A ‘Reset’ for Relations?: Understanding Russian Grievances

Robert D. English is a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, and the author of Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (Columbia University Press, 2000).

 

 

Are we at a genuine crossroads in Russian–American relations, a moment when those ties can be set on a new, productive and enduring track for years to come and the frictions of the recent past put safely behind us? With President Barack Obama keen to repair his country’s frayed international reputation and reverse the unilateral excesses of his predecessor George W. Bush, as well as a global economic crisis that has chastened both Washington and Moscow, the moment would seem ripe for a “reset”¹ in the United States’ relations with the government of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Yet such hopes will be sorely disappointed if, as the expression of the moment suggests, expectations are for a quick and painless or guilt-free—at a keystroke, as it were—erasure of years of accumulated antagonisms. Rather, the penance will probably be prolonged, progress at best will be protracted, and a return to the once-bright prospects of the initial post–Cold War period is highly unlikely.

 

It is not only that the quintessentially American optimism of “let bygones be bygones” often leads to disillusion and even backlash when the other party won’t put aside deeply felt resentments and “just get over it” in short order. Nor is it simply that these antagonisms stem from more than merely clashing styles—Bush’s arrogant unilateralism, or Putin’s prickly insistence on the prerogatives of a great power—but equally from fundamental policy differences. Rather, it is that a combination of the two factors—personal and political, style and substance—have worked to disillusion Russians profoundly about America and to alter dramatically their outlook on the West. Thus, hopes for improved ties must recognise not only the depth of Russians’ resentment, but also the length of their steady alienation—twenty years of unfulfilled (or broken) promises and searing disappointment. This experience has hardened a worldview, a core identity of their society and state as an actor in international affairs, that is sharply at odds with the American-led West. The first task, therefore, for those who would “reset” Russian–American relations (apart from tempering expectations) is to understand the evolution of that worldview, beginning not with the recent Bush presidency but that of Bill Clinton and, before it, the first Bush administration. 

The 1990s: Two Perspectives 

The dominant American story about the first post–Cold War decade is one of Washington’s benevolence and forbearance in relations with Moscow. The United States gave generously to aid Russia’s transition from communism, both money—its own, and that of global financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)—and also expertise, in the services of numerous advisers on building democracy and free markets. President Clinton stood by his partner President Boris Yeltsin (the personal chemistry between “Bill” and “Boris” was strong, even if the latter was given to frequent lapses or outbursts) as Russia made great strides towards a liberal political and economic system. That support helped Yeltsin to defeat an attempted hardliners’ revanche in October 1993, to privatise an inefficient state-owned economy and overcome a financial crisis in 1998, and more generally to establish the foundations of a free and prosperous new Russia at peace with its neighbours. US observers viewed the 1990s as the most democratic and promising decade (whether measured in terms of political, press, or entrepreneurial liberties) in Russia’s long and difficult history.² Yeltsin’s successor Putin, however, has steadily curbed these liberties, beginning with his renewal of Yeltsin’s only really singular folly—the war in Chechnya—which as prime minister he resumed on the eve of Yeltsin’s retirement in late 1999.

 

A typical Russian view of the 1990s, by contrast, is at almost complete odds with this narrative. US and Western aid for Russia’s transition was in fact stingy, beginning when it mattered most—under the first Bush administration, with perestroika leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s desperate 1990–1 efforts to secure assistance and prevent the collapse that he foresaw would lead to widespread conflict and immiseration. Yet even under America’s darling Yeltsin, such aid as was offered came, under terms of the neo-liberal “Washington Consensus”, with strings that pushed Moscow into a disastrously hasty privatisation, a deadly evisceration of the state’s ability to ensure healthcare, education and other basic services, and a reckless disregard for the importance of legal infrastructure and governmental oversight. Unsurprisingly, the “market” swiftly degenerated into a bacchanalia of the criminal and well-connected who plundered the country’s resources, stripped its industrial wealth, and bred a tiny class of “new Russians” who lived extravagantly while most of the population fell into poverty. Withal, Russia endured a decade-long slump that by almost any measure was worse than the currently much-discussed (at least, in the West) Great Depression of the 1930s. 

Paltry US Aid 

Few Americans are likely to recognise a scenario of the 1990s so different from the reassuring orthodoxy of their country’s propriety and generosity. Yet some simple facts speak otherwise. Consider the economy: not only did there never materialise the much-discussed “Marshall Plan” for Russia, but even the total direct US aid of a few billion dollars was dwarfed by the tens of billions given to the other ex-Soviet republics—chiefly (many Russians are convinced, and not without reason) to “wean them away” from Moscow’s influence and weaken their natural economic and political ties to Russia.

