What Russia Wants

This much we know: In the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has transformed itself from a one-party state into a one-pipeline state -- a semiauthoritarian regime in democratic clothing. At the same time, Russia has grown increasingly independent and unpredictable on the international political scene. And now that Vladimir Putin has successfully installed his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, he is nowhere near relinquishing his grip on power. Putin's foreign policy is here to stay.

But there's so much we can't know about the direction Russia is heading. It is, at once, a regime that offers its citizens consumer rights but not political freedoms, state sovereignty but not individual autonomy, a market economy but not genuine democracy. It is both a rising global power and a weak state with corrupt and inefficient institutions. The Kremlin's regime seems both rock solid and extremely vulnerable, simultaneously authoritarian and wildly popular. Although Russia's economy has performed well in the past 10 years, it is more dependent on the production and export of natural resources today than it was during Soviet times. Its foreign policy is no less puzzling. Russia may be more democratic today, but it is less predictable and reliable as a world player than was the Soviet Union. The more capitalist and Westernized Russia becomes, the more anti-Western its policies seem. The more successful Russia's foreign policy looks, the more unclear its goals appear.

Russia's contradictory development has succeeded once again in capturing the world's political imagination. Putin's tenure has left most people confused about what role Russia now wants to play in the world. In recent years, for example, Moscow has orchestrated a noisy and confrontational return to the international scene. It decided not to cooperate with the West in taming Iran's nuclear ambitions or in settling the final status of Kosovo. Last year, the Kremlin unilaterally suspended the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. It blocked the work of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Gazprom, Russia's gas monopoly, aggressively tries to control the energy supply throughout the region. The country's military budget has increased sixfold since 2000. Russian planes are patrolling the Atlantic. Moscow's intelligence network is creeping into all corners of Europe. Not since the hottest days of the Cold War have so many wondered just what was going on behind the Kremlin's closed doors.

ONCE A SUPERPOWER...

Some look at Russia and see a wounded enemy readying itself for another round. They interpret Moscow's new assertiveness as a simple overreaction to the humiliation of the 1990s. These realists are quick to blame NATO expansion and Western triumphalism after the Soviet collapse for the direction of Russia's current foreign policy. What Moscow learned in its "decade of humiliation" is that the West respects strength, not shared values. On the other hand, the liberals who shaped the West's policies toward Russia in the 1990s are not in a self-critical mood. They tend to believe that Putin's foreign policy is simply a new incarnation of Moscow's traditional imperial policies. Plus, though they may concede that the West has lost some of its ability to shape Russian politics, they insist that the West can still focus on the rule of law -- if not full democracy. In their view, Russia's gains in the international arena are temporary and the Putin miracle is a mirage. In short, even the experts are far from unanimous in divining the motives of Russia's recent turn.

It would be easy to assume Russia is simply grasping power for power's sake, or to conclude that just as "there are no ex-KGB officers," there are also no ex-imperial powers. But to understand why the Kremlin acts the way it does, one must first recognize how haunted it is by uncertainty and paranoia. How Russia thinks is closely linked to how Russia's political elites feel. Moscow's current strategy is not merely a reflection of its new economic power or a geopolitical change. It is the expression of the traumatic experience of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the omnipresent political vulnerability of the current regime.

In effect, Russian foreign policy is held hostage by the sense of fragility that marked the Russian experience of the 1990s. It explains Moscow's preference for the pre-World War II international order based on unrestricted sovereignty and sphere-of-influence politics. It explains Russia's open resistance to American hegemony and its opposition to the postmodern European order promoted by the European Union (EU). The EU, with its emphasis on human rights and openness, threatens the Kremlin's monopoly on power. The West's policy of democracy promotion awakens in Moscow the nightmare of ethnic and religious politics and the threat of the territorial disintegration of the Russian Federation. Russia feels threatened by the invasion of Western-funded nongovernmental organizations, and the Kremlin is tempted to re-create the police state to prevent foreign interference in its domestic politics. The recent "color" revolutions that shook the post-Soviet space embodied the ultimate threat for Russia: popular revolt orchestrated by remote control. Moscow is in an elusive quest for absolute stability.

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