Over the past half decade, our debate about Russia--and, for that
matter, Russia's debate about us--has been episodic but always
excitable. The issue or problem dominating the news at any given
moment has been seen again and again as the test likely to determine
the overall success of the post-Soviet transformation. Handled
poorly, the problem of the day seemed likely to stunt Russia's
evolution and poison our relations for years to come--or at least
until the next make-or-break issue came along.
These would-be defining moments have included Russia's acute
financial crisis in the summer of 1998 (remembered in one recent
study as "the total collapse of the Russian economy"). It was
followed by the Bank of New York money laundering scandal in the
summer of 1999, which turned Russian corruption into headline news
for weeks on end; by Moscow's grisly grudge match against the
Chechens in the fall and winter of 1999-2000; and, this past summer,
by Vladimir Putin's (slightly) less relentless campaign to bring
independent television under government control.
Foreign policy confrontations have also generated predictions of
lasting U.S.-Russia estrangement. (I know: I made some of them.) NATO
enlargement was perhaps the first disagreement of this magnitude, but
subsequent ones have produced even more dire predictions. Was it not
obvious that relations between Washington and Moscow would never
recover, and that the start II Treaty would never be ratified, after
the war in Kosovo in 1999? When they did begin to improve, of course,
it then became obvious that the real threat to good relations, the
one from which they would never ever recover, was American deployment
of a limited national missile defense.
