...even Russian Foreign Minister  Andrei Kozyrev -- known in Russia as Mr. Yes for  accommodating the West -- became frustrated with 
the Clinton administration's tough love. As he  told Talbott, who served as ambassador at large to the newly independent states from 1993 to 
1994, "It's bad enough having you people tell us what you're going to do whether we like it or not. Don't add insult to injury by also telling us that it's in our interests to obey your orders."
...
...The sense in the  Kremlin is that the United States cares about  using democracy as an instrument to embarrass and 
isolate Putin more than it cares about democracy itself. ...



Losing Russia
By Dimitri K. Simes
Dimitri K. Simes is President of the Nixon Center 
and Publisher of The National Interest.

Foreign Affairs. November-December 2007
www.foreignaffairs.org



Faced with threats from al Qaeda and Iran and 
increasing instability in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
the United States does not need new enemies. Yet 
its relationship with Russia is worsening by the 
day. The rhetoric on both sides is heating up, 
security agreements are in jeopardy, and 
Washington and Moscow increasingly look at each 
other through the old Cold War prism.

Although Russia's newfound assertiveness and 
heavy-handed conduct at home and abroad have been 
the major causes of mutual disillusionment, the 
United States bears considerable responsibility 
for the slow disintegration of the relationship 
as well. Moscow's maladies, mistakes, and 
misdeeds are not an alibi for U.S. policymakers, 
who made fundamental errors in managing Russia's 
transition from an expansionist communist empire 
to a more traditional great power.

Underlying the United States' mishandling of 
Russia is the conventional wisdom in Washington, 
which holds that the Reagan administration won 
the Cold War largely on its own. But this is not 
what happened, and it is certainly not the way 
most Russians view the demise of the Soviet 
state. Washington's self-congratulatory 
historical narrative lies at the core of its 
subsequent failures in dealing with Moscow in the post-Cold War era.

Washington's crucial error lay in its propensity 
to treat post-Soviet Russia as a defeated enemy. 
The United States and the West did win the Cold 
War, but victory for one side does not 
necessarily mean defeat for the other. Soviet 
leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian President Boris 
Yeltsin, and their advisers believed that they 
had all joined the United States' side as victors 
in the Cold War. They gradually concluded that 
communism was bad for the Soviet Union, and 
especially Russia. In their view, they did not 
need outside pressure in order to act in their country's best interest.

Despite numerous opportunities for strategic 
cooperation over the past 16 years, Washington's 
diplomatic behavior has left the unmistakable 
impression that making Russia a strategic partner 
has never been a major priority. The 
administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. 
Bush assumed that when they needed Russian 
cooperation, they could secure it without special 
effort or accommodation. The Clinton 
administration in particular appeared to view 
Russia like postwar Germany or Japan -- as a 
country that could be forced to follow U.S. 
policies and would eventually learn to like them. 
They seemed to forget that Russia had not been 
occupied by U.S. soldiers or devastated by atomic 
bombs. Russia was transformed, not defeated. This 
profoundly shaped its responses to the United States.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russia has 
not acted like a client state, a reliable ally, 
or a true friend -- but nor has it behaved like 
an enemy, much less an enemy with global 
ambitions and a hostile and messianic ideology. 
Yet the risk that Russia may join the ranks of 
U.S. adversaries is very real today. To avoid 
such an outcome, Washington must understand where 
it has gone wrong -- and take appropriate steps 
today to reverse the downward spiral.

DEATH OF AN EMPIRE

Misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the 
end of the Cold War have been significant factors 
in fueling misguided U.S. policies toward Russia. 
Although Washington played an important role in 
hastening the fall of the Soviet empire, 
reformers in Moscow deserve far more credit than they generally receive.

Indeed, in the late 1980s, it was far from 
inevitable that the Soviet Union or even the 
Eastern bloc would collapse. Gorbachev entered 
office in 1985 with the goal of eliminating 
problems that Leonid Brezhnev's administration 
had already recognized -- namely, military 
overstretch in Afghanistan and Africa and 
excessive defense spending that was crippling the 
Soviet economy -- and with a desire to enhance 
the Soviet Union's power and prestige.

