Russia relations are in disarray, with talk of a new Cold War russian foreign policy 2016. Fortunately, framing the conflict in terms of national interests points to a way forward. View of the Moscow Kremlin from the Moscow River, February 2016. I assume we would all agree that each country has its own national interests, which sometimes conflict with the national interests of other countries.
Conflict is not necessarily a bad thing. Satisfactorily resolved conflicts can improve relations, create expectations about how future conflicts will be resolved and decrease the likelihood that countries will consider resorting to violence. A diplomat’s primary responsibility is to advance his or her own country’s interests. Russia’s view of its interests has changed in fundamental ways in the quarter-century since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Much of that change would, in my view, have been likely whether Vladimir Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin or not. The Russia that emerged from the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union was intent on becoming part of the Western world and wildly optimistic about what that would mean. Boris Yeltsin, its president, had staked his political future on destroying both the Communist Party and the Soviet system in which it was embedded.
His foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, was as intellectually pro-West as anyone in his position had been throughout Russian history. They inherited from Mikhail Gorbachev a foreign policy outlook—the Common European Home—that they intended to implement and extend. The Russian people, giddy from the collapse of the corrupt, oppressive regime under which they had labored for generations, hungered for a normal relationship with the rest of the world and believed that the result would be quick and dramatic improvement in their lives. In 1992 I wrote that these expectations could not be met, and that a period of disillusionment would inevitably follow. The policy challenge for both the West and Russia was to manage that period of disillusionment so that it would lead to a more mature and well-grounded relationship, and limit the likelihood of a Russian turn toward autarky and hostility. A quartercentury later it is clear that the relationship has not been managed well.
Where the West saw an emerging democratic, market-oriented society in the Yeltsin years, Russians saw criminality, disorder, poverty and the emergence of a new, corrupt and astronomically wealthy class of oligarchs. If this is what was meant by capitalism and democracy, they did not like it. By 1998, when Putin replaced Yeltsin, the U. Russian relationship had already deteriorated, driven by the NATO expansion, as well as by differences over the civil wars that stemmed from the breakup of Yugoslavia. The Russians saw in these and other developments an attempt to establish a U. Russia would have no meaningful role.
The Common European Home would be common to every European state except Russia. Trying to tell other countries what their fundamental interests are is generally a futile exercise. At the turn of the century, what were those interests? If the United States, Britain or France espoused such interests, it is not likely that they would be viewed as inherently predatory. Are we to conclude, then, that in Russian hands such interests are predatory because Russia itself is inherently predatory?
A claim like that cannot withstand scrutiny. It is also not very smart. Interpreting Interests So, is it appropriate, then, to consider the Putin regime inherently predatory? A number of foreign policy analysts who are not Russophobes, or do not want to be seen as such, do trace the problem not to the country but to the regime governing it. In my view, there are serious problems with this interpretation of Russian intentions and the policy approach that flows from it. First, it does not stand up well to critical examination. Second, its zero-sum view of the U.
Russian relationship assumes that a mutually beneficial resolution of conflicting interests is all but impossible. The policy challenge for both the West and Russia was to manage that period of disillusionment so that it would lead to a more mature and well-grounded relationship. The Putin regime has been more assertive, particularly during the past several years, in advancing Russia’s interests than was the Yeltsin regime throughout the 1990s, but it inherited a relationship with the West that its predecessors also considered deeply flawed. This embryonic alliance was useful to Washington when it invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban regime. It began to fray when the United States invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Hardball International Politics With regard to Georgia and Ukraine, the Putin regime has made no secret of its view that it is a fundamental Russian interest that these countries not become NATO members under any conditions, and that they become European Union members only under conditions acceptable to Russia.
To assert that Russia has no right to such interests is beside the point. For a couple of centuries one of Britain’s two fundamental interests was preventing the emergence of a single dominant power on the European mainland. Britain used diplomacy, trade and military power on the mainland to pursue that objective. Was the Monroe Doctrine inherently predatory? In Georgia and Ukraine, Russia used means that were appropriate to the achievement of limited objectives in support of its national interests. Since there are many who will find every element of that statement objectionable, some clarification is in order. The Putin regime will continue to be assertive in pursuit of its international interests, believing that the alternative is that its interests will be ignored.
Rather, the objective was to force a re-evaluation, both in the country concerned and among the Western powers, of the costs involved in pursuing NATO and E. By recognizing Abkhaz and Ossetian independence and by annexing Crimea, Russia imposed an immediate cost on the countries concerned and also sent a message that there could be further costs if its interests were not taken into account. Putin regime’s ambitions extend to the re-creation of the Soviet Union. In fact, our differences with Russia on Georgia and Ukraine are not fundamental. The Russian interest in not having those two countries in NATO should be shared by the United States.