 

Under the recent Bush administration, the United States gave upwards of $300 million in direct and indirect military aid to Tbilisi, preparing it for membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and helping fuel a twenty-fold increase in Georgia’s defence budget. This apparently emboldened President Mikheil Saakashvili to gamble on a strike to reclaim the breakaway South Ossetian region, which in turn sparked war with Russia in 2008. Now, in 2009 alone, the United States is spending an additional $1 billion to help Georgia rebuild after that brief but destructive war. Similar military aid to Uzbekistan, in return for the use of an airbase in that autocratic Central Asian state to support NATO operations in Afghanistan (and that cost the United States tens of millions more in fees and upgrades), proved an even poorer investment when the regime summarily ousted the Americans in 2005, forcing them to seek more complicated and expensive arrangements elsewhere. More generally, one wonders if such funds for “security assistance” could not have purchased far more genuine security if invested in socio-economic needs instead.

 

The paltry American investment in Russia’s transition seems especially myopic given the much greater subsequent costs of countering new threats and instability in the post-Soviet region that different initial policies could have avoided. And this is to say nothing of the irony attending the (virtual overnight) alacrity with which tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars were found to accomplish everything from propping up the Mexican currency (1994) to propping up troubled US corporations (2008–9).³

 

That Western charity was severely limited, even if foolishly short-sighted, was certainly disillusioning but something that most Russians soon understood; American interest in their country fell rapidly once Gorbachev’s foreign-policy concessions had been pocketed and then the Soviet Union itself collapsed, and they had been naive to put much faith in extravagant talk of large-scale aid and wide-ranging co-operation. What has been harder to accept is that Western policies would actively work to weaken Russia and complicate its transition—such as the above-mentioned “Washington Consensus” conditionality that even leading IMF and World Bank officials now admit contributed to the development of a financially unstable, profoundly polarised, and broadly criminalised economy.⁴

 

This criminalisation emerged as perhaps the most severe obstacle to investment, growth, and a law-governed society, yet early warnings about metastasising public- and private-sector corruption were either ignored (to avoid upsetting relations with Yeltsin’s government, whose compliance abroad suited US foreign policy) or rationalised (with typically self-centred reference to America, whose own nineteenth-century “robber barons” built a mighty industrial economy, after all). Worse yet were a few much-publicised cases of the involvement of American bankers and consultants in Russian criminal schemes—from money laundering to insider trading—that hurt America’s image far more than they ever hurt the Russian economy. 

Yeltsin—America’s Darling 

The gap between American and Russian perceptions of Russian politics is as large as their divergence on Russia’s economy. For example, the vaunted free press of the 1990s probably peaked under Gorbachev in 1991; in Yeltsin’s post-Soviet Russia, the quantity and quality of publications soon declined as state subsidies for the media were slashed. Staying afloat in a floundering market economy drove many surviving outlets into the pockets of the new media barons, who routinely slanted coverage to serve their personal, often corrupt, economic interests.

 

Consider the now-exiled oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, banker and founder of the first “independent” national Russian television network. While hailed in the West for his reporters’ frank coverage of the war in Chechnya, Gusinsky’s simultaneous enforcement of an editorial line against banking reform (including opposition to competition from foreign banks) contributed to a prolonged credit drought in small business and consumer finance that was extremely harmful to Russian economic growth.⁵ Only after deposing Gusinsky and other oligarchs—whose payoffs had bought them the protection of the Yeltsin government, prolonging their lucrative financial monopolies—was Putin able to push through long-overdue reforms and invite competition from Western banks, moves that swiftly expanded the availability of credit and greatly aided Russia’s subsequent recovery. The banking sector is still riddled with problems, and suffers now from the current global financial crisis. But Russians rightly wonder why the West overlooks Putin’s “Westernising” reforms, clinging instead to an image of Yeltsin as free-market champion and ignoring his government’s incompetence and corruption that did so much to harm millions of ordinary Russians. As for Gusinsky, his contribution to press freedoms is clouded by his self-interested manipulation of the same; and since the US-led invasion of Iraq, outsiders’ concern for the Russian media’s right to expose the carnage of war in the face of government secrecy can only strike Russians as quaint.

