Washington Profile: What can we expect to see in U.S.-Russian relations in the wake of the symbolic success of the so-called "lobster summit" in Maine?

Sestanovich: Well I think [the summit] showed that neither side was happy with the tone of relations that had developed over the past several months. You can probably date this to Putin's famous speech in Munich, but by itself that wasn't all that significant. What was important was the accumulation of disagreements on a whole chain of other issues. Now the two presidents haven't solved any of those issues, but they've suggested that they are going to approach them in a slightly different spirit than what one might have expected from the rhetoric of the past several months.

Washington Profile: Do you think this is mere rhetoric, or an indication of a concrete shift in policy?

Sestanovich: Well, it's a little hard to say. I think it's clear that there is a kind of emerging nuclear core to this relationship. If you think about the issues on which the two sides are closest and making the most concrete progress; its nuclear issues, particularly bilateral ones. After the meeting in Kennebunkport, Sergei Lavrov and Condi Rice announced that they will be having discussions about strategic nuclear arms, and about what will come after the expiration of the START I nuclear strategic arms treaty. There has been an agreement on what's called a 123 accord to create the legal framework for cooperation on civilian nuclear power projects. There are nuclear issues that are a little more difficult; those involving Iran, for example. The question of sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council and the issue of missile defense are both in that category. It's surprising how much the agenda of Russian-American relations has become nuclearized.

Washington Profile: Many Russia watchers are criticizing President Bush for being too forgiving of Russia's harsh rhetoric in the past couple of months, and of what they see as the further deterioration of political and democratic freedoms. Your thoughts?

Sestanovich: Bush's comments [at Kennebunkport] were a little bit more of a retreat on the issue of democracy and Russia's internal political evolution then we've seen in the past. He was essentially saying, "Are things perfect there? No, but moving forward.." This is the implication. I think the question of Russian rhetoric of late is slightly separate from the issue of Russia's internal political evolution. Putin had really taken the offensive, the comparison to the Third Reich, the denunciations of unipolarity, the claim that American policy in Vietnam was no worse than Stalin's purges. The president would have been completely within his rights if he had said, "What am I supposed to make of this?" But I think the Russians had been concluding that they were isolating themselves in this way. It's one thing to run a successful rhetorical campaign. It's another to take the offensive and discover that suddenly, people are trying to avoid you at every turn. I don't think they found the results of this intense rhetoric particularly positive. I was struck by the poll released this week by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. Very few people have paid attention to what it shows about attitudes towards Russia. But you discover that contrary to the Russian claim that current anxiety in Europe about Russia is entirely led by the Balts and Poland, you see a deterioration of attitude toward Russia in the very places where the Russian government has been assuming they can count on friendly attitudes. Negative attitudes toward Russia in Germany are higher than in Poland, are higher in France than in Poland. I think what may have checked the Russian rhetoric is not so much President Bush's disapproval or harsh words, but an awareness that they weren't succeeding.

Washington Profile: Not too long from now, we will have new leaders in both Russia and the United States, and many predict that the next American president will be less accepting of Russia's faults then the current president. What could this mean for U.S.-Russian relations?

Sestanovich: I am not sure that's right. [At the summit] we saw how Bush and Putin, having been on a track toward at least rhetorical confrontation, took advantage of the opportunity to pull back and tried to show that it's possible to make some concrete progress on issues that matter to both sides. The question is, will new presidents in each country have the same view, or will they also adopt a more contentious style? Will they downgrade the relationship? I would think that a new president in Russia, who sees from just this year's experience how easy it is to run Russian-American relations into the ground, will see this as maybe one area where he can actually do better than Putin. Putin had a lobster dinner, but how much did he actually produce in the way of agreement? Hard to say, yet. I think it's entirely possible that the two new presidents will actually make an effort to improve the relationship not through family dinners and good feeling, but through concrete accords. Now the question is, how easy is that going to be? And the accumulation of disagreements, lately, makes that a real question mark. On the other hand, when you've got this many disagreements piled up, you've got many different areas in which to make some headway.

Washington Profile: Many have noted a rising sense of nationalism and increasing anti-Americanism in Russia. To what extent could this be a barrier to improving bilateral relations between Russia and the United States?

