Russia and the US: An Uncertain Reset

Predictably, both Russia and the United States have portrayed the recent summit in Moscow as a success. Indeed, the summit did produce some positive signs: a resumption of serious arms control negotiations after years of neglect, an agreement on U.S. military overflights of Russian territory to Afghanistan, and the creation of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, a structure that could give the relationship a high-level institutional focus.

But much more is needed for the "reset" to be real. Most important, the United States must overcome what I first described in an essay from October/November 2007 as "the unmistakable impression that making Russia a strategic partner has never been a major priority." This will require not only new vocabulary -- such as "reset" -- but a new sense of priority toward Russia from the Obama administration.

Such an approach need not come at a cost to U.S. interests or values. But it will require an honest recognition that, since U.S. and Russian interests are not identical, Moscow is unlikely to accommodate Washington's concerns unless it sees something for itself in return.

The United States' priorities with respect to Russia are Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea. Regarding Iran, neither Washington nor Moscow wants to see the clerical regime develop nuclear weapons. However, Iran is a major Russian trading partner and -- unlike Turkey, a U.S. ally -- offered no encouragement to separatist movements in the North Caucasus or support for pipelines that bypass Russia. Some in the Russian government fear that a Western rapprochement with Iran could disadvantage Moscow if Iranian gas were to become available for export to Europe.

Although Russian officials strongly oppose any military strike against Iran's nuclear installations, they privately acknowledge that such an attack could benefit Russia by increasing energy prices and creating a global backlash against the United States.

As for Afghanistan, Russia does not want to see the Taliban defeat U.S. and NATO forces and the country descend into chaos. Nevertheless, it is frustrated at being shut out of the Afghanistan after then President Vladimir Putin supported U.S. military intervention and encouraged the Northern Alliance to provide muscle to unseat the Taliban in 2001.

Moscow's priorities are different from Washington's: curbing NATO expansion, preventing the establishment of U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, and maintaining and enhancing Russia's influence in the post-Soviet region. At times, Moscow can sound like its own worst enemy, when, for example, it makes inflated claims that any expansion of NATO is unacceptable or demands privileged interests in its "near abroad."

However, notwithstanding the August 2008 war against Georgia, Moscow's practical ambitions are fairly limited -- especially in comparison with suspicions that Russia is seeking to reestablish the Soviet Union by coercion and force. It is hard to take Russian statements about dominance in the post-Soviet space seriously when even Russia's closest allies in the region -- Armenia and, particularly, Belarus -- are regularly defiant of Moscow's wishes. As for the Caucasus, although Russia did invade Georgia proper, it did so after its own forces in South Ossetia came under attack by Georgian troops. The Russian army then ultimately stopped short of entering Tbilisi and directly challenging the rule of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Even after the war, most of Russia's neighbors feel free to ignore its preferences and have not expressed fear of a Russian attack.

The United States would be wise, therefore, to make a distinction between Russia's nostalgia and bravado, on the one hand, and its actions and capabilities on the other. This would leave several options for developing common ground. The United States already recognizes that neither Georgia nor Ukraine is ready for NATO membership. (This will not change anytime soon, and few NATO members support accelerating the process.) On the question of missile defense in Europe, President Barack Obama and his advisers do not share the almost religious commitment of the Bush administration -- suggesting that a joint system may be possible, as is providing Russia with guarantees that if the Polish and Czech sites are eventually operational, they could not be used against Russian interests.

Given all this, Russia's immediate concerns can be addressed fairly easily without sacrificing anything of real importance to the United States. The modest results of the summit are less a function of U.S. interests or even Russian conduct -- which too often is counterproductive and provides good cause for those skeptical of cooperation -- and more due to the Obama administration's failure to make the "reset" a priority. In this respect, U.S. policy has not changed much since the Bush and Clinton administrations.

Before the summit, Washington promised a "reset" but sent a series of mixed messages. In May, NATO conducted military maneuvers in Georgia despite strong objections from Russia. Although there were good reasons to proceed with the exercises -- they were small-scale, planned before Russia's war with Georgia, and included an invitation to Russia to participate -- the Obama administration could have made a stronger effort to convince the Russians that the maneuvers were not directed against them. A good use of Obama's political capital would have been a presidential or cabinet-level conversation with Moscow to discuss U.S. motives and interests.

Then, days before the summit, Obama criticized Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for having "one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new." Considering that Putin continues to influence Russian national security, it was predictable that Russia's political elite would interpret Obama's statement as endorsing the allegedly more liberal Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, against Putin. This could hardly have been helpful to Medvedev, whose political legitimacy still depends on Putin's support and approval.

