The remaking of a superpower. (Capitol Ideas).

Russia is back. Or at least, it's heading that way.

For most of the 1990s, America's superpower rival appeared to be neither a superpower nor a real rival, and it was an open question whether Russia would prove a sustainable economy. Promises of reform were constant; results were few. President Boris Yeltsin wobbled between disorganization and inebriation. Poverty deepened, and the average lifespan of Russians shortened. Corruption was endemic. The 1998 ruble crisis only confirmed the West's worst suspicions: Russia, it seemed, would never match China's entrepreneurial drive or Poland's economic discipline.

Finally, that perception is changing. Nearly two years into his presidency, it is becoming clear that Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir V. Putin, understands what it will take to make Russia a global economic player. Since September 11, a key element of his strategy has kicked in: After years of indecision, Russia has cast its fortunes with the West, militarily and economically.

Putin made his decision in the space of a week, as he embraced the Bush Administration's war on terrorism and reversed his bureaucracy's own nationalistic instincts (and his foreign minister) by allowing American troops into former Soviet territory. He told critics in Russia's parliament that if they thought his move toward the West was a short-term, tactical ploy, they were "deeply deluded."

Then came the Russian leader's trip to President Bush's Texas ranch. At the stage-managed love-fest, the two men showed that they could joke together, even while disagreeing on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Treaty's future.

That dispute, which revolves around whether to treat the Cold War arms control accords as relics or living documents, will simmer for years. But Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security advisor, was right when she said that arms control "is now a much smaller part of a much bigger relationship."

It certainly is for Putin. You could see the difference last fall, when he attended the Asian summit in Shanghai. That city's transformation astounded the Russians. It is galling to them that China attracts far more foreign capital than does their own nation. More galling are China's leaders, who have figured out how to transform their economy without transforming their political structure. Russia has done just the opposite.

All this intensified Putin's interest in winning for Russia what President Jiang Zemin won for China: full membership in the World Trade Organization. Just as Putin wants to integrate Russia into NATO to prove his country is no longer an enemy of the West, he wants WTO membership to signal that Russia is a globalizing economy. Putin knows from the Chinese experience that the carrot of joining the WTO can, if properly managed at home, accelerate economic reform. In Texas, he predicted that several legal changes needed to bring Russia into compliance with the WTO's market opening rules would pass the parliamentary Duma early in 2002.

Passing laws is one thing, but changing the nature of the real economy is another. For too many years, Russia has operated under Mafia, not international, rules. Controlling oligarchs who have dominated industry and discouraged competition with large guns is just one challenge. Putin also needs to end governance by autocratic whim--chillingly apparent when he recently used tax authorities to shut down critical media groups.

The big question is whether the new alliance with the United States will last beyond the common struggle in Afghanistan. Rice insists it will, that things are "very different" from the conditions at the end of World War II, when the collaboration between Moscow and Washington dissolved into a half-century of enmity. Communism is dead, she notes, and Putin is hardly Stalin.

She is right, of course, but the future depends on how well Russia's leaders can spread prosperity to rural areas, neutralize the Duma's Communists, and change the stubborn thinking of their own party's nationalists. Only then will Russia pull off its desired hat trick: political alliance with the West, Chinese-style economic success, and an independent voice in the running of the world.

David E. Sanger ([e-mail]) covers the White House for The New York Times. Previously he served as the chief Washington economic correspondent and Tokyo bureau chief.