#17
CIS-Barometer
No. 32, January 2003
Published by Korber Department
Joint Venture of the Korber Foundation, Hamburg and the Research Institute of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Berlin
Pragmatism in Russian Foreign Policy

Summary:

Russian President Vladimir Putin requires a stable foreign policy environment and Western support for both his reform and modernization policies. While Russian foreign policy of the years 2000-2001 was primarily aimed at the European Union, after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, the United States became Russia's closest Western ally. In 2002, the relationship between Russia and the EU was burdened by the problem of the transit visa ruling for Russians to and from Kaliningrad (Königsberg). Moreover, since Europe had difficulties in creat-ing a common economic space with Russia, Putin tried to achieve his goal of forging links with the West by approaching the defence policy cooperation with the U.S. and establish a common security space with the West.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, Russia went through a foreign policy revolution. President Vladimir Putin moved his country as close to the U.S. as last seen in the Anti-Hitler Coalition in the Second World War. In 2002 he was able to reap the benefits of his approach when American firms started investing in the Russian market again, and George W. Bush visited Russia twice in one year. After Putin offered Bush his support following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Bush openly supported Putin in his battle with ´Chechen terrorists` after the hostage crisis in Moscow in October. In return, there was little disturbance in the UN Security Council on the Russian side, regarding an American attack on Iraq.

Today, Russia plays a leading role in the U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition. Moscow sees this alliance not only as an instrument to fight Islamic fundamentalism, but has also followed the Americans in their change of focus from fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to disarming the rogue state Iraq. Russia will also cooperate with the U.S. in keeping North Korea free of nuclear weapons.

The front line in the fight against international terrorism has been moved to Asia. In the ´NATO Council of Twenty`, that was created in June 2002 and that is supposed to deal with all the key questions of future European and global security politics in cooperation with Russia, Moscow feels integrated into a com-mon security space alongside the NATO states. Furthermore, the strategic partnership between Russia and the U.S. is being strength-ened by the development of an energy alliance, extended Secret Service cooperation and better economic relations between the two countries.

Russia has started to export oil to the U.S. In northern Russia, new infrastructure is being created that is designed to route the export of Russian energy to the U.S. In return, American investors who fled Russia in panic after the 1998 economic crisis, have returned to the country. The partnership did not suffer -- nei-ther due to the one-sided American exit from the ABM Treaty in the beginning of 2002, nor after the decision made at the NATO Summit in Prague in late 2002 to enlarge the Western defence alliance to include seven additional Eastern European states.

One week before the Prague summit, the Ger-man Council on Foreign Relations, supported by the Russian Presidential administration, staged an international conference in the Czech capital with the topic ´NATO - EU - Russia: Together Against New International Security Threats.´ Major politicians from the Kremlin administration, (Sergei Yastrzhemb-sky), Security Council (Oleg Chernov), General Staff of the Armed Forces, (Yuri Baluevsky), Foreign Ministry (Aleksander Alekseev), Par-liament (Mikhail Margelov), three NATO Deputy General Secretaries (Günter Altenburg, Robert Bell, Juan-Martinez Esparza), security experts from the EU Military Staff, the EU Commission, representatives of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, the German Foreign Ministry and Federal Intelligence Service BND, and directors of leading research insti-tutes from Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy and the Czech Republic were present.

The Russian side made it clear that in the future Moscow is going to actively participate in the ´NATO Council of Twenty`, as it will in solving conflicts in the Near and Middle East. Other goals include the development of com-mon structures in the fight against terrorism, the strengthening of the non-proliferation re-gime, as well as the construction of a joint monitoring centre for world-wide missile launches, as a preliminary step towards a pos-sible joint missile defence system. Intelligence representatives welcomed this level of coop-eration between their organizations as some-thing the likes of which has never been seen before. Many illegal financing routes of inter-national terror organizations could have al-ready been thus detected.

Only one aspect of NATO seems to frighten the Russians, namely the historically understandable deep-rooted anti-Russian sentiments in the new Eastern European member states, which could jeopardize the new level of trust that has been established between Moscow and the old Western states. In contrast, Russian criticism over the expansion of NATO onto the territory of the former Soviet Union (today the Baltic States, tomorrow the Caucasus) has been moderate.