Meanwhile, Russian questions about Obama's intent only intensified when Michael McFaul, a top Russia specialist at the National Security Council, said, "We're not going to reassure or give or trade, you know, anything with the Russians regarding NATO expansion or missile defense." He went on to align U.S. "national interest" on these questions with "the interests of our allies in Europe." This statement was seen within Russia as a sign that the Obama administration was not prepared to negotiate on the issues most important to Russia and would instead settle these questions without regard to Russia's perspective and with input from new NATO member states considered antagonistic toward Russia.

In Moscow, however, this is not quite how Obama acted. All issues were on the table and -- to Russia's satisfaction -- the two presidents signed a statement affirming the link between strategic offensive and defensive weapons. This linkage was vague, but Medvedev cited it as an acknowledgement that Russian views counted. Then, to compensate for his earlier criticism of Putin, Obama praised the prime minister's "extraordinary work" while president. Still, this did not overcome the resentment of some on the Russian side over Obama choosing to spend one of his two nights in Moscow at a nightclub with his family rather than with his Russian hosts.

From Moscow's perspective, Russia offered a significant goodwill gesture in allowing U.S. military planes to fly over Russian territory on their way to Afghanistan -- but it did not receive a goodwill gesture in return. In fact, on the question of repealing the Jackson-Vanik amendment -- a move promised by the Obama administration and three preceding administrations -- U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said in Moscow that Russia must remove restrictions on U.S. poultry and pork imports as "a significant first step" toward persuading Congress to repeal the act.

The Moscow summit was a useful step and certainly did no damage. However, it did not send a clear signal that Obama has decided to make the U.S.-Russian relationship a personal priority. Without such clarity about the president's commitment, the relationship is unlikely to progress significantly. The Bilateral Presidential Commission is helpful as an expression of presidential commitment but cannot be a substitute for it.

More fundamentally, the United States needs to think more strategically about what is required to turn Russia into a responsible stakeholder in international security. Early last century, the Treaty of Versailles excluded Germany and Russia from European security architecture and thereby contributed to a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War II. Now, more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, Russia remains outside this NATO-dominated structure.

Most officials in the United States and Europe were dismissive of Medvedev's call for a new European security treaty that would include Russia as a full partner. It is understandable that Western leaders are reluctant to do anything that might weaken NATO's mandate, especially when the alliance continues to play a role in providing security in places such as Afghanistan and Kosovo, but this should not obscure the fact that marginalizing a great power such as Russia could push it into seeking partners outside Europe, such as in China or Iran, to the detriment of U.S. interests.

Estrangement from the West would cost Russia dearly, but it would not be without costs to the United States either. An isolated Russia could make it harder to use such international institutions as the UN to advance U.S. interests, as well as provide the hint of an alternative to U.S. primacy, potentially emboldening other U.S. competitors and rivals. Pursuing a partnership with Moscow is difficult and frustrating, but neglecting Russia could severely compromise the pursuit of vital U.S. national interests tomorrow and in the years to come.

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Source:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65203/dimitri-k-simes/an-uncertain-reset

Tags:

Russia, USA, Medvedev, Putin, Obama, Russia-US Summit, U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, Treaty of Versailles, NATO, Taliban, Iran, North Korea, Georgia, UN, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Germany, Global Development News, Europe, Ukraine, CFR, Armenia, Belarus,

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Google, Facebook Launch Persian Services

(AFP) - Internet giant Google has unveiled a Farsi translation service to help Iranians "communicate directly" to the world, while Facebook has launched a version of its site in Persian, they said Friday.

The Internet has played a key role in allowing some Iranians to communicate since last week's disputed presidential elections and many international media outlets have used services like Twitter and emails in their coverage. "We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran," Google's principal scientist Franz Och said, announcing the addition of Farsi to Google Translate, its free online service.

Like YouTube and Twitter, "Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa -- increasing everyone's access to information," he added in a posting on Google's official blog. Meanwhile, Facebook engineer Eric Kwan said on its blog: "Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath." He added: "Today we're making the entire site available in a beta version of Persian." Several thousand people posted a "thumbs up" reaction to the news, denoting their approval.

The BBC reported that Google and Facebook had speeded up work on their projects because of huge interest in current events in Iran. Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been declared the winner of the elections, provoking major protests on the streets of Tehran by supporters of his principal challenger, moderate former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Many young people have been taking part in the protests. Meanwhile, the BBC also said Friday it has increased the number of satellites carrying its BBC Persian television service to countries including Iran. It said in a statement that the Hotbird 6 satellite which carries BBC international TV and radio services had been subjected to "deliberate interference" since last Friday. Services will now be available via three other satellites.

