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Planet Earth: Russia and Transatlantic Relations

Vyacheslav Nikonov

The war in Iraq has triggered “the most severe transatlantic tensions in a generation, dividing Europeans and Americans from each other and among themselves”[1] Most politicians and analysts drew a conclusion in the wake of that war that a single superpower of an unparalleled strength had climbed to domineering positions, while the united West had gone to nonentity. They said the crack was going lengthwise along the Atlantic, and Russia would have to choose between an alliance with Europe or an alliance with the U.S.

That is a false dilemma. If Robert Kagan believes that America represents the bellicose Mars and Europe embodies the peace-loving culture of Venus,[2] the place where Russia can make the best habitat for it is the planet Earth, despite this country’s interest in other celestial bodies.

Failed Breakthrough Westwards

The rise of the Russian Federation coincided with euphoric aspirations that the progress of democracy here would bring the country into the transatlantic community of civilized states. Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker recalled Russian President Boris Yeltsin speaking enthusiastically in 1991 of a possible merge of the military structures of the Commonwealth of Independent States and NATO.[3] There were expectations of amassed economic aid in the format of a new Marshal Plan. The West, on its part, harbored a hope that Russia would rapidly transform into a developed democracy with a flourishing market economy and would display solidarity with Western leaders on the major issues of international policy.

The hopes did not materialize, and the reasons for it call for separate analysis.[4] The lofty aspirations gave way to the disproportion in economic, political, military, and other capabilities of Russia and the West. The weakening country sliding into a political chaos could not expect others to treat its concerns as top priority matters. Moscow’s pro-Western course took a heavy blow as the prospects of NATO’s eastwards expansion began getting clear contours despite the numerous assurances given previously to Mikhail Gorbachev. The war in Yugoslavia added to it. Against this background, the development of democratic institutes within Russia disenchanted even the Russians themselves, unaccustomed to democracy as they were, not to mention the Europeans or the Americans.

Russia failed to join Euro-Atlantic structures, and the transatlantic dimension of its foreign policy fell into three separate elements reflecting its relations with the U.S., with the European Union, and with NATO. All of the three were close to the freezing point at the turn of the century. The domestic situation was dominated by scandals involving corrupt officials surrounding Yeltsin, his Family’s influence, an incessant change of ministers, a new war in Chechnya, and the attempts to answer the question “Who lost Russia?” Moscow realized that the breakthrough to the West had ended in a fiasco, and this understanding made it look for a new policy line and self-identification.

The West met President Vladimir Putin’s initial foreign policy course with a strong suspicion bolstered by his remarks that “Russia will hardly become a replication of the U.S. or Britain any time soon, as liberal values have deep historical traditions there.”[5] While paying respect to the concept of the world’s multipolarity, he declared pragmatism, economic efficiency, and the priority of national interests to be the backbone elements of his policy.[6] Putin stepped up bilateral contacts with China and established multilateral contacts with it in the format of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Russia did not succumb to the U.S. objections against building nuclear reactors in Iran; furthermore, it rehabilitated contacts with Pyongyang and Havana.

At the same time, Putin kept emphasizing the importance of cooperation with the West. He turned down the idea of relying exclusively on Russia’s own – rather limited – resources and proclaimed a strategic course of economic transparency and integration into the world economic system.

Putin reached understanding with both houses of the Russian parliament, the State Duma and the Federation Council; and thus attained ratification of the critical treaties, START-2 and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which had been shelved in parliament for years. Putin began reactivating ties with leading Western countries long before the Nine-Eleven.

On the face of it, restoring contacts with the North-Atlantic Allianes was more problematic. Putin launched efforts to reanimate relations with the bloc that had been frozen following the bombing raids at Yugoslavia. He expected NATO to show signs of reforming from a military-political into a purely political organization, as well as to renounce its further expansion and its new doctrine of “humanitarian interventions,” which he described as erroneous and violating the norms of international law.

