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MOSCOW - Unlike with President Vladimir Putin's domestic policies,
which are usually ascribed to one or another group of advisers
within the corridors of power, the genesis of foreign policy is
a murky affair.
Market reform can be traced to the recommendations of the distinctive
so-called St. Petersburg group of technocrats who are not shy
about making their positions known. But no clear group influences
foreign policy, and analysts are generally at pains to identify
which individuals have the most access to the president's ear.
Putin's renowned silence about his objectives irks members of
the foreign-policy establishment.
"Those who support the president's foreign policy among
the elite are a tiny minority," said Sergei Karaganov, head
of the independent Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, an influential
group whose members include a number of the country's political,
academic and economic elite. Karaganov was speaking at a council
briefing in March.
Andrei Ryabov of the Moscow Carnegie Center agrees. "Foreign
policy is initiated by a small group of policy-makers," he
said in an interview.
When he came to power, Putin vowed to restore the dignity Russia
lost with the Soviet collapse. He began on a distinctly hard-line
note, booting U.S. foreign-service officials out of Moscow last
year in a case of tit-for-tat after Washington expelled Russian
diplomats it accused of spying.
The president is now using his new pro-Western stance as a political
show of strength - even as many of his supporters bemoan major
concessions to the United States, such as allowing U.S. troops
in former Soviet states.
But a number of instances in which Putin has capitulated to
the West can be put down to sheer pragmatism - such as his decision
not to publicly criticize Washington's announcement last December
that it would pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Moscow
had called the treaty a cornerstone of security, but could do
nothing to save it.
Putin has been welcomed on the global stage as a responsible
leader, a role he clearly relishes. But Western leaders have only
somewhat muted their criticism of Moscow's brutal campaign in
Chechnya, and the United States has made it clear it will continue
to pursue an essentially unilateral foreign policy, brushing aside
criticism from opponents and allies alike.
Economic dividends for Russia are a more palpable motive for
friendliness to the West, especially given the country's role
as one of the world's top oil and gas producers.
Despite general support for his policies, Putin is widely reproved
for making his decisions behind closed doors. While Karaganov's
views are often close to the Kremlin's outwardly pro-Western position,
for instance, he bitterly criticizes how policy is formulated
and publicized.
"No one understands what he [Putin] really wants in foreign
policy and that's a giant drawback," Karaganov said at a
Moscow conference last week.
But Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected analyst, tells a different
story, saying that rather than formulating policy himself, Putin
only gives a final nod to initiatives worked
out by a host of others.
Chief among them are members of the president's administration,
and specifically its secretive chief Alexander Voloshin. The administration
sets strategic goals and exerts the greatest influence on foreign
policy, Markov said. A former economist with ties to exiled tycoon
Boris Berezovsky, Voloshin is one of the last major officials
in power to have taken office under Putin's predecessor, former
President Boris Yeltsin.
Voloshin is said to represent the interests of Yeltsin's political
clan, which generally favored stronger ties with the West. But
the chief of staff rarely appears in public and almost never makes
statements, much less about foreign policy.
Among bona fide foreign policy gurus said to have the president's
ear are Kremlin deputy chief of staff and top presidential foreign-policy
adviser Sergei Prikhodko, who occupied the same position in Yeltsin's
administration and is in charge of Putin's appointment book.
Second in influence, Markov said, is the Foreign Ministry, which
works out tactical approaches to policy set in the Kremlin. Foreign
Minister Igor Ivanov, a career diplomat, has generally shown himself
to be a cautious official.
Third in importance, Markov said, is the Defense Ministry, headed
by Putin's close and hawkish associate Sergei Ivanov, who, like
Putin, is a former KGB officer. The Carnegie Center's Ryabov said
Sergei Ivanov is the only one of Putin's advisers who can without
question be said to influence foreign policy.
Ivanov often makes saber-rattling statements and reflects the
outwardly more cautious approach to relations with the West that
held sway before Sept. 11. The government's liberal economic bloc
of technocrats - including Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and
Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref - are among
the groups that play a part in foreign policy, not least with
their pressing for Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization.
Big business, especially exporting firms such as gas giant Gazprom
and oil major LUKoil, also has a role in pushing its interests.
Finally, members of the "foreign-policy elite" - academics,
analysts, legislators with foreign policy expertise and other
shapers and mirrors of public opinion - also influence the Kremlin's
foreign policy decision-making process.
Chief among them is Mikhail Margelov, head of the Federation
Council's foreign-affairs committee, another former KGB agent
who is reputed to be a close presidential adviser. Reflecting
the Kremlin's current foreign-policy line, Margelov supports warmer
ties with the United States, saying the position is in the interests
of Russia's national security.
"I hate to say this, but fortunately for us the Americans
got involved," Margelov said of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan
in a recent interview with the Financial Times.
He tied the campaign in Afghanistan to Russia's war in Chechnya,
justifying the internationally criticized conflict by saying,
"Sept. 11 has shown us we have a common enemy."
