RECENT RELATIONS BETWEEN RUSSIA
AND THE UNITED STATES

By : Gilles TROUDE,Research fellow at the DESC of the University of Paris III, Sorbonne nouvelle. He is also author of a book "Yougoslavia, the impossible bet ?"

At the Davos summit, in February 2000 in Switzerland, a Russian doctor gave the order to the driver of an ambulance, to take his patient directly to the morgue. " Why ? " begged the patient, " I'm not dead yet ! ". " Shut up, " answered the doctor, " we havn't arrived yet ! "1.

This joke, which was going around Moscow at the time, describes perfectly the state of mind of the relations between the United States and Russia, when Vladimir Poutin came to power.

Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Federation, which has retaken its seat at the United Nations, and would wish ensuring its continuity, is "having foreign policy illness", according to the statement of Marie Mendras'2. "We have neither allies, nor friends, nor enemies", a Russian diplomat noted bitterly at the eve of the Rambouillet Conference in 19993. Certainly, there was indeed the attempt at the creation of the Community of Independent States, but we shall see that aside from Bielorussia, and, in lesser measure, Armenia, most of its members do not follow Russia at all in its foreign policy.

Let's recall briefly the facts: although its surface area still makes it the vastest country of the world, the population of Russia represents scarcely half that of the Soviet Union: 150 million inhabitants against 245 for the USSR. But above all, the terrible financial crisis of 1998, following on an excessively rapid liberalisation, has brought the Gross National Product of the Russian Federation, according to certain experts, to some 6% of that of the United States of America, for a population of less than half4. Even if this estimation can be tainted by a strong margin of error - of about 50%, keeping in account the deficiency of statistic measuring means-, it is convenient to keep these numbers in mind when one examines the reports between the two powers. With 600 billion Euros, the "economic weight" of Russia in the economic world would be of the same order as that of Canada, or of the three Scandinavian countries together, but only half that of France or of Great Britain (respectively 1.358 and 1.355 billions of Euros in 1999).

But these purely economic elements - one could also say "stock market" - don't keep account of Russia's military power. The latter has inherited from its precursor its immense nuclear arsenal, equivalent if not superior, as we shall see it, to its American counterpart, although we don't know in what condition it all is, keeping in account the lack of financial means for maintaining it. One thing is certain: differing from Ukraine, who has decided to denuclearise - at least on the military plan - Russia still disposes of its entire dissuasion capacity, otherwise said, of resisting against all nuclear attack by any country, including the United States, and of counterattacking by launching its intercontinental missiles against the aggressor's main cities, without serious fear of riposte. The American military experts are perfectly conscious of this, and this element hasn't ceased to be kept in account in the global relations of American diplomats with Russia.

These relations, according to Laurent Rucker, have known three phases before the arrival in power of President Poutin. First of all, from 1991 to 1993, qualified sometimes as "romantic period", Russia, converted to the Western dogma, abandons Marxism-Leninism and subscribes naively to so-called "universal values": democracy, economic liberalism, massive privatisation, etc. It joins the International Monetary Fund, the International bank for Reconstruction and Development, and, in the Yugoslav conflict, recognises as from 1992 - without exchange - the independence of Slovenia, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Although this is formally contrary to the dispositions of the Helsinki Agreements of which the USSR was co-initiator, and which were foreseeing the intangibility of existing frontiers in Europe, Russia, its inheritor, was voting its resolutions at the UN Security Council imposing sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and accepting to furnish close to a thousand men to the United Nations peace-keeping force (UNPROFOR) sent into Croatia5. Much better than that, it envisages joining NATO as "a long term political objective"6!

At a later period, from 1993 till 1998, Russian diplomacy made as if to formalise a first reaction, and its chief AndreÏ Kozyrev, declared as from 1993: "The future of East Europe reside in its transformation, not into a sort of buffer zone, but into a bridge joining the East and the West of the continent"7 - first shy attempt to define objectives for Russian diplomacy.

Even more distinct, President Boris Eltsin, pressed by his opposition, notably the chief of the liberal-democrat party Vladimir Zhirinovsky, declares, in his address to the nation in February 1994: "We like to repeat that Russia is a big country, and it's true, so in that case may our foreign policy correspond to this reality! 1994 must put an end to the policy of international retreats."8

This translates, as in the case of the Yugoslav conflict, by the temptation to wind up with an armistice throughout the country. In 1994, it acceded to the rank of member of the "Contact Group" formed with the four other "large powers" (United States, Germany, France and Great Britain) in order to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict, in liaison with the United Nations Organisation.

