Putin's Patient Strategy

...The actual document that was signed on May 24 did make official both sides' previous intention to cut by two-thirds the number of their strategic nuclear weapons, i.e...

...Russia would have much more relative weight in a body confined to Europe, and it would present daunting economic problems to an entity that already faces trouble absorbing its smaller East European applicants...

...Such views are suggestive of the socalled Eurasianists, romantics who believe Russia is fundamentally Asian and see its future mainly in the East...

...His books include The End of the Communist Revolution and Russia's Transformation...

...Nor has he dealt directly with the flight of capital out of Russia to the tune of $ 10 billion to $20 billion a year...

...In these circumstances, new ventures by the world's only superpower—like crusades against the "axis of evil," Bush's pre-emptive strike doctrine, or the expected attack on Iraq—are only bound to play into Putin's hands...

...Putin moves vigorously only against weak opponents whom he can isolate—those vulnerable TV moguls Boris A. Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, the Chechen separatists, perhaps now the Communist opposition...

...For the Russians, all this recalls Germany's historic Drang nach Osten, or push toward the east...

...Such a tie, it should be noted, is much more attractive to Russia from an economic standpoint than a burdensome alliance with China and India...

...It doesn't matter that President Bush thinks "Nothing we do will subtract from NATO's core mission"—even though that mission had originally been military containment of the now-defunct Soviet Union...

...The step was taken to reward it for acquiescing to the alliance's admission of Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic States, scheduled to be formalized at a NATO summit in Prague in November...

...This year the agenda was largely economic: How could the ever more tightly bound EU enter into a "common economic space" in matters of trade and investment with the impoverished 600-pound gorilla stretching thousands of miles to the east...

...Putin has accepted the circumstances he found on taking office, while making sure he stays in charge...

...Putin looks quite lonely on this front...

...NATO will die slowly," wrote the commentator Sergei Strokan in the Moscow Kommersant (the Russian Wall Street Journal) after the Rome deal...

...for NATO's new Eastern members, so recently under Moscow's thumb, the alliance still means protection from the Russians...

...The need for its existence prompts more and more doubts...

...For the American, it was to win a demonstration of amity even as he was sticking his finger in the Russian's eye by abrogating the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, expanding NATO, and achieving the de facto U.S...

...But again, when Bush and Putin segued to Rome for the May 28 summit of 19 NATO member states plus Russia, the agenda had been well prepared, in this case at the meeting of NATO and Russian foreign ministers in Iceland's capital of Reykjavik on May 14...

...Finally, it fails to advance the matter of verification...

...There is an analogy here with the stumbling block that complicated the unification of Germany in the mid-19th century...

...He also seemed ready to take on the criminal business oligarchy that had seized control of the Russian economy when Yeltsin opened the door to robber-baron capitalism...

...Putin's line of accommodation with the West has been attacked in practically every sector of articulate Russian opinion, including most of the military...

...No one in NATO wants to extend its joint defense guarantee to Russia's Asian frontiers...

...Eurasianism is paralleled more concretely by the advocates of a "multipolar" ideal in world politics associated with former Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov...

...ICBMs...

...Robert V. Dantels, a frequent NL contributor, is professor emeritus of history at the University of Vermont...

...By and large this KGB veteran does not like risky confrontation in a situation he does not fully control...

...Some in Washington would like to box in the Russians further by pushing the alliance all the way to Muslim Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea...

...It has also been a sop to the Russians, to mollify them about the alliance spreading into what was the Soviet bloc...

...They have favored an Asian alliance with China and India, to counterbalance the U.S...

...In the area of foreign policy, Putin has pursued the same strategy, avoiding confrontation with the U.S...

...We should follow a policy...

...But the import of the deal was diminished by its allowing the decommissioned warheads to be stored, ratherthan dismantled...

...A very tangible problem is Russia's huge geographical expanse beyond the traditional concept of Europe, all the way to the Chinese border and the Pacific Ocean...

...So Putin seems poised to achieve Russia's diplomatic goal of counterbalancing the U.S., but in a way no one anywhere has anticipated, by looking Westward rather than Eastward...

...As the Emperor Napoleon is supposed to have said, "Never interrupt your enemies while they are making mistakes...

...But formally including Russia in NATO raises many more difficulties than the admission of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, or even the Balkans...

...As a result, Mr...

...flexibility...

...takeover of formerly Soviet Central Asia...

...The issue was whether to incorporate the Austrian Empire, with its German core around Vienna, in a "Greater Germany" formation, orto settle for a "Lesser Germany" that excluded the Austrians because of their diverse non-German possessions in Eastern Europe...

