#6
Le Monde Analyzes 'Turning Point in Russian Foreign
Policy'
Le Monde (France)
November 15, 2001
Article by Daniel Vernet: "Putin's Westward Turn"
Vladimir Putin asks for nothing. He spontaneously called President Bush the evening of 11 September and decided, on his own, to place his country in the antiterrorist coalition led by the United States. He thus broke, in a matter of days, with the anti-Americanism of Russian foreign policy, an anti-Americanism which may have faltered in the early nineties but which has always been present. He did this against the military establishment, the foreign ministry bureaucracy, and the majority of Russian society. For the first time since he came into office he has made a decision that could rob him of the unprecedented popular support which he enjoys and where he runs the risk of ending up in the situation of a Gorbachev, venerated abroad but execrated at home.
He negotiated nothing in return, which does not mean that he expects nothing. On the contrary: from strategic arms reduction to an agreement on the ABM treaty, admission to the World Trade Organization, debt elimination, the war in Chechnya, and NATO expansion there is no lack of topics where discussion with Washington has been tough these last months.
With his support for US strategy in Afghanistan the Russian president holds a bargaining chip, but he intends to use it as a statesman and not a beggar. "We ask no favor of the West at all for combating terrorism," he told the ABC TV channel, "either in terms of admission to the WTO or as regards our foreign debt. This fight is in everyone's vital interest, thus it is in our interest, too. (...) We want to become increasingly integrated into international structures, and that, too, seems to us to be in everyone's interest." Vladimir Putin added that the policy was not new, but prior to 11 September it went unnoticed; since then it has become obvious. It is only one facet of the truth.
The other facet is marked by Russian attempts to play a role by flirting with "rogue states," by selling arms to the enemies of the United States, even by making a discreet but real contribution to the proliferation of arms of mass destruction. Following the disappointments suffered by Gorbachev during his final period and by Yeltsin during his first, Moscow hedged its bets because the policy of rapprochement with the West had failed to deliver the expected benefits. On the contrary, it had done harm to its promoters.
It is no exaggeration therefore to speak of a turning point in Russian foreign policy in the wake of 11 September. The advocates of this change, who are often recruited among the Russian politicians and observers who were originally most critical of Putin, speak of a "second chance" for relations with the West, after the one immediately offered in the months following the disappearance of the Soviet Union in 1991, a "second chance" that must not, this time, be wasted. They are worried in this respect by the little eagerness evinced by the Americans to involve Russia in a concrete way in the actions directed against terrorism, particularly in Afghanistan, beyond kind words of gratitude. They recognize that the traditional US allies are in the event no better off, while thinking at the same time that they -- for historical and geographical reasons -- have more to offer.
Doubtless Vladimir Putin can derive some immediate advantages from the stance he has taken. As one of his advisers, Sergey Karaganov, crudely put it: "After the bombing of Afghanistan the Americans and the British have forfeited the moral right to criticize Russia over the way it pursues the war in Chechnya." And he added: "It is highly likely that in two years' time Russian soldiers would have had to do the same thing that the Americans are now doing for us" against the Taliban, because Russia would have had to intervene to cut off the support to the Chechens. There is therefore, for the first time in a long while, a congruence of Russian and Western interests. However, the reasons which have impelled the Russian president to take these risks at home are not confined to short-term considerations.
"Heaven-Sent Opportunity"
As someone who knows Germany well -- Putin spent years there, on the Eastern side, prior to reunification -- he is aware of the points in common there are with the history of his own country. The conviction, for example, that you are the bearer of a specific civilization that is not identical with the West and which has the vocation to be a go-between -- between the West and the East in the case of Germany, between Europe and Asia in the case of Russia. This conviction was shared by a very large number of Germans up until the defeat of 1945, and not just during the Third Reich.
Yeltsin's Russia has sometimes been compared to the Weimar Republic, two regimes that emerged out of defeat with a shaky economy and galloping inflation, two truncated countries in search of a new place in the world. Weimar's leaders sought to find this place by two means: Either by challenging the order born out of World War I (what is known as the "revisionist" policy) or by accepting the Versailles Treaties while trying to integrate themselves into the new system in order to transform it from within. They failed because they tried to pursue these two incompatible policies simultaneously. Their hesitations resulted in 1933 in the radical break provoked by national socialism. On the other hand, following World War II the leaders in Bonn chose to restore Germany's sovereignty by closely integrating the Federal Republic within the new European and transatlantic order.
Postcommunist Russia is faced with a choice: Bonn or Weimar? For 10 years it has veered between revisionism and integration. Vladimir Putin seems to have seized the "heaven-sent opportunity" afforded by the attacks of 11 September to take a firm stand on the side of integration. Perhaps he realized that Russia does not have the means to recover its lost influence by heading up the protesters and that, on the contrary, it had an unhoped-for opportunity to join up successfully with the West by resolutely siding with what the Russian "Westernizers" call the "civilized world." Certainly, Russia is expecting it to yield dividends, and those opposed to Putin's policy, who already speak of the "grave errors" committed by the president and reproach him for having abandoned the traditional standpoints without having gotten anything in return, are poised to tax him for explanations. Putin's success thus depends on the responses he receives from the West and from George W. Bush, in particular. But there are domestic stakes involved, too. Can Vladimir Putin abandon Russian "specificity" in foreign policy to join an international system determined by the Western democracies and succumb at the same time to a form of "Asiatic despotism" in domestic policy? The Russian responses are divided because the social base for "Westernization" is relatively weak. The failure of the heirs of the Communists in the various elections organized in the last 10 years have brought little benefit to the democrats and the liberals and more to the representatives of the "structures of enforcement," of which Putin is a product and which are little attracted by either rapprochement with the West abroad or democratization at home.
Here, too, the German experience shows that the two are intrinsically linked. Between the two wars Thomas Mann wrote authoritative words on the close relationship between the establishment of "bourgeois" freedoms (democracy) in Germany and the "entente" with France (symbol of the West), because politics in the West goes hand in hand with a commitment to a system of values. Vladimir Putin, who recently quoted Goethe and Schiller to the Bundestag in perfect German, should ponder Thomas Mann's words.
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