 

Democracy, too, appeared increasingly “for hire” as parliamentary deputies bought their offices, sold their votes, and proved unable to pass even basic reform legislation. Regional governments, meanwhile, were ruthlessly dominated by corrupt “local tsars” who shamelessly exploited public office for private gain. Most routinely intimidated, and sometimes simply murdered, local editors or reporters who dared expose their rapacity. This degradation continued for most of the 1990s, though many Russians had already lost faith in Western-style democracy by 1993. That was the fateful year when Yeltsin illegally shut down parliament, violently assaulted its defenders, and fraudulently passed a new Russian constitution that invested him with greatly expanded presidential powers.⁶ Together with the widespread poverty and corruption that discredited Western economic counsel, this flagrantly unconstitutional power-grab also tainted Western democracy advisers as many either remained silent, or regretted the “excessive violence”, but ultimately approved Yeltsin’s brutal measures as the lesser of two evils. Their “the end justifies the means” rationalisation for Yeltsin’s blatantly anti-democratic actions has proved as indelible a stain on the credibility of Western democracy advocates as those actions themselves did on the legitimacy of the remainder of Yeltsin’s rule.⁷

 

Ironically, it was Yeltsin’s own new “super-presidential” Russian constitution that Putin began exploiting in 2000 to expand his personal powers, and central state authority, at the expense of broadly dysfunctional regional and local governments. And yet most Russians approved this expansion precisely because for them its main effects have been to restore the government’s ability to pay salaries and pensions, to raise taxes from oligarchs (who had routinely bought legislative loopholes from corrupt parliamentarians), to rein in the shamelessly corrupt “local tsars”, and to restore the writ of federal law and otherwise arrest the incipient fragmentation of the Russian Federation. Russian Putinism, in other words, has been a natural result of the failures of Western-backed Yeltsinism. And it has been broadly applauded in Russia, notwithstanding the price to procedural democracy and the free-market economy, both of which, for most Russians, had long since manifestly failed.⁸

 

Further, some Russians argue that, as a result of the West’s policies—and the mistakes of gullible leaders such as Yeltsin, or “traitorous” ones like Gorbachev—their country has suffered a veritable genocide, with as many “excess deaths” during a decade of Yeltsin as Russia ever suffered in two decades of Stalin. The relentless grim reaper of premature mortality caused by decay (collapse of public health, spread of infectious disease) or despair (alcohol, drug abuse) may not be as dramatic as Stalin’s political terror. But it is the contemporary, not historical, experience of an entire generation of Russians who, even if most do not speak literally of “genocide”, still blame the hapless Yeltsin and his Western backers for their decade-long national tragedy. Of course, most Americans will reject such indictments of US policy towards Russia, and indeed the “malevolent and genocidal” characterisation of that policy is as distorted in one direction as the “munificent and generous” version is in the other. The point here is not to determine where the truth actually lies, but to understand common Russian perceptions that America did little to help, and much to hurt, Russia’s post-communist transformation; and that even if this was not by design, America has been quite happy to take advantage of Russia’s resultant weakness. 

Sidelining Russia 

This disillusion with America, the West, and the Western liberal free-market model is broadly mirrored in Russia’s foreign policy. Indeed, as should be clear from the preceding discussion of Russian views on economics and politics, the domestic and foreign-policy realms are inseparable. This is so, in an immediate sense, because Europeans and especially Americans have been so closely involved in Russia’s domestic affairs—sadly, in the Russian mind, in a frequently negative way. But the domestic and foreign are also linked in a more fundamental fashion because, over nearly two decades of post–Cold War, post-communist struggle, a majority of Russians have come to an understanding of their state and society—authoritarian, paternalistic, with renewed attachment to its traditional culture and renewed pride in tsarist and even Soviet-era achievements—that reflects a worldview, an identity, quite distinct from the liberal model of the West. As lamented by Andrei Grachev, a former adviser to perestroika leader Mikhail Gorbachev, “The iron curtain has been replaced by a new cultural curtain, which will be even more difficult to bring down.”⁹

 

Post-Soviet Russia’s identity crisis has attracted much scholarly attention, yet there remains something of a “Washington consensus” among analysts and policymakers that does not quite take identity seriously. Their assumptions assume the following form: “Russia is going through a phase, a post-imperial hangover, but it will outgrow this eventually as one outgrows adolescence”; or “There’s no alternative to the liberal model in the long run, and socio-economic forces will sooner or later push Moscow in the same direction as other developing societies”. These assumptions are not entirely without basis, but cultural change is measured in generations, not presidential terms, and thus such beliefs are a perilous basis for the making of foreign policy today.

