WASHINGTON-Russian authorities were expected to drop espionage charges against Qualcomm Inc.’s Richard Bliss over the weekend and free the 29-year-old field technician to return to the United States.
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Diane Feinstein, according to press aides, spoke last week with Russia’s Ambassador to the United States, Yuli Vorontsov, and he told each separately that he didn’t see any problem with clearing Bliss by Saturday.
A spokesman for the Russian Embassy here declined to confirm the contents of those conversations.
While the Bliss case may have seemed like a return to the Cold War, the incident points up how much diplomacy has actually changed from saber rattling to commercial threats in the age of the global economy. Indeed, after Russian authorities formally charged Bliss of spying on Dec. 5, the Clinton administration threatened economic retaliation to win Bliss’ conditional release in Rostov-a large city 100 miles south of Moscow where Qualcomm is building a $5.8 million wireless local loop system.
Bliss had faced espionage charges that carry a 10- to 20-year prison term.
James Foley, a State Department spokesman, had said “that if this matter were not resolved promptly and in a satisfactory manner, that it might have a chilling effect on the ability of American business to participate in and contribute positively to the further development of Russian economic reforms and integration into the world economy.”
Caving to U.S. threats, Russia dropped a demand that Qualcomm post a $5 million bail for Bliss (which Qualcomm agreed to pay) and accepted the San Diego wireless firm’s guarantee that the 29-year-old field technician will not leave Rostov.
In addition to Boxer and Feinstein, Sen. Richard Bryan (D-Nev.) and others in Congress wrote Russian President Boris Yeltsin asking that he and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin intervene to drop charges against Bliss and free him to return to the United States.
Those efforts appear to have paid off.
“The recent actions taken by Russian authorities against Richard Bliss, an American citizen and an employee of Qualcomm, are without justification and present a major threat to the future of U.S.-Russian relations,” Bryan and his colleagues wrote.
The threat encompassed economic retaliation.
Russia, attempting to make the uneasy transition from communism to a democratic-driven market economy, sorely needs investment from the West, financial support from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization membership to be a viable actor on the world stage.
Without such support and recognition, Yeltsin’s regime could be weakened and become politically unstable. That outcome is not in the best interests of Russia or the United States for political and economic reasons, which is why the Clinton administration had to be careful how it handled this matter and others that may arise in the future.
Russia, China, India, Asia, Africa and Latin America are In the post-Cold War era, economic strength is increasingly becoming the measure of nation’s might. Widgets are supplanting weapons in global diplomacy. Incentives and disincentives in global relations have changed accordingly.
The United States dangled WTO membership in front of Russia to try to win Bliss’ freedom and is employing the same carrot-and-stick approach with China to force Beijing to open its telecom market and cease human rights abuses.
But as attractive as emerging markets are for U.S. firms, investments are not without risk as the Bliss case illustrated.
Political unrest in India could force President Clinton to postpone a scheduled trip there in February, though that is not stopping Commerce Secretary William Daley and a cadre American executives from prospecting for business in world’s biggest democracy this month.
It is precisely why political risk insurance exists and is made available through partial U.S. underwriting by the Overseas Private Investment Corp.
Bliss was detained Nov. 25 by Russian intelligence agents and accused of using satellite receivers to gather data at sensitive localities. U.S. and Qualcomm officials maintained all along Bliss was not a spy and disputed that he illegally brought into Russia satellite receivers, commonly used to ascertain coordinates for antenna siting.
While the strategy of U.S. diplomacy today is to hit economic pressure points in Russia, the Bliss case is not without Cold War similarities in the sense that Bliss may simply have been an unlucky pawn in a “tit for tat” game between the two former adversaries.
Various news services contributed to this report.
