Some good comments from readers on my (too) long piece about the US Missile Defence decision.

Two take a different view, arguing that Putin’s Russian government is not motivated by crude nationalism, and that if one stacks up various decisions taken in recent years by the USA/West it is not hard to see plenty of reasons why Russia currently is uncooperative.

Thoughts on what ‘cooperation’ means in this context.

I was working closely in Moscow with the Russian MFA in the mid-1990s when the post-Cold War sense of official disillusionment with the West started in earnest.

We Brits helped this along by making a serious blunder, refusing to give a visa to a close friend of Mr Primakov who was designated by the Russians to head (in an openly acknowledged way) their external intelligence representation at the Embassy in London.

This decision, taken at a very high level in London against Embassy advice, was (as far as we could see) stupid and insulting and above all pointless. It gave terrific support to those in the Russian security establishment who argued that the Brits did not want true cooperation in the grown-up areas of policy but were bent on playing more Cold War games. 

Thereafter the Contact Group and other processes continued, but with Russian enthusiasm drip-drip waning as US/UK/German support for Kosovo’s independence grew. I know that the Russians did try to get through to Milosevic just how damaging his policies were likely to be to Serbia’s interests – I had a vivid account from a Russian diplomat who listened to him being ridiculous about the subject until 4am, then walked out in despair.

More generally, the practical problems Russia has faced in dealing with such sprawling new borders and all the other human and policy issues arising from the collapse of the Soviet Union have been daunting, and handled pretty fairly. The Putin period has led to much greater discipline and sense of purpose.

So a lot has been achieved in a generally positive direction.

The difficulty comes from the psychological aspects of the dissolution of the USSR:

  • formally the Russian elite accept Ukraine’s and the other CIS states’ independence. But because they (rightly) see ‘Westernisation’ as a threat to their privileged and untransparent status, they do not want Ukraine to modernise according to normal European standards. So Western support for the tendencies which want reform, transparency and modernisation becomes a ‘threat to Russia’s interests’.
  • the loss of Big Power status has been especially painful. Rather than appear to accept limits on what Russian diplomacy can now do by being ‘merely’ part of a pro-reform bloc under US leadership, Moscow tries to project power by being awkward and obstructive – see Russia’s disgraceful support for Mugabe at the UN, a classic example of the Russian leadership having nothing at stake and blocking pressure designed to bring about improvements for the mass of Zimbabweans
  • elsewhere the Russians have just not tried to make use of their strong KGB-style weight to improve the behaviour of obnoxious regimes such as Iran and North Korea. They appear to dislike the very idea that US-led Western pressure might be seen to be working in such cases (since if that were so, their own role might be diminished), preferring instead to hold back and make half-hearted moves only when they ‘get something’ as a price.   

In short, the Russia we now have sees no real advantage for itself in the world’s bad regimes (including a good few in the CIS itself) behaving in an increasingly pluralist and measured way, nor in other parts of the CIS becoming more ‘European’.

Nor can the Russian ruling elite bring themselves to come fully clean about the violence and horror of the Soviet period – perhaps because their own families were either victims or perpetrators or both? 

All this is not an irrational or ‘crudely nationalistic’ attitude. It makes sense, once the basic hard premise is accepted that for the next few decades Russia will do better for itself – and above all its self-esteem – by defining itself separately from ‘Western’ processes and (as necessary) countering them where the cost of doing so is not too high. 

And, if some territorial gains can be made and loud warning shots fired across European/Western bows in the process to send a strong message of a new psychological confidence (see S Ossetia and Abkhazia), so much the better.

When the Americans pressed that famous Reset button, what new (or old) set of conditions and beliefs were they trying to reset?

Do they know themselves?

And how would they tell if it had worked?