AFTER THE FINANCIAL CRASH of 1998 and the political disintegration of president Boris Yeltsin, the question in foreign policy circles was, “Who lost Russia?”

The answer was complicated. House Republicans first blamed Al Gore and the White House Russia hands for an unquestioning commitment to Yeltsin and his often-dubious policy decisions. Subsequent House hearings took the International Monetary Fund to task for unscrupulously doling out massive loans that were hastily expropriated by a band of oligarchs and the Kremlin elite (often perceived as one and the same). House majority leader Dick Armey thundered that Russia was “a looted and bankrupt zone of nuclearized anarchy,” while Secretary of State Madeleine Albright urged calm and to “bear in mind that Russia is not a watch or a set of keys that can be misplaced.”