MOSCOW -- Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry was back in Moscow recently, trying to rekindle the type of pragmatic relationship that existed between the two nations when he held the cabinet post during President Bill Clinton's first term in office.
His message to the Russian leadership was that relations between the two nations are far too important to be imperiled by a single disagreement, such as the West's opposition to Russian actions in Chechnya.
Perry, now a professor at Stanford University, was accompanied by the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Ret. Gen. John Shalikashvili, along with other former members of his Pentagon staff, as part of a joint project sponsored by Stanford and Harvard universities to revitalize "normal relations" between the two nations.
"Minor issues," such as the war in Chechnya, should not be allowed to get in the way of improving U.S. - Russian relations, he said. "Americans are sympathetic with the goals of combating international terrorism but criticize Moscow for the methods employed to reach these goals," said Perry during an appearance at the Carnegie Center here.
The visit coincided with the arrival of the new NATO secretary general, George Robertson, who offered a relatively mild criticism of Russia's Chechen policy and welcomed the resumption of formal relation, suspended since the start of the war in Kosovo.
Both meetings point to how anxious the West is to improve relations with Moscow.
Perry went out of his way to assure the Kremlin that the administration' s long-cherished anti-ballistic missile defense system, first initiated under former president Ronald Reagan and continued in a reduced form by the current administration, poses no military threat to Russia. But Washington does recognize that any unilateral changes in the existing anti-ballistic missile treaty could create political problems for Moscow.
Both sides are now deadlocked on the issue of weapons reduction, with Russia warning that it cannot possibly consider ratifying START II if the U.S. goes ahead with its missile defense system, and the U.S. warning that such a defense system becomes all the more necessary without Russia's START II ratification.
Maybe, Perry suggested, it's time for both nations to set aside those differences and instead agree on joint efforts to combat nuclear proliferation.
Of course, the current political environment limits both the quality and quantity of U.S. - Russian relations, notes John Reppert, a former Army and later Defense Department attache at the U.S. Embassy here and now executive director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Still, he believes the benefits are important enough to encourage the restoration of some forms of cooperation.
Observers here see two reasons for the U.S.'s interests in restoring a "normal" level of relations with Moscow. The first is Russia's vast nuclear arsenal. With the weapons levels agreed upon in START I about to be reached, START II remains unimplemented and unratified by the Russian parliament.
The Clinton administration would desperately like to see it accepted by Moscow before the president leaves office in less than a year. After all, aside from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was rejected by the U.S. Senate, it remains the only major disarmament treaty signed by this president during his two terms in office.
But this can only be achieved in an environment where U.S. - Russian relations are a good deal friendlier than they are today.
The second reason is the upcoming presidential election in the U.S. With the Republican candidates taking a somewhat tougher stance towards Russia, the administration is anxious to boost Vice President Al Gore's chances by demonstrating how maintaining cordial relations with Russia is in the best interests of the U.S.
Meanwhile, observers think that there's good reason for Russia to seek improved relations too. Russia's obsession with the West in the first years after the fall of the Soviet Union was followed by former prime minister Eugeny Primakov's turn to the East. The result is that today Russia has few friends to its East and even fewer in the West. The Kremlin has strained and cooled relations with most of the world, a situation it would like to reverse.
In addition, acting president Vladimir Putin is no less anxious than Gore to achieve international recognition and support as he faces his own presidential election later this month. And obviously, whoever is elected will need a substantial amount of Western goodwill and investment as well.
Future relations between the two countries won't be based on personal relationships, such as the one between Clinton and former president Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s. Future relations are more likely to be of the pragmatic partnership type fostered by Perry in the mid-1990s. Pragmatism is coming of age -- and than may not be such a bad thing after all.
Mikhail Pogorely is an editor of the Nuclear Security bulletin published by the National Press Institute in Moscow.