Present state of Russia-US relations

End of the Cold War, he said, was part of an even broader movement in the world. "From Germany and Japan after World War II, to Latin America to Asia and Central and Eastern Europe, and now to broader Middle East, the advance of freedom is the great story of our age" and the important lessons learned from the titanic shift from totalitarianism to democracy include "that free nations grow with time because of free people's creativity and enterprise, governments accountable to the people are peaceful while dictatorships stir resentment and hatred".

President Bush reminded his audience that sovereignty, majority rule and elections ushered only the dawn of democracy which could be clouded unless adorned with minority rights, rule of law, and inclusive society devoid of "identity politics" where political community is fragmented on religious, ethnic, racial and other considerations resulting in societal anarchy and bringing about Stalinist "agents of repression" in the name of establishing law and order. A few days before Bush's visit to Moscow Condoleezza Rice reportedly told President Putin of US interest that Russia's democratisation was "extremely important not just to US-Russia relations but for Russia's own progress" because having a free society "would facilitate Russia's integration into Europe and into Euro-Atlantic structures".

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Russian affairs specialist Nikolai Zlobin warns that while the US might have initially regarded childhood illness of Russia's fledgling democracy as a kind of "political mumps", during the passage of the year 2004 three fundamental changes have emerged in the US perception of Russia: (a) the US no longer regards Russia as a democratic country, (b) Vladimir Putin is no longer regarded as a democrat in the western sense of the term, and (c) the key players of the US establishment are convinced that Moscow harbours imperial ambition, at the very least in the region of the former Soviet Union. Such an assessment puts US-Russia relations at crossroads because democracy and human rights are not an expendable part of the Euro-US political agenda which they intend to use to evaluate other countries.

Indeed, suggests Mark Brezinski, an official of Clinton administration National Security Council, that consistent with Joe Lieberman and John McCain sponsored Senate resolution the US should support Russian membership of G-8 as long as Russia's policy reflects the principle of democracy, freedom and the rule of law. He further suggests that the US policy should not revolve around Putin's personality who "believes the loss of pervasive state control over politics and economy and the diminution of Moscow's influence in the former Soviet states have hurt Russia's interests".

But President Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brezinski sees Putin Presidency as the "final gasp of the Soviet era(of an elite which) is increasingly fading from the scene" and Russia as being totally unable to wage either a hot or a cold war against the West. Brezinski, a supporter of the US efforts to promote geopolitical pluralism in the space left vacant by the former Soviet Union, is unwilling to provide Russia with a "sphere of influence" without the voluntary consent of the adjoining countries. But given the recent events in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrghystan, and the ongoing unrest in Uzbekistan it is unlikely that Russia's neighbouring countries would be willing to bind themselves in solidaristic ties with Russia.

Some Russians, however, see the emergence of "anti-Russian campaign" in the US responsible for the transformation of US-Russia relations into smoldering crisis and the "inspirators" of the campaign goading President Bush to address Russia critically and chastise Vladimir Putin for straying from the democratic path. But Nikolai Zlobin feels that democracy is not the issue. Of far greater importance are "conflict-ridden internal developments, the people's palpable discontent, the government's unbelievable incompetence, foreign policy blunders, the crawling economy and failure to modernise" which Putin would do well to address instead of brushing aside Bush as another victim of "anti-Russian campaign".

The diminution of Russia has been made possible because of the abject defeat of communism and consequent disappearance of the Soviet empire and the rise of unipolar world. Professor Niall Ferguson feels quite comfortable with the US global dominance because, as he argues, if the US were to retreat from its hegemonic role the vacuum would not be supplanted by Europe, China, or the Islamic world but by apolarity which could turn out "to mean an anarchic Dark Age; an era of waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic plunder and pillage; and civilization's retreat into a few fortified enclaves". But the problem would not be solved by global acquiescence of US hegemony, if that were to happen at all, because as Professor Joseph Nye Jr tells us that throughout the history of the world coalition of countries has arisen to balance the dominant power and any focus on unipolarity, hegemony, sovereignty, and unilateralism will fail to provide the right outcome.

Besides, conflicts, if not military, is inevitable, as Professor John Mearsheimer theorizes, great powers do not merely strive to be the strongest great power, their ultimate aim is to be the hegemon -- the only great power in the system. But it is almost impossible for any state to achieve global hegemony in the modern world because it is hard to project and sustain power globally. Nor should any country, however powerful, try to do so. The argument for such self-denial is not hard to find. Zbigniew Brezinski points out that we live in a world far different from the one in which hegemonic powers could go to war without erasing each other's society from the face of the earth. The nuclear age has altered the power politics from the one it had been since the dawn of history.

In a deeply moving article (Apocalypse soon­May/June 2005) former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara describes how close the world had come to extinction during the Cuban missile crisis. He points out that the US has never endorsed the policy of "no first use" of nuclear weapons against either a nuclear or a non-nuclear enemy. McNamara paints the horrific scenario that while to declare war requires an act of the Congress but to launch a nuclear holocaust requires 20 minutes of deliberations by the President and his advisors. McNamara finds it shocking that today, more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the basic US nuclear policy has remained unchanged and has not been adapted to the new situation emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union. "The indefinite combination of human fallibility" writes McNamara "and nuclear weapons carries a very high risk of nuclear catastrophe… I know from direct experience that the US nuclear policy today creates unacceptable risk to other nations and to our own".

The world today faces far greater danger from non-state actors than it did before the Bush administration's pyrrhic victories over Afghan nomads (though the destruction of the Talibans was totally justifiable) and Saddam Hussein -- both having the possibility of sowing seeds of civilizational chasm between two great religions of the world. The enemy of yesteryears was identifiable. The enemies of today are shadowy characters, veiled behind exclusionary and rejectionist interpretation of a so-called purist version of a great religion which itself is having a constant struggle between saner devotees and demented strayers for the soul of Islam. In this context Bush administration's advocacy of freedom and democracy though incontestable in principle should be conveyed in tandem with other powers to alleviate the concerns of the global community.

Diminution of Russia would be self-defeating if only because of fire power packed by the erstwhile adversaries. If today the US has deployed 4500 strategic offensive nuclear war heads Russia has roughly about four thousand, many on hair-trigger alert ready to be launched at 15 minutes warning. Robert Kagan would claim that multipolarity cannot be decreed; it must be created. Europe, he thinks, lacks the will to establish itself as a second "pole" capable of balancing American power. Others would lay the responsibility at the door of the emergence of unique configuration of global power resultant of the disappearance of the Soviet empire which pitched the global colossus -- the US -- which again in the words of Francis Fukuyama "tend not to see any source of democratic legitimacy higher than the nation state" vis-à-vis the rest of the world which would like to see legitimacy flow from international law and institutional multipolarity invested in the UN Security Council.

In the case under consideration insensitivity towards Russian efforts to grapple with relatively new institutions of democracy coupled with NATO's expansion to Russia's backyard -- an alliance founded for military and political containment of the USSR -- without due consideration of Russia's security concerns can only inflame the "restorationists" in Moscow who want to resurrect the old glory of the Soviet empire. Bush administration would do well to proceed in concert with Russia and other powers to bring about democracy and freedom at a pace suitable for each aspirant. Unnecessary haste can only help defeat the very purpose of the US mission of establishing successful democracies "based on shared principles, shared responsibilities, and respect for all".

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.