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| BOMBS HIT CHECHNYA | |
 December 8, 1999 
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Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered pilots to begin bombing the Chechen capital of Grozny. After a background report on the international reaction to this move, Gwen Ifill leads a discussion.
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RAY SUAREZ: The American and world response to Russia's offensive in Chechnya. We start with a report from the Chechen border by Robert Moore of Independent Television News.
This is a war of bombardment. Their mortar positions are already dug
in as the Refugees are still only emerging from Grozny in small numbers, despite
the Russian threat to destroy the Chechen capital from this Saturday.
Talk of a safe corridor for civilians seems meaningless for a people
clearly fighting to even move. Tonight this border crossing remains
a desolate spot, closed by the Russian military to the flow of refugees.
But the real question is whether |
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| The president's response | ||||||||||||||||||||
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RAY SUAREZ: And now Margaret Warner takes the story from there. MARGARET WARNER: President Clinton was asked today whether there was anything more he or the West could do to dissuade Moscow from carrying out its threat to launch a final assault on Grozny this Saturday. PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I haven't decided what else I can do. I do think, first of all, they may believe that because their position in the United Nations and because no one wants them to fail and have more problems than they've got that they can do this, but, you know, most of life's greatest wounds for individuals and for countries are self-inflicted. They're not inflicted by other people.
Secondly, it will affect the attitude of the international community over a period of time in ways that are somewhat predictable and in some ways unpredictable, and that is a very heavy price to pay, because it works better when everybody is pulling for Russia. It's a great country, and they have all these resources and talented and educated people and yet they've got a declining life expectancy, as well as all these economic problems. And I think it's a bad thing for this to be the issue, the number one issue both inside the country and in our relationship with them. So I do think it's going to be a very costly thing. |
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| The administration's policy | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: For further perspective on the Chechnya conflict, and what the United States should do, we turn to: Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of state in the Bush administration, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter.
LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: What I think I heard just a few seconds ago was that this is really a very difficult and tragic situation and we aren't going to do anything about it. MARGARET WARNER: Is that what you heard? ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: What I heard was indifference and ignorance. Indifference to the genocidal carnage that's now taking place, and ignorance of the historical roots of this problem, of what has been happening, and of the political and geopolitical implications of what might happen as a consequence of this war. MARGARET WARNER: Does the U.S. have a dog in this fight? I mean, what does the U.S. -- and what are the western interests here? LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: Well, I think Mr. Brzezinski and I may disagree
on this fundamentally. Do we have a dog in the fight? Sure we do in
the sense that we're dealing with Russia, which is a major power, which
is in serious difficulties domestically and all of that adds to the
confusion of what we're going to do with Russia in the next decade.
But insofar as this specific issue is concerned, my own view of it is
that fundamentally, while I had little trouble interpreting the president,
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| A moral issue involved | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Are his suspicions correct? ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I think on that aspect Larry is correct. He's not on the rest. First of all, I think there is a moral issue involved here. There's a moral issue, as there was a moral issue in Kosovo or in East Timor -- namely, how should a people be treated by other people. And we're dealing here with a small nation that has resisted oppression for a long time, that was deported in toto by Stalin, that was subjected to carnage four years ago and has been treated extremely badly. And incidentally, you missed perhaps the most telling sentence in the president's press conference, which I think is going to ring loud. He said, "I have no sympathy for the Chechen rebels." And that ignores real historical ignorance and moral indifference. But it's the political and geopolitical consequences which I think mean to me that we should be concerned. If this war goes on and it succeeds, it's going to drive Russia into the hands of the KGB and the army. MARGARET WARNER: Excuse me. When you say if it succeeds, if you -- you mean if Russia succeeds in...
MARGARET WARNER: You're talking about the oil pipeline. ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: The oil pipeline, the existing oil pipeline Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline to Georgia will no longer be accessible to the international community. So there are some stakes. It doesn't mean we should go to war with Russia, but I think the analogy is closer to that of East Timor, concerted international pressure, criticism, some sanctions induced Indonesia to do the right thing, and the same should be tried here. MARGARET WARNER: But you think it's not only in Russia's interest, but in our interests, for Russia to keep Chechnya within Russia?
