ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996 TAG: 9601290070
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DONALD NUECHTERLEIN
FIVE years after the Cold War's end and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new Russia is presenting the United States with a serious foreign policy challenge.
Three factors are contributing to a re-examination of U.S. policy toward Russia.
First, elections to the Duma (lower house of Parliament) in December produced a significant reaction against the moderate, pro-western policies pursued by Boris Yeltsin over the past four years. Russia's resuscitated Communist party emerged with the largest bloc of seats, and ultra-nationalist groups hold the second largest number. Candidates and parties that supported moderate economic policies of the past lost strength.
Second, Yeltsin recently decided to shuffle his Cabinet in order to placate growing public frustration with his policies and to counter the nationalists' and communists' appeal. He dropped pro-West Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev from the Cabinet and replaced him with hardliner and former intelligence chief Yevgeny Primakov. He also dropped Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, one of the few remaining champions in government of economic reform.
Third, although Yeltsin's recent moves suggest he expects to run for re-election as president in June, his health is so precarious that many experts question whether he will, and if so, whether he will be elected in a clean vote. Other candidates - for example Communist party chief Gennady Zyuganov, and ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky - will certainly charge that Yeltsin is not physically fit to be president.
The White House and State Department initially put the best face they could on the December vote. However, when Yeltsin dismissed his foreign minister and his chief economic adviser, the State Department concluded that he was embarking on a new, perhaps fundamental shift in foreign as well as domestic policy.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, in a speech at Harvard University Jan. 18, said that recent events in Russia, such as the ouster of remaining reform advocates in Yeltsin's government, "reflect troubling signs of Russian reform under strain." According to The Washington Post, Christopher said he would tell Yeltsin's new foreign minister at their meeting in February that "Russia's integration with the institutions of the West will depend on Moscow's adherence to international standards of behavior and continuation of economic and political reform."
This was a warning to Moscow that if it slides back into the old ways of state control of the economy and a hardening in foreign policy, it may lose U.S. economic assistance and political support for its ambition to be treated as a full partner in international relations.
U.S.-Russia relations are also complicated by the continuing conflict in Chechnya, which erupted again this month when a band of Chechen guerrillas kidnapped a large number of Russians and demanded independence for their land which is now part of Russia
Yeltsin's decision to use military power against Chechen rebels and the inept way Russian troops carried out the operation brought ridicule on his government from media both at home and abroad. The brutality displayed by government forces made it difficult for the Clinton administration to treat the affair as an internal Russian matter, as some were inclined to do.
The reality for Yeltsin is that if he intends to run again for president, he must convince Russian voters that he is a tough leader who is willing to deal harshly with Chechens or any other group that threatens the country's internal security. In view of the election results, he must also show that he is not so tied to the West that he is unable to defend Russia's interests.
Recent opinion polls suggest that many Russians believe their country has been reduced to the role of second-class power by its cooperation with the West. Many people yearn for the old days when Russia was treated as a great power and had an independent foreign policy.
Perhaps the most sensitive foreign policy issue troubling relations between Washington and Moscow is the proposed expansion of NATO eastward, to include Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Yeltsin's government made it clear from the beginning that it opposes this plan and will consider a Western security guarantee to former Warsaw pact countries as a threat to its own security. Russian nationalists of every variety vehemently oppose NATO expansion and insist that Yeltsin make this a condition of Russia's cooperation with the West on other issues.
Yeltsin's new foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov, will no doubt adopt a hard line against the NATO plan, which Western governments have endorsed in principle. He may threaten to pull Russia out of defense cooperation with the United States if the Clinton administration pursues this course.
Defense cooperation is one of Washington's highest priorities in relations with Russia, and Secretary of Defense William Perry is rightly proud of what has been accomplished. Russia's nuclear arsenal has been greatly reduced, along with U.S. reductions, and each side has monitors at the other's nuclear sites to ensure compliance with agreements.
Joint troop-training exercises, in the United States and Russia, have commenced and exchanges of officers are proving beneficial to both sides.
The most remarkable example of defense cooperation is Moscow's decision to permit 1,600 of its troops to be stationed in Bosnia as part of the U.S. zone of peacekeeping to help enforce the Dayton peace agreement among Bosnia's warring factions. Initial contacts between Russian and American forces have been friendly and cooperative. The Russian contingent is not part of the NATO operation to enforce peace, but the Russian government agreed to permit its troops to be under the operational control of an American general.
One U.S. officer remarked that the arrangement for the two sides to cooperate in Bosnia was "nearly unbelievable," considering the relationship only five years ago.
If President Clinton is able to maintain this working relationship with Russia to contain the civil war in Bosnia, this may rank as a great foreign policy achievement.
Conversely. if Yeltsin adopts a nationalistic, less than cooperative foreign policy and tries to placate his nationalists at home, Bosnia will be only one of many instances where relations between the two former antagonists could quickly deteriorate.
The dilemma for the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon is whether to do nothing to rattle things before Russia's presidential elections, or press Yeltsin's new foreign policy team, as Christopher suggested, not to abandon cooperation with the West.
If Washington publicly admonishes Moscow about backsliding on modernizing its economy and negotiating with the Chechen rebels, it risks giving ammunition to the nationalists who want to halt the country's "subservience to Washington" as they call it..
Yet, if Clinton and his foreign policy team appear to accept, albeit reluctantly, Russia's turn to the right and its harsh treatment of dissidents, they risk alienating their liberal constituency in the United States, which Clinton's needs in his own re-election campaign.
In my view, the United States and its European allies need to accept the possibility, perhaps probability, that Boris Yeltsin will not be the leader of Russia after the June elections. A successor will certainly be more nationalistic in foreign policy and less amenable to Western ideas about how Russia should organize its devastated economy.
Yeltsin, like Mikhail Gorbachev before him, has been a large disappointment to the masses of Russians who see their living standard eroded instead of improving. They will vote for a new leadership in June and the United States should be prepared for change in Russia .
There is one other possibility which should not be dismissed. Yeltsin's supporters in the army, the intelligence services. and the bureaucracy may decide to ensure that he is the winner.
What, then, should the U.S. position be if Yeltsin retains power by questionable means?
Despite his early warnings to China to improve its human rights behavior or risk losing favorable trade treatment, Clinton continued trade relations even though China did not move toward democracy. Should he act differently in the case of Russia if it shifts its policy and is less cooperative in dealing with neighbors in eastern Europe and in Asia?
We are entering a difficult, perhaps even dangerous, period in U.S.-Russian relations. If a new government in Moscow decides to take firm leadership of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which it established upon the breakup of the Soviet Union, NATO could be faced with a serious challenge because Poland will be a prime target of Russian policy.
For this reason, I believe NATO should schedule talks with the Polish, Czech and Hungarian governments for sometime next summer. It should advise Moscow that, whatever the outcome of its June elections, NATO will proceed to bring these countries into its defense arrangement by the end of the century.
If this firm policy jeopardizes cooperation between Russian and American troops in Bosnia, it is a price the White House should be willing to pay because the peace and security of all eastern Europe, not just the Balkans, may be stake.
It is time for Americans to put aside dreams of a peaceful post-Cold War world. Although we will not see a renewal of the nuclear dangers associated with that period, because Russia is no longer a super power, we nevertheless may see a resumption of the political tensions which have divided Europe for most of the 20th century.
Donald Nuechterlein is a political scientist and writer who lives in Charlottesville. He is the author of "America Recommitted: U.S. National Interests in a Restructured World."
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