"This is an important time for Iran and many Iranians are turning to the BBC for impartial and independent news and information during this crisis," said BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090619/tc_afp/iranpoliticsinternetgooglefacebookmedialanguage_20090619160723

Tags: Google, Twitter, Facebook, Farsi, Iran, BBC, YouTube, Hotbird 6, Franz Och, Peter Horrocks, Eric Kwan, BBC Persian Television, Google Translate, Global Best Practice,

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Mideast Hanging On Every Text and Tweet From Iran

Though Tehran has largely shut down communication outlets, protesters are getting out snippets of text and stealthily uploaded photos in a guerrilla-style Internet revolt.

Reporting from Cairo -- Footage of burning cars, masked boys and bloodied protesters in Iran is playing across the Middle East, captivating Arab countries where repressive regimes have for years been arresting political bloggers and cyberspace dissidents.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations have tense relations with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Shiite-led theocracy ruling Iran. But they don't want protests in Tehran to inspire similar democratic fervor in their countries -- especially the merging of Facebook and Twitter with a potent opposition leader like Iran's presidential challenger, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

So far, that has yet to happen. Egyptian activists, for example, have called for rallies and strikes on Internet social networks over the last year, but they have no galvanizing personality and are too disorganized to pose a threat to the police state controlled by President Hosni Mubarak.

"I don't think similar events could even take place in Egypt or other Arab countries," said Ibrahim Issa, editor of the Cairo independent newspaper Al Dustour, who has been arrested a number of times for criticizing the Mubarak government. "We hope and we always keep faith that what's happening in Iran could push Arabs to try and do the same against their oppressive regimes. But reality tells us that this is not applicable. We are comparing 30 years of what I can call Iranian democracy to 30 years of Egyptian tyranny."

The Middle East is witnessing Iran slip into a guerrilla-style Internet and Twitter game of strategies and slogans pecked out by protesters attempting to outflank a government that has largely shut down communication outlets, leaving the nation breathless on snippets of text and stealthily uploaded pictures.

It is a battle on the streets and across the airways, a realm where technology is both churning out and smothering polarizing messages and images. Iranian authorities have blocked opposition websites, jammed satellite TV channels and cut off text messaging. But still, word is trickling beyond the censors, linking, however sparsely, protesters from Tehran to those elsewhere in the country.

Tweets by StopAhmadi are both philosophical and terse: "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. Over n' out." "Girl shot in Tehran." Persiankiwi's tweets list updates of police movements and arrests: "Our street is quiet now -- we cannot move tonight but must move asap when dawn starts."

Iran is offering an intriguing glimpse into how years of disillusionment can suddenly leap from cafes and university campuses to a national revolt, where dueling political voices and agendas square off with banners, rhetoric and allegations of election fraud.

The Iranian elections have "imposed themselves on everything. The masses of young men, the noticeable presence of young women -- especially female university students -- and the slogans of change, the intense competition that raged," Mohammad Hussein al-Yusifi wrote in the Kuwait daily Awan. "All these factors left us no possibility but to observe closely what is happening on the Iranian scene."

The characters in that tumult, appearing amid videos of tear gas and baton-swinging police, have provided alluring narratives: presidential challenger Mousavi, whose Facebook fan group has about 50,000 members, standing amid throngs of his supporters; Ahmadinejad proclaiming victory and calling for calm; and the hovering visage of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Each is mentioned on Twitter missives bristling with rumors about what might happen next.

But sometimes things go blank. On Tuesday, Persiankiwi's Twitter feed, which has nearly 19,000 followers, posted this: "I must log off now -- will log on when I have more info -- need phone line -- no mobile cover, no sms, no satellite, no radio." Similar difficulties are encountered by international media. Teymoor Nabili, a reporter for Al Jazeera, wrote on the network's website: "Day-by-day our ability to access any information has been slowly whittled away. . . . I am no longer allowed to take a camera out into the streets. I'm not even sure I can walk out into the streets with a mobile phone without getting into trouble."

Activists and bloggers watching developments in Iran from afar say the protests show the promise and limits of technology in orchestrating the kind of social unrest seen in Tehran. There is also the sentiment that Iranian activists rising up against an anti-Western regime enjoy more international support than their counterparts in Arab countries where anti-democratic governments are close U.S. allies.

"A cyber war and its bloggers [can't] carry out a revolution or overthrow a certain regime on its own," said Wael Abbas, a blogger and human rights activist in Egypt. "Full revolution has to come from the masses in the streets." The huge rallies and placards in Tehran make Issa, the Cairo editor, envious: "The current Egyptian system was built on fraud while the Iranian revolution was built by the people, and that is why they are fighting for such a system," he said. "The bottom line is that unlike Iran, we are politically dead."

