MAY-27-96 MON 17:52

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

policies which differ only in degree from those urged
by Zyuganov.

This has happened because the relationship
between market economics and democracy and between
democracy and a peaceful foreign policy is not nearly
so automatic as Washington has postulated. True, no
alternative to market economics in promoting growth
has been discovered. And advanced pluralistic
democracies enjoying a high standard of living are
likely to conduct moderate foreign policies. But the
process of maturing took several generations in
Western Europe and in the interval did not prevent a
series of increasingly catastrophic wars. Indeed, the
early stages of market economics and democratization
have often provided incentives for leaders to mobilize
domestic support by appeals to nationalism.

P.04

RIVER HOUSE

23:13

MAY-27-1996

outright criminal activity has generated a demand for
law and order which, as interpreted in Moscow, is
frequently inimical to democracy. The Communist system
produced a low standard of living but distributed it

NoP Failure to recognize these historical experiences
has caused the Administration to emphasize policies on
matters that require a long period of evolution and to
neglect those aspects which can be shaped in the
present.

The relationship between democracy and the so-
called private sector is particularly ambiguous in
erstwhile Communist countries - especially those
which, like Russia, have a legacy of decades of
central planning and no historical memory of private
enterprise. In Russia, privatization has resulted in
the takeover of the vast majority of the former state
enterprises by members of the nomenklatura, who used
to run them under Stalinist planning. While they enjoy
the absence of state interference in the operation of
their enterprises, they are not eager for a genuinely

P.05

RIVER HOUSE

23:13

MAY-27-1996

MAY-27-96 MON 17:52

COLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

6

competitive economy; their preference is the
preservation of these monopolies. Nor have they
demonstrated any interest in political democracy.

Indeed, several leading representatives of Russian
industry and banking have, in the name of economic
stability, urged Yeltsin to avoid the turmoil of an
election altogether.

The population's experience with what passes for
market economics in Russia has not exactly been
widespread devotion to democratic institutions or
principles. The weird Russian hybrid of state
capitalism, black market, wild speculation, and
outright criminal activity has generated a demand for

MAY-27-96 MUN 17:53

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

fairly uniformly (except for the privileges reserved for the ruling class). However chafing the experience under the Stalinist system, in retrospect the security it afforded is viewed with nostalgia in many formerly Communist countries - as evidenced by the explosive growth of the Russian Communists under Zyuganov (and for that matter, by the victories of the Communist Parties in Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria).

Even without these obstacles, the development of democracy in Russia was always likely to be painful and slow. For Russia lacks the cultural and historical background that produced pluralistic democracy in the West - a process which extended over centuries. In the West, religion established the principle that the moral and religious realms were beyond the reach of the state even when the churches were run in an

P.06

RIVER HOUSE

MAY-27-1996 23:14

MAY-27-98 MON 17:53

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450398

P.08

authoritarian manner. In Russia, the church has been an instrument of the state and a passionate supporter of militant nationalism. Russia experienced neither the Reformation, with its emphasis on the individual conscience, nor the Enlightenment, with its belief in the power of reason. Russia did not participate in the Age of Discovery and what capitalism there was concerned trading rather than production.

Of course, pockets - some of them of extraordinary moral and intellectual quality - of all these tendencies did exist in Russia but they never permeated the entire society and their few vestiges were bloodily eradicated by Stalin. Not surprisingly, adherents to pluralistic democracy in today's Russia are largely confined to the intellectual circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg; its representatives have

P.07

RIVER HOUSE

23:14

MAY-27-1996

MAY-27-98 MON 17:53

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

been eliminated from Yeltsin's inner circle and have
of course never existed in Zyuganov's.

Yeltsin himself was hardly cast in a Jeffersonian
mold. Nearly his entire adult life has been devoted to
serving the Communist Party - a career to which the
gentle-hearted have rarely gravitated. In his rise
through its ranks into the Politburo, Yeltsin surely
had little exposure to pluralistic principles. And
while he was courageous in concluding that the
Communist Party, moribund and inefficient, was doomed,
Yeltsin has shown few signs since that democratic
values, including acceptance of dissent, are a central
part of his value system.

In short, democracy in Russia is an ongoing drama
whose evolution has far from played itself out. Yet
American foreign policy has been conducted as if a

P. 80

RIVER HOUSE

23:15

MAY-27-1996

MAY-27-1996 23:16

RIVER HOUSE

10

mature, Western-style democracy was already nearly in
place, under Yeltsin. Equating foreign policy with
Russian domestic politics has gravely mortgaged long-
term Russian-American relations. It has unnecessarily
identified America in the minds of too many Russians
with the dislocations and suffering inseparable from
the transition from state planning to market
economics. Russian nationalists and Communists can
thus claim that market economics is a fraud
perpetrated by the West to keep Russia weak - at least
one reason for America's unpopularity, on which all
observers agree.

Our reliance on Yeltsin has lured us into
endorsing, if not actually encouraging, such high
handed actions as the military assault on the Russian
Parliament and the dismissal of the Russian Supreme

MAY-27-98 MON 17:54

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

11

Court - acts difficult to reconcile with democratic pretensions, whatever their provocation. The assumption that Yeltsin must be coddled (cultivated) because he embodies Russian democracy explains why American high officials, including the President, justified Russian pressures on the newly independent states of the Caucasus (on the ground that they were) comparable to American actions in the Caribbean, and even as expressions of UN peacekeeping; or why they felt it reasonable to compare the Russian military campaign in Chechnya to the American Civil War.

There is no foreign policy requirement obliging the White House to comment on every Russian internal crisis; indeed, the obsession with participating in Russian domestic politics undermines our ability to conduct a foreign policy geared to the external

P.11

RIUER HOUSE

MAY-27-1996 23:16

MAY-27-96 MON 17:56

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

13

closer to Seattle than it is to Moscow. A country of
that size ought not to suffer from claustrophobia. Yet
creeping expansionism in the name of security has been
the recurring theme of Russian history. Developing the
enormous resources of its vast territory has never,
under Tsar or commissar, been a Russian priority. For
four centuries, Russia has subordinated the well-
being of its own population to this relentless drive
and threatened all its neighbors (with it). In the
Russian mind, the centuries of sacrifice have been
transmuted into a mission, partly in the name of
security, importantly in the service of an alleged
Russian superior morality.

In the 19th century, the Russian nationalist
writer Michael Katkov defined the difference between
Western and Russian values as follows: "...everything

MAY-27-1996 23:16

RIUER HOUSE

P.12

MAY-27-98 MON 11:57

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

14

there is based on contractual relations and everything
here on faith.... A basic dual authority exists there;
a single authority here." Similarly, Zyuganov
describes Russia as a "special type of civilization"
based on "collectivism, unity, statehood and the
aspiration to achieve the highest ideal of good and
justice" - as compared to the West, infected with
"extreme individualism, militant soullessness,
religious indifference, adherence to mass culture."

