RUSSIA AND EASTERN EUROPE NEWS DIGEST
Russian Security Official: Americans Dizzy With Illusory Military 'Omnipotence'
Oleg Chernov, deputy secretary of Russia's Security Council, spoke frankly about delusory thinking on the part of U.S. strategists, in a May 7 interview with the daily Izvestia. Chernov's remarks came just after a Security Council meeting chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and two weeks before the summit meeting between Putin and President George W. Bush, scheduled for May 23 in St. Petersburg.
Chernov said, "Today the combined military potential of the United States is larger than that of the rest of NATO. That is causing the USA to become dizzy in the head.... But in my personal opinion, the omnipotence of the USA is a big illusion. And anyway, omnipotence never lasts very long. Action provokes counter-reaction, and the offended nations might unite, which would change the political map of the world. Some people in the USA and its closest allies realize this. Even today there are major splits and controversies in NATO."
Concerning U.S. plans to attack Iraq, the Russian official said it was "impermissible, to live and act in isolation," without support from other countries for such an action. Russia's position on this matter is carefully considered, Chernov said. "Russia has normal business relations with Iraq. Iraq owes us $8 billion, recognizes this debt and is paying it. But that is not the only point. Not only Russia, but also others oppose the use of force against Iraq. This was shown by the [Mideast] trip by Vice President Cheney. Many European countries object, and above all the Arab world. Even Kuwait, which has no reason to love Saddam Hussein. The whole anti-terror coalition could break apart on the Iraq question.... The United States is scaring everybody with Iraq.... But we insist that anti-terror operations must be well conceived. It doesn't work, to try to resolve centuries-long conflicts in the Near and Middle Eastethnic and religious conflictsby simply pushing buttons to drop bombs."
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Chernov said, "The key to the problem now is not the ethnic-religious, but above all the social component. Look: the average yearly income of an Arab is $800, while an Israeli earns an average of $18,000. With such a gap you cannot just declare peace. Where there is no social equality, there cannot be social peace.... I think this is the key to the Near East problem. Everything else is ideological folklore."
International Finance Is the Driving Force for War, Says Military Analyst
General Leonid Ivashov, former head of the international relations department of the Russian Ministry of Defense and now with the Geopolitical Studies Academy, gave a press conference May 8, in advance of the Putin-Bush summit and the next round of Russian negotiations on its relationship with NATO. Setting the stage for detailed answers he gave on arms control and NATO organizational questions, Ivashov made a number of striking comments about the world at the end of an era"in a transitional phase from one established system to a different system," as he put it. The press conference was carried by Federal News Service.
"In the opinion of researchers at the Geopolitical Studies Academy," said Ivashov, "and that opinion has much in common with the opinions of analysts in other countries, including Western countries, the world community is moving toward chaos, disarray, and possible collapse. The main factor at work in the world today is finance capital. And the main instrument that directs these processes, as it were, is the International Monetary Fund. And I must say that Western scholars themselves consider the International Monetary Fund to be an instrument that may lead to a new world war, describing that war as a financial war. We say that the threat of a world civil war is looming ahead."
Ivashov identified two difference concepts of world dominance. According to the first concept, the United States is "a powerful state that seeks to dominate the world.... But there is a different concept, the concept of subjugation of the world community to the power of capital, the power of money, and that includes the subjugation of the United States itself."
The retired general said that claims made after Sept. 11 about a possible "strategic alliance" between Russia and the United States, had been "overly optimistic," because "in the absence of common strategic goals, there are no grounds for talking about a strategic alliance." He went on, "Yes, the fight against international terrorism seems to be a unifying and integrating task. Yet even there we see different approaches.... The U.S. is using the struggle against terrorism to establishand let us be frankits world domination....
"If we take the question of coinciding economic interests, here again we see that the basic interests of Russia and the U.S. are also different. The U.S. is reluctant to see Russia as a powerful economic country. These are not my words. These are the words of ideologists of U.S. policy, such as Kissinger and Brzezinski, the figures of the moment in the United States."
Attack on Parade in Dagestan Kills 41 or More
At least 41 people, 17 of them children and 18 military servicemen, were killed by a remote-controlled, anti-infantry land mine set off in Kaspiysk, Dagestan on the parade-route of the May 9 Victory Day celebration, commemorating victory in World War II. Over 100 more people were hospitalized, many of them in grave condition.
President Putin, addressing the May 9 celebrations in Moscow, said, "This crime was committed by scum for whom nothing is sacred. We have every right to treat them just like Nazis, whose only purpose is to inflict death, sow terror, and kill." Putin put Federal Security Service (FSB) chief Nikolai Patrushev in charge of the investigation. Patrushev, together with Presidential Representative for the Southern District Viktor Kazantsev, flew to Makhachkala, Dagestan on May 9. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing. Dagestan, in the North Caucasus, has been the scene of attacks by Chechen guerrillas before, but Kazantsev said upon arrival that it was "premature" to blame Chechens.
