EUR/RPM DIRECTOR TURNER DEC 16-18 MOSCOW VISIT

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 MOSCOW 003139

SIPDIS

GENEVA FOR JCIC, DEPT FOR EUR/RPM, EUR/RUS, VCI/CCA

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/29/2019
TAGS: KACT KCFE PARM PREL RS AF
SUBJECT: EUR/RPM DIRECTOR TURNER DEC 16-18 MOSCOW VISIT

Classified By: POL M/C Susan Elliott for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)


1. (C) SUMMARY: EUR/RPM Director Bruce Turner visited Moscow
December 16-18 to discuss NATO-Russia relations, the
Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, the OSCE's
Corfu Process, and Russia's proposed European Security and
NATO-Russia Council (NRC) treaties. MFA officials played up
the proposed NRC treaty as a legally binding recommitment to
the terms of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act (though
excluding many of the commitments made by Russia in this
document),claiming (unconvincingly) that Russia's desire to
have a voice in NATO decision-making would not amount to a
veto. Russia will consider NATO requests for Afghanistan,
but gratis donations are unlikely. MFA disarmament officials
said Moscow remains interested in reviving CFE, but as the
Russian military is getting used to life without it, the
treaty could die completely if the West does not make
substantial concessions on the Russian flank and Istanbul
commitments. Think tank experts and journalists were less
charitable in assessing Russia's motivations for tabling the
two draft treaties, which included excluding Ukraine and
Georgia from NATO, exempting Russia's forces from the CFE
flank regime, and maximizing Moscow's influence in the former
Soviet space. End summary.


2. (C) EUR/RPM Director Bruce Turner and Russia policy
officer Michael Carpenter met Russian officials and
non-government experts December 16-18 to discuss European
security issues in the wake of NATO SYG Rasmussen's visit to
Moscow a day earlier. Turner and party met with MFA European
cooperation department director Vladimir Voronkov, deputy
Yuri Gorlach, and MFA DVBR conventional arms control director
Anton Mazur. Other meetings included Dmitry Danilov
(Institute of Europe),Pavel Felgenhauer (Novaya Gazeta),
Dmitri Trenin (Carnegie Center),Fedor Lukyanov (Institute of
Europe and editor of "Russia in World Affairs"),and Tatyana
Parkhalina (Center for European Security).

MFA on NATO-Russia and European Security Treaties
-------------- --------------


3. (C) European cooperation director Voronkov said Moscow was
positive about NATO SYG Rasmussen's visit, particularly the
commitment to repair relations with Russia and consult on the
new strategic concept. However, he noted cooperation would
be easier if the overall NATO-Russia relationship were
"reset" on the basis of the European Security Treaty proposed
by President Medvedev and the NATO-Russia Council (NRC)
agreement proposed by Foreign Minister Lavrov at the December
4 NRC ministerial. Voronkov said Russia wanted NATO
Strategic Concept discussions to be transparent and welcomed
former Secretary Albright's planned trip to Moscow to engage
on the new concept. Voronkov said the GOR was disappointed
by Rasmussen's comments on Medvedev's draft European Security
Treaty (EST) and asked when the U.S. would provide official
comments. Turner said the U.S. was still studying Russia's
proposals and would provide more detailed comments in the
near future, but asked why new legally binding treaties were
necessary given that NATO was fulfilling all of its
commitments in the NATO-Russia Founding Act.


4. (C) Discussing Rasmussen's appeals for assistance in
Afghanistan, Voronkov said Russia is interested and
positively inclined towards cooperation, but intimated that
cooperation would be easier on a fee-for-service basis,
joking that "Russia is now the most capitalist country in the
world." He played up the possibilities for cooperation with
Russian companies, which should be given opportunity to bid
on contracts in Afghanistan. Russia would also like to
cooperate with NATO on counter-narcotics, missile defense,
the Cooperative Airspace Initiative, critical infrastructure,
energy security, and in the military-technical field, e.g.,
training helicopter pilots, maintaining helicopters, and
providing spare parts.

NRC Treaty
--------------


5. (C) Voronkov and Gorlach portrayed the Russian draft
"Agreement on Basic Principles Governing Relations among NRC
Members in the Security Sphere" as the basis for redefining
Russia's relations with the West, noting that Rasmussen's
statement that "NATO will never attack Russia" was welcome,
but should be made legally binding so it will be permanent.