In 1864, Chancellor Aleksandr Gorchakov wrote with
respect to Central Asia that: "...the interests of
border security and trade relations always require the
more civilized state to have a certain authority over
its neighbors.... where the greatest difficulty is in
being able to stop." In our time, Zyuganov writes
admiringly about Tsar Aleksandr III, who reigned while

P.13

RIVER HOUSE

MAY-27-1996 23:17

MAY-21-96 MUN 1:57

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

16

America have both historically asserted a global vocation for their societies. But while America's idealism derives from the concept of liberty, Russia's sprang from shared suffering and common submission to authority. Everyone is eligible to share in America's values; Russia's have been reserved for the Russian nation even vis-a-vis the subject nationalities of the empire. American idealism tempts isolationism; Russia's has historically prompted adventurist domination.

Russia, abutting Asia, the Middle East and Europe, faces in three directions at once and, in pursuit of concepts of security, has produced insecurity for all its neighbors, while its sense of mission has led to imperial domination. In the West, Russia has historically come up against the

P.15

RIVER HOUSE

MAY-27-1996 23:18

MAY-21-96 MON 11:54

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

17

necessities of the European balance of power. But even when paying lip service to its requirements, Russia has generally excluded the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia from its operation, insisting on dealing with them unilaterally and often by force: in the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi in 1833, in the prelude to the Crimean War in 1853, in the Balkan crisis of 1885 and in the prelude to the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. Even when it participated in European alliances, Russia tended to endow them with a missionary quality that justified permanent military intervention in the domestic affairs of other states - from the Holy Alliance of the early 19th century to the Brezhnev Doctrine of the late 20th century.

Thus Yeltsin's "reformist" foreign minister,

P.16

RIVER HOUSE

MAY-27-1996 23:18

MAY-27-1996 23:18

RIVER HOUSE

P.17

18

Koyzerev (since dismissed for being too liberal), put forward a Russian right of military intervention in all the countries containing Russian minorities. At a minimum, that includes 14 successor states of the Soviet Union and the Baltic states - all of them recognized by the United Nations. Two Russian divisions are being maintained on the territory of Georgia where Russian intervention in a civil war made that country ungovernable until Russian conditions had been met. Russia's encouragement of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has given Moscow a voice in both countries and blackmail potential vis-a-vis Azerbaijan's vast oil reserves. Russian troops participate in the civil war in Tajkistan. Russia refuses to demarcate the borders with Ukraine, a country with a population close to 60 million whose

TOTAL P.17

MAY-21-96 MON 17:58

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

19

independence Russians seem particularly loth to accept. And Russia is pressuring the oil producing nations in Central Asia to export their oil only through pipelines running through Russia - claiming for Moscow a stranglehold on one of the largest oil reserves in the world, energy supplies may again become short under the impact of global industrialization.

All this has happened under Yeltsin and at a moment of Russia's maximum weakness. To paraphrase Churchill with respect to Soviet actions in the immediate postwar period: "If they act like this in the green wood, what will they do when the trees are fully grown?" (口) occasional ferrets into democracy seem to

"You say the same thing a couple of paragraphs later. Perhaps you should pick one place or the other to say it but not in both.

MAY-27-98 MON 17:58

COLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

20
have tempted competing leaders to appeal to that deep
Russian nationalism tinged with mysticism.

Russia's simultaneous thrust in all directions
runs the risk of repeating the underlying tragedy of
its history: no people has sacrificed more for its
vision of security and its sense of mission, none has
received fewer tangible benefits from it, or as often
turned its fears into self-fulfilling prophecies.

Tsarist and Communist empires have collapsed, materially and spiritually exhausted by their overextension. The almost paranoid sense of insecurity is all the less appropriate in the present world, where Russia possesses 20,000 nuclear weapons, making a land attack on it almost inconceivable.

The long-term stakes are indeed high. If Ukraine
were to suffer the fate of Belarus and return to

P.02

RIVER HOUSE

MAY-27-1998 23:21

MAY-27-98 MON 17:59

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

22

The Chechnya war started shortly after a visit by Vice
President Gore. And Clinton had barely left Moscow in
April when Yeltsin betook himself to Beijing and
Shanghai where he signed what had all the appearance
of a strategic partnership with China - a maneuver
facilitated by the lack of direction in our China
policy.

The United States has been far too slow to
recognize these dangers. It is only in the last year
that Ukraine has received attention commensurate with
its political and strategic importance. In Central
Asia, American policy seems unable to substitute human
rights pressures for a concept worthy of the
geopolitical importance of that region. In the
Caucasus, flagrant Soviet military or near-military
intervention has been met with American silence, or

p.05

RIVER HOUSE

MAY-27-1998 23:52

MAY-27-96 MON 17:59

GOLDHAMMER

FAX NO. 4077450358

P.14

25

Such a policy requires a rededication to
strengthening the Atlantic Alliance. This has two
components: the Atlantic Alliance in effect no longer
has a mission; the frontiers that it guarantees are
not threatened and the threatened frontiers are not
guaranteed. Thus NATO expansion is imperative; its
absence will tempt an even further thrust to expand
Russia's strategic frontiers. (This is certainly the
view of literally all the leaders of Eastern Europe.)
Even more importantly, the Atlantic Alliance must
deepen its political consultation and extend it to
subjects heretofore excluded as being out of area -
Islamic fundamentalism, global energy supplies, and
other threats to world stability. Finally, the time
has come to move the project of a North Atlantic Free
Trade area from study committees to the action level.

P.07

RIVER HOUSE

MAY-27-1996 23:23

TOTAL P.08

26

As part of such an architecture, Russia must be given an important role in the creation of the new international system, the birthpangs of which mark the crisis of our age. But this presupposes a major change in Russia's attitudes. It must be prepared to stay within its borders. Over time, such a Russia could indeed become a strategic partner of the United States and of the Western democracies. The challenge to America is whether it can assemble a proper balance of Russian incentives and penalties conducive to world order. And this challenge exists whoever wins the Russian election, though it will be more complex after a Zyuganov victory. That is the kind of reform to which we can hope to contribute in the immediate future.

P.08

RIVER HOUSE

MAY-27-1996 23:23

1

3186 WORDS

KISSINGER NEWSWEEK ARTICLE

5/27/96 III

Whatever the outcome of the Russian election, it
is bound to put an end to the process of staking
American foreign policy on a single personality. If
Zyuganov wins, this is inevitable. But a Yeltsin
victory would involve only a change of degree in the
challenge Russia will pose to American foreign policy.

[For] a more assertive Russia, even under Yeltsin,
seems well on the way to seeking status in part by
resisting American notions of world order. America¹
will have no choice but to disenthrall itself from its
preoccupation with personalities and its superficial

¹I would use "Washington" instead; it's not really America's fault.

2

interpretation of history.

