Nikolai Zlobin is the Director of Russian and Asian Programs at the Center for Defense Information and editor-in-chief of the Washington Profile News Agency. (www.washprofile.org)

Q: What do expect of the upcoming meeting between Putin and Bush, their first one since the Iraqi crisis?

I think it will be a polite meeting. Everyone will say just the right things; there will be many smiles and embraces. But the real status of Russian-American relations is much more difficult than we can imagine. Neither country has the will to analyze this situation. Neither country is ready to estimate the level of damage brought upon their relations by the Iraqi crisis.

Our relations are currently at their lowest point in the past ten years. Using the American terrorist warning system, our relations are on yellow alert, nearing red. The development strategy for Russian-American relations that has existed after the Cold War has entered a dead end. Moscow and Washington both miscalculated each other's reaction on the Iraq issue. On must admit that a fundamental and conceptual bankruptcy of Russian-American relations has taken place.

From a tactical point of view, the Russian-American conflict over Iraq has practically been resolved. The administrators should pat themselves on the back but people concerned with strategy should not congratulate themselves yet. This has not been a resolution of Russian-American relations, but a resolution of just one of the problems. The successful resolution of the Iraqi crisis does not touch upon the fundamentals of Russian-American relations. One must see the forest for the tress, but one must also make sure that there is a forest.

Putin calls the national interest, economic development and pragmatism as Russia's chief priorities, and yet none of these issues seemed to figure in the Iraq issue. Russia demonstrated a completely irrational, unpragmatic approach, losing more than it could afford, worsening its economic situation, and hurting its image in the eyes of the average America, which, of course, doesn't help foreign investment.

Q: People in Russia think the crisis was caused by America's illegal actions.

The US foreign policy can and should be criticized. But Moscow must also take responsibility for its choices. To blame Washington for its own mistakes is not the right way to go. From my viewpoint, Moscow took a deeply mistaken position on the Iraq issue and showed that it doesn't quite understand what's happening in the world. The Russian Foreign Ministry displayed an old-fashioned, heavily ideological, unrealistic approach to the problem. And on the other hand, Russian policies looked improvisational, as a reaction to Europe or the US. Such improvisation is not fit for a nuclear power.

And lastly, Russia, as it turned out, had no specialists who knew what was going on, much less chart a true course and pursue it effectively. Even the position that Russia did take, it could not defend and, therefore, lost. Russia lost trying to gain authority not from standing with America, but by distancing itself from it, by giving in to the French line, by believing in the efficacy of UN inspectors in Iraq, not realizing that the issue was not about inspectors per se, but about some very serious changes in the international arena.

Q: What about US relations with Europe?

With all the disagreements the US has with France and Germany, these countries have an enormous historical, economic, and cultural experience of cooperation. That experience has not disappeared. No matter how serious the quarrel, it doesn't cancel that out. But Russian and the US have no such base, and that's why the conflict over Iraq was able to so easily cancel out any positive steps and intentions.

As it turned out, everyone was mistaken in thinking that after Sep.11, Putin chose to turn his country Westward and conducted a revolution in Russian foreign affairs. In the past 20 months, no concrete steps have been taken in that direction. That is, there has been no strategic turning point. If any foreign policy revolution did take place, it was ephemeral, and did not leave the bounds of the Presidential cabinet. The strategic choice was not made, and we must disappointedly admit this fact.

The US also bears some responsibility for this turn of events. There was an impression that Bush did not need Russian support, an impression shared by the American establishment. To a large extent, they believed they can solve all problems themselves. That's why many actions after Sep.11 can be seen as unfriendly and anti-Russian. One might recall Jackson-Vanick, the US position on Russian-Georgian tensions over the Pankisi Gorge, quotas on Russian steel, pushing Russia out of Afghanistan, the US exit from the anti-ballistic missile treaty and so on. But I think that America simply didn't consider how its actions look from the side, it wasn't part of some plan to humiliate Russia. The US looks at things from a vastly different perspective.

Today, neither Russia nor America have policies toward each other. In the Us, for instance, policies toward Russia are part of a policy of a fight against terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and ecology. And Russia has no foreign policy line at all. If we have no conception for behaving toward each other, then obviously any disagreement - such as over Iraq, grows to a colossal size, because we have nothing to lean upon.

