The Russian Challenge
20150605RussianChallengeGilesHansonLyneNixeySherrWoodUpdate
20150605RussianChallengeGilesHansonLyneNixeySherrWoodUpdate
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Russian</strong> <strong>Challenge</strong><br />
Russia’s Changed Outlook on the West: From Convergence to Confrontation<br />
interests in ‘strategic stability, disarmament, NATO<br />
expansion and forming the foundations of the world order<br />
in the twenty-first century’. NATO should uphold the terms<br />
of the 1997 Founding Act and should not ignore the opinion<br />
of the international community.<br />
By 2002, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United<br />
States, and with Russia’s economy improving, Putin was<br />
optimistic in his annual address that the international<br />
attitude towards Russia was changing:<br />
the period of confrontation has ended. We are building constructive,<br />
normal relations with all the world’s nations … in the world today, no<br />
one intends to be hostile towards us … After 11 September last year,<br />
many, many people in the world realized that the ‘cold war’ was over<br />
… a different war is on – the war with international terrorism. …<br />
Our major goal in foreign policy is to ensure strategic stability in the<br />
world. To do this, we are participating in the creation of a new system<br />
of security, we maintain constant dialogue with the United States,<br />
and work on changing the quality of our relations with NATO. …<br />
Russia is being actively integrated into the international community.<br />
Russia’s active support for the United States after 9/11 was<br />
rewarded by full membership of the G8 and the upgrading<br />
of the NATO–Russia Council at a specially convened summit<br />
in 2002. In 2003 Putin became the first <strong>Russian</strong> leader since<br />
the Victorian era to be invited to the UK on a state visit.<br />
Putin’s 2003 annual address followed the US-led invasion<br />
of Iraq. He referred obliquely to this, but refrained from<br />
attacking the United States by name: ‘Terrorism threatens<br />
the world and endangers the security of our citizens.<br />
Certain countries sometimes use their strong and wellarmed<br />
national armies to increase their zones of strategic<br />
influence rather than fighting these evils we all face.’<br />
In 2003 he reiterated his optimism of the previous year<br />
that Russia had taken ‘some big steps forward on the road<br />
to international integration’. It had become a full member<br />
of the G8 and was taking part in the global partnership on<br />
non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, making<br />
progress towards joining the WTO and improving its credit<br />
rating. Russia valued the anti-terrorist coalition. <strong>The</strong> policy<br />
of developing a strategic partnership with the European<br />
Union was gradually being realized.<br />
Throughout his first term, Putin avoided clashing with<br />
the West over the ‘near abroad’. He placed a benign<br />
interpretation on the enlargement of the European Union<br />
up to the borders of Russia. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania<br />
– all former Soviet republics – and five countries formerly<br />
within the Warsaw Pact joined the EU on 1 May 2004. In<br />
his annual address three weeks later, Putin declared: ‘<strong>The</strong><br />
expansion of the European Union should not just bring us<br />
closer geographically, but also economically and spiritually.<br />
… This means new markets and new investment. Generally<br />
it means new possibilities for the future of Greater Europe.’ 11<br />
Most strikingly, Putin chose not to make a big issue of the<br />
enlargement of NATO. He had put down a marker that ‘we<br />
see the CIS area as the sphere of our strategic interests’ and<br />
‘tens of millions of <strong>Russian</strong>s live in these countries’. 12 <strong>The</strong><br />
NATO applicants came from outside the CIS, and the subject<br />
of NATO’s expansion was conspicuously absent (bar his<br />
one glancing reference in 2001) from the set-piece annual<br />
addresses of Putin’s first term.<br />
<strong>Russian</strong> officials and generals made clear privately that the<br />
applications, in particular, of the three Baltic states to join<br />
NATO, together with those of yet more former members of<br />
the Warsaw Pact (Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia), were<br />
deeply unwelcome. However, in the wider context of closer<br />
integration with Europe and the United States and of a<br />
strengthened Russia–NATO relationship, the Kremlin chose<br />
not to make strong public objections or by other means to<br />
obstruct the process.<br />
Ten days before NATO’s Prague summit of November<br />
2002 was to approve the accessions, Putin met NATO<br />
Secretary-General George Robertson in Brussels. He<br />
expressed satisfaction with the work of the NATO–Russia<br />
Council and confirmed that Russia would be represented<br />
at the Council’s meeting in Prague by Foreign Minister<br />
Igor Ivanov. He hoped that the enlargement would not<br />
‘undermine the military stability and security in the<br />
common European space, or damage or prejudice the<br />
national security interests of Russia’. He appreciated the<br />
existing cooperation, but ‘<strong>Russian</strong> military organizations<br />
take their own view of this situation and they make<br />
assessments of the possible deployment of forces to the<br />
territory that is affected by enlargement’.<br />
Putin was asked by a journalist whether Russia might<br />
possibly join the Alliance. He replied that the matter had<br />
never been raised, but added that, if cooperation continued<br />
to develop and NATO continued to transform in a way that<br />
corresponded with Russia’s security interests, Russia could<br />
consider ‘a broader participation in that work’. 13<br />
In sum, during its first term the Putin administration’s<br />
perspective of Russia’s relationship with the West broadly<br />
reflected the obverse view from West to East. <strong>The</strong>re were<br />
some sharp points of disagreement, but the across-theboard<br />
hostility of the Cold War appeared to be a thing of<br />
the past. Extensive contacts had developed between nonstate<br />
actors of every kind. Integration was the leitmotif.<br />
Strategic partnership was the goal.<br />
11<br />
Annual address to the Federal Assembly, 26 May 2004.<br />
12<br />
Annual address to the Federal Assembly, 16 May 2003.<br />
13<br />
Joint press conference of President Putin and NATO Secretary-General George Robertson, Brussels, 11 November 2002.<br />
4 | Chatham House