Losing Russia

The Costs of Renewed Confrontation

Dimitri K. Simes

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2007

Summary:  U.S.-Russian relations are deteriorating rapidly. Misguided and arrogant U.S. policies since the end of the Cold War have fueled resentment in Russia, and Vladimir Putin's increasing defiance is inflaming the West. But Washington and Moscow need not be adversaries. Both sides must act soon to avert renewed confrontation.

DIMITRI K. SIMES is President of the Nixon Center and Publisher of The National Interest.

U.S. influence played even less of a role in bringing about the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The George H. W. Bush administration supported the independence of the Baltic republics and communicated to Gorbachev that cracking down on legally elected separatist governments would jeopardize U.S.-Soviet relations. But by allowing pro-independence parties to compete and win in relatively free elections and refusing to use security forces decisively to remove them, Gorbachev virtually assured that the Baltic states would leave the Soviet Union. Russia itself delivered the final blow, by demanding institutional status equal to the other union republics. Gorbachev told the Politburo that permitting the change would spell "the end of the empire." And it did. After the failed reactionary coup attempt in August 1991, Gorbachev could not stop Yeltsin -- and the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine -- from dismantling the Soviet Union.

The Reagan and first Bush administrations understood the dangers of a crumbling superpower and managed the Soviet Union's decline with an impressive combination of empathy and toughness. They treated Gorbachev respectfully but without making substantive concessions at the expense of U.S. interests. This included promptly rejecting Gorbachev's increasingly desperate requests for massive economic assistance, because there was no good reason for the United States to help him save the Soviet empire. But when the first Bush administration rejected Soviet appeals not to launch an attack against Saddam Hussein after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the White House worked hard to pay proper heed to Gorbachev and not "rub his nose in it," as former Secretary of State James Baker put it. As a result, the United States was able to simultaneously defeat Saddam and maintain close cooperation with the Soviet Union, largely on Washington's terms.

If the George H. W. Bush administration can be criticized for anything, it is for failing to provide swift economic help to the democratic government of the newly independent Russia in 1992. Observing the transition closely, former President Richard Nixon pointed out that a major aid package could stop the economic free fall and help anchor Russia in the West for years to come. Bush, however, was in a weak position to take a daring stand in helping Russia. By this time, he was fighting a losing battle with candidate Bill Clinton, who was attacking him for being preoccupied with foreign policy at the expense of the U.S. economy.

Despite his focus on domestic issues during the campaign, Clinton came into office with a desire to help Russia. The administration arranged significant financial assistance for Moscow, primarily through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As late as 1996, Clinton was so eager to praise Yeltsin that he even compared Yeltsin's decision to use military force against separatists in Chechnya to Abraham Lincoln's leadership in the American Civil War.

The Clinton administration's greatest failure was its decision to take advantage of Russia's weakness. The administration tried to get as much as possible for the United States politically, economically, and in terms of security in Europe and the former Soviet Union before Russia recovered from the tumultuous transition. Former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott has also revealed that U.S. officials even exploited Yeltsin's excessive drinking during face-to-face negotiations. Many Russians believed that the Clinton administration was doing the same with Russia writ large. The problem was that Russia eventually did sober up, and it remembered the night before angrily and selectively.

EAT YOUR SPINACH

Behind the façade of friendship, Clinton administration officials expected the Kremlin to accept the United States' definition of Russia's national interests. They believed that Moscow's preferences could be safely ignored if they did not align with Washington's goals. Russia had a ruined economy and a collapsing military, and it acted like a defeated country in many ways. Unlike other European colonial empires that had withdrawn from former possessions, Moscow made no effort to negotiate for the protection of its economic and security interests in Eastern Europe or the former Soviet states on its way out. Inside Russia, meanwhile, Yeltsin's radical reformers often welcomed IMF and U.S. pressure as justification for the harsh and hugely unpopular monetary policies they had advocated on their own.

Soon, however, even Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev -- known in Russia as Mr. Yes for accommodating the West -- became frustrated with the Clinton administration's tough love. As he told Talbott, who served as ambassador at large to the newly independent states from 1993 to 1994, "It's bad enough having you people tell us what you're going to do whether we like it or not. Don't add insult to injury by also telling us that it's in our interests to obey your orders."

But such pleas fell on deaf ears in Washington, where this arrogant approach was becoming increasingly popular. Talbott and his aides referred to it as the spinach treatment: a paternalistic Uncle Sam fed Russian leaders policies that Washington deemed healthy, no matter how unappetizing these policies seemed in Moscow. As Talbott adviser Victoria Nuland put it, "The more you tell them it's good for them, the more they gag." By sending the message that Russia should not have an independent foreign policy -- or even an independent domestic one -- the Clinton administration generated much resentment. This neocolonial approach went hand in hand with IMF recommendations that most economists now agree were ill suited to Russia and so painful for the population that they could never have been implemented democratically. However, Yeltsin's radical reformers were only too happy to impose them without popular consent.

At the time, former President Nixon, as well as a number of prominent U.S. business leaders and Russia specialists, recognized the folly of the U.S. approach and urged compromise between Yeltsin and the more conservative Duma. Nixon was disturbed when Russian officials told him that the United States had expressed its willingness to condone the Yeltsin administration's decision to take "resolute" steps against the Duma so long as the Kremlin accelerated economic reforms. Nixon warned that "encouraging departures from democracy in a country with such an autocratic tradition as Russia's is like trying to put out a fire with combustible materials." Moreover, he argued that acting on Washington's "fatally flawed assumption" that Russia was not and would not be a world power for some time would imperil peace and endanger democracy in the region.