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Can Russia handle a changed world?
Aug 30th 2001
From The Economist print edition
Missile-defence talks and NATO enlargement will test Russia’s new pragmatism
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EVER since the cold war ended, Russia has been searching in vain for a foreign policy worthy of the great power it thinks it still ought to be. From the mutual disappointments of their early bear-hugging “strategic partnership”, through Russia’s deep sulk over its loss of empire and influence, to the outright hostility that greeted NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, western governments too have puzzled over how to manage relations with a country that is too large and well-armed to be overlooked, but all too prickly and unpredictable to be counted on. Vladimir Putin has sensibly tried to counter Russia’s drift to the margins of world affairs by presenting himself as a more of a pragmatist to do business with. This autumn, the search for a new strategic understanding with America about nuclear weapons and missile defences, as well as the start of discussions in NATO about further enlargement, will test this new pragmatism to the limit.
If a new rift is to be avoided, by the time Mr Putin meets America’s president, George Bush, in November, the two will need to have in their minds, if not yet in detail on paper, the outline of a new strategic bargain that will both dramatically cut their nuclear arsenals and resolve their differences over the future of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. Yet success is still far from certain. Part of the difficulty is that it is hard to over-estimate what is at stake in such a deal for Russia.
Mr Putin has been more honest than most in acknowledging that it is not dastardly western plots, but Russia’s own economic and political weakness, that has so greatly reduced its standing in the world. By contrast, nuclear weapons and the raft of cold-war-era treaties with America, including the ABM treaty, represent the one flattering measure of Russia’s old worth that endures. That is why, although cash-strapped and badly in need of a deal that will cut the numbers of nuclear missiles he needs to maintain, at first Mr Putin simply refused to contemplate tampering with the ABM treaty, which for 30 years has prevented either side from building the sorts of anti-missile defences Mr Bush is now keen to have.
Instead Mr Putin joined China in a chorus of disapproval, and tried to drive an ABM -sharpened wedge between America and its European allies. But the Europeans refused to play along, and common interests with China—which unlike Russia opposes all missile defences, including non-ABM-offending ones, because it worries these may be used someday to protect Taiwan from China—extend only so far. So in June, at his first face-to-face meeting with Mr Bush, Mr Putin at last agreed to explore a new set of strategic understandings with America to replace those of the cold-war years.
Another difficulty, it has to be said, is that America’s plans for new defences have barely taken shape. Mr Bush says his aim is to help defend America and its allies against limited new threats from rogue states armed with a few long-range missiles, not from Russia or China. China’s deterrent is smaller and therefore potentially more easily undermined by even limited defences, but Russia knows that the sort of defences Mr Bush has talked about, though they would still offend against the ABM treaty as it currently stands, would not threaten Russia. Still, some of Mr Bush’s officials talk airily of defences on land, at sea, in the air, even in space. Without some eventual limits on technology, or on numbers of interceptors and how they can be deployed (ruling out weapons in space would help), Mr Putin could have little confidence that the “understandings” with which America says it wants to replace the ABM treaty will protect Russia’s interests too.
The best way for Russia to proceed, however, is to negotiate with America in good faith. A Russia ready to think creatively about the elements of a new strategic bargain would also help those on Mr Bush’s team who would prefer to have such a stability-preserving deal; there are others, frankly, who would rather press on regardless of Russia. And if the two sides still fail to agree? Russia has no veto over America’s defences. America has said it will go ahead unilaterally if no deal is done, and it may yet do just that. But Russia would earn a lot of diplomatic credit for seeking a genuine accord.
Unfortunately, the instinct of Russia’s diplomats and generals is still to see the world as a zero-sum game: anything that America wants, or is seen to benefit from, must be bad for Russia. But traditional Russian tactics—turning any negotiation into an endurance test (some of those old arms-control treaties took years to pull off)—will not work with Mr Bush. If Mr Putin really wants talks now under way to get results, he will need to bang heads together on his own side.
It does not help Russia’s case that some of its own companies have been doing a lot (alongside China and North Korea) to help would-be proliferators, including Iran, Iraq and Syria, build the bigger missiles that America now sees as a potential new threat. With official approval, Russia’s scientists help Iran’s nuclear industry, despite the country’s barely disguised bid to build a bomb; Russia is also selling nuclear fuel to India, despite that country’s refusal of full international safeguards. Rather than opportunistically pocketing the cash from such deals, Mr Putin would do better to stem this flow of technology, which could some day pose a direct threat to Russia too.
Old diplomatic habits die harder in Russia, but when it comes to NATO’s further enlargement, Mr Putin may have learned something from past mistakes. When NATO first offered to open its doors to new recruits from Eastern Europe—Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic—Russia loudly threatened dire consequences, only to discover it had no veto over NATO decisions and had to back down. All its thundering achieved was a lengthening queue of countries mustard-keen to join. At its summit in Prague next year, NATO says it will issue more invitations—how many and for when is yet to be decided. Russia is no keener to see NATO grow, especially as this time the hopefuls include Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, once part of the old Soviet Union (see article ). But so far Mr Putin has kept his cool. There have been dark mutterings that Russia might move its short-range nuclear weapons provocatively closer to NATO territory. But a more pragmatic Russia would instead take a hard look at the damage such cold-war reflexes are already doing to its interests in Europe.
Mr Putin wants Russia to be an accepted European power, but his is still an old-style Europe of spheres of influence and thus he still demands Russia’s due in its ex-Soviet parts. Yet the more Russia banks on trouble in places like Georgia in the hope of keeping a grip there, or coddles repressive Belarus, or supports anti-reform elements in Ukraine so as to keep that country economically dependent, the more those countries that can will keep shuffling nervously away from Russia and towards organisations like NATO and the European Union.
Whether Mr Putin likes it or not, Russia has no more of a veto over other Europeans’ futures than it does over America’s defence. With luck, Putin-the-pragmatist has started to understand that. If he can apply that insight to managing relations with America and with NATO, however tricky, without all the bad-tempered fist-banging of the past, Russia would have the makings of a pragmatic new foreign policy—and show itself to be a worthy power to do business with.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=760307
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