...Equally important for the long run was the summit of European Union (EU) leaders with President Putin in Moscow just a day after Rome, continuing the parties' efforts to strengthen East-West ties and iron out some of the differences between Russia and the growing forces of a united Europe...

...But he is endowed with extraordinary patience and coolness in restoring Russia's place in a multipolar world...

...Under Putin it is swallowing NATO's push into former Soviet space and the insertion of American influence into Russia's Central Asian backyard...

...In addition, the new treaty does not apply to tactical nuclear weapons, whose present number equals or surpasses that of long-range rockets...

...The Communists, who have morphed under the leadership of Gennady I. Zyuganov into blatant, if marginalized, nationalists, say Putin ought to be removed from office because he has sold out Russia's national interests...

...Putin reassures himself that NATO has already become "more political than military...

...A step-by-step inclusion of Russia in the counsels of NATO has been the answer to concerns about European integration...

...Yet unlike his compatriots, he seems shrewd enough to realize that the old geopolitical thinking is pass...

...and Western Europe have warned...

...If he can continue to woo the Europeans successfully, and if they are sufficiently angered by U.S...

...The new NATO-Russia Council will permit the Kremlin greater involvement in NATO's decision-making...

...In the process, he has emerged as a man without ideology...

...On the other hand, it is being claimed that his go-easy approach to business and the superwealthy elite, featuring a flat income tax of only 13 per cent (the old Soviet rate, incidentally), is finally reversing the capital drain and government deficits...

...Geopolitically Russia has for years been in steady retreat from its old status as an imperial superpower, without having much to show in return...

...One was his summit meeting in Moscow with President George W. Bush, and the nuclear weapons reduction treaty they signed...

...Where you are is no longer as important as who you are...

...We must understand...

...The EU today buys over a third of Russia's exports (mainly oil and gas), and this figure will rise to more than 50 per cent once the Union has taken in its prospective East European members...

...This wrinkle, a retreat from the start III Treaty agreed to by Presidents Boris N. Yeltsin and Bill Clinton in 1997 but never implemented, perpetuates the risk of nuclear theft from poorly secured Russian stockpiles...

...The oldest rule in diplomacy is divide and conquer, or at least divide and survive...

...By contrast, Putin is wily enough to recognize that the winning Western combination can be split only if Russia desists from its characteristic bluster and lets potential disagreements between the U.S...

...Actually, some economic integration of Russia and Western Europe has been taking place spontaneously...

...The two leaders' gushy embrace led Reuters to call the meeting "one of the oddest comedy acts in recent memory...

...Russia would dilute the organization and fuzz up its purpose, as NATO purists in the U.S...

...they were simply the latest steps in a gradual process of accommodation...

...But the difficulties loom even larger in this case...

...In a recent perceptive piece the Economist ruled out the entire official foreign policy establishment...

...Putin is a master in judo, with its principle of turning an opponent's strength into a weakness and waiting for an opening that can be exploited...

...To remind everyone of his country's persisting unhappiness over NATO's growth, Putin let it be known that Russia would not exercise its privilege to attend the Prague meeting...

...When Bush was asked what he especially liked about Putin's policies, he immediately cited the flat tax...

...Nevertheless, the Russians got a treaty, after many months of pre- and post-election rhetoric from the Bush team against any formal limitations on U.S...

...so that no countries could be enemies for us...

...The concept of an accommodation between Russia and NATO had been around since the demise of the Soviet regime in 1991...

...behavior, Russia could become a crucial ally of Europe against the pretensions of the new Pax Americana...

...For the Russian, it was to gain formal recognition that his country mattered, and acknowledgment of Russia's special status as a nuclear power...

...There was more substance to the "Declaration" Bush and Putin appended to the treaty, dealing mainly with economic relations between the two powers .Bush undertook to declare Russia a "market economy" and to terminate the 1974 Jackson- Vanik Amendment linking trade privileges to Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union...

...Soviet leaders from Stalin to Leonid I. Brezhnev signally failed in this as they came up against the Atlantic alliance...

...The other was the Rome summit shortly afterward that brought the two Presidents together with all the NATO members to form a new NATO-Russia Council, making Russia virtually a NATO member in many respects...

...and Western Europe ripen without interference...

...Prodi promised that Europe would finally recognize Russia as a market economy and support Russian entry into the World Trade Organization...