Russia is opposed to raising the embargo on arms deliveries made to the States issuing from the collapse of Yugoslavia, a raising wished by American diplomacy, in order to help the Muslims and Croats of Bosnia-Herzegovina who were supposed to be "weaker" than the Bosniac Serbs (doctrine of the balance of forces). Russia requires a condemnation of the new Croat State presided by Franjo Tudjman, for his policy in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and above all for his "ethnic purge" of 600,000 Serbs of Croat Krajina during a period of a few days in August 1995 (Operation Tempest), an operation of the "blitzkrieg" type sustained and advised by the American secret services. Russia, traditional ally of former Serbia during two centuries, is trying to defend the interests of the Serb people, in the face of a Croatia supported by Germany, and of the Muslim part of Bosnia assisted by the United States, without all the same endorsing all the initiatives of President Slobodan Milosevic. It's thus that, when Serb planes, that hadn't respected Bosnia's aviation exclusion zone, were shot down by NATO, in February 1994 - Russia didn't contest the well foundedness of the intervention by the Alliance based on Security Council Resolution 781 that it had itself signed9.

At the time of the Dayton Agreements, Russia wasn't invited to participate directly in the negotiations which took place "in camera" on the American military base in Ohio, but, at the official signature of the agreements in Paris on 14th December 1995, ratified by a UNO Security Council vote the next day, a role is assigned to it in the Implementation Force (IFOR), and a brigade of 1.400 Russian parachutists is rushed into Bosnia-Herzegovina. This brigade goes on to create a lot of controversy about itself.

In order to remain tactful about Russian sensitivities, and to curtail the legal difficulty related to the fact that Russia is not a member of NATO, a particularly elegant solution was determined. During an informal reunion of the NATO Defence Ministers at Williamsburg, in Virginia, the American Defence Secretary William Perry negotiated arrangements with the Russian Defence Minister Pavel Gratchev. These discussions were facilitated by the invitation speared to an eminent representative of the Russian administrative staff, General Leonti Chestov, to come to SHAPE in Brussels, in order to familiarise himself with the NATO procedures and terminology.

It was convened that the Russian contingent would be placed under the operational control of the SACEUR (NATO's Supreme Allied Command for Europe) situated at Mons in Belgium, via the intermediary of General Chestov acting in the capacity of SACEUR Attaché for the Russian Forces, and under the tactical control of the American Commander of the Multinational Division North, based at Tuzla in northern Bosnia10.

It seems important for us to underline - revealing detail of the subtlety of American-Russian relations in practice - that the Russian generals declare only to be co-operating with "American soldiers", therefore "amongst equals", and not with NATO. The American generals specify that the written orders shall not bear the NATO paper-head, but that of the American army, and that the observations of the Russian attaché shall be taken systematically into account - without all the same the latter being able to oppose a veto against General Joulwan, SACEUR Chief, who, for reasons of well understandable military efficiency, shall have the last word (principle of unique chain of command).

In the field, co-operation between Russian soldiers and allied forces is symbolised by the fact that joint Russian-American patrols operate in the delicate Brcko corridor of North-East Bosnia, a corridor 4 km wide joining up alone the Serb zone of Banja Luka in the West, to that of Pale on the East - including right in the city itself11.

The Kosovo crisis:
deterioration of Russian-American relations
The arrival of General Evgueni Primakov at the head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in January 1996, marks a turning point in Russian-American relations. As from then, Russia refuses a unipolar world dominated by the United States, but orients itself towards a multipolar world, involving privileged relations with powers such as China, India, the European Union, and leaving Russia with a larger margin for manoeuvre12.

On 16th June 1998, President Yeltsin received the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at Moscow, and General Leonid Ivachov, responsible of international co-operation at the Defence Ministry, declares: "If NATO launches an attack against Yugoslavia, Russia would be able to resume complete military co-operation with Belgrade, including violating the arms embargo."13

At the Rambouillet conference, in February 1999, Russia refuses to support a solution that has not been signed by the Yugoslav delegation, and this provokes rupture at the heart of the Contact Group. According to the Russian representative, Boris Maïorski, the military copy of the agreement was signed "behind our back" (inference to the annex foreseeing free circulation of NATO troops throughout the totality of Yugoslav territory, including Serbia, this annex presented at the last moment by the American delegation and that provoked the refusal to sign by the Yugoslav delegation, who had already approved the civil copy)14.

