U.S. - Russia Relations

In your academic career you thought a lot and focused on U.S. - Soviet relations, and now as a parliamentarian, on U.S. - Russia relations. What is your assessment of where we are in those relations?

Relations during the last two years were better than ever. There was an unprecedented scale of cooperation after September 11th between Russia and the United States to fight against international terrorism. And a successful operation in Afghanistan, which was a result of very close cooperation between Russia and the United States, a great achievement, certainly, for world security and for Russian security as well, since the Taliban was an immediate threat to Russian security in the south.

However, now we have come to a very serious threshold, because American policy in Iraq is not supported in Russia by either the population or the political and strategic community. It's also not supported in Europe by the main America allies, to say nothing about China and the Islamic world. I think that what happens in Iraq will affect Russian - American relations for many years to come. I hope that we can live through this hard period without major damage. But that requires a lot of skills. At this particular moment, I do not see such skills either in Washington or in Moscow.

We're on the threshold of war with Iraq, but there is a period that comes before that in which many of the achievements in arms control which were begun in the Soviet period, in the Soviet Union's relations with the United States, have been unraveling. Whether it was the United States not ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or deciding unilaterally to end the ABM Treaty, the Bush administration has questioned the whole arms control agenda -- maybe finishing up on START II, but questioning the need for that in the future. As a Russian parliamentarian who also has a background of understanding what that agenda was all about during the Cold War, what is your reaction to that?

I think that Americans in this particular area are following the Russian tradition -- to put it more precisely, following Soviet Communist tradition: first, destroy everything and then start building something new. Usually that doesn't work, because transitions, in history, are not like opening a new page. They are based on the preceding events and preceding structures and achievements -- in particular, international treaties.

The United States during the last three years committed a number of mistakes of historic dimension, [such as] dismantling the international security system and system of arms control and disarmament and nonproliferation that was created during the decades of Cold War, instead of amending it very carefully, with great skill, to adjust it to new threats and new realities. Just to give you one example, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was very closely linked to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Would it not be easier to fight the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction if we had ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and if we had a strong instrument to make all other nations, who want to be treated as civilized partners [adhere to] this treaty? And then in this way, guarantee that other countries will not be able to develop and test nuclear weapons?

For instance, we could apply this to India and Pakistan. Apply this to Israel. Make North Korea and Iran join this treaty. We would put a cap on India and Pakistan nuclear programs. And we would, effectively, put a cap or stop the potential nuclear programs of other countries. Instead, the United States rejected this. And now, when North Korea withdraws from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, what can you tell them? You cannot tell them to stay in the treaty or blame them, because the United States started this process. The same relates to ballistic missile defense. The same relates to strategic arms control. We have an old treaty which responds, basically, to the times of Cold War, but we do not have any new, serious treaty that would make us certain about our strategic relationship in ten to fifteen years. I think that this is a great mistake.

You can use your preponderant power in two ways: Either you use it to build and fortify an international system of cooperation and security, or you can destroy the system to free your own hands to do whatever you want. But you do not have to forget that there are many other nations which will join this game, and there are new superpowers on the horizon, and they will come in a vacuum, and there you'll have a lot of trouble with them.

So your assessment is a general one about the way the superpower, the United States, acts across a whole series of realms. That [rather than] going for an effort to build an international structure based on international law and rules and so on, [we've] made unilateral decisions about what is in our interest in the short-term, with negative consequences for the long term.

Right. Right.

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