UPI: Vladimir Putin's announcement of political reforms, including the Kremlin appointment of regional governors, has precipitated an outpouring of negative responses from Western politicians and media.

Russia is widely seen to be retreating to old habits of authoritarian rule. To add to the frustration of many Russia watchers, there appears little the West can do to influence Russia's domestic political order - unlike Russia's chaotic 1990s.

How much does Russia's domestic political environment impact the U.S.-Russian relationship? How much impact should it have? Putin appears unmoved by Western concerns about the nature of Russia's democracy. In a sense, Russia's domestic political order is no longer part of the dialogue.

Shouldn't the United States now focus more on the core elements of the bilateral relationship: energy cooperation, anti-proliferation measures, the war on terror and trade? For better or worse, Putin has turned a new page for Russia. How will the United States respond?

Dale Herspring, a U.S. Navy retiree and former career diplomat, is a professor of political science at Kansas State University.

This is part of an eternal dilemma in American foreign policy. On the one hand, there are those who believe that the most important thing the United States should do is to push other countries to improve their human rights record - i.e., act more like Americans. This really came to the fore during the Carter administration when it became part and parcel of U.S. policy around the world.

There is a problem with a policy that tries to force other countries to change their domestic policies to suit our own view of how the world should look. This is what we did vis-a-vis the U.S.S.R. and other communist countries.

The Jackson-Vanik Bill was a case in point. Unfortunately, the overall result in terms of impacting on their policies was negative. The most it did for us was to make us feel good. We were doing the Lord's work, and even if it was often counterproductive, we felt good about ourselves.

In my own personal experience, we had a much bigger impact on the Russians and Poles during communist times when we worked quietly behind the scenes on things like divided families or other human rights issues.

I can remember a number of Polish officials telling me privately to avoid going public and making it into a political contest - if that happened their hands would be tied - and nothing would happen. When it came to things like freedom of the press, or freedom for the political process, the Russians and Poles ignored us.

Finally, just as we argued that we had bigger things to worry about than freedom of the press during Soviet times (i.e. arms control negotiations), one could make the argument that we have bigger fish to fry now - the war on terrorism.

Like it or not, we are in the same boat, regardless of how we got ourselves into the current situation.

The fact is that we need the Russians and they need us. This does not for a minute mean that we should not use back channels or official contacts to let the Russians know how we feel, but big public campaigns by academics or politicians are likely to have a negative impact and, if anything, get the Russians to circle the wagons.

I realize that many from the human rights world will find my comments upsetting. It is true that the Russians signed conventions agreeing that they would respect things like a free press and other individual and corporate freedoms. There is nothing wrong with noting that they do not appear to be in compliance.

However, one should not expect outside pressure to have much of an impact when the president of the country - the one who is taking these negative steps - has a 72 percent popularity rating. This is especially true when the vast majority of the population believes the steps he is taking are justified in the aftermath of Beslan.

Peter Rutland is professor of government at Wesleyan University.

Well, I would challenge your premise that the West was able to significantly influence Russian domestic politics during the 1990s. I don't think that was true. Can you cite any specific examples of this beneficial influence in action?

From the storming of the Parliament, to the invasion of Chechnya, to the rigged privatization, Yeltsin did not pay much attention to Western opinion. Does that make the current situation any better? No. But it does make it more familiar than is often supposed.

Putin is not so much turning a new page as going back to an old playbook: authoritarian control. America will learn to live with an authoritarian Russia, just as we seem comfortable dealing with Gen. (Pervez) Musharaff, the Saudi royal family, and other undemocratic rulers.

But I am not sure that this authoritarian strategy will work in Russia. It may strangle sustainable economic growth, and fail to prevent further ethnic conflict in the Caucasus.

The world has changed and Russia has changed since the 1980s. I don't believe that Putin can get the toothpaste back in the tube, and reverse the opening of Russian society.

America has an interest in seeing Russia succeed, but I do not believe that Putin's policy will produce the success that would serve the interests of both countries.

Andrew C. Kuchins is director of the Carnegie Moscow Center

It is true that the United States has very little leverage over major domestic political-economic issues in Russia, and this makes it tempting to discard concerns about non-democratic trends and simply concentrate on issue areas where our interests intersect.

In this case, we would take a purely interest-based approach to the relationship in which trust would develop over time by actually working together on concrete areas of joint interest.

