Russia

Russian Officer Convicted of Spying for CIA

Jorge Benitez — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:59:26 -0600

From the AP: A military court on Friday convicted a Russian officer of providing the CIA with secret information on Russia's new intercontinental ballistic missiles and sentenced him to 13 years in prison.

Lt. Col. Vladimir Nesterets pleaded guilty to passing on that classified information in exchange for money, said the Federal Security Service, the main agency that replaced the KGB.

The agency said Nesterets committed treason as he worked as a senior engineer at the Plesetsk launch pad in northwestern Russia, a facility the military uses to launch satellites and test its new missile systems.

The security service's terse statement did not say when Nesterets had been arrested or give any further details about his case. . . .

Earlier this week, Putin's protege, President Dmitry Medvedev, praised the Federal Security Service for exposing 41 foreign intelligence officers and 158 of their agents last year. (graphic: Russia Today)

What's Georgia Going To Get At The NATO Summit?

Jorge Benitez — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:48:08 -0600

From Joshua Kucera, the EurasiaNet: Georgia's prospects in NATO, after being more or less left for dead in the wake of the 2008 war with Russia, have lately appeared to be improving. NATO has recently changed its rhetoric on Georgia, for the first time calling it an "aspirant" along with several Balkan countries. And U.S. officials have said Georgia is making "significant progress" that should be recognized at the next NATO summit, in Chicago in May.

So what does this mean? Does Georgia have a shot at NATO membership after all? As a story on EurasiaNet's main page today explains, not really: President Obama, after his meeting with his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili, used the word "ultimately" to describe Georgia's entrance into NATO, which suggests he doesn't see it happening any time soon. And even if the White House were to again back Georgian NATO membership as strongly as the Bush administration did pre-August 2008, there would still be the matter of the big Western European countries who oppose Georgia's membership. So what to do?

The defense official quoted in the EurasiaNet piece had more thoughts on this (though there wasn't room in that piece). A Membership Action Plan, the holy grail for Georgia, is not a possibility. That subject won't even be discussed at the summit: remember, this will be in May of an election year. "It's about U.S. internal politics, so this summit needs to look good. We don't need a food fight like in '08, between us and the Germans, or the pro-Georgia camp vs. the camp that's not too keen on Georgia. We don't need that. So the whole Georgia issue isn't going to be raised," the official said. . . .

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking to Russian journalists has weighed in on even this slight warming of ties between Tbilisi and Washington . . .

Medvedev made the remarks after one of the participants of the meeting told him with regret, that although after the August, 2008 war Russia managed to secure international “informal arms embargo” against Georgia, situation was now changing with Georgia “restarting to buy arms from around the world”; this participant of the meeting also said that there were speculations about a trade-off – Russia turning a blind eye on Georgia’s rearmament and in exchange securing Tbilisi’s go-ahead for Russia’s WTO accession.

Makes you wonder, though, what's being said behind closed doors. (photo: AP)

Syria Intervention: Ugly Choices

Daniel Trombly — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:28:54 -0600

With Russia and China standing firmly behind Assad’s regime in Syria, it appears increasingly likely that continued violence, and potentially a prolonged civil war, will be the future condition of a country where the opposition is not strong enough to overcome the core elements of the regime’s security forces, and foreign parties lack the willpower or capacity to overthrow the rulers in Damascus.

As Tony Karon explains, civil war is an accurate way to describe the ongoing descent into violence in Syria. The country’s ethnic composition and the regime’s divide-and-rule political strategy makes the specter of civil war an effective engine of consolidation for the regime’s supporters:

… the Assad regime presents itself as the guarantor of the interests not only of Allawites [12% of the population], but also Syria’s Christians (10%), Kurds (10%) and smaller communities of Druze, Yazidis, Ismailis and Circassians — against the specter of a vengeful sectarian Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. No surprise, then, that the regime has, through its own violent strategy, encouraged the rebellion against Assad’s rule onto the path of sectarian civil war.

