#5486
[Second Issue of the Day]
#3
Wall Street Journal
October 11, 2001
[for personal use only]
Russia Watchers Ponder Whether Shift Toward West Is for
Long Haul
By ANDREW HIGGINS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MOSCOW -- After Russian President Vladimir Putin went on state television
late last month to align Russia firmly with America's war on terrorism,
liberal lawmaker Boris Nemtsov made a frantic call to an American academic
with contacts in the White House: Why, asked Mr. Nemtsov, hadn't President
Bush publicly applauded the Kremlin's big shift toward the West? Mr. Putin
was taking a risky step and the opportunity, Mr. Nemtsov warned, could slip
away.
Two days later, the White House made sure Russia didn't feel ignored.
President Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said Mr. Bush "very much
appreciated" Mr. Putin's TV address, which "demonstrated that Russia
can
make a major contribution to [the] common struggle against international
terrorism."
After a decade of vacillation over its interests and allegiances, Moscow is
winning plaudits in Europe and the U.S. for placing itself squarely in the
same camp as the West. And it isn't only Russia that has shifted. The West,
too, is changing its views, particularly on Chechnya and Russia's prospects
for a swift entry to the World Trade Organization.
The big question, though, is whether a realignment brought about by the
Sept. 11 hijack attacks reflects short-term tactical imperatives or a
deeper reassessment of Russia's position in the world by both itself and
Western nations. If the war in Afghanistan escalates or expands to other
countries, will President Putin want to -- or be able to -- keep public
opinion and a still deeply conservative military-security establishment on
the same side as Washington?
On a visit to Moscow last week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of
the "common interests and common dangers" faced by Russia and the
West. "I
believe something is happening today which is immensely important. The Cold
War is over, and many of the difficulties of the past can be set aside."
But, says Michael McFaul, the American Russia scholar telephoned by Mr.
Nemtsov, legacies of the Cold War still linger. He compares the current
shake-up in geopolitics to that of a decade ago when the Soviet Union first
fell apart. "This is another chance to really end the Cold War, just like
1991 was a chance, but back then we blew it," says Mr. McFaul, a fellow at
Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "This is another window. It is an
opportunity, but we are not there yet."
For Russia to truly join the West, he says, it mustn't merely support the
hammering of suspected terrorists abroad but entrench at home the
democratic habits and institutions that bind Western states together
regardless of their frequent quarrels. And the U.S., too, he says, needs to
reform its thinking -- to scrap old stereotypes and a host of small but
nettlesome Cold War relics such as trade restrictions introduced to punish
Moscow for now-nonexistent restrictions on Jewish emigration and a ban on
North Atlantic Treaty Organization states' buying Russian arms.
Mr. Nemtsov, the liberal politician who worried that Mr. Putin's dramatic
gestures might go unrewarded, applauds the Kremlin's decision to make
common cause against terrorism -- which includes accepting an American
military presence in former Soviet republics in Central Asia that Russia
long regarded as its own fiefdom -- as a bold and strategic rupture with
the past.
But, he warns, "[President Boris] Yeltsin made the same choice [a decade
ago], and then lots of things happened to change this. I hope this time it
will last. Now we have a common enemy, and the best way to become friends
is through an enemy."
Russia, harboring bitter memories of the Soviet Union's military debacle in
Afghanistan, has repeatedly said it won't send troops to Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, it has already moved far from a position outlined by the
country's military before Mr. Putin's Sept. 24 television address. Mr.
Putin's offer of overflight rights, his nod to America's use of bases in
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and other moves to support a U.S.-led coalition
contradicted earlier statements ruling out any military cooperation with
the U.S. by his defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, and the chief of the
general staff, Anatoli Kvashnin.
Some Hard-Liners Grumble
The military has fallen into line, but hard-liners are already grumbling
publicly. "This demonstration of the military might of the U.S. … [is]
not
making the situation in the region any simpler; what's more, they're making
it more confused," said Leonid Ivashov, a senior officer recently sacked as
the Defense Ministry's head of international relations. He is now deputy
head of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems and is seen as an influential
voice of conservatives within the military. During the war in Kosovo, he
described NATO as a "criminal" body.