 

As to foreign affairs per se, that these have been an arena of steadily increasing frictions—generating Russian resentments of the United States similar to those arising from Russia’s domestic circumstances—is well known to all. And again, to understand these resentments we must first return to the 1990s, where the antagonisms started, and thus where any “reset” too must begin. The first President Bush’s uncharacteristic boast, “We won the Cold War!”, was naturally offensive to the Russian reformers who justly believed that they were equally victors in, and certainly had suffered more under, the long struggle against communism. But the Clinton administration’s subsequent cavalier treatment of a once-mighty country seeking to come to terms with the loss of international prestige and influence—as it similarly sought, mostly unsuccessfully, to build stability and prosperity at home—was short-sighted in the extreme. On Europe and the Balkans to the Middle East, Russia found its opinions ignored, its participation unwelcome, and its ministers and diplomats sidelined, with the predictable result that it soon sought influence by distancing itself from, and often opposing, US leadership simply on principle. “We don’t need Russia any more,” was the bluntly admitted rationale in Washington, and in any case, “We know perfectly well what is best for the world, and for Russia too, without having to take the Russians’ advice or misgivings seriously.” (This latter sentiment has been characterised as the “spinach” treatment—an unpleasant experience the Russians must endure for their own good.)¹⁰

 

The former Yugoslavia is a prime example of the folly of such policies, the tragic arena where a true partnership in diplomacy and peacemaking would surely have halted the carnage much earlier. Instead, by failing to take Russia seriously, Washington in effect pushed Moscow into the arms of the Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic (for whom Yeltsin had no love, Milosevic having cheered the anti-Yeltsin hardliners in both the 1991 and 1993 attempts to unseat him). Washington thus indirectly encouraged the subsequent “Serbophilia” in Moscow that made conflict-ending compromise in Bosnia or Kosovo so difficult to reach.¹¹ To this day, it is difficult to understand how so many Russians confused Milosevic’s personal interests—corruption, military aggression, war profiteering—with the interests of the Serbian people. Evidently, much of the Moscow elite, humiliated and angry at their exclusion from a serious international role, and searching for a “usable past” in Tsarist-era glories that included a resounding triumph over the Ottoman Empire in support of the Serbs, were easy prey for Milosevic’s concerted campaign of flattery and appeals to historic “Slavic‑Orthodox solidarity”.¹²

 

We will return to the former Yugoslav arena shortly; for now, it stands as one of many instances where the self-proclaimed posture of the United States as “the indispensable nation” or triumphant Cold War victor in a new “unipolar” world proved woefully short-sighted. Other examples of US foreign-policy missteps—from Iran to North Korea, under both Clinton and Bush—are too well-known to need detailing here; they serve as reminders not only that excluding Russia often incurred negative results, but also that including it could have paid great dividends. We tend to focus on what went wrong with a given policy, but less on what could have gone right with a different approach—particularly one that involved Russia as a real partner, not merely as a follower–supplicant. Difficult as it is to imagine today, think back to 1989–91 and Moscow’s positive (sometimes central) role in conflict resolution from Namibia to Nicaragua. The first President Bush consulted Gorbachev before the first Iraq War in 1991, earning his support by giving diplomacy a final chance; might not the second President Bush have considered the well-grounded objections of Putin, and really given diplomacy a chance, before launching the second Iraq War in 2003? American hindsight, too, is often severely limited; in this latter instance it focused on “How could the post-war occupation of Iraq have been better managed?” rather than “How might we have better worked with allies, especially Russia, to manage Iraq short of war?” 

NATO Expansion 

Far and away the most problematic issue in US–Russian relations is the expansion of NATO—and once again it is vital to view it through Russian eyes, however illegitimate or overwrought one judges Moscow’s perception to be. Returning to the early 1990s, we recall a time when Russia—though reeling from hyperinflation and the collapse of vital state functions, with Yeltsin facing a powerful conservative backlash yet struggling to down the toxic “spinach” that the West urged on him—was nevertheless a responsible and co-operative international actor. Russian troops quit the Baltic republics more or less on schedule, despite the harsh discrimination suddenly imposed on the large Russian communities there (measures that the European Union later ruled illegal, and which Russians found shockingly ungrateful given Yeltsin’s early support of Baltic independence).

 

In Central Asia and the Caucasus, too, Russia initially played a mostly balanced peacekeeping role, such as in Tajikistan (where Russian troops intervened to halt a vicious civil war) and Georgia (where a nationalist government first provoked the Abkhaz and South Ossetian minorities into secession, then sparked civil war between rival Georgian factions).¹³

 

Elsewhere, Russian troops bade farewell to their former east European allies as Yeltsin, like Gorbachev before him, sought to ease historic grievances. Official statements of regret and apology were issued for Soviet-era misdeeds (e.g., the Stalin–Hitler pact that dismembered Poland in 1939, or the Prague Spring crackdown of 1968), incriminating documents were published and historical commissions sponsored—all this despite strident opposition from unrepentant Russian hardliners.

