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Cold War Redux

First Published July 6, 2010

Last weekend, the FBI arrested eleven members of a Russian deep cover spy ring, less than a week after Russian President Dmitri Medvedev came to Washington as part of a 'relations reset' which Obama initiated. The fact that this happened so soon after Medvedev's visit is surely disquieting to Moscow and is likely giving the Obama administration, known for bungling foreign policy, ulcers as they try to find a way to downplay this indictment.

The agents were sent by Moscow's SVR, the successor to the KGB, over a decade ago, some even before the Soviet Union had been properly buried. According to intercepted communiques, their mission was to live amongst the natives and integrate into American society to gain access to policy makers and their friends. They were to gain insight into the administration's policies towards Moscow, to discover how first Bush and now Obama fell about Russia, and they've had contact with officials all over Washington, including nuclear weapons researchers and legislative counsels to Congress.

Moscow supplied them with cash for cars, mortgages, phones, even advanced degrees. These spies are known as 'illegals', agents hiding behind contrived identities and false passports who are neither in the country under any remotely legal pretense nor here as acknowledged agents of a foreign power. According to one ex-KGB officer, even at the height of the Cold War's spy mania, when he was active as a Soviet agent, they never had more than nine or ten such agents at once. This operation included at least eleven.

While these agents represent a loss for the Kremlin, I doubt very much they reported anything about this administration's stance towards Moscow an informed human being couldn't have put together given five seconds. The Obama administration seems intent on treating a declining country with a crumbling military infrastructure run by an ex-KGB authoritarian thug much as Nixon did, pursuing a policy of détente as though the USSR were still on equal military footing with the US. The boy wonder in the White House has demonstrated time and again that he doesn't want the US to come out on top in this, and that he's willing to do anything to prevent it.

First, after Bush fought long and hard for approval to put a ballistic missile shield in Eastern Europe, Obama pulled the plug in an apparent effort to appease the Russians after their invasion of S. Ossetia during the '08 campaign. At the time, blatant territorial aggression seemed the obvious reason Russia had taken the step of invading Georgia after having passed out Russian passports to give themselves an interest in the region. Now, it seems clear that Putin was testing how potential successors to Bush might respond to a resurgent and aggressive Russian military policy.

Then Obama signed the disastrous START treaty in April in, ironically, Prague, capitol of one of the eastern European nations screwed out of that missile shield. Under the terms of this treaty, we will voluntarily reduce our arsenal (without verifiable reciprocation from the Russians), and we agree never to use nuclear weapons against any nation in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

This means that, for instance, if Iran supplied Hezbollah with a nuclear weapon, who then set it off in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Washington, we could not use our nuclear weapons as part of our response. And what's worse, the world would know it. Our nuclear deterrent only deters if people know that we have the strength of will to make use of it if necessary. That has always been a question with this President, and this treaty lays out a very clear path for our enemies to evade our nuclear threat.

Putin knew how Bush would respond to such an incursion, were it uncovered. He'd proceed on course to keep Russia from regaining the regional dominance it once had by ensuring the liberties of its neighbors. If anything, it would make Bush more interested in pursuing such a policy. But no one has to wonder just how Obama will ultimately respond to this egregious intelligence incursion from his pals in the Kremlin. I think, based on his track record, its safe to say that whatever he does, it won't enhance US national or intelligence security.

The FBI made this bust independent of the President's explicit authorization. They decided to move quickly because they had received information that the suspects were being permanently recalled to Russia. There's no question that they had a solid case against these agents; in addition to their wiretaps, searches, and intercepted messages, they had also had FBI agents posing as SVR agents in recent months to give fictitious missions to the suspects in final confirmation that they are, in fact, Russian spies.

But the timing is nevertheless convenient. There are now allegations flying around Washington that the arrests were made by hardliners within the FBI who disagree with the Obama administration's policy concerning Russia, and that they sprang these arrests not only on the Russian spies but on the administration, timing it to embarrass Obama just after Medvedev left the country. The Senate will shortly be voting on ratification of the START treaty, and this revelation will certainly damage Obama's chances of passage. I can't say I'm sorry about it.

It will damage Obama's desired reset as the Kremlin feigns outrage, but I doubt the damage will be permanent. If anything, this incident will cause him to bow and scrape all the more. Sad, really, but there's not a whole lot to be done about it. He'll get his reset, back to the Nixon administration, because there's not really a whole lot the Soviets, pardon, the Russians can do to stop him from treating them as an equal or superior power. It will make them bold, because Putin knows he can walk all over Obama with nary whisper of protest. And that's just disturbing.