Risks and rewards in Russia's resurgence

THE UNITED STATES and Russia can't see eye to eye on anything these days. However, they may soon be staring eyeball to eyeball again, as reports surfaced this week that Russian bombers could be deployed to Cuba if the United States goes ahead with plans to install missile defense interceptors in Eastern Europe. Commentators have been using the term for months now, but are we really heading for a new Cold War?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled in mid-July to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to bolster the country's enthusiastically Western-leaning government, which finds itself bombarded by Russian threats over its ambitions to join NATO and rein in Moscow-sponsored separatists on its territory.

Despite hopes for a new beginning, Russia's new president, Dmitri Medvedev, has continued his predecessor's penchant for undermining American objectives - most recently scuttling previously agreed UN sanctions on Zimbabwe. This comes in the context of Medvedev's calls before this month's Group of Eight summit to redirect the world economic order away from a flagging American hegemon. The world's financial system, he said, cannot be dependent on "only one currency and only one country."

This is the new Russia talking - a phoenix that has risen from the ashes of the 1990s, when the former Soviet empire was plunged into chaos by robber-baron capitalism and shamed by an ineffectual (and often drunk) President Boris Yeltsin. The Russia rebuilt by former KGB operative Vladimir Putin in the past eight years has relied on its vast territory's immense energy wealth and on the export of arms.

Newly confident and increasingly assertive, the Kremlin has recently sought to decrease Western influence in its Eurasian neighborhood. But, it has also exerted influence of its own further afield - such as claiming the North Pole and beginning Cold War-style nuclear bomber patrols to Guam and Scotland.

Since claiming that he gazed into Putin's soul and found it not to be threatening, President Bush has largely chosen to ignore Moscow's provocations, or attempted to counter them without much fanfare. John McCain, however, has said he would push for Russia to be kicked out of the G-8. And Barack Obama has hinted on more than one occasion that he would take a harder line on the country's human rights and foreign policy problems. Either way, the growing trouble spots in US-Russia relations - from Moscow's sale of antiaircraft units to Iran to the Kremlin's growing grip on Europe's energy supplies - will necessitate a new approach by a new administration.

That said, we may be on the cusp of a breakthrough. Dmitri Rogozin, Russia's envoy to NATO, usually spends his time lambasting the Alliance for seeking to surround Russia. Earlier this month, however, he quietly mentioned that in September, Medvedev will suggest a joint security framework "from Vancouver to Vladivostok."

While he gave few details, it seems that Moscow will attempt to elicit a grand bargain from the West: transcontinental security cooperation in exchange for a Russian sphere of influence in former Soviet Eurasia.

This could mean that the United States would have to abandon democratic Georgia, reforming Ukraine, and the energy-rich countries of the Caspian region to Russian dominance. Both NATO and the EU would have to halt their expansion, along with the peace, prosperity, and good governance they bring. If that is Russia's aim, then there is little to be gained from such an ambitious pact.

But, if US and European negotiators can hammer out an agreement with Moscow that serves the interests of both sides, then the dividends would be significant. Having Russia on side to tackle Iran, North Korea, transnational terrorism, climate change, and energy security would make life a lot easier for a new administration that is certain to have its hands too full elsewhere to engage in a new Cold War.

Alexandros Petersen is policy adviser with the Institute for Strategic Studies in Brussels and an adjunct fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.