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RIA Novosti
February 1, 2005
RUSSIA AND AMERICA SEARCH FOR RULES OF THE GAME IN FORMER SOVIET UNION
MOSCOW
(RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov)

When Vladimir Putin and George Bush meet in Bratislava at the end of February, they will most certainly discuss, among other issues, their respective policies in the former Soviet Union. The collision of Moscow's and Washington's interests during the recent presidential election in Ukraine clearly showed that this problem stands out from the regular agenda of Russian-US relations due to its complexity and acute nature.

The sides have strikingly opposing views on the processes underway on post-Soviet territory.

The US standpoint is that Russia remains nostalgic about the former Soviet empire and continues, without any grounds, to aspire to leading positions in the former Soviet republics.

From the Russian point of view, the US has unceremoniously intruded into the zone of Russia's economic and historical interests, in a bid to affix Georgia and Ukraine to the American model of the world order. Other former Soviet republics will apparently follow suit at a later date.

The US administration hailed the revolutions in Tbilisi and Kiev as a victory of Western democracy over obsolete, corrupt regimes. Russia, in contrast, believes these revolutions bear conspicuous signs of anti-constitutional coups.

These differences would, perhaps, not cause increased tension between the two countries if the US refrained from building up its military presence in the region.

The US has established military bases in former Soviet republics throughout Central Asia and continues to allocate tens of millions of dollars in military aid to Georgia. Moreover, NATO is actively involving states in Central Asia and Transcaucasus in its Partnership for Peace Program. Washington explains the shift of its military presence closer to Russia's southern borders by the changing nature of external threats, primarily, the spread of international terrorism, which tends to establish headquarters and training camps in the Central Asian region.

However, Moscow assesses current developments in the context of NATO's general expansion. Kremlin officials discern a direct link between seemingly unrelated elements - the construction of a powerful NATO radar in Estonia, US attempts to lure Finland into the alliance, and, finally, the appearance of a network of US bases in the former Soviet Union.

Although Russia has chosen a course for cooperation with NATO and is willing to take relations with the alliance to a new level, it still feels the psychological scars left from the cold war era. "We are still convinced that NATO's geographical expansion has not argued justification," President Vladimir Putin stated at a recent Russian Security Council meeting.

Such fears have caused a heated discussion among Russia's political elite about how to avoid a further collision between Russian and US interests in the given region. The debates focused on a report, "US-Russian Relations: The Case for an Upgrade," written by experts from the Moscow Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Politika foundation.

The report's authors acknowledge that America and Russia have little common ground. The major areas of partnership include the fight against international terrorism because neither Russia nor the US is interested in the expansion of Islamic radicalism into the CIS, and the development of a common approach toward countering drug trafficking from Afghanistan through Central Asia to Russia and Europe.

At the same time, the authors clearly state that Moscow and Washington have limited opportunities to develop cooperation on post-Soviet territory. In addition, the countries in the region fear that such cooperation might turn into a struggle for spheres of influence. Therefore, a "strategic compromise" on the Ukrainian issue would have been "impossible and illusory," the authors warn. "Ukrainians must decide the future of the country on their own..."

Nobody is capable of preventing the US from participating in strengthening security in the former Soviet Union, in developing democracy there, and in integrating local economies into the global economy. "Stop telling me that no country other than Russia can act on post-Soviet territory," Mr. Putin has said at numerous recent meetings with the state and diplomatic elite. The President urged them "to make Russia competitive" in this geopolitical region, acknowledging that tough competition between Russia and the US was compatible with cooperation.

However, competition is one thing, but any attempt to neutralize Russia's influence in countries that have had close cultural and economic ties with Russia for centuries and where 25 million Russians live is an entirely different matter. The latter policy, apparently, has become the focus of an influential group of American neo-conservatives that are trying to change US policy toward Russia. When speaking recently at the Russian-US Council for Economic Cooperation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted that current US-Russian relations still bore traces of the past, featuring "attempts to play a 'zero-sum game.'"

"This refers in particular to some aspects of US activity on post-Soviet territory," the minister explained, "to the use of 'double standards' in the election process, when the results of voting are regarded to have corresponded to the principles of openness and democracy only if they meet particular political interests." The allusion to Ukraine could not have been more transparent.