CSCE Debacle Leaves Russia Isolated

Intended as a lovefest for the European continent, the Budapest summit on security ended in an East-West brawl that for the first time has left Russia's political isolation nakedly exposed.


The meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which closed Tuesday, was called to strengthen the amorphous organization's role as European peacekeeper and integrator, and to discuss some of Europe's post-Cold War security problems.


But Russia comprehensively spoiled the party by refusing to condemn the violence in Bosnia and sharply attacking NATO's plans for a fast-track expansion into the former Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe.


No one is predicting the beginning of a new Cold War, but the temperature did drop a bit in Budapest this week to what President Boris Yeltsin described in his address to the 52 other assembled heads of state as a "Cold Peace."


The hitherto close relationship Yeltsin has enjoyed with U.S. President Bill Clinton could not prevent the two leaders from trading some sharp barbs. Yeltsin, for example, said in a clear allusion to Washington that it was a "dangerous delusion" to think "the destinies of continents and of the world community in general can somehow be managed from one single capital."


Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze summed up the troubles revealed at the Budapest summit in a few pungent words: "The (Cold) War is over; beware of the peace."


For the Russian delegation, the trip back to Moscow from Budapest must have seemed longer than before.


"The distance between Russia and the West is obvious now," said Sergei Medvedev, an analyst at the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Europe. "It has been a long-standing condition, but now everyone can see it."


Yeltsin certainly appeared crestfallen on returning home, agreeing with a reporter that there were "certain grounds" for saying Clinton had proved himself the dominant figure at the summit.


The press has interpreted Budapest as a diplomatic disaster, demonstrating a miserable failure in Russia's effort to exert its superpower status.


"Russian diplomacy has suffered a terrible defeat," Izvestia said on its front page. "And Russia can only blame itself. Wasn't it obvious two years ago, when it was first mentioned that Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia might join NATO, that Russia didn't have the strength to interfere?"


Nezavisimiay Gazeta lamented that "While Russia was busy dismantling the Soviet imperial policy, the West praised it and intimated early and full integration into the World and European community.


"As soon as there was nothing left to dismantle, and it was necessary to assemble a new foreign policy for a new Russia, the barrier was raised before its very eyes."


Russia's resistance to NATO's expansion, Medvedev said, only proves that agreements like the Partnership for Peace -- the vehicle by which former Soviet bloc countries could align themselves with, but not fully join, NATO -- were never accepted in spirit by Moscow.


"There never really was any consensus about what the Partnership for Peace was," he said. "Everyone interpreted it in their own way." Yeltsin once showed approval of the partnership, but only to the extent that it slowed NATO's actual absorption of Eastern European countries, Medvedev said.


NATO officials, interpreting the partnership in favor of East European countries eager to join the alliance, said they would push ahead their plans to expand anyway.


"It is our decision. It is not Russia's decision," said a NATO source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Ideally, we would like to work with the Russians, rather than against them."


In the future, each side will likely develop its own sphere of influence, Medvedev said. If NATO becomes the dominant force in Europe, Russia will exert the same leverage over the countries of the former Soviet Union.


"There won't be a second Yalta over this, but there will be some kind of unspoken, mutual understanding," he said. As a result, Russia would suffer from a new polarization from the West -- not economically or socially, but politically.


"This country is open, and you can't close it," said Medvedev. "In the political sense, though, I think this will be a period of isolation."


Some of the conference's goals were reached. The CSCE will send a 3,000-strong peacekeeping force to the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Russian troops will play a large role in that effort, although not as large a role as Moscow had sought.


The CSCE will also gain a higher profile and change its name to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.


A Foreign Ministry spokesman declined Wednesday to give a statement yet on the outcome of the summit.


But Yeltsin had at least one supporter abroad for his awkward stance. European Union President Jacques Delors blamed the United States for provoking Russia.


Referring to the proposed NATO expansion, Delors told the Associated Press, "I would have counseled against proposing an enlargement now which, I think, complicates the forging of the necessary relations between the United States, the European Union and Russia."