Boris follows Bill

The Russian President who signed the Founding Act with the 16 NATO leaders was a statesman of reason; and aptly enough, he called the agreement a “victory of reason”. It is; for Yeltsin seems to have come to the conclusion that NATO expansion with the first batch of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary set to join by 1999 — will go on irrespective of Russia’s protests. In Paris he has not only stopped protesting but, in an impulsive gesture of magnanimity, assured the West that it would no longer be targeted by Russian nuclear warheads.

In return, Russia will have a consultative status no veto power within NATO and a membership in the Group of Seven. It is the triumph of Russian realism, for Yeltsin has refused to subordinate national interest to the national fantasy of Soviet vintage.

An isolated, angry, wounded Russia serves only the cause of history’s leftovers, which are multiplying despite Yeltsin’s bold steps in reforms. The Yeltsin agenda of economic prosperity needs the West. Russia’s strategic partnership with NATO is not only economically rewarding but diplomatically pragmatic. Russia has already expressed its desire to join the WTO as well as OECD.

For Russia’s interest lies not in aligning with an unpredictably volatile China but in joining the Western mainstream. The recently revived Sino-Russian bonhomie has offered many third world “anti-imperialists” a scenario of an emerging power axis against the Pax Americana.

Yeltsin knows better than professional third world anti-imperialists where his country’s interests are. For him, the benefactor in Washington matters more than the commissar in Beijing.

That is why the Paris breakthrough has become a mutually shared presidential triumph. Bill Clinton’s Friend-of-Boris part has to be seen in the larger context of his remarkably successful internationalism. Clinton’s first term was defined by domestic wreckage and global trophies.

His second term, especially in this season of rejuvenating American Dream, is also seeking glory in far shores.

His European mission has that rare historic reasonance because it recognises the genuine aspirations and fears of the post-Communist societies in Eastern and Central Europe. Wisely enough, he realises that NATO expansion should not result in a disgruntled, nationally-provoked Russia. After Paris, it seems Bill Clinton’s “bridge to the 21st century” is broad enough to accommodate a traveller like Boris Yeltsin, who too is keen to have a respectable place not in Europe alone but in history as well.