…

Two thirds of the Iraqi refugees in Syria are Sunni Arabs, and a further 10% are Christian. The lesson for Syria’s minorities is stark: One in seven Christians who lived in Iraq in 2003 is now a refugee in Syria; those left behind are an increasingly embattled community, while even in newly democratic Egypt, the Christian minority is feeling increasingly put-upon by the now dominant Sunni Islamists.

As Karon further notes, the defection of Sunni conscripts to the Free Syrian Army further reinforces the perception that Syria is careening towards large-scale ethnic bloodletting. The Assad regime, like Hussein’s and many others before it, deliberately ensured its top-tier units and the ones closest to political power were less dependent on conscripts from the hostile ethnic majority. It is far less likely that there will be sympathetic defections from such units, which means that they will, in all likelihood, need to be actually defeated on the ground.

Alas, there are no easy solutions.

Safe zone: Benghazi, Misrata or Ibril?

Propositions for “safe zones” have so far remarkably elided the question of how they will be made safe.

Despite the frequent invocations of Operation Provide Comfort as a model for intervention, very few of the plans for intervention in Syria actually describe the most essential prerequisite to Provide Comfort: the defeat and destruction of huge amounts of Iraqi military capability in the first Persian Gulf War.

Furthermore, as Micah Zenko recently explained in Foreign Affairs, the use of ground forces was important to the preservation of safe zones established in southern Iraq during the long containment of the country in the 1990s. Saddam’s ground forces largely ignored the no-fly zones imposed in Iraq, and the U.S. often had to conduct significant military mobilization just to reduce the intensity of his counterinsurgency campaigns. In Operation Vigilant Warrior, the U.S. was only able to dissuade Saddam from moving additional Republican Guard units to southern Iraq by mobilizing the logistical support element of I Marine Expeditionary Force (a clear sign of impending mobilizations to come) and the deployment of two brigades from the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division to Saudi Arabia (Britain, for its part, deployed two warships and brought its ground strength in Kuwait to 1,000 troops). Clinton understood that the only way to deter Saddam from accelerating his offensive against his own people was to threaten ground intervention – and even then, the Iraqi units in the south which predated the two Republican Guard divisions’ mobilization remained and continued to suppress their local population.

Essentially, even a vastly weakened Iraqi military still required a credible ground threat of thousands of soldiers and Marines just to dissuade Saddam from reinforcing his ongoing crackdown of the Iraqi Shia population. What reason do we have to think that Syria’s military, without a thorough shellacking such as the one Saddam’s military (already weakened by nearly a decade of war with Iran!) received in 1991, would fear a foreign-imposed safe zone enough not to challenge it?

While Srebrenica was supposed to be a mutual (albeit poorly or deliberately unenforced, in the case of the Bosniak forces) demilitarization, Serbian forces completely ignored Resolution 819 and surrounded the area with heavy weaponry, and later went on to overwhelm and massacre its inhabitants. While some of the proposed safe areas are in relatively mountainous terrain, it is quite probable that Syria would attempt to kettle or even assault the safe area. Who, exactly, would defend it? The Free Syrian Army? If they were actually capable of holding and defending such a safe zone on their own, there would be no need for a safe zone. The addition of foreign special forces would help, but not by much if the Syrian government chose to mount a sustained assault.

Concentrating FSA and Syrian opposition forces and infrastructure in a safe area would actually give the regime an enormous incentive to strike. Consolidating the FSA, which so far is an extremely loose network of commanders with no real chain of command, and SNC governing officials in a single area would tell Damascus exactly where to strike, and knowing such a location would be the heart of foreign support and nascent “Syrian Benghazi” would provide a huge incentive to destroy it or reduce it through sustained siege. Additionally, guerrilla units could be deployed to harass or destroy supply corridors even after the successful establishment of a safe zone and the suppression nearby of Syrian forces. Even with the addition of Turkish conventional troops, would they be willing to defend an area with their lives against a Syrian military assault or a sustained guerrilla campaign? Even with close air support and airstrikes, it is unlikely that without a sustained offensive that such a safe area could actually provide a viable base of support for an opposition movement. Defending a Syrian safe area would likely devolve into a massive aerial campaign and a significant ground campaign (consider that Turkey’s cross-border incursions just to rout out PKK fighters during the 1990s involved 15,000-35,000 troops), not a mere suppression of air defenses and local forces with a small training contingent of special forces. It is hard to see how a limited action to create a safe area could succeed without ground forces and air forces capable of resisting and repulsing a military with armored formations, artillery, and air support would fare – and it is hard to see how relieving this pressure would occur without an offensive, as in Operation Storm, to permanently secure a safe area.