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| The military effects in Russia | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: What about the point Dr. Brzezinski made that if Russia succeeds in this military campaign, it will also embolden those forces in Russia? LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER: Well, see, again, and I don't want to argue with one of the premier academic people on Russia and the Soviet Union and so forth, but I just don't see it that way. I mean, it may embolden them. On the other hand, I world argue fairly strenuously, I think, that if the Russians now fail in this effort, which by in large I gather has very substantial public support in Russia, if I they fail in this effort, it would seem to me that leads to some consequences that may encouraging precisely the people he says will be edge encouraged if they win. I think it's an unpleasant mess. But number one, I don't think there's a great deal we can do about it. But number two, I do think we need to understand that there are some fundamentals on the Russian side we need to consider, and frankly, while I don't often agree with President Clinton, I think in this case he was making the point, and I think properly, that there are some things we need to understand as far as Moscow is concerned.
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Of course. There's a whole range of things that can be done between doing nothing and doing too much. The issue is what is at stake. And if this war succeeds, there will be a sense of triumphalism in Russia that will greatly help the worst elements in Russian politics. It's not an accident that the best people in Russian politics, like Yavlinsky or like Sergei Convalyos [ph] -- the human rights leader of Russia -- are adamantly against this war. But it is true that the Russian public has been stirred up by the worst chauvinist sentiments. And this is the kind of development we should not be encouraging. MARGARET WARNER: But the President's been saying, you'll pay a heavy price. All the European leaders are going around saying this. Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general was on the phone with Ivanov, the defense minister. I mean, all jawboning them. What else should the West do? ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, the whole point is that it shouldn't be just words. Saying it will be a heavy price and then there being no price is, in fact, loss of credibility and self-defeat. There are things we can do. Take again the East Timor example. We said to the Indonesians, it's going to adversely affect your access to the world financial markets. It's going to affect your cooperation with us. It's going to affect your military connections with us. The same thing applies here. Russia needs IMF credits. The Europeans are, in fact, in favor of delaying them. The Germans and the French have been delaying them. They want Export Import Bank guarantees. They need that. They want to be accepted into the G-8 as a full member, a club of democracies when they're engaging in non-democratic conduct. The great many things, which can be done to convey some degree of pressure, which may not work, but which may discourage this form of conduct. And it seems to me if we are serious when we say that Russia will be paying a heavy price, there ought to be a heavy price. Otherwise it's empty words. |
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| Empty threats: A bad idea | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: So what's wrong with some of those steps?
I guess fundamentally what I'm saying is I can't think of any real punishments that we can impose upon the Russians that won't do, first of all, more damage to the long-term relationship between the U.S. and the Russians themselves, which after all we have to be careful about, if for no other reason than we have all of those nuclear weapons sitting there and we have to find ways to get rid of them. I mean, I can go through 18 reasons why we have to think about the Russian relationship in more than the context of Chechnya. That isn't to say that I don't think what they're doing is wrong and horrible. I don't think there's much we can do about it, number one, and number two, I would hope at some point we will learn there are some battles and conflicts we ought to stay out of. And this is one. If we want to say it's reprehensible, of course we should say that. But in terms of trying to do anything, to affect events, I don't think, one, there's much to do. And two, if we tried it, I think it would do us more damage than good. MARGARET WARNER: All right, gentlemen. We have to leave it there. Thanks very much. |
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ROBERT
MOORE: Today in the early morning mist just a few hundred meters from
the front line, Russian soldiers could be seen trying to keep warm and
bracing themselves for another day of heavy fighting deep inside Chechnya.
Russians
struggle to keep their own casualties to a minimum. Tonight, after days
of heavy artillery and mortar fire, the Russian high command has broadcast
news: It has seized the key strategic town of Orasmartin. The target
now will be Grozny itself -- no frontal assault, rather a relentless
bombardment designed to destroy Chechen resistance from afar. 
