By STEVEN ERLANGER
PARIS


THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION talks of pressing the“reset button”with Russia, but NATO remains sharply split over how quickly to get back to normal business with a Moscow that seems to be an aggressive outlier, refusing to retreat from occupied parts of Georgia, intimidating opposition figures and breaking up protests, complaining about the current security structure of Europe and using its enormous gas supplies as a political weapon against a NATO aspirant, Ukraine.

“It is no secret that when it comes to Russia, there are a wide range of views within NATO, from the very cautious to the forward-leaning,”said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the current secretary general.“Until we narrow that range it will be difficult to engage Russia effectively.”

But Russia, too, he continued,“needs to decide whether it recognizes NATO’s desire for partnership, or whether it will continue to look at NATO through the prism of a cold war that is long behind us.”

NATO leaders spent a great deal of time at their 60th anniversary summit meeting on April 3-4 trying to overcome Turkish opposition to a new secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who will take charge of the alliance in August. But little time was spent on the more important issue of the Russian bear, sitting outside the room.

In the group’s“Declaration on Alliance Security,”issued as a blueprint for rethinking NATO for a new century, there is only one paragraph on Russia, which describes the status quo and states emptily,“We stand ready to work with Russia to address the common challenges we face.”

Mr. de Hoop Scheffer put in the nicest terms NATO’s contradictory positions toward Russia. Organized as a bulwark against Soviet expansion in Europe, NATO did not disband at 40, when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union soon followed. Instead, NATO expanded to the former Sovietbloc countries of Eastern Europe and beyond, to include the Baltic nations, which Moscow had annexed, and it now wants to expand into the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia.

In a recent article in the journal The National Interest, Richard K. Betts of the Council on Foreign Relations and Columbia University in New York describes NATO’s own identity crisis, with three competing functions and self-images: first,“the enforcer, the pacifier of conflicts beyond the region’s borders”; second,“the gentleman’s club for liberal and liberalizing countries of the West”; and“the third is the residual function of an anti-Russia alliance.”

Mr. Betts calls it“a potentially corrosive mix, particularly as they relate to Russia,”with the potential to further divide the United States from its European allies. While former Soviet-bloc states are much more wary of Moscow,“old Europe”is more sanguine - and both are dependent on Russian energy.

The European Union is vital for Russia, too. It accounts for roughly half of Russia’s two-way trade and 80 percent of its exports, while providing 75 percent of foreign investment, according to figures cited at a Berlin conference of the American Council on Germany and the German Council on Foreign Affairs.

Russia has responded with a mixture of bluster and, lately, some conciliatory words. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin has described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, and President Dmitri A. Medvedev has insisted that Russia reserves“a zone of privileged interests”covering the post- Soviet space. But a Russia badly hit by the economic crisis has welcomed President Obama’s change of tone.

“Atmospherics help, and the noises are better now than for a long time,”said Andrew C. Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C.

Still, Mr. Kuchins noted, Russia is pressing for fundamental change in Europe. It has called for a new“security architecture”to replace NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Some European nations, like Poland and other former members of the Soviet bloc, think Moscow, having digested parts of Georgia, is simply trying a traditional game of playing European countries against one another and dividing Europe from Washington, while some countries, like France, Germany and Italy, think that Russia’s ideas should be explored. And as usual, many Europeans fear that Mr. Obama and Washington will drive the relationship with little reference to Europe.

Ivan Soltanovskiy, Russia’s deputy ambassador to NATO, said the West should not overreact.“There is a new sense of self-assurance in Russia, but don’t confuse it with aggressive nationalism,”he said.“We see in the West a lot of mistrust of my country. But this is a self-confident Russia open to negotiation.”


Russian snipers react to demonstrators at a checkpoint in Igoeti, Georgia, after the conflict there last August.


When Russian troops rolled into South Ossetia in August, the repercussions were felt throughout NATO.