President Bush and President Putin at the G-8 Summit in St. Petersburg
The U.S. and Russia finally seem to have reached an agreement on Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Next week President Bush and President Putin will meet face to face at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam, where they will make the agreement official.
The last time the U.S. and Russia were this close to a deal was before Russia’s July 2006 showcase G-8 Economic Summit in St. Petersburg. Iran spoiled the party by ordering Hezbollah to rain rockets on Israel. At the summit, both Tony Blair and George Bush were visibly distracted by the Mideast conflict, and were unable to address a comprehensive agenda for engaging Russia. On the Russian side, the money the Kremlin spent to hire the Washington-based Ketchum PR firm to promote Russia’s image for the summit appeared to be wasted. Both during and after the G-8 summit, the U.S. media was flooded with stories depicting Putin as a tyrant cracking down on economic and civil liberties at home and arming America’s enemies abroad. When Israeli newspapers reported that several Israeli Defense Forces tank crews were killed using Russian anti-armor missiles supplied to Hezbollah by Syria, the anti-Russian mood in Washington reached a boil.
President Putin meeting with Iranian envoy Ali Larijani last week in Moscow
This time around Russia seems determined not to let Iran come between it and full membership into the WTO. In recent weeks the Kremlin has walked a fine line on Iran, joining with China at the United Nations to oppose stiff sanctions against Teheran favored by the U.S. and European Union, but also sending signals that it would be open to allowing some sanctions if the Iranians continue to enrich uranium.
During a question and answer session with American journalists in the Moscow suburbs last September, Putin declared that “Iran should abandon plans for enrichment on its soil.” Putin emphasized that Iran constituted “a special case…located in a very dangerous area,” and that other countries with nuclear capability such as South Africa or Brazil, “do not establish in their constitutions the goal of destroying another state” as the Islamic Republic of Iran does with Israel.
Putin meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Moscow on October 19, 2006
Ironically, just as the relationship between Washington and Moscow was deteriorating this summer, Jerusalem continued to reach out to the Kremlin. In August, several well-respected Israeli lawyers opened an investigation into whether fugitive oligarch Leonid Nevzlin fraudulently obtained Israeli citizenship after he fled charges of tax evasion and murder in Russia. Israeli companies were also reportedly negotiating with Russia’s state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom to supply Israel via an undersea pipeline from Turkey.
Perhaps it is easier for Israel to adopt a pragmatic approach towards Russia because it has one million citizens of Russian or Ukrainian descent. Or maybe Jerusalem feels that it has no choice but to work with the Kremlin in order to maintain a non-Arab intermediary for negotiating with Iran. Either way, it seems odd that Israel, the country most threatened by Iran’s nuclear ambitions, would be more prepared to work with Moscow than the U.S. is right now. In the wake of last week’s electoral debacle, the Bush Administration appears to have a newfound sense of urgency to cut a deal with Russia on WTO membership.
The Kremlin has long been wary of Congressional influence over trade and diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Jackson-Vanik amendments, originally passed in 1975 to pressure the USSR into permitting Jewish refuseniks to emigrate, remain on the books, nearly fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Madame Speaker - Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
In comparison, the requirement that the People’s Republic of China abide by all the provisions of the Jackson-Vanik law was waived by American Presidents until China joined the WTO in 1999. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Most Favored Nation trade status for China became an annual political football in Congress. The decade-long debate over MFN for China seldom followed strict party lines and often produced strange bedfellows. In 2000, the conservative Weekly Standard magazine hailed Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi for her stand against MFN to punish China for its human rights abuses, while pro-business Republicans and Democrats fought for China’s inclusion in the WTO. Advocates for free trade with Russia may have to run a similar gauntlet in the new Congress.
Even after the Jackson-Vanik provisions are gone for good, this Congress is likely to be more protectionist than the Republican-led majority that scuttled China National Overseas Petroleum Company’s (CNOC) bid to buy Unocal in April 2005. The previous Congress also joined in bipartisan opposition to the proposal by United Arab Emirates-based Dubai Ports World to operate several U.S. ports in February 2006. If state-owned Russian companies such as Gazprom or Rosneft attempt to buy significant assets in the U.S., such as liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals or oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, they can probably expect a similarly hostile reception on Capitol Hill.
Comments
You see, this global war, WWIII, is already bringing us closer together.
I thought it a bit interesting that a few posts below you reported on the New York times, Russia and this WTO.
I see no reason why Russia and the U.S. cannot be friends!
John
Posted by: John | November 13, 2006 11:49 PM
"I see no reason why Russia and the U.S. cannot be friends!"
I do. From supplying Saddams regime with weapons to use against us, supplying terrorists with arms. These are scum and should wiped off the face of the earth, you are a naive fool who supports the destruction of free media, free speech and a nation that is openly hostile to us.
