Russia Sees No Cause to Celebrate NATO Birthday

When Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin decided to snub Washington and boycott NATO’s 50th birthday party this weekend, it was a clear sign of how low Russia’s relations with the United States and the alliance have sunk in the last four weeks.

For Russians, there is nothing to celebrate in the longevity of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. They view NATO’s month-old bombing campaign against Yugoslavia as an unlawful act of aggression that threatens Russia’s security and could start a new Cold War. In the most dire predictions, some Russians warn that NATO’s actions could provoke a new nuclear arms race or World War III.

Always skeptical of NATO’s intentions, Russian officials now say the airstrikes are proof that the alliance is willing to attack a country outside its fold. Russia, which waged its own ethnic war in the separatist republic of Chechnya, fears that it also could be vulnerable to attack under NATO’s logic.

“What we have is the first crisis in Russia-U.S. relations since the end of the Cold War,” said Sergei M. Rogov, director of the USA-Canada Institute, a Moscow think tank. “Under an optimistic scenario, it will take years to rebuild what has been broken by the war in Yugoslavia.”

Where Americans see allied forces on a humanitarian mission, Russians see an illegal assault on a sovereign nation. Where Americans see NATO trying to stop an evil dictator, Russians see the West attempting to cut Russia off from the rest of Europe.

“People are convinced that an arms race is inevitable and a buildup of nuclear weapons is inevitable and that Russia will face a much more unstable situation than even three months ago,” said Sergei A. Karaganov, a former member of Yeltsin’s Security Council.

On March 24, the day the bombing of Yugoslavia started, Russia retaliated by breaking off relations with NATO and recalled its envoy from the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels. On Wednesday, Russia announced that, in protest, it would not send a delegation to the NATO summit in Washington that starts today with the participation of leaders from 42 other countries.

NATO was created by the United States and its European allies in 1949 to contain the perceived threat of communism after World War II. The Soviet Union countered with the formation of its own European military alliance, the Warsaw Pact.

As the power of the Soviet Union waned, then-President Mikhail S. Gorbachev agreed to pull Soviet troops out of Central Europe and permit Germany to retain full NATO membership after reunification. In a gentlemen’s agreement with Gorbachev, U.S. officials promised that the alliance in turn would not expand eastward, according to Jack F. Matlock, who attended the negotiations as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.

That verbal commitment was broken in 1997 with the decision to invite three former Soviet satellites--Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic--to join NATO as full members.

Attempting to soothe Russia’s fears about NATO enlargement, the alliance stressed its origins as a purely defensive organization that would not attack other nations unprovoked. Even the charter of the 19-member alliance forbids offensive military action beyond the borders of NATO nations, Western leaders pointed out.

Those assurances also proved to be short-lived. Predictions by Russian officials last year that the shifting balance of power in Europe and the widening role of NATO would lead to armed conflict have come true.

“There are a number of points which worry us,” Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov said in a December interview. “Above all, it is the possible use of NATO forces without U.N. sanction. Secondly, the possibility of actions by NATO beyond its sphere of responsibility.”

The deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations is illustrated by a poll conducted earlier this month by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion.

Of 1,600 Russians surveyed, 56% said the U.S. and NATO were responsible for the escalation of the Kosovo conflict, while 63% said the ultimate goal of the U.S. and NATO was to set up bases and deploy troops in Kosovo. Only 33% said they had a positive attitude toward the United States, down from 67% in a poll in December.

Patriarch Alexi II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, spoke for many Russians when he went to the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, on what was ostensibly a peace mission Tuesday and delivered a sermon condemning the West’s “orgy of sin” and “lawlessness” in Kosovo.

“Bombs and missiles are pouring down on this land not because they seek to defend anyone,” the patriarch told a congregation of Serbs. “The NATO military action has a different goal--to destroy the postwar order, which was paid for with heavy bloodshed, and to impose upon people an order alien to them and based on the dictate of brute force.”

The Russian government largely has sided with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in the war. It continues, for example, to deny that Milosevic’s regime carried out “ethnic cleansing” against ethnic Albanians in Yugoslavia’s Kosovo province before the NATO airstrikes began.

In recent days, Russia has attempted to strike a more balanced posture and help find a peaceful way out of the conflict. Former Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, recently named Yeltsin’s special envoy on Kosovo, flew to Belgrade on Thursday and discussed with Milosevic a possible compromise in the conflict.

Russia worries that it will become increasingly isolated from the rest of Europe if NATO continues to add former Communist countries as members or if the alliance takes over their territories by force.

Russians fear that NATO’s decision this week to update alliance plans for a potential Yugoslavia ground war--which Russia calls an invasion--could dramatically escalate tension between the two powers.

“This is the road to disaster and would destroy whatever is left of Russia-U.S. relations after the end of the Cold War,” said Rogov of the USA-Canada Institute. “If NATO can invade one country, NATO can invade another country. There are plenty of ethnic problems in Russia and other former Soviet republics” that might give NATO a pretext.

With the deterioration of Russia’s economy and military, Moscow undoubtedly would counter any threat from NATO by relying on its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent, Rogov said. That in turn could trigger a new arms race.

Already, the warfare in Kosovo is affecting Russian domestic politics and building support for the anti-American views espoused by nationalists and Communists. Some analysts predict that hostility toward the West will color the presidential election scheduled for next year.

“New and almost impassable dividing lines appear in Europe once again,” Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, head of the Moscow-based think tank Politika Fund, wrote Tuesday in the newspaper Izvestia. “The dream of one unified continent from the Atlantic to the Urals has evaporated like snow under the April sun.”