However, Russia, although its public opinion was very critical with regards to the bombings of a "brother country" during 77 days by NATO, didn't react militarily, and it became necessary to expect such a "coup" as the Pristina Airport affair, in the night of 12th June 1999, so that it reappear at last in the forefront of world news: a Russian contingent coming from SFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was crossing the Yugoslav frontier right in the face of NATO troops deployed all around Kosovo, and took by surprise the airport zone of its capital Pristina, in order to prepare the ground for the arrival of 2.500 parachutists arriving from Russia. It was taking fast, therefore, the French, American and British assault troops occupied in de-mining painstakingly the areas thus prepared by the Yugoslav soldiers on all Kosovo thoroughfares before their departure (excepting, curiously, that used by the Russian soldiers!).

World opinion will surely remember the enormous burst of laughter of President Boris Yeltsin on television, delighted for having played "a good one" on NATO and notably on the American generals that direct it. However, on the diplomatic front, this "burst of brilliance" shall scarcely have any following, since, contrary to its expectation, Russia didn't obtain the right to administer any sector of Kosovo, whereas this "favour" was granted to nations reputed less powerful militarily, such as Italy and Germany. For this latter one, it was a big return on the international scene, since, for the first time since the disaster of 1945, its army was participating fully in an international operation beyond its boundaries.

It was not only the only humiliation undergone by the Russian Federation in that year of 1999, since at the ceremonies marking the fiftieth anniversary of NATO, from 23rd to 25th April in Washington, all the members of ICE, except Russia but including Bielorussia, thought it seemly to respond to the American invitation. Even more, the Azerbaijan of President Aliev declared itself ready to accept NATO bases, and Georgia by the voice of President Chevarnadze declared that "NATO is not an aggressive organisation, (but) a realistic force that can establish peace wherever that is necessary"15. Let's remember that these two heads of state are former prominent Soviet personalities, President Aliev being even a former executive of the KGB like Vladimir Poutin.

It's true that these words were pronounced before the NATO intervention in Kosovo, which just diminishes considerably their range, it seems to us.

In Central Asia, Uzbekistan announced in April 1999 its membership in GUAM, which thereupon became GUUAM, regional alliance formed by Georgia, Ukraine and Azarbaidjan in 1996, and to which rallied Moldavia in 1997. Alone, apparently, Bielorussia and Armenia resist against the western "sirens", for the moment, at least.


The coming of Vladimir Poutin: a turning in Russian-American relations?
On 31st December 1999, it's well known that President Boris Yeltsin, old and ageing, retired and transmitted power to his "designated successor", Vladimir Poutin, elected triumphantly to the presidency of the Russian Federation less than three months later. After his "dazzling ascension", the new president, younger than 50 years old, sporting, and in full health, would he be tempted to restore Russian power and become "Vladimir the Terrible", as Paul-Marie de la Gorce inquired of herself, in souvenir of Tsar Ivan IV (1533-1584), called "the Great Gatherer of the Russian Lands" by the historians of this country16?

It is, of course, too early to say, but as from his first year at the head of the country, his personal imprint has noticeably modified Russia's foreign policy, notably with regards the United States. As from 14th March 2000, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Madeleine Albright, interjected in the Figaro newspaper a warning to the new master of Russia. While entirely recognising that her first impression was favourable ("someone capable and energetic, frank and direct, well-versed about the dossiers and of the positive things to say about the economic reforms, the state of right and arms control"), she declared "We must make Russia understand that this war (in Chechenia) must be settled by political and not military means"17.

But, curiously, during her first meeting with Vladimir Poutin, on 2nd February 2000, the same Madeleine Albright, in a common communiqué published after the interview, didn't even mention Chechenia, which was considered as an internal affair (let's remember that Chechenia was part of the Russian Federation), but treated of threats against the ABM Treaty and the enlargening of NATO18.

President Clinton went in the same sense, in declaring "that he recognised Russia's right to combat terrorism, but not to violate the Rights of Man"19. It's other Western countries, and in first place France, who become partisans of a much more interventionist policy with regards Russia in the Chechenia campaign, and they were supported by numerous non governmental organisations (Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Frontiers, Doctors of the World, etc), and by ecologist parties of West European countries. Perhaps the American authorities shared the same sentiment with regards what was happening in Chechenia, but at least they remained discrete on the subject, because for them the primordial objective was to reach an agreement with the Russians on the problem of global negotiation of arms reduction - planetary problem, putting eventually on the spot the future of the human species, and no longer just a very localised ethnic conflict.

