The Boston Globe (USA): "Russia tests Obama"
THE KREMLIN wasted no time hurling a brushback pitch at President Obama when Kyrgyzstan's president announced Tuesday - from Moscow - that his country will be closing the sole American air base in Central Asia. The Manas Air Base is a crucial transit point for supplies and NATO troops going to Afghanistan.
Notice of the base closing came just after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev granted Kyrgyzstan $2 billion in loans along with $150 million in financial aid. The Kremlin also agreed to write off $180 million of debt and to provide a loan for a $1.7 billion hydropower plant in Kyrgyzstan. Given Russia's cratering economy, this investment in the loyalty of a former Soviet republic is obviously something the Russian ruling class values highly.
These maneuvers are Russia's way of telling Obama that even though US and Russian interests in opposing the Taliban converge in Afghanistan, its cooperation will not come free of charge. Medvedev, and even more so Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, are warning they will not tolerate unauthorized foreign poaching on Russia's periphery.
Obama's response to this barely veiled blackmail needs to be cool and pragmatic. Both Kyrgyzstan's president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and his Russian backers have hinted that the announcement about the air base is meant only as the opening move in what they hope is a bargaining session.
Bakiyev noted in Moscow that he has been telling the Americans they must be less tight-fisted in negotiations over the price for renewing rights to Manas. At present, he receives total payments worth $150 million from the United States; $63 million of that sum is earmarked as rent for the air base.
Bakiyev might well reverse his decision to close the base once the Americans meet his price. But the message Bakiyev and his Kremlin financiers sent Tuesday is that something more will be required. If NATO forces are to be resupplied without having to traverse the dangerous Khyber Pass in Afghanistan, Obama may also have to cut a more encompassing deal with Putin.
Putin wants Obama to cancel or postpone deployment of the defective missile defense system that President Bush wished to locate in Poland and the Czech Republic. Obama will also be expected to back off from Bush's support of fast-track NATO membership for the former Sovet republics of Georgia and Ukraine. And now Putin is trying to show Obama that all foreign dealing with the nations of Central Asia must pass muster with the Kremlin.
Russia wants these concessions badly. It will be up to Obama to exact the right price.
