World Political Blog » Russia

What does the Security Council do about the North Korean launch

Ashish — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 06:48:16 +0000

By all projections, the North Korean attempt was to try to put a satellite into space (not a missile test as feared). However, it is also known that the North Koreans are using the same vehicle for both a rocket launch, and a missile launch (and that is one of the fundamental problems of space technology – a lot of the technology has dual applications); and so if the rocket had been successful, then that would also have been a validation of a missile with supposedly sufficient range to reach parts of the United States. This is a scary prospect, since the North Koreans have been suspected of working to miniaturize their nuclear device so as to form it to be a warhead capable of fitting onto a missile. Further, the North Koreans have been caught in the past of collaborating with other countries on both missile and nuclear technology. The rocket overflew Japan, but then failed, and there was no payload launched into orbit. At some point in the future, if they are allowed to advance, the North Koreans will be able to make sufficient advances.
Unfortunately the North Koreans have not been susceptible to much pressure in the past (with China and Russia, key pressure capable nations, not willing to apply the required amount of pressure). They are already under United Nations sanctions for the previous nuclear test of 2006, and that does not seem to have much effect on the North Koreans; so the US is now worried about how to stop further work in this regard. Military threats also do not work since the North Koreans are capable of causing huge damage to Seoul, and maybe parts of Japan (link to article):

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Japan met Monday for a second closed-door session to hammer out a response to North Korea’s weekend rocket launch in defiance of international opposition. But, as happened on Sunday following a called emergency session, there was no official statement from the council. Security Council Resolution 1718 was unanimously adopted in 2006, imposing a series of economic and commercial sanctions on North Korea. The resolution called for Pyongyang to conduct no further nuclear tests and to suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program, including launches.
However, not all Security Council members are onboard with Japan and the West. Russia and China are pushing for a technical assessment of the rocket launch before further actions are undertaken.
Earlier Monday, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said it was important to avoid an “emotional knee-jerk reaction because what we do need is common strategy and not losing sight of the goal — and this is the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”

Russia and China are not fully behind the US and Japan in this area, partially because they do not quite like the concept of seeming to act to further the interests of the US. As a result, they will stick to the stand that if the North Koreans were seen to be launching a satellite, then there is no need to take any action.

The West’s dilemna over relations with Russia

Ashish — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 20:21:53 +0000

This is a mighty strange situation for the West to be in. Ever since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, there has been the feeling in the Western Countries that Russia could be a strategic partner, one that shares the democratic values of the West and will be an effective partner. Initially, things seemed to be going in a different way. Under Boris Yeltsin, Russia started going through political and social turmoil, and it seemed to be a decaying country (with high inflation, potential leakage of arms and nuclear material, negative to zero growth, corruption, mafia, and so on). And then came in this former KGB man, Vladimir Putin, a person who saw the death of the Soviet Union as a disaster, and who bemoaned the loss of status of Russia. By himself, he could not have invented a new powerful Russia, but he got the benefit of Russia’s growth as an oil and gas producer, coupled with increasing prices.
This growth of Russia was not in the way that the US and other countries thought. Russia would go the way that Vladimir Putin wanted it to, and he managed to sell his vision of a resurgent Russia to the population as well, thus diminishing the possibility of any successful internal opposition. The same support also allowed him to stamp away any perceived opposition, including independent media, and other opponents (an example was the trial and imprisonment of the oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was starting to stand upto Mr. Putin). The net result was a system where only support to Valdimir Putin was allowed.

At the same time, Russia’s external environment was changing. The former republics of the USSR (except for a few) were all moving off into independent trajectories, and worryingly for the Kremlin, closer to the West and to NATO. Russia has always considered these republics to be the sort of buffer zone for the motherland, and is not likely to easily accept the borders of NATO extending to these territories. In addition, the former Communist countries outside the USSR have also moved closer to NATO, putting more pressure on the Kremlin. The proposed measure of the US to have missile defense establishments of many of these countries (currently a deal signed with Poland) is making Russia see totally red. In this context, the provocation of the Georgian first step and the all out Russian response shook the US and European countries; further, Russia is not easily giving in, only hesitatingly accepting a ceasefire, and on its terms. All this now leads to a debate in the West about how should they deal with Russia:

What do you do with an angry bear? Growl back at him, face him down or threaten to take away his honey? It is a debate the NATO countries are patently having trouble resolving. The 26 member nations of NATO agree that the Russian invasion of Georgia in response to Tbilisi’s military action in South Ossetia, whatever the provocation, seriously overstepped the mark. But the meeting of NATO’s foreign ministers to discuss what to do about an increasingly assertive, not to say belligerent, Moscow has served only to demonstrate the inability of the alliance to come to firm conclusions and to take decisive action.
The NATO nations remain divided between those who ache to take a swipe at Vladimir Putin and Dimitri Medvedev and the pragmatists who say that NATO, the EU and the U.S. simply have to find a way of doing business with a new-style Russia that has not, as the West had hoped, come to share their values and which has been emboldened by its new energy riches to demand a controlling influence on the countries close to its borders. But what sign was there of a slap over the wrist for Russia, let alone a “concrete step” that deprived Moscow of its easy-odds victory? If the toughest warning Europe can offer in the present situation is to threaten a meeting of EU heads of government to review relations with Russia, then Messrs. Putin and Medvedev will hardly be phoning their medics to ask for pills to help them get their beauty sleep.