 

Few outsiders appreciate just how searing this post-Soviet historical revisionism was for Russian pride to bear, for mass opinion to come to terms with—overturning as it did the lifelong belief of Russians in their country’s international goodness, invalidating as it seemed their multi-generational sacrifices for peace and security, and coming as it did on the heels of seemingly endless perestroika-era revelations about domestic crimes, corruption, and waste that essentially meant the entire Soviet era had been a mistake, and that their entire lives had been lived in vain. Thus, the “betrayal” by the Baltics’ nationalist leaders, and their and other post-communist neighbours’ visceral and vocal anti-Russianism—indicating their conflation of “Russian” with “Soviet”, their tarring of an entire people for the crimes of one political party and thus their ignoring of the no-less horrific sufferings of the Russian people under Soviet rule—were extraordinarily injurious. In this situation of retreat from Europe, collapse and demoralisation at home, and chaos on the borders (to which one might add the Armenian–Azerbaijani war, the heroin traffic streaming in through Russia’s now wide-open Central Asian underbelly, and the spread of religious and political extremism there as well), what was America’s main foreign-policy initiative with respect to Russia? Why, the expansion of NATO, of course.

 

It was infuriating enough that NATO’s eastward enlargement violated an implicit pledge made to Gorbachev (given orally, not in writing, to Russia’s everlasting regret) in return for his agreeing to the reunification of Germany on Western terms. But it was also insulting, and a striking vote of no confidence in the new Russia’s peaceful intentions towards Europe, given Gorbachev’s and later Yeltsin’s firmly pro-Western, co-operative, integrationist words (enshrined in their official foreign policy and military doctrines) as well as deeds (striving to join Western institutions and support Western policies, and rapidly withdrawing from a long-vital and in many respects still legitimate sphere of interest).

 

Justifications of NATO expansion, e.g., that every state has the right to choose its allies, are of course legally correct but also short-sighted in ignoring the backlash that comes from humiliating a once-great power; the Versailles Treaty that humiliated Germany after the First World War was perfectly “legal” as well. And the Clinton administration’s efforts to mollify Moscow by arguing that NATO expansion aimed at improving European security and that it was therefore in Russia’s interests, too, and certainly not directed against Moscow were immediately given the lie from every quarter. Polish, Czech, and other pro-expansion voices trumpeted that NATO’s enlargement was directed against Russia, which could never be trusted as imperialism was in its genes. “Of course we should expand NATO,” argued unapologetic and still-influential Cold Warriors. “And while we’re at it we must also extend our military and economic power into Central Asia, the Caucasus, and other post-Soviet areas right away, while Russia is still too weak to resist.”¹⁴

 

Regarding the actual decision to enlarge NATO, multiple approaches compete to explain this fateful step. The “bureaucratic politics” model emphasises the alliance’s organisational imperative to “expand or die” (i.e., find a new mission now that the Cold War threat that once united its fissiparous members was gone). The “post–Cold War European stability” argument posited a need for the alliance to “go out of area” into troubled regions such as the Balkans, and also that the carrot of NATO membership could be used to push transition states, such as Romania and Hungary, to settle long-standing ethnic or border disputes. And domestic politics in particularly anti-Russian states such as Poland cried for the reassurance of membership in the Western bloc, even if Russia no longer posed its historic threat.

 

Moreover, this sentiment played an influential role in American domestic politics, via the “ethnic lobby” of Polish, Baltic, and other east European émigré voters that Clinton wooed to boost his administration’s troubled mid-1990s electoral prospects. To this we might add the lobbying might of US defence contractors, who stood to earn huge profits from the military restructuring that alliance membership entailed for former Warsaw Pact countries (this would be the “military–industrial complex” motivation for NATO expansion). As before, one might ask whether in hindsight vast increases in military spending have brought central and eastern Europe more real “security” than if the increased tensions with Russia had been avoided and the funds devoted to socio-economic needs instead. Perhaps more importantly, one also wonders how modest, largely short-term gains in US and European domestic politics could blind Western leaders to the far greater and more dangerous losses in Russian domestic politics.

 

To conclude with “theory”, it is worth dwelling for a moment on the approach to international relations that most US analysts and policymakers claim to follow—so-called “realism”. This is essentially the “power politics” perspective on international relations, the belief that conflict is frequent if not inevitable among states and that each must pursue its “national interest” by striving to hold and expand its power while putting limited faith in international co-operation and institutions (a faith which is, in turn, identified with “liberal” theory).