Cooling-down of the Relationship with the EU

While Russia has accepted NATO as an international cooperation partner, there was a standstill in relations between Russia and the EU last year. Cooperation within the framework of the new European Security and De-fence Policy (ESDP) has not yet been realised. Russia wanted to continue to develop the EU strategy that it proposed initially at the EU summit in Helsinki in October 1999.

In terms of the security policy cooperation with the EU, Russia has been primarily inter-ested in the sale of its arms. Western ideas for joint peace-keeping missions in former Soviet republics, such as in Moldova, nonetheless continued to be rejected by Russia. On demand of the Kremlin, the OSCE mission in Chechnya was shut down. The different views on the Chechen conflict, which surfaced particularly after the Moscow hostage drama in October, cast a dark shadow over the relationship between Russia and the EU.

Despite intensive negotiations with Brussels, Putin's suggestion to abandon the need for visas between EU countries and Russia altogether by the year 2006, as well as threats made by the special representative for Kalin-ingrad, Dmitri Rogozin, Moscow could not prevent the EU from introducing the need for a visa obligation for Russian transit travellers to and from Kaliningrad after the admission of Lithuania and Poland to the Shengen zone. In the final phase of negotiations, the arguing between Putin and the Danish EU Council President almost escalated to a major row.

Finally however, a compromise was reached at the EU summit in November, which stated that Russian train travellers between Russia and its Kaliningrad enclave will not require a visa, but still need a Lithuanian permit. With this decision, the travelling freedom that Rus-sian citizens used to enjoy on land has been fenced in. However, the EU has promised Russia to work out whether the technical requirements for express trains going through Lithuania can be met, which would mean that the requirement for permits may be dropped. Both parties seem to be playing for more time regarding the Kaliningrad question.

Russia and the EU need a joint settlement of the Kaliningrad problem, so that the present disagreements do not lead to a serious conflict. The Achilles heel of the Kaliningrad region remains the corruption of the local administra-tion as well as the miserable economic situation. Hardly any real investments are made in the region, the idea of a special economic zone has lost its charm, and the Baltic Sea Council under the rotating Russian presidency has not been able to provide new inspirations. A strengthening of the European consulates in Kaliningrad does not account for enthusiasm with the Russians. Sweden and Latvia are constantly facing new obstacles in trying to open their consulates in Kaliningrad. Moscow pro-tests against the development of new EU structures in the region, this despite the fact that the EU is willing to promote projects in Kalinin-grad, partly because it wants to prevent the impression of erecting new borders after the Eastern EU expansion. Furthermore, the threat of an energy supply problem in Kaliningrad after the shutdown of the nuclear power plant in Lithuania is immanent.

In Kaliningrad the impression has arisen that Moscow has abandoned the region economi-cally. Russia is above all trying to prevent the separatist tendencies in the Kaliningrad area, which are propagating an orientation towards the EU. But more forward-looking politicians like Rogozin fully understand that Moscow can keep Kaliningrad in the Russian Federation not by closing but by opening it up to the outside world.

Besides Kaliningrad, there are other aspects that seem to have chilled the relationship between Russia and the EU. Russia has betrayed its disappointment over the fact that there have been no major investments in the Russian economy coming from EU countries. Russian companies voiced their dissatisfaction about bureaucratic barriers that were set up by the EU for their investments in Western industry.

The Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky voiced his anger over the Europeans at the Prague Conference, saying that through the prevention of the energy dialogue, the EU is threatening the realisation of a joint economic trading space with Russia. The EU should seize the historic opportunity to hook up the Russian energy complex to the West. The Rus-sian oil and gas companies have secured significant market shares in Eastern European countries in the last few years by buying local companies and have thus created the basis for an energy alliance in the eastern part of the Continent. The West, according to Khodorkovsky, should not underestimate the Russian gigantic oil potential, else Russia would turn exclusively towards the Asian markets. His company "Yukos" regards China as Russia's future market. The EU representative responded by saying that Moscow should con-duct its energy business more transparently, as Russia does not have an alternative to the consumer EU.

While in the 90s Russia viewed NATO´s East-ern expansion as problematic, and the EU´s Eastern expansion was considered something positive, the current Russian viewpoint is the exact opposite. There are new barriers developing at Russia's western borders. The east-wards expanding EU is now beginning to talk to Russia as a united power of newly achieved political strength, which seems to be increas-ingly irritating Russian diplomats, who, in Soviet times, tended to ignore the EU altogether. Perhaps new conflicts between the EU and Russia can not be ruled out for the near future.

