#3
Voice of America
Analyst Predicts Increasing US-Russian Cooperation
Barry Wood
Washington
9 May 2002
With the May 23 meeting in Russia between Presidents Bush and Putin only two
weeks away, a leading British expert on Russia says prospects are better than
ever for increased cooperation between the United States and Russia. Anatole
Lieven, a visiting fellow at Washington's Carnegie Endowment, addressed a public
policy forum May 8.
Mr. Lieven regards President Putin as a pragmatic politician determined to
connect Russia with Europe. He says the former KGB official has abandoned all
claims of Russia retaining its former superpower status. Instead, he told an
audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Mr. Putin is reaching out to the West
cooperating in the war on terror and approving the stationing of American troops
in what was once Soviet Central Asia.
Mr. Lieven, an author and former newspaper correspondent in Moscow, says
Russia has dropped its opposition to the three Baltic states becoming part of
NATO. But, he says, as part of its strategy of promoting itself by playing
Western Europe off against the United States, the elite in Russia are beginning
to favor an even larger NATO expansion.
"The argument is, of course, that the more one enlarges NATO, certainly
by bringing in countries like Romania and Bulgaria which unfortunately by no
means are fully comparable to central Europe in terms of successful economic
reform or democratization - the more one expands NATO in this way and the more
one tends to dilute it, and to weaken its ability to act in common," he
said.
Mr. Lieven says Russia is making progress in building democratic
institutions, although the transformation away from totalitarianism is far from
complete.
"If one looks at the world in general, one would certainly have to say
that Russia under Putin, while undoubtedly it is nowhere near the top end of the
scale as far as democracy is concerned, it certainly isn't anywhere near the
bottom of the scale either," he said. "You know, in a world which
includes Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan and various other charming figures."
Mr. Lieven says western pronouncements on Russian reform should be a better
mix of encouragement and criticism.
"We have to develop a new balance between cooperation and
criticism," he said. "And I would say we need to move more towards the
model we pursue in relations with allies, partners, countries with which we wish
to cooperate."
Mr. Lieven concedes that Vladimir Putin is an unlikely leader, a bureaucrat
thrust into power by former president Boris Yeltsin. He is, says Mr. Lieven,
unable to exercise the absolute power of former Soviet leaders and must gain the
favor of Russia's new economic elite the industrial barrons who control much of
Russia's mineral wealth.
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