|
|
|
Foreign Policy
Getting Russia Right
By Michael McFaul
This abstract is adapted from an article appearing in the Winter 1999-2000 issue of Foreign Policy magazine.
Politicians and pundits have blasted the Clinton administration in recent months for mishandling a crucial strategic relationship and “losing” Russia. In focusing on recent corruption scandals or Russia’s financial collapse, however, their criticism entirely overlooks the fundamental transformation that Russia has undergone during the last decade.
Despite real setbacks to domestic reform and international integration, most Russians still aspire to build a democratic polity, consolidate a market economy, and join the Western community of states. Although some of Washington’s policies did little to encourage Russian reform and much to exacerbate U.S.-Russian tensions, the instincts behind the U.S. strategy of engagement were sound and its overall impact positive.
But what worked yesterday may not work today: Russia in 2000 is not the same as Russia in 1992. The prospect of new administrations in both countries offers a valuable chance to recast U.S. policy toward Russia in a way that avoids the mistakes of the past and capitalizes on the opportunities of the future.
Only a decade ago, the Soviet Union was the free world’s greatest enemy. Thousands of nuclear weapons, an army of more than 2 million, and a sizable military-industrial complex made Moscow a formidable rival. Today, Russia has almost lost its ability to project military power. Russia’s army has struggled to subdue a rebel republic within its own borders; it is hardly a threat to invade Europe. Moscow’s only real military asset is its nuclear arsenal, although even this symbol of superpower is eroding.
Of course, it was not simply raw power that threatened the West. It was also communism—i.e., the motivation to use Soviet power against Western interests—that made the Soviet Union so threatening. Ultimately, it was the collapse of communism within the Soviet Union and then Russia that suspended the international rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and reshaped the international system in a fundamental way.
In place of communism, Russians might have erected a fascist, imperialist, or neocommunist regime-but they did not. Recent polls show most Russians continue to believe that their country must develop a market economy and adhere to the principles of electoral democracy. In addition, no serious political force in Russia today, including even the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, advocates restoration of the command economy or one-party dictatorship. The majority of Russian politicians, to their credit, have used the evidence of setback to boost demand for “genuine” and “better” reform. Most Russians, despite major obstacles along the way to economic and political transformation at home and integration abroad, still believe that integration with the West is in Russia’s national interest.
In an age of unrivalled U.S. hegemonic power, Americans can perhaps be forgiven for thinking they control (or are responsible for) the destinies of all countries around the world. Nevertheless, in the great drama of our day—the end of the communism—the United States played only a marginal role both for good and for ill. If and when the time comes to determine whether Russia has been won or lost, it will above all be Russians who must answer for their history, not Americans.
Despite mistakes, Washington’s basic strategy of engagement was on target. The U.S. Agency for International Development was right to try to fund technical assistance programs that provided knowledge to their Russian counterparts about the creation and operation of market-supporting institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was right to loan money to the Russian government to try to achieve macroeconomic stabilization, a prerequisite to real economic growth.
As the conditions within Russia and the challenges facing it change, U.S. policy makers must rethink some basic assumptions and redesign their policies accordingly. Instead of mindless finger-pointing about failures real and imagined during the last decade, the debate on U.S. policy toward Russia must turn toward charting a course for the future. A good place to start might be with the following five steps:
Depoliticize and Democratize the U.S.-IMF-Russia Relationship The new administration must refrain from using the IMF as a conduit for politically motivated aid to Russia. The U.S. Department of Defense, not the IMF, should fund programs to ensure the safety and control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. If this policy shift means no new IMF lending to Russia for a while, then so be it.
Assist Russian Society, Not the Russian State Over the next decade, the alliance between financial oligarchs and authoritarian politicians at both the national and regional levels of government will constitute the greatest threat to Russian capitalism and democracy. The United States must support small businesses, political parties, civic organizations, business associations, and trade unions to develop liberal economic and political institutions that will keep oligarchs and authoritarian politicians in check.
Shift the Focus from Arms Control to More Cooperative Arms Building The next U.S. president should announce that the United States plans to reduce its arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons to the lowest level that will still give the United States a deterrence capability. Given Russia’s dire financial situation, the Russian government is likely to reciprocate.
Manage Regional Security Supporting the autonomy of former Soviet states without threatening Russia’s strategic interests in Eurasia will require a delicate balancing act—but it may be the most important issue on the U.S.-Russian agenda in the coming decade.
Consider Individuals Instead of Policies Now that the period of revolutionary polarization within Russia is over, U.S. officials no longer have to gamble on the individuals they think might best drive Russian reform. The next U.S. president need not—and should not—choose sides.
Ultimately, high expectations may well remain the greatest hurdle to the success of reform. After the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, Western observers assumed that Russia would follow the path of Poland in jump-starting capitalism. Expectations in Russia were even grander. Leaders in both the United States and Russia fueled these expectations by making unrealistic promises.
Just because reality has fallen far short of expectations, however, does not mean that Russia has failed or been lost. Now is not the time to give up on Russia. Neither antiliberal nor anti-Western forces in Russia enjoy a monopoly over policy making in domestic or international affairs. Disagreements over Iraq, Iran, or Serbia; past failures regarding aid programs; and tensions between Russians and Americans are arguments not for abandoning engagement but for rethinking and reinvigorating it.
References
Coit Blacker’s “Russia and the West” in Michael Mandelbaum, ed., The New Russian Foreign Policy (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1998)
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “The Premature Partnership” (Foreign Affairs, March/April 1994)
Yegor Gaidar’s Days of Defeat and Victory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999)
James Goldgeier’s Not Whether but When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1999)
Thane Gustafson’s Capitalism Russian-Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Mandelbaum’s The Dawn of Peace in Europe (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1996)
Michael McFaul’s “A Precarious Peace: Domestic Politics in the Making of Russian Foreign Policy” (International Security, Winter 1997/98)
Sarah Mendelson and John Glenn’s “Evaluating Western NGO Strategies for Democratization and the Reduction of Ethnic Conflict in the Formerly Communist States,” a Carnegie Endowment working paper
See the symposium on “What Went Wrong in Russia?” (Journal of Democracy, April 1999). Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, Alexander Lukin and McFaul; articles on the Russian economy by Andrei Illarionov, Anders Åslund, and James Millar; a discussion of civil-military relations by Zoltan Barany; and overview pieces on Russian reform, or the lack thereof, by Martin Malia and Charles Fairbanks
Thomas Remington’s Politics in Russia (New York: Longman, 1999)
Stephen Sestanovich’s “Why the United States Has No Russia Policy” in Robert Lieber, ed., Eagle Adrift: American Foreign Policy at the End of the Century (New York: Longman, 1997)
Lilia Shevtsova’s Yeltsin’s Russia: Myths and Reality (Washington: Carnegie Endowment, 1999)
Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman’s Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, forthcoming)
Strobe Talbott’s “Democracy and the National Interest” (Foreign Affairs, November/December 1996)
Michael Urban with Vyacheslav Igrunov and Sergie Mitrokhin, The Rebirth of Politics in Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Celeste A. Wallander, ed., The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy after the Cold War (Boulder: Westview, 1996)
David Woodruff’s Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)
The journals Post-Soviet Affairs, Demokratizatsiya, and Problems of Post-Communism.