A FASCINATING LECTURE!
Twenty-one years after the dissolution of the USSR, the international politics of the new Russia can be understood as a tortuous search for a new place in the post-Soviet international system. It was in these terms that Jacques Lévesque, a professor of political science at the Université du Québec à Montréal, opened his talk at Glendon College on February 13 during the Royal Society of Canada’s Governor General Lecture Series. Professor Lévesque provided a remarkable overview of U.S.-Russian relations on the one hand and Sino-Russian relations on the other. He considers that Russia’s vision is still Americanocentric, even though relations between the two countries have been marked by five phases.
The first phase occurred under Boris Yeltsin immediately after the collapse of the USSR. Two years after the collapse and for a brief period, Russia went through a phase of intense idealism and high expectations that have been typical of that country’s revolutionary situations. Russia’s leaders promised to “rejoin the ranks of the civilized world,” by which they meant the United States and Western Europe. In 1992-1993, Russia’s foreign policy was completely and unconditionally aligned with that of the United States. During this period, Russia’s conduct vis-à-vis the countries that emerged from the break-up of the USSR was tolerant and subordinated to its priority number one: to rejoin the ranks of the civilized world. This tolerance even extended to the interior of the country. Although not recognized by Moscow, Chechen independence was tolerated. The use of force to quash the Chechen movement would come only three years later, i.e., in 1994. This initial phase was based on too many illusions and would be short lived. The chaos following the dissolution of the Soviet regime led to the rise of the Communist Party and a resurgence of Russian nationalism as well as disaffection among Yeltsin’s supporters on the Supreme Soviet. From 1992 to 1998, Russia’s gross national product declined by half compared to what it had been during the Soviet era, and half of the population was pushed below the poverty threshold.
In 1993, the phase of alignment with the U.S. came to an end, followed by a “sobering-up” phase from 1994 to September 11, 2001. This phase was marked by Russia’s search to find its place in the world order, i.e., a search for alliances with the Western world together with recriminations against what the Russian leaders called disregard for the interests of Russia. The former Soviet republics once more became the first priority of Russia’s foreign policy. In 1994, Russia began its battle against the extension of NATO, an issue that was the foremost constant in the deterioration of relations between Russia and the Western world over the previous 20 years.
In early 1989, the U.S. and NATO started the war against Serbia with the goal of militarily driving Serbia out of Kosovo. In Moscow’s eyes, this extension of NATO was a nightmare come true for nationalists and Occidentalists alike. Up to that point, NATO was, statutorily speaking, a strictly defensive alliance. Now it was NATO and the United States that were initiating hostilities. Worse still from the Russian perspective, NATO and the U.S. had circumvented the UN Security Council to avoid having to negotiate the conditions and limits of a potential intervention in Serbia with Russia.
What about China?
In Professor Lévesque’s view, the third significant player in Russia’s search for its place in the new world order is China. Relations with this country had slowly returned to normal under Gorbachev but had still not progressed to the point of Russia’s relations with the U.S. Its relations with China did develop further when Yevgeny Primakov became Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister in 1996; it was then that the term strategic partnership came into use to describe Sino-Russian relations. The purpose of this partnership was obvious: to develop a multipolar world in order to form a new international order. The U.S. wanted to preserve the unipolar world of the early post-USSR era, a situation that Russia felt it had to oppose. Moreover, the Russians considered that the partnership with China was not enough to counterbalance American power. They needed other partners, including India. China and Russia avoided challenging the U.S. directly on the issues that were most sensitive for them. No formal alliance between Russia and China was contemplated. The reasons for this were twofold: to allow these countries to preserve their freedom of manoeuvre and to avoid taking a confrontational approach with the U.S. It was a matter of discreetly rebalancing international power relationships.
