Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) with President of Greece Karolos Papoulias
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Greek President Drawn into the Arms Race
// In a meeting with Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin made some unexpectedly straightforward statements on the delicate topic of the American desire to place an antiballistic system in Eastern Europe and its link to Russia's withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) during a meeting with Greek President Karolos Papoulias. Even Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov saw the link.
The presidents of Russia and Greece met with journalists after two hours of talks. It was evident that Putin was pleased with the course of those talks. He said that Russia, Greece and Bulgaria would build the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline “in the shortest time.” He emphasized “shortest” as though it were vengeance on everyone who had ever impeded the pipeline's progress.
The Greek president seemed reverential of his Russian colleague. Papoulias was delighted with Russia and delighted that it will soon be a democratic superpower. From the Greek presidents' words and the Russian president's expression, it was easy to guess what the negotiations had been like.
Putin's relaxed good mood served him poorly when he answered a question from a Greek journalist. The journalist stated that he was in Russia for the fourth time, and was asking the same question for the fourth time.
“Moscow has been subject to criticism recently by the United States and Europe. But Russia has excellent relations with Vienna, Luxembourg and Greece. Why?” he asked.
“Those problems have always come up,” Putin answered lightly. “They exist now and probably will be there in the future. The question is how to look at them.”
Having asked his own next question, the Russian president proceeded to answer it.
“We hold that the world has changed. Efforts were made to make it unipolar. Some participants in the international process had the desire to dictate their will to everyone… We consider it very, very dangerous and harmful to exchange international law for the politics of expediency. And what is the politics of expediency? Who determines it?” The president asked himself even more questions.
“In our view,” he answered himself, “it is dictate and imperialism.”
I jumped when I heard the last word. He was talking about American imperialism, a phrase popular in the 1970s and 1980s, that is, at the height of the Cold War.
“Yes, that has to be said openly,” Putin continued. “Things have to be called by their names. We are against putting such methods into practice. And when our partners find that it is impossible to get around Russia's position, to sway it, the desire arises to influence our position in various areas. One of the most important problems is strategic security. Our partners the Americans…” he was stumbling over his words here, “withdrew from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and we warned them immediately that we would take responsive measures to preserve the strategic balance… and yesterday we carried out the latest test of the new strategic ballistic missile with a large number of detachable parts. Tests of the new cruise missile… will further improve its capabilities.”
Thus Putin openly admitted that the missile tests were a response to American military initiatives. Thus he agreed to be drawn into a new arms race, which is characteristic of “American imperialism” and the “peaceful foreign policy” of the Russian leadership.
“But we are not the initiators of this new round of the arms race,” Putin continued. “We ratified the CFE! We implemented it in full! In recent years, we cut back our armed forces by almost 300,000 people… No, even more! And our partners? What are they doing? They are filling Eastern Europe with new weapons! What are we supposed to do?!”
The Russian president did not have the look of someone who is cornered as he said those words. He looked like someone who was ready to enter the arms race the country lost catastrophically once already and is just recovering from.
“We cannot unilaterally observe and implement the treaty!” he continued. “So we said, either you ratify the treaty and implement it, or we will withdraw from it too.”
The Greek president looked from side to side with a look of distraction and helplessness. He looked as though he did not want to go down in history as the person whose two-hour negotiations were followed by those words.
Andrey Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of June 01, 2007
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