Back in the days of World War II the Soviets had one former
foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, and a current FM, Vyacheslav
Molotov, to share the two-faced duties of chief foreign
representative of the USSR. Litvinov would butter up the
politicos in Washington and London while Molotov was Mr.
Nyet in Moscow. Today, instead of the good cop/bad cop
system, there is the current “man for all seasons,” Sergei
Lavrov.
Lavrov’s style is an interesting and effective combination
of smooth, reasoned manner along with an unbending fault-shifting
technique that borders on bombast. His manner well reflects the
present Medvedev/Putin foreign policy itself. This policy has at
its core the residue of the old Soviet communist fear of NATO and
American influence in European affairs.
Why Moscow should fear Washington’s role in European
security matters is hard to understand when it is patently
obvious that the Obama Administration is so little concerned with
Europe. Yet this is the motivating factor behind the Russian
desire to create what has been described as Dmitry Medvedev’s
pan-European security treaty. If the implications of Mr. Lavrov’s
behind-the-scenes comments can be credited, Moscow’s perception
is that the United States is driving NATO toward building an
offensive capability challenging Russia’s “natural” border of
Eastern Europe all the way to and through Ukraine.
How the Kremlin could divine a conflict-avoiding Obama
government to be supporting a NATO push eastward is explicable
only if the Russian leadership seriously believes it needs a
neo-Cold War propaganda line to offset its domestic fears of the
future. The fears are legitimate even if the Moscow reaction is
not. But even these legitimate fears do not justify the type of
exaggerated response emanating from the Russian foreign and
defense policy establishment.
It is true that there is a serious potential fall in the
Russian population. It is true that the Russian economy has not
grown in proportion to the country’s new and important role as an
energy exporter. It is true that Islamic extremism threatens a
large portion of Caucasian Russia. But such circumstances do not
justify the dredging up of old attacks on the West’s “aggressive
ambitions.” There is more reason to fear Iranian efforts to
infiltrate and exploit the Moslem minority in Russia and the
growing Chinese economic influence in Eastern Siberia than the
imagined dangers of a U.S.-led NATO aiming to destabilize
Russia.
As great as may be the temptation to dismiss Russian
foreign policy mutterings by Sergei Lavrov as simply a replay of
earlier Soviet international agitprop, it is important
to recognize the Russian historical paranoia that goes back to
the 19th century. There is an opportunity now for Russia to take
great strides in just the areas about which its leaders most
rant—strategic defense. But they have chosen to ignore the
opportunity.
The program of U.S. anti-missile batteries placed in Poland
with radar in the Czech Republic aimed at countering Iranian
nuclear missile systems could have been used by Moscow to begin
an entirely new defense alignment with Washington. Instead Putin
chose to characterize these purely defensive weapons as carrying
the potential of aggression against Russia. It was deemed more
valuable to the Kremlin to revive fears of U.S. and NATO
aggression than to accept the advantages of a mutual defense
posture.
In the same manner the Lavrov/bad cop phase of Russian
diplomatic schizophrenia has treated nuclear arms reduction with
a far less welcoming attitude than it deserves. Of course this is
all directed from the current Putin/Medvedev tandem leadership,
but nonetheless the “bad cop” side of their foreign minister is
once again the same very useful device it was seventy years ago
under Vyacheslav Molotov.
This analogy holds true for other periods of contemporary
Russian history. Khrushchev tried the Molotov demeanor with the
young John F. Kennedy during their meeting in Vienna and then
reversed himself the next year when he pulled the Soviet missiles
out of Cuba. At present the Russian Foreign Ministry is working
overtime to show its two faces at once on Iranian matters,
simultaneously smiling in order to keep up Russia’s commercial
relationship with Tehran, while showing toughness in support of
threatened UN sanctions over Iranian nuclear weapon
development.
Although this game of offering opposing characterizations
of Russia to the world may strike Moscow as a clever way to
protect its own ambitions, two-faced diplomacy doesn’t really
work well in the globalized system in which we must all operate.
Operational tacking aside, it’s very important for great
countries like Russia to aspire to clear and consistent foreign
policies. How else can the rest of the world, West and East,
formulate its own consistent positions in return toward Russia.
Sergei Lavrov, and any successor to him, must be allowed to bury
the ghosts of Litvinov and Molotov.
