Brent Colton is a retired CIA operations officer now in the employ of the Creighton Corporation, a privately owned think tank that advocates various opinions on world issues, but it’s his clandestine job to solve the dirty problems for their private clients for a million dollar fee with no questions asked. When recovering stolen technology from a Vietnamese industrialist, Colton obtains evidence that he secretly partnered with a U.S. Senatorto rig the recent presidential election and elect him to the nation’s highest office.

CFR REPORT WARNS OF RUSSIA’S OMINOUS ATTITUDE CHANGE
by Terry Heath, 2006

With the United States so focused on Iraq, Iran, North Korea and the growing military threat during the next decade by China it appears those in the Bush Administration and at the State Department have forgotten the relevance and historic place of Russia in this post-Cold War 21st Century world and needs to address the increasing intransigence being offered by that one-time rival to our own needs in keeping the globe at peace.

That is the conclusion of a new report issued by the Council on Foreign Relations that was the result of discussions made by an elite group of political experts over this last year. The team was chaired by former Democratic U.S. Senator John Edwards and former Republican Congressman Jack Kemp, both, ironically, losing vice-presidential candidates of their respective parties. Kemp was the VP nominee in 1996 under Bob Dole and Edwards in 2004 under John Kerry.

The provocative study is entitled ‘Russia’s Wrong Direction: What the United States Can and Should Do’ as the distinguished panel of policy wonks made an investigation of the recent deteriorating relations we have with Russia, primarily in these five years following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks made on our soil.

Many of the usual crowd of CFR members/political bureaucrats, including former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot who make their living in the abstract analytical environment known as the think tank world, participated in the ten month study that examines Russia’s increasing estrangement from America and western Europe on common policy aims as that nation attempts to seek its own, independent place in the world despite the fact that its relevance on the global stage has been diminishing this last decade and a half once the Soviet Union broke up and Russia was on its own.

The seventy-page study looks at the relations between the United States and Russia these last fifteen years since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It states that our nation’s present perception is that those currently in power in the Kremlin are not as close to us as they were five to ten years ago when they first embraced democracy and a willingness to emulate the west.

The report points out that we are now having disagreements with Russia as they go their own way on international issues and away from our stated positions on those same matters. The task force determined that several of those disputes include our perception that the Putin Government is becoming less democratic and more authoritarian in dealing with those with opposing viewpoints to their policies and governing style, Russia’s export of its energy resources to neighboring countries as a policy weapon to get their way on security concerns and to their own economic advantage, their growing divergence from our suggestions in battling worldwide terrorism and their dicey relations with the poor nations along their borders that used to be a part of the Soviet Union.

What is the CFR’s purpose of issuing this critical report about our once former enemy and presumed to still be our ally at this time? It appears the political power elite in Washington are unhappy with Russia’s recent overtures toward Iran and China these last few months and its less than enthusiastic support of our 2003 military invasion into Iraq. Now the CFR has had a long history of having a direct impact on American foreign policy since the conclusion of World War Two so when its very influential members make a recommendation of international policy changes toward certain nations you can usually be sure that it will be implemented by those at the State Department and in the executive branch as soon as possible. So what they propose will have major impact to all of us in the months and years to come.

The study alleges that our relationship problems began to change at the start of President Vladimir Putin’s second term in office. They then state that we should promote the idea that the U.S., and particularly the Bush Administration, should pursue a new strategy to be called a ‘selective cooperation’ of a broad partnership on all world matters which the task force members now concede as not being feasible at the moment and will have to wait for a new generation of leaders on both sides to begin the mutual cooperation needed by the two nations.

Putin is scheduled to leave office in 2008, pending any unforeseen event that would force him to stay on, so it’s apparent the CFR members are worried about the unknown factor the next Russian leader will bring to the relationship with a lame-duck George Bush and our new chief executive in 2009 when long-term strategies to keep the world safe will need to be developed by the two countries with the most nuclear weapons.

The report claims that Russia’s shift in policy against our vested interests began in 2003 when they sought to curtail the growing presence of U.S. and NATO military forces in several of the central Asian countries that used to be under Soviet control that we had put there to help coordinate our war on terrorism against extremist Muslims hiding out in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But are we to be surprised that the Russian leadership could be getting annoyed at our increasing military presence along their former borders as we also encourage western oil companies to expand their drilling for crude to satisfy the ever-growing thirst of American drivers in all of those countries of the former Soviet Union?

So how influential is the CFR on official government policy? Consider this. Just a few weeks after the report was issued Vice-President Dick Cheney visited Europe and made several speeches that criticized Russia’s new hard-line attitude against us while in several of the countries that used to be under Soviet influence.

Putin responded on May 10th during a nationwide televised address to his legislature in which he cynically described the United States as ‘the wolf who eats without listening.’ He then stated that he was going to start increasing funding to Russia’s military to counter what he perceives as the growing threat from America’s military aims.

We should be reminded that most of the nations of the former Soviet dominated Warsaw Pact have since joined NATO and even the Ukraine is seeking membership into that European military organization. Now the Russians find our unwanted presence on their southern flank via our troops and our capitalist oil companies. Could they be getting the impression that they’re getting squeezed on both ends by America and feel the need to fight back?

What the study does not address nor these elitist CFR members take into account is that Russia is not the Soviet Union. That nation self-destructed under its own massive bureaucratic incompetence, leaving Russia and its former satellite states to go their own ways, each seeking its own place in this new world. The CFR is only considering Russia’s recent actions as it relates to America’s own needs, and may not be taking into account just what is in Russia’s best interests as that country’s population declines in the next fifty years and their very survival of a sovereign state and as a race may be at stake.

It’s apparent that Russia, which still has several thousand operational nuclear weapons, wants to re-assert its importance on world matters yet is finding that us, the countries of Europe and the nations of Asia that were formerly their client states doesn’t really consider them all that relevant any more. Russia wants to re-establish its place in the world. Those at the Council of Foreign Relations wants them to instead consider doing things our way. Is there room for compromise our politicians can make with a former superpower rival trying to bring back their good old days of still being important without starting a new Cold War?

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com