National Review: Russian roulette: Moscow is developing a new rallying cry. Rogue states of the worl

Mr. Rosenberger is assistant to the president of Boston University and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy.

SIX years ago, Yevgeny Primakov, then a special envoy of Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, made his first foray onto the international stage. He arrived in Baghdad on the eve of the first Western attack in the Gulf War, hoping to avert hostilities at the last minute -- and thus unravel President Bush's careful diplomacy. Primakov worked so hard at this that -- like CNN's Bernard Shaw --he was in the Iraqi capital when the bombs began to fall and had to be hustled out of the country, peace proposals in hand.

That was then; this is now. When in October Saddam Hussein expelled the American members of a UN arms-inspection team, precipitating yet another Iraqi crisis, it was Primakov, not anyone in the West, who controlled the end-game. As Washington fumed on the sidelines, Primakov, now Russia's foreign minister, cut a deal that allowed Saddam to appear to cave in (he let American inspectors back into the country, but cut off their access to dozens of possible weapons sites). In exchange, Saddam won a crucial promise from Primakov: that Russia would work to ease sanctions against Iraq in the United Nations Security Council.

The 67-year-old Primakov is a survivor, a Soviet apparatchik who has prospered in the Yeltsin era and whose own vision of a "new world order" may be more viable nowadays than that of his old Gulf War adversary, George Bush. The foreign minister stands as an emblem, not just of the nasty pedigree of the upper echelons of the new Russian bureaucracy, but also of a broader anti-American trend in Russian attitudes and foreign policy. His vision of "multipolarity" aims to set Russia on a collision course with the West -- making the kind of mischief Primakov worked in Iraq a permanent feature of Russia's behavior in the world.

Many Russian intellectuals are in the mood for just such an anti-Western turn. Roy Medvedev -- a respected intellectual and dissident in Soviet days -- has decried calls for a fascist, nationalist regime in Russia. But even he argues that "no less dangerous are the attempts to turn Russia into a commonplace country of the Western type, thrusting upon it Western values and American-model capitalism, which are alien to our people." The key to national restoration, Medvedev contends, lies in a new assertiveness on the world stage. "Neither 'humility' nor the position of a client of the West will help change the situation. We must stop the country's decline, including by means of foreign policy."

Primakov has taken up Medvedev's challenge, with relish. For him, the fall of the Soviet Empire was a potential personal disaster --which he appears to have turned into triumph. There have always been rumors in Moscow that Primakov has kept secret a Jewish background so as to avoid impeding his official career -- thus symbolically rejecting his real family for the embrace of Mother Russia. Whether the rumor is true or not, there is no doubt that Primakov has shrewdly managed to keep his career thriving in all political circumstances.

AS a reporter for Pravda in the Middle East in the early 1960s, Primakov was able to weave an impressive web of reporting contacts and political affiliations. He cultivated the big names of the Middle East, including Mustafa Barzani, then the leader of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan; Hosni Mubarak, the future president of Egypt; Jordan's King Hussein; and a young Iraqi Ba'athist leader named Saddam Hussein. Primakov's work abroad during this period --the latter years of Khrushchev's reign -- suggests he had connections at the highest levels of the Soviet apparatus.

Upon returning to Moscow, Primakov took up a number of positions within the USSR's Academy of Sciences and supervised "brainstorming" sessions on problems of Soviet foreign policy. Transcripts of these seminars were compressed into policy papers for emerging Party leaders such as Gorbachev and Yuri Andropov. Primakov also managed to find time to supervise the doctoral thesis of Saddam Hussein's cousin.

Primakov's politicking at home earned him a first-class cabin on a sinking ship -- the Communist Party. By 1989, he had risen through the Party's Central Committee to become head of one chamber of the Supreme Soviet. As Primakov watched the Soviet Union come apart, he hedged his bets. He made contacts with liberal reformers -- but he also did the Party's bidding, no matter how brutal the task.

As the informal supervisor of troubled Azerbaijan in 1990, when that republic was seeking a measure of autonomy, Primakov at first negotiated with the rebellious Popular Front, but, as the threat of general strikes loomed, he warned of reprisals. "The militia, troops of the MVD, the KGB, and the Procuracy -- these additional forces have arrived from Moscow," he told a crowd on the eve of a crackdown. "Everything is being done to restore order." In the subsequent attack, 130 Azeri protesters were killed, 700 wounded.