A dangerous – and perhaps more likely – proposition would be a Syrian Misrata. It took nearly two months after NATO air strikes began for Misratans to finish recapturing their own city, and even then Gaddafi’s forces were able to temporarily deny use of the port through artillery fire. Jisr al-Shughur, the report’s suggested safe zone area, is even more isolated than Misrata. It is, of course, not a coastal city. There are not even significant roads to Turkey without winding through mountain passes that guerrilla groups would be able to harass and temporarily close. It took Misratan forces, with NATO air support and resupply opportunities from the sea and air, months to capture Zliten, just 40 miles away. There is no major airport in Jisr al-Shughur. Aerial reinforcement would have to come either through airborne drops or helicopters. Anyone who has ever read military history – let alone anyone who has had to deploy to a combat zone in such a manner – is probably feeling somewhat nervous right now. Leave aside man portable air defense missiles, even machine guns of sufficiently heavy caliber could make aerial reinforcement or resupply of such a safe zone a very risky prospect. In all likelihood, thousands of Turkish regular troops would probably be necessary just to secure Jisr al-Shughur. Even then, the possibility of Syrian counter-attacks from Latakia would probably require additional major military actions. Why mobilize thousands of troops and risk dozens or hundreds of casualties just to carve out a minor safe area which, if we look at its counterparts in Kurdistan during the 1990s, is probably not going to become a war-winning base of support?

NEXT: The Damning Merits of Invasion.

Daniel Trombly is writer on international affairs and strategy. This essay is based on a longer piece at his blog Slouching Towards Columbia. Photo credit: Reuters Pictures.

Why Russia Supports Assad

Jorge Benitez — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:20:06 -0600

From Dimitri Trenin, the International Herald Tribune: The Russian government is openly conservative; it abhors revolutions. This, however, is more than a self-serving ideological stance. When the Kremlin — or [director of Foreign Intelligence Mikhail] Fradkov’s office — looks at the Arab Awakening, they see democratization leading directly to Islamicization.

If the West’s historical analogy is Europe’s 1848 or 1989, theirs is Russia’s 1917. They cite recent election results in Tunisia and especially Egypt. They point out that post-Qaddafi Libya is chaotic, with a lot of the former regime’s weaponry finding its way into unsavory hands. In their view, Syria’s uprising could have even worse consequences in terms of sectarian violence and the potential to affect the country’s neighbors, particularly Lebanon and Israel.

Revolutions are bad enough, in the Kremlin’s view, but attempts to interfere in other countries’ civil wars can only make things worse.

The Russians appreciate that the United States and other Western powers would only intervene militarily if they could sustain zero losses themselves, as in Libya. Syria, however, is a more difficult case. Arming the Free Syria Army and providing it with intelligence will not be enough to prevail over Assad’s forces. A prospect of a wider war with Arab and Turkish participation looms on the horizon.

Such a war could only make sense if it were the first act of a more serious drama. Russians suspect that the real reason for the West’s pressure on Damascus is to rob Tehran of its only ally in the region. Behind the activity of the Gulf States, particularly Qatar, in the Syrian issue Moscow sees the rising regional influence of Saudi Arabia, Iran’s bitter rival in the region. Turkey’s “neo-Ottoman” ambitions are also playing a role. What the Russians are most worried about, however, is that Israel may strike at Iran, dragging in the United States and thus precipitating a major war with Iran sometime this year.