But it would be erroneous to think that values are so easily separable from interests in international relations. U.S. and European leaders espouse strengthening democratic institutions, including independent courts, independent Parliament, free media, strong civil society, etc., because we believe it will strengthen the state in Russia and increase its capacity for effective partnership on economic, security and other fields of cooperation.

Let me try to clarify what I mean. I believe today that the Russian state's greatest challenge is systemic and endemic corruption. Mr. Putin acknowledged this in Russian security and military forces after Beslan as a great problem as well.

I believe that deep corruption prevents the Russian economy from achieving its full potential, and Mr. Putin also acknowledged this in his 2003 State of the Union address. But despite identifying the problem, both empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests the problem is worsening rather than improving.

The essence of the problem lies in the unaccountability and irresponsibility of state agents - the dreaded bureaucracy.

What is more likely to be an effective approach to bringing state officials to account: strengthening the vertical of power or strengthening democratic institutions? My money would be on the latter approach, but unfortunately all evidence suggests the Kremlin prefers the former.

I am also convinced that this will weaken Russia's capacity for partnership and not only with the United States, and it will also compromise Russia's economic modernization goals as well.

Ira Straus is U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia on NATO.

America is not ready to disengage fully from Russian domestic politics, nor should it. It has been right to lower the noise level of involvement. However, Russia's domestic system does impact the overall relationship.

America's worst sins have not been over-involvement. Under Bush I, it was under-involved, alienating Russia deeply during 1992. Under Clinton, there were several periods of under-involvement, despite rhetoric that made it seem otherwise.

American influence has always been less than one might think by reading Russian nationalist complaints, which often blame all Russia's problems on an omnipotent United States and its lackeys.

Likewise, some Russian democrats - and their allies in the U.S. media - blame Russia's problems on wrong U.S. influence (supporting Yeltsin and Putin, not imposing its will on them).

The reality is the United States is not omnipotent but has inescapable influence, which it weakens when it acts petulantly. The 1940s were a model of intrusive yet wise influence, culminating in the Marshall Plan and NATO; the 1990s were sometimes a model of standoffish petulance.

Advice and aid were not in balance: There was more advice than the aid could carry. Russians were never sure whether the advice was coming from an ally trying to help them recover, or an enemy trying to weaken them irrevocably.

Nunn-Lugar (a program to assist in dismantling or safely storing Soviet nuclear weapons) is accepted cautiously; it would go down better if the West were not just disarming Russia but engaging it more as an ally, working out joint strategies for becoming jointly stronger, and supporting legitimate Russian interests.

Democratization advice would go down better if it were not so often misdirected in American rhetoric, whose anti-centralist fixation could easily sound like pushing for break-up. It has the makings of tragedy.

Americans urge upon Russia a federalism close to the anti-federalists. Russians think it is a plot to tear apart their country. But it is mostly just America's distorted self-image, the gap between its Jeffersonian rhetoric and Hamiltonian reality.

America needs to recalibrate its democratization advice to be helpful to reconstruction of an effective state in Russia, its military-strategic partnership with Russia to make it more visibly helpful to Russia's legitimate interests, and its expectations of output to fit the input.

Gordon Hahn is a scholar at large and author of Russia's Revolution for Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000.

Under certain circumstances Russia's domestic environment heavily impacts U.S.-Russia relations, as the Cold War showed most clearly. During the 1990s, the democratization process put limits on the ability of certain anti-Russian groups in the United States to successfully lobby the Clinton administration to press Moscow on Chechnya.

On the other hand, a democratic-oriented regime influences the relationship from the Russian side, as anti-Westerners find it harder to shape foreign policy.

Many would have liked to have seen the U.S. reward Moscow for eschewing empire and authoritarianism by abandoning NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and offering her a well-designed and well-monitored Marshal Plan.

That this did not occur underscores the limits to which the Russian domestic scene when it is characterized by democratization impacts on U.S. policy.

The contrast with Sino-American relations is striking to Russians, and they appear to have learned a lesson I wish we had not taught: that democracy and human rights is at times trumped by perceived self-interest in U.S. foreign policy.

I believe the increasingly hard, but still reasonably soft authoritarian regime emerging under Putin offers Western Russophobes and Russian anti-Westerners greater leverage.