The Clinton Administration's Russia policy is based on a number of flawed premises. Many of Clinton's generation in his Administration hold the view that the United States has its own heavy responsibility for the Cold War, which they believe could have been avoided had the United States pursued a policy of reassurance rather than of confrontation toward the Soviet Union. To the extent that they ascribe [any] responsibility to the Soviet Union, it is to [the combined effect] of [its] Stalinist economy and totalitarian domestic structure. As a result, Clinton's Russia policy has emphasized domestic reform and psychological engineering. It has concentrated on promoting internal change and on reassuring the Russian leadership rather than seeking to influence

3

Russia's actions outside its borders. These efforts have focussed on Yeltsin, who is viewed as the guarantor of market economics, democracy, and hence of peaceful international conduct. This is why Clinton has attended more summits with Yeltsin than he has with any other foreign leader and with a greater show of personal warmth. Though the President has never visited Beijing or invited a Chinese leader to the White House, he has been to Moscow ___2___ times and has invited Yeltsin to Washington ___3___ times. Yet these efforts have not prevented the Communist Party from becoming the largest single party in Russia or from fielding a major challenge to Yeltsin's rule. To stave off this danger, or perhaps acting on the basis of his own convictions, Yeltsin has embarked on foreign ___4___

2. Need figure.

4

This has happened because the relationship
between market economics and democracy and between
democracy and a peaceful foreign policy is not nearly
so automatic as Washington has postulated. True, no
alternative to market economics in promoting growth
has been discovered. And advanced pluralistic
democracies enjoying a high standard of living are
likely to conduct moderate foreign policies. But the
process of maturing took several generations in
Western Europe and in the interval did not prevent a
series of increasingly catastrophic wars. Indeed, the
early stages of market economics and democratization
have often provided incentives to leaders to mobilize
domestic support by appeals to nationalism.

5

6

competitive economy; their preference is the
prevention of these? monopolies. Nor have they
demonstrated any interest in political democracy.
Indeed, several leading representatives of Russian
industry and banking have, in the name of economic
stability, urged Yeltsin to avoid the turmoil of an
election altogether.

The population's experience with what passes for
market economics in Russia has not exactly generated
widespread devotion to democratic institutions or
principles. The weird Russian hybrid of state
capitalism, black market, wild speculation, and
outright criminal activity has generated a demand for
law and order which, as interpreted in Moscow, is
frequently inimical to democracy. The Communist system
produced a low standard of living but distributed it

7

8

9

10

mature, Western-style democracy was already nearly in
place under Yeltsin. Equating foreign policy with
Russian domestic politics has gravely mortgaged long-
term Russian-American relations. It has unnecessarily
identified America in the minds of too many Russians
with the dislocations and suffering inseparable from
the transition from state planning to market
economics. Russian nationalists and Communists can
thus claim that market economics is a fraud
perpetrated by the West to keep Russia weak - at least
one reason for America's unpopularity, on which all
observers agree.

11

Court - acts difficult to reconcile with democratic pretensions, whatever their provocation. The assumption that Yeltsin must be coddled [cultivated] because he embodies Russian democracy explains why American high officials, including the President, justified Russian pressures on the newly independent states of the Caucasus [on the ground that they were] comparable to American actions in the Caribbean, and even as expressions of UN peacekeeping; or why they felt it reasonable to compare the Russian military campaign in Chechnya to the American Civil War.

12

actions of the Russian state. Yet it is precisely the
external actions of Russia that present the greatest
challenge to international stability. And,
paradoxically, the very domestic drama of which we
have made ourselves too much a party provides the
incentive.

[Russian] foreign policy has emerged as the deus
ex machina to escape present-day frustrations by
evoking visions of a past that seems glorious, at
least in retrospect. Russia has always displayed a
unique set of characteristics - especially when
compared to its European neighbors. Extending over
nine time zones, Russia - even in its present, post-
Soviet extent - constitutes the largest land-mass of
any contemporary state. St. Petersburg is closer to
New York than it is to Vladivostok, which is in turn

13

closer to Seattle than it is to Moscow. A country of
that size ought not to suffer from claustrophobia. Yet
creeping expansionism in the name of security has been
the recurring theme of Russian history. Developing the
enormous resources of its vast territory has never,
under Tsar or commissar, been a Russian priority. For
four centuries, Russia has subordinated the well-
being of its own population to this relentless drive
and threatened all its neighbors [with it]. In the
Russian mind, the centuries of sacrifice have been
transmuted into a mission, partly in the name of
security, importantly in the service of an alleged
Russian superior morality.

14

In 1864, Chancellor Aleksandr Gorchakov wrote with
respect to Central Asia that: "...the interests of
border security and trade relations always require the
more civilized state to have a certain authority over
its neighbors....where the greatest difficulty is in
being able to stop." In our time, Zyuganov writes
admiringly about Tsar Aleksandr III, who reigned while

15

Russia's "southern border went one thousand kilometers
towards Afghanistan." And what Zyuganov preaches,
Yeltsin practices - in Tajkistan, Azerbaijan and
Chechnya.

These convictions enable Russians to wrest a
sense of pride from economic decline and social
disintegration. As major themes of Russian foreign
policy under Yeltsin, they seek to recapture glory and
to overcome the humiliation of the disintegration of
empire and the collapse of social order. The
restoration of the strategic frontiers of the old
Soviet Union (never clearly defining whether they
include the old satellite orbit) is a recurrent theme
under Yeltsin and even more sharply with Zyuganov.

The encounter between Clinton and Yeltsin is thus
[representative of] two types of idealism. Russia and

16

Russia, abutting Asia, the Middle East and Europe, faces in three directions at once and, in pursuit of concepts of security, has produced insecurity for all its neighbors while its sense of mission has led to imperial domination. In the West, Russia has historically come up against the

17

18

Koyzerev (since dismissed for being too liberal), put
forward a Russian right of military intervention in
all the countries containing Russian minorities. At a
minimum, that includes 14 successor states of the
Soviet Union and the Baltic states - all of them
recognized by the United Nations. Two Russian
divisions are being maintained on the territory of
Georgia where Russian intervention in a civil war made
that country ungovernable until Russian conditions had
been met. Russia's encouragement of the conflict
between Azerbaijan and Armenia has given Moscow a
voice in both countries and blackmail potential vis-
a-vis Azerbaijan's vast oil reserves. Russian troops
participate in the civil war in Tajkistan. Russia
refuses to demarcate the borders with Ukraine, a
country with a population close to 60 million whose

19

independence Russians seem particularly loth to
accept. And Russia is pressuring the oil producing
nations in Central Asia to export their oil only
through pipelines running through Russia -[ claiming
for Moscow a stranglehold on one of the largest oil
reserves in the world as energy supplies may again
become short under the impact of global
industrialization.]³

All this has happened under Yeltsin and at a
moment of Russia's maximum weakness. To paraphrase
Churchill with respect to Soviet actions in the
immediate postwar period: "If they act like this in
the green wood, what will they do when the trees are
fully grown?" Occasional forays into democracy seem to

³You say the same thing a couple of paragraphs later. Perhaps you should pick one place or the other to say it but not in both.

