Unilateralism, Russian Style
by Robert Heiler, Executive Director, IASPS - DC

The Washington Post and others reported Thursday that Oleg Chernov, the Russian “point man on missile defense,” proclaimed an agreement that would release the U.S. from restraints under the ABM treaty will not be reached soon. A related story, “Democrats to Pare Missile Funds,” is referenced alongside this Moscow report.

What follows is a series of quotations from these two stories, illustrating the editing process by which one can carefully construct a clear thought using nothing but the Post. It’s almost like magic. In the process, one exposes the Post as a mouthpiece for the American left and its friends in Moscow. It’s remarkable how the pressure of daily deadlines can sometimes force errors that give up the game so completely.

“If Russia agrees with American proposals now, then we may win something. We may try to limit to some extent the size and capacity of the future [anti-missile] system. At the same time, if America is not able to deploy it, then we lose nothing. The rational strategy is to discuss and to get as much as we can for our acceptance of this.” (Yuri Fyorodev, Deputy Director of the PIR Center, a Moscow research organization).

This next paragraph is not from a source, but rather in the voice of Peter Baker, the author of the Post piece:

“Moscow’s strategy could be to play for time. Chernov, a former KGB agent who worked as a television correspondent while undercover in Berlin, recently traveled through the United States promoting Russia’s point of view and appeared to be hoping that Bush’s missile defense plan would be weighed down by budget concerns and domestic public opinion.”

Now, switching to the companion story by Vernon Loeb and Dan Morgan:

“[Sen. Carl M.] Levin (D-MI) said the administration’s request for a 57 percent increase in missile defense funds is ‘unjustified’ militarily and strategically, particularly since Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has yet to tell the panel whether any of the money would fund research activities that violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.”

And then:

“Any successful effort by Senate Democrats to substantially reduce missile defense funding and restrict Bush’s ability to modify or withdraw from the ABM Treaty would greatly complicate discussions the administration plans to hold with both the Russians and Chinese.”

Moscow’s strategy is clearly to “play for time,” and to hope for budget concerns and internal U.S. politics to make the whole missile defense issue evaporate, and further to achieve their own ends merely by pretending to go along with the U.S. on this eventual non-issue. Worse, this strategy dovetails perfectly with the delaying, research-but-never-deploy refrain of many U.S. missile defense opponents, who decry Bush’s attitude as “unilateralist.” It seems sometimes that Carl Levin, not Oleg Chernov, is Moscow’s “point man on missile defense.”

So Russia’s brand of unilateralism employs not only its own power structures, but manipulates those of the U.S. to serve its aims. Not bad for a group that supposedly already lost the Cold War.

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