It comes again. Another Russia-U.S. summit, another swindle by way of Kremlin "democracy"; led by KGB-democrat Vladimir Putin; financed by a capitalism based on KGB ownership of the means of production; celebrating freedom after the last independent television station has been shut down; demilitarized with its armored hordes momentarily parked behind the Urals, with hundreds of strategic missiles held past the agreed timetable of decommission; and there is more.
Russia will be keeping us warm this winter, selling us the natural gas we need to keep our furnaces, water heaters and stoves lit. It seems the Russians have been taking lessons from the lords of global interdependence, the Saudis. The West and Japan depend on Saudi oil and the Saudis depend on Western military technology (which they purchase with petrodollars). As the world's biggest oil producing country Russia wants in on the action. The Kremlin hopes to make the Saudi-U.S. energy relationship into an energy triangle. Russian Fuel and Energy Minister Igor Yusufov recently announced a new agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia to "coordinate oil exports." The Kremlin also hopes to use its new relationship with the Saudis for joint ventures in the production of weapons and aircraft.
But how could Russia make nice with Saudi Arabia? After all, Russia's civil war in Chechnya was supposedly fueled by Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi fundamentalism. At least that's the official story out of Moscow. Islamic fanatics are said to be responsible for terrorist acts going back to the 1990s. Last July a suicide bomber killed 15 people at a Moscow rock concert. In August a suicide truck bomb killed 50 people at a military hospital in North Ossetia. These acts have been blamed on Islamic extremists. But now a new twist has appeared in the story, casting doubt on our easy assumptions. An out-of-step investigator with the Russian security services has acknowledged that the chief suspects behind the suicide bombings in Moscow and North Ossetia are Interior Ministry policemen. Of course, the acknowledgement is sure to be retracted or buried by Kremlin fixers. The indiscreet investigators and security officials who exposed the provocation will be called on the carpet. The controlled press in Moscow, with its pet liberals and democrats, will offer a few cynical asides. No major shift in world consciousness will occur.
What should be remembered, what we always seem to forget, is that Russia was the leading sponsor of international terrorism during the Cold War. Russia trained some of the world's most notorious terrorists -- from Carlos "the Jackal" to Yasser Arafat. This week we owe a debt of gratitude to former Romanian intelligence chief Ion Mihai Pacepa for his Monday column in The Wall Street Journal Online which clarifies Arafat's Russian connections. As Romania's former spy chief, Pacepa has read Arafat's KGB file. He says that Arafat was a KGB agent. According to Pacepa, Arafat "is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades."
In his Wall Street Journal column, Pacepa describes Moscow's plan to make Arafat the national leader of the Palestinians. And this is what Arafat has become, even as he directs the greatest terror offensive of them all -- against Israel. Pacepa describes Arafat as "an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence." Arafat was trained at the Balashikha special-ops school in Russia. Pacepa also relates how "the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth."
But surely, that is old news. The Soviet Union is gone and Arafat is a free man. Right?
In November 2000, when the Israelis were about to retaliate against Palestinian forces, Arafat flew to Moscow for a huddle with President Putin: the KGB officer and the KGB agent, now and forever. This indicates the relationship between the Kremlin and Arafat did not change with the fall of the Soviet Union. The relationship continues, and so does the overall plan.
Pacepa reminds us who has fed the hatred against Israel and U.S. imperialism decade after decade in the Middle East and elsewhere. It is Russia and its secret agents, like Arafat, that have told the big lie, spreading hate and misery on all sides. President Vladimir Putin is no friend of President Bush. He is no ally in the war against terror. He is our most dangerous enemy.
Chess champion Garry Kasparov is a Russian personality whose outspoken political writings deserve attention in this context. On Sept. 18 he wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal Europe with the title, "KGB State." Kasparov tells us, flatly, that Putin is no ally in the war against terror. Taking the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council to task for sins of omission, Kasparov damns the policy of the Bush White House formulated by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. This policy is based on Rice's formula that America should "punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia" for obstructing our war against Saddam. Kasparov calls this "one of the worst blunders of U.S. foreign policy in recent years."
According to Kasparov, White House support for Putin "is preventing any serious opposition" to Putin's KGB-regime. The old Soviet structures that remain beneath the surface in Russia since 1991, controlling things from the shadows, now lead the way in seizing businesses and terminating free market reforms. Kasparov tells us that democracy has collapsed in Russia. "With the de facto liquidation of the institution of a free press ... and increasing power of the former KGB ... Russia is increasingly overloaded with anti-U.S. hysteria.
It is time for realism to take hold in Washington. It is time for President Bush to look past Putin's friendly demeanor. The Russian dictator intends to supply Iran with nuclear technology. He continues to support China's military buildup. He tells his controlled media to bombard the Russian people with anti-American lies.
President Bush should have a few choice words for Vladimir Putin, who is not America's friend. Russia is bolstering every rogue regime on the planet. It is trying to divide Europe from America. It is stirring the bubbling cauldron of Asia while breaking its disarmament treaties with the U.S. The Kremlin terror machine remains in place, and we should not be fooled.