Russia has drawn a line in the sand with its current campaign in Georgia. Further, it has totally opposed the US-Poland missile defense deal, and is in the position of making international cooperation that the US desires much more difficult. It will also suffer, but can make things much more difficult for the West overall. Threatening Russia is not going to get the West anywhere, unless it is prepared to suffer the consequences.

Russia signs cease-fire accord in Georgia

Ashish — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:57:56 +0000

The fight over Georgia has been seen as having 2 bigger objectives;
1. Russia wants to ensure that it is seen as the Big Brother of the neighborhood, and is willing to put force to ensure that this happens
2. Georgia has been seen as a region that was being projected as an alternative route for an oil pipeline that would bypass Russian territory
Both of these are issues that impact Russian interests pretty strongly. For a country that used to consider wide swaths of territory in Europe and Asia Minor as its area of influence, the movement by many of these areas towards greater integration with NATO and the United States must be galling. Already, US based in Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan ward off Russian influence in the strategic oil-rich regions of Asia. Combine this with the movements by states such as Poland, Ukraine, etc to move to greater integration with NATO must be real painful to the strategic community in Moscow. And then the movement in a region that is actually under Russian control (granted to it by the Commonwealth of Independent States – CIS); South Ossetia, a region in Georgia that is over-whelming tilted towards Russia. Georgia invaded South Ossetia, and launched a bombing campaign that started killing people in the capital of South Ossetia. This would have just been the motive for Russian interests to start a reverse action – they marched in troops, tanks, and even fighter jets and pushed the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia.

This much movement must have been expected by the West, but this was not it. Russian forced moved out from these territories and moved towards the strategic city of Gori, a city that sits on the central part of Georgia. Georgians considered this move as an attempt to split the country into 2 separate sections and hollered mightily, expecting action from their allies (the West and the United States). The United Nations was out since Russia would have vetoed any such resolution. And the United States depends on Russia to help it on Iran (something that is more important than the action in Georgia), so except for calling for a cease-fire and speaking about how this action of Russia would have far-reaching consequences, it was not able to do anything greater.
It was Russia that is deciding the course of actions, and one is waiting to see how its other interest, of preventing an oil pipeline that would remove Russian influence from oil shipments will play through. In this case, the West can only try and hope that it will be able to influence Russia, and even though a cease-fire is now signed, Russian troops are not currently retreating:

A day after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went close to the front lines in Georgia to press for immediate withdrawal of Russian forces there, the Kremlin announced Saturday that it had approved a framework for a cease-fire. On the ground in Georgia on Saturday, the situation remained largely unchanged, with Russian troops occupying large swaths of territory. The Kremlin gave no indication when they would be pulled out.
The six-point arrangement had been negotiated by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, but a dispute soon followed over one of its provisions, which the Russians had interpreted as allowing them to maintain a military presence on Georgian territory outside the two disputed enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The vagueness of the original provision appeared to have allowed the Russians to occupy Gori even after the two countries had agreed to the cease-fire framework. A senior Western diplomat in Tbilisi, speaking on the condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules, contended that the Russian military maneuvers near the capital on Friday around the time of the Rice visit were deliberate. The diplomat said troops were “moving around to weaken the civilian administration and perhaps create the conditions for political upheaval down the line.”

For all the bluster that Rice and other leaders could raise, it was clear that the initiative lay with Russia. Both Russian Prime Minister (and true force behind the throne) Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev had raised the stakes very beginning with the fast deployment of Russian forces, with some pointed comments and speeches, and with not stopping at the border of South Ossetia, but taking the fight inside Georgia.

Russia and Georgia – the conflict

Ashish — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:26:19 +0000

The Soviet Union was once a mighty empire, controlling large chunks of land in Europe and Asia, and giving the West a might enemy. And then it all fell apart; the individual states (many of them incorporated by force) wanted their freedom, and Boris Yeltsin wanted his own Russia to rule, and so the Soviet empire ended. And then it fell into decline. And then rose a strongman out of all this, one who had the blood of the all-powerful intelligence agency KGB running through him. On his own he could not do anything; however, he was lucky. Russia had large tracts of oil and gas, and had turned into a large exporter of these, bringing in revenue, and helping regrow the power.
However, in the midst of all this, the world did not stay still. Many of the former Soviet republics did not stay still, moving towards the West (and seemingly away from the clutches of their former all-powerful dictatorial landlord), striking closer relationships with them. At the same time, like any major power (and one that remembers all too well how powerful it is), Russia grew increasingly resentful of this emergence of the West in an area that it treats as its backyard (a close equivalent would be if Mexico suddenly became more hostile to the US and very very friendly towards Russia or China). This may well seem normal for a powerful country to treat its immediate neighbors as its areas of influence, but not so for the country so dominated. Ask Finland, that has fought wars with Russia in the past over this dominance, and ask Afghanistan that does not like being called as an area of Pakistani influence, as if it has no entity of its own.

