The United States and Russia

HEADNOTE

Keeping Expectations Realistic

IN AUGUST 1991, watching Russian President Boris Yeltsin standing on the tank in defiance of the last-ditch effort of the old Soviet elite to hang onto power and empire, we

were euphoric. The old guard was finished, and within months, the Soviet Union, our main adversary of 45 years, was finally placed on the ash heap of history. After the cooperation between U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during German unification and then in the Gulf War, it seemed at the beginning of 1992 that a future partnership between Russia and the United States in a post-Soviet era would be relatively easy to achieve.

Ten years later, it is not partnership that seems to have defined the past decade, but rather growing suspicions and finger-pointing. In the U.S. 2000 presidential campaign, the talk was not about what had been achieved with Russia. It was about "Who Lost Russia?" With Russian President Vladimir Putin's government clamping down at home and U.S. President George W. Bush's top advisers initially calling Russia a threat to U.S. interests, the start of the second decade of America's relations with post-Soviet Russia is a far cry from the heady days of 1992, regardless of what Mr. Bush saw when he peered into Putin's soul at their first face-to-face meeting in June.