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| U.S.--RUSSIA RELATIONS | |
 March 23, 2001  |
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In the wake of dueling expulsions, experts assess the state of U.S.--Russian relations.
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Well, we heard from Secretary of State Powell and the Russian foreign minister and the Russian President saying -- okay, it's done, response, counter response, case closed. Is it really over?
RAY SUAREZ: But what about the size of the expulsion? I was looking over a log of the recent ones. They were all pretty small. Three here, one there. You have to go back to the second Reagan administration for one as large as this. ROY GODSON: Well, between the U.S. and Soviet Union that's true. Actually some of the former Eastern European allies of the former Soviet Union have had relatively speaking some sizable expulsions. Bulgaria and Poland, for example, have expelled ten and 12 each in recent years. I think one makes these expulsions based on a number of cost benefit calculuses. One is to send a message. The second, though, is to level the playing field. Washington, there is a playing field between spy and counter spy in Washington, the Soviets -- the Russians now, the Soviets in the past - the Russians have gradually increased their presence in Washington. During the Reagan years, the playing field was leveled a bit when we expelled 80 some spies. The Russians have been increasing. We had hoped we wouldn't have to put the same resources into watching and neutralizing Russian espionage. They also got some advantages with the Hanssen case, teaching them a lot about how to recognize and deceive American counterintelligence as well as American intelligence. So we wanted to level the playing field here in Washington. We had to make a calculation about what this would cost us when they retaliated. And we presumably decided the cost benefit was in our favor. |
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| A case in isloation? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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RAY SUAREZ: Stephen Cohen, when you look at the expulsion and its response, can you look at the Hanssen case and its fallout in isolation, or is it part of a wider momentum in U.S.-Russia relations since the arrival in Washington of the Bush administration?
RAY SUAREZ: Ariel Cohen, is it a question of setting a marker, we're a different administration from the one that just left?
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| A time of transition | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ARIEL COHEN: Ray, I went over some figures. The Russian GDP, National product, is 3 percent, a little bit above 3 percent of the U.S. GDP. Russian GDP per capita is about $2,000 a year versus U.S. GDP per capita of $24,000 -- by the factor of 12 -- so while we should respect the rusting old Russian nuclear arsenal and its huge geopolitical importance in size in the eastern hemisphere, we are not talking about too superpowers anymore. We're talking about an economically weak country with a lot of dangerous toys it can sell to china, Iran, Iraq, et cetera, and the Russian foreign policy national security elite has not made a real choice. Are they going to be with the Euro Atlantic community, with the West, or are they going to be building something else in what they call Eurasia in Eastern Hemisphere with China, maybe with India, Iran, Iraq and others. Until such time that Russia is not clearly not a friend and maybe not yet a foe, we have to treat them carefully, with respect, we shouldn't stumble into a new Cold War, but they have to pay the price for bad things, sometimes some people in Moscow do. RAY SUAREZ: Stephen Cohen, how do you respond to that?
RAY SUAREZ: But you heard Ariel Cohen read out a list of particulars demonstrating in his state of view, that the Clinton approach, a more softly, softly approach, wasn't the proper one. Wasn't it time for a change of tone? STEPHEN COHEN: I would go farther, the book that you mentioned, Failed Crusade is an argument that the administration was catastrophic -- partly because it watched as Russia disintegrated and Russia's disintegration meant the disintegration of its nuclear infrastructure. Yes, we need a new policy. The good news in my mind is that the Bush administration is not going to repeat the Clinton policy. The bad news is either they don't know what they're going to do or that they're going to lurch back into a Cold War policy. Both bad. RAY SUAREZ: Roy Godson, let's try to understand where continued spying fits in the range of bilateral problems, challenges, things that the United States and Russia have to talk about.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, given what Roy Godson just said, is a tougher line an appropriate one -- given the things that remain to be settled with this foreign country?
RAY SUAREZ: Guests, thank you all.
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RAY
SUAREZ: For more, we go to, Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies
at New York University. He is author of the recently released book Failed
Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia. Ariel
Cohen, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He has written
extensively about Russia. They are not related. And Roy Godson, professor
of government at Georgetown University and president of the National
Strategy Information Center. He is author of Dirty Tricks or Trump
Cards: U.S. Covert Action and Counterintelligence.
ROY
GODSON: Well, for now I think it's probably over. We've seen this replayed
before. But I think we should realize that we shouldn't get too overly
concerned with this particular problem. I don't think there will be
any lasting damage to U.S.-Soviet relations from this particular incident.
