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)

Good afternoon, thank you. On June 1st Putin and Bush will meet in St. Petersburg. It will be a very polite meeting, and they will kiss and hug each other and try to cover up some very serious problems in US-Russian relations. Using the American system of terrorist alertness, I would say that Russian-American relations are in the orange level, and very close to red. We are in the lowest point in our relations, and I think this is very dangerous for both of our countries, as well as for a large part of the world. Iraq became a sort of magnifying glass for exposing the tremendous differences in Russian and American attitudes toward the world. I think that the conflict in Iraq, and the Russian-American conflict over Iraq, ended a big epoch in Russian-American relations, one which started at the end of the Cold War. Now we have had a reality check, and we are starting something new, something which we don't really want.

I couldn't believe how many people in Washington were surprised by the Russian position on Iraq, and how many people in Moscow were surprised by the American position on Iraq, which suggests to me that we don't read each other correctly, we have misread each other's position and each other's intentions and policies toward Iraq. The Russian position was motivated in many ways by Putin's unofficial start of the presidential campaign, and his address to the Federal Consul was part of this campaign, and the war on Iraq coincided with this campaign. Putin's motivation was to show to his country that his decision was not influenced by the White House, that his foreign policy is not run by Bush. He also had an idea, or at least a dream, to influence Bush, and he failed, and I think this left him quite bitter. I think the Russian position was also motivated by the necessity to defend certain economic interests in Iraq, which, if you look closely, were not economic interests but political interests of the current elite and the oil business. Putin tried to play himself as a middleman between Europe and the US; he thought he could be the European voice in Washington, and that definitely didn't work, since he lost that role to Tony Blair. I don't think Tony Blair was very welcome during his recent trip to Russia, and Putin's attitude toward Tony Blair was bitter because he took the position that Putin would like to have had. And now Putin is losing Kvashnevsky in Poland, and Eastern Europe is running away from Russia, which is again, the result of Russia's position in Iraq. So to become a middle man, a mediator between European and American leaders and a moderate voice, Putin wasn't able to do.

Also, I think Putin has become a hostage to his own popularity and high rating. His rating, popularity and money comes from the oil businesses, which are very much in charge in Russia. Maybe, it was in a way a smart decision for him not to risk a high rating, at lest until March 14, the next presidential election in Russia. When I was talking to people from his administration, they were telling me that he is very tired after 3 years of running Russia, very disappointed and feels betrayed by so many people that he doesn't trust anyone at all. One thing we should consider is the situation inside Kremlin — Putin was influenced by members of his administration, those who were able to come to his office. And I think the people who were there, who had access to him, like Voloshin or Prikhodko or Margelov, who were arguing for support of America were outshadowed, purely through quantity, by people from the FSB and the security structures. Putin had limited information, or unclear information, and I think in a way he was basing his decisions on quantity of information, not quality. Indirectly, I think people did manipulate Putin's decision — you can't manipulate Putin directly, he's too strong for that — but they did manipulate him indirectly, and as a result there was definitely not enough Putin in the Iraq issue — he definitely didn't say enough about Iraq, he didn't show his real attitude and allowed Igor Ivanov to do most of the talking. In this situation it was very difficult for him to make any thoughtful decisions, and if you follow the Russian position on Iraq, there was little of Putin there. Actually, I would say, there's very little of Putin in foreign policy for the last year at least. And Putin was very quiet about Iraq, once in a while he would say something angry, but no deep thoughts. He didn't explain the Russian position.

For him, personally speaking, it was a very indecisive position, which before Iraq was very beneficial, when you didn't have to take sides. It was good for him, and he tried to stretch that position as possible, but then he couldn't maintain it. During and after the war, the US has lost essentially all interest in Russia. Now, if you ask someone in the administration about the policy toward Russia, they say "give me a minute" and try to say something intelligent. Two years, three years ago they could go on for hours and you could not stop them. Now they don't have any policy. The point is, after the Cold War, US and Russia stopped to think of each other as enemies. I would argue that after the war in Iraq, the US stopped looking at Russia as a potential partner, maybe for a long time. I very much think this is the Bush administration's position. We can discuss whose fault that is, whose responsibility, but it's a fact of life.

So I would argue that this alleged strategic choice the Putin made on Sep.11 2001 to turn his country toward the US didn't happen, and wasn't much of a choice. Maybe it was a choice on the tactical level, maybe it was influenced by Chechnya or just a moral reaction, but I don't see any choice at all, for several reasons. The most obvious is that Putin didn't do anything after Sep.11 to prove that the choice is there. There is no single stand, there is no explanation to his country or to his elite what his choice meant. And I think we're trying to believe so much that the choice is there that we didn't really check what it means and took it for granted, and now we have to recognize that it was no choice. There's plenty of articles and even books already from both sides of the ocean about the revolution in Russian foreign policy under Putin, and I don't think there was any revolution at all.

