The Myth of the New Detente: The Roots of Putin’s Pro-U.S. Policy

Over the past year, Russian president Vladimir Putin initiated a stream of diplomatic overtures to probably the most unresponsive and self-centered of U.S. administrations since the U.S. reemergence from isolationism under president Franklin Roosevelt. Among the most prominent of Putin’s gestures are: Moscow's increasing friendliness to NATO and attempts to get NATO involved in Russia's military reform; Putin's decision to shut down Russian bases in Cuba and Vietnam, while, at the same time, his seemingly unperturbed acceptance of the U.S. use of air bases in Central Asian countries bound with Russia by a security treaty; his de-facto readiness to discard earlier insistence upon the primacy of the UN Security Council in conflict resolutions; his markedly conciliatory stand on the ABM Treaty and NATO expansion; and finally, his reluctance to circumscribe Russia's support for the U.S. actions in Afghanistan, or attach conditions to it, at least in public. This pattern has been even more striking for a leader who cannot pass for a naive, inexperienced idealist, and, judging by his consistently hardline posture at home, is not predisposed at all to unilateral concessions. […]

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