Differences With Kozyrev Admitted LD2511172493 Moscow INTERFAX in English 1550 GMT 25 Nov 93 By diplomatic correspondents Dmitriy Voskoboynikov Igor Porshnev Vitaliy Trubetskoy and others from the Diplomatic Panorama feature Text The plans to expand NATO by admitting Central and Eastern European countries to it do not solve the problem of ensuring security for Russia said the director of Russia s Intelligence Service Yevgeniy Primakov Presenting his service s report on the prospects for the expansion of NATO and Russia s interests at a news conference in Moscow on Thursday he said that a major decision on expanding NATO may be taken as early as in January According to Primakov the emergence of a big group with a powerful offensive potential on Russia s frontiers will make it necessary to revise the development of Russia s armed forces but retaliatory measures taken in a brief period of time would deal a blow to Russia s budget and security Primakov quali ed as speculative the allegations that the in uence exerted by the military on the taking of political decisions in Russia increased of late Neverthe- less he noted that the Russian government s inability to take retaliatory steps in connection with expan- sion may generate discontent among those who are responsible for ensuring security for Russia The process of turning NATO into a post- confrontational instrument is slow and many fears would disappear if the processes of expanding the bloc and altering its nature were Primakov said With reference to partnership between Russia and NATO the director of Russia s Intelligence Service noted that such a solution does not resolve the problem of admitting countries adjoining Russia to NATO According to him the idea of partnership will be afloat for a long time yet since it is amorphous enough for the time being Russia is far from believing that to expand NATO is tantamount to expanding a springboard for launching a strike on Russia Primakov stressed There is no inten- tion of pressing our will on other countries he declared Nevertheless Russia has its own interests and it has the right to protect them Primakov pointed out According to his service s analytical bureau to expand NATO will not be conducive to speeding up its transfor- mation The efforts to change NATO in terms will take a lot of time yet he said The chief of Russia s Intelligence Service does not believe that conditions will emerge in the near future RUSSIA INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS FBIS-SOV-93-226 26 November 1993 that would prompt Russia to create a new politico- military bloc Nevertheless he said that no state can be deprived of its right to collective security When asked about the possibility of disagreements with the Foreign Ministry on the issue of expansion Primakov said he is absolutely con dent that in strategic terms Russia s foreign ministry works to protect Russian interests He conceded however that some differences between departments always exist NATO Report Summarized PM25112H593 Moscow IZVESTIYA in Russian 26 Nov 93 First Edition 4 Key extracts from a report by Academician Ye Primakov director of the Russian Foreign Intelligenc' Service under the Documents rubric Prospects for NATO Expansion and Russian Interests Foreign Intelligence Service Report Text Today IZVESTIYA publishes key extracts from a report which has just been promulgated by Academician Yevgeniy Primakov director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and which touches on what is per- haps the most acute problem of Russia s relations with the countries of distant foreign parts The report which runs to 13 pages is unclassified It is open to anyone indeed it is comes entirely free of charge The report has two sections We will pass over the rst It analyzes the approach of various NATO countries to the problem of widening North Atlantic Alliance membership But the second which we are publishing in a abridged form assesses this problem from the viewpoint of Russian interests eco- nomic political and military 2 1 The North Atlantic Alliance s Prospects According to Foreign Intelligence Service experts an analysis of the impact of the process of expansion on Russia s interests requires first of all fore- casts connected with the alliance s potential evolution after the end of the cold war Many of Russia s fears associated with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joining NATO would disap- pear or would be eased if there were guarantees either of the priority development of the process of changing the alliance s functions or of the parallel expansion of political functions and its geopolitical scale But these guarantees are absent First and foremost the question ofthe prospects for the transformation of NATO is not clear enough There is no clear understanding in the alliance at the moment of its role and place in the system of international relations in the postconfrontational period The stereotypical bloc mentality also persists particu- larly in the case of a number of representatives of the military leadership of the Western countries and of the 26 November 1993 alliance as a whole One of these stereotypes is that the USSR the nucleus of which was Russia was regarded for many years as the main source of the military threat to the very existence of Western civilization Obviously it will take a long time to eradicate these residual phe- nomena And the withdrawal are bound to be painful Nor should one discount the inertia of the arms race which requires that the