The Resurgent Russian Bear

"I shall be an autocrat, that's my trade". Thus quipped the Empress
of Russia, Catherine the Great, who stamped Russian authority onto
the international stage, seizing vast swathes of territory and
establishing Russia as a formidable power in the middle of the
eighteenth century. It appears that Vladimir Putin has taken her
example to heart.

Buoyed up by high energy prices, Putin has embarked on an aggressive
foreign policy agenda which seeks to re-establish Russia as a
pre-eminent international power in opposition to what it perceives
to be American and European hegemony. This foreign policy agenda is
based around two primary goals, namely tightening Russian control
over the former Soviet Republics and tightening alliances and
friendships with like-minded states and in areas of strategic
importance.

To Israel's detriment, it appears that Moscow has identified the
Middle East as a primary region through which to recapture its
former international significance. Russia has sought to present
itself to the Arabs as a more neutral arbiter than the U.S. in order
to increase its international influence in this strategic region of
the world.

To this end, Moscow has courted some of the most noxious regimes in
the neighbourhood and provided them with sophisticated weaponry and
diplomatic support which has been extremely damaging to Israel's
interests. A further complication to this state of affairs is that
Israel imports a large percentage of its oil from Russia, as much as
seventy percent according to some analysts, rendering diplomatic
protests and threats somewhat toothless.

Putin's invitation to Hamas top-brass for talks in Moscow in March
2006 was a prime example of Russia's antagonistic foreign policy. It
was a cynical attempt to increase Russian influence with the
Palestinians with the additional benefit of underlining the
independence of Russian foreign policy from the U.S. and the West.

Why else would a country, which has experienced the horrors of
Islamist terrorism like the Beslan school massacre, court Hamas
which has been one of the pioneers of the Islamic terrorist creed?

Russia's arms sales to Israel's neighbours have also been hugely
problematic. In December 2005, Russia signed a contract with Iran to
deliver around thirty TOR-M1 air-defence systems and began to
deliver them in late 2006, even as debates in the UN Security
Council were underway regarding possible sanctions of Iran over its
refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

The TOR-M1 is one of the most advanced air-defence systems in the
world capable of shooting down planes at low-altitude as well as
precision guided munitions and cruise missiles. Iran will place
these systems around its sensitive nuclear installations in Isfahan,
Bushehr and others and will give the Iranian regime even greater
confidence to defy international insistence that it halt its uranium
enrichment and comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA).

In April 2005, Russia also completed the sale of advanced "Igla"
anti-aircraft missiles to Syria and was only dissuaded from selling
its "Iskander-E", 300km range tactical missile to Syria by strong
American pressure. Russia also sold large numbers of advanced
anti-tank missiles to Syria and Iran during the 1990s, some of which
were subsequently transferred to Hizballah and used to deadly effect
against Israeli soldiers and tanks in the Israel-Lebanon war this
summer.

During the war, Israeli troops found the sophisticated Russian
anti-tank Kornet missile in abandoned Hizballah positions with the
words "Customer: Ministry of Defence of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula,
Russia" written on them. The Russian made RPG-29 was also used by
Hizballah during the war.

The republics of the former Soviet empire or, as the Kremlin refers
to them, Russia's "Near Abroad" have been the other major target of
Russia's new assertiveness. For example, Moscow has unabashedly
promoted separatism in Georgia's breakaway territories, Abkhazia and
South Ossetia in response to Georgia's pro-Western orientation and
its attempts to join NATO. Russia's other truculent former vassal,
Ukraine, has also been displeasing its former master of late, with
Kiev's tightening relationship with NATO being a major factor behind
Russia's antagonism.

The establishment and strengthening of multi-lateral alliances such
as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), consisting of the
former Soviet Central Asian Republics and China, is an important
tool for Moscow in its efforts to counter what it sees as the
encroachment of Western influence into the traditional spheres of
Russian authority. Russia has also increasingly aligned itself with
China to form a bulwark against Western dominance of global affairs
and has advanced this alliance through arms sales, joint war-games
and by building pipelines to China to quench Beijing's thirst for
oil and gas.

Further enhancing its reputation as arms supplier to the world's
tyrannical regimes, Russia sold twelve MiG-29 warplanes to Sudan in
2002, a country whose government has been complicit in the genocide
of approximately 400,000 people in Sudan's western province of Darfur.

Russian energy companies have also signed contracts for the
development and exploitation of oil resources in Sudan and have
agreed to increase "cooperation in the exploitation and development
of oil and gas fields and the transportation, utilization and sale
of gas" in Iran.

In light of these commercial interests it is easy to see why Moscow
has threatened to use its veto in the Security Council to block
meaningful sanctions against Sudan which would seek to halt the
ongoing ethnic-cleansing there, and against Iran to force it to
cease its uranium enrichment programme. Moscow's one billion dollar
contract to build Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor has also clearly
influenced this attitude.

The recent spate of politically motivated killings of prominent
Russian critics of Putin and the Chechen Wars point to possible
Kremlin connivance and testify to the government's growing
authoritarian nature. They also illustrate Moscow's extreme
sensitivity to criticism of its foreign policy and its unwillingness
to brook dissent. The poisoning and death of former KGB
Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Litvinenko in November is just one in a
series of assassinations of those who have drawn the Kremlin's ire.

The deaths of Litvinenko, Duma Deputy Sergei Yushenkov in April 2003
and Duma DeputyYuri Shchekochikhin in July of the same year are all
linked by the fact that these individuals had accused the Russian
Federal Security Service (FSB) of coordinating the Russian apartment
bombings of 1999, which killed over three hundred people, in order
to give Russia a pretext for starting the second Chechen war. The
evidence relating to the key event supporting this allegation was
sealed by the Duma for seventy-five years. The slaying of the
prominent war-critic Anna Politkovskaya in October appears to offer
similar testimony to Moscow's ruthless attitude to its opponents.

Russia remains a formidable power in global affairs and Moscow is
positioning itself at the nexus of an international movement to defy
and oppose Western influence. It is clear that Russia is forging
ahead with its plans to re-capture its former authority and that its
malign influence is spreading out over the Middle East, much of Asia
and beyond as well. What is not clear is if, and how, the West will
try to rein in the Resurgent Bear.

Full Article: http://web.israelinsider.com/views/10046.htm

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"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.