Russia and the U.S.: Love-Hate Relationship

Putin paid relatively small attention to the Russia-U.S. relations in the initial phases of his presidency. On the one had, he made assurances that Russia would never revert to whatever confrontational elements in relations with the U.S.,[7] but on the other hand, the agenda of bilateral ties did not seem to hold much promise for him. There was a stumbling block – the U.S. Administration had revealed its plans of unfolding a national system of anti-ballistic missiles and Moscow issued tough objections to it. The Kremlin said Russia would pull out of the system of agreements on arms cuts and control and would launch an independent policy of nuclear deterrence if the U.S. abandoned the ABM treaty.

The terrorist attack at the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon September 11, 2001, moved the Russo-American relations to a higher level. Putin was the first to offer condolences and to pledge support to the U.S. President in the anti-terrorist campaign. During the November 2001 Russia-U.S. summit meeting in Washington and Croweford, Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush made statements about long-term partnership.  They proclaimed commitment to the promotion of common values, naming respect for human rights, tolerance, religious freedoms, freedom of speech, economic opportunities, and supremacy of law among the top priorities.[8] Russia gave a de facto agreement to the projection of the U.S. military influence to the territory of the former USSR (Central Asia and Georgia) that had been regarded earlier as the exclusive zone of Russia’s strategic sway. Moscow also agreed to the use of military force in the vicinity of that zone, in Afghanistan, and even supported the U.S. by pooling together and arming the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance, offering intelligence information, opening air corridors for foreign Air Force jets, giving access to bases in the former Soviet republics, and delivering humanitarian cargoes to the Afghans.

The Kremlin dropped the formerly inviolable principle of nuclear parity. Putin expressed regrets after the U.S. had pulled out of the ABM treaty, but he did not go farther than that. In 2002, Russia and the U.S. ventured to sign the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty. They did it in spite of criticism in Russia that provisions of that document were unspecified and gave the U.S. an opportunity to stockpile, not destroy the nuclear warheads, and also despite the Bush Administration’s initial unwillingness to assume whatever obligations in the nuclear area. When the 2002 NATO summit in Prague decided to invite seven countries of Central and Eastern Europe to join the block, Putin called the decision senseless, but no diplomatic complications followed.

A conclusion one can draw from all of it is that Russia has changed the system of foreign policy priorities. As Putin said in July 2002, trustful partnership with the U.S. was based on what he called “a new interpretation of both countries’ national interests and similarity of views on the nature of nowadays threats”.[9]

Though in my view policy shifts in Washington itself had a much greater significance for bilateral relations. U.S. policy-makers realized that Russia had no smaller a role in implementing America’s strategic priorities – fighting with international terrorism, checking the spread of the weapons of mass destruction, tightening of energy sector security, and China’s integration in the world system – than its direct allies. Not only did the Nine-Eleven change the Russian policies, it changed the very context and agenda of international relations. Russia and the West had gotten a common enemy to fight, and its name was international terrorism.

The war in Iraq put the Russo-American relations to a heavy test. Putin offered a very negative reaction to the campaign, and apart from the considerations of domestic policy – pressures from the elites, the approaching electoral campaign, misgivings about the discontent of Russia’s Islamic population – external factors also added up to it. France and Germany displayed tough resistance to the U.S. policy, assuming the roles of leaders of the anti-U.S. coalition.

Relations with the Washington sank to the lowest point since Putin had moved to the presidential office. Their breakdown was looming, but it did not happen. The Bush Administration thought that improvement of relationship with Russia was one of its impressive achievements, which it should not let slide downhill. In all appearance, Washington tried to defuse the potentially explosive tendencies that might derail the Russo-American relations. The White House officials would not betray their president by declaring the rapprochement with Russia erroneous, and they chose the principle going along these lines: ‘Punish the French, ignore the Germans, and forgive the Russians’. Putin reciprocated them with another display of pragmatism, all the more so that France and Germany had started seeking ways of bettering relations with the Americans, as the war to oust Saddam Hussein was over.

