Russia Challenges U.S. on Weapons

Back in the Cold War days, Washington and Moscow pored over the world map like a chessboard; it was then folded by Boris Yeltsin, who had no appetite for the game. President Vladimir Putin, however, wants to play. And under the tutelage of such old pros as former foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, Putin's no slouch when it comes to geopolitics. That much was clear earlier this year when the Russian president outflanked Washington among its own NATO allies in the diplomatic battle over U.S. plans for a missile defense system. Since then, he's managed, quite improbably, to revive a role for Moscow in the Middle East peace process, and has helped lead a growing number of European and Arab countries to loosen sanctions against Iraq in defiance of Washington's wishes. But Putin's most dramatic challenge yet to the U.S. comes Friday, when Russia unilaterally withdraws from an agreement brokered by Vice President Al Gore committing Moscow to refrain from selling arms to Iran.

A 1995 agreement between Gore and then Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin obliged Russia to stop shipping conventional weapons to Iran, in order to exempt Moscow from automatic U.S. sanctions against those who sell arms to countries on the State Department's list of states sponsoring terrorism. Despite the undertaking, Russia continued to fulfill orders for fighter aircraft, armored vehicles and submarines, but it has withdrawn from the Gore-Chernomyrdin agreement to take advantage of a $5 billion Iranian order for helicopters, surface-to-air missiles and new tanks and jets.

Viewed in the big picture, Putin's decision is hardly surprising — weapons remain the most viable export of the somnambulant Russian economy, and while the rampant corruption of the Yeltsin years has slowed Western aid and investment to a trickle, Tehran's weapons order alone is equivalent to more than 10 percent of Russia's annual budget. Add on recent weapons orders worth $3 billion from India and $1 billion from China, and it becomes clear that there's considerable material incentive for Moscow to ignore Washington's objections. Indeed, a case can be made that even Russia's efforts to end sanctions against Iraq are motivated by self-interest — Moscow claims the economic blockade of Iraq has cost Russia $30 billion in revenues from arms sales and oil supplies.

But there's a lot more than economics at work in Russia's latest challenge to Washington. Moscow's military establishment looked on with alarm throughout the '90s as Yeltsin compromised their strategic interests in exchange for financial handouts from the West. The seditious grumbling over NATO's expansion onto Russia's eastern European doorstep reached a crescendo during last year's Kosovo campaign. President Putin built his election campaign around the military's brutal assault on Chechnya — a hapless attempt to restore its lost honor — and vowed to restore Russian power. Despite such humiliations as the Kursk submarine disaster, Putin has set about modernizing his armed forces by cutting their size while increasing their budget. At the same time, he's adopted an overtly competitive geopolitical stance toward the U.S., openly seeking alliances of convenience with China and India on the basis of a common interest in limiting and countering Washington's global influence.

Even if they have their own difficulties with Washington, of course, China and India may also have many reasons to keep Russia at arm's length. And dabbling in Iran and Iraq also has the potential to blow up in the face of a Russian leader whose Chechen enemies have a far greater emotional claim on the good offices of Islamic countries. Still, Moscow has unleashed a flurry of moves on the geopolitical chessboard. And whoever ends up calling the shots in the White House will have his work cut out for him. Washington's geopolitical free ride of the Yeltsin-Clinton years appears to be well and truly over.

With reporting by Yuri Zarakhovich