MOSCOW 00003139 002 OF 004


Voronkov asserted that just as the 1947 Washington Treaty
solved the conflict between France and Germany, the NRC
treaty and EST could eliminate conflict between NATO and
Russia. The "indivisible security" concept, according to
Voronkov, is not meant to give Russia a veto over NATO
decisions ("We respect NATO's sovereign right to act.") but
to ensure Russia's concerns are taken into account "up
front." (Note: Despite these protestations, the NRC draft
treaty as written would grant Russia a veto over any
substantial NATO deployments on the territory of "new"
Allies, i.e., those who joined NATO after 1997 - as well as
all other European states. End note.) Voronkov's deputy
Gorlach explained that a NRC treaty is not meant to
substitute for CFE. While Russia is not sure whether U.S.
bases in Bulgaria and Romania currently contain "substantial
combat forces," Russia is concerned that they could in the
future, which is why Russia needs the legally binding
commitment contained in the NRC treaty.


6. (C) Voronkov said the agreement to regulate "incidents
related to military activities" (Article 3 of NRC treaty) is
aimed at preventing incidents that could arise from, e.g.,
accidental Russian over-flight of Lithuanian territory or
close encounters between Russian and NATO ships on the Black
Sea. Turner said communications links to prevent such
incidents would be a good idea and should be explored further.

OSCE
--------------


7. (C) Voronkov agreed that EST should be further discussed
at OSCE through the Corfu Process and hoped that that HOSG
involvement in these discussions at a future summit could
give impetus to "concrete decisions." He said Russia looked
favorably at Kazakhstan's proposal -- as incoming
Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE -- to hold a summit in 2010,
but offered no ideas for deliverables other than highlighting
progress on "process" issues. Turner cautioned that "summit
fatigue" makes it unlikely the U.S. would participate unless
there were substantive deliverables.


8. (C) Voronkov echoed the Russian position that this is not
the time for OSCE to work inside Afghanistan, raising
concerns for the safety of any OSCE mission. Carpenter noted
that an OSCE Election Support Team had nevertheless provided
valuable assistance inside Afghanistan during the recent
presidential elections.


9. (C) Responding to Turner's question why Russia was
retreating from human rights commitments made in the 1990s,
Voronkov said "We're at a different stage of development"
from the mid-1990s and no longer need to focus on
"democratizing" Central and Eastern Europe. Although an
exclusive OSCE focus on human rights will bring about
deadlock, Russia's approach to the "security of the
individual" will be based on all three dimensions and might
accommodate U.S. concerns.

CFE: We're Still Interested
--------------


10. (C) MFA Department of Security Affairs and Disarmament
(DVBR) conventional arms control director Mazur said Russia
is interested in finding a solution to the current CFE
impasse, but "not more and not less than our CFE partners."
He noted that Russia had suspended its implementation of the
treaty two years ago and the Russian military was "not
unhappy" with the outcome. Consequently, there was not much
time left to save the treaty, probably less than "a couple of
years."


11. (C) Mazur said Russia was very unhappy that language for
a way forward on CFE agreed by the U.S. and Russia at the
OSCE ministerial in Athens was rejected by other Allies,
chiding Turner that "You should keep your Allies in line."
Turner responded that the U.S. was not inclined to impose its
will on other CFE States Parties, but was interested in
forging consensus among them. Mazur said Russia can still
work with the Parallel Actions Package, but it was important
that other Allies not try to improve the package once there
was an agreement. Mazur hoped discussions could continue
among experts in Vienna at the JCG as there is a role for
Vienna experts in finding a creative solution to the impasse.
The NRC treaty could also be discussed in Vienna in the CFE

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context.

A/CFE Alternatives?
--------------


12. (C) Mazur said CFE "modernization" should be seen as an
ongoing process; States Parties should seek to make some
updates now and revisit the CFE regime in three to five
years. CFE is only viable if it continues to adapt.
Prolonged absence of a fully-implemented regime will kill the
treaty altogether. Mazur noted that the Turkish MFA had
doubts whether its legislature would ratify an "already
outdated treaty." When Turner asked if an interim political
agreement might substitute for an adapted treaty, Mazur
suggested U.S. and Russian CFE legal experts would be
skeptical of the viability of this solution. On the other
hand, negotiations on a completely new treaty would probably
prove too great a challenge; it would be better to build from
the existing treaty through iterative adaptations.