Saturday's
ultimatum is just a warning, part of the brutal, psychological warfare,
or whether it's a real deadline that might trigger a new and horrifying
bombardment of Grozny. All the signs are that the Chechen guerrillas
are digging in, preparing to make a last stand in the rubble of Grozny.
And
I will say again, the greatest problems that the Russians will have
over Chechnya are, one, I don't think the strategy will work. I have
never said they weren't right to want to do something to the Chechen
rebels. But I don't think the strategy will work, and, therefore, it
will be expensive, costly, and politically damaging internally to them.
First,
Mr. Secretary, decipher the President's words for us. How do you read
the administration's policy here? 
I'm
inclined to think his basic judgment is correct, and that, you know,
the last thing I think we want to see is a Russia that begins to come
apart at the seams because of issues such as Chechnya, where you have
people that have decided they want to be independent, and many of them
not very nice people. So my own view of this is, this is going to hurt
the Russians in terms of public opinion. There's no question about it.
They are doing it in their normal ham-handed way, and that will hurt,
but insofar as the justice of the fundamental cause, I personally think
it's on the Russian side. I suspect Mr. Brzezinski will agree with that.
ZBIGNIEW
BRZEZINSKI: Massacring the Chechens, which it probably will succeed
in doing, actually. I think it will mean the victory will be celebrated
through the takeover of power by the worst elements in Russia, of which
Colonel Putin, the KGB colonel, is a symbol, and he will be the next
president of Russia. And, secondly, in the region, and particularly
in the south caucuses, there's going to be greater instability. And
we -- and the international community -- have a shared interest in an
open Caspian Sea region, an open Central Asia, which we can reach. But
if southern caucuses is destabilized and subjected again to Russian
control, that access will be shot, and all of the talk about the Baku-Ceyhan
Pipeline... 
LAWRENCE
EAGLEBURGER: Yeah. I think that the beginning of the dismemberment of
the Russian federation, which the Chechnya situation could become, could
lead to all sorts of instabilities. Now, you know, I don't want to sounds
like Chicken Little, which my friend over here did, the sky is falling,
I don't happen to believe that the situation is as bad as he would describe
in terms of strategic outcome. I think the human aspects of this case
are miserable, and the Russians are doing what they have done so many
times in the past, which is hitting a tack with a sledgehammer, perhaps.
But in terms of the fundamentals, I think there is an important aspect
here in terms of, one, the stability of the Russian Federation, first.
Secondly, and Zbig is right in terms of the historical aspect of Chechnya.
But I talked, for instance, yesterday to a representative of a voluntary
organization. I don't want to identify him because I don't want to get
him in trouble, but who has been working in Chechnya. He says the Chechnya
rebels are by and large very unpleasant types, that there's a lot of
drug traffic that goes through there. They are in fact many of them
fundamentalist Islamicists of the worst sort. And that in fact in his
judgment, and he's not prejudiced, I think. He said what he's seen in
the most recent months is that the Chechens themselves are getting very
unhappy with the guerrillas that are running this war at this point.
So I think there's more balance here, more to be looked at here than
simply this rather bleak strategic picture if Zbigniew is correct. 
MARGARET
WARNER: But you do think there is something we can do. Draw that out
a little more.
LAWRENCE
EAGLEBURGER: Well, no, first of all, I don't disagree at all that we
ought not be making threats that we don't intend to carry out. That's
one of the things that this administration has done too much of all
the last eight years. So I'm not... and if we're going to say it's going
to require a heavy price, then I suppose we have to pay it -- or demand
they pay it. But my point would be a different one. First of all, as
far as the IMF is concerned, they're not getting anything now nor should
they even if they walked out of Chechnya tomorrow because of the corruption
that we've seen take place over the years with regard to those loans.
Ex-Im Bank credits, we can cut those off. They won't mean much, I don't
think. You watch the Europeans who are screaming bloody murder about
how tough they're going to be. It will all turn out to be a wet biscuit
and not much more than that, I think.