The former will be supported by more objective observers in arguing - correctly (within limits) in my view - that an authoritarian Russia is more likely to counter American interests. Shared interests like the war against terrorism are likely to prevent a new Cold War.

However, certain flashpoints could directly pit Russian versus American interests and undermine the sense, even the reality of common interest in the war on terrorism. Moscow's support for separatism in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and plans to proceed with nuclear construction in Iran are the main dangers.

The United States should continue to focus on energy cooperation, anti-proliferation measures, the war on international terrorism and trade. However, this should not exclude at least threatening certain costs or exacting small ones for Russian political, civil and human rights violations.

After all, trade and even energy cooperation may be more in Russia's interests than our own and provide leverage. The view that we have very little or no leverage remains untested by President Bush, and it may soon be time to act.

Vlad Sobell is a director at Daiwa Institute of Research

Basic facts need to be restated. The totalitarian Soviet enemy vanished in 1990-1991, when the Union imploded under the weight of its imperial overstretch and dysfunctional economy.

Furthermore, unlike Germany and Japan, Russia has emerged from tyranny by its own bootstraps, thankfully making a Soviet military defeat and U.S. occupation unnecessary. As a consequence of this happy outcome, Russia is now constructing its democracy in line with its indigenous culture and traditions.

While these are indisputable historical facts, many analysts and policy-makers apparently have not noticed. They continue to treat Russia as if nothing has happened, or as if communism was removed by Western conquest, censoring Russia's every move and calling for all manner of levers.

It seems, however, that these individuals will remain disappointed: Their advice and prescriptions are not needed. So instead of objectively analyzing Russia's democratic evolution and seeking ways to advance mutual interests, they channel their energies to carping at Putin's regime, portraying his reforms as authoritarianism, and the legitimate re-assertion of Russia's interest as neo-imperialism."

It is high time the West comes to terms with reality and lets go. The United States should stop judging and lecturing, and concentrate instead on cooperation in vital areas such as security and energy.

The West should also cooperate with the Kremlin in seeking the peaceful settlement of conflicts in the former U.S.S.R. and Chechnya. It seems that true democrats must accept that the only and ultimate judge of the regime must be the Russian demos, not Western analysts and officials.

Putin stands accused of running a managed democracy because he allegedly distrusts genuine democracy and will not let go. But the self-appointed guardians of democracy in the West are doing the same.

By distrusting and constantly fretting about post-totalitarian Russia, they reveal their own lack of democratic credentials as well as lacking faith in democracy's ability to take root in Russia.

Janusz Bugajski is director of the East Europe Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington

There are two serious concerns in Washington about President Putin's counter-revolution and the link between Russia's new authoritarianism and Russia's new imperialism.

First, the re-centralization of the Russian state will thwart the remaining vestiges of democracy and may exacerbate the causes and consequences of internal conflict.

In particular, such a policy could further stoke ethnic tensions, religious conflicts, and separatist aspirations in the north Caucasus as resentment toward Moscow increases.

It will also eliminate all accountability among Russian officials and lead to increasingly arbitrary decisions in both domestic and foreign policy. Eventually, instead of making Russia more viable, Putin's policy may actually accelerate Russia's slide as a failing state.

Second, an authoritarian Russia is more likely to export its model of illiberal rule and project its imperialist impulses throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States region.

If successful, such a policy will undercut American influences in Eurasia; and if unsuccessful, Russia's strategy will bring about further regional instabilities and terrorist threats that will also endanger Western interests.

Putin is unmoved by democracy building among Russia's neighbors, but supports dictators along the country's border who will acquiesce to Kremlin interests. Such policies will in turn engender political radicalism, territorial separatism and religious terrorism across Russia's southern periphery.

Of course, Washington must focus on issues where it can work with Moscow, especially in such spheres as anti-WMD proliferation and intelligence sharing to combat Islamist terrorism.

However, it must carefully discern Russia's objectives and how these fit with America's long-range goals, especially in any common dealings with Iran and North Korea.

Washington also needs to carefully monitor Moscow's contribution to counter-terrorism and specify where Putin's policies actually aggravate the international threat.

Moreover, it is not Putin who should be determining the basis of cooperation with the United States, but America needs to determine where the former superpower can be helpful. Ultimately, one can only meet on the same page if one is actually working with the same book.

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