U.S.-Russia: Summit With A Difference 'Emerging Partners' Forging Complex Bond

Margaret Shapiro (Washington Post Foreign Service)

(C) 1994 The Washington Post (LEGI-SLATE Article No. 213049)

MOSCOW


    The last time Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton met for a full-fledged
summit, Russia was still in shock from an armed uprising against reform,
ultranationalists had swept into parliament, and key reformers were about to
quit the Yeltsin government in disgust.
    A sense of uncertainty and worry as deep as the gloom of that Moscow
winter pervaded their summit last January. Would Russia stray from the path
of political and economic reform? Would it become the aggressive power that
victorious ultranationalists had promised? Could Yeltsin hang on to power?
How should the United States, which had staked its Russia policy on Yeltsin,
help?
    This time, although none of those questions has been definitively
answered, the mood and atmospherics could not be more different. The emotions
and violence of last fall and winter have faded as Russia has settled into
relative tranquillity. Yeltsin seems secure in his position, for  now, and
economic reform continues, though often confusingly.
    More significantly, Russian and U.S. officials interviewed last week
said, there also has been a subtle shift in relations between the two
countries. The new tranquillity at home has released Yeltsin from having to
play the role of supplicant and Clinton that of savior - the underlying theme
of their previous summits.
    Russia no longer needs, or wants, the intense political and financial
support from the United States that it demanded in the past, officials said.
Similarly, for the United States, Russia is no longer the same crisis-driven
focus of foreign policy that it was less than a year ago.
    But the tone too has changed. What Clinton has often called the friendly
"partnership" still exists, but with a greater suspicion now on both sides.
Disagreements over Bosnia, the expansion of NATO, arms trade and Russian
involvement in former Soviet republics have erased any illusions that
relations between these former adversaries can remain as seamless as they had
been until last year.
    "In some ways we had an abnormal relationship" after the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, one senior U.S. official said last week. "We're finding we
have things we agree on and things we disagree on. The relationship becomes
more complex, but it also becomes more normal."
    But what one Western diplomat called the "warm fuzzy" feeling many
Russians had toward the United States after the Soviet Union collapsed has
mostly vanished, replaced by a low-grade anti-Americanism that occasionally
finds its way into official pronouncements.
    The United States often is seen here as angling to preserve its position
as sole superpower, with Russia a struggling secondary nation. In news
accounts of the last Russian troops' withdrawal from Germany and the Baltic
states, for instance, frequent mention was made of the fact that U.S. troops,
under NATO, are still stationed in Europe and are not being withdrawn.
   Meanwhile, nationalist sentiments that so shocked the West when bellowed
by ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky last winter have now
penetrated the Russian political landscape. From Yeltsin on down, politicians
here understand that, in light of Zhirinovsky's electoral success, they
cannot risk being seen as weak on the issue of Russian pride and nationhood.
    This in large part explains the Kremlin's claim of a "sphere of
influence" in the former Soviet Union, its bluster toward the Baltic states
over treatment of their ethnic Russians and its defense of Bosnian Serbs, who
are seen as part of the greater Slavic community. Ultranationalists had
attacked Yeltsin especially viciously for failing to defend the Serbs against
Western "interference" in the civil war in the former Yugoslavia.
    Clinton's desire to end an arms embargo on Bosnian Muslims so they can
defend themselves against the Serbs is certain to be a major source of
contention between the two presidents at the upcoming summit, officials from
both countries said last week. "Russia is looking for a new place in the
world and refuses to accept that its place is only that of a regional power.
Such a position brings the present regime and national-patriotic opposition
closer to each," political commentator Stanislav Kondrashov wrote last week
in the daily newspaper Izvestia.
    U.S. officials in interviews acknowledged the new tenor in the rhetoric
from Moscow since the last summit, but said they believe the relationship
remains basically sound. They pointed to the growing number of bilateral
contacts, including officials, business people and tourists, that allow each
side to understand the other better, the joint military maneuvers recently
held in Russia and the Kremlin's expressed desire to further integrate Russia
into the world economy.
    The officials also said that the Russian bark was often worse than its
bite. Yeltsin, for instance, had sworn last summer that Russia would not
adhere to a scheduled departure of troops from the Baltics because those
governments were discriminating against Russian speakers. In the end, though
 and after Clinton personally pressed the issue - the troops were pulled out
on time.
   The two presidents are likely to come up against some of the touchier
points of what one U.S. official called "an emerging partnership" when they
meet this week. But the official said any friction will be minor compared
with summits of the past.
   "Unlike during the Cold War, when the whole world hung on whether we'd
survive thenext summit, now it's about two leaders getting together to
discuss issues that need to be dealt with in an ongoing way," the official
said. "This is an emerging partnership that is working."