U.S., Russia 'reset' button must focus on counterterrorism

May 9 marks the 68th anniversary of Moscow’s Victory Day celebrating the Soviet Union’s triumph in World War II. The anniversary puts President Vladimir Putin on the world stage from Moscow.  

Arguably the benefactor from America’s “Reset Button,” Putin won an unprecedented third term largely through outmaneuvering his U.S. counterpart thereby fostering resurgent nationalism within Russia.  

Putin got the better deal in the New START agreement on nuclear arms reduction, has continued to test U.S. resolve with submarine patrols in the Gulf of Mexico and strategic bomber fly-bys off Alaska and Guam, all the while supporting anti-U.S. regimes in Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela.  

Today’s shared problems of radical-Islam inspired terrorism gives a chance to Russian intelligence services to seek cooperation with American and other Western intelligence services.

Meanwhile, America has inherited one of Russia’s principal threats: Chechen terrorists.

Some “Reset Button.”

The Boston Marathon's IED aka "improvised explosive device" attacks carried out by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, two ethnic Chechen brothers, should convince Team Obama that we must have closer cooperation on counterterrorism efforts with Russia – and finally get something in return for the “Reset” olive branch.

While Russian and U.S. authorities had the Tsarnaev family on their scopes for years, including the assailants’ mother Zubeidat, neither side acted quickly or decisively enough to prevent the massacre.  

And while Russia shared intelligence with U.S. counterparts, it seemingly scratched the surface of what they knew, and fell woefully short of the cooperation needed to stop such attacks.  

We must do better.

On April 29, 2013, President Putin and President Obama reached an agreement to strengthen contacts between Russian and American security agencies. According to Putin, if Moscow and Washington are able to join efforts, they will be able to successfully combat terrorism in the future and avoid suffering losses.

The fact that Russian authorities had informed the FBI in 2011 about connections of Boston bombers to Chechen terrorists shows that Russia wants to cooperate with America in fighting terrorism.

Though the FBI did question Tamerlan Tsarnaev, it apparently gave him only a cursory look before wrongly determining he did not post a threat.  

Perhaps the FBI didn’t pursue him further owing to a lack of trust for Russian security agencies – successors of the long-standing rival Soviet KGB? 

After all, the KGB had a history of support for terrorist organizations. Or perhaps the FBI didn’t trust Russian counterparts as they believed the fight for Chechen independence was primarily secular in nature, and not inspired by radical Islam?

While that was the case early in Chechnya’s struggle starting in 1991 just after the Soviet Union crumbled, the initially secular and ethnic fight to become its own oil-rich nation transformed itself into a jihadist war designed to establish an Islamic state, largely because of a decade of Russian overkill against Chechen civilians that caused at least 100,000 deaths.  

Such a strong response from Moscow provoked an international jihad, inadvertently turning Chechnya into a breeding ground for terrorists, as thousands of young men flocked from mostly Muslim-majority countries to earn money and taste adventure, in the name of defending fellow Muslims.  

Moscow itself suffered a series of retaliatory deadly terrorist attacks at apartment buildings, subways, a theater, a school and more.

So how can the U.S. and Russia better cooperate on counterterrorism today?

First, they must place more trust in one another on information sharing against potential terror threats.  The U.S. should more fully investigate Russian tips, and the Russians should share all their cards.

Second, they should work together to promote human rights, greater autonomy and economic freedom in places like Chechnya and Dagestan, which would help foster meaningful alternatives to the jihadist narrative of holy war in order to achieve their goals.

Third, they should collaborate more closely with Central Asia republics such as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan to develop more effective networks to monitor and infiltrate radical Islamists groups. 

Long before Sept. 11, Central Asian governments recognized the danger of radical Islamists to their own existence. They undertook tough measures against radical Islamists to de-legitimize the strict ideology of Wahhabism and limit its influence on local Muslims, deterring youth from joining terror groups.

Today’s shared problems of radical-Islam inspired terrorism gives a chance to Russian intelligence services to seek cooperation with American and other Western intelligence services. Such cooperation matches national interests of both the U.S. and Russia and may help to avoid tragedies like Boston in the future.  

Dr. Evgueni Novikov is a scholar with the Center for Secure Free Society in Washington, D.C. Novikov is a former senior official in the International Department of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party. Following his defection to the U.S. in 1988, he served on the faculty at the U.S. Naval War College and George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany.

J.D. Gordon is a retired Navy Commander who served as a Pentagon spokesman in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2005-09. He is a communications consultant to several Washington, D.C.-based think tanks.