Posted by: James | November 14, 2006 7:41 AM
"I see no reason why Russia and the U.S. cannot be friends!"
did they themselves not give many middle east goverments sponsorship though various means
is the us not one of the worlds leading arms producers
and exactly how many arms treatys has the united states not signed
Posted by: Anonymous | November 14, 2006 2:39 PM
I see lots of reasons for the US and Russia not to be friends. Putin is re-Stalinizing the country. The media muzzled, journalists dead, a court system directed by the Kremlin, human rights organizations banished, private property returning to state hands....please, only fools and apologists for Putin's creeping fascism would see Russia as a friend. And, let's not forget the mischief that Russia is creating with Iran which 24/7 vows to blow Israel off of the map.
Posted by: penny | November 15, 2006 9:37 AM
Why are people always fixated on the bad things? So negative, so wanting trouble, so wanting bad things to happen!
So proud of their respective "views" that they refuse to compromise even the smallest bit.
Jebiga!
Posted by: John | November 16, 2006 5:29 AM
James/penny
Seems like you've figured the world around you out already, go back to watching CNN (or Fox, I suspect), or ...
Oops,my bad, forgot that you live in the freest country in the world so there are no real alternatives, sorry!
Good night, and good luck!
Posted by: Arbitr | November 16, 2006 6:10 AM
"I see no reason why the US and Russia shouldn't be friends" Well I do. The US wants to nick Russia's oil and gas by fair or foul for starters. It tries to cause friction btween Russia and the other ex-Soviet Union states.
Then there is the chronic under-education of the average American. Apparently less than 20% of Congressmen have been abroad and probably not more than 1% can speak a foreign language. Everything has to be in this small controlled world of super-markets, reality TV for small brains, big cars using cheap "gas", condos and misleading news. I would urge Russians to spend more time developing their alliances with Western Europe and the Far East.
Posted by: Mario | November 16, 2006 11:14 AM
Hey, Mario, how many Russian elected officials are widely traveled? Get real. Not having a a free press where an open exchange of ideas is available to the public is the definition of undereducated. You haven't noticed there are no independent tv stations remaining in Russia anymore. All criticism of Putin and his cronies are being systematically muzzled if no outright murdered.
Your ridiculous measurement of educated is laughable. How many Russians are as widely traveled or college educated as Americans?
Google it.
Posted by: penny | November 17, 2006 9:45 AM
Penny, to be honest, you know nothing about real situation here in Russia.
Maybe not all russian officials were in foreign countries, USA for example, but many of them are very well educated, and know world much better than USA officials. I'm sure of it.
Also, you speak about not having a free press. It is untrue. Except state-owned national TV, there are lots of free radio, TV-stations. And internet of course! :)
And maybe you do not understand, but we, russians are not worrying to much about "free press". We have other problems that are more important than freedom of press. For example, problem of NATO which is constantly trying to destabilize our borders.
You probably never heard of it? So, what free press we are speaking about? You haven't access to many information in your country too.
Posted by: Alex | November 18, 2006 12:24 AM
Alex, how pathetic, no concern about your lack of a free press, a fundamental human right, a necessity in a civil and free society, but, paranoia regarding NATO. You're the perfect anti-democracy Putin lackey.
Posted by: Penny | November 22, 2006 9:35 PM
John, I think this comment thread is a pretty good answer to why Russian and the US cannot be friends, at least on a country-to-country level.
Americans and Russians live in different worlds with vastly different histories. History is king in Europe and Asia, it is everything there, it is the only thing that matters.
In the US, we couldn't care less about our ancestry or our history before 1776. Most people I know probably couldn’t even tell you want countries their ancestors came from. If they could, they wouldn’t care if any of those countries ceased to exist the next day.
All US residents have ancestors that left their homelands to achieve a better life (including "native americans"). Because no one in the US has any claim to the land, country, or its institutions based on race or heritage, it creates an even playing field for all races, creeds, religions, etc. Kind of like Antarctica, only with less ice and penguins. This will never be the case in say a region like the Caucasus, or for that matter, anywhere else in the eastern hemisphere.
Posted by: Jason Herr | November 28, 2006 11:46 AM
Hoje em dia a transmissão de conhecimentos e de opiniões através da blogosfera é algo que os poderes instituídos jamais conseguirão controlar.
Pode ler Manuel Bancaleiro - Algumas Verdades em:
http://manuel-bancaleiro.blogspot.com
Manuel Bancaleiro
Posted by: Manuel Bancaleiro | December 5, 2006 2:55 PM
Cant you just let God to deal with. Please
Posted by: yana | November 30, 2007 11:09 AM
Your ridiculous measurement of educated is laughable. How many Russians are as widely traveled or college educated as Americans?
Google it.
I did and it says that Russia has more college gratuates than any Western country.
Posted by: Anonymous | December 5, 2007 6:54 PM