But the US took a very passive and indifferent attitude toward Russian position at that time, which put Putin in a big frustration. It seems like Bush administration didn't meet Russian strategic choices, and did not appreciate Putin enough. After 9/11, Russia was very busy counting the very unfriendly steps that the US took toward Russia, starting with the missile defense system, bases in Central Asia, the State Department's position on Pankisi, steel exports, Jackson-Vanick… I can go on and on, and mention things that doesn't seem very important on the Washington scale of political life, but very important on the Kremlin scale.

The level of mistrust is tremendous. American missiles are still targeting Russian targets, nuclear submarines are still swimming — I mean, Russia is doing the same thing. You have to realize that mistrust level is very high and we're in a catch-22 situation.

Where are we now? After the break-up of the USSR, I was arguing very hard against the concept of improving US-Russian relations. I thought it's a bad idea because you're trying to improve something that was designed for a very different political and geopolitical situation, which is a bad idea. I thought it would waste intellectual effort and time to improve what is not improvable. I thought we have to drop it and start building a new relationship based on something very different. I argued for new fundamentals, but nobody listened at that time. Now I feel like I got my revenge. We don't have fundamentals in Russian-American relations, we have no idea what the relationship means, where it's supposed to go, what the content or motivation is. In this situation, everything is based on current events — America does something, Russia reacts, and this is what our relations are. There is nothing behind it. And I think this is a very difficult situation — we don't have fundamental relations, we don't have proactive relations, it's purely reactive policies toward each other, and some quite unfriendly. If you ask someone in Kremlin or the White House what has been the biggest success in our relations — well, the answer is that we didn't fight militarily. A phrase was used quite often, that we "agree to disagree." I agree with that, it's a nice phrase, but what are the things where we agree to agree? We agree to disagree on everything, but we agree to agree on nothing. It's a strange situation, two big countries' reactions to each other depends on current events, and all diplomatic efforts are spent on trying to calm each other.

Russia does not have a solid foreign policy, it's an imitation of foreign policy, and there are no big ideas. When Putin came to power, a lot of Americans argued that he's the man with big ideas. I think now we see he's the man with little ideas, at least in foreign policy. There's no system in American foreign policy, and Russian foreign policy is not solid. Plus, I think we have to recognize that it's very important, for the last 10 years now we haven't been solving our problems, we've been storaging and collecting them, trying to look forward without solving these problems, and now we have a whole roomful of these problems which we haven't solved in the previous decade. Iraq, China, Iran, Syria, plenty of problems which we try not to see in our relations and didn't solve them at the right time.

We see the situation so differently now, and we don't have joint understanding of how this came about. Russia is definitely in a worse position than it was a year ago, foreign policy-wise. If you remember fundamentals of Putin's speech at the foreign ministry last summer, when he said there were 4 main goals: establish closer, trustworthy relations with the US, re-establish relations with the EU, straighten relations with NATO, and secure Russian interests in Central Asia. A year later, every four of these goals have failed completely. Both sides contributed a lot to the deterioration of the UN. After the Cold War, where the UN did not play an important role at all, when it was a hostage to the two superpowers, I thought after the Cold War the UN could go through a reincarnation, because it would really be a place to solve problems, but it didn't happen. This is one of the reasons why Russia is so frustrated by American foreign policy, because the UN Security Council is the last place Russia can exercise power, as a result of WW2. If something happened to the UN and Russia's veto power, then it doesn't have any tools. It's very clear from Moscow — Russia is doing everything possible to keep the Security Council and its position there, and try to win back the respect and reputation of the UN. Paradoxically, over Iraq, Russia helped to destroy the UN, it didn't take the right position. But now I see serious changes in Russian policy toward compromising, particularly concerning the UN and the Security Council.

I also remind you that before Iraq, Russia was quite anti-European, and Europeans were quite anti-Russian, and whatever relations were achieved were through huge influence from Washington. Whenever you talk to Europeans here, they always complain about how Washington pressures them to bring Russia in, to establish good relations with Russia. So if Russia loses political support from Washington, its relations with Europe will be worse, particularly with the EU. Both countries are now in a situation of making a certain choice. There is no evidence that a multipolar world will give Russia more security than a world run by the US alone. It's a choice for Russia now which way to follow — if Russia decides, strategically speaking, to go with the US, then Russia would definitely try to get a status of special relations, like it was during the 1st Clinton administration. Russia wants a much more formal union with the US; the US as you know, rejects the ideas of formalities, of signing treaties, and Russia feels insecure. In a way, it's like a huge North Korea, they need a formal agreement with the US. After all, when the Cold War ended there was no peace treaty, and there's no rules. So Russia would like to have some rules and to formalize its relations with the US, and this is one big piece of disagreement we have between the two countries.