 

In one sense, the decision to expand NATO was perfectly “realist”, since building up one’s own alliance while taking advantage of an adversary’s weakness is simply what states historically do. But the realist worldview has also been described as “tragic” precisely because the drive for ever-greater security often produces exactly the opposite result when everybody else does likewise (or, it could be added, when it turns a friendly state into an adversary by treating it as such). Thus, it was notable that at a critical moment in the US debate on NATO enlargement, a group of prominent realist international-relations scholars publicly argued against the supposedly “realist” step of expanding the alliance. From George Kennan (the founder of the Cold War “containment” doctrine) and John Lewis Gaddis (America’s pre-eminent Cold War historian) to John Mearsheimer (author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics) and many others, they understood the backlash, or counter-balancing, that NATO expansion would probably provoke.¹⁵

 

But of course the academics were ignored, and NATO enlargement was easily passed in the US Congress. And just months after its formal expansion into eastern Europe—and contradicting repeated assurances to Moscow that the alliance acted only defensively, on behalf of member states—NATO was engaged in an offensive war on the territory of a non-member state (Serbia). If 2008 was a turning point in many Westerners’ perceptions of Russia, 1999 was an even more dramatic watershed in Russians’ perceptions of the West. 

Bush and Beyond 

There is little need to detail the still more negative impact of the second Bush administration on Russian–American relations: its “take it or leave it” posture towards Moscow on arms control and its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; its failure to deliver on economic promises from membership for Russia of the World Trade Organisation to termination of that Cold War relic, the Jackson–Vanik Amendment; its double standards, as in recognition of Kosovo’s independence and Vice-President Dick Cheney’s harsh criticism of Russia’s failing democracy while simultaneously praising that of autocratic Kazakhstan; its dismissive attitude towards international agreements and organisations, including the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court; and its promulgation of an aggressive “preventive war” strategy, swiftly followed by its execution in Iraq.

 

Particularly unnerving for Moscow is the US initiative to deploy missile defences in central Europe. As previously, the United States was apparently unable or unwilling to take Moscow’s perceptions seriously. Moscow was expected simply to believe US protestations that Washington could be trusted, that its military preparations are never offensive, that the missile-defence system is directed only against Iran, and will not form part of a future architecture that, in combination with space-based and other elements, will encircle Russia and nullify its deterrent. Moscow, with a now decidedly “realist” outlook that has discarded its Gorbachev- and Yeltsin-era liberal illusions, will no longer accept such assurances—not after NATO’s initial enlargement violated one pledge, its offensive war against a country friendly to Russia violated another, and then the juggernaut continued to roll in 2004 with NATO expansion into the rest of eastern Europe and even into the former Soviet (and now strongly anti-Russian) Baltic republics. Yet, with recklessness born of hubris, apparently reasoning that “They’ve gone along with it this far, despite objections and warnings, so we can safely continue”, the Bush administration attempted to push NATO still further, into the strategically vital states of Ukraine and Georgia.

 

What were they thinking? What if there had been no fierce Russian opposition—political–economic in the case of Ukraine, and a crushing military strike in that of Georgia—to NATO membership for these divided, unstable states? What if Saakashvili’s US-built army had succeeded, if Russia had not thwarted his attempted reconquest of South Ossetia? How could Tbilisi rule, and reintegrate, a region violently resisting Georgian hegemony since the late 1980s? Short of martial law, or the expulsion/exodus of most Ossetians, it is difficult to imagine. This is another rarely asked question, but a vital one in assessing a country that was on the verge of being invited to join an alliance whose charter is explicit that stability, democracy, and an absence of domestic or international disputes are expected of would-be members.

 

But at least a majority of Georgians aspire to join NATO; a majority of Ukrainians do not. How could that be overlooked in the rush to add yet another post-Soviet neighbour of Russia’s to the alliance? If, lured by promises of US largesse, a weak Ukrainian government signed on against the wishes of its own people, the likely consequences would be severe: a split between western and eastern Ukraine, the secession of heavily Russian (and heavily armed) Crimea, violence and armed clashes. However brutal, Russia’s brief “preventive war” against Georgia—taking a page from the Americans’ book, and destroying two NATO bases-in-making in the process—might, ironically, have saved Georgia and Ukraine from even more destructive domestic conflict. In any case, there can no longer be any doubt that while NATO expansion remains US policy, even if much delayed, then the most serious obstacle to improved relations still festers.¹⁶

 

Progress on arms control, an agreement to replace the START I Treaty that expires in December 2009, would mark an important beginning in improving US–Russian relations—and is easily achievable. It is in both countries’ interests to conclude a verifiable agreement on strategic arms reductions, and only the Bush administration’s unilateralism, and rejection of any limits on future deployments of nuclear or space weapons, can explain the failure to reach such a relatively simple agreement. This is the right place to begin a “reset” in Russian–American relations, but beyond that things get harder. Ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would end a glaring double standard in global non-proliferation efforts, but was already rejected by the US Congress along partisan lines in 1998. And a joint US–Russian position on the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme will be even more difficult to achieve, presenting the Obama administration with a major test of its ability to surmount powerful domestic foreign-policy opposition (particularly if the price of Russian co-operation is the sensible one of shelving the missile-defence boondoggle).

