Russia has a new leader in Vladimir Putin who replaced Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s dominant figure since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putin is young and energetic, a former KGB agent who rose from obscurity to be the elected president of Russia in less than a year. He is still a mystery both at home and abroad.

Can Putin restore public confidence and stop Russia’s slide into chaos? While there are many uncertainties some observations can be offered about what lies ahead for Russia and for U.S.-Russia relations. Most important: What lessons should be learned from the past and what opportunities can be seized?

Putin comes to power in a country that has experienced catastrophic economic and social decline. A third of the population lives in crushing poverty and most others face a daily struggle to make ends meet. There has been a massive deterioration of the social infrastructure. While elections have become an accepted feature of political life, power has been centralized in a corrupt elite who control the country’s major economic assets and much of its media. A sense of powerlessness and despair has become widespread as Yeltsin’s repeated failures of leadership dashed early hopes that life would get better in the new Russia. Putin is a repository of the rekindled aspirations of Russians for positive change.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Russians were very pro-American. But the United States’ role as an enthusiastic supporter of Yeltsin has damaged America’s reputation. Russians associate the U.S. with the failures of economic reform and the corrupt privatization program that was implemented with American advice and financing.

Compounding the disillusionment has been the expansion of the NATO military alliance and occasions, such as the war in Yugoslavia in 1999, when Russians felt their vital national interests were ignored. As relations soured and Yeltsin’s health declined, progress became stalled as Russians rejected paternalistic American directions about how to order their economic and political life.

The dominant and enduring U.S. interest in Russia has been to help secure and remove the huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials that Russia inherited from the Soviet Union. Even in its decline, Russia remains a nuclear superpower. Nuclear safety has been an important area of constructive cooperation between the two countries. But Russia’s continuing economic catastrophe threatens to undermine attempts to address the nuclear issue.

Putin has been sending mixed messages about what he stands for and what he will do. The brutal war in Chechnya has been his main focus since Yeltsin appointed him prime minister in August 1999. His close connection with security and intelligence agencies and his call for a “dictatorship of law” create anxieties even among Russians. On the other hand, Putin says that “Russia is a part of European culture” and clearly wants Russia to be integrated with the world economy and to secure foreign investment to help achieve economic growth. He has even suggested that Russia might join NATO some day.

The Putin government has adopted a new national security doctrine calling for a more assertive foreign policy and maintaining the central role of nuclear weapons. Along with China it insists on a multipolar world not dominated by the U.S. There is more emphasis on promoting the country’s economic interests. But the focus remains on the dangers from economic weakness and threats at home. It is unlikely that Russia will try to restore the Soviet Union or pose a military threat to its neighbors. Economic progress at home is the number one priority.

On the immediate agenda of U.S.-Russia relations is progress on arms control. The START II treaty has been languishing unratified in the Russian parliament but will likely be approved as a prelude to the further, more drastic cuts in nuclear arsenals sought by the Russians. Russia cannot afford to maintain even its diminished nuclear forces. The U.S. also seeks to amend the U.S.-Russia ABM treaty that limits missile defenses, but Russia has strongly opposed any such step. Putin has given some indications of flexibility on the matter, but the issue could potentially derail further arms control measures if the U.S. pushes too hard or too quickly.

Another danger lies in NATO expansion. Yeltsin’s Russia acquiesced in the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, but Putin’s Russia is adamantly against any further expansion, particularly into the Baltic states that were once part of the Soviet Union. The U.S. needs to take great care in its next steps in European security so as to ensure that legitimate Russian interests are respected. Russian military forces have been taking part in peacekeeping in Kosovo, but relations could be aggravated again if conflict reignites in the former Yugoslavia.

Russia is burdened with a huge foreign debt, some inherited from the Soviet Union but most generated in the Yeltsin era as Western governments and international financial institutions expressed their support for Yeltsin with money. Easing this debt burden will be very helpful to Russia as it tries to achieve economic progress.

Both Russians and Americans hope that President Putin will pursue policies at home that promote growth and stability. It remains to be seen whether this will be done while ensuring that the independence of Russian media is strengthened and new democratic political institutions evolve and are respected. Russians want order and stability, but they do not want dictatorship or the rule of oligarchs.

The U.S. has a real opportunity to work with Russia to diminish and perhaps eliminate the role of nuclear weapons. We need Russian cooperation on proliferation issues and to help resolve conflicts in many parts of the world. If this is going to happen, however, we need to respect the capacity of Russians to generate solutions to their problems that may be different than our preferences. In our current preoccupation with our role as “the world’s only superpower,” such restraint may be difficult – but it is necessary.

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