Worth reading both his cover note and the original memo, now declassified, in full.
The most interesting aspect of this whole affair was the crucial role played by the Treasury. They were running the American effort in Russia, and would not listen to career foreign service officers’ critique of their policy. When Merry wrote a critical memo, it was squashed by the Treasury: “it would give Larry Summers a heart attack.”
Full text (part 6)
As with all former imperial states, Russia will be as much or more influenced by its former subjects as they by Russia. Culturally, Russia fears isolation if the West prefers her Western neighbors. Ethnically, Russia is permeated with nationals of its former subjects. Economically, Russia is mutually dependent on these countries and does much of its business with them and through them to the world beyond. In security terms, Russia worries that conflicts in the “near abroad”, especially among its Islamic neighbors, will endanger its own territory. Politically, the most dangerous and unstable element of Russia’s population is the growing number of ethnic Russian refugees from the former Soviet republics (at least two million), potentially a pool of radical and ultra-nationalist sentiment similar to the French-Algerian “pied noirs” or German “Volksdeutsche”. In all respects, Russia cannot ignore these countries and will interact with them to an extent we never shall.
In practice, Russia’s relations with her neighbors will be as messy as those of any former imperial power with its former subjects (Turkey in the Mideast and Balkans, France in Africa, Japan in the Far East). Some parts of the “near abroad” will be sunk in ethnic and other conflicts for years, if not generations. Some of the present borders may not last long, as they are the product of Stalinist divide-and-rule policies. Many people who voted for independence from Moscow in the referenda of late 1991 did so in expectation that independence would equate with prosperity. In some of the new states, this expectation has given way to the bitter recognition that Russia has done a better job than most in preserving living standards. Recent events in Belarus, Crimea, eastern Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere point to an increasing inclination to restore some of the Soviet-era economic relationships, with consequent political tensions within the newly independent states and turmoil in their relations with Russia.
The key issue for stability within the former Soviet domain is the status and well-being of the twenty-five million ethnic Russians beyond the borders of the federation. The key country is Ukraine, home to about half of them. Despite considerable bickering over more than two years, the governments in Moscow and Kiev have worked hard to prevent disputes becoming conflicts, and have dealt fairly responsibly with issues ranging from nuclear weapons, to the Black Sea Fleet and its bases, to terms of trade. Nonetheless, few Russians even begin to comprehend the depth of national feeling among ethnic Ukrainians or the hostility toward Moscow in much of western and central Ukraine. Russian arrogance toward the “little Russians” (and toward the “[White] Russians”, for that matter) is very similar to the prevailing attitude of Czechs toward Slovaks, with an understandable human reaction among the recipients. The danger is that Russians will feel sympathy if the predominately ethnic Russian Crimea and eastern Ukraine should seek to rejoin the Russian “motherland”. Crimea and the eastern salient of Ukraine are by far the most dangerous potential conflict zones of the former Soviet empire, dwarfing the localized conflicts in the Caucasus and Central Asia in importance.
Whether the comparative Russian restraint of the past two years toward its neighbors will endure will depend on the challenges Russia faces from them. The interplay will not be easy, nor will it fit the stereotypical Western view or a rebirth of Russian imperialism. Russians across the political spectrum view their neighbors and former subjects with varying perspectives, but with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Yeltsin’s recent treaty with Georgia, seen by many in the West as nascent neo-imperialism, was dead on arrival in the Duma among all factions from Gaydar through Zhirinovskiy. Similarly, there has been no groundswell of support for the proposed currency union with Belarus or for the independence movement in Crimea. Why the caution? Everyone sees the problems and the risks, and wants to know the price tag. The prevailing mood in Moscow toward neo-imperialism (for now) is caveat emptor.
XII
The other states of the former Soviet Union certainly cannot be expected to evaluate their neighboring colossus in other than anxious terms, experienced as they all are with the carnivorous traditions of the Russian bear. Must Russia now behave as it did in the past? If we regard a rebirth of Russian imperialism as inevitable, the United States will be effectively left with no creative Russian policy because a renewed Russian empire will require an authoritarian and non-democratic Russian homeland (“democratic imperialism” was no great success even for the British and is certainly beyond Russian capacities). Our strategy would then be limited to a resumption of containment on different geographic lines, with the consequent resumption or American-Russian mutual hostility and a potential renewal of the thermonuclear balance of terror.
Such a dismal course of events is not inevitable. The twentieth century provides numerous object lessons in loss of empire by states long accustomed to exercise dominion over their neighbors and territories further afield. Indeed, our external agenda today is dominated by the problems created by imperial breakup (Bosnia, Somalia, Cuba, Palestine, Iraq—to name just a few), but not by the former imperial states themselves, most of whom are prosperous democracies well-disposed toward the United States, regardless of their previous political systems. While no state gave up its external realm without regrets, the ease of the transition and the domestic political impact of loss or empire were always critically influenced by the policies of the dominant Western powers. The rise of European fascism was equally the result of lost empires and or policies designed to humble the former imperial metropoles.
