Experts: U.S.-Russian
Relations At 15-Year Low
10:45 a.m. Apr 25, 1999 Eastern
By Daniel Bases
HARRIMAN, N.Y. (Reuters) -
U.S.-Russian relations have
deteriorated to their worst level
since the fall of the Iron Curtain,
partially because of NATO's
inclusion of three former Soviet
bloc nations and its bombing of
Serbia, academics say.
''We are at the worst position in
relations since just before (former
Soviet President Mikhail)
Gorbachev'' (1985-1991), said
Marshall Goldman of Harvard
University at a recent conference
sponsored by both Columbia and
Harvard Universities.
While Russia and the United States
have had disputes over the military
campaign in Kosovo, the gulf
between the dominant nuclear
powers began long before Serbian
President Slobodan Milosevic
started clearing Kosovo of more
than 535,000 ethnic Albanians,
academics say.
''The Russians have assumed that
much of Western policy, led by the
United States, ... was designed to
diminish Russia, to displace Russia
and force its influence back,'' said
Robert Legvold, former director of
Columbia's Harriman Institute.
''This was brought to a fine point
by NATO's recent expansion, but it
is a misreading of U.S. policy. Right
now the situation is bad and getting
worse, and a thing like Kosovo,''
exacerbates it, he said.
NATO accepted Poland, Hungary
and the Czech Republic into its fold
on March 12.
''The expansion of NATO was a
profound mistake,'' said Marshall
Shulman, a retired international
relations professor at Columbia.
Besides NATO issues, Russia's
economic collapse on August 17,
1998, when it devalued its
currency, the ruble, and announced
a debt moratorium, threw a nation
of 153 million people into a
destabilized and disoriented state.
''There is now a displaced
resentment and anger at not being
able to make ends meet in Russia,''
Shulman said. ''It is an anxious
time'' in the history of U.S.-Russian
relations.
''All of the leaders of Russian
liberalization are associated with the
Americans, and right now Russians
are not happy with America,'' said
Alexander Livshits, a former
economic advisor to President
Boris Yeltsin who stepped down in
the wake of the financial crisis.
Russians associate the failure to
build a market economy with
America's influence in shaping its
economic reforms.
Additionally, anti-Americanism has
grown rapidly in Russia, as the
United States is seen as the main
force behind NATO's decision to
bomb Yugoslavia, conference
participants said.
Russians from across the political
spectrum are supporting their fellow
Orthodox Christian Slavs in Serbia.
''Russia is in a state of suspended
animation, politically, economically
and there won't be any reforms, nor
will there be upheavals before the
(presidential) elections'' in June
2000, Livshits added.
In Legvold's view, America is
suffering from ''Russian fatigue''
caused by Russia's inability to fix its
own problems.
''We are bored by them, frustrated
by them and at the core this is a
problem of indifference that is
leading to a widening of the
relationship,'' he said.
Russia has interpreted this ''fatigue''
as a willingness to let it fail,
shattering the view that the country
was too big to be allowed to go
under.
''In the early 1990s we met and got
to know all of the reformers, and
then they were gone and we don't
know where they went,'' said Rep.
Howard Berman, a California
Democrat and senior member of
the House International Relations
Committee.
''The Russian Duma, with its
resurgent Communists, nationalists,
anti-American sentiment, plus
delays in ratifying START II'' make
dealing with Russia difficult, he
added.
The Duma, or lower house of the
Russia Parliament, has repeatedly
delayed ratification of the second
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
(START), most recently to protest
NATO's bombings of Serbia.
START II, a bilateral agreement
concluded in January 1993, would
cut both America's and Russia's
nuclear weapons arsenals to a
maximum of 3,500 warheads each
by 2003.
Berman admitted that Washington's
focus on foreign relations has
shifted away from Russia and
toward China, as business interests
are drawn to the world's most
populated country and away from a
financial cripple.
''To some degree (there is) a
feeling among a small minority of
congressmen that Russia is still a
major potential threat,'' Berman told
Reuters. Berman stressed,
however, that he did not subscribe
to this view.
One ray of hope for bolstering
relations, Legvold said, ''is that we
are very close to achieving a new
Conventional Forces in Europe
agreement, which I think is a very
important step in managing the next
phases of NATO and NATO
expansion.''
The CFE was a cornerstone of
security during the Cold War,
limiting the number of tanks, artillery
pieces, aircraft and other
non-nuclear arms that state could
hold and deploy.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. |
