The Hawks and the Spies

Hot Russian spies having sexy spy sex! Hijacking the identities of dead Canadians! Using social networking sites! Burying caches of cash in NY! Praising Fidel Castro! Being all-American! And posting inane and ridiculous status updates on facebook!

In fact, the 11 accused of being ‘deep cover’ Russian spies did pretty much anything but acquire any actual American secrets.

In the words of a neighbour of one of the alleged spies, they may have been the worst spies ever.

All this we know from the thousands of hyperventilating news reports of the last two days.

In fact, in its silly anachronism, the whole operation resembles those reports of left-over Japanese soldiers continuing to fight in the jungles of Asia years after the end of WWII.

But what about the boring stuff, like were the arrests politically timed to embarrass Obama and/or Medvedev?

Russian elites certainly think so. Lavrov snarked that the arrests, coming on the heels of  Medvedev’s groundbreaking US visit, exhibited ‘elegant timing’; the Russian consensus is that foreign policy hawks in the US timed the arrests to undermine the White House’s new climate of diplomacy with Russia.

US officials, on the other hand, claim that the arrests came when they did because one of the suspects, Anna Chapman, realised that her cover was blown and was about to return to Russia. They also say that the arrests demonstrate the political independence of the DOJ from the White House.

Who to believe? The timing does seem suspicious, especially considering that none of the alleged spies had a chance to carry out any actual espionage, had already been under surveillance for years, and were caught far from red handed; where was the urgency to arrest them now if not to send a political message. Tantalisingly, FBI director Robert Mueller is a George Bush nominee who may have received pressure from foreign policy hawks such as the Cheney family.

On the other hand, authoritarian Russia frequently overestimates the degree of control that US policymakers can exercise. Moreover, the fact that the arrests came after Medvedev’s trip rather than during it may itself testify to the new detente.

I’m inclined to think that it is a combination of the two. I don’t believe that it was a coincidence, but I also doubt that it was the work of detente saboteurs. Rather, because there is a growing consensus that this spy scandal will be more nuisance than deal breaker, I believe that Obama may have used the arrests to appease the hawks in his cabinet and opposition suspicious that he is too soft on Russia without actually jeopardising his outreach policy.

Considering what happened to Jimmy Carter, who paid dearly for ignoring the loony right until too late, this is very shrewd thinking.

However, the episode might not be as innocuous as the White House may have calculated. Putin may hope and Obama may well be right in thinking that the storm will not capsize the budding friendship between the US and Russia. But it might seriously hurt Medvedev’s political standing, as Fred Weir writes in the Christian Science Monitor. He quotes an expert from a Russian think tank:

“It really looked like Medvedev was gaining points, starting to close the gap between him and Putin in terms of who is most capable,” says Alexander Konovalov, president of the independent Institute for Strategic Assessments in Moscow.

But now Medvedev looks like he fell into an American trap, by making concessions on Russia’s Iran policy and other issues amid the warm glow of Obama’s hospitality, then getting hit with these spy allegations just as he was leaving, Mr. Konovalov says.

“This scandal shows Medvedev as not so tough, not so experienced as the former intelligence officer Putin,” in the eyes of people who really matter in Moscow, meaning the military and security establishment. “So, objectively, this can only play directly into Putin’s hands,” he adds.

Whether or not the spy arrests were orchestrated by the hawks or were a preemptive strike by Obama against them, they should be careful not to overreach and inadvertently orchestrate the return of Putin, which would not be good news for anyone.