We see very differently how we can solve problems — we have different political agendas. Putin said that each country its own axis of evil — Russia has its own axis of evil which doesn't match the American one. For Russia, the most dangerous country is Pakistan, and we have to solve this problem. Musharaff is, at least according to Moscow, not more legitimate than Saddam Hussein. And Pakistan has nuclear weapons, missiles that can reach quite deep into Russian territory. There were discussions, with Americans, Russian officials trying to say "let's deal with Pakistan" and the Americans inevitably say, "yes, but let's start with Iraq". The second concern for Russia is Saudi Arabia, as first a potential site for a terrorist takeover of the government, and second as a potential competitor in the oil business, a country that can stop Russia from going to Western and particularly American markets. Israeli nuclear ability is very high on Russian foreign policy priorities.

So we have very different geopolitical agenda, and we could not so far coordinate it. The non-proliferation issue — Soviet Union and the US signed a bunch of non-proliferation treaties, but the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore, Russia is a poor country, and many people believe that non-proliferation only benefits the US, because Russia can't compete anymore, in non-proliferation, quality-wise. Russia doesn't have enough money to develop new systems, to develop a missile defense system. Russia cannot update existing systems, so it has to go with quantity, not quality. But we can't go with quantity because that would violate non-proliferation pacts. So we have another huge disagreement on that. Putin announced last Friday in his speech at the Duma that Russia is on the way to develop new strategic arms, nuclear weapons. But on the big scale, Russia is losing to the US, quality-wise and losing its field of influence, a cushion around Russia, to America, so Russia not happy about that. And we have common disagreements in Iran. Lately, I see little changes in Russian position on Iran and higher Russian officials did recognize that whatever Russia doing in Iran can be used potentially to develop nuclear weapons. And North Korea was a disappointing moment for Putin because he thought he had great influence over North Korean leaders after all these meetings and trips.

Our agendas are very different and our foreign policy on both sides speaks in very different languages. This is very obvious. If Europeans think that Bush is putting right questions but giving wrong answers, Russia actually expresses opinion that Bush is even asking the wrong questions. We have a different attitude to what terrorism is about. Is it world-wide political movement or do we have to deal with them as criminals? In the last case, we don't use armies and weapons, just police and intelligence. We have a very different attitude toward international law — Russia suddenly become very supportive of international law, and American's attitude is after the fact law, and Russia wants now to set rules and preconditions.

We don't agree on tactical foreign policy issues, like this preventive strike — is it only a right of the US, or could Russia do it in Georgia, let's say? And Americans were opposing this, remember, last summer. How will Iraq affect the development of the terrorist networks, will it increase it? Russians believe that it will increase network of terrorists and suicide bombers and people who want to join terrorist organizations all over the world. On Sep. 12, 2001, everybody was in love with America — twenty months later, everyone hates you. So Russia doesn't want to be on your side partly because of that. It doesn't want to have the anti-American mood spread over Russia as well.

And last point I'll make about this disagreements or how they effect Russian-American relations. I mentioned at the beginning that Putin has two big weapons in his arsenal — high rating and popularity in the country — people do love him, I have no idea why. But his other weapon is the current peace with the oil and the oligarchs. This is very important — the structure of power, the structure of economy, of legislative and executive power is very much paid off from this money. So if the price of oil drops, then this source of Putin's support will disappear very fast, and the only thing he can do is go and find another source of support for the power, go to different people, and it's very dangerous because it's one year before elections, and six months before Duma elections. I talked with a Duma operator, and he said, every seat in the Duma is sold, particularly party seats. And when money will stop from oil, then Duma is out of protection, the Communists can take over. If your money will come from somewhere else and not controlled by Kremlin than you have a big problem. And for Putin it's a big problem. Berezovsky still in London trying to make some noise. Iraq's stability and oil prices are a big concern to Putin, and he lost on that as well.

In conclusion I would say that we are in bad shape, we don't have fundamentals in Russian and American relations. We could probably solve certain tactical issues, and it seems we did, for now — Iraq, Russian debt. But there's no fundamentals, and the next crisis can break our relations even deeper than now. We are now in a situation when it's obvious we have to do something. Both countries do not recognize this necessity. But now Bush started his campaign, and Putin basically did the same on May 16, by reading his speech in the Russian Parliament. So now, next year is important because we're working on the agenda for both presidents' next terms. We have to work very hard to give them some agenda on Russian-American relations, not to try to improve what we had, because I believe this is a lost cause, but try to find new fundamentals of this relations, otherwise we might lose the chance to take advantage of Putin's next term. After Putin, in 2008, I believe Russia will go in Eastern European direction, Russia will get a president from the left, who will be a socially democrat at the very least. It won't be so market-oriented, or West-oriented as Putin. Russia will eventually go the same way as East Europe, Russia just has huge inertia. But in 2008 it won't be a person like Putin in Kremlin, at least we could talk reasonably to him, but if by 2008 there aren't certain fundamentals in Russian-American relations, and we will need to wait a long time for next opportunity. Thank you.