A democratic Russia is as natural an ally of the United States as a totalitarian Soviet Union was a foe. For both the United States and Russia constructive partnership is the best strategic choice. Despite its troubles, Russia remains a great power. In a range of economic and security organizations, the West must make room for greater Russian input. Russia cannot accept a partnership in which one side retains complete freedom while demanding that the other coordinate its every step. The West must consider Russia's special role and interests in its "near abroad," where Moscow will seek gradual and voluntary reintegration. The benefits of partnership are real but require frank dialogue and mutual trust.
Andrei Kozyrev is Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. This article was translated by Antonina W. Bouis.
IN SEARCH OF A JOINT STRATEGY
In August 1991, addressing a mass rally in Moscow in the wake of the failed communist coup, I officially stated something that had been just an idea before: the United States and other Western democracies are as natural friends and eventual allies of the democratic Russia as they are foes of a totalitarian U.S.S.R.
Indeed, partnership is the best strategic choice for Russia and the United States. Rejection of it would mean the loss of a historic opportunity to facilitate the formation of a democratic, open Russian state and the transformation of an unstable, post-confrontational world into a stable and democratic one.
Achieving these goals is of vital importance to Russia and the United States, which now share common democratic values. The national and state interests of both countries no longer conflict but complement each other on most international issues. The stage is set, then, for Russia and the United States to influence positively the course of world affairs, not through a condominium or imposed superpower priorities, but catalytically through a constructive partnership.
Yet despite successes such as the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the agreement to cease mutual targeting of nuclear weapons, and the cooperative approaches to several regional conflicts, partnership between Russia and the United States faces problems or fails altogether in some areas. In my view, this is due not to a wrong strategy, but to the fact that so far we have no strategy at all. While elements of cooperation exist on concrete issues, a mature strategic partnership has yet to emerge.
Partnership could run only against the interests of military-industrial groups and factions of government bureaucracies in both countries. These forces see themselves losing ground after the Cold War, and they are trying to survive by portraying their narrow group interests as national ones. They profit from the inertia of past confrontation and the inevitable difficulties of building a new Russian-American relationship.
The traditional American Sovietologists harp on the difficulties and unpredictability of Russia’s internal processes, which do not fit the usual Western criteria and stereotypes. Some analysts cannot accept the idea of a strong Russia, whether it be imperial or democratic. They propose that the West either take a wait-and-see approach or develop a new containment strategy.
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Rosy scenarios of a democratic, economically revitalized Russia are the basis for the U.S. partnership with Boris Yeltsin. Such views hinge on the assumption that Russia wants peace with its neighbors. But Russia cannot be both a democracy and an empire, and it now seems to be choosing the latter. In the "near abroad," the politically powerful Russian military hungrily eyes breakaway republics. By heaping aid on a corrupt economy and deferring to wounded pride, the United States will legitimize a Russian sphere of influence in Europe's east and forfeit the fruits of its Cold War victory. A more even-handed diplomacy and distribution of aid among the former Soviet republics could temper Russia's imperial impulse.
Strobe Talbott's memoirs provide a richly detailed account of the U.S.-Russia relationship in the 1990s. They are an insider's chronicle of critical (and often overlooked) successes mixed with deeply regrettable lost chances.
Moscow with a Soviet hangover tests the patience even of those who most wish to engage it. As Chechnya festers, privatization lags, and the world contemplates the possibility of a communist president in the Kremlin dreaming of empire, some ridicule the notion of partnership. Russian chauvinists paint America as the enemy, but the interests of the two countries after the Cold War are compatible. The West should focus its attention--and Russia's--on common interests like nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, regional peace, and full participati0n in the world economy. America should deal rationally with irrationalities in a nation finding its way.

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