His dramatic reduction of Soviet subsidies for 
states in the Eastern bloc, his withdrawal of 
support for old-line Warsaw Pact regimes, and 
perestroika created totally new political 
dynamics in Eastern Europe and led to the largely 
peaceful disintegration of various communist 
regimes and the weakening of Moscow's influence 
in the region. Ronald Reagan contributed to this 
process by increasing the pressure on the 
Kremlin, but it was Gorbachev, not the White 
House, who ended the Soviet empire.

U.S. influence played even less of a role in 
bringing about the disintegration of the Soviet 
Union. The George H. W. Bush administration 
supported the independence of the Baltic 
republics and communicated to Gorbachev that 
cracking down on legally elected separatist 
governments would jeopardize U.S.-Soviet 
relations. But by allowing pro-independence 
parties to compete and win in relatively free 
elections and refusing to use security forces 
decisively to remove them, Gorbachev virtually 
assured that the Baltic states would leave the 
Soviet Union. Russia itself delivered the final 
blow, by demanding institutional status equal to 
the other union republics. Gorbachev told the 
Politburo that permitting the change would spell 
"the end of the empire." And it did. After the 
failed reactionary coup attempt in August 1991, 
Gorbachev could not stop Yeltsin -- and the 
leaders of Belarus and Ukraine -- from dismantling the Soviet Union.

The Reagan and first Bush administrations 
understood the dangers of a crumbling superpower 
and managed the Soviet Union's decline with an 
impressive combination of empathy and toughness. 
They treated Gorbachev respectfully but without 
making substantive concessions at the expense of 
U.S. interests. This included promptly rejecting 
Gorbachev's increasingly desperate requests for 
massive economic assistance, because there was no 
good reason for the United States to help him 
save the Soviet empire. But when the first Bush 
administration rejected Soviet appeals not to 
launch an attack against Saddam Hussein after 
Iraq invaded Kuwait, the White House worked hard 
to pay proper heed to Gorbachev and not "rub his 
nose in it," as former Secretary of State James 
Baker put it. As a result, the United States was 
able to simultaneously defeat Saddam and maintain 
close cooperation with the Soviet Union, largely on Washington's terms.

If the George H. W. Bush administration can be 
criticized for anything, it is for failing to 
provide swift economic help to the democratic 
government of the newly independent Russia in 
1992. Observing the transition closely, former 
President Richard Nixon pointed out that a major 
aid package could stop the economic free fall and 
help anchor Russia in the West for years to come. 
Bush, however, was in a weak position to take a 
daring stand in helping Russia. By this time, he 
was fighting a losing battle with candidate Bill 
Clinton, who was attacking him for being 
preoccupied with foreign policy at the expense of the U.S. economy.

Despite his focus on domestic issues during the 
campaign, Clinton came into office with a desire 
to help Russia. The administration arranged 
significant financial assistance for Moscow, 
primarily through the International Monetary Fund 
(IMF). As late as 1996, Clinton was so eager to 
praise Yeltsin that he even compared Yeltsin's 
decision to use military force against 
separatists in Chechnya to Abraham Lincoln's 
leadership in the American Civil War.

The Clinton administration's greatest failure was 
its decision to take advantage of Russia's 
weakness. The administration tried to get as much 
as possible for the United States politically, 
economically, and in terms of security in Europe 
and the former Soviet Union before Russia 
recovered from the tumultuous transition. Former 
Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott has also 
revealed that U.S. officials even exploited 
Yeltsin's excessive drinking during face-to-face 
negotiations. Many Russians believed that the 
Clinton administration was doing the same with 
Russia writ large. The problem was that Russia 
eventually did sober up, and it remembered the 
night before angrily and selectively.

EAT YOUR SPINACH

Behind the façade of friendship, Clinton 
administration officials expected the Kremlin to 
accept the United States' definition of Russia's 
national interests. They believed that Moscow's 
preferences could be safely ignored if they did 
not align with Washington's goals. Russia had a 
ruined economy and a collapsing military, and it 
acted like a defeated country in many ways. 
Unlike other European colonial empires that had 
withdrawn from former possessions, Moscow made no 
effort to negotiate for the protection of its 
economic and security interests in Eastern Europe 
or the former Soviet states on its way out. 
Inside Russia, meanwhile, Yeltsin's radical 
reformers often welcomed IMF and U.S. pressure as 
justification for the harsh and hugely unpopular 
monetary policies they had advocated on their own.