20

Russia's simultaneous thrust in all directions
runs the risk of repeating the underlying tragedy of
its history: no people has sacrificed more for its
vision of security and its sense of mission; none has
received fewer tangible benefits from it, or as often
turned its fears into self-fulfilling prophecies.
Tsarist and Communist empires have collapsed,
materially and spiritually exhausted by their
overextension. The almost paranoid sense of insecurity
is all the less appropriate in the present world,
where Russia possesses 20,000 nuclear weapons, making
a land attack on it almost inconceivable.

21

Russian satellite status, tremors would be felt all over Europe and a militarization of diplomacy would be nearly inevitable. A Russian stranglehold on Central Asian oil would provide dangerous blackmail potential during foreseeable energy crises of the next century. Beyond the geopolitical challenges, Russia, in its attempt to regain what it perceives as ancient glories, appears inclined to challenge the United States' position in the Middle East and to conduct adventurous policies in Asia for no other purpose than to augment its prestige.

Yeltsin has seemed to feel a necessity to balance every high level American visit with a move in a more nationalist direction. Within days of Clinton's visit to Moscow in 1993, Yeltsin dismissed Gaidar, the reformer on whom many American hopes had been based.

22

The Chechnya war started shortly after a visit by Vice
President Gore. And Clinton had barely left Moscow in
April when Yeltsin betook himself to Beijing and
Shanghai where he signed what had all the appearance
of a strategic partnership with Russia - a maneuver
facilitated by the lack of direction in our China
policy.

The United States has been far too slow to
recognize these dangers. It is only in the last year
that Ukraine has received attention commensurate with
its political and strategic importance. In Central
Asia, American policy ambivalently substitutes human
rights pressures for a concept worthy of the
geopolitical importance of that region. In the
Caucasus, flagrant Soviet military or near-military
intervention has been met with American silence, or

23

worse, American statements seemingly legitimizing
ancient Russian imperial drives.

The most serious lack has been of omission. Cold
War American foreign policy built Atlantic relations
from West to East on the basis of a strong Atlantic
Alliance and an emerging European Community. Post-
Cold War policy seems to seek to build from East to
West. Focussed on Russia, it has neglected
refurbishing the Atlantic Alliance in the light of new
circumstances. It has offered no vision of a political
or economic partnership in the North Atlantic region
or has consigned such prospects to bureaucratic
studies that never seem to have a terminal point. This
is even more true of NATO expansion, with respect to
which Administration ambivalence threatens to create
a grey zone in Eastern Europe, potentially tempting

24

historic Russian drives to [carve out] vacuums around
its periphery.

By treating Yeltsin - in defiance of mounting
evidence in the daily conduct of Russian diplomacy -
as if he were some tender shoot incapable of
withstanding the gusts of realistic foreign policy, we
have encouraged tendencies which compensate for
disappointment at home by asserting Russian
nationalism as the cohesive element of society. If we
seek genuine reform in Russia, its leaders must be
brought to understand that a return to historic drives
will replicate the debacles of the past. They must be
given to understand that the strategic domination of
its neighbors can be achieved only at the cost of
permanent tensions with the United States and the
West.

25

26

MAY-27-1996 15:25 FROM

TO

14077450358 P.14

12

characteristics - especially when compared to its
European neighbors. Extending over nine time zones,
Russia - even in its present post-Soviet stage - constitutes
the largest land-mass of any contemporary state. St.
Petersburg is closer to New York than it is to
Vladivostok, which is in turn closer to Seattle than
it is to Moscow. A country of that size ought not to
suffer from claustrophobia. Yet creeping expansionism in the
name of security has been the recurring theme of Russian history. For
four centuries, Russia has subordinated the well-
being of its own population to this relentless drive which
Developing the enormous resources of its vast
territory has never, under Tsar or commissar, been a
Russian priority. These centuries of sacrifice have
been transmuted in the Russian mind into a mission
partly in the name of security, importantly in the

MAY-27-1996 15:26 FROM

TO

14077450358 P.16

and 13
service of Russian alleged superior morality, a theme
that has reappeared in contemporary Russia.

In the 19th century, the Russian nationalist
writer Michael Katkov defined the difference between
Western and Russian values as follows: "...everything
there is based on contractual relations and everything
here on faith.... A basic dual authority exists there;
a single authority here." Similarly, Zyuganov
describes Russia as a "special type of civilization"
based on "collectivism, unity, statehood and the
aspiration to achieve the highest ideal of good and
justice" - as compared to the West, infected with
"extreme individualism, militant soullessness,
religious indifference, adherence to mass culture."

These convictions enable Russians to meet a distribution
confer on Russia a distinction
even amidst economic decline and social

MAY-27-1996 15:27 FROM

TO

14077450358 P.19

Thus Yeltsin's "reformist" foreign minister, Koyzerev (since dismissed for being too liberal), put forward a Russian right of military intervention in all the countries containing Russian minorities. At a

MAY-27-1996 15:27 FROM

TO

14077450358 P.21

clanning for 18 stanglwood
Russia - giving Moscow a stronghold on one of the
largest oil reserves in the world as energy supplies
may become short again under the impact of global
industrialization.

All this has happened under Yeltsin and at a\moment of Russia's maximum weakness. To paraphrase
Churchill with respect to Soviet actions in the
immediate postwar period: "If they act like this in
the green wood, what will they do when the trees are
fully grown?" And the occasional forays into democracy seem
to be ongoing.
(tempting leaders to appeal to that deep Russian
nationalism tinged with mysticism.)

MAY-27-1996 15:29 FROM

TO

14077450358 P.24

the geopolitical challenges, Russia, in its attempt to regain imagined ancient glories, seems inclined to challenge the United States' position in the Middle East and to conduct adventurous policies in Asia for not purpose other than prestige.

The United States has been far too slow to recognize these dangers. It is only in the last year that Ukraine has received attention commensurate with its political and strategic importance. In Central Asia, American policy ambivalently substitutes human rights pressures for a concept mostly of geopolitical importance of the region. In the Caucasus, flagrant Soviet military or near-military intervention has been met with American silence, or worse, American statements seemingly legitimizing ancient Russian imperial drives.

MAY-27-1996 15:30 FROM

TO

14077450358 P.26

21

By treating Yeltsin - in defiance of mounting evidence in the daily conduct of Russian diplomacy - as if he were some tender shoot incapable of withstanding the gusts of realistic foreign policy, we have encouraged Russian imperial tendencies to ~~emphasize~~ by accentuate~~ compensate for disappointment at home and to~~emphasize~~ Russian nationalism as the cohesive element of society. If we seek genuine reform in Russia, its leaders must be brought to understand that a return to historic drives of Russian policy will replicate the same debacles as in the past. They must be given to understand that the strategic domination of its neighbors can be achieved only at the cost of permanent tensions with the United States and the West.