There are many conceptual issues where our countries disagree. Before, they either tried to ignore them or thought they weren't very serious. Now it turns out that these issues are important for both sides, and cannot be resolved quickly. The US and Russia have very different views on the global situation, on how the world should function, on the existing system of international laws and institutions. Americans think that the current system was created during the Cold War, an era that was fundamentally different from today. Therefore, many things require extensive reforms. And Russia knows very well that if the UN Security Council is reformed, then Russian political influence will quickly diminish.

The world has changed. There are many non-governmental actors in world politics, like al-Qaeda. You can't call bin Laden to a Security Council meeting. You can't enforce sanctions against al-Qaeda, or sign agreements with them. The UN was based on the functions of sovereign states. That's why Americans think that international institutions should reform, while Russia is certain that this shouldn't happen.

The same is happening in the field of international law. America has a law of precedent - a law is created ex post facto. Russia, after turning into a weak country, defers to international law, as do all weak countries, and demands the upholding of law that is clearly spelled out beforehand. And this contradicts American political tradition. As Putin said, each country has their own axis of evil. Russia is worried about Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, America has its own problems. In the near future, Iran may become the next sticking point in Russian-American relations.

We can also bring up the issue of new nuclear states. The fact that North Korea acquired a nuclear weapon has caused a serious international incident. But if South Korea or Japan had done this, it probably wouldn't have been such an issue. This has the patina of the Cold War; there is still a view that the issue is not about nuclear weapons, but the good or bad guys who control them. Bad guys should not have them, but the good guys - Israel, India, Pakistan - are allowed. It's a system of double standards.

Q: Isn't it possible that time will vindicate the actions of Europe and condemn the actions of the US?

That can happen, of course. But let's look at the question more widely. Over the past ten years, we have ignored many problems in Russian-American relations. We swept them under the rug and moved, leaving them to be solved by future generations. This is not a rarity in international relations. Russia has an analogous problems with Japan - the issue of the Kuril islands will be dealt with by future generations of politicians.

For many countries, a change in the status quo is dangerous. Instead of declaring war to new threats, many countries are prepared for a regime of peaceful coexistence with these problems, thinking that everything may change in the future or the problem itself will disappear. As the old joke goes - either the king will die, or I will die. Europeans tried to find a way to peacefully coexist with Communism, and even invented a special theory of convergence. So if the world is convinced that problems should not be resolved today, but left for future generations, then America might lose - not in a military or economic sense, but in their influence upon the world.

But we need to look truth in the eyes. Who wins by ignoring these problems - obviously not Western civilization. In Iraq, America proved that it is a superpower ready to use actions as well as words to accomplish its goals. Besides the US, I see no one trying to deal with similar problems. Let's take a sub-issue: who will control the process of rebuilding Iraq - the US and the UK and someone else? The US approach is called neocolonialist and imperial, and that has a lot of truth to it. But I don't think that Russian-European control over Iraq would be better. Should they just be given a try?

Where is the evidence, that a multipolar world is more safe for Russia than a unipolar one? Multipolarity is less stable. There is no evidence that the presence of many power centers would make the world more predictable and less safe, especially for Russia. Unipolarity is not that great either, if the rules of the game are not in your favor. But if Russia can agree to a special relationship with America, than it has much greater chance of profiting from a unipolar world and avoiding unpleasant compromises. I don't think one should oppose a unipolar world seemly because you don't govern it.

Yes, America could end up in the minority. It's a minority right now, as it was a month ago. But it's not afraid of being a minority - whether that's good or bad is a different question. There will be no new Vietnams because there are now Soviet Unions standing behind Vietnam, no Brezhnevs behind Arafats. The battle between the two systems is over.

Q: What's the proper course?

We should move away from trying to improve our relations, toward a new model for relations. You can improve only to a certain extent. The steam engine can be rationalized only so far - sooner or later, it will reach the limit of its usefulness and you will need a new engine, like gas or electric, because after a certain point you need a qualitative change, a new conception and a new philosophy. Russia and the US spend almost 15 years trying to improve what we have inherited as a result of a half-century opposition. Now we are no longer enemies, but we don't know why we need each other. The new engine has not been invented, and the old one is outdated.

As a result, America has the opinion that it doesn't need Russia. And Russia believes that American can't live without it. This is a huge misconception. Russia should abandon improvisation because, as is well known, a predictable foe is better than an unpredictable friend. Russia cannot be an unpredictable friend.

The conflict over Iraq became the end of an era in Russian-American relations, an era that began with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The epoch of searching for a strategic partnership is over. We have begun a transition to a new period, which will be expressed in cooperation on concrete, limited issues.