Paradoxically, the situation in and around Iraq is lubricating the growing Russia-U.S. rapport. Developments that followed the fall of Baghdad affected the style of mentality in the Bush Administration. It looks like the hostilities in Iraq marked the peak of the American policy of «unilateralism». The predictions that it would be easier for the U.S. to win the war than to gain peace came true. Compared with the ordeal that the Americans have been caught in on Iraqi soil, even the Chechen epopee does not look so hopeless. As the euphoria over Saddam’s fall was gone, growing concern filled its place, and George W. Bush’s popularity ratings slid – at the start of the presidential race. The influence of the neo-conservative proponents of «unilateralism»  is visibly melting in the White House, while the politicians giving preference to multilateral actions – with the aid of allies, partners, and international institutions – are clearly winning new grounds. «Condoleezza Rice triumphs as a macho infighter driving Rummy into a diva-like melt».[10]

It was not for nothing that Washington asked the UN Security Council to endorse a resolution on sending the UN peacekeeping force, a move that contrasted with burying the UN in oblivion earlier in the year when the Security Council had refused to sanction the use of force against Saddam. It was now trying to convince the countries, which the Iraqis treat as friendly ones, to share responsibility with it. Moscow, too, has received invitations to join the post-Saddam peace settlement process, and the U.S. officials have made hints at their readiness to respect the Russian economic interests in Iraq – and to do it in a greater degree than the defunct dictatorship did. A question sprang up: do we really need it? Some analysts said with confidence that Russia would get advantages if the Americans mired in Iraq.

It does not seem that Kremlin could find that line of thinking acceptable. First and foremost, it would mean that a revival of previous oil, construction and trade agreements with Baghdad would be unthinkable of. Second, Iraq may really plunge into a protracted destabilization, resulting in shock-waves of instability across neighboring regions, including Russia, and in the exports of Islamic extremism, if the world community does not intervene in the situation. Some people may take inspiration in the thought that America has become Satan No. 1 for Islamic extremists and their main target, but Putin cannot help remembering that Russia remains Satan No. 2 on the terrorists list. Third, one can scarcely hope for fruitful cooperation with the U.S., the world’s most powerful nation, in other fields while shunning cooperation on the Iraqi problem: its has preeminent importance for the Americans now and there will be no topic of equal significance for them over the short-term prospect.

The fact that Russia’s relations with the U.S. began smoothing was not accidental. Russia backed the UN resolution on Iraq that actually meant legitimizing the American and British presence there, and also said it was open for cooperation in the postwar rehabilitation of that country. I think participation in the UN-led peacekeeping efforts in Iraq would give benefits as well, although Putin seems unprepared for it. I have a vague idea of what Russian peacekeepers were doing in Bosnia, but I can easily imagine what their role will be once they are deployed near the Qurna-2 oilfield.

Meetings between Putin and Bush in St Petersburg at the end of spring and in Camp David in the fall of 2003 drew a bottom line under the contradictions. «Rapprochement between Russia and the U.S. has helped create the atmosphere of trust and strategic stability in the world,» Putin said. «Our cooperation is not declarative, it is well specified and pragmatic.»[11] Russian analysts noted the absence of a single remark on his part on multipolarity when he visited the U.S. Whether it was quite by chance or whether it revealed a tendency of some kind will only be seen later.

The zone of overlapping Russian and American interests is expanding and this means growing opportunities for drafting a positive agenda. Both countries have interest in averting the proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction or in preventing the advent of nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran, which would unleash an arms race in Asia and make the use of nuclear weaponry highly probable. Moscow and Washington have equal interest in implementing the Road Map peace settlement plan in the Middle East and in weeding out international terrorism. They have good prospects for projects in the energy sector, especially now that the Americans are looking for sources of oil in quieter places than the Arab Middle East and Russia has outstripped Saudi Arabia in terms of oil and natural gas production.