Such a policy requires the abandonment of the

1

2783 WORDS

KISSINGER NEWSWEEK ARTICLE

5/27/96 II

The outcome of the Russian election is bound to put an end to the process of staking American foreign policy on a single personality. In case of a Zyuganov victory, this would have been inevitable. But as far as foreign policy is concerned, a Yeltsin victory will involve only a change of degree. American strategy must adjust to the certainty of a more assertive Russia seeking status in part by resisting American notions of world order. America will have no choice but to disenthrall itself from the preoccupation with personalities and begin to deal with the underlying forces.

The basic premise of the Clinton Administration's

2

Russia policy has been that the Cold War was caused by
the combination of a Stalinist economy and a
totalitarian domestic structure, if indeed it was
caused by Soviet actions at all. For many of the
representatives of Clinton's generation in his
Administration hold [the view] that the United States
has its own heavy responsibility for the Cold War
which they believe could have been avoided had the
United States pursued a policy of reassurance rather
than of confrontation toward the Soviet Union. As a
result, America's Russia policy has emphasized
domestic reform and psychological engineering. It has
concentrated on promoting internal change and on
reassuring the Russian leadership rather than on
seeking to influence Russia's actions outside its
borders. And all these efforts have focussed on

3

Yeltsin as the guarantor of market economics,
democracy, and of peaceful international conduct.

Thus Clinton has attended more summits with
Yeltsin than he has with any other foreign leader;
though the President has never visited Beijing (or
invited a Chinese leader to the White House), he has
been to Moscow ___¹ times during his presidency and
Yeltsin has been invited to Washington ___ times. Yet
these efforts have not prevented the Communist Party
from gaining in Russia and fielding a major challenge
to Yeltsin's rule. To stave off this danger, or
perhaps as a reflection of his own convictions,
Yeltsin has embarked on foreign policies which differ
only in degree from those urged by Zyuganov.

The view that market economics and democracy more

¹Need figure.

4

or less automatically produce a restrained foreign
policy has overlooked at a minimum the time frame
before these transformations could occur and the
incentives for a nationalist foreign policy in the
interval. True, market economics are essential for
growth; planned economics lead to bureaucratization,
rigidity, and stagnation. But market economics,
however desirable from the human point of view, have
not always led to democracy, at least in the short
run. What managers want from the state is to be left
alone or to be protected from foreign competition. For
the rest, they value constitutionalism - a legal
system of ordered expectations that permits long-
range calculations. They rarely insist on democracy in
the abstract. The fascist dictatorships, Pinochet in
Chile and Franco in Spain, coexisted quite well with

5

a private sector, as did Imperial Japan and China
today.

The relationship between democracy and the so-
called private sector is particularly ambiguous in
erstwhile Communist countries - especially those
which, like Russia, have a legacy of decades of
central planning and no historical memory of private
enterprise. In Russia, privatization has spelled the
takeover of the vast majority of the former state
enterprises by members of the nomenklatura, who used
to run them under Stalinist planning. While they enjoy
the absence of state interference, they are not eager
for a genuinely competitive economy. Nor have they
demonstrated any interest in political democracy.
Indeed, several of their representatives had urged
Yeltsin to avoid the turmoil of an election

6

altogether.

Russia's experience with market economics has not
exactly strengthened [its] devotion to democratic
institutions. The weird hybrid of state capitalism,
black market, wild speculation, and outright criminal
activity has generated a demand for law and order
which, as interpreted in Moscow, is frequently
inimical to democracy. The Communist system produced
a low standard of living but distributed it fairly
uniformly (except for the privileges reserved for the
ruling class). However chafing the experience with the
Stalinist system, in retrospect the security it
supplied is viewed with nostalgia in many formerly
Communist countries - as evidenced by the victories
of the Communist Parties in Poland, Hungary and
Bulgaria and the explosive growth of the Russian

7

Communists under Zyuganov.

Even without these obstacles, the development of
democracy in Russia was always likely to be painful
and slow. For in Russia there is no cultural and
historical background such as produced pluralistic
democracy in the West - and one must remember that the
process there extended over centuries. In the West,
religion established the principle that the moral and
religious realms were beyond the reach of the state
even when the churches were run in an authoritarian
manner. In Russia, the church has been an instrument
of the state and a passionate supporter of militant
nationalism. Russia experienced neither the
Reformation, with its emphasis on the individual
conscience, nor the Enlightenment, with its belief in
the power of reason. Russia did not participate in the

8

Age of Discovery and what capitalism there was concerned trading rather than production. Of course, pockets - some of them of extraordinary quality - of all these tendencies did exist in Russia but they never permeated the entire society and their few vestiges were murderously eradicated by Stalin. Not surprisingly, adherents to pluralistic democracy in today's Russia are largely confined to the intellectual circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg; its representatives have been eliminated from Yeltsin's inner circle and have of course never existed in Zyuganov's.

9

through its ranks into the governing body Politburo status, Yeltsin surely had little exposure to pluralistic principles. And while he did courageously conclude that the Communist Party had become moribund due to its inherent inefficiency, Yeltsin has shown few signs since that democratic values, including acceptance of dissent, are a central part of his value system.

In short, democracy in Russia will involve an evolutionary process whose drama is far from played out. Yet American foreign policy has acted as if a mature, Western-style democracy was already nearly in place and it has relied on Yeltsin as the guarantor.

In the process, America's missionary bent has created a series of long-range dangers to Russian-American relations. The attempt to manage Russia's domestic

10

evolution has identified us with the dislocations and
suffering inseparable from the transition from state
planning to market economics. Russian nationalists and
Communists have been able to claim that market
economics is a fraud perpetrated by the West to keep
Russia weak - at least one reason for America's
unpopularity, on which all observers agree.

Our reliance on Yeltsin has also tempted us to
endorse Yeltsin's military assault on his own
Parliament and his dismissal of the Russian Supreme
Court - actions difficult to reconcile with democratic
pretensions, whatever their provocation. The
assumption that Russian democracy, as embodied in
Yeltsin, needs coddling explains how American high
officials, including the President, could have
explained Russian pressures on the newly independent

11

states of the Caucasus as being comparable to American
actions in the Caribbean, and even as expressions of
UN peacekeeping; and why the Russian military campaign
in Chechnya has been compared with the American Civil
War. There is no law of nature obliging the White
House to concentrate? on every Russian internal
maneuver; the tendency to make ourselves part of
Russian domestic politics undermines our ability to
conduct a foreign policy geared to the external
actions of the Russian state. Yet it is precisely the
external actions of Russia that in the next period
present the greatest challenge to international
stability. Paradoxically, they arise from the very
domestic drama of which we have made ourselves too
much a party.