Iran's revolutionary spirit, evident 30 years ago in the Islamic Revolution, has been unbottled again. And for the Arab world it is a lesson in resistance and a maturing democracy that may be controlled by clerics but is expressing its will in the streets and in blips of texts and tweets.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-iran-image17-2009jun17,0,5597.story?track=rss

Tags: Iran, Twitter, Iranian elections, Iranian protests, Cairo, Egypt, Facebook, Bloggers, activists, persiankiwi, Tehran, Global Development News, Al Dustour, Mubarak,

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Iranians Using British Software to Crash Official Websites and TV

LONDON (AFP) - - A British web designer claimed Tuesday that an application he developed is being used by opponents of recently re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to crash official websites in Iran.

Ryan Kelly developed the software to automatically refresh websites such as eBay, but told Channel Four News he had received emails from Iranians saying they were using it to bombard official websites with hits, making them crash. The 25-year-old from London said the number of visitors to the site where the programme is available, www.pagereboot.com, has surged in recent days.

"Later I got lots of emails from Iranians saying they were using the application to attack government websites and bring them down," he said. Iran's capital Tehran has been rocked by protests for four days since the results of Friday's presidential election were announced, amid complaints of rigging from supporters of Ahmedinejad's main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi

Kelly had to take his website down because the huge spike in Internet traffic was exceeding his server limits. But after an online appeal for donations to cover the increased costs, he was able to make it available again. "I agree with what they are doing and will keep it up there as long as I can, and as long as the server does not overload," he told Channel Four News.

The Internet has played a crucial role in the Iranian election, with reformists using it to mobilise supporters and circumvent their lack of access to state-controlled media in the run up to the vote.

Source: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20090617/ttc-iran-politics-internet-britain-0de2eff.html

Tags: Cyberwars, British, Ahmedinejad, Iran, Iran elections, Iran protests, Ryan Kelly, ebay, Channel four news, pagereboot.com, Mousavi, Global IT News,

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US Asks Twitter to Stay Online Because of Iran Vote

NEW YORK (AFP) – The US government took the unusual step of asking Twitter to delay a planned maintenance outage because of its use as a communications tool by Iranians following their disputed election, according to a senior official.

The request highlighted the Obama administration's Web-savvy and the power of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook in organizing protests over the election results in the face of a ban by Iranian authorities on other media. But it also seemed to run counter to President Barack Obama's public efforts not to appear to be meddling in Iran's internal affairs.

Twitter delayed Monday's scheduled tuneup, which would have taken place during daylight hours in Iran, and rescheduled it for Tuesday but said the decision was made with its network provider, not the State Department. The micro-blogging site went down around 5:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Tuesday and was back online about an hour later.

A State Department official in Washington said Twitter had been asked to delay Monday's shutdown because it was being used as "an important means of communications" in Iran. The official told reporters on condition of anonymity that Twitter was all the more important because the Iranian government had shut down other websites, cell phones, and newspapers.

"One of the areas where people are able to get out the word is through Twitter," the official said. "They announced they were going to shut down their system for maintenance and we asked them not to." Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, in a blog post, noted the State Department request but said the decision to delay the outage was made with Twitter's network provider, NTT America.

"When we worked with our network provider yesterday to reschedule this planned maintenance, we did so because events in Iran were tied directly to the growing significance of Twitter as an important communication and information network," Stone said.

"We decided together to move the date. It made sense for Twitter and for NTT America to keep services active during this highly visible global event," he said. Stone said "it's humbling to think that our two-year old company could be playing such a globally meaningful role that State officials find their way toward highlighting our significance.

"However, it's important to note that the State Department does not have access to our decision making process," he said. "Nevertheless, we can both agree that the open exchange of information is a positive force in the world." Stone also said the maintenance was a success and Twitter's network capacity had been "significantly increased."

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said meanwhile that the United States does not intend to meddle in Iranian politics. "We don't want to be seen as interfering," he said. Obama himself issued the same message Tuesday, saying: "It is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations to be seen as ... meddling in Iranian elections."

Kelly went on to say that new media provided a good source of information for the US government, which has had no diplomatic relations with Iran for three decades. "We're of course monitoring the situation through a number of different media, including social media networks like Facebook and Twitter," he said.

Another Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, speaking at a two-day conference in New York on Tuesday about the micro-blogging service, described the usage of Twitter by Iranians as "amazing." "Just think about what's occurring over there and the accessibility that we all have to see this unfold in real time," he said. "It's amazing. It's huge."

"Suddenly everything that's happening over there feels extremely close," he said. "It feels approachable. And that's really important and that is really the greatest success of what Twitter is."

"If ever there was a time that Twitter mattered it was this past weekend in Iran," added Jeff Pulver, organizer of the 140 Character Conference.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090617/ts_alt_afp/iranuspoliticsunrestinternettwitter_20090617014955

Tags: US State Department, Obama, Biz Stone, Twitter, NTT America, Jack Dorsey, 140 Character Conference, Jeff Pulver, Iran, Iranians, Facebook, Election, Election Protests, Global Development News,

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