12/14/2006
Russia Today
As the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning saga continues and attention remains focused on the culpability of the Kremlin, I want to go back to a piece written for Foreign Affairs this past summer, the July/August 2006 edition specifically, by Dmitri Trenin, Deputy Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. I didn’t have a chance to look at Trenin’s work before but actually it makes even more sense now than it did when first written.
Mr. Trenin penned the article at the time of the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg. Recall then that the focus was to be on energy and a “strategic partnership” between Moscow and the West. But as opposed to those first days of the Bush administration in 2001 when President Bush peered into the soul of his counterpart Vladimir Putin and liked what he saw, by the spring of 2006 the U.S.-Russian relationship had turned frosty. In a May 4 speech in Lithuania, for example, Vice President Cheney accused the Kremlin of “unfairly restricting citizens’ rights” and using its energy resources as “tools of intimidation and blackmail.”
Dmitri Trenin observed:
“Until recently, Russia saw itself as Pluto in the Western solar system, very far from the center but still fundamentally a part of it. Now it has left that orbit entirely: Russia’s leaders have given up on becoming part of the West and have started creating their own Moscow-centered system.
“The Kremlin’s new approach to foreign policy assumes that as a big country, Russia is essentially friendless; no great power wants a strong Russia, which would be a formidable competitor, and many want a weak Russia that they could exploit and manipulate. Accordingly, Russia has a choice between accepting subservience and reasserting its status as a great power, thereby claiming its rightful place in the world alongside the United States and China rather than settling for the company of Brazil and India.”
Trenin talks of how the West has mismanaged the post-Cold War era.
“Armed with nuclear weapons, its great-power mentality shaken but unbroken, and just too big, Russia would be granted privileged treatment but no real prospect of membership in either NATO or the EU. The door to the West would officially remain open, but the idea of Russia’s actually entering through it remained unthinkable. The hope was that Russia would gradually transform itself, with Western assistance, into a democratic polity and a market economy. In the meantime, what was important was that Russia would pursue a generally pro- Western foreign policy.”
But Trenin says the “project was stillborn from the beginning.” Former Warsaw Pact countries eagerly came into the fold, but Russia was kept at arm’s length. Various organizations such as the Council of Europe and the NATO-Russia Council were side shows. Security treaties such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have been ignored by Moscow. 9/11, however, was to have changed the relationships.
Dmitri Trenin:
“After 9/11, Putin took the opportunity to offer the White House a deal. Russia was prepared to trade acceptance of U.S. global leadership for the United States’ recognition of its role as a major ally, endowed with a special (that is, hegemonic) responsibility for the former Soviet space. That sweeping offer, obviously made from a position of weakness, was rejected by Washington, which was only prepared to discuss with Moscow the ‘rules of the road’ in the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).”
Then Moscow aligned itself with the “coalition of the unwilling” at the time of the war in Iraq. This was Putin’s way of joining the major European powers in opposing the invasion and creating a Russo-German-French axis to balance out Washington and London. But this didn’t work out for Russia either.
“Instead,” Trenin writes, “transatlantic and European institutions continued to enlarge to the east, taking in the remaining former Warsaw Pact and Council for Mutual Economic Assistance countries and the Baltic states. With the entry of Poland and the Baltics into the EU, the EU’s overall approach became even more alarming for Moscow.”
And then the United States and Europe began promoting regime change in Ukraine and Georgia, or in the CIS itself. Moscow’s relations were already souring with both Europe and the U.S., then, in the wake of Beslan, “the self-confidence of the Putin government hit an all-time low.”
Dmitri Trenin:
“Astonishingly, the Kremlin bounced back – and very quickly. Lessons were learned, new resources mobilized, and morale restored, all helped along mightily by high oil and gas prices. At first, Moscow acted cautiously, still somewhat unsure of itself. It joined Beijing in calling for the withdrawal of the U.S. military from Central Asia. Then, toward the end of 2005, it boldly embraced Uzbekistan as a formal ally, and the year ended with a dispute with Ukraine over gas supplies. The Kremlin did not hesitate to take on the post-Soviet republics’ ‘beacon of democracy.’
“In the past year, Russia has begun acting like the great power it was in tsarist times, (including welcoming) Hamas leaders to Moscow after the United States and the EU declared that they would not talk to them and offered financial support to the Palestinians even as the Americans and the Europeans were cutting off or suspending theirs. Russia has squarely rejected placing Iran under sanctions for its uranium-enrichment activities and has declared that its nuclear energy cooperation and arms trade with Tehran will continue and that the Russian armed forces would stay neutral should the United States decide to attack Iran.”
These days Russia recognizes the waning influence of the U.S., while the EU is an economic unit, not a military one. As for China, Moscow admires its progress and, though fearful because of past ‘issues,’ is cooperating closely with Beijing.
Dmitri Trenin:
“In the late nineteenth century, Russia’s success was said to rest on its army and its navy; today, its success rests on its oil and gas. Energy is a key resource that should be exploited while prices are high, but it is also an effective political weapon, although one to be handled with care.”
Of course instead Putin and Co. have come off like bullies in their handling of Ukraine and Georgia as state-controlled Gazprom exercised its muscle on the natural gas front.
Dmitri Trenin:
“By and large, however, Russian leaders do not care much about acceptance by the West; even the Soviet Union worried more about its image. Officials in Moscow privately enjoy Senator John McCain’s thunderous statements about kicking Russia out of the G-8 because they know it is not going to happen and they take pleasure in the supposed impotence of serious adversaries. Public relations and lobbying are simply not high on the Kremlin’s agenda. GR – government relations – is considered more important than PR.”
Trenin concludes:
“Tension will culminate in 2008, the year of the Russian and U.S. presidential elections. Supreme power will likely be transferred from the current incumbent to another member of the ruling circle in Moscow, and this anointment will be legitimized in a national election. [There are other scenarios, of course – ranging from Putin’s running for a third time to a union with Belarus – but they seem less probable at the moment.] Thus, the real question will be not about the Russian election but about the reaction to that election in the West, and above all in the United States .
“With U.S.-Russian relations at their lowest point – and the Kremlin at its most confident – since 1991, Washington must recognize that frustrated Russia-bashing is futile. It must understand that positive change in Russia can only come from within and that economic realities, rather than democratic ideals, will be the vehicle for that change. And most important, as president and CEO of the international system, the United States must do everything it can to ensure that the system does not once again succumb to dangerous and destabilizing great-power rivalry.”
Hott Spotts will return Dec. 28.
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