With the advent of Putin in January 2000, the partnership with China grew more solid. First, there was the Cooperation and Friendship Treaty, which finally settled the border dispute between the two countries. Then came the founding of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which became the primary instrument of the Sino-Russian partnership with respect to the three former Central Asia Soviet republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) that border on China. These three republics entered into a military security agreement with Russia. The chief purpose of the SCO was to keep the Americans out of Central Asia.
In 2000-2001, economic relations between China and Russia were still limited, but China was buying cutting-edge military equipment from Russia, and this enabled Russia to remain internationally competitive in a high-technology area and to be something more than just an exporter of raw materials.
September 11, 2001
The attacks of September 11, 2001, created an opportunity for President Putin to re-forge Russian-American relations. He helped obtain American bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan for the war in Afghanistan. In so doing, Putin went against the counsel of the majority of his advisers and did not consult his Chinese partner. The decision is understandable because the war in Chechnya was at its height and Putin was literally obsessed by what he called “international terrorism” driven by Muslim fundamentalism. He saw in this the main reason for Russia’s inability to win the war in Chechnya. Well before September 11, Putin warned the world in his speeches about growing international terrorism. The Russians detested the Afghan Taliban, who were alone in recognizing Chechnya’s independence. With the events of September 11, Putin quickly understood that the war on terrorism would become a key fixation in George W. Bush’s policy. He was convinced that this would form the basis for building a new and more solid relationship between Russia and the United States.
Russian support for the war in Afghanistan was a way to show that Russia could be a better partner than NATO when it came to crucial issues affecting the security of the U.S. Moreover, after September 11, Putin ordered the closing of Russia’s last military installations in Cuba and Vietnam. This policy was favourably received in Washington; however, contrary to Putin’s expectations, it did not end the American unilateralism that was harming Russia’s most clearly articulated interests– quite the opposite, in fact.
In a speech delivered in Warsaw in November 2001, President Bush gave the go-ahead to admit the three Baltic republics into NATO; this represented an intrusion into former Soviet space. In December 2001, Bush unilaterally announced that the U.S. was withdrawing from the ABM Treaty on prohibiting anti-missile missiles, a treaty that had been the cornerstone of nuclear parity between the two Cold War giants. The Russian reaction to both of these events was restrained, with Putin saying that the decisions were regrettable. Russian cooperation with the U.S. continued for at least two years, if not longer, with Putin minimizing the aftermath of these events.
The Russian-American honeymoon would begin to fray at the edges in 2003, but only very slowly. After the Rose Revolution in Georgia in December 2003, reactions were still relatively tempered in spite of American support for Saakashvili. However, the turning point was reached in December 2004 with the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the most important former Soviet country after Russia. Putin knew the internal reasons leading up to the Orange Revolution, but he was convinced that the active support received by the Ukrainian protesters from the media, Western governments and American NGOs had played a decisive role in how these events ultimately played out. Finally, in the eyes of the Russians, Bush’s support in fast-tracking Ukraine’s and Georgia’s admission into NATO was part of a vast plan to decimate Russia’s sphere of interests, even the most legitimate of these interests. It was at this time that Russian-American relations reached their lowest ebb since the end of the USSR.
The last phase of Russia’s search for its place in the new world order is characterized by a strengthening of the strategic partnership with China. A month after Obama’s inauguration, Vice-President Joe Biden declared: “We’re pressing the restart button.” This became the byword for describing relations between the United States and Russia over the next four years. Indeed, relations between the two countries did improve to a significant degree until 2012.
The strategic partnership with China has been much more durable than most Western observers had predicted. This is not to say that it will necessarily continue to grow stronger. In the current state of affairs, this partnership in no way prevents Russia’s relations with the United States and Europe from undergoing significant and constant improvement. Russia has become a tough, demanding partner in its negotiations with the U.S. and Europe. This has not always been the case, and many opportunities have been lost.
In conclusion, Professor Lévesque maintains that at least some of Russia’s conditions must be satisfied if we are to see a significant and durable improvement in these relations.
By Michel Héroux
