http://www.spacedaily.com/upi/20040412-16155700.html

United Press International

April 12, 2004

Russia rages at NATO growth
By Martin Sieff

[Russian Defense Minister Sergei] Ivanov wrote in the latest issue of the Russian magazine Global Affairs that the Bush administration's drive to develop new nuclear weapons was dangerous and destabilizing. -"If NATO remains a military alliance with an offensive military doctrine, Russia will have to adequately revise its military planning" and this includes "its nuclear forces," [Ivanov] wrote. -NATO's European arsenals "still have about 200 nuclear aviation bombs which were certainly not designed against terrorists. Who are they meant for? No answer." -"Relations between Russia and Estonia have been tense ever since NATO built a radar station on the Russian-Estonian border last year.

On March 23, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko warned Russia would retaliate "if NATO planes fly over Russian borders after Baltic nations join the alliance." As if the Bush administration didn't have enough on its plate in Iraq, it is now facing a restive, angry and even alarmed Russia possibly prepared to upset 30 years of security treaties in Central and Eastern Europe. For Russian leaders have reacted with fury and even threats to the incorporation of the three Balticstates of Lithuania, Latvia and -- especially Estonia into the NATO alliance. The Russians have been infuriated by NATO's immediate commencement of fighter-plane patrols over Estonia, only a few minutesflying time from St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city.

Last month, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov warned that his country may adopt far tougher policies towards the United States and NATO. Ivanov wrote in the latest issue of the Russian magazine Global Affairs that the Bush administration's drive to develop new nuclear weapons was dangerous and destabilizing. "It is necessary to take special account of the possible reemergence of nuclear weapons as a real military instrument. This is an extremely dangerous tendency that is undermining global and regional stability," he wrote. Ivanov also had tough words for the U.S.-led NATO alliance only days before it expanded to include seven former communist states this month, including the three Baltic countries, all of which were forcibly > included in the Soviet Union as constituent republics from 1940 for half a century. "If NATO remains a military alliance with an offensive military doctrine, Russia will have to adequately revise its military planning" and this includes "its nuclear forces," he wrote.

A few days later, with the alliance expansion anaccomplished fact, Ivanov went further. Speaking on a visit to Washington Wednesday, he announced that Russia would take all measures necessary for its self-defense if NATO went on to establish a military presence in the Baltic states. "With the Baltic states included in NATO and in the event of a military infrastructure created on their territory, any military-political actions by Russia will conform to the principles of self-defense," he said at Washington's Center for Defense Information. Ivanov then interpreted the continued eastward expansion of the Atlantic Alliance into former Sovietterritory in threatening terms that harked back to the most tense eras of the Cold War. "We entertain no illusions why the Baltic countries have been admitted to NATO and why NATO planes are already being deployed there," he said. "This has nothing to do with the fight against terrorism." Ivanov also warned that the "'window of opportunities' for developing the Russia-NATO partnership" could "shrink to a breathing hole." "Today it depends on NATO and above all on the U.S. for this window not to be closed," he said. When Russian defense minister's warnings were not an unexpected bolt from the blue.

The suspicions and fears of NATO and the United States that he expressed are now common talk in diplomatic and military circles in Moscow. On Tuesday, the day before Ivanov spoke in Washington, a leading Moscow military analyst also warned about the growing tensions between Russia and the United States. "American military bases are coming closer to Russia's borders and the military infrastructure of the new members is being improved to store hardware andmunitions and accept large formations and aviation," analyst Viktor Litovkin wrote in an article for RIA Novosti, the official Russian government news agency. NATO's European arsenals "still have about 200 nuclear aviation bombs which were certainly not designed against terrorists," Litovkin wrote. "Who are they meant for? No answer." Moscow knows that the NATO leadership still harbors an unspoken distrust of Russia, possibly as the successor of the Soviet Union, with predictable consequences,according to Litovkin. "No diplomacy can do anything about this fact," he wrote. Yevgeny Grigoriev, another prominent analyst, took a similar tone. On March 26, he warned that the entry ofthe seven former communist states into NATO threatened the diplomatic system of security treaties solaboriously built up over the past 30 years, which has guaranteed peace and stability in Europe for the past generation. The latest NATO expansion has taken place "when there is no version of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe," Grigoriev warned in the newspaper Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie. "It is obvious that the U.S. and leading countries of the alliance could lift a finger and such new satellites as the Baltic states would cease their sabotage concerning the CFE (1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe treaty)," Gregoriev wrote. But in reality "the CFE can share the fate of the Anti-Ballistic Treaty," he continued. Having served notice that Russia was likely to regardthe CFE Treaty as dead, Grigoriev added an even more ominous note. Since that was the case, he wrote, Russia would regard itself as having a free hand to take whatever unilateral measures it deemed necessary to ensure its own security. Russia will have more freedom if some counter measures are necessary in the western, northwestern or southern regions" of the Russian federation," he concluded. In the new highly charged atmosphere between East and West, the most immediate flashpoint appears to be tiny Estonia on the Gulf of Finland, athwart the land and sea communication routes to St. Petersburg. Estonia has a very large ethnic Russian minority and Russians have long charged that since Estonia won independence from the collapsing Soviet Union, they have suffered serious discrimination. Russian analysts over the past month have repeatedly accused Estonia of pursuing a policy that could provoke a major crisis with Russia. "Experts say Tallinn deliberately escalates tensions between Russia and Estonia," the RIA RosBusiness Consulting news service reported on March 26. "According to analysts, Estonia's irresponsible and provocative policy, based on the anti-Russian sentiment among local politicians, may lead to a serious crisis between Russia and the West." "Relations between Russia and Estonia have been tense ever since NATO built a radar station on the Russian-Estonian border last year. On March 23, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko warned Russia would retaliate "if NATO planes fly over Russian borders after Baltic nations join the alliance." How far will this go? U.S. policymakers and foreign policy pundits, preoccupied with Iraq have paid almost no attention to it. Even Defense Minister Ivanov's warnings, delivered to a Washington think tank, were almost entirely ignored. So was a recent article by Russia's newly appointed foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. Russia is now strong and feared, he wrote in the newspaper Vedemosti Tuesday. "Until recently, everyone was concerned that Russia, weakened by its internal crisis, was becoming unpredictable," Lavrov wrote. "But now a different kind of Russia is feared: a country which has become stronger and more confident after several years of stability and economic growth." Lavrov and Ivanov, like their leader, President Vladimir Putin have repeatedly insisted that Russia wants to solve its problems with more international cooperation, not less. But that still leaves open the question of what Russia will do if it doesn't get that cooperation. As Lavrov warned in his article, "A legalvacuum in matters of security is intolerable."