Resurgent Russia Is Unlikely to Heed U.S.

In its campaign to bring about a more democratic Russia, the Bush administration is speaking ever more loudly, but carrying a small stick.

Although the administration has served notice that it will press the Kremlin to govern democratically at home and play by the rules abroad, it has less and less leverage to bring this about. Despite the Bush administration’s hopes and sometimes wishful rhetoric, the Russia that once was poor and dependent has found it can ride its energy riches to global influence.

In the 1990s, Russia depended heavily on international loans and yearned to be seen as a world power. Now, with oil selling for more than $70 a barrel and with $220 billion in gold and hard currency in the Russian treasury, Moscow needs less in the way of aid or international recognition. The shift is a potent reminder of how oil prices can alter the balance of power.

As a result, Washington is likely to make little headway in changing Russia’s policies and faces a difficult relationship with the Kremlin for years to come, say current and former U.S. officials and other experts.

“If we had developed the relationship in a more positive way four years ago, we would have had more leverage,” said Steven Pifer, a top State Department official for Russia during President Bush’s first term. “But the relationship now is pretty thin. There’s not that much they need us on.”

Nonetheless, the Bush administration has made it clear over the last two weeks that it intends to step up pressure on the Russian government. In an appearance May 4 in Vilnius, Lithuania, Vice President Dick Cheney accused Russia of rolling back democracy and using its energy wealth as a “weapon” against its neighbors.

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin responded, criticizing the United States in his annual state of the nation address. The White House fired back that it expected reform from Moscow.

Bush is expected to carry much the same message to a July summit of the leading industrialized nations in St. Petersburg at which Putin will be host. Some analysts fear that a face-off between the two leaders would begin a period of confrontation, the converse of the Bush-Putin summits of 2001 and 2002, which appeared to clear the way for collaboration between the onetime Cold War rivals.

Early in his presidency, Bush hoped to nurture ties with Russia. He was grateful when Putin responded to the Sept. 11 attacks with sympathy and help, and the two leaders mapped a new strategic partnership that was to include major energy projects, security assistance and people-to-people contacts.

But the relationship they envisioned never came to fruition. The energy projects stalled, economic ties proved to be less than hoped for and even Moscow’s counterterrorism assistance fell short of expectations, some U.S. officials say.

The problem partly was negligence on both sides -- and partly the fact that they saw the world very differently.

U.S. officials tried to observe Russian sensitivities on key issues, such as Moscow’s battle against Chechen separatists. But Russia opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. And these days Washington sees Moscow as one of the most significant impediments to its efforts to build international pressure against Iran’s suspected nuclear ambitions.

Even by the autumn of 2003, some U.S. officials feared that the Putin government, in its effort to restore order through a strong executive branch, was undoing many important post-Soviet democratic reforms.

The concerns fueled a debate within the administration on how to handle Russia. Cheney and other hard-line foreign policy experts wanted to send a tougher message, officials said, whereas Bush and Condoleezza Rice, then his national security advisor, favored patience.

But, in a bad sign for the relationship, many senior officials simply viewed Russia as secondary to the administration’s priority of reshaping the Middle East. In their view, Russia was an issue of the past, not worth a lot of effort.

One senior administration official said that the tougher U.S. position on Russia had come about gradually, not through any dramatic change.

“There’s been no policy break, but an evolution in our thinking as we’ve observed what the Russians have actually done,” said the official, who declined to be identified.

But some observers say that in taking a new stance on Russia, the White House was just catching up with a growing belief among many in Washington that the United States needed to get tougher.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has been calling for a tougher stance, and has urged Bush to stay away from the St. Petersburg summit to avoid appearing supportive of the Kremlin. This year, a panel of the Council on Foreign Relations headed by Jack Kemp, a former Republican lawmaker from New York, and John Edwards, the former Democratic senator from North Carolina, urged a stronger American challenge to Putin’s policies.

As that position gained support, the White House needed to spell out its views before Bush showed up in St. Petersburg, said Pifer, the former State Department official, now a senior advisor to the Center on Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The meeting is likely to enhance Putin’s prestige but carries risks for Bush, Pifer said.

“Bush could get hammered if he comes home with nothing to show for it,” he said. “I can’t believe there’s anybody at the White House who’s very enthusiastic about going to St. Petersburg.”

By criticizing the Kremlin before the trip, “the vice president’s speech at least put down markers that the White House is not blind to some of these problems,” Pifer said.

U.S. officials have taken pains to make it clear that they do not intend start a new Cold War and want to work with the Russians in areas where their interests coincide.

“Everybody wants to have a good, solid, strategic relationship with Russia,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week in an interview on NBC. “This isn’t the Soviet Union. But there are a number of areas of grave concern.”

U.S. officials have notably avoided commenting on ways they could penalize Russia if it failed to change. The implication of their warnings is that they would no longer treat Russia as a democracy in the inner circle of U.S. allies, but instead more like an authoritarian government.

But it is not clear how much of a punishment this would be, given the lack of U.S. influence.

“The problem for the Bush administration is that we really have very little leverage,” said Andrew C. Kuchins of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“There are lots of thing we want from them. But we have really very little leverage.”