ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the interrelationship of domestic and foreign policies in the contemporary Russian-American relationship with an eye to gauging the soundness of a relationship based on the prospect of Russia’s democratic and capitalist transformation. Western policy elites have sought to develop a broad political partnership with the government of Boris Yeltsin that is aimed at providing incentives for diplomatic cooperation and the advancement of “the reform process” in Russia. In a number of areas, Russian diplomacy has been able to project an influence far beyond that of the Soviet Union at the height of its power, and certainly well beyond what one would have deduced from Russia’s straitened domestic and international circumstances. British diplomats openly welcomed Russian support in resisting American pressure to “lift and strike” in the spring and summer of 1993. Radical discontinuity thus appears to be the distinguishing characteristic of the international setting of contemporary Russian-American relations.