Mr. Putin, by contrast, wants Russia to work with or even eventually join
NATO, though his vision for the future of an organization set up to defend
against the Soviet Red Army differs starkly from its current form. In a
visit to Brussels last week, he suggested that Russia could drop its
opposition to former Soviet Baltic republics' joining the alliance -- but
only if NATO is transformed from a military to "political
organization," a
condition that is highly unlikely.
"The problem is not that Russia is not a European country; the problem
is
that it is an archaic European country," said Dmitri Trenin, an authority
on Russian foreign policy at the Moscow branch of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace. Mr. Putin, he said, has made a "strategic and
risky choice" to prod Russia into the European mainstream against
resistance from segments of a political and military elite little changed
from the Soviet period. "Putin relies on a minority. But all changes in
world history are accomplished by a determined and convinced minority,"
said Mr. Trenin.
While perhaps out of step with Russia's political class, Mr. Putin enjoys
overwhelming popularity among the general public that gives him wide room
for maneuver: His approval rating stands at more than 70%. But public
opinion is divided on the wisdom of U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan, with
42.4% approving and 49.4% disapproving, according to a survey by Russian
Public Opinion & Market Research. At the same time, though, 57% of those
polled want Russia to offer all assistance to the U.S. action short of
direct involvement in the fighting, and only 11% want Moscow to condemn the
attacks.
Before the bombing started, Komsomolskaya Pravda, a tabloid newspaper, ran
two small classified ads in a stunt devised by editors to gauge the public
mood. The first advertisement offered work to "real men" ready to
fight for
Islam and a second, published four days later, promised jobs for "real
men"
eager to join the battle against international terrorism.
The ads elicited telephone calls from more than 300 would-be mercenaries:
186 for America, 132 for militant Islam. The journalist who devised the
exercise, Sergei Gerasimenko, says the newspaper informed Russia's security
service beforehand to avoid being raided by antiterrorist police. He says
most ordinary Russians support Mr. Putin's alignment with the West but that
a strong current of anti-Americanism still flows on the margins.
Trumping any anti-American feelings for most Russians is hostility to what
many see as the far graver and more immediate threat posed by militant
Islam, which Mr. Putin blames for the conflict in Chechnya. "For Russia it
is better to have Americans in Uzbekistan than the Taliban in Tatarstan,"
said Gleb Pavlovsky, head of the Foundation for Effective Politics and
public-relations consultant to the Kremlin, at an Internet press conference.
Facing the Same Enemy
"This is not a question of our president yielding to the West,"
says Sergei
Butin, an adviser on foreign affairs to Russia's Parliament, "This is our
national interest. Both sides face the same enemy, the same threats."
The U.S. and other Western countries have helped reinforce this view by
muting their criticism of Russia's conduct in Chechnya. Mr. Fleischer, the
While House spokesman, implicitly endorsed Russia's longstanding claim that
the war in Chechnya is also a battle against Islamic terrorists, calling on
rebels to "immediately and unconditionally cut all contacts with
international terrorist groups such as Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda
organization."
The trauma caused by Sept. 11 has pushed into the background contentious
issues that had previously dogged, and to a large extent dominated,
Russia's relations with the U.S. President Bush's plans to build a
missile-defense shield are still on the table but aren't any longer a
centerpiece of his administration' s agenda. Russia, diplomats say, is
hoping Washington will now slow what had been a rush to revise or abandon a
1972 treaty that bans the testing of national antimissile systems. Moscow,
seizing the opportunity, has stressed the need to strengthen, not scrap,
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
In a meeting Tuesday in Moscow with former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara and others, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Mamedov said
Moscow's strategic partnership with Washington "must be based on
strengthening the architecture of treaties," Interfax news agency reported.
"We have to play this right," said Mr. McFaul of the Hoover
Institution.
"We have to take integrating Russia [into the West] seriously, and Russia
has to take building democracy more seriously. If neither is done, we could
be looking at the same Cold War legacies in 10 years' time."
Mr. Trenin, the foreign-policy expert, says the path chosen by Mr. Putin,
despite opposition and zigzags, will eventually lead Russia to Europe. "A
nation's history moves down a very complex route," he says. "Each
country
gets into Europe in its own way."
- Back to the Top -