Analysis: U.S.-Russia Rift Deepens

Council on Foreign Relations

June 6, 2007
Prepared by: Lionel Beehner

President Bush mentioned “freedom” no fewer than forty times in a speech delivered in Prague this week. His words took aim at coalescing despotism around the world in places like Iran and Venezuela, but also jabbed at the ruler of Russia, President Vladimir Putin. Over a span of seven years, as this Backgrounder explains, relations between the two leaders have gone from chummy to chilly, mainly because of disputes over regional security and the rollback of Russian democracy. Freedom, President Bush is now well aware, has been “derailed” (RFE/RL) in today’s Russia.

Where did things go wrong? As this February 2006 CFR Task Force report accurately prophesied, relations almost seemed bound to deteriorate as Russia edged closer to authoritarian rule and away from democratic norms. Its alleged use of energy as a foreign policy tool to intimidate neighbors like Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia raised alarm bells across Western Europe, which relies on Russian natural gas. The unsolved murders of a string of anti-Kremlin dissidents, including the muckraking journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the ex-KGB officer-turned-whistle blower Alexander Litvinenko, sent relations with several European countries, particularly Britain, into a downward spiral. And the plan to stage a missile-defense radar system in former Warsaw Pact states like Poland and the Czech Republic, following on the earlier U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, has Putin fulminating in a Cold War vein (Reuters).

Putin’s complaints are not entirely unfounded. He says Russia’s unilateral moves to draw down its weaponry from Eastern Europe and reduce its regional forces only spurred the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to strengthen its presence.

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