Soon, however, even Russian Foreign Minister 
Andrei Kozyrev -- known in Russia as Mr. Yes for 
accommodating the West -- became frustrated with 
the Clinton administration's tough love. As he 
told Talbott, who served as ambassador at large 
to the newly independent states from 1993 to 
1994, "It's bad enough having you people tell us 
what you're going to do whether we like it or 
not. Don't add insult to injury by also telling 
us that it's in our interests to obey your orders."

But such pleas fell on deaf ears in Washington, 
where this arrogant approach was becoming 
increasingly popular. Talbott and his aides 
referred to it as the spinach treatment: a 
paternalistic Uncle Sam fed Russian leaders 
policies that Washington deemed healthy, no 
matter how unappetizing these policies seemed in 
Moscow. As Talbott adviser Victoria Nuland put 
it, "The more you tell them it's good for them, 
the more they gag." By sending the message that 
Russia should not have an independent foreign 
policy -- or even an independent domestic one -- 
the Clinton administration generated much 
resentment. This neocolonial approach went hand 
in hand with IMF recommendations that most 
economists now agree were ill suited to Russia 
and so painful for the population that they could 
never have been implemented democratically. 
However, Yeltsin's radical reformers were only 
too happy to impose them without popular consent.

At the time, former President Nixon, as well as a 
number of prominent U.S. business leaders and 
Russia specialists, recognized the folly of the 
U.S. approach and urged compromise between 
Yeltsin and the more conservative Duma. Nixon was 
disturbed when Russian officials told him that 
the United States had expressed its willingness 
to condone the Yeltsin administration's decision 
to take "resolute" steps against the Duma so long 
as the Kremlin accelerated economic reforms. 
Nixon warned that "encouraging departures from 
democracy in a country with such an autocratic 
tradition as Russia's is like trying to put out a 
fire with combustible materials." Moreover, he 
argued that acting on Washington's "fatally 
flawed assumption" that Russia was not and would 
not be a world power for some time would imperil 
peace and endanger democracy in the region.

Although Clinton met with Nixon, he ignored this 
advice and disregarded Yeltsin's worst excesses. 
A stalemate between Yeltsin and the Duma and 
Yeltsin's unconstitutional decree dissolving the 
body soon followed, ultimately leading to 
violence and tanks shelling the parliament 
building. After the episode, Yeltsin forced 
through a new constitution granting Russia's 
president sweeping powers at the expense of the 
parliament. This move consolidated the first 
Russian president's hold on power and laid the 
foundation for his drift toward authoritarianism. 
The appointment of Vladimir Putin -- then the 
head of Russia's post-KGB intelligence service, 
the FSB -- as prime minister and then as acting 
president was a natural outcome of Washington's 
reckless encouragement of Yeltsin's authoritarian tendencies.

Other aspects of the Clinton administration's 
foreign policy further heightened Russia's 
resentment. NATO expansion -- especially the 
first wave, which involved the Czech Republic, 
Hungary, and Poland -- was not a big problem in 
and of itself. Most Russians were prepared to 
accept NATO enlargement as an unhappy but 
unthreatening development -- until the 1999 
Kosovo crisis. When NATO went to war against 
Serbia, despite strong Russian objections and 
without approval from the UN Security Council, 
the Russian elite and the Russian people quickly 
came to the conclusion that they had been 
profoundly misled and that NATO remained directed 
against them. Great powers -- particularly great 
powers in decline -- do not appreciate such 
demonstrations of their irrelevance.

Notwithstanding Russian anger over Kosovo, in 
late 1999, Putin, then prime minister, made a 
major overture to the United States just after 
ordering troops into Chechnya. He was troubled by 
Chechen connections with al Qaeda and the fact 
that Taliban-run Afghanistan was the only country 
to have established diplomatic relations with 
Chechnya. Motivated by these security interests, 
rather than any newfound love for the United 
States, Putin suggested that Moscow and 
Washington cooperate against al Qaeda and the 
Taliban. This initiative came after the 1993 
World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 bombing 
of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, by which 
time the Clinton administration had more than 
enough information to understand the mortal 
danger the United States faced from Islamic fundamentalists.