Russian policy makers may have a point or two when they discuss other people’s policies. They need, however, to step back and look at their own.

Delivering arms into a country going through civil war is damaging, both politically and morally. Confronting both America and Europe, even if Western policies are misguided, is clearly at odds with Russia’s wider interests. Telling Qatar to shut up is not merely undiplomatic, but unwise. And openly quarreling with Turkey and Saudi Arabia has to be avoided.

To this, some would say that, having lost $4 billion in Libyan arms and other contracts and facing the prospect of losing an equal amount in potential Syrian trade, Moscow has no other choice but to take a hard line. It will be a pity if, at the end of the day, this argument prevails.

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, is the author, most recently, of “Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story.”

Syria Cyber War Opens New Front In Russia

Jorge Benitez — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:52:04 -0600

From Jonathan Earle, the Moscow Times: The cyber front of Syria's year-old civil war spread to Russia this week as pro- and anti-government bots splashed criticism and expressions of gratitude across the Russian Internet, and Syrian hackers attempted to commandeer the website of a Russian embassy.

The attacks are a response to Russia's ongoing resistance to proposed UN sanctions against Damascus and willingness to sell weapons to the Syrian government, which has been accused of killing thousands of civilians to stem a popular uprising that began in March.

On Sunday, the Syrian National Council, the main opposition coalition, called on Syrian expatriates to stage protests at Russian embassies and consulates and "exert pressure" on Russia. . . .

Thousands of Syria-related comments have since appeared on Russian news websites and Facebook pages. Most comments are sharply critical of Russia's defense of President Bashar Assad. "Russia sold its humanity when it sold weapons to a criminal regime" user Abu Mujahid al-Hamwi wrote on President Dmitry Medvedev's Facebook page Tuesday morning. . . .

Meanwhile, a senior official at the Russian Embassy in New Delhi said Syrian hackers tried and failed to commandeer the embassy's website, Vesti.ru reported Monday. The official denied earlier reports that hackers had posted photographs of children allegedly killed by Syrian security forces. (graphic: the Telegraph)

Can Germany Summon the Will to Lead?

Jorge Benitez — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:52:57 -0600

From John Vincour, the International Herald Tribune: Mr. Putin’s goal is not only to paint an American-led enemy in time for next month’s vote, but to get the West to back off on Iran and on deployment of NATO’s missile shield in Europe through threats and by sowing the notion that America is shoving its friends into confrontations they don’t need.

Germany counts enormously here. It has the West’s biggest economic hold on Russia and, historically, a (sometimes delusional) vision of the two countries’ potential for a golden destiny together. With Germany having gained in power and influence through its appearance of rigor and solidity, if not flexibility, during Europe’s debt misfortunes, the issue now is how assertive Ms Merkel wants to be in naming Mr. Putin’s game. If she chooses to lead, she will make clear that a review of relations with Russia is under way, that its election procedures will be under intense scrutiny, and that in prolonging the extermination of thousands of people by a regime armed by Russia, Mr. Putin will find only contempt in Germany.

The occasion and the urgency are there. The alternative is a Germany seeking to hide behind a comfortable default position as an above-the-fray go-between. It would be a sign of the West’s weakness and a failure of German political instinct.

The precedents and current indicators of a demonstration of German resolve are not terrific: When the heat was on in Libya this spring, Ms. Merkel’s Germany turned its back on France, Britain and the United States, and — abstaining alongside Russia and China — refrained from standing with its allies in approving Security Council intervention. . . . .

Ultimately, Germany, now supposedly leading Europe, faces the question of how much responsibility it wants to take concerning the world’s most jagged political issues. To me, the West seems at a point when a heavy injection of German political courage could make a greater contribution to its role in world stability than Germany’s austerity-for-all economic vision. . . .

So, what are the odds on Ms. Merkel, in a position of rare influence, saying something true and meaningful now about the implications of the awful behavior of Mr. Putin and what to do about the reality of his return to the Russian presidency?