Russia and the U.S. have stopped factoring other big countries into their self-centered stratagems, something that Moscow did in the past when it tried to play up the contradictions between the Europeans and the Americans, or when Washington sought to add fuel to the Soviet-Chinese discord. Partnership is visible with a naked eye now: the crowds of people protesting against George W. Bush’s policies were smaller by a factor of several times during his tour of Russia than in France, Germany or Grate Britain. Problems in contact-making with the Europeans can also prompt the two sides to move towards each other. On the whole, «unlike Europe, Russia shares a more traditional view of the use of force and the role of multilateralism with the United States.»[12]

Bilateral relations open a wide field for the rise pressing issues, varying from mutual claims and rebukes to the elaboration of ideology of strategic partnership. There can hardly be any doubt that coordinated actions by Russia and the U.S. would lay a most solid foundation for our country’s and the whole world’s successful development in the 21^st century. This prospect is realistic. I can only agree with Robert Legvold from Columbia University, who says: «Consider how different the world could be in twenty years if a democratic and economically revitalized Russia is a genuine partner of the United States, addressing side by side fundamental threats of international comity and welfare.»[13]

The U.S. is the only superpower and the only power capable of producing tangible reactions to an array of challenges in different parts of the globe. The actual task is not at all to paralyze America, all the more so that, not infrequently, its actions are not at all incorrect. Criticism of America’s unilateralism, imperial arrogance, and boorish practicing of declared policies is justified, but the American leadership has displayed an ability to identify the sources of major threats quite pertinently, and I hope Russia could prompt the U.S. how to make its policy more rational and cooperative.

Both countries have not removed all the differences yet, and some of them are pretty grave. The Russians and Americans have dropped each other from the lists of potential war enemies, but have not changed the lists of goals to be subjected to nuclear strikes. This is not a derivative of aggressiveness, though, but a stimulus for further cuts in strategic offensive weapons. Russia and the U.S. have reserved too many warheads for themselves (1,700 and 2,250) and who else can they target with those missiles, if not each other? Nor have they settled their differences over the supplies of Russian missile technologies to China, although those differences are far less acute than the former problems around Iran and Iraq. The U.S. is restricting the imports of Russian steel and Russia retaliates with restrictions on the U.S. poultry. The Jackson-Vanik amendment that tied up the granting of a most favored nation status to the USSR to a freedom of Jewish emigration is still in place, but it looks like a trifle on the background of America’s trade problems with the Europeans.

Russia will not step over a line beyond which a confrontation with the U.S. may begin. I hope that Washington will not do it either.

I have some doubts that the Russo-American partnership will grow over into a form of close and binding alliance over the short term. The asymmetry of strength is a major barrier, and it will continue pushing the U.S. to ignore many of Russia’s concerns, thus fueling knee-jerk anti-Americanism of the Russian elites and the electorate. As for the Russian political institutions and economic system, the time when they become congruent with the American idea of a genuine democracy and market economy is clearly some way off. The whole story of the oil company YUKOS provides ample proof of it.

Russia-EU: Glutinous Relationship

Relations between Russia and the EU are based on a number of fixed points that predetermine the format of contacts and do not see any change along with changes of the EU’s rotating presidency or the governments in Moscow.

To begin with, like it or not, Russia is the largest European country, and the outside situation in which the European Union is operating depends on Russia’s actions to a big degree. For Moscow, the EU is the largest trade partner, accounting for over a third of our foreign trade, and the figure will grow to over 50 percent after its scheduled expansion.

Second, Russia is one of the countries that cannot integrate into the European Union in the foreseeable future. Officials in Brussels realized it from the very start, but Moscow developed that realization at a rather late date. Boris Yeltsin mentioned a possibility of joining the EU the last time in 1995 and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, in 1997.

Vladimir Putin does not harbor illusions like that. Nowadays Russians are far less concerned with the processes of building a united Europe than other Europeans. The EU summits draw attention largely because of the protests by anti-globalists, while the reforming of EU institutions, the procedures of voting in different European structures, the division of power between the central European and national structures do not bother the Russians more than the sandstorms on the Mars – or on the Venus, where there are no sandstorms at all.

