Losing Russia

The message of a Dimitri K. Simes article in Foreign Affairs is that the West is partly to blame for the aggressive reawakening of the Russian bear. The Clinton administration generated much resentment, Simes said, by giving Russia the "spinach treatment." The U.S. fed it policies that Washington deemed healthy, no matter how unappetizing Moscow found them. Nato expansion then heightened the resentment. To avoid losing Russia, Simes said, the U.S. should drop its belief that it can secure Russia's support for its own policies while ignoring Russia's priorities. This means not backing down on missile defense, he said, but limiting deployment to the stated objective of overcoming rogue-state threats and combining this with specific steps to reassure Moscow that MD isn't aimed against it. The good news, Simes said, is that Russia isn't eager to enter into an alliance against the West. Its elite, he said, don't want to give up their Swiss accounts. (Or Carlsbad spas.)