Margelov has been a Kremlin spinmeister for some time, dating
back to when then Prime Minister Putin was looking to run for
the presidency. Margelov followed by helping run the military's
propaganda effort at the start of the second Chechen war in 1999
in his position as chief of Rosinformcenter, the state information
agency notorious for keeping a tight lid on the campaign while
releasing dubious statistics and rosy forecasts.
Markov said Margelov's importance to the Kremlin lies less in
his formal role as foreign-policy chief in the upper house than
in his promise as a young, up-and-coming politician.
Also influential, but to a significantly lesser degree, are
members of Karaganov's Council on Foreign and Defense Policy.
Karaganov is close to Prikhodko, Markov said, but not to the Kremlin
as a whole.
"Many [of the council's] proposals aren't accepted and
some are even sneered at," he said. The once mighty U.S.A.
and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, headed
by Sergei Rogov, has even less of a role in policy-making, Markov
added.
The Council on Foreign and Defense Policy had a far greater
say in the affairs of Yeltsin's Kremlin. Karaganov is close to
Yevgeny Primakov, the former spymaster and longtime foreign minister
who was the main factor behind increasingly hawkish foreign policy
under Yeltsin's administration. Karaganov, in his own words an
"informal adviser to the president," says his council
does not aim to influence policy but rather the minds of the political
elite.
However, the council was instrumental in the ouster of pro-Western
former Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev in 1996 and the installation
of Primakov in his place, ending a brief diplomatic honeymoon
with the West following the Soviet collapse.
Appointed prime minister in 1998, Primakov became a Kremlin
foe, a position that was underscored when he joined forces with
powerful Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov in a failed bid to run for
the presidency. Karaganov went into the enemy camp as a chief
adviser.
In the days after Sept. 11, Putin moved away from the so-called
Primakov doctrine of "multipolarity" - advocating cooperation
with India and China to balance the global reach of the United
States - and toward the ostensibly pro-Western yet firmly pragmatic
and often even hard-line views of his behind-the-scenes advisers.
Those included Putin-supporters Markov and his associate and
chief Kremlin spin guru Gleb Pavlovsky, head of the Efficient
Policy Fund and creator of the strana.ru web site, which publicizes
the Kremlin's positions.
Ryabov said that while Markov and Pavlovsky's influence has
been strong, it has declined somewhat since the beginning of the
year as Putin pushed hisovertures to the West even further.
The newest tendency was more than clear when the Kremlin barely
issued a peep after Washington announced it would pull out of
the ABM Treaty. Observers had been expecting an outcry.
When the Pentagon said in March that it was sending up to 200
troops to Georgia, several politicians and diplomats flew off
the handle. Those who objected loudly included Foreign Minister
Ivanov and Dmitry Rogozin, chairperson of the State Duma's foreign-affairs
committee and a known hawk.
In a by-then familiar pattern, Putin kept quiet on the issue
before giving the final word: U.S. troops in Georgia did not pose
a threat to Russia.
"Eighty percent of such cases reflect a policy of 'good
cop-bad cop,'" he said. "The rest are a result of incompetence,"
he added, naming as an example Federation Council Speaker Sergei
Mironov's decision during a recent trip to Israel to skip a meeting
with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Markov agreed, saying he was absolutely certain Rogozin's position
on Georgia - in which he proposed the Duma vote on recognizing
the independence of two breakaway regions of Georgia - had been
orchestrated ahead of time with the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, among those to bemoan current policy is Vyacheslav
Nikonov, head of the Politika think tank, once political strategist
to Luzhkov and also a member of the Council of Foreign and Defense
Policy. He said the 1990s had brought ruin to a coherent policy
mechanism amid Yeltsin-era anarchy, from which the country has
yet to recover.
"Foreign policy has many towers," he said at the council
conference, alluding to the Kremlin's many spires. "There's
no single policy because each one [tower] has its own."
Liberal Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov also criticized Russia's
foreign policy by saying it did not reflect the will of the people
and that it was caught between the old Soviet command system and
a more democratic future. "The authorities are alienated
from society," he said.
But Ryzhkov also said it was crucial for Russia to become an
integral part of Europe, echoing the views of another liberal,
Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky, who praised post-Sept. 11 foreign
policy as Putin's chief achievement.
"The vector of foreign policy can have strategic perspectives
and serve as a prologue to Russia's becoming a European state
in the widest sense of the word," Yavlinsky told Interfax
recently.
As Moscow and Washington prepare for a summit in May, both sides
aim to further boost U.S.-Russian relations with the negotiation
of a nuclear arms-reduction agreement and the development of a
new NATO framework that would give Russia a greater say in decision
making.
But Karaganov said Putin's reliance on a small group of advisers
and refusal to publicize his goals would create problems. "[Putin
must] attract people from different parts of the country, not
only from Moscow," he said. "If he doesn't explain what
he wants, he can't attract those who would otherwise support him."
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