America's election campaign, dominated by foreign policy issues, has barely touched on the dangers presented by Vladimir Putin's Russia. Although Washington has acknowledged Russia's slide toward authoritarianism and Brussels has criticized Moscow's policies in Chechnya, neither the U.S. nor the EU have recognized that Moscow poses a long-term threat to both American and European interests.

President Putin is intent on rebuilding Russia's global stature at the cost of regional stability. His policies combine three core elements: statism, the dominance of the security services, and the re-creation of Muscovite hegemony across Eurasia. This approach presents not only a danger for Russia's neighbors but will also challenge U.S. and EU objectives across two continents.

Boris Yeltsin, the leader in the Kremlin throughout the 1990s, established the foundations of Putinism through a super-presidency and by diminishingthe role of parliament. The Putinists have decimated their competitors by curtailing independent media, alternative parties, autonomous governors, and politically ambitious capitalists. Although Mr. Putin poses as a centrist by marginalizing communists and coopting nationalists, the "political center" in Russia has little to do with ideology but with location -- the Kremlin.

Mr. Putin's "managed democracy" includes a statist capitalism in which the Kremlin controls the most important economic levers and resources and tolerates only loyal oligarchs who can enrich the regime and serve its foreign-policy objectives. It is paradoxical that while the Bush administration is actively promoting democratization in Iraq to combat terrorism, it is largely inactive in preventing the eradication of democracy in Russia to purportedly combat the very same threat.

The Atlantic alliance does not share the same long-range goals with Russia even though their interests may coincide in specific missions, as against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moscow is pursuing various methods of reimperialization in the former Soviet Union through its security, economic  and political predominance. If successful, such a policy will undercut American and European influences in Eurasia. Even if unsuccessful, Russia's strategy will bring about further regional instabilities and terrorist threats that will also endanger Western interests.

There are three profound differences between Western and Russian objectives. First, America and Europe are genuine democracies that seek to project human rights and political pluralism, even though their methods may differ. Mr. Putin's Russia is an authoritarian state that has little interest in promoting democratic rights among its neighbors. On the contrary, the Kremlin has supported dictators along its border who will acquiesce to its interests. Such policies will engender political radicalism, territorial separatism, and religious terrorism across Russia's southern periphery.

Second, America and its European allies aim to combat global terrorism because this phenomenon is perceived as a serious long-term security threat. Russia manipulates the threat of international terrorism to impose an internal dictatorship, crush Chechen independence, and reinforce its imperial objectives by undermining the sovereignty of its East European, Caucasian, and Central Asian neighbors. Russia's relative weakness, so often cited by Putin apologists, is dangerously misleading, especially when its neighbors are institutionally and economically weaker and politically more vulnerable.

And third, America and Europe seek security arrangements with an assortment of partners, including Russia, in order to counter regional instabilities. Moscow tolerates cooperative arrangements with Washington in particular either because it is currently unable to predominate or because it can leverage Western political and military capabilities to strengthen its own positions. 

By naively assuming that Western and Russian national interests are equivalent or compatible, Washington and Brussels play into the hands of an imperial power that has revived its ambitions. In a recent tour of Central Asia, Mr. Putin made it clear that he is working to "restore what was lost with the fall of the Soviet Union." Indeed, the Russian president placed blame for the Beslan massacre on the collapse of the USSR and on foreign enemies allegedly seeking to tear Russia apart.

Russia possesses global aspirations that do not coincide with those of a democratic world order. The Kremlin is seeking to restore a Russian dominated post-Soviet region where security, foreign policy, energy supplies, and trade are determined by Moscow. Mr. Putin thereby aims to create a counterbalance to America's presence throughout Eurasia that will also neutralize EU influences.

If mishandled, U.S. and EU collaboration with Moscow may actually speed up Mr. Putin's timetable. It may undermine the West's political and military objectives in Central Asia and the Caucasus where weak states confront the double menace of Islamic radicalism and Russian imperialism.

A crucial task for the next U.S. administration is to devise an effective trans-Atlantic policy that pre-empts Russian destabilization. Both the U.S. and EU can work in tandem to guarantee the integrity and security of all states threatened by Moscow's designs, from Moldova and Ukraine to Georgia and Uzbekistan. They must be brought into a closer Western orbit while their long-term stability can be promoted through political pluralism, a free media, civil society, and the rule of law -- practices that are in perilously short supply in Russia.
 
 

Janusz Bugajski is the Director of East European Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C.

This article was originally published in the Wall Street Journal, Europe on October 13, 2004.