Both American and Russian newspapers carry Bush’s accusations and Putin’s denials of Russian arms sales to Iraq. I’m pretty sure that the accusations are true (see my reasoning below), but, like much of Bush’s diplomatic efforts, they are likely to only further sicken already ailing relations with a much-needed ally in the war on terror.
Putin’s denials are not very powerful, nor are they very credible, but they are not unprecedented either. The 40th President of the US was accused, though never convicted, of selling arms to an Axis-of-Evil nation: Iran.
Back in the 1990’s, I visited, almost by accident, a Russian arms factory in Siberia. (You can read about the absurd experience in my book.) My Siberian business partners took me there without telling me it was a military factory. We were looking to rent warehouse space for the trainloads of cocoa beans we were importing for Siberian chocolate factories. With me pretending to be Russian, we made it past security and were shown into the office of the director of the arms factory. He was proud of the quality of weapons they produced, but he was frustrated that he wasn’t allowed to sell them to anybody but the bureaucrats in Moscow, who paid poorly and never on time. He was struggling to find a way to pay his employees. It was clear to me from his tirades that he would have loved to a) sell his products directly on the open market and b) have his products ‘tested’ against the best in the world (i.e. the US military). This second desire was clearly a reflection of his genuine respect for the US military. He seemed to have no animosity for America; most of his venom he saved for, as he called them, the “bastards in Moscow.”
Bottom line: Just as it is a scorpion’s nature to sting, it is a manufacturer’s nature to sell his products, even if they're deadly arms, to buyers, even if they’re wicked tyrants.
(I’m not am impartial spectator in this diplomatic row. My brother is a US Marine Corp pilot. He is in Iraq flying an AV-8 Harrier to destroy Saddam’s regime and to liberate the Iraqis. (In his last email, sent just a few days before the war started, he said that he was reading Tocqueville in his few spare minutes to better understand democracy and America.) So these alleged Russian arms sales puts my brother at greater risk. This concerns me.
More Accusations and Denials…
In related, but mostly ignored in the US, news, Russia has accused the US of Cold War practices by spying on Russia with planes that are supposed to be locating Chechen terrorists in Georgia. Georgia’s defense minister confirmed that US planes might, on occasion, stray into Russian airspace. Imagine the headline if Russian airplanes were found a) flying in Northern Mexico supposedly to help locate separatists rebels and b) these Russian planes strayed into US air space.
I don't know if Bush stopping US spy planes allegedly flying over Russian airspace would cause Putin to stop the alleged arms sales to Iraq. I'm pretty certain, however, that Bush's public accusation won't stop them. As I said before, this concerns me.
Posted by Xander at March 25, 2003 09:56 AM | TrackBack