MOSCOW -- United Press International's Moscow analyst Peter Lavelle engages experts Donald Jensen, Patrick Armstrong, Janusz Bugajski, Dale Herspring, and Ira Straus about what to expect in U.S.-Russia relations during President George W. Bush's second term in office.
Bush's re-election has delighted the Kremlin. Russian President Vladimir Putin supported Bush even during the short time the election result was in doubt. It is clear Putin backed Bush for pragmatic reasons, but does Bush now have a political debt to settle with Putin? Putin was, after all, one of the few world leaders to openly support Bush's re-election bid.
What kind of changes in policy, personnel, and cooperation can we expect during Bush's second-term? Bush and Putin already have a solid working and personal relationship. Can this be counted as a form of leverage both presidents have to engage each other over foreign policy differences, including discussion of each country's internal affairs?
Lastly, as both Bush and Putin have made the war on terrorism the centerpiece of their domestic and foreign agendas, can we expect increased U.S.-Russia coordination in this area?
Donald Jensen, director of communications at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Instead of trying to transform Russia into its own image, the Bush administration has focused on making progress on concrete areas of mutual interest: the war on terror, especially, but on weapons proliferation, missile defenses, and energy. There has been progress in several areas.
As for the second Bush term, I suspect that (U.S.) Secretary (of State Colin) Powell will leave. Ambassador (Alexander) Vershbow is scheduled to depart in a year. But other key players on Russia policy are likely to remain. I would expect therefore, the U.S. administration to follow much the same approach as it has in its first four years, though with greater difficulty getting results. If Putin continues to roll back democratic freedoms at home, criticism of Russia in the United States -- especially from the U.S. Congress -- is likely to increase. Recent Russian efforts to throw its weight around Ukraine have not been well received. Putin has rather successful leveraged the war in Chechnya into the international fight against terror. Many people in Washington believe they are largely separate issues. The longer that conflict continues, the more likely the tragedy there will damage bilateral relations.
The focus on specific issues by the U.S. administration has meant that developments in Russia as a whole have receded to second-level concerns in Washington. This is sometimes difficult for our Russian counterparts to understand. Moscow habitually exaggerates its influence. Few here took note of Putin's apparent endorsement of Bush and I am quite sure it made no difference in the race. While Russia has few, if any, levers to favorably influence developments here, it has many few chances to spoil its relatively positive image.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the significant possibility that relations could veer in unpredictable directions. I do not believe Russia is as stable as it appears. The Yukos affair, the repeated terrorist incidents inside Russia, above all, the jockeying for the Russian presidential succession, all make it unrealistic to expect that relations in the next few years will inevitable be only a continuation of the previous four. Geostrategically, there are potentially strong tensions inherent in the coexistence of U.S. and Russian power in places like the Caucasus and Central Asia that bear close watching and careful management.
Patrick Armstrong, defense analyst for the Canadian government
Putin has a foreign policy difficulty. He has had two aims since he began: 1) to get Russia integrated into the world economy and 2) to gain support for Russia's war against international jihadists in Chechnya. The first aim was blocked by the second: the West objected to Moscow's brutalities and was ignorant about the situation in Chechnya. But 9-11 narrowed the gap because people came to understand the real threat of the worldwide jihadist movement. Then the Iraq war divided the United States from much of Europe as well as Moscow (let's hope for more significant reasons than bribes from (former Iraqi leader Saddam) Hussein). Putin's problem is that the EU is Russia's largest market but Washington is a much more effective ally in the war. That is why Putin, evidently doubting (Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John) Kerry's strength of purpose in the war, wanted Bush to win. Moscow is trying to ride both horses (the Kyoto approval was a sop to the European Union) but, if the two horses get farther apart, this will become impossible.
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From Washington's point of view, Putin's problem is that Russia is a reasonably good ally in the war but many of Bush's inner circle still see it as an enemy or rival. Georgia is the place where these two concerns meet. Moscow was right: the jihadists had set up a base in Georgia's Pankisi Valley but many of Bush's inner circle can't get over their suspicion that Moscow really wants to absorb Georgia into a reborn Soviet Union.
So the things to watch in the next few months will be how or whether Moscow and Washington cooperate in Georgia and whether the disagreement between Paris and Berlin and Washington can be reduced. Putin has quite a stake in the outcome.
Dale Herspring, professor of political science at Kansas University, retired Navy and former career diplomat.