But Clinton and his advisers, frustrated with 
Russian defiance in the Balkans and the removal 
of reformers from key posts in Moscow, ignored 
this overture. They increasingly saw Russia not 
as a potential partner but as a nostalgic, 
dysfunctional, financially weak power at whose 
expense the United States should make whatever 
gains it could. Thus they sought to cement the 
results of the Soviet Union's disintegration by 
bringing as many post-Soviet states as possible 
under Washington's wing. They pressed Georgia to 
participate in building the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan 
oil pipeline, running from the Caspian Sea to the 
Mediterranean and bypassing Russia. They 
encouraged Georgia's opportunistic president, 
Eduard Shevardnadze, to seek NATO membership and 
urged U.S. embassies in Central Asia to work 
against Russian influence in the region. Finally, 
they dismissed Putin's call for U.S.-Russian 
counterterrorist collaboration as desperate 
neoimperialism and an attempt to reestablish 
Russia's waning influence in Central Asia. What 
the Clinton administration did not appreciate, 
however, was that it was also giving away a 
historic opportunity to put al Qaeda and the 
Taliban on the defensive, destroy their bases, 
and potentially disrupt their ability to launch 
major operations. Only after nearly 3,000 U.S. 
citizens were killed on September 11, 2001, did this cooperation finally begin.

FROM SOUL MATES TO RIVALS

When George W. Bush came to power in January 
2001, eight months after Putin became president 
of Russia, his administration faced a new group 
of relatively unknown Russian officials. Keen to 
differentiate its policy from Clinton's, the Bush 
team did not see Russia as a priority; many of 
its members saw Moscow as corrupt and 
undemocratic -- and weak. Although this 
assessment was accurate, the Bush administration 
lacked the strategic foresight to reach out to 
Moscow. Bush and Putin did develop good personal 
chemistry, however. When they first met, at a 
June 2001 summit in Slovenia, Bush famously 
vouched for Putin's soul and democratic convictions.

The events of September 11, 2001, dramatically 
changed Washington's attitude toward Moscow and 
prompted a strong outpouring of emotional support 
for the United States in Russia. Putin reiterated 
his long-standing offer of support against al 
Qaeda and the Taliban; he granted overflight 
rights across Russian territory, endorsed the 
establishment of U.S. bases in Central Asia, and, 
perhaps most important, facilitated access to a 
readily available Russian-armed and 
Russian-trained military force in Afghanistan: 
the Northern Alliance. Of course, he had Russia's 
own interests in mind; to Putin, it was a 
blessing that the United States had joined the 
fight against Islamist terrorism. Like many other 
alliances, U.S.-Russian cooperation on 
counterterrorism came into existence because of 
shared fundamental interests, not a common ideology or mutual sympathy.

Despite this newfound cooperation, relations 
remained strained in other areas. Bush's 
announcement in December 2001 that the United 
States would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic 
Missile Treaty, one of the last remaining symbols 
of Russia's former superpower status, further 
wounded the Kremlin's pride. Likewise, Russian 
animosity toward NATO only grew after the 
alliance incorporated the three Baltic states, 
two of which -- Estonia and Latvia -- had 
unresolved disputes with Russia relating 
principally to the treatment of ethnic Russian minorities.

At roughly the same time, Ukraine became a source 
of major tension. From Russia's perspective, U.S. 
support for Viktor Yushchenko's Orange Revolution 
was not just about promoting democracy; it was 
also about undermining Russia's influence in a 
neighboring state that had joined the Russian 
empire voluntarily in the seventeenth century and 
that had both significant cultural ties with 
Russia and a large Russian population. Moreover, 
in Moscow's view, contemporary Ukraine's border 
-- drawn by Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev 
as an administrative frontier between Soviet 
provinces -- stretched far beyond historical 
Ukraine's outer limits, incorporating millions of 
Russians and creating ethnic, linguistic, and 
political tensions. The Bush administration's 
approach to Ukraine -- namely, its pressure on a 
divided Ukraine to request NATO membership and 
its financial support for nongovernmental 
organizations actively assisting pro-Yushchenko 
political parties -- has fueled Moscow's concerns 
that the United States is pursuing a 
neocontainment policy. Few Bush administration 
officials or members of Congress considered the 
implications of challenging Russia in an area so 
central to its national interests and on an issue so emotionally charged.

