Some of Primakov’s initial travel and comments reinforced that impression. Moreover, the existing Sino-Iranian connection in weapons trade as well as the Russian inclination to cooperate in Iran’s efforts to increase its access to nuclear energy seemed to provide a perfect fit for closer political dialogue and eventual alliance. The result could, at least theoretically, bring together the world’s leading Slavic power, the world’s most militant Islamic power, and the world’s most populated and powerful Asian power, thereby creating a potent coalition.
The necessary point of departure for any such counteralliance option involved a renewal of the bilateral Sino-Russian connection, capitalizing on the resentment among the political elites of both states over the emergence of America as the only global superpower. In early 1996, Yeltsin traveled to Beijing and signed a declaration that explicitly denounced global “hegemonic” tendencies, thereby implying that the two states would align themselves against the United States. In December, the Chinese prime minister, Li Peng, returned the visit, and both sides not only reiterated their opposition to an international system “dominated by one power” but also endorsed the reinforcement of existing alliances. Russian commentators welcomed this development, viewing it as a positive shift in the global correlation of power and as an appropriate response to America’s sponsorship of NATO’s expansion. Some even sounded gleeful that the Sino-Russian alliance would give America its deserved comeuppance.
However, a coalition allying Russia with both China and Iran can develop only if the United States is shortsighted enough to antagonize China and Iran simultaneously. To be sure, that eventuality cannot be excluded, and American conduct in 1995–1996 almost seemed consistent with the notion that the United States was seeking an antagonistic relationship with both Teheran and Beijing. However, neither Iran nor China was prepared to cast its lot strategically with a Russia that was both unstable and weak. Both realized that any such coalition, once it went beyond some occasional tactical orchestration, would risk their respective access to the more advanced world, with its exclusive capacity for investment and with its needed cutting-edge technology. Russia had too little to offer to make it a truly worthy partner in an antihegemonic coalition.
In fact, lacking any shared ideology and united merely by an “antihegemonic” emotion, any such coalition would be essentially an alliance of a part of the Third World against the most advanced portions of the First World. None of its members would gain much, and China especially would risk losing its enormous investment inflows. For Russia, too, “the phantom of a Russia-China alliance… would sharply increase the chances that Russia would once again become restricted from Western technology and capital,” as a critical Russian geopolitician noted.[8] The alignment would eventually condemn all of its participants, whether two or three in number, to prolonged isolation and shared backwardness.
Moreover, China would be the senior partner in any serious Russian effort to jell such an “antihegemonic” coalition. Being more populous, more industrious, more innovative, more dynamic, and harboring some potential territorial designs on Russia, China would inevitably consign Russia to the status of a junior partner, while at the same time lacking the means (and probably any real desire) to help Russia overcome its backwardness. Russia would thus become a buffer between an expanding Europe and an expansionist China.
Finally, some Russian foreign affairs experts continued to entertain the hope that a stalemate in European integration, including perhaps internal Western disagreements over the future shape of NATO, might eventually create at least tactical opportunities for a Russo-German or a Russo-French flirtation, in either case to the detriment of Europe’s transatlantic connection with America. This perspective was hardly new, for throughout the Cold War, Moscow periodically tried to play either the German or the French card. Nonetheless, it was not unreasonable for some of Moscow’s geopoliticians to calculate that a stalemate in European affairs could create tactical openings that might be exploited to America’s disadvantage.
But that is about all that could thereby be attained: purely tactical options. Neither France nor Germany is likely to forsake the American connection. An occasional flirtation, especially with the French, focused on some narrow issue, cannot be excluded—but a geopolitical reversal of alliances would have to be preceded by a massive upheaval in European affairs, a breakdown in European unification and in transatlantic ties. And even then, it is unlikely that the European states would be inclined to pursue a truly comprehensive geopolitical alignment with a disoriented Russia.