Third, Russia and the EU are interacting at a very low level, if one looks at it from a formal legislative angle of view. We are building our relationship on the Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation that took effect in December 1997. It was modeled as an upgraded form of a standard non-preferential agreement, and the only difference is that it contains a voluminous political part. In terms of status, the EU maintains relations with Russia at a lower level than with some countries of Africa or Latin America. The 1997 agreement is also inferior to the agreements on free trade an customs union (which it has with Israel). Naturally, it is way below the European agreements that the EU member-nations signed with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990’s. The Russia-EU agreement provokes criticism for its inability to take cooperation to a higher level, but limited as it is, even its provisions have never been used in full. Up to 60 percent of its articles are idling.

It is true that Russia became the first country in 1999 towards which the EU designed some kind of a general strategy. Moscow reacted to it with a medium-term strategy of its own. These documents are not mandatory in any way, however. While the heads of state and government meet regularly at the Russia-EU summit conferences, Carl Bildt is quite right in saying that the dialog “has been remarkably empty in terms of regional policies as well as global issues that are of mutual concern to both Russia and the EU.”[14]

Asymmetry of Russia’s and EU’s interests is taking clear contours. The European Union tends to regard Russia as a challenge rather than an opportunity, and the challenge is seen from the angle of economic and political instability and ecological disasters. The Europeans have a short list of things they would like Russia to give them – absence of dictatorship, nuclear security, a lot of natural gas, some amounts of crude oil and timber, and the opening of Russian markets for European commodities.

For Russia, Europe presents a totally different type of challenge – that of the economic, technological, informational, and security marginalization. The graveness of the latter aspect came to limelight as NATO continued expanding and Russia had to stay away from the construction of the united Europe or from the solution of major issues of European security (like the situation in Kosovo).

Russia has economic rather than political interests in Europe. Their scope embraces the foreign debt, the bulk of which Russia owes to the Europeans, investment, access to high technologies, and unimpeded access to western markets. Ironically, the Europeans are least of all interested in cooperation in the very same areas. At a time when Brussels is reluctant to discuss debts and investment, Russian manufactured exports – in 13 commodity classes – run into tough anti-dumping sanctions.

This country attaches primary significance to cooperation in science and technologies along a wide range or areas – ecology, healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing technologies, transport, telecommunications, and also mobility of researchers. These areas of cooperation – the least advertised ones – have seen notable achievements, but different projects collapsed with a perplexing regularity there as well. Moscow’s cooperation in the pan-European transport system remains mostly on paper, although its role as a vital transit corridor between Europe and Asia is growing.

There has been slightly more progress in long-term cooperation in the energy sector under the so-called Prodi plan that reserves a role for Russia in ensuring security of the European fuel and energy systems in the 21^st century. Energy dialog has brought up discussions about a changeover of financial operations from the U.S. dollar to the euro, which put Washington on alert. By the time of the Russia-EU summit in Rome in November 2003, the sides endorsed the fourth general report on cooperation in the energy sector, but not a single project has gotten off the ground to-date. “The Russian companies are not craving for the European investment, as it will open the doors for European competitors, while the EU fears an excessive dependence on Russian energy resources and declares diversification of imports.”[15]

EU member-nations have pledged support to Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization, but talks on specific agreements permitting mutual access to the markets of commodities and services have deadlocked in the wake of the EU demands to bring the domestic Russian energy rates to a level with the averaged European ones. For Moscow, this sounds as weird as a demand for Morocco to sell oranges at an averaged Russian price would sound, and yet Brussels is reluctant to heed that argument. On the WTO front, there are no problems with the Americans as regards our accession there – all of them have been posed by the Europeans.

