A different dance: from tango to minuet.

• Author: Aron, Leon
• Position: Russia and the US

In the glorious autumn of 1991 the Soviet kingdom of ideological imperatives fell, and the foreign and security policies of Russia began to be shaped by what might be called the "normal" factors: domestic politics and the economy, history and geography. Suddenly, Russia's course became open to variations - and meaningful speculations.

Those in this country who speculated out loud almost instantly split into two camps. Each ranged across party affiliations and spanned the conservative-liberal divide, and each quickly acquired allies in the mass media and among policymakers. One school of thought (let us call it the "Historical") contended, in oversimplified essence, that a nation's history is its destiny. Historic genes would see to it that, sooner or later and mutatis mutandis, Russia would revert to its age-long authoritarian and imperialist ways. The best known exponents of this view have been Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

The opposing camp (call it the "Romantic") had its main advocates in Jeane Kirkpatrick and, until last spring, Richard Nixon. The Romantics argued that nations do change, and that democracy - even one as tentative, fledgling, incompetent, and chaotic as Russia's - cures historic ills, as in our time it has done already in the cases of Germany and Japan.

It is clear today that both the Historicals and the Romantics were partially right - and also that both have erred, although the Romantics, so far, have been closer to the mark. The internal condition of Russia has changed immensely for the better, and is continuing to change, though progress has not occurred as fast or as decisively as the Romantics had hoped. As far as foreign policy and security are concerned, the process of change has turned out to resemble not a highway, but a muddy and pitted country road that zigzags, undulates and detours a great deal.

The justifiable concern caused in the West by the twists and turns of the Russian course has been endowed with additional weight and darker hues by a powerful mind-set which requires a serious effort to resist. That mindset arises and gains credibility from an undeniable fact: for the last four centuries and until a few years ago Russia has been at the heart of two relentlessly expansionist empires: first that of the tsars and then that of the communists. Seen in this light, the dips and loops in the road - from the alleged Russian involvement in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict (whether authorized by the Kremlin or not), to the continuing presence of the Fourteenth Army in Moldova, to the defense of the brutal communist dictatorship in Tajikistan - easily acquire significance and portent well beyond their actual scope.

Russia Great versus Russia Free

Yet alongside these disturbing developments there has unfolded a dazzling spectacle of what might be called the Yeltsin revolution in Russian foreign policy. From Ivan the Terrible through Peter the Great and Catherine to Stalin, Russian state-building invariably included three elements: first, a potent messianic streak (from Russia as a "Third Rome," to Russia as the leader of the Slavs, to the "heart of world socialism"); second, the relentless expansion and strengthening of the empire; and third, dependence on massive military strength. Yeltsin has radically revised (indeed, in many instances, reversed) all three components.

The ideological dream has been interrupted - one hopes, terminated - and Russia is learning to speak prose both to its own people and to the world. The empire has been broken up. And the military is being starved for funds and men, with a brutal determination unprecedented in Russian history. The annual diminution of the defense budget for three years in a row; the steadfast adherence of the Yeltsin administration to the target reduction of the armed forces to under 1.5 million (from 4.5 million just three years ago); and the withdrawal from the Baltic countries controlled by Russia for two centuries - these are only the most dramatic manifestations of the military revolution.

But the most momentous development has been a break with another national theme, one which, like a thread of steel, bound rulers and ruled for centuries. This theme was the unquestioned and unquestionable priority of national security and foreign policy objectives over domestic concerns. The readiness with which the latter were sacrificed to advance the former was the central characteristic of the Russian state for at least four centuries. As the great Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin succinctly put it in a memorandum to Alexander I in 1818, "The first duty of the sovereign is to preserve the internal and external unity of the state. Solicitude for the welfare of social classes and individuals must come second." Throughout Russian history, an overwhelming preoccupation with the integrity of the empire was a critical brake on domestic liberalization. As Adam Ulam has said:

At decisive moments it was not only the government but also Russian society which found itself unable to opt clearly for freedom if its price seemed to involve the threat to the country's unity and greatness. [In 1990, it was precisely such a threat that moved Gorbachev, belatedly and unsuccessfully, to attempt to slow down the reforms.]

When Russian foreign policy was reborn, Yeltsin, too, faced the same cursed dilemma of Russian history: Russia great (that is, Russia imperial) versus Russia free. He became the first Russian leader ever to choose Russia free. Consider the magnitude of what Yeltsin did. In December 1991, when he hammered the last nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union in Belovezhskaya Pusha, he not only gave up all of the imperial conquests of Peter, Catherine, and both Alexanders but reversed the four hundred year old tradition in which the very national idea of Russia was derived from that of the imperial state. He "uncoupled" Russian identity and Russian statehood from the Russian empire. Until then, the two had never been separate: the emergence of the modern Russian state under Ivan the Terrible coincided - after the conquest of the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates - with the birth of the Russian empire. The result of this revolution may be summarized quite simply: not since the middle of the sixteenth century when the Russian expansion began, has there been a Russia less aggressive, less belligerent, less threatening to neighbors and the world than the Russia we see today.

Liberal Disenchantment with America

It is quite clear today, however, that despite the justified euphoria that attended the early stages of this revolution, it has not, in the end, produced a Russian foreign policy that is uniformly and unremittingly solicitous of the United States, or even automatically accommodating of its interests.

Nor, in retrospect, could it have. Just as in Russian domestic politics anti-communism is no longer viewed in Russia as synonymous with democracy, but only as a necessary and in itself insufficient condition for progress, so, while the radical break with foreign policy objectives of the past creates a vital pre-condition for Russia's re-integration in what Moscow used to call "the civilized world," it does not in itself ensure a cloudless relationship with the United States and its allies.

Between the August Revolution of 1991 and today, there has occurred a major change in the ways in which the Russian political class views Russia's proper role in its neighborhood and the world. In particular, there has been a change in perceptions of Russia's relations with the United States, whose motives and objectives have been intensely - and less than objectively - re-examined in Moscow. The most remarkable feature of this metamorphosis is the political provenance of those affected by it. Until it occurred, there had been a very stable correlation between domestic ideological positions and perceptions of the outside world: the rejection of the West almost perfectly coincided with reactionary - that is, in the Russian context, leftist, statist and nationalist - domestic positions. But starting in the second half of 1992, suspicion of the United States and calls for a tougher foreign policy line in pursuit...