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Foreign Affairs
America's Real Russian Allies
By Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul
Timothy J. Colton is Professor of Government and Director of the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University. Michael McFaul is Associate Professor of Political Science and Hoover Fellow at Stanford University and Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Mass Support
The terrorist attacks that rocked the United States on September 11 opened a new chapter in the country's relations with the outside world. Already alliances are shifting, U.S. troops are redeploying, and policymakers are rapidly rewriting their agendas. It remains unclear just what the world will look like once the dust settles. But as we enter a new and undefined era, it is becoming increasingly evident that, just as America's competition with the Soviet Union defined the second half of the last century, so will its new relationship with Russia help determine the contours of the new one.
So far, both Russia's president and its people have given the United States vigorous support since September 11. The budding personal relationship between Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush might have had few practical results before that day, but it seemed very much in evidence when Putin became the first world leader to speak with Bush after the attacks, and again when, days later, Moscow pledged wide-ranging Russian support for the American response. Meanwhile, a great many Russians — party leaders, civic activists, businesspeople, and ordinary citizens — have expressed sympathy for those in the United States. According to one Russian poll, 85 percent of Muscovites feel that the attacks were aimed not only at the United States, but at all of mankind.
Putin, of course, has good reason to show solidarity with Washington — at least for now. Russia's president is keen to link America's new battle against terrorism with his own country's campaign against rebels in Chechnya. And indeed, the connection Putin draws is not without merit. After all, Osama bin Ladin has sponsored violence in both Russia and the United States. In the longer run, however, Putin's pro-American stance may begin to waver. Despite the early cooperation, senior Russian military and intelligence officers are already pushing Putin to retreat to old ways of thinking about international politics — to regard NATO troops in Central Asia with suspicion and to worry more about Iraq's security than about America's.
If Putin does return to such Cold War habits, however, he will be moving against the grain of Russian public opinion. Russians' empathetic response to the attacks on America sprang from something deeper than mere strategic concerns. Russians aligned themselves with the United States in its hour of need — and have been more pro-American in their reactions than their own government — because, in part, of a deep support for democracy. As a number of recent polls show, the Russian people today — despite a decade of unmet expectations since the fall of communism — strongly endorse core democratic values. And they do so, among other reasons, because a sustained Western policy of engagement has encouraged democratic governance within Russia and the country's integration into the Western community of nations.
Russia's transition from authoritarianism is far from complete, however. As preoccupied as Washington is with its new campaign against terrorism, inattention to the fragility of Russian democracy would be a huge mistake — and . . .