American - Russian Dualism?

Regarding the assertion of threat potentials in the world, the U.S. and Russia have a closer understanding than the U.S. and the EU. If confronted with a new Chechen terror attack, possibly with weapons of mass destruction, Russia might, according to a source in the Kremlin, strike back with tactical nuclear weapons. The U.S. will also experience further setbacks in the fight against Islamic Funda-mentalism and will have to respond with an appropriately tough line of action. Fatal for the future development of Europe would be a new American-Russian dualism in global security questions, which would not take the Europeans into consideration. The EU is threatened to get locked in between two war-waging powers.

Nonetheless, the Russian - American relation-ship does have a latent potential for conflict. The new partnership is not irreversible. Putin's approach to the U.S. does not draw a lot of sympathy in his own country. Many influential representatives of the Russian ruling elite, especially in the military, criticized Putin for his compliance with the former Cold War en-emy. Putin can still argue that thanks to Russian politics, the U.S. has again been tied into the framework of the UN Security Council and that the role of the UN as international ´referee` has been saved. A unilateral U.S. advance against Iraq, which is not sanctioned by the UN, would, however, put Putin under pressure in his domestic politics and would endanger the future of the anti-terror alliance.

Currently, Putin is trying to avoid any signs of anti-Americanism in his foreign policy. His visit to China and India at the end of 2002 did not serve, as one might suggest, as the incarna-tion of the idea of an anti-Western triangle Moscow-Beijing-New Delhi, but rather, as an opportunity to discuss the policy of rapprochement between Russia and NATO with Chinese and Indian leaders.

In the meantime, Beijing has displayed interest in cooperating with NATO. Putin made offers to the Chinese to invest in the Russian oil market. Washington and Moscow seem to have a mutually agreed political strategy in dealing with China, namely to bind the developing Asian superpower to the anti-terror alliance.

A war with Iraq could further change the global political situation. A victory over Saddam Hussein would secure the U.S. a leading role in the oil-rich Middle East. Russia does not want to be cut off from the future oil trade in the Persian Gulf and is trying to secure its interests both in Baghdad and in Washington. Baghdad however cancelled a cooperation treaty with Russia in December, because Russian oil companies had, with the help of the U.S, taken up talks with the Iraqi opposition in exile.

This development made it clear that Russia is being viewed as more menial in the Arabic world than it was before, i.e. as a junior partner of the U.S. The loss of the Iraqi market could be compensated by Russia through newly developed closer ties to the U.S., but how will Russia react if it gets pressure from the Americans to further cut its nuclear and economic ties to Iran and North-Korea?

A further potential conflict could arise in the case of Russia pursuing a neo-imperialist policy in the territory of the post-Soviet states. Putin's urging for Belarus to unite with Russia within the next 15 months, Russia's surprising stationing of its own fighter jets in the fight against terrorism in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan), intended as a countermeasure to the American presence in the region, as well as Mo-cow's support of eastern Ukrainian and Moscow-friendly oligarchs in the Ukrainian Presidential campaign and the disturbed Russian-Georgian relationship, these are all factors that might weaken the anti-terror alliance. Washington regards Putin as a ´partner`, not an ´ally`. In informal talks with Europeans, senior U.S. officials state that the American- Russian relations were a temporary coincidence of political preoccupation, not more.

At the moment, Putin seems to need the U.S. more than he does the Europeans. Through the strategic partnership with the U.S., Putin was able to bring back Russia into the first division of world politics, step by step. Russia´s joining of the WTO, which is supposed to finally be worked out in 2003, would be, besides Russia being accepted as a fully-fledged member of the G-8, the highlight of Putin's first period in office.

A leading Kremlin official stipulated the need to improve the relationship with the EU in 2003 - when first Greece, then Italy, would hold the rotating presidency. Both Greece and Italy are among the most Russian-friendly countries in the West, and are much more eager to embrace Russia in an energy alliance, than other European countries are. 2003 may thus become a new window of opportunity for Russia to approach the EU.

Copyright 2003 Körber Department Russia/CIS. Joint Venture of the Körber Foundation, Hamburg and the Research Institute of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Berlin. Program director: Alexander Rahr (ar). Address: Rauchstraße 17-18, 10787 Berlin; Tel.: 030/254231-54(-68 Fax); gus@dgap.org. Internet: www.dgap.org

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