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| Volume X, Fall 2003, Number 3 |
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| EXCERPT: Playing the Angles: Russian Diplomacy before and during the War in Iraq |
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| Mark N. Katz |
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Dr. Katz is professor of government and politics at George Mason University.
In the lead-up to and during the
American-led intervention in Iraq this
year, the Putin administration had
several goals:
• To work in partnership with other nations, especially France and Germany, to prevent the United States from acting unilaterally, to create a "multipolar" world in order to prevent American intervention in the first place, and (when this failed) to prevent the United States (along with the United Kingdom) from determining Iraq's future without U.N. Security Council approval.
• To work in partnership with the United States, especially in the wake of 9/11, against terrorism and in pursuit of common security, and economic goals.
• To finally cash in on the contracts that Russian oil firms and other enterprises had signed with the Saddam Hussein regime (and as many as possible of those that were initialed or just discussed) after it was ousted and U.N. Security Council sanctions were lifted.
• To preserve the contracts Russia had gained under the U.N. Security Council's oil-for-food program in post-Saddam Iraq.
• To finally collect the $8 billion in Saddam-era Iraqi debt owed to Moscow.
• To prevent events in Iraq from damaging Russia economically and from hurting the Putin administration politically.
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