presidents of both political parties strove mightily to contain the aggression of Russia's Soviet predecessor without military confrontation - an effort that consumed most of my professional life. With the added perspective of having signed nearly 1,400 condolence letters since taking this post, I see no reason to change that approach now.

The Russian leadership might seek to exorcise past humiliations and aspire to recapture past glory along with past territory. But mauling and menacing small democracies do not a great power make.

The nations of not just Europe, but also Central Asia and the Far East, now look at Russia through a different set of lenses. As Foreign Secretary Miliband said last month, as a result of what happened in Georgia, "Russia is more isolated, less trusted and less respected."

I believe the Georgia incursion will, over time, be recognized as a Pyrrhic victory at best and a costly strategic overreach. Europe and the United States will help Georgia rebuild, and in the weeks and months ahead, will be coming to other decisions about our relationship with Russia - decisions that could, among other consequences, affect Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Though I've warned tonight against basing rhetoric or policy decisions on strained historical analogies, I can't help but be influenced here by some of my past experiences in government.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, and Moscow's deployment of SS-20 missiles helped unite reluctant allies, whose resolute countermeasures helped set the stage for deep reductions in nuclear arms and the ultimate bankruptcy and demise of the Soviet Union. Aggressive behavior produced unwelcome results - for the aggressor.

At the end of the day, Russia faces a decision: to be a fully integrated and responsible partner in the international community - or, as Secretary Rice suggested, to be an isolated and antagonistic nation viewed by much of the world as little more than a gas station for Europe.

To manage diverse challenges in the years ahead, we - America and Europe together - will need strength and solidarity such as we have demonstrated in the past. Our policies and responses must show a mixture of resolve and restraint - the proverbial arrows and olive branches of Truman's eagle. To be firm but not fall into a pattern of rhetoric or actions that create self-fulfilling prophecies; to heed the lessons of both 1914 and 1938 but not be trapped by them.

We need to be careful about the commitments we make, but we must be willing to keep commitments once made. In the case of NATO, Article Five must mean what it says. As the allied troops fighting in Afghanistan can attest, NATO is not a talk shop or a Renaissance Weekend on steroids.

In the United States, I've pushed for more emphasis on, and resources for, non-military tools of national power. That is not the problem on this side of the Atlantic. For example, only five out of 26 allies meet the NATO standard of spending two percent of GDP on national defense. Despite the best intentions of allied governments and militaries, and despite having more than two million men and women in uniform among NATO's European members, the Alliance nonetheless struggles to scrape together a few thousand more troops and a few dozen helicopters for our commanders in Afghanistan.

One of the triumphs of the last century was the pacification of Europe after ages of ruinous and bloody wars. But I believe we have reached an inflection point, where much of the continent has gone too far in the other direction. De-militarization has gone from a blessing into a potential impediment to achieving real and lasting peace, as real or perceived weakness is always a temptation to miscalculation and aggression.

With all of the quotes of Churchill this evening, I would at this point recall the words of George Washington, who in his First Annual Address to Congress, warned, "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." We seek peaceful means to resolve disputes and head off gathering threats, but as Frederick the Great said, "Diplomacy without arms is music without instruments."

The goal must be to come together and take the steadfast and prudent steps now - political, economic, and, when appropriate, military - to shape the international environment and choices of other powers. We must try to prevent situations where we have only two bleak choices: confrontation or capitulation, 1914 or 1938.

This certainly is the case with Russia, but it applies to other security challenges such as Iran. One of those bleak choices would be presented by an extremist regime possessing nuclear weapons that could be used for blackmail or set off a regional arms race. The other scenario is a costly and potentially catastrophic military intervention - the last thing the Middle East needs. That is why it is so important for strong, sustained economic and political pressure to continue, to head off that nightmarish narrowing of choices.

The world is a rough and nasty place. Absent a change in human nature, it will remain so. As one of the great, if unsung, heroes of World War Two, Sir William Stephenson, wrote in his book, A Man Called Intrepid, "Perhaps a day will dawn when tyrants can no longer threaten the liberty of any people, when the functions of all nations, however varied their ideologies, will be to enhance life, not to control it. If such a condition is possible, it is in a future too far distant to foresee. Until that safer, better day, the democracies will avoid disaster, and possibly total destruction, only by maintaining their defenses." George Washington, a realist, would have agreed. And, I am confident, so would Winston Churchill.

Department of Monitoring, Kavkaz Center