This is all news to me, but in an article in Foreign Policy, Peter Savodnik argues that Russia has given up on its quest to build itself back into a superpower, and is instead settling for the push for “a new international system” and other institutions and coalitions of multilateralism.  The rub of it is that Russia can’t afford to keep up the confrontation status quo with Washington in the midst of an economic crisis.  If Russia wants to get more involved in rule-based international institutions, that can only be a good thing.

The basic answer is that Moscow, after years of trying
unsuccessfully to reclaim its superpower status, has concluded that a
new system is needed. Of course, a greatly weakened Russia is in no
position to coauthor, with the United States, a new geopolitics. But it
can initiate a conversation meant to transcend the asymmetries and
tensions of the past two decades — tensions that were manageable until
recently but no longer appear so.

The shift, which no Russian
leader has publicly articulated, is really a change in disposition that
has yet to be felt concretely. But given various internal developments
– including the financial crisis, which has ignited anti-Kremlin
demonstrations in Moscow, Vladivostok, and elsewhere; military reform,
which is transforming how military and civilian leaders view the West;
and the ascension of Medvedev himself, who shows few signs of being a
force for change but seems uncomfortable with the status quo — there
is clearly something happening in Russia.

The krizis,
more than any other turn of events, has had a devastating impact on the
country’s sense of self. The nationalistic, anti-American harrumphing
of former President Vladimir Putin’s reign has subsided, replaced by a
deep skepticism and a fear that Russia is on the verge of a 1998-style
disaster that will destroy the ruble and wipe out personal savings.
Moscow’s nightclubs reflect these fluctuations nicely. A decade ago,
American men were in great demand. Sometime about five years ago, there
was a palpable shift, and expatriates acquired a reputation for being
leeches preying on the city’s oversupply of beautiful women. Now,
Americans are popular again, and where it was once considered imprudent
to speak English, it is thought to be chic.

The idea of “managed
democracy,” as Kremlin ideologists call it, is now open to question.
Although there have been repeated attempts to blame the crisis on the
United States — to hear it from state-controlled television, you’d
think the Lehman Brothers collapse single-handedly derailed the Russian
economy — there is a new understanding that Russia is now very much
woven into the international, commercial fabric (the Kremlin’s
withdrawal from World Trade Organization talks notwithstanding).

“Russia
cannot afford anymore to have bad relations with the United States in
the middle of a financial crisis,” Nikolai Zlobin of the
Washington-based World Security Institute told me. “The Russian
situation is not as good as the government expected. Russia is going to
have a hard time in the next year or two.” And there have been renewed
calls, particularly by the oligarchs, for Russia to diversify its
economy away from oil and gas. This diversification can only be
achieved, as Medvedev has noted, by enforcing the rule of law and
protecting private property.

Last 5 posts by Robert Amsterdam

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