Years of futile struggle against the eastwards expansion of NATO have overshadowed for the Kremlin a real problem stemming from the expansion of the European Union that changes the terms of trade between Russia and a range of tradition Central-European and East-European partners in a radical way. Those countries are now severing the previous trade agreements with Russia, and about 10 percent of all our industrial exports will face anti-dumping procedures in twenty-five countries of Europe instead of the previous fifteen when the expansion becomes an accomplished fact.[16]

The Europeans have moved eastwards the Schengen curtain of visa requirements, and the Russians are now forced to obtain travel visas to the countries of Eastern Europe – something that they did not have to do even in the Soviet era. What is more, any Russian national has to obtain a Lithuanian transit visa for travels between the Baltic exclave region of Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia, which means getting visas for journeys between parts of a single country. Discussion of a possibility of lifting visas for Russians going to the EU is very topical now. The EU requires no visas from the Americans, Israelis, and most Latin Americans. In the meantime, a real freedom of movement in an undivided Europe would mean an efficacious solution to the Kaliningrad problem, aside from other advantages.

Although the Russians and the Europeans have joined the U.S. and the UN to form a quarter of Middle East peace mediators, about 59 percent Europeans believe that the main threat to peace is coming out of Israel,[17] which obviously proves that Europe is far more anti-Jewish than Russia, a country whose numerous descendants have moved to Israel and that shares Jerusalem’s concerns over Islamic extremism.

The explanation for that sharing of concerns is to be found in the Chechen problem in many ways. Both Russia and the European Union advocate a political settlement in that much-troubled North-Caucasian territory alongside with respecting Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, yet they have a completely opposite vision of political solutions. European organizations exert a much stronger pressure on the Kremlin in connection with Chechnya than the U.S. No doubt, the European officials will continue accentuating human rights as regards the Chechen problem, but the Russian leadership will continue considering Chechnya an internal problem and will unlikely show more willingness to discuss it in the future than it did in the past.

Since 2001, Russia and the EU have been holding special consultations on security and defense and having contacts in the field of operative crisis management. They are also pondering the use of Russian transport aviation for Petersberg missions. I do not think we will see those missions soon, and the Europeans will definitely have to discuss who and how will perform them with the U.S. and NATO, not Moscow. The prospects for cooperation in that area are vague, and the same goes for the very future of the SPED. Henry Kissinger’s question about where one could call to get details of a consolidated European position remains open. “Even though all European leaders keep saying that EU defense future must be NATO-friendly, they mean different things”.[18]

Dispute among the Europeans over the Iraqi war reflected an already noticeable tendency towards a weakening of European solidarity and breathed a new life in the leading European powers’ desire to rationalize their foreign and defense policies. For Russia, it means a potential prospect of dealing with separate members of the EU – old and new ones likewise, rather than the central union agencies. This is especially possible now that the former socialist nations have recovered from the post-Communist anti-Russian syndrome.

Putin’s solidarity with Federal Chancellor Schroeder and President Jacques Chirac during the Iraqi war prompted some analysts to claim that Moscow, Berlin and Paris had formed an axis, which Russian jingoists hailed as a basis for an anti-American coalition. But more sober analysts warned against rash conclusions about the degree of the split, whatever its seriousness for the trans-Atlantic relations. Western solidarity is firmly grounded in the economic and political interdependence of western nations, and a long range of parameters makes relations with the U.S. far more important for the Germans and the French than relations with Russia.

Moscow is not interested in an escalation of controversies between the U.S. and key European nations, which might enfeeble the international antiterrorist coalition. The Kremlin will not play up the contradictions between the Europeans and Washington – it does not fancy a situation where it will have to choose between America and Europe.

The axis with the Europeans proved to be momentary and did not produce lucrative dividends in relations with the EU. More than that, new complications in a range of issues – accession to the WTO, freedom of traveling, and Chechnya – have clearly intensified. Putin told a meeting with German businessmen in Yekaterinburg in October 2003 that eurocracts had taken a biased and indecent stance on Russia’s joining the WTO. “Let me tell you our muscle is getting stronger and stronger and even a partner as strong as the European Union will be able to twist our arms”.[19]

As years go by, policy-makers in Moscow are more and more inclined to believe that Russia should not seek accession to the European Union. It is highly undesirable to make the country’s economic development a hostage of aquis communautaire, and to put our businesses into an excessively rigid format, especially if one considers the higher degree of economic freedom and the higher rates of economic growth here than in the EU – both now and in the foreseeable future. There is one more question that Putin asked while he was interviewed by Italian correspondents: “And who should we integrate with?… If you take many pressing issues of the day, Russia has much closer positions on them with separate European countries than many European countries have among themselves.”[20] But the Kremlin does not deny the importance of a closest possible matching of Russian and European laws or of a closer partnership with the EU’s leading member-nations to promote the Russian interests and build up a legalist paradigm of international relations.