Georgia soon became another battleground. 
President Mikheil Saakashvili has been seeking to 
use Western support, particularly from the United 
States, as his principal tool in reestablishing 
Georgian sovereignty over the breakaway regions 
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where 
Russian-backed separatists have fought for 
independence from Georgia since the early 1990s. 
And Saakashvili has not just been demanding the 
return of the two Georgian enclaves; he has been 
openly positioning himself as the leading 
regional advocate of "color revolutions" and the 
overthrow of leaders sympathetic to Moscow. He 
has portrayed himself as a champion of democracy 
and an eager supporter of U.S. foreign policy, 
going so far as to send Georgian troops to Iraq 
in 2004 as part of the coalition force. The fact 
that he was elected with 96 percent of the vote 
-- a suspiciously high number -- along with his 
control of parliament and Georgian television, 
has provoked little concern outside the country. 
Nor has the arbitrary prosecution of business 
leaders and political rivals. When Zurab Zhvania 
-- Georgia's popular prime minister and the only 
remaining political counterweight to Saakashvili 
-- died in 2005 under mysterious circumstances 
involving an alleged gas leak, members of his 
family publicly rejected the government's account 
of the incident with a clear implication that 
they believed Saakashvili's regime had been 
involved. But in contrast to U.S. concern over 
the murder of Russian opposition figures, no one 
in Washington seemed to notice.

In fact, the Bush administration and influential 
politicians in both parties have routinely 
supported Saakashvili against Russia, 
notwithstanding his transgressions. The United 
States has urged him on several occasions to 
control his temper and avoid provoking open 
military confrontation with Russia, but it is 
clear that Washington has adopted Georgia as its 
main client in the region. The United States has 
provided equipment and training to the Georgian 
military, enabling Saakashvili to take a harder 
line toward Russia; Georgian forces have gone so 
far as to detain and publicly humiliate Russian 
military personnel deployed as peacekeepers in 
South Ossetia and Georgia proper.

Of course, Russia's conduct vis-à-vis Georgia has 
been far from exemplary. Moscow has granted 
Russian citizenship to most residents of Abkhazia 
and South Ossetia and has imposed economic 
sanctions against Georgia, often on dubious 
grounds. And Russian peacekeepers in the area are 
clearly there to limit Georgia's ability to rule 
the two regions. But this blind U.S. support for 
Saakashvili contributes to a sense in Moscow that 
the United States is pursuing policies aimed at 
undermining what remains of Russia's drastically 
reduced regional influence. The sense in the 
Kremlin is that the United States cares about 
using democracy as an instrument to embarrass and 
isolate Putin more than it cares about democracy itself.

DEALING WITH A RESURGENT RUSSIA

Despite these growing tensions, Russia has not 
yet become a U.S. adversary. There is still a 
chance to stop further deterioration of the 
relationship. This will require a clearheaded 
evaluation of U.S. objectives in the region and 
an examination of the many areas where U.S. and 
Russian interests converge -- especially 
counterterrorism and nonproliferation. It will 
also require careful management of situations 
such as the nuclear standoff in Iran, where the 
two countries' goals are similar but their 
tactical preferences diverge. Most important, the 
United States must recognize that it no longer 
enjoys unlimited leverage over Russia. Today, 
Washington simply cannot force its will on Moscow as it did in the 1990s.

The Bush administration and key congressional 
voices have reasonably suggested that 
counterterrorism and nonproliferation should be 
the defining issues in the U.S.-Russian 
relationship. Stability in Russia -- still home 
to thousands of nuclear weapons -- and the 
post-Soviet states is also a key priority. 
Moscow's support for sanctions -- and, when 
necessary, the use of force -- against rogue 
states and terrorist groups would be extremely helpful to Washington.

The United States has an interest in spreading 
democratic governance throughout the region, but 
it would be far-fetched to expect the Putin 
government to support U.S. democracy-promotion 
efforts. Washington must continue to ensure than 
no one, including Moscow, interferes with the 
rights of others to choose a democratic form of 
government or make independent foreign policy 
decisions. But it must recognize that it has 
limited leverage at its disposal to achieve this 
goal. With high energy prices, sound fiscal 
policies, and tamed oligarchs, the Putin regime 
no longer needs international loans or economic 
assistance and has no trouble attracting major 
foreign investment despite growing tension with 
Western governments. Within Russia, relative 
stability, prosperity, and a new sense of dignity 
have tempered popular disillusionment with 
growing state control and the heavy-handed 
manipulation of the political process.