In my humble view, both men are advocates of "realpolitik." Both are also unilateralists. They will cooperate with the United Nations or EU or other multilateral organizations, but only if and when they believe it is in their national interest. The same is true of other countries. Moscow will cooperate with Paris or Berlin when it believes they have something to offer, but if they become too anti-American, for example, Putin will pull back. Furthermore, both men seem to genuinely like each other, something that appears to count for a lot in their relationship. Finally, both have adopted a policy of pre-emption as a means of defending their countries against terrorism. While Western Europe may be from Venus to quote Robert Kagan, both the Russians and the Americans are from Mars when it comes to dealing with terror. Both are convinced that it is far more than just a police and intelligence job.
To be honest, I do not believe Bush owes Putin anything. Bush will cooperate with Putin in the war on international terror because it is in the U.S. interest to do so. Similarly, Bush will go soft on Chechnya because -- as it used to be stated within the American government, "we have bigger fish to fry." In contrast to the West Europeans, the Russians quietly made their opposition to Iraq known, but have gone light on the polemics.
I don't expect to see any many changes in the U.S.-Russia relationship. Right now, it is working well. We have the ability to disagree on an issue, but to not let it impact on our bilateral relations. When it comes to Paris and Berlin, we have to almost start over in rebuilding our relations. This is not the case with Moscow. Our relations could always be better, but the bottom line in any bilateral relationship is that there will always be conflict. What distinguishes Putin and Bush from Bush, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and some others, is that we have learned how to agree to disagree and how to work together in those areas where we have common interests.
Janusz Bugajski, director of the East Europe Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington
Russia has already cashed America's "political debt." During his first term in office, President Bush remained largely silent on Russian state terror in Chechnya, issued only muted criticism of the resurrection of a police state in Russia, and allowed the Kremlin to accelerate its restoration of a Russian imperium. These remain the major reasons for Putin's pragmatism.
Moreover, Moscow calculates that a renewed Bush presidency will keep the Middle East on the boil and maintain high-energy prices to Russia's direct advantage. Bush's policies also give a cover to potential Russian "pre-emptive" moves against nearby states whose policies it disapproves. I don't expect major changes in U.S. policy toward Russia during Bush's second term as the White House will remain preoccupied with Iraq, Afghanistan, and other emerging fronts against Islamist terrorism, although some new agreements may be reached with Moscow in disrupting the terrorist international.
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However, there may also be points of friction which could rapidly escalate and sour the relationship With his new and substantial mandate, Bush may feel emboldened to take a harder line toward Iran and North Korea, thus eliciting open Russian opposition. A breakdown of authority in Ukraine and any possible Russian intervention could precipitate a new freeze in relations with Washington. And a Russian-Georgian military confrontation could pull the United States into the conflict as a potential peacekeeper. Moscow will continue to test the American response to its anti-democratic policies domestically and its empire-building endeavors in neighboring states. Nevertheless, there may come a point of diminishing returns for Washington in its approach toward Putin. In such a scenario, Russian actions whether at home or abroad may be interpreted as actually contributing more to spreading international terrorism and inflaming regional instabilities than in pragmatically assisting America in its counter-terrorism offensive.
Ira Straus, U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia on NATO
Bush owes Putin no political debts. All of Putin's interventions in U.S. politics were either ineffective or counterproductive. This applies to Abkhazia and most probably Ukraine as well. Putin acts if he has a sincere and naive belief in the right and responsibility, in an interdependent world, of a national leader to explain to people in other countries about his own country's preferences and interests in the electoral choices they will be making. If so, he has let his idealism run amok. His point is true in principle, but needs to be applied carefully in practice, since people feel an irrational resentment toward even the most straightforward honest foreign interference in their domestic democratic processes. And Americans cannot help but resent what seemed to be KGB disinformation about Iraq for purposes of influencing U.S. politics in favor of Bush.
This is not to mention the problematic character of interference that takes the form of massive financing for a corrupt candidate of the incumbency like Viktor Yanukovych or threatening disruption of relations if he doesn't win. America does it all the time too in Latin America, but that's not necessarily a wise model to follow: Latin America, which is not as organically friendly as Ukraine is, often U.S. actions are directed against genuinely hostile extremists which Viktor Yushchenko is not, and one can see from Venezuela that America's methods are also sometimes seriously counterproductive.
Closer to home, the United States interfered frequently to help (Russia's liberal parties) Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces and look how much good it did. The United States also interfered massively to help Yeltsin win in 1996. That worked. Russian nationalists and Communist fretted that it made Russia forever a raw materials colony of the United States, but now most pundits in the United States already believe that they've "lost" Russia, and what's more, that Russia is buying Ukraine into permanent colonial servitude. We should all be less paranoid, or Pollyannaish as the case may be, about the long-term effects of electoral interference in another country. Like Austria, electorates always amaze the world by their ingratitude.