image of the enemy albeit a potential enemy be ever present in the mind of the public The desire of the central and East European countries by joining NATO to get the West to actively contribute to the solution of their domestic political and external problems could have an unexpected effect If drawn into complex processes in East European states involving a erce struggle the North Atlantic Alliance could face the objective need to harden its line The transformation of NATO into a universal peacemaking and stabilizing force could be a protracted process At any rate there is a danger that this process and the expansion of the alliance s membership will not be This would endanger the Russian Federation s interests since this could reduce the chances of the split in the continent s nally being mended and could lead to a recrudescence of the bloc policy moreover in conditions where zone of responsibility now reaches the Russian Federation s borders 2 2 Geopolitics Aspects Experts have reached the conclusion that the exploratory proposals to Russia concerning partnership with NATO contain no discernible intention of creating a mechanism to maintain international security that is appropriate in its composition and functions to the conditions of the postconfrontational period The idea of such a mecha- nism is under discussion in the West Specialists in the United States for example are examining the possibility of the creation at the present stage of a collective security organization that will be something intermediate between NATO on the one hand and CSCE and the United Nations on the other Naturally it is of fundamental importance to Russia what kind of alliance it is joining and what its functions are and what kind of partnership it is establishing with it 2 3 Military Aspects It is hard to imagine and it would be wrong to assume that the geographical expansion of NATO will serve to establish a bridgehead for a strike against Russia or its allies But this is not the same as saying that eastward movement does not affect Russia s military security interests All kinds of interpretations of the Russian army s posi- tion on the aforementioned questions have been going around in the West of late In particular the has arisen that the generals want to exploit their heightened RUSSIA INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 7 in uence on the Russian Government and impose a hard line on it in the sphere of safeguarding national security These opinions are speculative The Russian military leadership clearly must make the following pomts l The fact that as a result of expansion its biggest military grouping the biggest in the world pos- sessing massive offensive potential comes into direct proximity with the Russian borders demands a funda- mentral reappraisal of all the defensive concepts the reorganization of the armed forces a review of the operational allocation of theaters of hostilities the devel- Opment of an additional infrastructure the redeploy ment of major troop contingents and the alteration of operational plans and ofthe nature of combat training 2 The implementation of the above measures rapidly moreover will put a strain on the state budget and will weaken Russia s defense capability during the restruc- turing and the movement of forward-based groupings of armed forces 3 It is clear that in these conditions there will be a danger that existing programs of cuts of the reorganiza- tion and professionalization of the Armed Forces pro- grams for equipping them with expensive modern high- echnology weapon systems might be delayed or disrupted Ifwe fall behind in this sphere there will be a qualitative reduction in the combat potential of the Russian Armed Forces compared with the level of the leading military powers 4 If the Russian Government is unable to ensure the normal functioning manning material-technical provi- sion and social protection of the Armed Forces there could be disaffection in the Army which is obviously not in the interests of either the political or the military leadership of Russia or of the country as a whole Nor can one overlook the fact that the expansion of NATO would result in its zone of responsibility covering the part of the European continent where interstate borders were altered as a result of World War II More- over this process is envisaged in conditions where as a result of the formation of new states in Europe the Helsinki accords establishing the status quo are ceasing to operate or are being significantly weakened Conse- quently one might say that in the new conditions NATO will be an alternative guarantor of postwar European borders Along with the positive aspects this has a negative side as well There is reason to suppose that when studying the question of the expansion of NATO certain circles in Germany are viewing this process in terms of the future development of the situation around the postwar borders The NATO leadership stresses that it has no intention of establishing a cordon sanitaire in central and Eastern Europe separating Russia from Western Europe But this could happen irrespective of the NATO leaders subjec- tive intentions 8 RUSSIA INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS It must be borne in mind also that a change in the NATO membership is bound to undermine a number of the alliance s international commitments under multilateral treaties and agreements in particular the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe the preservation of which will contribute