Well before George W. Bush finally won the U.S. presidency, Vladimir Putin and his surrogates made it clear that they hoped for a Republican victory. Putins team believes that the new Bush team for foreign policy will adopt a more realpolitik philosophy toward international affairs. In their view, this means less attention to pesky issues like human rights, corruption and the war in Chechnya, and more attention to traditional issues of foreign diplomacy such as arms control and great power regulation of regional conflicts.

President Bush and his new foreign policy team have announced that they plan to undertake a full review of all aspects of American policy toward Russia on matters like economic assistance, NATO expansion and missile defense. There must be a new agenda, we are told, because the old approach of cooperation and engagement pursued by the Clinton administration has been ineffective. In hinting at the tone of their new policy, Bush administration officials have promised a realist approach, which would presumably include greater attention to Russia's international conduct and less to reforms within Russia.

Between a continuation of engagement and a return to containment is a third path: realistic engagement. [Bush] needs to communicate to [Putin] that he believes in the possibility of Russia's integration into Europe and the Western community of states. But he also needs to clearly articulate the real terms of integration, terms that will require Russia to undergo serious political and economic changes. To help Russia integrate into the West, the American strategy must still be engagement, but with more realistic expectations about when, and with real standards for how this integration might occur.

President Bush thus must express his faith in Russia's ability to rejoin Europe as a democratic state with a market economy. Many within Russia do not believe the United States and the new administration in particular want to see Russia as part of the West. Bush should even be so bold as to present NATO membership for Russia as a real goal for the long term. Europe will only be whole and free, a goal Bush's father once articulated, if Russia is a member.

Most Russians still hope their country can become a full-fledged member of Europe. They do not want to become an autocratic ally of China seeking to confront the West. But a decade of disappointed expectations about democracy and markets, coupled with seemingly hostile acts from the West, has fueled doubts about Russia's place in the world. President Bush cannot eliminate this self-doubt overnight, but he can make clear American intentions toward Russia. By articulating a positive but realistic vision for Europe -- whole, free and including Russia -- he can help to reverse Russia's dangerous anti-Western drift.

Since coming to office, President Bush has made real progress in challenging some of the lingering legacies of the cold war. He has advanced a vision of defending American national security interests that is not constrained by cold-war logic and agreements. Mr. Bush's new approach to international-security issues has yielded real results - including most notably President Putin's agreement last week to rethink Russia's categorical rejection of missile-defense systems.

One group of Washington-based pundits and exiled Iranians wants to push the United States into increasingly hostile and direct confrontation with the Islamic regime, using coercive diplomacy and even military pressure if necessary. This group also wants to encourage demonstrators inside Iran to rise up and confront the regime as quickly and boldly as possible, even if this would prompt violence, revolution or civil war. Some members of this group -- following in the footsteps of the Iraqi exiles and U.S. policymakers who favored installing exiled banker Ahmad Chalabi as leader of Iraq -- are determined to handpick Iran's next leader. Their choice is Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last shah to rule in Iran.

A second group in Washington is pushing for a completely different U.S. policy toward Iran: detente. Increasingly, Iranian hard-liners have hinted that they might be willing to restrain Islamic radicals based in Iran who are stirring things up in Iraq. But in exchange, they've suggested, they would want guarantees that the U.S. will not support opponents of the Iranian regime. Desperate to hold onto power, Iran's leaders seem suddenly willing to deal with the U.S. in exchange for stability.

These proponents of engagement inside Iran have allies in the U.S. Since Hashemi Rafsanjani was elected president of Iran 15 years ago, a group of U.S. scholars, retired diplomats and businessmen (especially oil company executives) has acted as de facto lobbyists for the Islamic regime. They considered Rafsanjani to be Iran's great hope: a "moderate mullah" who wanted rapprochement with the West. When reformer [Mohammad Khatami] was elected to replace him in 1997, they changed horses, but not their recommended strategy of engaging with the existing regime.