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Courting the Kremlin

Russian Mistrust Overshadows Obama's Moscow Visit

By Uwe Klussmann and Matthias Schepp in Moscow

Barack Obama will lobby for nuclear disarmament and a fresh start in relations with Russia during his first visit to Moscow as president next week. But little concrete progress is expected -- the hosts fear America's overtures are a trap aimed at further reducing Russia's global influence.

John Beyrle, Washington's man in Moscow, would never have seen the light of day if it hadn't been for a group of decent Red Army soldiers. "My father always saw the Russians as a people that saved his life," the US ambassador recalls. "They could simply have shot him dead."

Beyrle's father had escaped from a German prisoner-of-war camp and headed east in the final months of World War II. Soviet soldiers found him hiding in a haystack and he was afraid they would kill him. He offered them Lucky Strike cigarettes and spent the final weeks of the war fighting on their side.

This background has given his son a high standing in political circles of the Russian capital, and his fluent command of Russian no doubt helps. He has been ambassador for exactly one year and now faces his biggest test -- next Monday, Barack Obama will travel to Moscow for his first visit to Russia as American president.

Russia, whose foreign policy is traditionally fixated on America, is buzzing with anticipation that the visit might improve ties between the former Cold War enemies. Beyrle, ever the diplomat, has been at pains to play down all the issues of conflict. Russia and America, he says "have more common interests than disagreements."

Overload

But Russia's national interests stand in the way of any major rapprochement. NATO's eastward expansion, the planned US missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, Iran, nuclear disarmament -- the list of contentious issues is so long that a recent translation gaffe by a member of staff in Hillary Clinton's State Department seemed like a bad omen.

At a meeting in March, Clinton handed her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov a gift in the form of a red reset button to symbolize US hopes to mend relations with Moscow. The word "peregruzka" was engraved on the device as the Russian translation of reset. But "peregruzka" means overload, as Lavrov pointed out.

After years of mounting alienation, ties between the two countries reached a low point last August with the brief war between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia. Relations weren't helped by "the lessons from Condoleezza Rice which I will greatly miss," as President Dmitry Medvedev mocked in private, referring to Clinton's predecessor.

Lingering Mistrust

The majority opinion in Moscow is that the more conciliatory tone of the Obama team stems solely from the current weakness of the US economy. "Of course Obama hasn't given up the ambition that America remains the leading power," says Evgeny Bazhanov of the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow.

Nuclear disarmament offers the best chances of quick progress. Obama wants to reduce the number of nuclear warheads for long-range missiles to around 1,000 in an initial step. Medvedev is talking about having less than 1,700 in a continuation of the Start I treaty, which expires in December.

Russia, also hit by the financial crisis, can't introduce its expensive Topol-M missile system as fast as planned, and maintaining its missile forces costs an estimated €2.5 billion ($3.5 billion) per year. That suggests agreement can be reached on a reduction in the arsenal, albeit a moderate one.

Deeper cuts would deprive Moscow of the last military trump card it still has vis-à-vis the Americans and Chinese. Washington heavily outguns Russia in terms of conventional weapons and Beijing is rapidly arming up. Russia wants to avoid at all costs shrinking to the status of middle-ranking nuclear powers such as France and Britain.

There's a consensus in Russia that the country didn't just lose the Cold War, but also came second in the disarmament game. Washington withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty limiting missile defence systems in 2002 and doesn't want to renegotiate the treaty on conventional weapons in Europe. And the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty on destroying mid-range missiles favored America, which is only reachable with long-range missiles, argues Prime minister Vladimir Putin. Close to Russia, Pakistan and India already have equivalent weapons systems, and North Korea and Iran could follow them.

"A Beautiful Dream"

In the best-case scenario, Russian diplomats see Obama's vision of a world free of nuclear weapons as a "beautiful dream," as Yuli Kvitsinsky, a former Soviet ambassador to West Germany and an experienced disarmament expert, puts it. If anything, it's seen as a trap to further weaken Russia's influence in the world.

Viktor Baranez, a retired colonel who is star commentator for a tabloid newspaper close to the Kremlin, has the following advice for Medvedev: Only give America something if Russia really gets something in return. "Unfortunately we have the tendency to put a present out on the table whenever we get a senior visitor from Washington -- and the thanks we get is that NATO comes closer to our borders," he says. The Kremlin is attaching nuclear disarmament to the condition that America give up its plans for a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic -- or develop it together with Moscow.

There's fundamental disagreement when it comes to former Soviet states that gained independence in the early 1990s. America wants to being them closer to the West, while Medvedev regards them as being part of Russia's "privileged sphere of influence."

"Hand Over Our Beloved Little Alaska"

Apart from the Caucasus, Ukraine offers the biggest source of conflict. If the country of 46 million people, from whose capital Kiev the Russian empire originated, were to join NATO, Russia would lose the base of its Black Sea fleet on the Crimean peninsula.

Moscow is banking on the NATO skepticism of most Ukrainians and hopes that the unpopular president, Viktor Yushchenko, a friend of America, will lose power in elections set for next January. So there are plenty of contentious issues for Obama to deal with.

US Ambassador Beyrle's father was awarded four medals by former Russian President Boris Yeltsin -- now Beyrle is trying to arrange a harmonious summit meeting between Obama and Medvedev. But the meeting won't yield substantial progress. The differences are too great, and the elites in both countries are too accustomed to viewing each other as opponents rather than partners. Besides, Russia is still plagued by the phantom pain of losing its empire.

After all, even Alaska belonged to Russia until 1867. At evening parties in Russia's embassy in Washington, staff still like to strike up a song by Russian rock group Lubeh, of whom Putin is a big fan: "Don't be stupid, America, hand over our beloved little Alaska."