Russia has always had a unique set of

12

characteristics - especially when compared to its
European neighbors. Extending over nine time zones,
Russia - even in its post-Soviet stage - constitutes
the largest land-mass of any contemporary state. St.
Petersburg is closer to New York than it is to
Vladivostok, which is in turn closer to Seattle than
it is to Moscow. A country of that size ought not to
suffer from claustrophobia. Yet creeping expansionism
has been the recurring theme of Russian history. For
four centuries, Russia has subordinated the well-
being of its own population to this relentless drive.
Developing the enormous resources of its vast
territory has never, under Tsar or commissar, been a
Russian priority. These centuries of sacrifice have
been transmuted in the Russian mind as a mission
partly in the name of security, importantly in the

13

service of Russian alleged superior morality - a theme
that has reappeared in contemporary Russia.

In the 19th century, the Russian nationalist
writer Michael Katkov defined the difference between
Western and Russian values as follows: "...everything
there is based on contractual relations and everything
here on faith....A basic dual authority exists there;
a single authority here." Similarly, Zyuganov
describes Russia as a "special type of civilization"
based on "collectivism, unity, statehood and the
aspiration to achieve the highest ideal of good and
justice" - as compared to the West, infected with
"extreme individualism, militant soullessness,
religious indifference, adherence to mass culture."

These convictions confer on Russia a distinction
even amidst economic decline and social

14

disintegration. Inevitably, they have become major themes of contemporary Russian foreign policy even under Yeltsin. It is the way a people can recapture glory and significance and overcome the humiliation of the disintegration of their empire and collapse of social order. The restoration of the strategic frontiers of the old Soviet Union (never clearly defining whether they include the old satellite orbit) is a recurrent theme even under Yeltsin and much more sharply with Zyuganov.

Russia and America have both historically asserted a global vocation for their societies. But despite their formal similarities, they also reflect profound differences. America's sense of uniqueness derives from the concept of liberty; Russia's sprang from shared suffering and common submission to

15

authority. Everyone is eligible to share in America's
values; Russia's have been reserved for the Russian
nation even vis-a-vis the subject nationalities of the
empire. American idealism tempts isolationism;
Russia's has historically promoted adventurist
domination.

Russia, abutting Asia, the Middle East and
Europe, faces in three directions at once and, in
pursuit of its missionary concepts, can become
extremely threatening to its neighbors. In the West,
it has historically come up against the necessities of
the European balance of power. But even when paying
lip service to its requirements, Russia has always
endowed its relations with Europe with a special
quality. For one thing, it excluded the Balkans, the
Caucasus, and Central Asia from the operation of the

16

balance of power, seeking to deal with these questions unilaterally and often by force: in the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi in 1833, in the prelude to the Crimean War in 1853, in the Balkan crisis of 1885 and in the prelude to the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. Even when it participated in European alliances, Russia tended to endow them with a missionary quality that justified permanent military intervention in the domestic affairs of other states - from the Holy Alliance of the early 19th century to the Brezhnev Doctrine of the late 20th century.

17

minimum, that includes 14 successor states of the
Soviet Union and the Baltic states - all recognized by
the United Nations. Two Russian divisions are being
maintained on the territory of Georgia where Russian
intervention in a civil war made that country
ungovernable until Russian conditions had been met.
Russia's encouragement of the conflict between
Azerbaijan and Armenia gives Moscow a voice in both
countries and blackmails Azerbaijan with respect to
its oil supplies. Russian troops participate in the
civil war in Tajkistan. Russia refuses to demarcate
the borders with Ukraine, a country with a population
close to 60 million whose independence Russians seem
particularly loth to accept. And Russia is pressuring
all oil producing nations in Central Asia to export
their oil only through pipelines running through

18

All this has happened under Yeltsin and at a moment of Russia's maximum weakness. To paraphrase Churchill with respect to Soviet actions in the immediate postwar period: "If they act like this in the green wood, what will they do when the trees are fully grown?" And the occasional forays into democracy tempt competing leaders to appeal to that deep Russian nationalism tinged with mysticism.

19

received fewer tangible benefits from it. Tsarist and
Communist empires alike collapsed, materially and
spiritually exhausted by their overextension. The
latent sense of insecurity is all the more
inappropriate in the present world, where Russia
possesses 20,000 nuclear weapons, making a land attack
on it almost inconceivable.

The momentum of current Russian policy bids fair
to bring Russian armies to the gates of Europe and the
Middle East. If Ukraine were to suffer the fate of
Belarus and return to Russian satellite status,
tremors would be felt all over Europe and a return to
rigid dividing lines would be nearly inevitable. A
Russian stranglehold on Central Asian oil would
provide a dangerous blackmail potential during
foreseeable energy crises of the next century. Beyond

20

the geopolitical challenges, Russia, in its attempt to regain imagined ancient glories, seems inclined to challenge the United States' position in the Middle East and to conduct adventurous policies in Asia for no purpose other than prestige.

The United States has been far too slow to recognize these dangers. It is only in the last year that Ukraine has received attention commensurate with its political and strategic importance. In Central Asia, American policy ambivalently substitutes human rights pressures for a concept commensurate with the geopolitical importance of the region. In the Caucasus, flagrant Soviet military or near-military intervention has been met with American silence, or worse, American statements seemingly legitimizing ancient Russian imperial drives.

21

By treating Yeltsin - in defiance of mounting evidence in the daily conduct of Russian diplomacy - as if he were some tender shoot incapable of withstanding the gusts of realistic foreign policy, we have encouraged Russian imperial tendencies to compensate for disappointment at home and to emphasize Russian nationalism as the cohesive element of society. If we seek genuine reform in Russia, its leaders must be brought to understand that a return to historic drives of Russian policy will replicate the same debacles as in the past. They must be given to understand that the strategic domination of its neighbors can be achieved only at the cost of permanent tensions with the United States and the West.

22

Administration's tendency to build the Atlantic relationship from East to West; and a rededication to strengthening the Atlantic Alliance. This has two components as it stands: the Atlantic Alliance in effect has no mission; the frontiers that it guarantees are not threatened and the threatened frontiers are not guaranteed. Thus NATO expansion is imperative; in its absence, a grey area will develop tempting an even further expansion of Russia's strategic frontiers. (This is certainly the view of literally all the leaders of Eastern Europe.)

Even more importantly, the Atlantic Alliance must deepen its political consultation and extend it to subjects●heretofore excluded as being out of area - Islamic fundamentalism, global energy supplies, and other threats to world stability.

23

Finally, Russia must be made to understand that American policy is prepared to give it an honored and important role in helping create the new world order, the birthpangs of which mark the crisis of our age. A Russia prepared to stay within its borders can over time indeed become a strategic partner of the United States. The challenge to America is whether it can assemble a proper balance of incentives and penalties encouraging world order. And this challenge exists whoever wins the Russian election, though it will be more complex after a Zyuganov victory. That is the kind of reform to which we will be able to contribute with our Russia policy.

MAY-27-1996 00:08 FROM

TO

14077450358 P.05

14

In the 19th century, the Russian nationalist writer Michael Katkov defined the difference between Western and Russian values as follows: "...everything there is based on contractual relations and everything here on faith....A basic dual authority exists there; a single authority here." Similarly, Zyuganov describes Russia as a "special type of civilization" based on "collectivism, unity, statehood and the aspiration to achieve the highest ideal of good and justice" as compared to the West, infected with "extreme individualism, militant soullessness, religious indifference, adherence to mass culture."

These convictions, conferring a distinction on Russia (even amidst economic decline and social disintegration, have become major themes of

P.14

FAX NO. 4077450058

GOLDHAMMER MAY-26-96 SUN 17:22

MAY-27-1996 00:10 FROM

TO

14077450358 P.03

17

force: in the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi in 1833, in the prelude to the Crimean War in 1853, in the Balkan crisis of 1885 and in the prelude to the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. Even when it participated in European alliances, Russia tended to endow them with a missionary quality, *justifying* permanent military intervention in the domestic affairs of other states - from the Holy Alliance of the early 19th century to the Brezhnev Doctrine of the late 20th century.

Thus Yeltsin's "reformist" foreign minister, Koyzerev (since dismissed for being too liberal), put forward a Russian right of military intervention in all countries maintaining Russian minorities that are a minimum Includes 14 successor states of the Soviet Union including the Baltic states - all recognized by

P. 17

FAX NO. 4077450358

GOLDHAMMER

MAY-26-96 SUN 17:23

MAY-27-1996 00:11 FROM

TO

14077450358 P.06

as a result of overextension. The latent sense of insecurity is all the more inappropriate in the present world, where Russia possesses 20,000 nuclear weapons, making a land attack on it almost inconceivable.

The momentum of current Russian policy bids fair to bring Russian armies to the gates of Europe and the Middle East. If Ukraine were to suffer the fate of Belarus and return to Russian satellite status, tremors would be felt all over Europe and a return to rigid dividing lines would be nearly inevitable. A Russian stranglehold on Central Asian oil would provide a dangerous level of energy crises of the next century. And beyond these geopolitical challenges, Russia, in its attempt to regain imagined ancient glories, may be tempted to

P.20

FAX NO. 4077450358

GOLDHAMMER

MAY-28-96 SUN 17:23

MAY-27-1996 00:13 FROM

TO

14077450358 P.10

24

Even more importantly, the Atlantic Alliance must deepen its political consultation and extend to subjects heretofore excluded as being out of area - such as Islamic fundamentalism, global energy supplies, and other threats to world stability.

What we should not be is a recurrence of imperial threats that Russia has never been able to sustain but which have condemned its people to centuries of misery. A Russia prepared to stay within its borders can over time indeed become a strategic partner of the United States. The challenge to America is whether it can assemble a balance of incentives and penalties

P.24

FAX NO. 4077450358

GOLDHAMMER

MAY-28-96 SUN 17:24

1

2981 WORDS

KISSINGER NEWSWEEK ARTICLE

5/27/96

The Russian election, just as the diplomacy preceding it, has focussed almost entirely on the competing personalities. Boris Yeltsin has been presented as the solution; Gennadi Zyuganov as the epitome of potential crisis. We have had great difficulty accepting the reality that, whoever wins, a crisis in Russian-American relations is likely as the international system adjusts to the reemergence of Russian power, and that the worrisome trends in Russian policy may be attenuated, though surely not ended, by a Yeltsin victory.

The preference of the Western democracies for a Yeltsin victory is understandable. He has the

2

advantage of familiarity. He will not be beholden - as
Zyuganov is - to a party affirming its preference for
collectivism or to a leadership that often contrasts
Russian spirituality with Western materialism and
selfishness. But ______ too reflects some of these
tendencies. And in the next phase of foreign policy,
we must disenthrall ourselves from our preoccupation
with personalities and begin to deal with the
underlying forces.

The basic premise of the Russia policy of the
Clinton Administration has been that, to the extent
that the Cold War was caused by Russian actions, these
reflected a combination of planned economics and
totalitarian domestic structure. An important sub-
theme for the representatives of Clinton's generation
in the Administration has been that the United States

3

has its own heavy responsibility for the Cold War
which, in the views of some of the key members of the
foreign policy team, could have been avoided had the
United States pursued a policy of reassurance rather
than of confrontation. Thus American actions have come
to be based on what is essentially a program of
domestic reform and psychological engineering. It
concentrates on promoting internal change and on
reassuring the Russian leadership rather than on
seeking to influence its actions outside its borders.
And all these efforts were equated with the
personality of Yeltsin as the guarantor of market
economics, democracy, and peaceful international
conduct.

This is why Clinton has had more summits with
Yeltsin than with any other foreign leader, and why

4

Clinton, who has never visited Beijing, has been to Moscow ____¹ times during his presidency. Yet at the end of this period, the Communist Party is gaining ground in Russia and fields a major challenge to Yeltsin's rule. To stave off this danger (or perhaps reflecting his own conviction) [Yeltsin] has embarked on foreign policies which differ only in degree, if at all, from those of Zyuganov.

Whatever happens in the election, a reappraisal of America's Russia policy is imperative, beginning with the underlying assumption that market economics and democracy more or less automatically produce a restrained foreign policy. True, market economics are essential for growth; planned economics lead to bureaucratization, rigidity, and stagnation. But

¹Need figure.

5

market economics, however desirable from the human
point of view, have not always led to democracy, at
least in the short run. What managers want from the
state is to be left alone (or to be protected) or
constitutionalism - a legal system of ordered
expectations. They rarely insist on democracy in the
abstract. The fascist dictatorships, Pinochet in
Chile, and Franco in Spain coexisted well with a
private sector as did Imperial Japan and China today.

The relationship between democracy and the so-
called private sector is particularly ambiguous in
erstwhile Communist countries - especially those
which, like Russia, have a legacy of decades of
central planning and no historical memory of private
enterprise. For what seems to have happened in Russia
is that the vast majority of the former state

6

enterprises have been taken over by members of the
nomenklatura, who used to run them under Stalinist
planning. While they enjoy the absence of state
interference, they are not eager for a genuinely
competitive economy. And they have demonstrated no
interest in political democracy. Indeed, several of
their representatives had urged Yeltsin to avoid the
turmoil of an election.

Nor has the private sector been necessarily an
obstacle to adventurism abroad. Ironically, Marxist
philosophy used to argue that capitalism inevitably
led to war; this proved not to be the case. But the
opposite is no more true. On the whole, ____ is too
preoccupied with running its industries to involve
itself on issues of political philosophy or national
strategy.

7

In Russia, moreover, the advent of market
economics presents a special challenge to democratic
institutions. The weird hybrid of state capitalism,
black market, wild speculation, and outright criminal
activity has generated a demand for law and order
often inimical to democracy. The Communist system
produced a low standard of living but distributed it
fairly uniformly (except for the privileges of the
ruling class). That security, which often proved
chafing when experienced, is now, in retrospect,
regarded with nostalgia in many formerly Communist
countries, especially in Russia. Hence the victories
of the Communist Parties in Poland, Hungary and
Bulgaria and the growth of the Russian Communists
under Zyuganov.

Even without these obstacles, the growth of

8

democracy in Russia was always likely to be painfully
slow. For there is not in Russia the cultural and
historical background that produced pluralistic
democracy in the West - and even there one must
remember that the process was painfully slow. In the
West, religion, even when the churches were run in an
authoritarian manner, established the principle that
the moral and religious realm was beyond the reach of
government. In Russia, the church has been an
instrument of the state and a passionate supporter of
militant nationalism. Russia experienced neither the
Reformation nor the Enlightenment, with their emphasis
on the individual's conscience and the power of
reason. It did not participate in the Age of Discovery
and its capitalism concentrated on trading rather than
on production. Of course, pockets - some of them of

9

extraordinary quality - of all these tendencies existed in Russia but they never permeated the entire society and their few vestiges were murderously exterminated by Stalin. Not surprisingly, adherents to pluralistic democracy in today's Russia are largely confined to intellectual circles in Moscow and St. Petersburg; its representatives have been eliminated from Yeltsin's inner circle and have of course never existed in Zyuganov's.

Nor was Yeltsin exactly cast in a Jeffersonian mold. Almost all his adult life has been as an officer in the elite corps of the Communist Party - a career not attractive to the gentle-hearted. Rising through its ranks to Politburo status was surely not a career based on pluralistic principles. And while he courageously concluded that the Communist Party had

10

condemned itself with its inefficiency, Yeltsin has shown few signs that democratic values, including acceptance of dissent, are central to his value system.

This does not mean that democracy in Russia is doomed; only that it requires an evolutionary process which will require much time and in all likelihood dramatic transitions?. American foreign policy has been based on two assumptions: (a) it has acted as if the evolution to a mature Western-style democracy was nearly completed and could be perfected by American actions; and (b) it has relied on Yeltsin as the guarantor of the process and indeed as the only assurance that it would continue.

Both assumptions have proven mistaken. The attempt to help manage Russia's domestic evolution

11

identified us with the dislocations and suffering
inseparable from the transition to market economics
and enabled Russian nationalists and Communists to
make it appear as an imposition from the West designed
to keep Russia weak - one reason for the unpopularity
of America, on which all observers agree.

It has tempted us to endorse Yeltsin's military
attack on the Parliament? and dismissal of the Supreme
Court - actions difficult to reconcile with democratic
pretensions, whatever the provocation. And the
assumption that Russian democracy represented by
Yeltsin needed coddling explains why American high
officials, including the President, have explained
Russian pressures on the newly independent states of
the Caucasus as comparable to American actions in the
Caribbean, or else as expressions of peacekeeping; and

12

[why they] compare the Russian military campaign in Chechnya with the American Civil War. There is no law of nature obliging the White House to concentrate? on every Russian internal maneuver; the tendency to make ourselves part of Russian domestic politics undermines our ability to conduct a foreign policy geared to the external actions of the Russian state.

And yet it is the external actions of Russia that in the next period present the greatest challenge to international stability. And, paradoxically, they arise from precisely the domestic drama of which we have made ourselves so much a party. For Russia has always had unique characteristics - especially when compared to the nations of Europe, which were its neighbors and which represented a culture Russia sought at one and the same time to imitate and to

13

transcend. Extending over nine time zones, Russia -
even in its post-Soviet stage - constitutes the
largest land-mass of any contemporary state. St.
Petersburg is closer to New York than it is to
Vladivostok, which is in turn closer to Seattle than
it is to Moscow. A country of that size should not
suffer from claustrophobia. Yet the underlying theme
of Russian history has been creeping expansionism. For
four centuries, Russia has subordinated the well-
being of its own population to this relentless drive.
Developing the enormous resources of its vast
territory has never, not under Tsar or commissar, been
a Russian vocation. These centuries of sacrifice have
been transmuted in the Russian mind as a mission
partly in the name of security, importantly in the
service of Russian alleged superior morality - a theme

14

In the 19th century, the Russian nationalist writer Michael Ratkov defined the difference between Western and Russian values as follows: "...everything there is based on contractual relations and everything here on faith....A basic dual authority exists there; a single authority here." Similarly, Zyuganov describes Russia as a "special type of civilization" based on "collectivism, unity, statehood and the aspiration to achieve the highest ideal of good? and justice" as compared to the West, infected with "extreme individualism, militant soullessness, religious indifference, adherence to mass culture."

These convictions, conferring a distinction on Russia even amidst economic decline and social disintegration, have become major themes of

15

contemporary Russian foreign policy even under
Yeltsin. It is the way to recapture glory and
significance for a people feeling humiliated by the
disintegration of Empire and the collapse of social
order. This is why the restoration of the strategic
frontiers of the Soviet Union (never clearly defining
whether they include the old satellite orbit) is a
recurrent theme even under Yeltsin and much more
sharply with Zyuganov.

Russian and American exceptionalism, both
asserting a global vocation, have encountered each
other again, even after the collapse of Communism. But
despite their formal similarities, they also reflect
profound differences. America's sense of uniqueness
derives from the concept of liberty; Russia's sprang
from shared suffering and common submission to

16

authority. Everyone is eligible to share in America's
values; Russia's have been reserved for the Russian
nation. American exceptionalism tempts isolationism;
Russia's has historically promoted adventurist
domination.

Russia, abutting Asia, the Middle East and
Europe, faces in three directions at once and can
become extremely unsettling in pursuit of such
concepts. In the West, it has come up historically
against the necessities of the European balance of
power. But even when paying lip service to its
requirements, Russia has always endowed its relations
with Europe with a special quality. For one thing, it
excluded the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia
from the operation of the balance of power, seeking to
deal with these questions unilaterally and often by

17

force: in the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi in 1833, in the prelude to the Crimean War in 1853, in the Balkan crisis of 1885 and in the prelude to the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. Even when it participated in European alliances, Russia tended to endow them with a missionary quality, justifying permanent military intervention in the domestic affairs of other states - from the Holy Alliance of the early 19th century to the Brezhnev Doctrine of the late 20th century.

Thus Yeltsin's "reformist" foreign minister, Koyzerev (since dismissed for being too liberal), put forward a Russian right of military intervention in all countries maintaining Russian minorities that, at a minimum, includes 14 successor states of the Soviet Union including the Baltic states - all recognized by

18

the United Nations. Two Russian divisions are being
maintained on the territory of Georgia after Russian
intervention in the civil war made the country
ungovernable until Russian conditions had been met.
Russian encouragement of the conflict between
Azerbaijan and Armenia? gives Moscow a voice in both
countries. Russian troops participate in the civil war
in Tajkistan?. Russia is pressuring all oil producing
nations in Central Asia to export their oil only
through pipelines running through Russia - giving
Moscow a stronghold on one of the largest oil reserves
in the world as energy supplies may become short again
under the impact of global industrialization. Russia
refuses to demarcate the borders with Ukraine, a
country with a population close to 60 million and
whose independence Russians seem particularly loth to