Another Yalta Accord?!

Russia's present confrontation with the West, unlike the Cold War standoff, covers not only military and political issues, but also economic and financial ones. During the Cold War Russo-U.S. summits were grand events that centered on nuclear arms control and often effectively defused East-West tensions on many issues. Nowadays summits are not that effective. Attempts to solve problems the old way -- by trying to revitalize Russo-U.S. nuclear arms control -- do not help to clear other obstacles.

The joint visits to Moscow by Rice and Steinmeier did not and could not do much. At least everyone, including the Russians, put on a brave face and pretended that it is still business as usual and that the problems between Russia and the West are not as bad as they are.

Separately the United States and the EU cannot bridge the present East-West rift. The EU cannot do much about planed U.S. missile defense deployments in Europe. Nor is Washington too concerned about Russian plans to scrap CFE, since the Pentagon has installed a superb intelligence-gathering network that gives it more information about the Russian military than the CFE confidence-building regime of notification and onsite inspection. Of course, the Pentagon does not share much of its intelligence with European allies. European states have been shocked by the apparent sudden end of CFE, while Washington is much more concerned about Iraq, Iran, and the situation in, say, Georgia.

Last week in Brussels Russia's chief of the General Staff, General Yuri Baluyevsky, told NATO generals the Russian Defense and Foreign Ministry lawyers are working on ways to implement President Vladimir Putin's declaration of a "moratorium" on CFE observance (RIA-Novosti, May 10). In fact Russian diplomats say openly that Putin's CFE "moratorium" is a legal impossibility and only a formal abrogation is possible (see EDM, May 2). At present officials do not know what to do next and are waiting for additional guidance from the Kremlin.

For the Kremlin the CFE and most other multiple issues that today wreck relations with the West are not, in fact, decisive. Russia is today reasserting itself and wants a new grand pact with the West, something like the Yalta accord of 1945, that would clearly delineate Russia’s new sphere of imperial influence in Europe and Asia, with the West assuring noninterference within that zone. Today even if the West would want to make such a deal, there is no legal framework within which to negotiate.

Another Yalta Accord?! uh. No. And I am unsure that is exactly what the Russians are seeking, truthfully.