Dmitri Trenin

There are people who think of Russia that way in the United States. But I didn’t expect to hear it from experienced politicians, campaigning for the presidency.

In Russia it’s difficult and unnecessary to generalize, but yes, there is a fairly strong group of people—not very big but pretty ideological—who see the United States as their former foe and future adversary in Russia. To me, those people are the holdovers of the Cold War. I don’t think they can be reformed.
 

Until last December Russia’s political system could be described as autocracy with the consent of the governed. What happened in December, and what’s been happening since December with the mass demonstrations against the electoral fraud, against Putin, against the current political regime, suggests that that consent is being withdrawn, at least partially.

The election results are very interesting. Even Mr. Putin’s fierce opponents concede he received the support of 50-plus percent of the Russian voters, all the irregularities notwithstanding. At the same time, Mr. Putin himself has had to concede that his support in Moscow is below 50 percent. This gives you, if you will, a stereo view of Russia today.

Part of it, I think, is maturing toward a more citizen-based society. People see themselves as citizens, more than as simply voters, but as citizens. They were not only voting on March 4 for the president, but also for members of municipal council. There’s a very low level of self-government. And I was struck that about half the number of people on the list were people the age of my kids—I’d say thirty years old. And it’s very striking, because up until now those people not only refused to be personally involved in governing the country, they stayed away from elections and from politics altogether.

And now I see people belonging to different political parties—communists, nationalists, democrats and whatever—who actually voted for all the younger people. I had a choice, too (laughs) and my choice was, no matter what party you belong to, that the new generation of Russians that needs to be supported.Until last December Russia’s political system could be described as autocracy with the consent of the governed. What happened in December, and what’s been happening since December with the mass demonstrations against the electoral fraud, against Putin, against the current political regime, suggests that that consent is being withdrawn, at least partially.

The election results are very interesting. Even Mr. Putin’s fierce opponents concede he received the support of 50-plus percent of the Russian voters, all the irregularities notwithstanding. At the same time, Mr. Putin himself has had to concede that his support in Moscow is below 50 percent. This gives you, if you will, a stereo view of Russia today.

Part of it, I think, is maturing toward a more citizen-based society. People see themselves as citizens, more than as simply voters, but as citizens. They were not only voting on March 4 for the president, but also for members of municipal council. There’s a very low level of self-government. And I was struck that about half the number of people on the list were people the age of my kids—I’d say thirty years old. And it’s very striking, because up until now those people not only refused to be personally involved in governing the country, they stayed away from elections and from politics altogether.

And now I see people belonging to different political parties—communists, nationalists, democrats and whatever—who actually voted for all the younger people. I had a choice, too (laughs) and my choice was, no matter what party you belong to, that the new generation of Russians that needs to be supported.
 

Putin controls quite a lot in the Russian government. What Putin or anyone else cannot control is Russian society. What we’ve been seeing in the last few months is the beginning of the awakening of the Russian people. Basically, it’s very logical.

For twenty years the Russian people had to survive the most basic physical problems. The first decade, the ’90s, was all about survival. The first decade of this century was about doing something with their lives, buying a car or a home or making sure you can send your kids to university or taking vacations abroad.

Now, the emerging middle classes, having achieved a certain amount of economic comfort, they have now been freed to look around. And they’re asking the questions they were not asking in the last twenty years.  Who is governing us? How is the country governed? And do those who govern us treat us with the dignity that we deserve?

It’s the beginning of a new era in which consumers are turning into citizens.
 

Well, the trust is not there. But this is precisely why you should engage. Engagement is essentially trust building. I grant you, there is a measure of paranoia on the Russian side. There’s also a lot of Cold War hangover inside the U.S. body politic, as we just heard from Mr. Romney. But you can only learn swimming if you actually start swimming. And you can only start building trust if you engage in a joint enterprise.
Arms control is a set of measures to regulate an essentially adversarial relationship. I think we’re beyond that. But missile defense is possible in the form of having a few elements integrated. And we have, for example, joint data exchange centers. You share information about missile activities, missile launches and such, and you build trust. But your firing systems, your targeting systems, these are under national control.

Through engagement at an early stage, the Russians, for example, can learn enough about the United States that it would become more comfortable with U.S. strategic intentions.

At least some Russians who look at the United States still believe that it is the enemy. This needs to be unlearned, and it will never be unlearned through lecturing.

No, confidence-building was about the other side doing this or that. It was more about transparency. And this future collaboration on missile defense is not about what the United States is doing, primarily, or what Russia is doing. It’s about collaborating against third-party threats and risks.

It’s not that the Russians think about attacking the United States, they fear that they may come under U.S. attack. So it’s more defensive than it was during the Cold War, when you had essentially a symmetrical relationship.

So there is an element of confidence and a trust-building process. But it shouldn’t be all about confidence. Confidence is an element, but the real objective, the real goal, is building trust.

Well, I saw the reset as part of a larger reset of U.S. foreign policy post-Bush. Russia was a part of that. The idea was to do away with the arrogance in the relationship between the two countries, so that opportunities can be better used on issues of primary importance to the United States such as Afghanistan, Iran, and a few other issues.

I welcome very much the reset of U.S. policy toward Russia. That policy has not only ameliorated the atmospherics between the two countries, but also allowed the U.S. and Russia to advance on a number of issues including Russia’s WTO (World Trade Organization) membership, the New START Treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), a number of other things.

What needs to be done in the next four years is to try to transform the nature of the strategic relationship, which is still stuck between enmity the actual future collaboration. We need to come up with a strategy on both sides. This year is a year of elections in both countries, so it’s difficult for any serious diplomatic breakthroughs, but it’s an excellent time to lay the groundwork for our future.
 

Let me explain. Russia is peripheral as far as the major strategic conflicts are concerned. And clearly Russia is not a big player on the economic scene. It’s a player, but it’s not in the same league as China or India. Russia’s not directly engaged in any major confrontations now, and it’s not engaged in very close collaboration with anyone.

In today’s world, there is no periphery because of globalism. But I see Russia as more important to the United States than it is usually credited. I was told that if you discuss U.S.-China relations with serious government people in Washington, Russia didn’t figure in this discussion. This is striking. I would imagine that anyone looking at U.S.-China relations should consider the relationships that United States has with countries such as Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, but it should also consider relations between Russia and the United States.
 

I am amazed also by what’s changed in the last twenty years. The end of the Russian empire was the work of the Russians themselves. The Russian empire in its Soviet form did not perish in the flames of revolution. It was a conscious decision by the Russian elites. The Russian elites played the largest role in dismantling the Soviet Union. They came up with the idea that empires are a huge burden. And they could not afford it.

So that gives some confidence that Russia’s thinking could in fact be in tune with the realities of the future. The Russians realize that power today is not vested in nuclear weapons or military power, but it depends on how economically competitive you are. There’s a lot that Russia needs to change in its attitudes to former satellites, the former republics. But Russia did not question the results of the sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union, and has not tried to restore it. Russia objected to the Central and Eastern European countries joining NATO, but has not tried to put them again under Russian control.

And this gives me some hope that the new generation of Russian leaders—who understand the world in very different terms from the Soviet leaders or even the first post-Soviet generation of leaders—will adapt Russia’s foreign policy accordingly.