Future cooperation may develop along the principles of three models, discussed in Russia. First comes the so-called South-African model envisioning a free trade zone, like the one the EU has with the South African Republic, Israel, Egypt, and some other countries. The second model is called the Norwegian, based on a less binding formula of a common economic area and offering the freedom of travel, as well as free commodity, capital and services flows. The last is the Swiss model that relies on a system of long-term agreements in different branches of the economy.[21]

It seems that Dmitry Trenin has come up with an adequate forecast for the prospects of that relationship: “Given the extreme improbability of Russia’s accession to the EU in the next twenty or so years, a question about a functional substitution arises. The Russians would obviously prefer a liberal construct consisting of a free trade zone, partnership in the energy sector and visa-free traveling. They would also fancy a mechanism of political consultations. In the field of security, the sides might sign a package of agreements ranging from fighting with crime to the maintenance of peace.”[22]

Russia-NATO: A Slipping-Away Partnership

NATO topic has almost died down in the domestic Russian debate. It seems the relationship with individual Western coutries are already at a much higher level than the North-Atlantic pact can provide. On the face of it, the general approach toward NATO combines elements of a growing skepticism and enduring repulsion.

The basic problem in the perception of NATO by the Russians is that we do not belong to that block. Many people here would agree with the western analysts who believe, like Phillip Bobbitt, that “there can be no higher priority for the United States and the United Kingdom than to strengthen cooperation with Russia in a league against international terrorism, even to the extent of transforming NATO. NATO could become the meeting ground for coalitional warfare against the lethal, global menace, and could include Russia as a full member.”[23] But the Russians realize perfectly well that they do not have chances of joining NATO over the short term.

The North-Atlantic block is not a menace for Russia, but quite understandably, affection for a military alliance that your country is not part of would be a perverted feeling, particularly in a situation where that alliance is gradually approaching your borders despite a decade of strong objections on the part of your government. This effect is definitely augmented by NATO’s largest ever military exercise close to the Russian borders with a simulation of warfare against this country. What is more, Russia remains on the short list of targets of a nuclear attack.

NATO has turned into a European system of security, and Russia has two problems as a minimum in the wake of it. First, Europe is the safest region of the world and it hardly needs a mammoth military organization that emerged as a Cold War instrument. Second, the system cannot be stable, as it leaves aside several large countries, like Ukraine or Russia.

This situation will not see any dramatic changes after NATO At 20 grows over into NATO At 27 – it does not offer Russia a place in the decision-making mechanism. The Council of Twenty (NATO and Russia) mostly focuses on nonproliferation and fighting with terrorism. It is by all means a fascinating thing to discuss nonproliferation issues and terrorism with officials from Denmark and Iceland – and very soon, from Estonia and Romania – in Brussels, but the truth is that Putin and the Russian Foreign Ministry will always give preference to discussing those things in the places where practical decisions can be taken on them. For instance, in Washington, DC.

As a person who chaired the subcommittee for international security and arms control in the State Duma after the 1993 parliamentary election, I would like to confirm that the NATO headquarters in Brussels is the dullest place for discussing whatever problems. Once you get there, you can always hear briefings on some prearranged positions of the member-countries, but NATO bureaucrats will always cut short any attempts to deviate an inch from those positions.

Skepticism towards NATO is also fuelled by the feeling that that the block is losing its significance. It looks like the war in Yugoslavia was its only and last military campaign – and far from a glorious one. The two wars that came in its footsteps, in Afghanistan and Iraq, did not involve NATO as a military alliance. A situation where it will come out as a plausible military force is scarcely imaginable. The peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan has given it a certain mission, the ending of which is unclear, and the predictions on where and when problems may begin are a wild guess. One can hardly believe that a large European constituency will be ready to support military presence in Afghanistan at all costs.

