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 MOSCOW 00003139 003 OF 004 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 MOSCOW 00003139 004 OF 004 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