#5547 #5548
[Third Issue of the Day]
#6
Washington Post
November 15, 2001
Putin's Reality Trip
By Samuel R. Berger
The writer was President Clinton's national security adviser. He now heads
Stonebridge International, a consulting firm.
In his political autobiography, published last year, Vladimir Putin tells a vivid story from his childhood. He was watching a cornered rat in his family's humble apartment in St. Petersburg. The rat was lashing out dangerously and violently at anyone who came too near. Young Vladimir never forgot the image.
On first reading, the story seemed a purposeful message: Don't ever corner Russia; we may be weak, but we can still be dangerous if we believe our vital interests are threatened. But having worked with and watched him closely, and reflecting on his meteoric rise to the presidency of Russia, I now read in that episode a different lesson drawn by young Putin: Don't ever get yourself in a corner. And that strategy, which he has pursued skillfully and sometimes ruthlessly since becoming president, set the stage for this week's meetings with President Bush, which will advance Russia's reemergence on the world stage and also the objectives of both countries.
Putin's rise was engineered with quiet but deliberate calculation by former president Boris Yeltsin. But it is the differences between these two men that are defining. Yeltsin, for all his personal failings, should be remembered as the father of Russian democracy -- the man who stood on the tank, literally and figuratively, against the enemies of democracy, the people who nearly succeeded, more than once, in overturning Russia's democratic revolution. These were far more precarious times for Russian democracy than we tend to recall.
Putin, while hardly the incipient Stalin sometimes portrayed by his critics at home and abroad, prefers order to the contest of ideas. He seeks to strengthen the center of power, as press critics, among others, have learned the hard way.
But Putin understands and accepts a reality that Yeltsin never could, and it is this understanding that has enabled him to come to the United States this week in a strong position. He understands Russia's weakness -- how much the country crumbled under the Soviet regime. He understands that the central imperative for Russia is to modernize, and that the only way to accomplish that is for Russia to plug into the global economy -- into the West.
Putin has been moving in this direction ever since he gained his footing. Sept. 11 was more than an opportunity to reinforce his argument that Russia, too, is threatened by Islamic "bandits"; it has provided him the basis for accelerating his move toward the West, not as a supplicant but as partner in a monumental struggle against a common enemy.
Yeltsin never accepted Russia's weaknesses -- that its GDP had slipped below that of the Netherlands, that alone among industrial nations it had a declining life expectancy for its male population, in no small measure because of the decrepit Russian health care system. Yeltsin railed against the tide of Russia's decline -- in a sense substituting his own persona, his own charisma, his own bluster for Russia's vulnerabilities. This led him, ironically, to compound the sense among the Russian people of lost greatness.
Yeltsin drew lines in the sand with the West that he could not sustain: "nyet" to NATO enlargement, "nyet" to the Balkans. He created for himself zero-sum confrontations, and when the United States and the West held their ground, "nyet" became "da" and Russians became bitter.
Vladimir Putin may not be a better democrat than Yeltsin, but he is a much better poker player. He does not overplay his hand. He does not draw unsustainable lines in the sand. He does not let himself get cornered.
Seeing further NATO enlargement as inevitable, Putin entertains, at least theoretically, the idea that perhaps one day Russia will be part of NATO; in the meantime, if we in the West are smart, we will strengthen the Russia-NATO relationship without diluting NATO in the process.
Yes, he will accept modifications in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that will enable the Bush administration at least to move ahead with more robust and far-ranging development and testing of national missile defense. In the post-Sept. 11 world, it is President Bush who will have to sit on his hard-liners and forgo the opportunity they have long envisioned to jettison the ABM Treaty once and for all; it will breathe on, at least for now. And in the meantime, the United States will undertake substantial and justifiable cuts in its strategic offensive arsenal.
Putin encourages rather than blocks the remarkable deployment, for the first time, of U.S. military forces on the soil of the former Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the United States moves to discard the Cold War Jackson-Vanik amendment (but, one hopes, not our concern for religious freedom) and to press for Russia's accession into the World Trade Organization (but not on too much of a discount basis, I hope).
All of this represents a triumph of pragmatism, from both leaders. Since Russia's weaknesses today are generally more dangerous for us than are its strengths, there is a great deal we can do together to make the world more secure, as long as we remain clear about our interests and our values. Putin, the new-generation Russian nationalist, is clear about his.
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