The second wave of expansion brought into the NATO family a group of weak countries that act as consumers of security, and Russian analysts believe it has weakened the alliance further.

“It seems that NATO is now evolving into a political institution with less operational military significance, something that the Russians have long advocated,” writes Andrew Kuchins, the head of the Carnegie Center in Moscow. “NATO may no longer exist twenty years from now, but if it does, I would venture that Russia will be a full member.”[24] This is really something that one cannot rule out, but for Russians’ the interest in that membership will be subsiding as long as this country regains strength and its unwillingness to bind itself by military and political commitments increases.

Finally, it is problematic to cooperate with an organization that lacks a clear vision of its own future.

Russia will continue building up relations with NATO. Its outgoing Secretary General, Lord Robertson, got an unprecedented warm reception in Moscow during the farewell tour in October 2003. He was the first leader of the block to leave Moscow with a special gift, a cavalry sword. But in spite of all courtesies, NATO will have a peripheral role in Russia’s rapprochement with the West, compared with leading western countries, the EU, or broader international associations – the UN Security Council or the G-8.

We could also make a pause in relations with NATO and thus prompt some of our western friends to give a thought to how a new architecture of the new indivisible transatlantic area could be created.

The Autonomy Imperative

The main challenge to Russia is coming from the south, not from the west, and that challenge is the menace of the spreading weapons of mass destruction, growing Islamic extremism and terrorism, drugs trafficking, and penetration of illegal migrants. It is from the south that Chechen terrorists get financial, military, and moral support. Some of the southern countries have undemocratic regimes aspiring to possess the WMDs and ready to use them as tools of blackmail. The south is a spawning ground of international extremist Islamic movements that tightly intertwine with state power in some countries. Russia feels direct impact of apparent problems in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East, and it is unlikely that this country will be able to tackle them all alone, even if it spends considerable resources for the purpose.

In this light, an answer to the question ‘Who should the Russians side with’ gets a clear contour: we must move towards advanced and responsible countries, located mostly on both coasts of the Atlantic. By opting for this course, we will avoid a devastating confrontation, oppose the real global challenges, and speed up development. The Russian establishment is gradually coming to a realization that the choice of development models has only one option.[25]  There are no occidental, oriental, or Russian models of development, there is only one successful model that has proved its worth in the developed western countries and in the East, too. Also, there are meager models, implemented in some southern countries. A drive to success presupposes that people follow a set of universal prescriptions, borne out of western experiences, which rids of meaning the age-old disputes between the followers of two major trends in Russian social philosophy – the pro-western Occidentalists and the traditionalist Slavophiles. When their disputes will stop is not clear, however.

What is clear is that Russia will not become part of the West in the short-term prospect – it is unintegrable into the Euro-Atlantic structures. It continues fixing positions in the global and regional institutions and is destined to retain the role of an autonomous actor that will not mingle with any alliance. Unlike many countries, Russia has a good potential for keeping up its sovereignty.

It will also be as a growing center of power. Goldman Sachs’ recent report argues that in terms of the GDP Russia is expected to outstrip Italy in 2016, France in 2025, and Germany in 2029, and will eventually get to the fifth position in the world. As regards the per capita income, Goldman Sachs predicts that Russia will slash the gap with the U.S., measured by a factor of 13.2 times now, to 1.7 times and will be ahead of Germany and Italy by 2050. Its living standards will supposedly get very close to those in France and the UK.[26]

In the meantime, the U.S. will remain the only superpower, but the likelihood that it will want to do global management unilaterally is small. The Americans will be moving de facto towards more cooperative approaches – something that the Europeans and Russians have long been calling for. The world will be moving along the road of a global Concert, in which a certain country will have more solos than others.[27] Its score and format are yet to be decided, but Russia will certainly be performing in it.

© Copyright Ôîíä "Ïîëèòèêà", 2003