Moscow. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov.)
Next week, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow will leave the country where he has spent four years. Russia will not have too many regrets on this score, even though the Ambassador has done nothing wrong.
Vershbow is a brilliant diplomat who arrived in Moscow in July 2001. A few months later, Russian-American relations underwent a dramatic change for the better, but no so much because of the U.S. envoy's diplomatic zeal. Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin were drawn together primarily by the horrible tragedy of September 11, when Putin offered Bush strategic partnership in combating international terrorism.
Vershbow was lucky that his first years in Russia were marked by what Russian analysts dubbed later the "spell of a sudden alliance."
Today, four years later, this spell seems to be losing its aura, and is giving way to more reserved but realistic positions on the part of the White House and the Kremlin. Meanwhile, average Russians view U.S. intentions toward the country with increasing suspicion. The typical view is that, despite the friendly attitudes of U.S. leaders, they are trying to weaken Russia, oust it from the post-Soviet space, and eventually, subordinate it to their self-centered global interests.
Anti-American attitudes have always been quite pronounced in Russia, running very high after the war against Yugoslavia in 1999. The attack on New York replaced them temporarily with compassion and solidarity, but suspicion came back with the invasion of Iraq, and later with political gambling on the post-Soviet space.
Russians accuse the United States of blatantly invading a sphere of Russia's historic interests when they see Washington trying to squeeze Georgia, Ukraine and other CIS countries into an American-centered model of the world.
Ambassador Vershbow leaves his position at a time when U.S. popularity in Russia has dropped far below what it was at the start of his Moscow tenure. This is not a very good result for the head of the diplomatic mission.
But Vershbow is not personally responsible for this. He was the very familiar face of a pushy and offensive America that will not stop lecturing the rest of the world - which does not even want to listen.
The Ambassador toured the whole of Russia, gave hundreds of interviews, delivered countless lectures, had numerous meetings with policymakers, businessmen, and especially human-rights activists. He tried passionately to prove that Washington had good intentions toward Russia: That the U.S. did not encourage velvet revolutions in CIS countries; that U.S. humanitarian programs in Russia and the rest of the post-Soviet space were fully transparent and decent; and that events in Georgia and Ukraine were not provoked by the U.S, but prompted by local desires for a free society.
These were fine words befitting the status of the U.S. Ambassador. Now he only has to persuade U.S. House Representative Ron Paul to drop his demand to set up an independent commission to investigate illegal funding of Viktor Yushchenko's election campaign by U.S. groups.
In his address to the House entitled "U.S. Hypocrisy in Ukraine," Ron Paul said: "We do not know exactly how many millions - or tens of millions - of dollars the United States government spent on the presidential election in Ukraine. We do know that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and through a series of cut-out non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - both American and Ukrainian - millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko."
Nobody intends, or can, prevent the U.S. from contributing to enhancing the security of CIS countries, integrating them into the global economy, and promoting democracy there. But certain circles are trying to neutralize Russia's influence in countries with which it has been linked culturally and economically for centuries, and where more than 25 million Russians reside. The U.S. Ambassador to Moscow quite often acted as a mouthpiece for these circles.
During his four years in Moscow, Vershbow made a huge effort to prove that America was disenchanted by the slow progress of civil society in Russia, by its controlled democracy and impending authoritarian rule, and by a clampdown on the Russian media.
Having made a leap from centralized economy to free enterprise, democracy in Russia is far from perfect. Moscow always welcomes constructive criticism. But an honest observer of Russia's political life will never say that the mass media enjoyed more freedom under Boris Yeltsin, for one. The oligarchs simply bought poor TV channels and newspapers that came to serve their sponsors instead of being sources of information.
It was under Putin that Yeltsin's tax evasion loopholes were abolished and that the media received more transparent and independent sources of funding.
Russia and the United States have common goals. They should pool their efforts against international terrorism, unstable countries trying to get mass destruction weapons for dubious purposes, against corruption and protectionism that are interfering with bilateral trade. But new mediators, a new style of work, and a new tone of communication are required to use this potential in full. Vershbow's successor will have to work hard.
