Christopher Ruddy, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Apr. 28, 2004

The United States is proposing a Yalta-style understanding between it and Russia in an effort to thaw relations that have become increasingly chilly.

On March 25, senior administration officials led by deputy National Security Council adviser Stephen Hadley met with senior Russian officials in Washington at the Hay Adams Hotel to hammer out a new entente between the U.S. and Russia.

The meeting was an effort to calm Russia’s simmering anger at the U.S. for what it perceives as interference in the “republics” that once constituted the Soviet empire.

“Russia and the U.S. may be on a collision course in the former Soviet states, and the two countries have no choice but to agree on new road rules to avoid it,” writes Eugene Rumer, a fellow at the National Defense University and Richard Sokolsky, a U.S. State Department official, in a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times.

Despite placid public reassurances of friendly relations between the U.S. and Russia, Putin’s government is furious that the U.S. has been working closely with several former Soviet states, cooperation it views as meddling in its backyard.

Putin has attempted to reassert Russian influence over the republics, and Rumer and Sokolsky argue this policy is the result of the “emergence of a broad consensus within Russia to restore an exclusive Russian sphere of influence in its neighborhood.”

But the scholars also note that this “trend” could easily put Russia on a “collision course” with the United States, which continues to champion the independence and sovereignty of the former Soviet states.

The U.S. has taken increased interest in several former Soviet Republics as bulwarks against growing Islamic radicalism throughout the Mid-East and Central Asia.

Already, the U.S. has established military bases in the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Many Russians, especially its military and former KGB elites, view the growing U.S. military presence near to its borders with alarm.

'We Want to be Your Friends'

A senior Russian diplomat complained at the recent Washington meeting about the new U.S. interest in working with Russia in dealing with the Republics.

“How would you like it for the past 10 years, we were creating anti-American sentiment for you in Mexico and Puerto Rico, and then suddenly saying, we want to be your friends,” the Russian asked quizzically, according to a source close to the conversation.

The cause of recent friction centers around Georgia, and the ouster of the government of Eduard Shevardnadze after last November’s parliamentary elections. Opponents accused Shevardnadze of fraud, and civil unrest forced him to step aside.

In the ensuing chaos, the U.S. government funneled money to the Georgian government to keep it afloat.

Moscow was angry at the move, which it called a bribe to “buy off the top bureaucrats” of Georgia’s new government.

Russia and Georgia have had tense relations in recent years. Moscow continues to maintain troops in Georgia, though it had pledged to remove them.

The U.S. has found Russia’s anger over Georgia perplexing. The U.S. had openly backed Shevardnadze for more than a decade while Russia was supposedly hostile to the former Soviet foreign minister who had returned to his home country to rule.

But when Washington changed sides at the end of last year and moved against Shevardnadze, Russia quickly did an about face and came out strongly in favor of him and against the U.S. position.

America is worried that a similar crisis could erupt again in Georgia, or in Ukraine or Belarus when elections are due later this year. Without a clear understanding of what Russia’s true position is, the U.S. could be entering a minefield.

The U.S. emphasized at its meeting that the new entente with Russia was an effort to “deconflict” before any new crisis erupts.

The American effort is a slap in the face to the State Department.

At the meeting Hadley made clear to his Russian counterpart that the decision-making in future conflicts needed to be moved from State and Moscow’s foreign office so disputes could be resolved more expeditiously.

He argued for a new Yalta-style “condominium” between Washington and Moscow in dividing their interests in the former Soviet empire.

The 1945 Yalta Conference at the end of World War II was the last meeting between the big three: President Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.

The Yalta conference was intended to re establish the sovereignty of European states after the defeat of Nazi Germany. But critics say it set the stage for the Cold War when an ailing Roosevelt made too many concessions to Stalin, allowing him to create satellite states of much of Eastern Europe.

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