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Graham digs in to ban mentally ill from guns, as Dems focus on assault weapons

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  FILE: January 30, 2013: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., points at a chart showing an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and other weapons, during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.REUTERS

As Senate Democrats push ahead with a proposed ban on assault weapons and other gun-control legislation, Republicans are still trying to draw attention to what they see as the bigger issue -- keeping the mentally ill from owning firearms.

The proposal was introduced this month by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who on Thursday again expressed his interest in getting the measure passed.

“I believe that the best way to interrupt the shooter is to have a mental health system that actually records and enters into the database people who should not be able to buy a gun,” Graham said.

He made his remark while voting against a bill passed by the committee to ban assault weapons and high-capacity gun magazines.

Graham’s proposal would require that people found mentally incompetent be added to the National Instant Criminal Background System – the database for all new gun sales.

Those added to the list would have to be found incompetent by a federal court or other official body. The proposal is based on a 2005 South Carolina case in which a women pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity for threatening to kill President George W. Bush. The woman, Alice Bolan, was later able to legally buy a gun and attempted to shoot somebody earlier this year.

 “The … case is Exhibit A of a broken background check system,” Graham said. “As astonishing as it sounds, that actually happened.”

Graham’s proposal was introduced earlier this month and has bipartisan support.  

"I’m a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights,” Arkansas Democrat Rep. Mark Pryor said in support of the bill. “That said, it’s evident that our background check system needs some improvements.”

Under the proposal, a person would be added to the database for such reasons as being an imminent danger to themselves or others, found guilty but mentally ill in a criminal case, found guilty by reason of insanity, found incompetent to stand trial, committed to a psychiatric hospital or required to have psychiatric outpatient treatment.

Meanwhile, several states are addressing the issue.

New York passed legislation that requires therapists report cases of potentially dangerous behavior to the state. And the Maryland and Florida legislatures are considering similar legislation.

The Florida proposal attempts to close a loophole that allows the mentally ill to voluntarily commit themselves to treatment to avoid getting added to a database. The bill also would require the mandatory reporting of mental illness.

The U.S. Senate committee has now voted in favor of four gun-control measures: the assault weapons ban, more school safety aid, expanding federal background checks on potential gun buyers and helping authorities prosecute illegal gun traffickers.

However, the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines faces tough odds in passing the full Senate. The measure would need 60 votes, which would require support from Republicans and some Democrats seeking re-election in pro-gun districts.

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Capitol gridlock shifts focus to growing power of Supreme Court to uphold, nix laws

With Capitol Hill mired in gridlock and lawmakers governing from one crisis to the next, there's a growing focus on the Supreme Court's increasingly powerful role in determining the law of the land.

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Thomas H. Dupree Jr. says when lawmakers fail to act, other branches of the government will.

"You look at the Voting Rights Act, you look at our broken immigration system, and when Congress isn't taking steps to fix the law, then they're leaving citizens no other choice than to raise these issues with the Supreme Court," he said. By default, Dupree notes, that effectively gives the justices "the final word."

Throughout our country's history, lawmakers often have responded to Supreme Court opinions they disagreed with by passing legislation that trumped or nullified the justices' decision. But an upcoming law review article from University of California, Irvine, law professor Rick Hasen illustrates how that trend is slowing.

Between 1975 and 1990, Congress overrode Supreme Court decisions at a rate of 12 per two-year congressional term. By the period ranging from 2001 to 2012, that rate had plummeted to just 2.8.  

Doug Kendall, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, notes how challenging it has become for lawmakers to find common ground.

"It's very difficult to get anything done, much less a law that overturns a ruling -- particularly an ideologically divided ruling by the Supreme Court," Kendall said. "That's tough sledding."

Just this week, Justice Anthony Kennedy acknowledged the delicate tightrope judges walk when they take on matters many believe are more properly left to legislators. Calling it a "serious problem," Kennedy lamented, "a democracy should not be dependent for its major decisions on what nine unelected people -- from a fairly narrow background, a legal background -- have to say."

Many will remember President Obama's decision to publicly chide the Supreme Court during his 2010 State of the Union address as the justices sat silently, just feet away.

"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests," Obama said at the time, as Justice Samuel Alito visibly disagreed.  

The president was referring to the Court's 2009 Citizens United decision overturning key campaign finance regulations -- a prime example of a ruling that sparked heated pushback from both the White House and Capitol Hill but no actual legislative response. As such, that decision is the law of the land and remains intact.

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