Hand over a trillion dollars, or else.

Germany’s ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has long been something of a legend. He serves at Vladimir Putin’s filling station for a measly couple of million euros a year, sits at sessions of the Russian Academy of Sciences like a latter-day Euler, and writes books about his staunch Eurasian friendship with Genosse Wladimir who, in the not so distant past, earned himself the well-deserved nickname of Stasi among business circles in gangster-ridden St. Petersburg.

It is not actually immediately obvious whether it is Mr. Schroeder licking Mr. Putin's boots or vice versa. The two of them are building, or trying to, the Nord Stream gas pipeline, an exceptionally costly project which satisfies twin strategic objectives. Demonstratively hostile to both Belarus and Ukraine, it ensures these countries will remain alienated from Russia irrespective of what governments may be installed in Minsk and Kiev in the next decade. As a bonus, it consolidates the Russian economy’s status as an appendage supplying natural resources to Germany.

These do appear to be the very objectives certain historical predecessors of Chancellor Schroeder attempted to attain by rather different means.

Russian diplomacy’s achievements in respect of America are even more impressive. The present Russia policy of the Obama administration is formulated, abundantly nurtured with advice from, and implemented by people who have no official position in the administration: Henry Kissinger, James A. Baker, Thomas Graham, and Dimitri Simes. The first two enjoy a reputation as major geopoliticians, and Mr. Graham and Mr. Simes are respected as outstanding Russia specialists. They write key reports for the administration, and shuttle between Moscow and Washington coordinating the parameters of America’s “reset” diplomacy.

What these people have in common is that, like Mr. Schroeder, they have serious business interests in Russia. Mr. Baker is a consultant of such companies, closely associated with the highest in the land, as Gazprom and Rosneft. The Kissinger Associates lobby group, whose Russian section is headed up by Mr. Graham, feeds in to the Kissinger-Primakov working group.

It is highly instructive to read their recommendations to the American government. As is only to be expected of top-flight lobbyists, they unobtrusively render the objectives of their Kremlin clients, into conceptual language familiar and comprehensible to the American political establishment.

Mr. Graham’s latest contribution, “Resurgent Russia and U.S. Purposes,” has caused a stir and is very revealing in this respect. The author finds the government of a “Russia getting up off its knees” to consist of progressive modernizers fully aware of the challenges facing their country as it attempts to “return to the great powers club.” He sees a document they put out last year titled “Strategy 2020” as testifying to the seriousness of their intentions. (Mr. Graham tactfully passes over the fact that this declarative document has already been consigned to the waste paper basket.)

“But in order to become a genuinely developed and modern country,” Mr. Graham continues, “in the coming decade Russia will need to invest at least one trillion dollars in modernizing its infrastructure. America and the West in general have a vital interest in seeing the modernization of Russia succeed. The lion's share of the technologies, know-how, and a substantial proportion of the investment, needs to come from Europe and the USA.”

In addition to the technology and investments, Mr. Graham, who, as an experienced psychoanalyst, has a fine understanding of the patient’s adolescent complexes, proposes also shoving a geopolitical dummy in his mouth by “Finlandizing” Ukraine.

Otherwise, he warns in melancholy tones, Russia will continue to dump on us “wherever and whenever it can,” and in the end will completely go to the dogs together with its nuclear potential. "At the extreme, a weak Russia, with its vast resources and sparse population east of the Urals, could become the object of competition among the great powers, notably China and the United States."

“Hand over a trillion dollars, or else...” It is an organic and logical development of Mr. Putin's homily at Davos, when he advocated decisive action to end the world economic crisis by writing off half a trillion dollars’ worth of debt owed to Western banks by the state corporations run by his pals from the Dresden KGB residency and the Ozero dacha cooperative.

Mr. Graham is no fool and is, of course, well aware that no trillions of dollars in the next decade will succeed any better than the trillions squandered in the last one in modernizing Mr. Putin's kleptocratic regime, which is institutionally, intellectually, and aesthetically antithetical to the task of modernization.

There is, however, a lot of work to be done, and very professionally Mr. Graham does it too. His only slip is in trying to bug his readers with a hypothetical confrontation between the United States and China. This is not his area of specialization. His boss works personally with the Chinese account, jointly propounding with his eternal rival Zbigniew Brzezinski the notion, so seductive for an America wearying of its imperial burden, of a Big Two. Here is a recent sample of his geopolitical arts:

“The role of China in a new world order is crucial. A relationship that started on both sides as essentially a strategic design to constrain a common adversary has evolved over the decades into a pillar of the international system... The Sino-American relationship needs to be taken to a new level. This generation of leaders has the opportunity to shape relations into a design for a common destiny, much as was done with trans-Atlantic relations in the post-war period.”

Feel the difference, as they say. Our concern, however, is not to compare the literary merits of these golden, in every sense of the word, pens of Messrs. Kissinger and Graham. Both these highly venerable gentlemen are conscientiously and honestly articulating the aspirations closest to the hearts of their customers.

It's just that not all customers are the same. One wants to get his hooks into a further trillion dollars, while another wants to become “a central construct of the system of international relations.”