In the beginning of this year, a distinguished French review, Critique, published a special issue on Moscow 2001, with largely Russian authors. The editor presented the issue on the back page of the journal in the following way:

Once upon a time there was the USSR. Adulated or hated, it mattered. Today there is Russia: does anyone care? We speak about it a lot, you say. No! We speak (correctly) about Chechnya. And then about the Mafia, and the nouveaux riches. Russia is reduced today to the picture of a few traits beaten onto a wall of indifference.

We must first look at Russia itself, and how Russia looks at Russia. The Gorbachev era was a whirlwind, in the very simple sense that everything went very fast in a direction almost no one expected before Gorbachev came to power. In virtually no time, the whole structure of Soviet power was dismantled, and in the 1991, the U.S.S.R. ceased to exist. Enter Russia and Yeltsin.

Yeltsin lasted a decade, a decade of "transition," as every one called it. State enterprises were dismantled, or rather were sold off cheap, often to their former managers. Russia entered into agreements with the United States to dismantle a part of its nuclear capacity. The armed forces were downgraded from that of a superpower to that of a regional power at best. And the Russians spent their time trying unsuccessfully to suppress a rebellion in Chechnya and somewhat more successfully to sustain regimes in the now independent republics of Central Asia that were formerly part of the U.S.S.R.

Above all, Russia lived out the great slogan of Restoration France, "Messieurs: enrichissez-vous!" A small but important stratum of Russians, many ex-apparatchiks but others new young persons, became international entrepreneurs and some became very rich indeed. Some of the wealth was gained by brazenly illegal means (the so-called Mafia); some of it was gained by semi-illegal means. Nothing unusual here, you will say - nothing but the bread and butter of savage capitalism. Quite right. When, in 1998, the rouble collapsed, it was bracing, but then Russians tried to pick up the pieces.

So why did everyone become so uneasy in the last few years? Why did the optimism of the early 1990's disappear? The answer is very simple. Two things became clear to just about everyone. Russia was not about to "catch up" with western Europe in wealth and economic power, not today and not tomorrow. It might improve its economic situation but there was no dramatic breakthrough in prospect. It was doomed to remain a semiperipheral state for a long time.

And if this were bad enough, suddenly everyone realized that Russia didn't matter anymore, didn't matter geopolitically. It could be ignored, and it was being ignored. And this hurt even more than the sense that the country was reaching an economic plateau. Nationalism is a very strong drug, and once one has been a superpower, one doesn't reconcile oneself very easily to being a second-rate has-been. Enter Putin, with his program not of economic transformation but of the reconstruction of geopolitical strength.

At the other end of the world, there is the United States. Under Clinton, in the Yeltsin years, the U.S. tried to buy off Russia with a supply of constant lollipops. Of course, the candy became a little expensive for the U.S. and there began to be some grumbling. On the other hand, the candy was scarcely enough for an avaricious group of Russian politicians controlling the sluice-gates of money flows. But then Yeltsin went, and Clinton went.

Enter George W. Bush and his band of unreconstructed conservatives. They seem to have the slogan of "keep the riches flowing as fast as possible in the next decade - to us" and the rest of the world, be damned! Since the U.S. has the greatest wealth in the world (at the moment) and an unbeatable armed forces (which, however, is politically almost unusable), the Bush crew are arrogant. They think they can get away with bullying anyone, not least Russia. So, restraints of historic treaties? Say they're outdated, and say the U.S. will violate them unilaterally, unless the Russians agree to dissolving them jointly.

Mr. Bush has just learned in U.S. internal politics that, when one deals highhandedly with elements one considers weak and wrong (for example, the so-called "moderates" of the Republican Party), it is actually possible for those so affronted to pick up their marbles and walk away, as Sen. Jeffords did recently, undoing the whole Republican agenda in the United States. The consequences for the Bush program within the U.S. are very far-reaching. Not preventing the Jeffords switch in party affiliation will go down as one of the monumental political blunders of this decade, if not longer.

Has Mr. Bush learned a lesson? Perhaps. It may be time for him however to look away from internal U.S. problems and cast a view on the geopolitical scene. For it is just possible that Putin will pick up his marbles and walk away as well. The Russians don't want to pick a fight with the U.S. They have more important things to do. But they do want to be taken seriously. At this very moment, things have improved economically in Russia because of the rise of world oil prices. On April 3, 2001, the New York Times headlined a small article, "Flexing its fiscal soundness, Russia will bypass the I.M.F." What this means is that the U.S. has lost its 1990 cudgel vis-a-vis Russia, the need for loans.

If Bush persists in the military program he has outlined, for which he is already in trouble with western Europe, Russia may just decide to ignore the U.S. Yes, ignore the U.S. What will they do? Who knows? Rebuild their armed forces? Probably. Play games in the Middle East? Probably. Cozy up to western Europe? Probably. Improve relations with China? Maybe.

The details of what Russia will do, and the degree of success such moves will have, may make less difference, than the possibility of showing a studied indifference to the U.S. If this happens, when this happens, Mr. Bush may find himself in as much trouble on the world scene as he now finds himself in the U.S. Senate.

Immanuel Wallerstein

[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.

These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]

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