U.S. Hawk Wants Russia Out of G-8

Richard Perle, a hawkish policy adviser whose voice is heard in the Pentagon, has called for Russia to be expelled from the Group of Eight industrialized countries over the arrest of Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

"Russia should be excluded from the G-8. No [other] G-8 country is allowed to treat its leading businessmen the way Russia treated Khodorkovsky," Perle was quoted as saying in Russian translation in the Thursday issue of Kommersant. "I believe Russia is moving fast in the wrong direction."

Perle, who believes that the White House should contain the Kremlin rather than cooperate with it, has criticized the campaign against Yukos shareholders from the beginning.

"It's possible already to say that real damage is being done to the prospects for future Russian economic growth and development by what appears to be an arbitrary, capricious and vindictive campaign against a private company," he said during a Moscow seminar in July after the arrest of Yukos shareholder Platon Lebedev.

Although he resigned as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, Perle retains strong influence on U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and is one of the leaders of the neo-conservative camp in Washington.

The influence of this camp on President George W. Bush has waned somewhat, but it is still strong when it comes to shaping U.S. defense policy, according to Alexander Pikayev, a military specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center. The conservatives, however, can do little to influence Washington's relations with Russia, according to both Pikayev and Ivan Safranchuk, Moscow representative of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.

Thus, Perle's appeal alone to exclude Russia from the G-8 will probably have little practical impact on the Bush administration's policy toward Russia, the experts said. However, it may set off a new round of criticism of President Vladimir Putin's domestic policies in the U.S. Congress, Safranchuk said.

Perle may be using the Yukos affair to push his vision of foreign policy that would contain Russia rather than elevate it to the status of a strategic partner, Safranchuk said.

"One player cannot have full control of such a game," he said, referring to those carrying out the attack on Yukos. "Other players start spinning this affair to advance their interests."

Perle also criticized the campaign in Chechnya and said he hoped that Russian oil companies would be denied contracts in postwar Iraq. He said the White House should be under no illusions that the Kremlin will help to end alleged development of nuclear weapons by Iran.

Perle was forced to step down as chairman of the Defense Policy Board last spring because of a potential conflict of interest between his duties on the Pentagon board and his defense-related business activities. He remained a board member.

He is not known to have any business ties with Yukos, Safranchuk said.