 

Yet even Iran is a problem that, since a “point of no return” is years away, affords the diplomatic luxury of time; where that luxury is absent is the former Yugoslavia. Seen by most observers as secondary issues at best, the ongoing problems of Bosnia (split into rival Serb and Muslim–Croat halves) and Kosovo (with its beleaguered Serb minority) could erupt in the near future with little warning. Another mass killing in Kosovo which causes the collapse of Serbia’s fragile liberal government, or a bid by the Serbian half of Bosnia to secede from that paralysed and increasingly polarised patchwork-state could spark renewed large-scale conflict that would, in turn, pull the United States and Russia back into confrontation behind their opposing “clients”.

 

However, danger also presents opportunity, and the former Yugoslavia is an arena where the sort of Russian–American partnership not seen since Gorbachev’s day should be swiftly revived. Washington should launch a quiet but comprehensive initiative for bilateral planning with Moscow to chart a more stable and workable future for the various pieces of the Yugoslav puzzle. Constitutional reforms in both Bosnia and Kosovo should be promoted, and Washington and Moscow should jointly apply carrots (increased aid, preferential trade, and clear steps towards EU membership) and sticks (major diplomatic pressure, the threat of reduced support) to induce the opposing sides to accept real compromise and recognise that the current corruption, ethnic mobilisation, and drift towards further secession will not be tolerated.

 

The difficulties of such an undertaking can hardly be overestimated. The problems of Bosnia and Kosovo have been so mishandled, drifting from crisis to ad hoc remedy to crisis again, that lasting peace and stability will not be crafted overnight. Furthermore, domestic American politics—impatient, ill-informed, and permeated by Cold War–style suspicions of Russia—will throw up numerous obstacles to the sustained diplomatic effort with Moscow necessary for meaningful progress. And Russian attitudes here are perhaps even more problematic, including a diametrically different view from that of Americans about who the heroes and villains are in the post-Yugoslav conflicts, and a prevailing cynicism about meaningful co-operation with the United States.

 

Yet it is precisely that cynicism that makes the Balkan arena such an important opportunity for Russian–American management. Even if progress is limited, joint effort can still go a long way towards undoing Russian beliefs that the West is interested solely in pressing its geopolitical advantage and that “co-operation” on international issues comes only at the price of endless concessions to Western interests. For nearly twenty years, it seems, the United States has ignored Russia’s interests and taken its international compliance (or impotence) for granted. Thus, a considerable period of resistance and petulance, of “paying America back” for so long disregarding Russia, can be expected, as in the recent moves to restrict US options in Central Asia and complicate US operations in Afghanistan. Washington must remember that other countries, too, have domestic politics, and public opinion to consider.

 

But the potential rewards of patience are great. If such an initiative can be sustained—forcefully rebutting the shrill domestic voices that already decry Obama’s “weakness” and “appeasement” of Russian “neo-Stalinism”, forgoing interference in Europe’s energy relations with Russia and renewed meddling in the pipeline politics of the former Soviet Union, and eschewing harsh and hypocritical (or, at best, counterproductive) criticism of Russia’s democratic failings—the global benefits of a genuine “reset” in Russian–American relations could be enormous. The Cold Warriors had their chance in the last US administration, and it is their self-fulfilling prophecies that Obama now struggles to undo. America’s influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia is currently largely exhausted, and the Europeans will in any case sort out their energy-security issues on their own.

 

As for Russian democracy, Russians, too, will find their own long-term path to a more liberal society. That process will hardly be helped by a renewal of 1990s-style US democracy promotion that is widely discredited for ostentatiously embracing a tiny, critical minority against a government that is still supported by a majority of its citizens. Similarly misguided is championing the cause of an embattled oligarch who is viscerally hated by most ordinary Russians (however flawed the legal case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky might be). One need only see their reaction to the latest pop-culture hit, the new film version of Nikolai Gogol’s classic novel Taras Bulba, to gain some sense of their continued yearning for sources of national pride and their vicarious joy in “sticking it to the West”.

