#7
International Herald Tribune
November 15, 2001
Putin Says He Wants Russia to Put the Cold War Behind It
By Max Jakobson
The writer is a former Finnish ambassador to the United Nations. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

HELSINKI A recent statement by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has puzzled Western observers. He said the Cold War had now ended. But didn't the Cold War end more than 10 years ago?

Yes, it ended for the West, but Russia remained stuck with one foot in the past. The economy has been opened up, but foreign policy has been conducted in a Cold War spirit. NATO has been regarded as a hostile alliance, to be kept at bay by a buffer zone on Russia's western border. Attempts have been made to drive a wedge between Europe and the United States. Relations with client states of the former Soviet Union - Cuba, Iraq and Vietnam - have been cultivated. Now Mr. Putin appears to have realized that Russia's efforts to create a "multipolar world order" as a counter to American hegemony have proved futile - pretense without substance. His statement about the end of the Cold War was addressed to his own people, telling them, in effect: If we can't beat them, let's join them. Signs of a shift in Russian foreign policy had emerged already during Mr. Putin's meetings with President George W. Bush last summer. Sept. 11 acted as a catalyst. The Russian president was the first foreign leader to call Mr. Bush and offer to join the campaign against terrorism. Of course, Mr. Putin used the opportunity to deflect Western criticism from Russia's war against the Chechens. But the Chechen rebellion is only the tip of an iceberg of trouble that Russia faces along the southern rim of the former Soviet Union.

The feud between Armenia and Azerbaijan has not yet been resolved. Georgia is fighting a separatist movement from Abhasia. And the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia face revolutionary Islamic influences from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The "buffer zone" along Russia's European border is no asset, either. Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova are all governed by corrupt regimes looking to Russia for economic assistance.

Of all the 14 former Soviet republics only the three Baltic states are democracies with functioning market economies. They look to NATO and the European Union for security against possible Russian attempts to pull them back into Moscow's sphere of influence.

Until recently the prospect of the three Baltic states joining NATO was believed to portend a severe crisis in Russia's relations with the West. It seems, however, that Mr. Putin will not let it become a stumbling block in his search for partnership with the United States.

He has abandoned the former Soviet bases in Cuba and Vietnam, and he is moving toward an accommodation with Washington on missile defense.

During a recent visit to Brussels, he described NATO as a political rather than a military institution and called for closer cooperation between NATO and Russia. He proposed that the NATO-Russia Joint Council established in 1996 meet regularly once a month.

Potentially there is indeed a heavy agenda of crises and conflicts that the joint council could begin to deal with.

From the ruins of the Soviet Union and the Federation of Yugoslavia, 17 new independent states have emerged, with two more (Kosovo and Montenegro) on the waiting list. So far only four, the three Baltic states and Slovenia, have qualified for entry soon into NATO and the European Union.

The rest are instant states with no meaningful experience of independence.

They form a wide zone of instability stretching from the Balkans into Central Asia. A joint effort to stabilize this area would surely be in the long-term interests of both the West and Russia. It would require some kind of agreement about exploitation of the Caspian Sea oil reserves. In light of historical experience, such a rational approach may seem utopian. In order to pursue his new foreign policy Mr. Putin will have to overcome strong opposition from those who cling to the traditional belief in Russia's separate and unique destiny. Suspicions of Western, particularly American, motives and intentions persist.

On the Western side, Mr. Putin's new line is viewed with understandable skepticism. Is it just a cover for Russia's brutal action in Chechnya and other violations of human rights?

Western opinion tends to judge Russia by its progress, or lack of it, toward democracy. Uncertainties abound. Will pragmatism on both the Russian and Western sides prevail over history, tradition and ideology? The meetings between Presidents Bush and Putin this week are the first test.

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