Why was the "balance of terror", as one had come to know it, once again formalised? The answer holds in a few words: it was the National Defence Missile System elaborated by the Pentagon, in order to protect itself from the new threats that States judged unpredictable or aggressive represent - States called by the infamous title "rogue states"20, such as North Korea that disposes of a nuclear industry, Iraq that has succeeded in enriching uranium in its secret installations, Iran whose Shah had launched a vast nuclear program before his overthrow and who keeps at its disposal eminent scientists, Libya that one knows has missiles capable of striking Italy and who has purchased uranium from its neighbour the Niger Republic, etc. This list is not at all complete, the problem is very real.

The Governor of Texas, who shall be elected President of the United States in November 2000, George W. Bush, proclaims himself the harbinger of this gigantic project involving spy-satellites detecting the launching of an enemy missile and following its trajectory, a chain of surveillance stations, and anti-missile missiles launched from a mobile ground base, in brief a new version of "star wars", at the colossal cost of 50 billion dollars, with a battery equipped 2,000 to 3,000 interceptors21, and this would just be the first phase.

The technical objective is to create engines capable of destroying a missile flying at 25,000 km/hour, the furthest away from its target (in order to avoid destruction of cities), and of putting into place, in this way a "defensive shield" protecting equally the United States of America. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the efficiency of the project is illusory, each new system creates a demand for a counter-system, this in turn being thwarted by increased missile resistance or "invisibility" (detection neutralisers) developed by the enemy22.

Moreover, the first two missile-anti-missile test shots over the Pacific Ocean being failures, President Clinton, exercising prudence, is to leave his final decision relative to the program's launching, to his successor, whoever that may be....

The first United States / Russia summit since the election of Vladimir Poutin to the presidency, on 4th and 5th June 2000 at Moscow, treats before all of this question, upon request by the American party. The Russian president requires one to note that the "remedy of an anti-missile shield imagined by the Americans would be worse than the evil involved". In effect, it would risk relaunching the arms race, amongst States having nuclear weapons - China, India, eventually Pakistan, and implying also Russia, towards the development of weapons capable of piercing the new American shield23. The phenomenal financial effort that this new arms race would involve for these countries, already in difficulty, would compromise all hopes of improvement of the living standard there, and could unleash a new international financial crisis.

Furthermore, the new American project invokes the ABM (Anti-ballistic missile) Treaty, signed in 1972, and which foresaw parity between the United States and Russia. In April 2000, the Russian Parliament had finally accepted to ratify the Start-II Treaty, left unattended since 1993, and Vladimir Poutin threatened that "in case of violation of the ABM Treaty", he would withdraw from all "system of limitation of strategic and eventually tactical weapons".

Nevertheless, the political argument employed by President Clinton, consisting in saying that negotiations with his successor, if the Republican candidate was elected, could well be far more arduous for the Russians than with himself, is very strong, on the negotiation level, even if it acts as a form of blackmail. Furthermore, the Russian president himself recognises that the question of "rogue states" preoccupies him too, but not only on the nuclear level (chemical and bacteriological weapons, terrorism, etc). It would be necessary, according to him, to develop the subject, which in and of itself deserves deep debate.

In conclusion, the declaration of principle signed by the two parties associated two negotiations, that on Start-III and that on the ABM Treaty: Russia would accept modifications of the antimissile treaty if the United States accept, on their side, in the context of Start-III, a stronger diminution than foreseen of their number of strategic nuclear heads, from 2,000-2,500 - threshold initially decided - to 1,000-1,500, level required now by Moscow24.

The negotiations continue therefore in this area, and the summit doesn't reach any agreement, except on two points of detail: the creation of a pre-alert and data exchange system between the two countries on all launching of missile leaving their territory, or directed towards their territory. A joint data exchange center shall function twenty-four hours per day at Moscow, staffed by officers of the two armies. It's a technical improvement on the famous "red line" already joining Washington and Moscow.

On the other hand, the two countries are agreed to destroy, each, 34 tons of military plutonium (a first agreement had already been signed between William Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in September 1998).

For purposes of debate clarity, it is interesting to note - although here we leave our subject - that the United States' allies, amongst others Germany and France, emit very serious reserves as to the development of the American project of anti-missile shield. It's thus that Chancellor Schröder, upon the occasion of conferring upon President Clinton the Charlemagne Prize at Aix-la-Chapelle on 2nd June 2000, declared: "Our American ally is in its sovereign right to take decisions that seem appropriate to it for security. But (...), for us Europeans, the maintenance of rights acquired by the disarmament policy and the pursuit of this disarmament are of the greatest importance."25

The speech given by President Clinton in front of the Duma excites lively reactions on the part of opposition members of parliament, notably Vladimir Zhirinovski, who retorted to him: "Don't interfere in our internal affairs!" Member of parliament Starodubtchev made the following commentary: "Clinton acts as if he was president of the planet, preaching to us how to live!"26.

