If we seek to influence Russia's foreign policy trajectory, then changes in our thinking as well as our priorities are unavoidable. The collapse of the world system of socialism might have delegitimized geopolitical thinking in the West, but the scale of the process and the traumas engendered by it have relegitimized it in Russia. If the mnogogolosiye (multi-voicedness) of the Yeltsin era camouflaged this fact, it should now be apparent. The new leadership is acutely conscious of power relations, extremely conscious of Russian weakness, but determined to use Russian power where it exists and use it toughly.

In two other respects Putin is challenging patterns to which we have grown accustomed and comfortable. During the Gorbachev era and the first half of the Yeltsin era (when a Yeltsin policy was plainly discernible), Russia sought to create the international conditions necessary, in former Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze's words, "to bring about change inside the country." Putin has reverted to a much older pattern established by Stalin and, with modifications, continued by Khrushchev. By means of change inside the country--by addressing internal weaknesses and restoring "the vertical of power"--Putin would restore Russia to its rightful position as a "great power." Internal change (not least of all Chechnya) is now "Russia's business." And our joint business, foreign policy, is not Putin's main priority.

The third discomfiting change is that the area of foreign policy that does have priority is the area closest to internal policy: relations with the "near abroad."

The "Near Abroad:" Antecedents and New Departures
The principle that Russia must be the leader of stability and security on the entire territory of the former USSR is not a new principle, and on more than one occasion it has been applied by means of force. Nevertheless, during the Yeltsin era, there was also a record of accommodation: to the emergence of normal state-to-state relations with neighbors (e.g., the May 1997 "Big Treaty" with Ukraine), to the right of these neighbors to draw closer to NATO (but not join it), and to the appropriateness (on a limited basis) of involving external powers and bodies in regional security arrangements (e.g., the US-Russia-Ukraine Trilateral Agreement, OSCE missions in Moldova, Armenia, etc).

The emergence of a tougher, more active and more aggressive Russian policy is directed not toward integration of Russia's neighbors, but rather their subordination in three areas that the Foreign Policy Concept deems essential to Russian interests: security and combating "extremism," "joint rational use of natural resources," and the "rights and interests of Russian citizens and fellow countrymen." The means to this end are as much transnational as interstate; they also include a more intense and focused active measures component. To Russian security elites, Western conduct virtually mandates such a course:
- Kosovo. In military terms, Operation Allied Force is seen as a rehearsal for more ambitious exercises in "coercive diplomacy" and, in political terms, a testing ground for using human rights as a flag of convenience for breaking up "problematic states." This perception has greatly sharpened the geopolitical stakes for Russia in the Caucasus and in Central Asia (where US sponsorship of the Taliban's precursors is never forgotten).
- NATO enlargement. If not a military threat, the Alliance is viewed as a means of excluding Russia from Europe and delegitimizing its interests.
- EU enlargement. Despite strong hopes for "strategic partnership," there is now recognition that the EU is not, in essence, a counterbalance to US dominance, but a mechanism of integration. The unspoken, but widespread, perception is that Russian integration with this entity is, at best, a distant prospect.

Set against these developments, the transformation of the CIS into a bloc and an internationally recognized Russian sphere of interest is seen not only as a defensive measure but as a precondition for giving Russia equality in the international system. Determination to exclude the OSCE "east of Vienna" suggests that there even might be areas outside the former USSR--Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania--where the future is deemed open.

Policy Toward the "Far Abroad"
To a significant degree, the policy emerging toward the "far abroad" supports the "near abroad" priority. Russian strategic partnership with the European Union, which many Americans fear is intended to distance Europe from the United States, also has more compelling, eastern dimensions: developing lucrative but also geopolitically driven gas and pipeline projects, which in themselves consolidate influence in the CIS; and securing European allies in keeping the former USSR off limits to further NATO expansion. The Shanghai Forum directly engages China--a state as resolutely opposed as Russia to overriding state sovereignty "on the excuse of protecting...human rights"--as co-guarantor of a brittle and repressive status quo in Central Asia. In rattling the saber against the Taliban, the intended audience is probably wayward Uzbekistan rather than this putative enemy (with whom, to judge from Russian initiatives in Pakistan, Russia might be seeking a form of accommodation).
Yet even if we exclude the self-evident, there are other issues which have saliency in their own right. It is now clear (contrary to some speculation in early 2000) that promoting "multipolarity" remains a transcendental cause. But unlike issues closer to home, Russian policy lacks the focus and sureness of touch that Primakov imparted to it. Relations with NATO (a more accurate term than "cooperation") are not a high priority. The proposition that relations between Russia, a single state, and NATO, an alliance of 19 states, should be based upon equality would be difficult for NATO to accept even if, contrary to its own undertakings, it were willing to recognize Russia as leader of the CIS. Yet in the absence of such acceptance, Russia treats the 44-member Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council as a theater of diplomatic struggle. Russia has not allowed dialogue to extend beyond platitudes, it has not permitted participation to affect mindsets, and in drawing up and implementing agreements--e.g., reopening the NATO liaison office in Moscow--it has been determined to keep the devil in the details. Determined for their part to get the relationship back on track, many NATO representatives have been more concerned about having meetings attended, programs submitted, deadlines met, and boxes ticked than using the Permanent Joint Council (PJC) and other forums to address issues of genuine substance.
An issue of high saliency to the United States and United Kingdom--the growing menu of relationships, open and concealed, between Russia and Iran and Iraq--is an example of promoting multipolarity not only outside Europe but within it, bearing in mind French opposition to, and German and Italian ambivalence about, the Anglo-American approach. But it also makes a more generic point: that in the absence of countervailing costs, enterprises that weaken US positions, disrupt Western unity, and bring commercial reward to Russia will be seen by Moscow as intrinsically worth pursuing. An issue of growing anxiety, Russo-Chinese strategic partnership--founded on joint views about the UNSC and excluding the US from "zones of interest," as well as on a vigorous inventory of defense cooperation--remains constrained by issues endemic to the Russo-Chinese relationship: Russia's primordial distrust of China and China's determination not to be shackled by Russia in its relationship with the United States. And on the key issue, Russia-US relations, one may doubt whether Putin has a policy at all.
Russian policy since late 1999 poses opportunities and dangers. The opportunities arise because the new Russian leadership is fatigued and irritated by the pieties of "partnership," the mechanics of "cooperation," and the courtesies that in the PJC and other forums have made it difficult to raise and pursue specific issues of substance. The lesser danger arises because after a period of romanticism, Russia became a variable in Western policy rather than a focus of policy. The greater danger arises because nine years of Western platitudes have left Russians profoundly confused about the extent and limits of Western interests and about what the West wants from Russia. Both opportunity and danger are present in the possibility--whether the issue be Iraq or Ukraine--that the West will react early, toughly, and in ways that focus Russian minds. At that point, President Putin is bound to ask us, "What do you want?" Let us hope we have answers.

US National Intelligence Council