Article
from
Moscow Times
On the day U.S. forces began the final assault on Baghdad, I received an early morning call on my cell phone. As U.S. defense attache in Moscow, I recognized the caller as Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.
Ivanov's tone was controlled but urgent. "We have a serious problem, and I need your help in contacting the Central Command. Our ambassador is trying to leave Baghdad and he is under fire from unidentified forces. One man is wounded. Can you help stop the firing?"
The situation was dangerous but fortunately no one was killed. Ivanov's call and the U.S. response were typical of the open and substantive communications that had developed between Russia and the United States in the wake of 9/11. Now that same ambassador, Vladimir Titorenko, is cited in a Pentagon study, "Iraqi Perspectives Project," as providing intelligence to Saddam Hussein's regime while American troops were rolling through Iraq on their way toward Baghdad. The study is enlightening, and the case of the Russian ambassador is instructive of the complexity of U.S.-Russian cooperation in the global war on terror and the contradictions that permeate our relationship.
After the war started in March 2003, Titorenko and a small cadre of intelligence officials remained in Baghdad long after other diplomatic missions had departed. At the time, it was widely rumored in Moscow that Titorenko had defied Moscow's instructions to depart Baghdad earlier, choosing to wait until the last (or maybe until after the last) possible moment. Some officials in the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry suggested Titorenko was grandstanding.
The documents revealed in the Pentagon study make it clear now that there was another reason for Titorenko's delay. Despite Moscow's denials, there can be no doubt that Titorenko was passing intelligence to Hussein and his government. Judging by the tempered response of the U.S. government, however, the incident is as problematic in Washington as it is in Moscow.
The possibility, suggested by General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the information in Titorenko's reports (much of it incorrect) might have been intentionally leaked by Central Command to confuse Hussein is plausible, but not likely. More likely is that Titorenko was receiving reports from agents within Iraq and combining them with information supplied by his own government in Moscow. It would have been natural for Moscow to pass Titorenko information on the advance of coalition troops in order to keep him informed. And it would have been easy for Titorenko to pass that information to his friends in the Iraqi regime.
Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has walked a tightrope in its relations with the United States, especially in the war on terror. Putin lent his support to early U.S. actions in Afghanistan and acquiesced to U.S. operations from Central Asia, all against the advice of hard-line elites in Russia. In the case of Iraq, Putin actively opposed U.S. plans and lobbied other countries against supporting the United States.
During the Iraq war, however, Putin did not withdraw Russian support from the United States in the broader effort against terror. U.S. non-lethal military supplies still transited Russian territory, and U.S. bases in Central Asia were not opposed. As one Russian officer told me in Moscow, "We know what you must do. Just get it over with so we can get on with our other cooperation." The result has been a mixture of positive actions and negative policies, some facilitating and some undermining U.S. goals in Iraq.
Neither side agrees today about which troops -- Iraqi or coalition -- actually fired on Titorenko's convoy as it attempted to leave Baghdad that Sunday morning in April 2003. It is doubtful that Titorenko's actions resulted in any disadvantage to U.S. forces during their operations, though they almost cost Titorenko his life. Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz theorized that war and politics are forms of interaction on different points of the same scale. It should be no surprise to us then that fog and friction are as much a reality of international relations as they are of war.
The fact is that Russia, a partner to the United States in some ways, is acting against the United States in others. We should be on guard in both war and politics, but we should not retreat. We must move forward to reap the benefits of the relationship between our two countries.
Retired Brigadier General Kevin Ryan is a senior fellow with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He served as U.S. defense attache to Moscow from August 2001 to August 2003.