Tough-Love Diplomacy.(Sergei Tretyakov defects)(Brief Article)

Nostalgic cold-warriors sat up up and took notice last week when U.S. officials announced that a Russian diplomat by the name of Sergei Tretyakov had decided to abandon his job at the United Nations and remain on American soil. Though his new U.S. handlers were reluctant to divulge details, Russian journalists speculate that Tretyakov was probably working as a spy under diplomatic cover. But whatever his motives, the case had one remarkable effect: for the first time in nearly a decade, the word "defector" has re-entered the vocabulary of Russia's relations with the West.

Even though Tretyakov resigned his midlevel post and asked for asylum last October, the timing of the revelation was all too appropriate. Russians' irritation over their country's demotion from superpower status is colliding with a new policy of tough love from the West. George W. Bush set the tone in pre-Inauguration newspaper interviews, reasserting his plans to develop a national missile defense (a project resolutely opposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin) and saying he was reluctant to lend Russia more money until the country cleaned up its act. That hard line was underscored by Bush's first foray into foreign policy last week, when he relegated Putin to the lower ranks of a list of introductory phone calls to foreign leaders. But U.S. leaders aren't the only ones opting for a policy of zero tolerance when it comes to Putin's Russia.

Russia's leading businessmen got a jolt, for example, during the recent World Economic Forum in Davos. Back in the 1990s conference organizers courted the small group of tycoons, known as oligarchs, who emerged as the main beneficiaries of the country's haphazard economic liberalization. This time WEF organizers made headlines by canceling their invitation to Oleg Deripaska, a leading aluminum magnate being sued by three of his disgruntled business partners in a U.S. court. The plaintiffs allege that Deripaska was involved in organized crime. Meanwhile, financial guru George Soros added insult to injury by reportedly saying that foreign investors no longer have the stomach to risk money in Russia's failing economy.

Many of the other Russians who usually ...