The overwhelmingly negative public image of the 
United States and its Western allies -- carefully 
sustained by the Russian government -- sharply 
limits the United States' ability to develop a 
constituency inclined to accept its advice on 
Russia's domestic affairs. In the current 
climate, Washington cannot hope to do much more 
than convey strongly to Russia that repression is 
incompatible with long-term partnership with the 
United States. To make matters worse, the power 
of the United States' moral example has been 
damaged. Moreover, suspicion of U.S. intentions 
runs so deep that Moscow reflexively views even 
decisions not directed against Russia, such as 
the deployment of antimissile systems in the 
Czech Republic and Poland, with extreme apprehension.

Meanwhile, as Moscow looks westward with 
suspicion, Russia's use of its energy for 
political purposes has angered Western 
governments, not to mention its energy-dependent 
neighbors. Russia clearly sets different energy 
prices for its friends; government officials and 
executives of the state-controlled oil company 
Gazprom have occasionally displayed both bravado 
and satisfaction in threatening to penalize those 
who resist, such as Georgia and Ukraine. But on a 
fundamental level, Russia is simply rewarding 
those who enter into special political and 
economic arrangements with it by offering them 
below-market prices for Russian energy resources. 
Russia grudgingly accepts the Atlanticist choices 
of its neighbors but refuses to subsidize them. 
Also, it is somewhat disingenuous for the United 
States to respond to Russia's political use of 
energy with self-righteous indignation 
considering that no country introduces economic 
sanctions more frequently or enthusiastically than the United States.

U.S. commentators often accuse Russia of 
intransigence on Kosovo, but Moscow's public 
position is that it will accept any agreement 
negotiated by Serbia and Kosovo. There is no 
evidence that Russia has discouraged Serbia from 
reaching a deal with Kosovo; on the contrary, 
there have even been some hints that Moscow may 
abstain from voting on a UN Security Council 
resolution recognizing Kosovo's independence in 
the absence of a settlement with Belgrade. If 
unrecognized territories from the former Soviet 
Union, especially Abkhazia and South Ossetia, 
could likewise become independent without the 
consent of the states from which they seek to 
break away, Moscow would benefit. Many in Russia 
would not mind Kosovo's becoming a precedent for 
unrecognized post-Soviet territories, most of 
which are eager for independence leading to integration with Russia.

A variety of other foreign policy disagreements 
have exacerbated tensions further. It is true 
that Russia did not support the United States' 
decision to invade Iraq, but nor did key NATO 
allies such as France and Germany. Russia has 
supplied conventional weapons to some nations the 
United States considers hostile, such as Iran, 
Syria, and Venezuela, but it does so on a 
commercial basis and within the limits of 
international law. The United States may 
understandably view this as provocative, but many 
Russians would express similar feelings about 
U.S. arms transfers to Georgia. And although 
Russia has not gone as far as the United States 
and Europe would like when it comes to 
disciplining Iran and North Korea, Moscow has 
gradually come to support sanctions against both countries.

These numerous disagreements do not mean that 
Russia is an enemy. After all, Russia has not 
supported al Qaeda or any other terrorist group 
at war with the United States and no longer 
promotes a rival ideology with the goal of world 
domination. Nor has it invaded or threatened to 
invade its neighbors. Finally, Russia has opted 
not to foment separatism in Ukraine, despite the 
existence there of a large and vocal Russian 
minority population. Putin and his advisers 
accept that the United States is the most 
powerful nation in the world and that provoking 
it needlessly makes little sense. But they are no 
longer willing to adjust their behavior to fit 
U.S. preferences, particularly at the expense of their own interests.

A BLUEPRINT FOR COOPERATION

Working constructively with Russia does not mean 
nominating Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize or 
inviting him to address a joint session of 
Congress. Nor is anyone encouraging Russia to 
join NATO or welcoming it as a great democratic 
friend. What Washington must do is work with 
Russia to advance essential U.S. interests in the 
same way that the United States works with other 
important nondemocratic states, such as China, 
Kazakhstan, and Saudi Arabia. This means avoiding 
both misplaced affection and the unrealistic 
sense that the United States can take other 
countries for granted without consequences. Few 
deny that such cooperation should be pursued, but 
Washington's naive and self-serving conventional 
wisdom holds that the United States can secure 
Russia's cooperation in areas important to the 
United States while maintaining complete freedom 
to ignore Russian priorities. U.S. officials 
believe that Moscow should uncritically support 
Washington against Iran and Islamist terrorists 
on the theory that Russia also considers them 
threats. However, this argument ignores the fact 
that Russia views the Iranian threat very 
differently. Although Russia does not want a 
nuclear-armed Iran, it does not feel the same 
sense of urgency over the issue and may be 
satisfied with intrusive inspections preventing 
industrial-scale uranium enrichment. Expecting 
Russia to accommodate the United States on Iran 
without regard to U.S. policy on other issues is 
the functional equivalent of expecting Iraqis to 
welcome the U.S. and coalition troops as 
liberators in that it fundamentally ignores the 
other side's perspective on U.S. actions.

