All the way: crafting a U.S.-Russian alliance.

• Author: Legvold, Robert

RUSSIA AND the United States both stand on the verge of fundamental foreign policy choices likely to change dramatically their mutual relationship and, quite possibly, much more besides. For Russia, the choice centers on how thoroughgoing an alignment with the West it should pursue; for the United States, the choice centers on how thoroughgoing should be the independent assertion of its power. Choosing in the Russian case depends on how fully the leadership persuades itself, and then the Russian political class, that a changing international environment requires a change in the Russian approach--one that cuts free from habitual fears and addresses factors crucial to national welfare and progress. Choosing in the U.S. case has less to do with the elite's conception of international challenges than with the scope and methods of dealing with them. If the Russians make a dramatic conceptual choice, the effect on U.S.-Russian relations could be profound and positive. In contrast, if the United States makes a parti cular strategic choice, the effect on those relations could be major and negative, and the potential for a truly beneficial U.S.-Russian alliance may be lost.

Understanding why this is so and what is at stake requires a deeper look at what has happened to Russian foreign policy in the year since September 11, 2001. Dramatic as Vladimir Putin's instantaneous support for the United States was, and important as Russian cooperation in the campaign against global terrorism has been, it is the basis of this shift that should focus our attention. Putin's foreign policy is no tactical foray. Rather, he and his domestic allies have settled a critical ambivalence that plagued the country's foreign policy before September 11, one that had left Russia torn between competing images of the outside world.

Until then, for many within the foreign policy establishment and, it seemed, a part of Putin himself, the international setting remained a traditionally menacing place. It was a world where the state of military balances mattered; where the assertion of U.S. power constituted a challenge to be thwarted; where NATO'S expansion toward Russian borders assumed first-rank importance, and its actions over Kosovo posed a direct threat; and where the virtues of a longed-for multipolar order served as standard mantra. Yet for others, including another part of Putin, the world was increasingly engulfed by globalization, and there, amid the tyranny of global capital flows, the refinement of trading agglomerations and an information and communications revolution, the fate of Russia's own transformation would be decided. This was a place of geo-economics, nor geostrategy; a place of arbitrage and export, not power plays and arms races.

It is this second world that President Putin now stresses, and thus it is clear in retrospect that his aligning Russia with the United States in the struggle against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban was but an eye-catching manifestation of a more basic strategic decision to throw Russia's lot in with the West. By so doing, Putin not only put an end to much post-Cold War uncertainty and equivocation, but also reconciled himself to what can only be a junior partnership with the United States--one in which Russia's ability to contest objectionable U.S. policies may be no greater than that of any U.S. ally, and perhaps a good deal less than some.

For those Russians still of the old view, Putin's concessions appear not merely misguided, but treasonous. In May, the leader of the Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov; condemned a policy that "threatens the very existence of the country." In his angry recital:

Reliable allies have been sold out. Russian bases in Vietnam and Cuba vital for our country's security have been closed. American soldiers have appeared in Central Asia and in Georgia. Soon U.S. aircraft will land at the airfields of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The CIS and Russia have already been proclaimed as within the sphere of the U.S. vital interests. The strategic encirclement of Russia is being completed with the full consent of Mr. Putin and his team. (1)

But Putin and his critics are ships passing in the night. Not only does the president no longer share even partially their view of the threats posed by the outside world, he has adopted an entirely different foreign policy agenda from theirs. This is not to deny that Putin's new direction has roots in the period before September 2001 or to suggest that all his concerns over NATO, the U.S. nuclear posture or manifestations of U.S. unilateralism have evaporated. But it is important to recognize how different is the order of tasks on which he is fixed from that of two or three years ago.

Russia's New Agenda

VLADIMIR Putin's overriding priority is to synchronize his domestic and foreign policy agendas, which inevitably means featuring economics. Not by chance has the focus of Putin's last two "state of the union" addresses to parliament been devoted overwhelmingly to domestic issues, with only a few fleeting paragraphs on foreign policy--and even these few paragraphs have had mainly to do with economic issues. In this year's address, for example, he opened his comments on foreign policy by discussing the World Trade Organization and closed by stressing that "a fundamental feature of the contemporary world is the internationalization of the economy and society." Russia, he said, "no longer [has] a choice of whether or not to integrate into the world economic space."

This shift in priorities radiates throughout Russia's foreign policy, and has three critical effects. First, it diminishes the urgency and immanence of alternative preoccupations. NATO's evolution and activities lose their centrality; the massive U.S. military advantage, its imperious approach to designing the strategic nuclear regime of the future, even the arrival of U.S. troops on former Soviet territory, all loom less large; and the need to watch, catlike, for any encroachment on Russia's strategic positions in bordering regions shrinks.

Second, the reordering of priorities leaves room for Russians to rethink old assumptions. Rather than accent latent traces of U.S.-Russian rivalry--including a not-so-latent strategic competition within post-Soviet space--those of the new perspective emphasize instead that "Russia's and the United States' geopolitical interests don't contradict each other; in fact, they tend to coincide." (2) Looked at objectively, they argue, by bringing down the Taliban regime and forcing Al-Qaeda on the run, the United States did what Russia could not do for itself--reduce the security threat from its south. On other pressing security issues, too--the spread of weapons of mass destruction, fighting terrorism, enhancing energy security, or even stabilizing Russia's northeast frontier in Asia--Russia and the United States have common interests that ought to lead to common endeavors. This is not just talk. The weakening of old fears and the incipient rethinking of security interests have already given rise to more constructiv e approaches to issues that once vexed U.S.-Russian relations. For example, the trade-off between the new NATO-Russia Council and a new Russian equanimity in the face of further NATO expansion would not have been possible if not for the shift in Russian attitudes that preceded them. Nor, almost surely, would the Moscow Treaty have sufficed to offset the unilateral U.S. abrogation of the ABM Treaty and its determination to do with its strategic forces as it chooses.

Third, because of the fundamental turn in Russian foreign policy, the basis for a radically different U.S.-Russian relationship now exists. In short, Putin's new agenda permits a new and positive U.S.-Russian agenda. No longer, say partisans of the Putin approach, need Washington and Moscow concentrate on preventing the negative; the two countries can now combine strengths to pursue a positive joint security agenda. After all, Putin rallied to the U.S. side so swiftly after September 11 not merely...