Post-Beslan Russia, the Kremlin says, is a country at war. Yet defining Russia's allies in this "total war" on terror has become an increasingly delicate challenge for Moscow policymakers and pundits. Even while giving greater play in recent days to long-held suspicions of the West, the Kremlin has begun to assert its own solidarity with the US in the fight against "international terrorism."
In a September 12 interview with television broadcaster NTV, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov declared that Americans have "a much better understanding" of the seriousness of the threat faced by Russia "since the United States, like us, has been subjected to powerful terrorist attacks." Ivanov said that he had spoken twice in the past week with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, adding that finding "a basis for mutual understanding with the United States was much simpler than with many European states."
That message was a sharp departure from a September 6 declaration by President Vladimir Putin in which the Russian leader had suggested that Western lawmakers and pundits who advocate a political settlement with Chechen separatists also invite Osama bin Laden to Brussels or the White House for talks and give him "what he wants . . . so he leaves you in peace[.]"
But Moscow could have its reasons for striking a more cooperative tone. Among the options aired by the Kremlin as possible responses in its new war on terror are pre-emptive strikes against countries believed by the Kremlin to host suspected terrorists a rationale also used by the White House to justify its own invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The US has not yet responded to Russia's assertion of its right to pre-emptive strikes, though some European countries have expressed cautious support for Moscow's stance.
Already, the parallels between the two anti-terror campaigns, as described by Moscow, appear to have resonated with Washington. At a September 2 press briefing, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher described the hostage-taking in Beslan as "an issue of international terrorism," adding that "We don't link the political settlement [with Chechen separatists] with acts of terror. We're absolutely firm condemning these acts of terror and standing with the Russian government in fighting terrorism."
That show of solidarity could stand the Kremlin in good stead as it announces reforms designed to strengthen government powers in response to Beslan and other recent terrorist attacks. In a September 13 speech to a special meeting of the Russian cabinet and regional governors, Putin argued that political parties should become a "tool" in the fight against terror, and that volunteer groups should be encouraged to assist law enforcement officials in fighting terror, crime and corruption. Regional officials should be appointed by the president, Putin went on to say, and the Duma should be elected by a party-list system a change that would effectively increase the influence of the pro-Kremlin faction that controls parliament. "State authority must be adjusted to work not only in crisis situations," Interfax quoted Putin as saying. "The mechanism of its work must be radically reviewed in order to prevent crises."
Already, Putin's clamp-down on power has sparked growing concerns in the West. Russia's once rambunctious parliament has effectively been brought to heel and sharp press restrictions have silenced most criticism of the Russian leader.
But criticism from the West in response to this latest get-tough campaign is unlikely to fall on fertile ground. Over the past three weeks, some 438 people have died in terrorist attacks in the Russian Federation. On August 24, two planes collided after an explosion, killing 89 passengers and crew. Less than a week later, on August 30, 10 people died in a suicide bomb blast at Rizhskaya subway station in Moscow. The Beslan crisis, which ended September 3, has so far claimed 339 lives. [For background see the EurasiaNet Insight archive].
In the search for answers, nostalgia for the Soviet Union and denunciations of the West or other unidentified forces for rejoicing in Russia's diminished international status have become recurring themes. A number of Russian strategists have readily welcomed Putin's earlier statements on Beslan that the efforts to "tear off a juicy chunk of our country" are being assisted by those who "think that Russia, as one of the greatest nuclear powers of the world, is still a threat, and this threat has to be eliminated."
"This statement is an attack against the West," independent military expert Vitaly Shlykov told a security forum in Novgorod on September 4, The Moscow Times reported. "Whom do Russia's nuclear weapons threaten? They do not threaten the Arab world and they do not threaten China."
The terrorist attacks appear to have sharpened Moscow's sense of strategic isolation. In the prevalent perception of Russian political class, the assault on the country and the West's reaction have left Russia standing one-on-one with an invisible, but dangerous enemy. Andrei Kokoshin, chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, told the September 2-5 Novgorod forum that the West had deceived both the Soviet Union and Russia in the name of greater openness. The US-led Western alliance, asserted Kokoshin, "took advantage of the situation, finished us off and then continued going about its own business." The West disregards Russia's vital interests, particularly in post-Soviet Eurasia, echoed Konstantin Kosachev, head of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee. "The outside world professes the following dogma: a good Russia is a weak Russia."
Some Moscow analysts argue that the main problem poisoning relations between Russia and the West is rooted in what they call an "incomplete recognition" of Russia as an equal world actor. The United States and Europe, these experts assert, tend to see Russia as the legitimate successor to the USSR exclusively in terms of Soviet debts and the nuclear arsenal.
In a wide-ranging September 6 interview with Russky Zhurnal, Kremlin political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky elaborated on that theme, stating that Russia's ongoing problems with Chechnya are caused not by the West's "dual attitude" toward Chechnya, but "toward Russia itself." Pavlovsky accused Westerners of a reluctance to recognize the legitimacy of Russia as a legitimate nation a recognition which would include its values and political traditions, as well as its state borders.
According to this analysis, international terrorism becomes just another strategy for Russia's rivals to use in a modern-day Great Game, argued security expert Yegor Kholmogorov in a September 5 commentary posted on the Russky Zhurnal website. Said Kholmogorov: "Russia stands alone against the pack of big and small predators seeking to tear it to pieces."
Editor's note:
Igor Torbakov is a freelance journalist and researcher who specializes in CIS political affairs. He holds an MA in History from Moscow State University and a PhD from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He was Research Scholar at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1988-1997; a Visiting Scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, 1995, and a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York, 2000. He is now based in Istanbul, Turkey.