With this in mind, the United States should be 
firm in its relations with Russia and should make 
clear that Iran, nonproliferation, and terrorism 
are defining issues in the bilateral 
relationship. Similarly, Washington should 
communicate to Moscow that aggression against a 
NATO member or the unprovoked use of force 
against any other state would do profound damage 
to the relationship. The United States should 
also demonstrate with words and deeds that it 
will oppose any effort to re-create the Soviet 
Union. In economic affairs, Washington should 
signal very clearly that manipulation of the law 
to seize assets that were legally acquired by 
foreign energy companies will have serious 
consequences, including restrictions on Russian 
access to U.S. and Western downstream markets and 
damage to Russia's reputation that would limit 
not only investment and transfers of technology 
but also Western companies' support for 
engagement with Russia. Finally, the United 
States should not be deterred by Russian 
objections to placing missile defense systems in 
the Czech Republic and Poland. Rather, in Henry 
Kissinger's formulation, Washington should keep 
the deployments limited to their "stated 
objective of overcoming rogue state threats" and 
combine them with an agreement on specific steps 
designed to reassure Moscow that the program has 
nothing to do with a hypothetical war against Russia.

The good news is that although Russia is 
disillusioned with the United States and Europe, 
it is so far not eager to enter into an alliance 
against the West. The Russian people do not want 
to risk their new prosperity -- and Russia's 
elites are loath to give up their Swiss bank 
accounts, London mansions, and Mediterranean 
vacations. Although Russia is seeking greater 
military cooperation with China, Beijing does not 
seem eager to start a fight with Washington 
either. At the moment, the Shanghai Cooperation 
Organization -- which promotes cooperation among 
China, Russia, and the Central Asian states -- is 
a debating club rather than a genuine security alliance.

But if the current U.S.-Russian relationship 
deteriorates further, it will not bode well for 
the United States and would be even worse for 
Russia. The Russian general staff is lobbying to 
add a military dimension to the Shanghai 
Cooperation Organization, and some top officials 
are beginning to champion the idea of a foreign 
policy realignment directed against the West. 
There are also quite a few countries, such as 
Iran and Venezuela, urging Russia to work with 
China to play a leading role in balancing the 
United States economically, politically, and 
militarily. And post-Soviet states such as 
Georgia, which are adept at playing the United 
States and Russia off against each other, could 
act in ways that escalate tensions. Putin's stage 
management of Moscow's succession in order to 
maintain a dominant role for himself makes a 
major foreign policy shift in Russia unlikely. 
But new Russian leaders could have their own 
ideas -- and their own ambitions -- and political 
uncertainty or economic problems could tempt them 
to exploit nationalist sentiments to build legitimacy.

If relations worsen, the UN Security Council may 
no longer be available -- due to a Russian veto 
-- even occasionally, to provide legitimacy for 
U.S. military actions or to impose meaningful 
sanctions on rogue states. Enemies of the United 
States could be emboldened by new sources of 
military hardware in Russia, and political and 
security protection from Moscow. International 
terrorists could find new sanctuaries in Russia 
or the states it protects. And the collapse of 
U.S.-Russian relations could give China much 
greater flexibility in dealing with the United 
States. It would not be a new Cold War, because 
Russia will not be a global rival and is unlikely 
to be the prime mover in confronting the United 
States. But it would provide incentives and cover 
for others to confront Washington, with potentially catastrophic results.

It would be reckless and shortsighted to push 
Russia in that direction by repeating the errors 
of the past, rather than working to avoid the 
dangerous consequences of a renewed U.S.-Russian 
confrontation. But ultimately, Moscow will have 
to make its own decisions. Given the Kremlin's 
history of poor policy choices, a clash may come 
whether Washington likes it or not. And should 
that happen, the United States must approach this 
rivalry with greater realism and determination 
than it has displayed in its halfhearted attempts at partnership.