WASHINGTON — As surprised as anyone by the resignation of Boris N. Yeltsin, President Clinton and his closest foreign policy advisors Friday praised the departing Russian president and stressed that continuity is key in the sudden ascendancy of his handpicked successor, Vladimir V. Putin. But some officials admitted that managing U.S.-Russian relations in the Putin era will be tricky.
After talking by telephone with Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told reporters that she had received assurances there will be no immediate change in Moscow's stance toward the United States and that Washington plans no shift either.
But some specialists were quick to admit that the future is filled with question marks. The 47-year-old Putin, a political unknown five months ago when he was named prime minister, comes to power at a time when Moscow's relations with the United States have been strained by a series of events, most recently the U.S.-led assault on Yugoslavia and Russia's military adventure in the separatist republic of Chechnya.
Those ties face new strains as the globe's two biggest nuclear powers get ready to deal with a touchy set of issues, including America's desire to launch a new round of arms-reduction talks with Moscow while Washington also hopes to develop and deploy a national missile-defense system.
While it is the perceived missile threat from so-called rogue states such as North Korea that has generated the political push in the United States for a missile-defense system, Russia strenuously opposes any such deployment, fearing it could render useless its own aging nuclear arsenal and trigger a new arms race that it could not possibly win.
In November, Moscow announced it had tested a short-range interceptor missile in a move interpreted as much as a political warning as a test of new technology.
Russia, as many nations, is also deeply unsettled by the enormousness of America's power, and Putin noted that unease Friday, saying Moscow will strive for a "multipolar" world--code words for counterbalancing the disproportionate influence the U.S. enjoys in global affairs.
While use of the expression is not new, some analysts believe that Putin's rise to the presidency could mean a hardening of the tone, if not the substance, of Moscow's policies toward the West. They note that in pressing the war in Chechnya, Russia's new president has already demonstrated a tough, no-nonsense decisiveness and has been quick to play on Russian nationalism.