Thus, none of the counteralliance options, in the final analysis, offer a viable alternative. The solution to Russia’s new geopolitical dilemmas will not be found in counteralliance, nor will it come about through the illusion of a coequal strategic partnership with America or in the effort to create some new politically and economically “integrated” structure in the space of the former Soviet Union. All evade the only choice that is in fact open to Russia.
THE DILEMMA OF THE ONE ALTERNATIVE
Russia’s only real geostrategic option—the option that could give Russia a realistic international role and also maximize the opportunity of transforming and socially modernizing itself—is Europe. And not just any Europe, but the transatlantic Europe of the enlarging EU and NATO. Such a Europe is taking shape, as we have seen in Chapter 3, and it is also likely to remain linked closely to America. That is the Europe to which Russia will have to relate, if it is to avoid dangerous geopolitical isolation.
For America, Russia is much too weak to be a partner but still too strong to be simply its patient. It is more likely to become a problem, unless America fosters a setting that helps to convince the Russians that the best choice for their country is an increasingly organic connection with a transatlantic Europe. Although a long-term Russo-Chinese and Russo-Iranian strategic alliance is not likely, it is obviously important for America to avoid policies that could distract Russia from making the needed geopolitical choice. To the extent possible, American relations with China and Iran should, therefore, be formulated with their impact on Russian geopolitical calculations also kept in mind. Perpetuating illusions regarding grand geostrategic options can only delay the historic choice that Russia must make in order to bring to an end its deep malaise.
Only a Russia that is willing to accept the new realities of Europe, both economic and geopolitical, will be able to benefit internally from the enlarging scope of transcontinental European cooperation in commerce, communications, investment, and education. Russia’s participation in the Council of Europe is thus a step very much in the right direction. It is a foretaste of further institutional links between the new Russia and the growing Europe. It also implies that if Russia pursues this path, it will have no choice other than eventually to emulate the course chosen by post-Ottoman Turkey, when it decided to shed its imperial ambitions and embarked very deliberately on the road of modernization, Europeanization, and democratization.
No other option can offer Russia the benefits that a modern, rich, and democratic Europe linked to America can. Europe and America are not a threat to a Russia that is a nonexpansive national and democratic state. They have no territorial designs on Russia, which China someday might have, nor do they share an insecure and potentially violent frontier, which is certainly the case with Russia’s ethnically and territorially unclear border with the Muslim nations to the south. On the contrary, for Europe as well as for America, a national and democratic Russia is a geopolitically desirable entity, a source of stability in the volatile Eurasian complex.
Russia consequently faces the dilemma that the choice in favor of Europe and America, in order for it to yield tangible benefits, requires, first of all, a clear-cut abjuration of the imperial past and, second, no tergiversation regarding the enlarging Europe’s political and security links with America. The first requirement means accommodation to the geopolitical pluralism that has come to prevail in the space of the former Soviet Union. Such accommodation does not exclude economic cooperation, rather on the model of the old European Free Trade Area, but it cannot include limits on the political sovereignty of the new states—for the simple reason that they do not wish it. Most important in that respect is the need for clear and unambiguous acceptance by Russia of Ukraine’s separate existence, of its borders, and of its distinctive national identity.
The second requirement may be even more difficult to swallow. A truly cooperative relationship with the transatlantic community cannot be based on the notion that those democratic states of Europe that wish to be part of it can be excluded because of a Russian say-so. The expansion of that community need not be rushed, and it certainly should not be promoted on an anti-Russian theme. But neither can it, nor should it, be halted by a political fiat that itself reflects an antiquated notion of European security relations. An expanding and democratic Europe has to be an open-ended historical process, not subject to politically arbitrary geographic limits.
For many Russians, the dilemma of the one alternative may at first, and for some time to come, be too difficult to resolve. It will require an enormous act of political will and perhaps also an outstanding leader, capable of making the choice and articulating the vision of a democratic, national, truly modern and European Russia. That may not happen for some time. Overcoming the post-Communist and postimperial crises will require not only