Senior Fellow John R. Bolton

In little more than a week, citizens of the United States will vote to elect the next President. Although many in Europe focus intently on the election's significance for U.S. foreign policy, the ongoing global financial crisis has largely dominated the campaign and voters' attention. Accordingly, there is much about the two major-party candidates' views on foreign policy that have not been fully articulated. We know, or can infer with confidence, the most about Senator McCain's likely national security policies because of his long and distinguished career in the U.S. Senate. Senator Obama, by contrast, has very limited experience in foreign policy. His campaign has prudently limited his potential exposure on the issue to broad generalities, concentrating on tying McCain to the unpopular Bush Administration by suggesting that a McCain presidency will simply be a "third term" for Bush.

While it is perfectly understandable that the economy has been uppermost on the minds of the voters, in Europe as well as America, we cannot escape the international challenges that the next President will face. Of these, the challenge which Europe and America face most acutely together is understanding and dealing with the direction of Russia's foreign policy, especially as it affects Europe and its other neighbors. Although no serious observer thinks we face a new Cold War, or that isolating Russia because of its increasing foreign adventurism is a real solution, there is no doubt Russia's behavior has grown increasingly troublesome and even belligerent for some time.

Facts are facts. Russia's invasion of Georgia is only the most recent and most vicious indicator of its return not to the Cold War but to a thuggish, indeed czarist, approach to its former dominions. Then-President Vladimir Putin gave early warning in 2005, saying that the Soviet Union's breakup was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century." In the same speech, Putin lamented that "tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory." Today, as Russia's Prime Minister, Putin may be acting to reverse that "catastrophe," as further demonstrated by Moscow's unabashed embrace of Yulia Tymoshenko and innumerable other efforts to interfere in Ukrainian elections. Prudence based on history requires us to assess Russia's invasion of Georgia as more than an aberration, until proven otherwise.

Russia has repeatedly demonstrated its intention and capacity to threaten America's and Europe's interests: providing cover to Iran's nuclear weapons program by enthusiastically neutering sanctions resolutions in the UN Security Council and trying to market reactors to Tehran; selling high-end conventional weapons to Iran, Syria and other undesirables; using Russia's oil and natural gas assets to intimidate Europe; making overtures to OPEC; and cozying up to Venezuela through joint Caribbean naval maneuvers, weapons sales, and even agreeing to construct nuclear reactors, a truly dangerous sign.

Take the controversy over locating U.S. missile defense assets in Poland and the Czech Republic. We fully informed Russia before withdrawing from the 1972 ABM Treaty that we would create a limited missile defense system, i.e., geographically national, but limited to protect only against the handfuls of missiles states like North Korea and Iran might launch. As anyone can tell from a globe, anti-missile sites in Europe won't defend against the missile trajectories of a Russian strike against America. (That's why the DEW Line was in Alaska and Canada, not Europe.) Russia's threat to attack Poland is aimed at intimidating Western Europe, an all too-easy objective these days.
  
Western  opposition to Russia's recent aggressive behavior should not rest on a desire to "punish" Russia, but on the critical need to brace Moscow before its behavior becomes even more unacceptable. Europe and the United States  have real interests at stake, such as a route to the Caspian Basin's oil and gas assets that does not traverse Russia or Iran. Even as global oil prices have fallen, the need for energy independence from potential adversaries remains compelling. If Moscow's marching through Georgia goes unopposed, marching will look more attractive elsewhere, starting with Ukraine with its large ethnic Russian population "beyond the fringes" of Moscow's control. "Legitimate security interests" do not justify invading and dismembering bordering countries.

A truly rational Russia policy has to escape both the persistent romanticism of Moscow in recent U.S. Administrations, and the desire of some Europeans to pull the covers over their heads and hope that things will work out by doing nothing. Too many Europeans believe they have passed beyond history, and beyond external threats unless they themselves are "provocative." Last spring in Bucharest, that mentality led Germany and others to reject U.S. suggestions to put Georgia and Ukraine formally on the path to NATO membership. Moscow clearly read that rejection as a sign of weakness. 

In truth, what most risks "provoking" Moscow is not Western resolve, but precisely Western weakness. This is where the real weight of history lies. Accordingly, attitude adjustment in Moscow first requires attitude adjustment in NATO capitals, and quickly, before Moscow's swaggering leaders draw the wrong lessons from their recent successes.
 
First, NATO must reverse the Bucharest Summit mistake immediately, and this is an achievable goal before President Bush leaves office. Admitting Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania has in fact stabilized a possible zone of confrontation in the Baltic, and moving to bring in Ukraine and Georgia will eliminate another dangerous vacuum in the Black Sea region. Second, we should scale up rapidly in military cooperation with current and aspiring NATO members in Central and Eastern Europe to make it clear more Russian adventurism is highly inadvisable. Hopefully, other NATO countries will join with the United States, but Washington should act bilaterally if need be. Third, the United States and Europe should proceed full speed ahead with missile defense plans, on which we have repeatedly offered Russia full involvement and cooperation, to protect us all from rogue state threats.

Such an approach will not endanger Western security, but enhance it. And if Russia takes offense, better to know it now than later, when the stakes for all concerned may be much higher.

John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI.