From: davidhe@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet
Subject: Poison Pills
Date: 31 Jul 92 01:25:04 GMT
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

From:	IN%"BALT-L@UBVM"  "Baltic Republics Discussion List" 29-JUL-1992 14:42:24.67
Subj:	BALT:2611 Troops; Washington Post article

Broadcast to list 29 July 1992

Original sender:  Sandra Bauska @ 70714.117@compuserve.com

The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, July 27 - August 2, 1992
"The Russian Military Under the Guise of a Commonwealth, The troops are
ripe for misuse in an ethnic uprising" by Paul A. Goble
(Paul Goble is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, formerly of the U.S. State Department, Baltic desk,
and a long-time friend of the Balts.)

Reprinted without permission and only in part.

		---(0)---

Among the two most dangerous "poison pills" left behind after the collapse
of the Soviet Union are the 1.5 million Russian troops stationed in the
newly independent non-Russian states of the old union and the 25 million
Russians living as ethnic minorities in those new nations.

Each of these poses serious challenges to both the new countries and to
Russia.  But they pose an especially explosive mix if brought together in
scenarios in which the military abroad is used to back the Russian
communities abroad.  This combination  is likely to threaten the prospects
for peace and stability on the periphery and for democracy in Russia
itself.  In recent weeks, a number of events have occurred that suggest
this dangerous combination may be forming.

On July 17, the Russian Parliament denounced the republic of Estonia for
mistreatment of its Russian minority and threatened to impose sanctions.
Only three weeks earlier, Russian military commanders there authorized the
use of force to repulse any Baltic interference with Russian military
operations.

Since Yeltsin has announced that Russia will create a miliary force of
1.5 million, the best way to proceed would be to accurately re-label CIS
forces as Russian.  The longer they are allowed to exist under the CIS
fiction, the greater the possibility they will be misused to advance
Russian nationalist interest.

. In the Trans-Dnieter region of Moldova, for example, where violence
continues between Russians and Moldovans, the 14th Russian Army has
exacerbated rather than calmed the situation.  In the Baltics, a Russian
general recently asserted the the Lithuanian-Polish border was in fact a
"Russian" border.  In June, Moscow miliary commanders authorized soldiers
- whether stationed within Russian or in the other former Soviet
republics - to use lethal force against local populations that interfere
with the miliary in any way.

.Some of the 25 million Russians in the new states have been there for
decades or even generations.  But most - one recent Moscow estimate put
the figure at 60% - were simple representatives of the imperial center,
dispatched to promote Soviet power and uninterested in and unsympathetic
toward the local population.

Now that the basis of the Russians' presence has been destroyed, many fear
discrimination.  Ironically, most of the new contries have adopted
remarkably liberal positions .... The worries of the Russians seem fueled
as much by withdrawal of the privileges they enjoyed as by fear of genuine
repirisal from long-oppressed minorities who are now in control of their
own nations.

o  On June 5, Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev said Moscow had the
right to intervene in the successor states to defend "the honor and
dignity" of ethnic Russians;

o  On June 22, Commision Chairman Ambartsumov warned against those who
would attack Russia, pointedly noting that "we sometimes overrate the
priciple of the inviolability of borders;"

o  On June 23, presidential conselor Sergei Stankevich repeated that
"Russia is responsible" for the fate of Russians in the new states, warning
the West not to think on this issue that it was dealing with Russia as "a
devastated empire."

. Our (U.S.) silence spurs Russian chauvinism and weakens Yeltsin.  The
administration seems to have learned nothing from an episode in 1991, when
it refused to take a tough stand against Soviet violence in the Baltic
states out of fear that to do so would somehow undermine Gorbachev.  The
unintended result:  Violence continued, conservatives in Moscow were
strengthened and any chance Gorbachev would resume reform was seriously
reduced.

What should the West do? .... must encourage both the rapid withdrawal of
all Russian troops from countries where they are not welcome and the end of
the undefined status of Russian military units by creating a specifically
Russian army and eliminating the CIS command.  Any delay is an invitation
to trouble.  Some Russian commanders and Russians on now-foreign soil may
actually seek to spark violence in order to justify their continued
presence.  To counter this possibility, we must internationalize the issue,
perhaps via the CSCE, which just met in Helsinki.

Finally, we must recognize that the presense of CIS forces in what now can
only be considered garrisons on foreign soil is a menace to peace.....

Failure to take a tough line on these issues in inconsistent with our
(U.S.) desire for stability throughout the region and promotion of
democracy and human rights.  Unfortunately, the administration has not
insisted on these more fundamental political reforms....

But an assertion of Russian power in the non-Russian successor states
could quickly change that, driving ethnic enclaves to attempt independence
before Moscow turned its attentions to them.

But the most serious consequence of silence is to undermine Russian
democracy and the reformist impulses of Yeltsin....

In a plea in June against any use of force to defend Russians in the
successor states, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev argues that
doing so would generate a backlash against Russian in the new states and
hurt Russian democracy as well.  Those pushing for such a use of force, he
said, were creating a situation resembling "1933 in Germany, with part of
the democrate begining to assume nationalistic postions."  Such people,
Kozyrev said, do not understand that democracy inside Russian dn the use of
miliary force to defend Russian abroad are "incompatible."  This is a
lesson that we need to learn too.

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