As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton began her first visit to Moscow as the top US diplomat, the Kremlin sent a message to Washington: Russia must still be wooed and won. It's how post-Soviet Russia has managed to thrive as a world power, despite a shrinking population, a bloated and inefficient military, and an antiquated industrial base. With its few major assets – energy resources, a seat on the UN Security Council and an aging nuclear arsenal – it has parlayed a weak hand into a position of expanding global influence. Clinton is on a two-day visit to encourage Russia to talk tough on sanctions against Iran if Tehran fails to cooperate on limiting its nuclear program. President Dmitry Medvedev has spoken sympathetically about how sanctions might eventually be needed, saying last month, “in some cases they are inevitable.” But Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov apparently dimmed US hopes Tuesday. “Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive,” Lavrov said. Later, three senior American officials said Medvedev had reaffirmed his earlier support for the US position in a private meeting with Clinton at his home outside Moscow. They said they were baffled by Lavrov's dismissive comment. By keeping its positions ambiguous – and its options open until the last possible moment – Russia has achieved so much with so little. And that could mean either more US concessions, or less of what Washington hoped for, or both. Meanwhile, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – by most reckoning Russia's most powerful political leader – was in China, where he said Moscow's cooperation with Beijing helps to “restrain” other powers, a not-so-veiled reference to the United States. Again, he appeared to be playing the angles. Russia desperately needs investment to find and develop new natural gas fields. But it has not rushed to cut deals: instead, it has carefully calculated how to use its resources to meet both economic and political goals. While Clinton was in Moscow, Putin was in Beijing to sign a framework multi-billion-dollar energy trade pact. But the details of Tuesday's deal remain to be worked out, and China hasn't agreed to Russia's demand for premium prices for its gas and other resources. Putin seemed to be suggesting to China's Communist rulers that a high-priced energy deal with Russia could pay political as well as economic benefits. And one of those benefits, it seems, would be a strengthened partnership opposing what Putin has called US global hegemony. Iran is another good example of how Russia has played a weak hand skillfully. A nuclear-armed Iran could threaten Moscow. On the other hand, Russian support for sanctions might sour important trade deals, especially in armaments and nuclear technology. Worse, Iran might decide to lend clandestine aid to Muslim separatists in the Russian Caucasus. So Moscow has walked a tightrope: joining Iran in scolding the West for its alleged imperial ambitions and blocking sanctions on the one hand, while warning Tehran it will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran on the other. Russia has agreed to sell Tehran sophisticated missile defense technology, but has so far declined to deliver those weapons – without giving up the right at some point to do so. By holding out the hope of sanctions to the US, Russia has won a lot of good will in Washington. By keeping alive the possibility of missile sales and continuing opposition to sanctions, it insures it has friends in Tehran. By delivering on neither, Russia has irked both would-be allies. But so far it has preserved its influence in a region where, otherwise, it might have little. Or none. Meanwhile, Russia continues to make incremental progress, it seems, on its own foreign policy goals, including expanding its control of Europe's energy markets and limiting the influence of NATO on its borders. Some US officials suspect the mixed messages coming from Moscow are the product of a lack of coordination at the top. Others see them as mostly reflecting debate and disagreements within the Russian government, perhaps the result of rival factions that surround Putin and Medvedev. Both may play some role. But Russia has been tacking like a sailboat, shifting from position to position to make the most of the prevailing winds, since Putin came to power in 1999. Russia's maneuvering has become even more intense since Putin, after two terms as president, engineered Medvedev's election and became prime minister in 2008, in effect giving the country two leaders. Today, Medvedev is often seen as the champion of Western hopes for reform and closer cooperation with leading democracies, while Putin typically plays the heavy. When Clinton was in Moscow, she met with Medvedev. But Putin, the political heavyweight, was in China. “I would have enjoyed meeting with Prime Minister Putin, certainly had intended to, but our schedules didn't work out,” Clinton said Wednesday on Ekho Moskvy radio. So, it seems, it was up to Lavrov to play the bad cop role. As in the case of Iran and the US, the result is that Russia's negotiating partners are whipsawed between their hopes and fears, uncertain about where exactly Russia stands – and perhaps ready to make concessions in order to test the waters and appeal to Russia's better nature. So are Medvedev and Putin rivals battling for the soul of Russia? Or are they silent partners, each playing his role in a grand strategy? Or is the relationship more complex? No one outside the Russian government knows for certain. “This is a non-transparent system,” said Masha Lipman of the Moscow Carnegie Center think tank. “We don't know how decisions are taken.” Whatever the reason behind Russia's seeming split personality, Moscow has in the last decade put itself in the center of some of the major foreign policy challenges facing the United States, including Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and arms control. Russia has repeatedly sought concessions in exchange for these services. And given Moscow's success, there seems to be little likelihood this pattern will change.