...On the Road to a 'United Greater Europe' Putin's Patient Strategy By Robert V Daniels Two highly touted events in May moved Russia closer to President Vladimir V Putin's proclaimed goal of integration with the West...

...Under Yeltsin it swallowed the loss of 14 Soviet republics, its footholds in the Third World, and the beginning of NATO'S expansion into Eastern Europe...

...Besides, the Cold War legacy continues to rankle in many minds...

...When he came to power on New Year's Eve, 1999, it appeared that he at least wanted to restore Russia's great-power prestige, lost by Gorbachev and Yeltsin...

...He therefore assuages European worries about Russian behavior and quietly watches as American manifestations of unilateralism, ranging from rejection of the Kyoto global warming treaty to rebuffing the new International Criminal Court, accentuate Europe's irritation with its transatlantic ally...

...The ink was hardly dry on the Rome agreement when Putin shuttled back to Moscow to host the EU's leaders...

...The Moscow summit was well prepared and its aims were modest...

...The parallel could not have been lost on Putin's audience when he addressed the German Bundestag last fall (in his excellent German) and called for a "united Greater Europe" as a goal in Russian-Western relations...

...Boris Yeltsin has joined the critics by admonishing: "Russia should not follow only one policy, a pro-Western policy...

...At all three gatherings the Russians evinced a decidedly un-Russian spirit of reasonableness and cooperation...

...Indeed, if NATO were to be enlarged eastward to end "the division of Europe," as the Clinton Administration ardently wished, why stop at the Russian border now that post-Communist Russia has become a friend...

...The alliance is close to taking on a modern version of the old "white man's burden," though there may be more enthusiasm in America for this mission than in Europe...

...Putin is endeavoring to rectify Stalin's costly mistake, by committing Russia to integration with Europe...

...At the same time, it is hard to believe Putin has accepted without inner rancor the concessions Russia has felt forced to yield in recent years...

...Neither of these expectations has materialized...

...In 1997, to pay off Yeltsin for acceding to the first phase of its expansion, NATO set up a Permanent Joint Council for consultations with Russia, giving Moscow a voice but not a vote...

...As the Left-leaning British Guardian put it, "Now...

...Meanwhile, Ukraine has said it wants to join NATO, and that would be a big pill for Russia to swallow...

...and its alliance system despite what Russian nationalists consider severe provocation...

...Under Mikhail S. Gorbachev it swallowed the antiCommunist revolutions in Eastern Europe and the demise of the Warsaw Pact...

...Joseph Stalin ignored this truth when he drew his Iron Curtain across Europe, started the Cold War, and turned most of the world against him...

...Internally, Putin has failed to challenge the oligarchs, except for picking off the most unpopular of them...

...On a per capita basis the economic and humanitarian aid efforts of European governments well surpass America's, and the Europeans show much less reserve about international peacekeeping...

...Full economic integration of Russia, as opposed to the present gradual measures, is a long way off, even though Russia is rid of Muslim Central Asia...

...this Rome Declaration represents only a beginning...

...The parties also optimistically affirmed "a relationship based on friendship, cooperation, common values, trust, openness, and predictability.' NATO has been a stickier matter, involving as it does a body blow to Russian imperial pride...

...Of course, he is sensitive to this opposition at home, which must resonate with his own deepest instincts...

...He seems to have thought up his new proWestern policy mainly off his own bat," the article said...

...Headed by European Commission President (and former Italian Prime Minister) Romano Prodi, the delegation was coming for another in the series of semiannual summit meetings the Europeans have been holding with the Russians since the mid-1990s...

...Who is advising Putin as he walks this tightrope...

...None of the new agreements, however, represented a sudden about-face of East and West orthe "end of the Cold War,' as they have commonly been depicted...

...At the Rome NATO summit Putin put the best face he could on his country's position: "The significance of this meeting is difficultto overestimate...

...As with NATO, the next question naturally is when will Russia be embraced as a full EU member...

...Former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott wanted not only to admit Russia into NATO but to make the alliance thenucleusof anew kindof world government, starting with the powers of the global "North...

...NATO is seen as America's European base in a strategy for global intervention...

...Russia is both in Europe and Asia...

...The Russians agreed to help stabilize world energy prices, and there they hold the top cards...

...Yet that is not to say the Europeans are less concerned with the Third World's troubles...

...That proposition at least squared with NATO's identity change, manifested in Bosnia and Kosovo, from a defensive organization facing off against the Russians to an instrument for imposing settlements of conflicts beyond NATO's territory in uneasy collaboration with the Russians...