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.
