The Foreign Service Journal, December 2016

30 DECEMBER 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL In 1997, I visited Moscow for a seminar devoted to NATO expansion. In tones that ranged from pleading to anger, Russian diplomats, politicians and journalists warned that the expansion of NATO into countries that only a few years earlier had been part of the Soviet security zone would strengthen the strong resentment against the West that was already boosting the rise of xenophobia and authoritarianism across the Russian political spectrum. Opposition in Moscow does not, of course, necessarily mean that NATO expansion was wrong. Membership in NATO and the European Union was critical in integrating former Eastern Euro- pean communist regions into a united and democratic Europe. But the failure to work out some mutually acceptable form of cooperation between NATO and Russia was a major setback. Russia, itself, bears much of the blame for this failure. Its threat- ening posture to its neighbors, aggressive intelligence activities and the questionable caliber of some Russian officials sent to NATO headquarters in Brussels left the impression that Moscow had little interest in ending East-West confrontation. Nevertheless, anyone seeking to understand why Putin has enjoyed such success in Russia should start with the sense of humiliation many Russians feel at the image of NATO forces perched astride borders that once formed part of the internal boundaries of the Soviet Union. In the early post-Cold War years the new Russian govern- ment, aware of its own weakness, stayed close to the United States on international issues. But, with its long-time Soviet rival vanished, Washington found it all too easy to dismiss Moscow’s concerns when these conflicted with its own priori- ties. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II, signed in January 1993, is an example. It mandated the most sweeping reduc- tions in nuclear arms achieved up to that time. Russian experts calculated that START II would save Moscow the equivalent of approximately $7 billion, but the optics of the deal looked bad to many Russians. In particular, it forced Moscow to give up a substantial part of its intercontinental ballistic missile force, whose elimination had been a U.S. objective since the incep- tion of arms control negotiations. START II was a good deal for both sides, but it also reflected the realities of the time. The United States made clear that if Moscow did not go along, Washington would maintain its nuclear forces at a level greater than the impoverished Russia of that era could afford. That perception of imbalance is one reason why START II never entered into force. After the treaty was concluded, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Robert Strauss told his good friend U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III: “Baker, you didn’t leave those folks enough on the table.” It was a shrewd remark that might serve as a good summation of U.S. policy toward Russia in the years immediately after the col- lapse of the Soviet Union. Meeting Moscow’s Challenge So what do we do now? Talk of a new Cold War is unre- alistic, if only because Russia remains incapable by itself of mounting the sustained global challenge to Western interests that the USSR did. Putin has impressively restored aspects of Russian military power, but his modernization program came Talk of a new ColdWar is unrealistic, if only because Russia remains incapable by itself of mounting the sustained global challenge to Western interests that the USSR did. From an exercise involving Lithuanian and NATO forces held in Lithuania in 2016. JAMESTALALAY