Russia has an interest in Washington returning to a position of collective action in dealing with crisis situations, rejecting the unilateralism that has been on display in Iraq. But Moscow understands that this can happen not through a crushing defeat of the United States in Iraq, but by the evolutionary turnaround of the Bush Administration toward involving the United Nations. This has already begun, and the essence of Russian policy is to encourage it forward.

In support of this, Russia's relationship with the European countries is of vital importance. During the last Iraqi crisis Europe was essentially divided between those who supported the U.S. military action and those who were opposed. Games based on these disagreements, however, are counterproductive. Russia's role might be to encourage European union member-states, especially France and Germany, to take a position that combines their negative attitude towards the unilateral use of force with active support of collective efforts to stabilize the situation in Iraq using the mechanism of the United Nations. Such actions should be developed in cooperation with the United States. The development of such a consensus should evolve under the aegis of the United Nations in order to solve the problem of legitimacy and to establish the authority of the operation to reconstruct Iraq.

It would be especially useful to utilize a collective effort to identify those forces in Iraqi society to whom power could be transferred--and such a collective effort to locate these forces could take the form of an international conference on Iraq.