REORGANISING RUSSIA-US RELATIONS
Stabroek News
Thursday, July 09, 2009
By Stabroek staff | July 8, 2009 in Editorial After a virtual
diplomatic interregnum, born of increasing suspicion and a hardening of
perceptions of evolving Russian domestic and international relations
by the George Bush administration, the change of administration in
the United States has brought a resumption of talks with President
Obama’s visit to Moscow. The assumption of the presidency by Mr Putin
after the retirement of President Yeltsin had given George Bush hope
that the general instability of policy-making under an obviously
declining Yeltsin, would allow an opportunity to establish a new basis
for relations in the post-Soviet Russian state. Indeed Bush publicly
announced after his first visit with Putin that he felt certain that
he could "do business" with the new Russian leader. But relations
began to freeze after about two years with both sides attributing
this result to each other’s actions. The United States had first
taken pleasure, in the aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Union, in
Yeltsin’s swift privatization of the Russian economy, the development
of opportunities for widespread capitalist investment in the country,
and the creation of a substantial national investor and capitalist
class there. But the other side of this policy, as time went on,
was a disruption of the traditional Soviet-type economy, widespread
unemployment as companies shed labour once protected by the state, and
a major decline in the generous social provisioning which the socialist
system had provided for its working and middle classes. The result
was much social deprivation and social disruption as the shake-out
continued. On assuming office, President Putin saw as his first task
the staunching of this potential collapse of the Russian economic and
social system, while continuing the liberalization of the economy. But
he also began, after he had established himself politically, to
rebalance the economy as between its state and private sectors,
paying particular attention to the development of influence in the
country’s decision-making processes, by a new set of private-sector
economic czars, achieving dominance over the banking and oil sectors
in particular. The arrest of one of the new capitalist sector’s major
actors, Khodorkovsky, was the signal of his determination to ensure
that they did not attain dominating influence in the Russian state’s
decision-making, and in the evolution of competitive party relations in
the liberalized political order. His initiatives in this direction led
to the first realization, in Western circles, particularly the United
States, that the Russian political order would not be evolving along
orthodox Western lines of multi-party completion, as was seeming to
be the case of the former socialist countries in Eastern and Central
Europe. American criticism of the emerging dominance of Mr Putin’s
own political party now irritated President Putin, leading to a strain
in the normalization process that Bush had hoped to initiate.
Almost simultaneously, President Putin began to take umbrage at the
speed with which the Western powers were proceeding to incorporate
the East-Central European states into their camp, and particularly
the rapid drawing into the European Union, of those countries. When it
appeared that it was the intention of the West to seek to incorporate
countries like the Ukraine and Georgia – countries often referred to
as the pre-Soviet Russia’s "near abroad" – into their camp, Putin’s
political mood began to change. It is well to remember, in that regard,
that many of the Soviet leaders were not native Russians, but came
from the near abroad – Stalin himself from Georgia, Krushchev from
the Ukraine, Mikoyan from Armenia and Shevarnadze from Georgia.
As the United States sought to establish military bases in the former
Soviet Asian republics, and then missile systems (ostensibly aimed
at Iran) in Poland and the Czech Republic, President Putin became
more and more reserved about normalizing relations. He now tended
to hold to the view that there had been an implicit promise from
the West after the demise of the USSR, that there would not be undue
interference in what now Russia continued to consider its own sphere
of influence. The attempt to draw many of these countries into NATO,
Russia considered a serious aggravation. In return, Putin’s response
was to stop negotiations with the West on the reduction of strategic
nuclear weapons – a strategy which, it was originally hoped, would
inhibit nuclear proliferation by other states gaining competence
in the development of nuclear technology. Worsening this situation
in recent years was what has appeared to the NATO powers to be an
attempt by Putin not to accept the alternation of political elites in
Russia as is characteristic of liberal systems. In Western circles his
exchange of offices with then Premier Medvedev, who assumed the office
of President, has not been seen as genuine. And In some measure, new
President Obama has inherited this concern, as indicated in his not
so subtle attempt to differentiate between the political characters
of Putin and Medvedev on the eve of his departure for Russia. But the
world has changed, and both Russia and the United States under Obama
recognize this. The rise of ‘third powers’ like China, but also India,
in Asia, the dramatic shift of the pace of economic development in
that part of the world, and the insistence by these countries that
the old Cold War duopoly of power now has no basis for existence,
has moved both Russia and the United States to come to terms with
each other, in spite of differences about the nature of the state and
of international relations. Russia recognizes that particularly in
Asia and the Far East, deference to herself is no longer akin to the
old deference to the Soviet Union of the Cold War era. Similarly, the
United States recognizes, as it seeks to come to terms with political
relations in Asia, the Middle East and the areas of the ‘Great Game’
including Afghanistan and Iran, that it can no longer hope to assert
the control that it has become accustomed to, and needs the assistance
of Russia to achieve a degree of so-called stabilization of the area.
Putin now appears to link United States’ objectives in Asia and the
Far East to the achievement of a more balanced relationship between
Russia and the United States in the area which General De Gaulle once
used to refer to as "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals." And no
doubt there will be discussion on the implications of its perspective
on this matter, as the Russians continue to assert, whether under Putin
or Medvedev, that there is a certain illegitimacy about NATO’s attempt
to encroach on its near abroad, including the previous Soviet-Asian
Republics, and on countries which, it assumed after 1990, would form
a kind of neutral belt between Russia itself and traditional Western
Europe. The rapid pulling under Western influence of Latvia, Estonia
and Lithuania certainly surprised and humbled Russia, and has made
it wary of further Western initiatives in Europe.
Nonetheless, there appears to be a sense of mutual recognition that
the globalization of economic relations is having its effect on the
nature of political interaction among all countries, including those,
like both the United States and the old USSR, which previously felt
that they could maintain a certain political and economic autarky, and
a degree of inhibition of external influences on their policy making.
Russia, under its dual Putin-Medvedev leadership, recognizing the
need to reconstruct the outmoded Soviet-type economy for effective
competition not only with its old American competitor, but with the
emerging economic powers of China and what used to be called the Third
World, also recognizes the need for widespread economic engagement in
the global economy. And on the other hand, the United States surely
recognizes, as its complex interdependence with the Chinese economy
proceeds apace, that Chinese objectives do not permit the one-sided
dominance of global economic and geopolitical relations of the recent
past; and that it needs the assistance of other states, including
Russia in coping with China’s global assertiveness. For Japan can
no longer to be seen as a dependable singular bulwark in Asia and
the Far East. All these concerns, and including new ones relating to
energy and environmental issues (climate change), will certainly have
been the objects of deliberation in this week’s Russia-United States
talks – the talks taking the form of preludes to the re-arrangement of
Russia-US relations that President Obama has committed his country to,
as part of his wider commitment to a new global engagement
From: Baghdasarian