Airstrikes Damage U.S. Relations With Russia and China

Little seen and easily forgotten in the heat of NATO’s first war in its 50 years of existence, a more subtle kind of damage smolders. Behind the fiery plumes of smoke pouring from targets of the airstrikes in Yugoslavia lies collateral political fallout that could complicate American foreign policy aims in the Balkans and beyond for years to come.

The NATO air campaign and the sudden hemorrhage of ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo have shaken the fragile Balkan democracies of Albania and Macedonia, as well as Montenegro--Serbia’s ambivalent partner in the Yugoslav federation. The stability of all three is an essential ingredient in the Clinton administration’s recipe for a peaceful southeastern Europe.

The absence of the United Nations as a meaningful player during the Kosovo crisis has dented the world body’s credibility and raised further questions about its role on the brink of a new century.

But after the first two weeks of bombing, the most serious political damage is elsewhere. Two of America’s most important bilateral relationships--those with Russia and China, both nuclear powers and permanent members of the U.N. Security Council--are suffering.

The most serious damage has been to U.S. relations with Moscow, where the airstrikes are seen as nothing less than confirmation of a Russian nightmare: an aggressive, out-of-control Atlantic alliance with designs against Moscow and its allies. For members of the Russian policy elite, the Kosovo campaign has erased all the Clinton administration’s assurances that they have no reason to fear enlargement of a purely defensive alliance.

“It reminds Russians that the expansion of NATO has turned out to be the very danger that opponents said it would be,” said Stephen Cohen, New York University professor of Russian studies and history.

The fact that Moscow is powerless to stop the attacks on Yugoslavia, a country with a strong religious and cultural affinity, merely adds to Russia’s sense of frustration and profound humiliation.

“For Westerners it is really difficult to imagine how badly humiliated Russians are,” said analyst Anatoly I. Utkin of the USA-Canada Institute, who believes that the world is sliding back into a cold war. “It is a feeling spread right across the country, and it’s very dangerous.”

According to Moscow-based analysts, the opposition to NATO’s action spreads far beyond the traditional nationalist and communist hotbeds, crossing the usual political and generational lines. Several former deputy prime ministers--including Anatoly B. Chubais and Yegor T. Gaidar, who were associated with introduction of policies like privatization and who normally take a pro-Western line--have condemned the airstrikes. They have warned that NATO’s bombs are hurting liberals and undermining reforms in Russia.

Many worry that the anti-Americanism will harm reform-minded candidates running in parliamentary elections later this year, while strengthening nationalist and communist politicians--a development that could shape Moscow’s policies toward Washington and the West for the first half of the next decade.

Andrei V. Kortunov of the Russian Science Foundation argues that the sense of insult in Russia is much deeper than the anger over the airstrikes against Bosnian Serbs in 1995 or NATO’s recent expansion. He predicts that the damage to U.S.-Russia relations will be deeper and more sustained.

“There is nothing to cushion the damage. There are very few positive achievements in the relationship now to offset the damage,” he said.

The airstrikes’ impact has been magnified because they follow a cascade of events that have already eroded the budding confidence that characterized Russia’s view of its relations with the U.S. in the early post-Cold War years.

Those events include the bombing of Iraq and the Clinton administration’s decision to build a missile defense system, as well as the failure of U.S.-crafted economic reforms for Russia and the subsequent feeling of abandonment. Today, arms control specialists fret that the U.S.-led military action has once again derailed Russian ratification of the START II treaty, which would limit both Russian and American nuclear arsenals to 3,500 warheads.

Although some argue that Moscow’s opposition is irrelevant because the nation is powerless to intervene, others insist that Russian involvement is essential for any long-term peace in and around Kosovo.

“History tells us that stability in the Balkans requires both a stable Russia and Russia as a guarantor of any peace there,” Cohen said.

It is a measure of how the Clinton administration views Moscow that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has had seven telephone conversations averaging 20 to 30 minutes each with Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov since the bombing began.

A senior State Department official said her calls are meant to keep Ivanov informed of events and reinforce the message that NATO and Russia must work together.

The airstrikes have also strained U.S. ties with China, whose leaders Tuesday reiterated their demand that NATO stop the bombing, which they say has only “aggravated the original situation.”

The statement was made by Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi amid increasingly heated rhetoric by Beijing against the Western alliance. For example, in a front-page commentary, the People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, railed against the airstrikes and pointedly referred to U.S. leadership of NATO.

“Ordinary Yugoslavians are the biggest victims in NATO’s naked aggression,” the paper said.

Although the airstrikes have soured the overall atmosphere of Sino-American ties, they have apparently not yet undermined specific elements of the relationship. After reported discussions within the Chinese leadership, Premier Zhu Rongji went ahead with a scheduled trip to the United States this week.

Chinese and Russian opposition to the use of military force in Kosovo has effectively excluded the U.N. Security Council as a player during the most crucial phases of the crisis, a development likely to strain ties between the United States and many member states. As the first bombs fell, Secretary-General Kofi Annan was left to lament both the failure of diplomacy and state his view that “the council should be involved in any decision to resort to the use of force.”

The U.S., which argued that it was acting under the authority of earlier Security Council resolutions, simply skirted the U.N. in the days before the bombs fell. Only as the flow of refugees became a flood and the United Nations assumed the role of the lead relief agency in Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro have the council and Annan once again become active.

Some observers saw the NATO campaign as an end to the idea that the Security Council could deal effectively with the world’s biggest problems.

“The honeymoon of the ‘90s is over,” said Ruth Wedgwood, who tracks the U.N. as a specialist on international organizations at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

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Marshall reported from Washington, Dixon from Moscow. Times staff writers Henry Chu in Beijing and John J. Goldman at the United Nations contributed to this report.