We should recognize that in the world people in politics, like in other
competitive activities, have secrets to keep and secrets that they want
to exploit. And they want to get other people's secrets. And they, the
Russians and many others around the world, will continue to spy and
use intelligence to achieve various purposes of foreign policy. I don't
see anything really new in this situation. 
STEPHEN
COHEN: Well, I was in Moscow for ten days this month. And whatever we
think, in Moscow they think that all this is part of a broad anti-Russian,
anti-Kremlin Bush set of initiatives. Now they don't know what it means.
They don't know if it is just the American ritual of being tough before
they begin to talk. They don't know if it's President Bush demonstrating
that he's not President Clinton. But they're worried. And I think we
ought to be worried, too, because these things do have ramifications.
One ramification is that there's a struggle in the Kremlin between a
faction around Putin that wants to cooperate with us, with the United
States, and a faction that says we, the United States, are hopeless,
impossible and that Russia's destiny and Russia's foreign policy priorities
are elsewhere. 
ARIEL
COHEN: No, I think the Hanssen case made a lot of people in Washington
very miffed and we want to make darn sure we're sending a message to
Moscow that there will be a price to what were the implications of the
Hanssen case. People were killed because of, allegedly killed because
of Mr. Hanssen. This was a disaster comparable with Aldrich Ames's case
in '94 or maybe going all the way back to the 50s with Ken Philby. We
cannot pass over that easily. However, there's a broader context of
U.S.-Russian relations. When things were swept under the rug under the
Clinton administration, the things like Iran, Russian-Iranian cooperation
in ballistic missile - in nuclear areas -- were not addressed by the
Clinton administration. When Russia repeatedly and intensely arming
China, when Russia is supporting Saddam Hussein, when Russia is throwing
a French fit over our involvement in Kosovo, and then it turns out that
we can cooperate with Russia beautifully in Kosovo, taking enemy fire
together from the Albanian extremists now. So the relationship is in
trouble in a broader sense and it didn't start with Bush. It even didn't
start with Putin. It started under Clinton and Yeltsin. 
RAY
SUAREZ: Would this be a predictable part of a transitional time in the
life of Russia? This is a country that has to get used to a different
place in the world. We heard during the tape report a Russian general
referring to relations between great powers as if they still can't let
go of a certain part of the past. 
ROY
GODSON: Well, I would say that for the Russians and the Soviets before
them, intelligence has been a force multiplier. That is to say ever
since the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviets now the Russians have been
at a disadvantage in terms of economic power, often in terms of military
power and political influence in the world. And they have found intelligence,
both collecting information through spies and technical equipment, as
well as exploiting the secrets of others, as a very important tool of
foreign policy -- a tool of state craft. And I think we would be mistaken
to believe that they're going to abandon that particular instrument.
Now they're in a relatively weak state in many ways. They do have this
nuclear power that Stephen Cohen speaks of, and this is an important
priority for us. They know that. They can expect that we're going to
want to know about the state of readiness of the force, the state of
decay of that force and who controls the nuclear weapons and how many
loose nukes are leaving the Soviet Union, if any. We are going to be
wanting to need to know about that. And they're going to be watching
us and wanting to see and try and understand what we're about just as
they were in the past. They're also going to want to use their intelligence
to make up for their economic and their military and political weaknesses.
So I just expect them to continue. I don't-- they may interpret this
as part of a pattern. But we have a much broader context. The way Putin
talks, I don't see him really interpreting this part as the beginning
of a new Cold War. 
ARIEL
COHEN: I believe that the major security concerns of the United States
should be articulated and clearly communicated to Moscow. And I was
in Moscow this past November, and there was almost a unanimous welcome
extended by the Putin crowd to the Republicans. And I couldn't understand
for the life of me why they're so happy. Now they got what they wanted.
So, you know, let's put the cards on the table. They have concerns about
NATO enlargement, about our missile defense. We have concerns about
proliferation. I tend to disagree with Stephen. I think selling of ballistic
missile technology and nuclear arms technology to Iran, and they're
very open and blatant about it. I did an Internet search about, you
know, what the Russian generals and members of parliament say. They're
in full support of that. If Iran can fire a nuclear missile at our allies
in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel, et cetera, this is a major headache
for the United States. So we have to put things on the table. If the
Russians want rescheduling of $150 billion debt, $100 billion from the
Soviet era, 50 billion from the Yeltsin era. They have to take our concerns
into account. This is the quid pro quo that the Bush administration
is fully justified to expect.