On May 10, Patrushev stated that persons had been detained "who may have had to do with the terror act." Three men were flown from St. Petersburg to Makhachkala for questioning the morning of May 11. Patrushev's statement was widely reported in the form put out by RIA Novosti, that these are "suspects" in the bombing and that Patrushev said they could lead to its organizers. This would be in contrast to other bombings in Dagestan, including the 1996 blast that killed 68 Russian soldiers at a military base in Kaspiysk. The Internet news service Polit.ru reported a high state of mobilization in southern Russia, with sweeps being done of all military facilities, to check for mines. Patrushev declined to reveal the detained persons' names, in order to protect the investigation.
Dagestani sources, meanwhile, leaked that a field commander named Rapani Khalilov, originating from Dagestan but active in Chechnya and implicated in the 1999 incursions from Chechnya into Dagestan, was behind the blast. There has recently been turmoil among the Chechen field commanders, who intersect the international "Afghansi" networks, deployed to foster the Clash of Civilizations. The Jordanian citizen, field commander Hattab, is reportedly dead, but the leading version of his demise attributes it to poisoning by another faction of the support networks of the Chechen insurgency, rather than to Russian actions. Russian Chief of Staff Anatoli Kvashnin recently stated that field commander Shamil Basayev had also been killed, but had to back off from this claim.
Russian media are quoting President Bush's statement that he was "grieved and concerned" about the deaths in Kaspiysk, side by side with a remark by a State Department official that Bush intends to seek "total clarity on the question of human rights violations" by Russian forces in Chechnya, when he meets Putin. It is noteworthy that the Kaspiysk attack happened two weeks before that scheduled summit. Various war-mongers have been flooding the Washington think-tank circuits with speculation about what it will take to get Russia to fully support military actions against Iraq and other targets of the Clash of Civilizations.
Putin Again Chastizes Government for Lack of Economic Plan
For the second time in little over a month, President Vladimir Putin told the Russian government he is dissatisfied at its lack of an effective economic policy. Addressing a Cabinet meeting on May 6, Putin singled out the two most liberal members of the government, Minister of Finance Aleksei Kudrin and Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref, for failing to act on his demand for improved growth targets. (Both of them, as well as Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, were absent from the meeting, which took place during a holiday week in Russia.) "We have already talked about the need to revise the basic parameters for the country's development during the next four to five years," said Putin, referring to a document prepared by Gref. "A month has passed, yet I have seen no new figures." The widely read Russian news and commentary site Strana.ru, again raised the question of possible changes in the government, as a result of the "shocking inaction" of Gref and Kasyanov.
Academy of Sciences Economists Intervene on Economic Policy
Taking rhetorical advantage of President Putin's complaints against the government, Academician Viktor Ivanter, who headed the group of economists who authored the famous Ishayev report to the Russian State Council, gave a rather self-confident interview to Strana.ru on May 7, in which he heaped scorn on the incompetence of the liberal "reformers" dominating the government, and demanded that the President take personal responsibility for changing economic policy. The Ishayev report, commissioned by Putin in late 2000 from a group sponsored by Khabarovsk Territory Governor Ishayev, outlined dirigist credit-creation and related measures to launch a science-intensive industrial revival in Russia. EIR, in its issue of March 2, 2001, published excerpts in English translation.
Academician Ivanter said, "Our boss wants growth, and has demanded that the government must figure out how to get it. But instead of thinking about that, people just put out new statistics, which is not what he asked for. He needs growth, because without it, he cannot solve the problems of the Russian state." The problem with the government, he said, is this: "They have ideological illusions. They think, all we have to do is reduce taxes, then the increase in private demandwhich is more effective than state demandwill bring growth. Yes, that is what is written in all the textbooks. But life shows a different result."
"What is missing?" asked Strana.ru, "Not enough money?" Ivanter: "Of course, there is not enough money. But the main problem is lack of responsibility and lack of political will.... State power must assert itself, and that power is concentrated in the President, whom we elected, and from whom we demand performance. See, in economics everything is very simple. If you take correct, adequate, and energetic actions, then you will get economic growth. So if you are getting economic decline, that means your policy is wrong."
Russian Government Will Look at National Wealth Policy
A Russian government session on May 20 will take up the question of "where should money from taxes and natural rents remainin the federal center or the producing regions?," Izvestia reported April 30. This is no mere squabble over oil and mineral riches, but a key question of Russian national economic policy. It was to discuss "natural rent," the allocation of benefits from the ownership and exploitation of natural resources, that Academician Dmitri Lvov was summoned to meet with Putin in mid-March. Academician Lvov is the Academy's leading advocate of a national investment policy, to direct the so-called natural rent proceeds into real economic development.
Izvestia reported on the upcoming meeting, in the context of a feature on Leonid Drachevsky, Presidential Representative in the Siberian Federal District. Drachevsky has been engaged in a two-year fight with German Gref's Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, over the need to adopt a strategy for the development of Siberia. The strategy was drafted by a Siberian working group after Putin visited the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, but it hit a stone wall when sent to Gref's Ministry in June 2001. In November, Drachevsky charged that the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade had "castrated" the plan by refusing to consider the special climate and physical features of Siberia. According to Izvestia, "Gref was proposing to place Siberia on a strictly market footing: non-competitive industries would die out of their own accord, and the population would become concentrated around large manufacturers and mining enterprises." Drachevsky secured Putin's support for reconsideration of the policy draft, and hopes for a positive resolution in the framework of the "natural rent" discussion.
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