Sestanovich: I've been somewhat sympathetic to the idea that presidential election campaigns in Russia usually bring an enemy to the fore. In 1999, the Chechens were a very convenient enemy. In 2003 and 2004, oligarchs seemed to be the enemy. It's a very neat pattern to see the West emerging as the enemy for this coming electoral cycle. Whether this reflects some deep-seated public attitude and hostility toward the West, I'm kind of skeptical of that. It seems like nationalism on command. When the Kremlin indicates it wants to take a more hostile line towards the West, suddenly the Russian media begin producing it. A lobster dinner gets held, and for a little while at least, I am sure the tone is going to be more positive. I think we can't say yet what the tone is going to be, but my inclination is to think that with the Russian media as eager to follow the Kremlin line as they have been of late, what we need to know is what the people in the Kremlin choose.

Washington Profile: Western, and especially American, Russia watchers are often criticized by Russian analysts for painting an incomplete picture of Russia, for focusing only on negative developments and for not being able to accept that Russia is now a force to be reckoned with. As a renowned American expert on Russia, how do you respond to this kind of criticism?

Sestanovich: Well collectively, we hear this complaint all the time, and it isn't just Russia specialists who are said to have this view, it is Americans in general, the foreign policy elite, people who allegedly fear Russian power, are opposed to Russia's revival, wish Russia were weak again the way it was in the 1990s. In general Americans don't understand this criticism for several reasons. The main one is we've seen how difficult it is to work effectively with Russia when it's very weak. Russia was weak in the 1990s, and it wasn't a particularly valuable partner for the United States. Russian foreign policy specialists and publicists have created this myth of Russia's subservience to the West in the 1990s. I don't remember it quite this way. Having worked on Russian-American relations as an official, I remember the difficulty of reaching agreement on Iran, and Iraq, and Kosovo, and missile defense - somewhat familiar issues, and the explanation that was often given to us by Russian officials was, "Well you see, we're weak, we have to do something to show that we haven't completely disappeared."

Americans are eager to have Russia as a partner. But the important question is not whether it's strong or weak, but whether we can define our interests in such a way that it's possible to cooperate effectively. And what has been disturbing to Americans about Russia's foreign policy rhetoric in the past several months is that it has suggested to people that for the current Russian elite, disagreement with the West is almost a good in itself. That suggests that weak or strong, we're going to have problems in relations between Russia and the United States. That seems to me short-sighted, and I think ultimately Russian leaders will come to the conclusion that this doesn't actually serve their interests, and maybe we saw the first signs of that at the [presidential meeting]. Of course, it's also possible that we'll see a continuing effort to construct Russian foreign policy on the idea of a break with the past, on an image of resurgent toughness. This effort is not likely to succeed, and not likely to last long, but it can certainly create a period of estrangement and suspicion between Russia and the West.

Washington Profile: Where do you see U.S.-Russian relations in 15-20 years?

Sestanovich: I think it's pretty hard to forecast over that time period, except in the most general terms. I think the chances are that Russian political developments and economic and social transformation will have made Russia a more recognizably modern European country, but there are many obstacles in the way of such a transformation, and usually these changes take longer than we expect. It is surely true that in the 1990s, although Americans, as I've said, were not relishing the spectacle of Russian weakness, they tended to think that Russia would be able to adjust more quickly to the breakdown of the old Soviet state. I always say that we are bad at forecasting where Russia is going to go because we tend to think that whatever we see at any given moment will continue. And right now I think people are probably making that mistake about the Putin order. They are thinking this is a successful formula and it will last for ten or twenty years, or maybe, as some of President Putin's enthusiasts suggest, seventy years like the Mexican PRI. That's not very likely. At every turn over the past twenty years when we thought we could see what Russia's trajectory was, it turned out to be something different from what we expected.

As for America's international orientation, predicating that for twenty years out is hard. There certainly is a basis in the two sides' interest for cooperation twenty years out. But you'd have to be pretty bold to be sure that the leaders of each country will want to take advantage of those common interests.

Washington Profile: What advice would you give to the presidents of Russia and the United States in this somewhat warmer climate of U.S.-Russian relations?

Sestanovich: I think the accumulated disagreements of the past year represent a very appropriate to-do list for the two leaders. Let them focus on addressing those questions. I think we both have to get through a cycle of political succession. I think the biggest threat to that positive relationship over the past year or so has been a kind of Russian temptation to define its interests by what it can reject of the Russian-American relationship of the past 15 years. I think that one of the important things to recognize is how much of a positive character was created in that period. We don't have to create all that much that's really new until we make good use of some of the institutions that have already been created. I'll give you one example just in conclusion. [At Kennebunkport], Putin talked about addressing the issue of missile defense in the NATO-Russia council. This is a suggestion that the United States has been making to Russia for at least ten years. If President Putin has come around to that view, maybe we are on the right track at last.