WASHINGTON -- After veering from being enemies to being friends, the United States and Russia have settled uncomfortably in between.
And the political weakness of Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris N. Yeltsin threatens to make the relationship worse.
Four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union all but buried the threat of mutual nuclear incineration, the two countries are chafing over such post-Cold War problems as Bosnia, Iraq and the expansion of NATO. And with Russia still struggling to create durable democratic institutions, the former rival states face new strains as a result of Republican pressure in Congress to cut U.S. aid to Russia.
"There's a sense of inevitability on both sides about a worsening of the relationship," says Stephen Sestanovich, vice president for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
On the surface, the Russian invasion of the breakaway republic of Chechnya this week poses no problem. U.S. officials have taken pains to insist that the incursion is an internal matter.
Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher said yesterday that he was "sure [Mr. Yeltsin] took this action only when he felt he had no other alternative."
"It's not in our interest, or certainly theirs, to have a sort of disintegrating Russia, so I think he's probably done what he had to do, to prevent this republic breaking away," Mr. Christopher said on the "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour."
But the Russian incursion is bound to stoke insecurity among republics around Russia's volatile southern periphery. And the way it was handled, arousing sharp domestic opposition, exposed how hard it will be for Mr. Yeltsin to hold the federation together and perhaps mortally wounded his presidency.
"There's a deep, deep horror of using force" that is widespread in the Russian populace, said Charles Fairbanks Jr., a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who spoke at a forum here yesterday on Russian foreign policy.
With Mr. Yeltsin weakened politically, the eastward expansion of NATO that is being pushed by the Clinton administration only compounds his problems.
The movement by the Western alliance to include former Soviet satellites "is seen as a negative verdict on [Russia's] democratic transition," says Leon Aron, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, who also spoke at the conference. "Russian public opinion does not like that type of verdict."
Mr. Yeltsin complained last week that the United States was trying to draw a new line in Europe.
He suggested that any shift eastward of NATO to include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia would be an attempt to isolate Russia from Europe.
Clinton administration officials insisted that Mr. Yeltsin was appealing to a domestic audience and predicted that Russia would soon resume its cooperation with the process of expanding NATO.
But Mr. Yeltsin's outburst was only the latest U.S.-Russian rift in two years that have seen Russia try to reassert itself as a "great power."
The two nations have repeatedly been at odds over Bosnia, with Russia acting to protect the interests of the Serbs, with whom it has longtime Slavic and Orthodox ties, and the United States acting to help Bosnia's Muslims. Russian membership in the Contact Group of countries seeking a negotiated settlement has only slightly eased the strains.
Indeed, it was Bosnia, more than anything else, that pulled Russia away from its initial "internationalist" foreign policy in which it repeatedly followed the American lead, according to Mr. Aron.
After voting to impose sanctions against Serbia, Russia saw the world's impotence during the siege of Sarajevo. This led Russian reformers "to re-examine their hopes regarding the ability of the United States and its allies to restore a just peace anywhere," Mr. Aron has written.
And three years after former President Mikhail S. Gorbachev acquiesced in the U.S.-led ouster of Iraq from Kuwait, Russia is now pressing to ease U.N. sanctions against Iraq.
Russia also takes offense at American demands that it curb its arms sales to countries --Iran for one -- that sponsor terrorism and oppose Middle East peace. Moscow argues that the United States hasn't jettisoned its own important weapons customers.
On Capitol Hill, the new Republican majority has a far more skeptical view of Russia's long-term intentions. While aid to reduce the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal draws bipartisan support as a benefit to the United States, Republicans are skeptical about economic aid.
"I never liked the 'Russia-first' approach," says GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who will chair an important appropriations panel on foreign aid. He proposes earmarking more money for other former Soviet republics, presumably at Russia's expense.
But rather than prompting Russia to toe the American line, a cutback in U.S. aid might make average Russians even more disillusioned than they already are about the West.
This, in turn, will make obstructing the United States and NATO a political plus for Russia's leaders.