13. (C) On Georgia, Mazur said the "situation has drastically
changed." The (CFE-related) issue was resolved by the events
of summer 2008: Abkhazia and South Ossetia were no longer
part of Georgia. A compromise solution will have to be
status-neutral, he said, but Russia can provide transparency
about its forces in Abkhazia and South Ossetia just as Turkey
does with its forces in Northern Cyprus. "We need to devise
a face-saving way for the West to drop the issue of the
so-called Istanbul commitments." Mazur asserted CFE should
not be used to solve "sub-regional" problems (i.e. Georgia
and Moldova); there were other mechanisms, many of them at
the OSCE, that could better be used, e.g., Chapter X of the
Vienna Document, and the "Stabilizing Measures for Local
Crisis Situations."


14. (C) Mazur said the flank issue needs to be resolved
"sooner rather than later: it can't be put off to the adapted
treaty." While conceding that Turkey wanted to preserve the
flank regime "as a whole," Mazur said Turkey had told Moscow
it did not consider Russian forces adjacent to Turkey as a
threat and did not view Russia as a potential adversary.
Mazur claimed that Norway did not object to the proposal made
by Marshal Baluyevskiy in 2008 to make all of Russia's area
of treaty application into a flank zone. He added that the
force limitations in the NRC treaty proposal were thought
through very carefully and implied that Russian forces
deployed in Abkhazia and South Ossetia would not exceed CFE
flank ceilings.

Experts: EST Aims to Restrict the West
--------------


15. (C) The experts were in broad agreement that the EST and
NRC treaty were designed to prevent further NATO encroachment
on Russia's "near abroad." Russia was also opposed to
additional EU enlargement to the same region and tends to
view the EU's Eastern Partnership in zero-sum terms. Tabling
the NRC agreement and EST were, however, fundamentally
defensive moves, a way to avoid further "losses,"
particularly since Georgia and Ukraine are now formally in
line to join NATO. According to Felgenhauer, Russia is
acutely aware of its weakness vis-a-vis the West and China
and now only seeks to be a regional power, albeit with an
irredentist interest in ethnic Russian populations in
neighboring states. The experts also agreed that the EST and
NRC proposals were two-way bets: their acceptance would give
Russia a veto over NATO, while rejection by the West can be
used to bash NATO domestically, always popular, and be used
as a justification for any future Russian military activity
in post-Soviet space: "We asked you to sign a treaty, yet you
refused and now we have to make our own security guarantees."


16. (C) Experts also concurred that nobody in Russia believes
NATO will "succeed" in Afghanistan. While Russia would not
hide its pleasure at a U.S. and NATO failure, it would also
fear the likely increase in extremist activities along its
southern borders.


17. (C) The Georgian war persuaded the Russian military that
the fewer "CFE-like" limitations on their forces, the better.
They and the Russian political leadership view the world in
stark neo-realist terms (i.e., balance of power),and are
concerned with uncertainty about the future, which they
define in terms of years, not decades. Hence, while Russia

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may view the Obama administration as more cooperative, even
docile, there is a persistent uncertainty about what will
happen in 2012 or 2016, so Russia must hedge to protect
against future risks.


18. (C) COMMENT: These discussions with officials and experts
underscore the different mindsets and objectives Russia and
NATO bring to their discussions of NRC cooperation. For a
NATO focused on new security challenges, Russia can be a
pragmatic partner for enhancing capabilities (and avoiding
unwelcome friction) even as the Alliance steadfastly rejects
the notion of "spheres of influence" and insists that the
spread of Western institutions and liberal democracy in the
former Soviet Union is in the interests of both Russia and
NATO. For Russia, the prevailing narrative that the West
"took advantage" of Russia's weakness in the 1990s is used to
justify a veto over NATO activities in Russia's "near
abroad," which Russian officials intimate is a precondition
for enhanced NATO-Russia cooperation. In this view,
cooperation with NATO must take place in the context of a
broad (preferably legally binding) "understanding" that
respects Russia's "legitimate interests." The challenge in
formulating our response to the Russian proposals will be to
find areas of overlapping interests -- however narrow -- and
incrementally develop pragmatic cooperation to build a more
constructive NATO-Russia relationship without sacrificing our
core principles. End comment.


19. (U) EUR/RPM has reviewed this cable.
Rubin