So, when Ukraine tried to show itself as more hostile towards Russia, there was a sudden crippling blockade of the oil and gas it gets from Russia; and now Georgia. Ever since President Mikheil Saakashvili came to office and had a campaign of getting back the pro-Russian provinces of South Ossetia and a second separatist area, Abkhazia, Russia has been seething. It already knows that it is much more powerful. The US wants its support in the initiatives against Iran and North Korea, and cannot afford to antagonize Russia. And the Georgian leader gave Vladimir Putin just that chance. He tried to take one of the provinces, South Ossetia back, and met such overwhelming Russian force (without any check by any other party) that Western leaders were worried that Putin may be trying to gain more geographic control inside Georgia. Right now, things are moving towards a cease-fire, but Russia must have intended this as a show of force to Georgia and others, that they are truly helpless when faced with this great bear.

Russia makes a further move to flex its military might

Ashish — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:27:59 +0000

Vladimir Putin has always seemed to dream of the good old days when Russia / Soviet Union was a powerful nation, held in fear for its military might and power. However, the days of perestroika and glasnost revealed that the Soviet Union was actually a nation held together by power and fear, and the collapse into individual countries soon followed. The reign of Boris Yeltsin that followed was a time when Russian power had weakened massively, and it was too poor economically to maintain its military or do any of the movement of large bombers, submarines, aircraft carriers, etc that were the show-piece of a major military power. Now Putin is more of a person who wants to wield the power that was there once, and hence, with his economy recovering, and the nation getting a lot more revenue from its oil and gas reserves, Putin is showing the power once again:

President Vladimir Putin said Friday that he had ordered the military to resume regular long-range flights of strategic bombers, a show of Russia’s resurgent military power which comes amid a chill in relations with the United States. Speaking after Russian and Chinese forces completed major war games exercises for the first time on Russian turf, Putin said a halt in long-range bombers’ flights after the Soviet collapse had affected Russia’s security as other nations had continued such missions — an oblique reference to the United States.
Soviet bombers routinely flew such missions to areas from which nuclear-tipped cruise missiles could be launched at the United States, but stopped in the post-Soviet economic meltdown. “Starting in 1992, the Russian Federation unilaterally suspended strategic aviation flights to remote areas,” Putin said. “Regrettably, other nations haven’t followed our example. That has created certain problems for Russia’s security.”
The announcement comes amid a growing chill in the U.S.-Russian relations, strained over Washington’s criticism of Russia’s democracy record, Moscow’s strong criticism of U.S. missile defense plans and differences over global crises. “This is a significant change of posture of Russian strategic forces,” Alexander Pikayev, a senior military analyst with the Moscow-based Institute for World Economy and International Relations, told The Associated Press. “It’s a response to the relocation of NATO forces closer to Russia’s western border.”

This is not a solitary step. The Russians have been much more provocative in their military flights, moving closer to the boundaries of other countries, and doing regular flights over areas under Russian influence. In addition, Russia has been much aggressive in its reactions to steps of the US such as the proposed deployment of anti-missile systems near the Russians, the expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia, and so on. At a time when the US military force has been projected to be much weaker, the Russians will try to take full advantage and project their force much more.

Russia plants a flag to lay claim to the North Pole

Ashish — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 17:24:54 +0000

The North Pole has always been ice bound, but with global warming heating up the world, scientists are not sure how long that will continue. There is increasing speculation that the North Pole will become ice-free in the next few decades, offering an alternative sea path for transport. However, it will also lead to territorial issues. Typically, when the North Pole has been deeply ice-bound and mostly inaccessible in a normal way, there has not been much debate about who owns the North Pole.
All that is set to change, with nations such as Russia, Canada and Denmark (via Greenland) claiming the North Pole. The concept is to secure rights to the Artic Ocean and the supposed mineral rights underneath.

Russia has laid claim to the seafloor at the North Pole, planting its national flag underwater in the hopes of securing the Arctic’s potential motherlode of natural resources. In an unprecedented dive beneath the ice, two three-person submersibles descended 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) to the bottom, where one symbolically dropped a titanium capsule containing a Russian flag.
The Russian claim to the region, made Thursday, is based on international law that sets a 200-mile (322-kilometer) territorial limit stretching from the coast into open waters. This limit can be expanded if a country’s continental shelf extends further out to sea. Since 2001 Russian officials have been arguing that an undersea formation called the Lomonosov Ridge is part of Siberia’s shelf, and that the country is therefore entitled to sole rights to the ridge and the nearby seabed.

This is a symbolic step, because it has no legal meaning. Neither Canada nor Denmark will easily give in, and the US might also step in to dispute any ownership of the Artic circle due to its potential as a trade route. Of course, if we do manage to control global warming, then none of this should be a problem.