I asked John Kornblum, a former U.S. ambassador and a keen observer of Germany, what he thought of the likelihood of a new kind of German commitment to leadership beyond economics (although the massive trade imbalances favoring Germany are a root factor in Europe’s debt and deficit grief).

“The Germans take more responsibility?,” Mr. Kornblum asked, as if having to field the dumbest question of the week. “They’ll run from it.” (photo: Reuters)

Clinton calls for coalition of 'friends of democratic Syria'

Jorge Benitez — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:24:31 -0600

From Matthew Lee, AP: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Sunday for "friends of democratic Syria" to unite and rally against President Bashar Assad's regime, previewing the possible formation of a formal group of likeminded nations to coordinate assistance to the Syrian opposition.

Speaking in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia a day after Russia and China blocked U.N. Security Council action on Syria, Clinton said the international community had a duty to halt ongoing bloodshed and promote a political transition that would see Assad step down. She said the "friends of Syria" should work together to promote those ends. . . .

"Faced with a neutered Security Council, we have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people's right to have a better future," Clinton told reporters after meeting top Bulgarian officials.

Such a group could be similar, but not identical, to the Contact Group on Libya, which oversaw international help for opponents of the late deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. However, in the case of Libya, the group also coordinated NATO military operations to protect Libyan civilians, something that is not envisioned in Syria. . . .

U.S. officials said a friends group would work to further squeeze the Assad regime by enhancing sanctions against it, bringing disparate Syrian opposition groups inside and outside the country together, providing humanitarian relief for embattled Syrian communities and working to prevent an escalation of violence by monitoring arms sales.

"We will work to expose those who are still funding the regime and sending it weapons to be used against defenseless Syrians, including women and children," Clinton said. "We will work with the friends of a democratic Syria around the world to support the opposition's peaceful political plans for change. . . ."

Radwan Ziadeh, a prominent member of the opposition Syrian National Council said countries backing Assad's foes should form an "international coalition ... whose aim will be to lead international moves to support the revolution through political and economic aid."

He said he expected French, U.S. and Arab support for a coalition. (photo: Getty)

Euro-Atlantic security 'is vitally important for the entire world'

Jorge Benitez — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:19:46 -0600

From Wolfgang Ischinger, Igor Ivanov, and Sam Nunn, the International Herald Tribune: At the close of the Cold War, hopes were high for a more organized and peaceful international system. Two decades later, there is not much sign of one emerging.

The focus of governments is shifting away from the Euro-Atlantic community — the heart of the international system up to now — and there is little consensus within the international community on how to deal with today’s challenges of sovereign debt, economic recession, climate change, nuclear proliferation and radicalism.

In many ways, this historic “pivot” from the Euro-Atlantic region represents a form of progress; the great rivalries between the United States, Russia and the European powers that produced two world wars and threatened to destroy the world during the Cold War are hopefully a relic of the past.

Yet it would be a grave mistake for Euro-Atlantic governments to neglect the security and stability of their own region. This great network is the bedrock of Western values of democracy, open markets and individual freedoms. It contains the largest trading zones in the world as well as most of the world’s nuclear weapons. It is vitally important for the entire world that the wider Euro-Atlantic region remain peaceful.

Beyond this, it is more important than ever that these states begin fashioning what has been too long delayed: a functioning, inclusive Euro-Atlantic security community. The world badly needs the leadership that this could provide in meeting the day’s new threats — from nuclear and bioterrorism to cyber insecurity and health pandemics.

We worry, however, that the security situation across this vital region today is in fact sliding backwards. The traditional bonds between the United States and Europe are weakening, and historical enmities between Russia and the West continually resurface. A destructive atmosphere of distrust lingers, and the present economic vicissitudes are only likely to raise the political tension.

Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference and a former German deputy foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, a former Russian foreign minister, and Sam Nunn, a former U.S. senator, are co-chairmen of the Euro- Atlantic Security Initiative. (photo: Ullstein Bild/Roger-Viollet)