The increasingly pressing American interventions into the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus and of Central Asia become independent, are equally poorly perceived by Russian public opinion, even more so because this region shelters very important petrol and natural gas reserves, especially subaquatic. The Caspian Sea could export, in about ten years from now the equivalent of the North Sea production27. But this vast subject cannot be treated here, and shall, a little later, be the object of a special study by us.

In conclusion, the judgement emitted by Paul-Marie de la Gorce at the end of 1999 seems to confirm: "The United States pursue, with or without Yeltsin, the policy of aiming to prevent Russia becoming a great power."28

Faced with this "uni-polar" vision of the world entirely dominated by the United States, sole global superpower, what shall Russia's reaction be? President Vladimir Poutin himself gives the answer on 30th June 2000 in a text presenting the new Russian foreign policy doctrine. Faced with "economic and military domination by the United States" (...) "Russia shall seek to create a multipolar system in international relations," (...) "Asia possesses important growth for Russia, in reason of its geographical situation and of the necessity of developing the Siberia and Extreme East regions." "Relations with China and India (...) are one of the main objectives of Russian foreign policy in Asia", and notes "the similitude of Russian and of Chinese approaches to key questions of international policy"29.

Putting this new doctrine into practice, Vladimir Poutin went on a vast Asiatic tour in July 2000, including China, Japan and, for the first time for a Russian head of state, North Korea - who is one of the "rogue states" according to American doctrine, as we have already seen! He equally intends "reinforcing his partnership with India", who officially entered the very closed club of nuclear powers, which constitutes moreover, a patent case of check of the American non-proliferation policy.

Are we returning to a cold war situation? It's very probable, but a cold war of a new type in which Russia would no longer be playing the role of superpower formerly assumed by the USSR, but would be associated equally with China and India, as well as other powers (North Korea, Iran, Indonesia ...?), thereby constituting a sort of "Refusal Front" in the face of an imposed American domination considered as outrageous.

American diplomacy, by its signal clumsiness, carried the entire responsibility for this "back lash". Instead of profiting from its superpower status to try to establish a new order in the world, it showed, by aggressing a sovereign and embattled country with 77 days of ceaseless bombing devoid of the least legal foundation in international law, its true face to the eyes of the judging world. Everyone knows that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO - a name now derisory) being in principle defensive, had no right to intervene beyond its territorial competence, according to its own statutes. Moreover, the aggression against Yugoslavia constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter. By becoming guilty of this immense fault, America is burdened with a heavy responsibility, of which the final quakes have not at all settled.
Besides, the recantations of a President Clinton giving moral lessons to the tribune of the Moscow Duma - whereas he himself has shown himself incapable of keeping in order his own domestic life - sabre rattling of a Madeleine Albright, without any common measure of the planetary visions of a Kissinger or, to go back a little further in time, of a Dean Acheson, not to mention of course President Roosevelt, inventor of the concept of United Nations, all provide à pitiful image of the America of today.

After the Vietnam disaster, and the Somalia humiliation - where the American troops had to make themselves scarce very fast, drowned as they were in civil hostility - the Third World countries know that America is not invincible, and that the might of an army isn't forcedly linked to Gross National Product per capita of population, at least in any non classical war. It hasn't been necessary for the Pope to make a grandiose visit to Cuba, a poor country but whose pride has succeeded in resisting to forty years of American embargo, for that idea to be reinforced.

By its policy of systematic humiliation of Russia, American diplomacy - unless an important redirecting takes place with the new presidency of George W. Bush, risks situating that vast now impoverished country into the camp of the Third World powers who have not yet said their last word, and who, because of their access to the rank of nuclear powers, and of their respective populations numbering in the billions, know that America doesn't dare attack them, and that time is on their side.

If this planetary "re-balancing" takes place, one can imagine numerous local conflicts in the "fracture zones" between the two blocks: in the Pacific Ocean (Taïwan, Korea, Indonesia), in Central Asia (where America intends to seize petroleum reserves, from the Caspian Sea, from the Caucasus), and in the Middle East (where the peace plan elaborated by American diplomacy has been heavily criticised).

In Europe, this seclusion of Russia, rejected towards the Asian bloc, risks having serious consequences, with new local conflicts related to the enlarging of NATO (refused by Russia - Baltic countries, Ukraine, Caucasus).
Gilles Troude,
19th January 2001