The National Interest
Winter 2000

Extracts from Where Does Russia Belong?

by Stephen Sestanovich

 

. . . The grim picture that Brzezinski paints in his article in the Fall 2000 issue of The National Interest, "Living With Russia"–unstable Muslims to the south, multiplying Chinese to the east–is standard stuff for hyperventilating Russian geopoliticians (who, of course, make it grimmer still by adding aggressive Americans, Germans and Poles to the west). The only way one could start an argument in Moscow with Brzezinski's analysis would be by trying to persuade people that he actually offers a way out of their fix. He envisions an "epiphany"–a sudden, blinding awareness of the advantages of being a normal Western nation–that will, he says, "liberate Russia from its ominous geopolitical context."

The typical Russian reaction to such hyperbole will likely be skepticism, and rightly so. Is there, in fact, any foreseeable relationship that Russia can have with the EU or NATO that will make a measurable short-term difference in the depth of its domestic ills? Or that will insulate it against radical Islamist groups to the south? Russians are likely to think that they have to deal with these problems by putting their own house in order, and in this they are not wrong.

Suppose, then, that we cannot get the Russians to be better joiners merely by educating them about what is really in their interest. (In my experience, Russians are not the only people who do not enjoy being told our view of their interests.) Can we push them into it by actions that we take on our own? Brzezinski proposes to bull ahead–but with an outstretched hand. His program combines enlargement of NATO and the EU with formal statements envisioning some sort of eventual Russian participation in both organizations. By proposing to incorporate new members while deepening ties with those left out, he recapitulates the basic approach taken by the alliance in round one of enlargement. Clearly, he suggests, a second round will call for the same kind of balance.

Yet striking a balance will be far harder when NATO is considering Russia's immediate neighbors for membership. Russians who were willing privately to pooh-pooh the significance of adding Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic will not treat the Baltic states the same way. And they will hardly be mollified by suggestions that their own ties to NATO (or the EU) might develop faster if they were prepared to drop their objections to further enlargement. One of the crucial principles that made it possible to find a workable balance in the first round of NATO enlargement was precisely that the Russians were not asked to drop their objections to the idea. In a second round, those objections (at least to inclusion of the Baltic states) will be far more intense. Brzezinski proposes, in effect, the following deal to the Russians: if they do what we want most–welcome the enlargement of the EU and NATO to all who want to join–we will reciprocate by doing what they want least: accelerate the process and bring the alliance right up to their borders as early as next year.

The next round of NATO membership decisions is likely to have an enormous effect on Russian elite opinion–and, in turn, on the prospects for Brzezinski's third approach to getting Russia to make an unhesitating choice in favor of full integration into the West. As he sees it, the next generation of Russian leaders will have a fundamentally different mindset from the current one, reflecting far greater understanding of what the world is like and of what Western ways have to offer. With such people in charge, Russia's orientation toward the West should occur almost automatically.

This depiction of Russia's next generation is so persuasive that one could almost make waiting for it the heart of U.S. strategy. Yet quite apart from the fact that the country has just elected a forty-seven year-old president (so the next people in line may have quite a wait on their hands), the real problem with such a long-term strategy is the possibility that the next generation's world-view will change before its members come of age as national leaders. The number of events that might shake their confidence in the advantages of integration into the West is probably very small, and a protracted global depression is surely at the top of the list. But a sustained confrontation between their country and NATO can hardly be far behind.

Only One Option?

In promoting Russia's integration into the West, we should certainly aim to create what Brzezinski calls "a compelling context" in which the Russians are more likely to make the right choice. Putin's recent statement welcoming the prospect of EU enlargement may even be a sign that this approach is working. And yet it is an illusion to think that we can so narrowly limit Russia's room to maneuver so that the right choice is its "only viable option." If nothing else, this objective is at odds with Brzezinski's insight that a lasting choice will have to be one that the Russians make themselves.

To understand the complexities involved in promoting a major country's path toward integration, it is hard to do better than the analyses that Brzezinski himself has published recently in The National Interest. In his discussions of both China and Turkey, there is no suggestion that the other guy's policy choices can ever be narrowed, godfather-style, to just one. His article on "Living With China" in the Spring 2000 issue sets its sights just as high as his proposals for Russia, announcing that the "central strategic task of U.S. policy toward China should be nothing less than the attainment of a fundamental, truly historic shift in the mindset of the Chinese elite." Yet, presumably because the goal is so important, Brzezinski favors extreme judiciousness in pursuing it. He worries, for example, about forcing choices on China that it would not find "palatable", and about pursuing outcomes that "no current Chinese leader could accept." He speaks of "the imperative of sensitivity for Chinese concerns", and warns that "how China is treated might well become a self-fulfilling prophesy." There is no brave talk here of leaving the Chinese just one viable option.

As for Turkey, Brzezinski's article on "Living With Russia" argues convincingly that anyone interested in promoting a historic shift in the mindset of the Russian elite needs to study Atatürk's achievement in giving his country a post-imperial European identity after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. The importance of Turkey's modernization strategy as a model not only for Russia but for other former Soviet states as well is beyond question. Brzezinski is also right that its ultimate success was made far more likely by the welcome that Turkey received in the West. A half century in NATO served as a kind of antechamber for its current candidacy before the EU.

Yet the story of Turkey's successful integration into the West has also been one of ongoing unresolved tensions, many of which continue to the present day. To these, the United States and its European allies have responded over many decades with a balancing act combining encouragement and restraint. Turkey did indeed start to make itself "post-imperial" under Atatürk, but its relations with Greece, Cyprus, the Kurds and Armenia remained–and remain–extremely complicated, to say the least. There were other ways things could have turned out. Any one of a number of flashpoints could have precipitated a break between us. If Turkey can serve as a model for Russia, then let us be sure to make U.S. policy toward Turkey a model as well. This sophisticated policy did not go into reverse just because at any given moment Turkey's embrace of its integration into the West was less than unequivocal.

There is always more than one option, a fact that teaches us to be wary of grand designs. It is hard to argue with a plan that holds out the benefits of early membership in NATO for all the democratic states of Central and Eastern Europe that want it, and of consolidated democracy in a Russia that is coming to grips at last with its internal problems, and of expanding cooperation between NATO and Russia, and of reduced Russian pressure on its neighbors, and of a consensus among Russians so strong that all this feels like their own choice. But if this prospect sounds too good to be true, then we should have an honest debate about the trade-offs that we may face if the design does not work out as planned. If we are going to end up with something less than the best of all possible worlds, then let us think about it realistically in advance, so that we at least get the next-best world rather than a truly undesirable one.

To have the debate we need about trade-offs, nothing is more important than avoiding a mere restatement of old positions. This rule applies to those on both sides of past discussions. Those who used to argue that enlargement of the alliance would put Russian democracy at risk need to take account of its impressive durability; if it remains vulnerable in 2001 (on which more below), it is nevertheless not the vulnerability of 1996.

By the same token, those who used to argue that NATO and the EU were our only effective tools for assuring the stability of Central and Eastern Europe have to acknowledge that stability has put down deeper roots than one could have counted on a half decade ago. Like Russian democracy, this region may have its vulnerabilities, but they too have changed.

The Russians themselves will affect our debate about trade-offs, and they need to know it. It goes without saying that Russian bellicosity–menacing statements and worse–will only strengthen the case for putting enlargement on a fast track. But could Russian leaders who take a different approach, who at last get serious about their own integration on many different fronts, including in their relations with NATO, elicit a Western response that recognizes this change and tries to support it? . . .