 

Still, Russian culture and identity are not irremediably anti-Western. There remains a core “European” identity, a deep desire for acceptance by the West, and hence a continuing opportunity to overcome the mistakes and misunderstandings of the past two decades. Andrei Grachev, the previously quoted former perestroika adviser, describes the West’s failure to support Gorbachev’s reforms as the first “wasted chance” for partnership in a post–Cold War world. The second, barely remembered, came with Putin’s overtures to the United States in 2001, particularly after the 11 September tragedy, when Russian policies and public opinion once again coincided with broad sympathy for the United States. Putin immediately expressed support for America, swiftly approved the setting-up of US bases in Central Asia, agreed to intelligence-sharing on Afghanistan, and aided the Northern Alliance fighters there, i.e., those who became Washington’s ground troops in toppling the Taliban regime. But his words were dismissed as merely rhetoric, and his military–political concessions simply pocketed, as the Bush administration ploughed ahead with even more arrogant, anti-Russian policies than those of Clinton. Now, argues Grachev, the confluence of political change and economic difficulty in both Washington and Moscow presents a “third chance” to start afresh in Russian–American relations. The domestic obstacles are much greater today than during the previous opportunities for rapprochement, and the global problems that such a partnership confronts are vastly more difficult. But that is all the more reason to do the utmost to ensure that this chance also is not wasted.

 

 

Endnotes

 

 

1. A “reset” of relations, akin to the rebooting of a computer, was suggested by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Geneva on 6 March 2009. (In fact, the Russian term on the mock computer button Clinton presented to Lavrov was actually “overload”.)

 

2. See, for example, David Remnick, Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia (New York: Vintage, 1998) and Leon Aron, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: St Martin’s Press , 2000).

 

3. A powerful argument as to the vital US interest in helping a fragile, nuclear-armed Russia avoid chaos and disintegration, as well a searing indictment of Washington’s Russia policies in the 1990s, are to be found in Stephen F. Cohen, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).

 

4. See Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), especially chapter five on “Who Lost Russia?”.

 

5. See Juliet Johnson, A Fistful of Rubles: The Rise and Fall of the Russian Banking System (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).

 

6. This is the “alternative” view of Yeltsin’s October 1993 steps to suppress the conservative parliamentary opposition which, as previously noted, his US supporters characterised as his “defeat of the hardliners’ attempted revanche”. Pro-government fraud in the subsequent December 1993 referendum, which still barely affirmed the new constitution, was widely documented.

 

7. Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election was similarly flawed by its wholesale violation of campaign spending limits, by the shameless cheerleading of both the state-run and private (oligarch-owned) media, and by widespread political graft and vote-buying—all funded by the notorious “loans for shares” fire-sale of lucrative national-resource companies to those same oligarchs.

 

8. That many Western advisers tacitly approved the fraudulent vote of 1996 as they had that of 1993—with some even profiting from it, as paid campaign consultants—only ended up discrediting them, and Western-style democracy, still further. This is a sad outcome, but understandable given how the compromises or misdeeds of a few have tarred the reputations of so many honest, talented, and dedicated pro-democracy advisers and other non-governmental analysts. Yet most are irrevocably associated with the failed policies of the 1990s; even liberal, pro-American Russian political observers agree that the Western-backed NGO community is “utterly marginalised” in Russia today (interview with Victor Sergeyev, Moscow, 26 March 2024).

 

9. Andrei Grachev, interview by author, Paris, 17 March 2009.

 

10. An insider’s account of the Clinton administration’s Russia policy, including examples of the attitudes criticised above, is Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2003).

 

11. Perhaps the starkest example of the workings of this Serbophilia is the Russian bluster and posturing that led Milosevic to believe he enjoyed Moscow’s backing to flout UN, EU, and finally NATO warnings to halt his campaign of repression in Kosovo. Had Washington earlier, and more seriously, worked with Moscow jointly to pressure the Serbs and Albanians towards compromise—before the latter took up arms in 1996–7, but perhaps even as late as 1998—it is likely that the war of 1999 could have been avoided.

 

12. See Sergei Romanenko, “The Yugoslavian Myth and Russian Political Elite”, Social Sciences and Modernity, no. 4, 2004.

 

13. In both the Caucasus and Central Asia, Moscow’s tilt to a partisan position in various regional conflicts, and its growing assertiveness in Russia’s “near abroad”, came only as these conflicts spilled over onto Russian territory, and thus into Russian politics, roughly coincident with increasing Western activity in the region. See Robert English, “Georgia: The Ignored History”, New York Review of Books, 6 November 2008, pp. 21–3.

 

14. For this perspective see Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1998).

 

15. After the 2008 Russia–Georgia war, advocates of NATO expansion saw their “prophecy” about Russia confirmed, while sceptics reply that they only omit “self-fulfilling”.

 

16. And though it satisfies a perceived need to “stand up” for Saakashvili’s beleaguered government, the staging of NATO-run exercises in post-war Georgia is of only symbolic military worth while its political value, in Moscow, and Tbilisi too, is clearly negative.