Primakov's fence-sitting paid off. He slipped into Gorbachev's inner circle as a member of the Presidential Council. From his seat at the Kremlin he was finally able to turn his long-nurtured ties to leaders in the Middle East into the tools of an assertive foreign policy. The USSR came apart at the seams, but Primakov continued to rise, eventually becoming head of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

However, the pro-Western policies that Andrei Kozyrev pursued as the new Russia's first foreign minister in the early 1990s diminished Primakov's influence. And so, relying on his extensive network of journalists and apparatchiks, Primakov stoked a public-relations assault on his own Foreign Ministry. Throughout 1995, for example, President Yeltsin was bombarded by a campaign of disinformation that included reports that a Western diplomat had found Russia's response to U.S. foreign policy to be surprisingly passive. By the time it was revealed that the diplomat had been speaking of France, not Russia, the campaign had had its effect, and the suitably tough-on-the-West Primakov was foreign minister.

In describing Primakov's vision for Russia's foreign policy, it is important to establish what it is not. Primakov is not a field commander in some Clash of Civilizations. He is interested in the trappings of traditional institutions, such as the Orthodox Church, only as a means to a secular end: the expansion of Russian power and influence.

When, for example, it is time to apply pressure on a NATO member such as Turkey, Primakov will quietly permit arms shipments to Russia's "Christian allies" in Greek Cyprus. But the real point is making trouble for the West, not reinforcing ancient cultural ties. There is no traditional Orthodox relationship with Turkey's Kurds. But Primakov's Foreign Ministry was happy to lend its support to a conference on their plight in Moscow last March.

Indeed, forthright expressions of traditional Slavophile fears of other races and civilizations provoke Primakov's wrath. When in December 1996 Defense Minister Igor Rodionov gave a speech in which he listed China and Iran as among the threats to Russia, Primakov helped force his resignation. When Primakov looks to the Islamic and Asian worlds, he sees nations that, like Russia, are unjustly trapped in an American-led world order and are struggling to regain their sovereignty.

Thus, the mantra repeated in every Russian communique, and in every speech Primakov makes abroad, is "multipolarity." Take, for example, the "Joint Russian - Chinese Declaration about a Multipolar World and the Formation of a New International Order," signed in Moscow last April. "A diversity of political, economic, and cultural development is becoming the norm," it reads. "Each state has the right -- proceeding from its specific conditions -- to independently choose on its own a way of development without intervention on the part of other states."

Beneath the statement's reassuring tone of international tolerance lurks a deep enmity toward the liberal-democratic order (in this sense "multipolarity" bears some relation to American "multiculturalism"). There is a hint, for example, of the old "anti-imperialist" rhetoric in the Russian - Chinese declaration, which makes reference to the "numerous developing countries and the Non-Aligned movement" that will be "an important force assisting the formation of a multipolar world and new international order." One Chinese delegate explained the joint declaration: "The earth is colorful and cannot be artificially changed into one single color."

LATELY, Primakov has been gaining ground in places besides Iraq and China. He was a hit at July's meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The rough treatment of the Thai and Malaysian currencies at the hands of international traders had prompted indignation against the "Anglo-Saxon world order." Primakov happily played into it. Anna Perfilyeva applauded the "wonderful way" Primakov had of "giving vent to the irritation about the unceremoniousness of American foreign policy which has been building up deep inside ASEAN" over American support for Israel.

Primakov also maneuvered a demarche toward a longtime (though notoriously prickly) American ally. At a Council of Europe meeting in October, Russia decried America's insistence that France drop its plans to finance an oil pipeline in Iran. In a thinly veiled reference to Uncle Sam, President Yeltsin called for a new pan-European foreign policy. "We do not need an uncle from elsewhere," he said. "We in Europe can unite ourselves." French officials didn't mind the anti-American flavor of the remarks. In fact, both President Jacques Chirac and Premier Lionel Jospin have adopted Primakov's line on a new "multipolar world."

Iran, of course, is a big Primakov booster. Iranian journalists have welcomed every anti-American comment of Russian officials. "During the Cold War," the Teheran Times has written, "the United States tried to contain the Soviet Union. Today other countries must contain the United States. Russia, China, and the Non-Aligned countries combined can contain U.S. expansionism. They should not allow the U.S. to change the contour of the world into a unipolar order."

Building a strong alliance with Iran is a critical element of the foreign minister's game plan, for two reasons. As the two most powerful players on the shores of the oil-rich Caspian Sea, Russia and Iran can cooperate to bully smaller neighboring nations into signing favorable exploration and pipeline deals. Secondly, Iran provides Russia with entree into the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East generally.

For all the dangers inherent in a new Axis on the Caspian, there is no more effective example of Primakov's "personal diplomacy" than Moscow's coddling of Iraq. As long as Saddam survives, he's a poster-boy for Primakov's world view: Why should any country postpone doing business with Iraq when Primakov's "multipolar" doctrine offers a convenient vision of the Baghdad regime as just one more chip in the world's rich mosaic? The Clinton Administration doesn't have an answer -- which is one reason why more and more countries' governments may start asking.