In fact, the answer is (c) both of the above. When Clinton and Yeltsin hold their summit after the VE Day ceremonies in Moscow, they will be playing as much to their political rivals at home as to each other. Yeltsin is under persistent attack from communists and ultranationalists like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who say he’s trying tO resolve Russia’s economic problems by selling out to the West. In America, Republican front runner Bob Dole is hammering away at what he calls Clinton’s “Russia first” and “Yeltsin first” policies. With that kind of electoral pressure, the two leaders can’t be expected to reach a breakthrough on any of their current disagreements: expanding NATO to include former Soviet-bloc nations, the war in Chechnya or Russia’s sale of nuclear-power technology to Iran (page 36). The one thing they might agree on is regular NATO-Russia consultations on security issues, but that small achievement is unlikely to head off further deterioration of Russia-American relations as the domestic battles intensify.
Both Clinton and Yeltsin have made themselves easy targets on foreign policy. They indulge in soaring rhetoric that raises unrealistic expectations. Both lack consistency. When Yeltsin recently backed away from threats to stop troop withdrawals from the Baltic states –he had cited alleged persecution of Russians living there-it was good news to the White House. To some Russians, though, it was a cave-in “We speak out loud, sometimes even scream, but it’s all a bluff, as if what we have in our pocket is a fig, not a fist,” says Vladimir Lukin, Russia’s former envoy to Washington and now chairman of the Russian Parliament’s foreign-affairs committee.
But Lukin also chides Clinton and other Western leaders who criticize Russia’s war in Chechnya. Although they will avoid the military parade, their presence at the other VE Day celebrations in Moscow, he asserts, “means they turned a blind eye to the Chechen events.” Yeltsin’s attempt to de-fleet attention away from Chechnya by declaring a ceasefire only resulted in an up-surge of hit-and-run attacks by Chechen rebels, who shot down a Russian plane last week. Despite their denials, Chechen military leaders appeared determined to embarrass Yeltsin and his Western guests.
For world-class inconsistency, nothing beats the clash over enlarging NATO. Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary are desperate to join the alliance. On a visit to Warsaw in August 1998, Yeltsin indicated he wouldn’t object to Poland’s membership. Since then, Russia has launched an all-out offensive to prevent Poland and its neighbors from joining. For its part, the Clinton administration dithered long and hard before deciding that it is firmly committed to enlargement. But it hasn’t established a timetable for accepting new members. Eastern European officials are fuming. They complain that Washington assures them they are on the fast track, while it also tells Moscow that NATO expansion will inevitably be a long, drawn-out process. Because both sides are aware of the conflicting signals, everyone is anxious.
Yeltsin delegates much of the mixed-signal sending to Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev. He tells Western audiences that his country is becoming “a normal democratic state” that threatens no one. But then he warns that if Eastern European countries are allowed to join NATO, he may end up writing his memoirs in the gulag because Yeltsin could be swept away by a nationalist dictatorship. Kozyrev denies that his government, to head off such a development, is pushing a new nationalist foreign policy or sliding back toward authoritarianism–as, for example, when it recently broadened the powers of the former KGB. At the same time, he defends the supposedly nonexistent harder line as a way to co-opt extremist opponents. The West is supposed to feel reassured that Yeltsin–and not an extremist-is in charge of such measures.
Clinton may have too much of a stake in showing that Russia is evolving in the fight direction to look hard at evidence to the contrary. But his GOP opponents will be only too happy to bring such evidence to light. Russian nationalist candidates, in turn, will point to the Republicans’ attacks as proof of America’s renewed hostility, The truth is that Russia today can be described as semi-democratic at home and semi-confrontational abroad. But don’t expect much of that kind of nuanced analysis in the heat of two presidential campaigns.
MICHAEL ELLIOTT
If you’re a prophet, the important thing for your reputation is not to be right immediately, but to be right eventually, in his great work, “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that America and Russia each seemed “marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.” His prophecy came true 110 years later. Everyone agrees that, at least regarding Russia, it is not true now. And beyond that, a fog of uncertainty surrounds the future relationship between the two countries that heaven once doomed to rule the planet.
Granth that America’s obsession with Russia will neveer be what it was in the cold war But what happens next? Will Russia become just another great power – like Germany, China and Japan – with which the United States tries to get along? Or will Russian actions and potentials continue to be the single most important focus of American foreign policy? The second outcome is more likely than the first.
“Russia,” says Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, “is a big country.” That it is; lop off the newly independent states born within the old Soviet husk and you’ve still got a lot left–a highly educated work force sitting on top of some of the globe’s most valuable resources. True, much of that vast territory has an awful climate (climate matters – for different reasons than Russia’s, it explains why Australia will never be a great power). But unlike India and China, two other “giant” states, Russia will be able to husbands its vast resources without the additional strain of feeding – and employing – more than a billion souls.
It also, of course, is the only country that can launch a devastating nuclear attack on the United States. That kind of power demands respect. And sensitive handling. Stephen Sestanovich, head Russia watcher at the Carnegie Endownment for International Peace in Washington, argues that present U.S. policy is geared too much to “dismantling Russian military might” – a policy that, since it breeds Russians resentment of Western meddling, is self-defeating. “We have to reorrient Russian power,” says Sestanovich, “not eliminate it. Because we can’t eliminate it.” Indeed, Washington should prefer a strong Russia. A Russia so weak, for example, that it could not resist a Chinese land grab of its Far East without resorting to nuclear weapons is a 21st-century nightmare.
All this implies a close U.S.-Russian relationship stretching into the future. American officials say it will be a “pragmatic” one, recognizing that Russian and U.S. national interests will sometimes collide. The danger, for the United States, is that a pragmatic relationship could be domintaed by security issues. In Western Europe, some futurists say that in the coming decades Russia will talk to the United States about nuclear weapons about everything else – trade, economic development and the rest.
Talbbott insists that won’t happen. America has good reasons for wanting relationship with Russia based on more than security. For Russia may one day be very rich, and if it is, American investors and exporters will want to share in its wealth. The last month has seen a rash of bullish forecasts on Russian economic growth. (Though be warned: in previous years such optimism has not lasted the fall. If you lived in Moscow, you’d think May was nice, too.)
A prosperous Russia is not a contradiction in terms. After all, before 1914 the Russian economy was on track to outperform that of France and Britain within a decade or so. If today’s Russia can achieve Asian-like 8 percent growth, then the law of compound interest will work its usual magic, doubling the standard of living within a decade. Can Russia manage that? Perhaps, though de Tocqueville would have doubted it. “The conquests of the American,” he wrote, “are gained by the plowshare; those of the Russian by the sword.” But even the best of prophets aren’t always right.