to stability and sedurity on the continent In the event of expansion by the addition of countries of the former Warsaw Pact the principle of balance of power is upset So the quotas of the conventional armaments not only of the potential new members of NATO but also of the CIS countries above all Russia in particular on the anks would be called into question It should be said that all the adjustments to the treaty which Russia has been seeking over the past 18 months-2 years at bilateral and multilateral talks have encoun- tered tough resistance and a negative reaction on part For instance Russian President B N Yeltsin s message September I993 to the NATO coun- tries leaders which contained proposals on reviewing ank restrictions on Russia s Armed Forces article V was virtually rejected by the alliance leadership There is a great deal of evidence that this will remain the bloc s stance until the end of l995- the date of comple- tion of the cuts in conventional armaments under the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe 2 4 Domestic Political Aspects One cannot overlook the possibility of expan- sion s having an adverse effect on the domstic political situation in Russia and on Russians state Public antipathy toward NATO has been fostered over a long period in the Russian Federation This cannot be changed overnight In view of this the extention of zone of responsibility to former union states of the USSR will be seen at the present stage by a large section of the public in terms of bringing the danger close to the frontiers of the homeland This could give a fillip to anti-Western forces in the Russian Federation provide them with arguments fer purposeful attempts to discredit the government s course In these conditions you might see a revival in the country of a siege mentality and of isolationist trends with all the negative consequences that would have for the implementation of the course of reforms Foreign Intelligence Service experts have arrived at the following conclusions --in the conditions of the postconfrontational period and ofthe absence ofthe so-called bloc discipline that existed up until the abolition of the Warsaw Pact Russia has no right to tell the sovereign states of central and Eastern Europe whether they should join NATO or any other international associations --it would be in Russia s interests to the process of expanding zone of responsibility with a change in the nature of the alliance the adap- tation of its functions to the character of the present stage of historical development FBIS-SOV-93-226 26 November 1993 --thc process of the Central and East European states joining NATO its character and timeframe and the new members obligations and rights must be formed taking into account the opinion of all interested par- ties including Russia the prospects of the strength- ening of the foundations of collective security on the continent the development of all-European coopera- tion and also the need to provide guarantees of the unswerving observance by all countries aspiring to participate in the North Atlantic Alliance ofthe inter- national agreements concluded by them - -only by taking the aforementioned factors into account will it be possible to contribute to the creation of the prerequisites and favorable conditions for col- laboration between the Russian Federation and NATO and the transfer of relations between them to the level of real partnership - at the present stage one should conduct a multivector policy of all-round development of cooperation with all international institutions capable of contributing to the creation of an integral system of collective security in Europe Need for Higher Approval Viewed PM 26 1 102193 oscow OMS 0M 01 5le YA PRA VDA in Russian 26 Nor 93 7 Aleksandr Vasilyev article Primakov Comes Out of the Wood Kremlin Amending Its Stance on NATO with Help of Intelligence Text The Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Ser- vice yesterday published its report Prospects for Expansion and Russia s Interests We can imagine how it was prepared- how Russian station officers chatth at society receptions or in noisy restau- rants with officials and journalists who had accurate information or pretended they had how our man in Europe would meet a NATO secretary in some zoolog- ical gardens and take from her trembling hands a copy of a top secret paper how another operative would hastily translate an article from Britain s THE ECONOMIST magazine prefacing it with we have learned from a well-informed source All this came together in Moscow in the Yasenevo wood where specialists analyzed it and pondered on it and where stylists scratched their heads choosing between seemingly probable and there are grounds to believe Then this raw material landed on the desk of Academician Yev- geniy Primakov the director ofthe Foreign Intelligence Service Incidentally we have learned from well- informcd sources that Ye Primakov did a lot of work on the report-he is proud of nis handiwork and that is why he presented it in person yesterday The conclusion can be drawn from the report that the prospects of expansion suit everyone except Russia It is something that the Western powers and their smaller allies want admittedly for different reasons They also have different views of the process whereby                     National Security Archive    Suite 701  Gelman Library  The George Washington University    2130 H Street  NW  Washington  D C  20037    Phone  202 994‐7000  Fax  202 994‐7005  nsarchiv@gwu edu