Though the elite media are unlikely to pay attention to it, I’m sure that the blogosphere is already abuzz over Bill Gertz’s “Russia Tied to Iraq’s Missing Arms”. (Wonder what James Taranto will make of that less than felicitous headline.) I’m going to post my own first reactions before reading what anyone else has to say. That way I can at least claim that my analysis is original, though there’s no chance that it will be unique.
I note at the outset that Mr. Gertz relies entirely on a named source, John A. Shaw, deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security. In an age when spectacular allegations so often rest on anonymous figures whose motives and credibility cannot be evaluated, that is almost a shock. As I’ve noted before, one of the corruptions of contemporary journalism is that unnamed sources are generally treated as more trustworthy than those that speak on the record. That unspoken prejudice guarantees, I’m afraid, that the Gertz article will have less impact than it should. I predict, too, that its first mention in the New York Times will be in a piece quoting “State Department (or CIA) sources” as denying everything.
Mr. Gertz devotes much of his space to considering whether Russian military units took the famous al-QaQaa explosives to Syria before the war, but a broader significance of this Russian collaboration with the Ba’athist regime is that it destroys Senator Kerry’s quaint notion, expressed in the first Presidential debate, that we could take our time about deposing Saddam Hussein because we had him “trapped”. Saddam’s ability to send aid, indeed large-scale aid, to terrorists elsewhere was, it is now clear, unimpeded by sanctions, U.N. inspections and other half-measures. The idea that we could safely leave him in place is Pollyannism on high stilts.
The Russian connection likewise demonstrates how meaningless are the words and resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. Senator Kerry claims to have met with all of the Council members and to have based his vote on authorizing the invasion of Iraq on what they told him. Did the Russian ambassador tell him about his country’s ties with the Ba’athist regime? Did the Senator really expect that ambassadors (“honest men sent to lie abroad for the good of their country”, as the old saw runs) would disclose to him all of the data needed to judge their nations’ dedication to “containing” Saddam?
We already knew that, if elected, Mr. Kerry will be the greatest Presidential naïf since Jimmy Carter. And it isn’t a revelation that Moscow was no friend of regime change in Baghdad. The real news is not the content of the story but the Bush Administration’s willingness to make it public.
It is scarcely conceivable that Mr. Shaw spoke without authorization from his superiors, either Secretary Powell or the President himself. It is also hard to believe that the U.S. government would publicize facts so discreditable to Russia without a go-ahead from President Putin. So the enigma is, why did Mr. Putin give his consent?
The most plausible explanations, I think, are the success of the invasion and the Beslan atrocity. The former would convince a realistic statesman (one unlike, say, Jacques Chirac) that sniping at America and extending covert help to its enemies are doomed strategies. President Putin is a realist, and all realists love winners.
Reinforcing that realpolitik sentiment is the murder of scores of school children by Islamofascists, a deed that appalled Russians just as 9/11 did Americans. Russia may be only a semi-democracy, but its elected leader cannot afford to be seen as siding with the friends of the friends of the Beslan murderers.
The convergence of these two factors has, it appears, led Russia to switch sides in the War on Terror. Admitting past misdeeds is part of the conversion process. I suspect that word will soon start to spread of the firing, demotion, even prosecution of officials who took Iraqi bribes or gave what will be retroactively characterized as “unauthorized” assistance to Saddam.
Whether whole-hearted Russian cooperation will add much strength to the forces of civilization is unfortunately open to doubt. Russian military forces are demoralized and have blundered badly in Chechnya. The country’s intelligence services and police are probably still rife with crypto-communists. The Putin Administration’s movement away from economic and political liberty is “worse than a crime, a blunder”. Nonetheless, having Russia a friend is better than facing it as a foe. We should feel hopeful, albeit with ambivalent hope.
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