The experience of our relations with post-Ottoman Turkey illustrates the path our policy toward post-Soviet Russia should take. Despite persistent difficulties in the Turkish economy, serious human rights problems and a tradition of authoritarian government, modern Turkey has been a major success for American post-war foreign policy. (We might also recall that even such a darling of the Western financial community as Turgut Ozal employed strongly statist methods of economic control and engaged in highly inflationary public financing.) Despite some continuing frictions between Washington and Ankara, this is one of the most consistently beneficial of our far-flung alliances, with Turkey exerting a stabilizing influence in a dangerous part of the world, restraining the irredentist tendencies of several of its neighbors, and giving the United States solid support when it counted. Both Russians and Turks would reject the comparison, but the parallels are significant: both are post-imperial states spanning Europe and Asia, each with religious and cultural traditions at odds with those of Western Europe, each rejecting the territorial and religious/ideological claims of its predecessor, each seeking acceptance by the West while preserving its own Eurasian identity.
As in republican Turkey, in post-Soviet Russia attitudes toward the “near abroad” tend to parallel views on democracy and relations with the West. While few Russians regard the loss of empire as an unalloyed good, those Russians who recall the former union as Russia’s burden tend to be those most favorably disposed toward reform, while those who h[e]arken back to the empire as Russia’s glory are also nostalgic for the authoritarian system and military power which sustained the empire. Thus, support for viable democracy in Russia is the best support we can give to the states of the “near abroad”, and certainly a better policy for the United States than an effort to construct an eighteenth century-style “cordon sanitaire” around Russia (as some have advocated) composed of states which fail, other than perhaps the Balts, to meet the standards to which we hold Russia.
XIII
There will inevitably be domestic reflections of its external policy within Russia we will not like. Chief among these will be the use of Russian nationalism by all political factions, including democrats, as a unifying force in the evolving political system. With the bankruptcy of the Soviet power structure and its ideology, Russia is a society badly in need of the restoration or some kind of ethical center. Much of the alienation of voters from the political process is the result of the ethical vacuum in which political debate takes place. Part of Zhirinovskiy’s success among young and disaffected working-class voters was his willingness to violate the taboos of democracy and proclaim their frustrations publicly. Ironically, Boris Yeltsin is himself the ultimate taboo-breaker of modern Russia, establishing most of his popular credibility through his willingness as a member of the CPSU politburo to proclaim openly that the party was morally naked.
The challenge for Yeltsin and for other democrats is to counter the surge of destructive negativism within Russian society. The substitute for ideology will almost certainly be nationalism, with a strong tie to the Orthodox Church (as noted above, almost no Russians imbue the market with positive ethical dimensions). If linked to constitutional democracy and to the steady growth of representative institutions, Russian nationalism can become a positive force, as patriotism and national feeling are in Western democracies. Divorced from democracy, Russian nationalism will become a terror.
Full text (part 7, final)
XIV
For the United States to be in a position to encourage restraint and responsibility in Russian external policy will require corresponding restraint on our part toward Russian-internal policy, particularly in the economic field. We are forced to choose: is our priority in Russia fledgling democracy or market economics? In the years remaining in this century, we cannot have both. Despite shallow roots in Russia, democracy enjoys a degree of public approbation which the market does not. Skeptical as they are of their politicians, Russians for the most part do want their country to be a democracy of some kind. In that vague and inchoate aspiration lies the basis for a successful long-term partnership between the two countries and for a comparatively benign Russian outlook on the world—if they and we don’t force other reforms faster than objective Russian conditions allow. Late last year, the Russian radical reformers imposed a complex foreign electoral system (the German) onto an unprepared electorate and produced a (predictable) shambles. To impose a complex foreign market economic system onto an unprepared Soviet-era structure will produce (also predictably) an even greater shambles.
The key to a constructive American role in supporting the growth of Russian democracy is mutual respect. The reservoir of goodwill which overwhelmed Americans at the collapse of Soviet power is not yet empty, but has become dangerously shallow. Some of that loss is the result of exaggerated expectations of what the West, and America, would and could do for Russia. Some of the loss, however, is the product of our own intrusive, if well-intentioned, efforts to define success for Russia in terms appropriate for our own country. While very few Russians regret the passing of the Cold War or wish to resume an adversarial stance toward the United States, equally few appreciate the missionary zeal or the superior tone which pervade our monologue toward them.
The Russian standard of success and failure in any undertaking—economic, political, social—is not the same as the American. The American national experience (a singularly favored one) is dominated by the theme and reality of success, to the extent that “success” has become the false deity of our society. The Russian national experience (an especially difficult one) has been dominated by pain, and by the memory and expectation of tragedy. To the Russian mind, our obsession with goals and goal-fulfillment is peculiar at best, at times offensive.
One might ask why we should show respect for a country which has inflicted upon itself so many failures over so many years. We should do so, first, because respect is the appropriate medium of interchange with any emerging democracy possessing thirty thousand thermonuclear weapons. Second, we should because many Russians (especially among the young) recognize their failures and were themselves the victors over the communist regime. Finally, we should show respect because Russia is their country to do with as they see fit, the more so as we are not prepared to match our advice with money.
XV
There is a growing trend in this part of the world away from the democratic reformers who shattered the icons of Soviet power. In Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus we have seen fatigue with the human impact of reforms delay, and potentially reverse, important political achievements. This is now happening in Russia, but with enormous implications for the world at large and for the United States. If Russia’s leaders, including many dedicated to broad systemic reform, turn away from Western pressure and retreat to a myopic and hostile outlook on the world, some of the blame will be ours. In only two years, post-Soviet Russia has moved from a naive and overly expectant faith in the wisdom of the West (and especially of America) to frustration tinged with animosity as Russians look beyond their truncated frontiers. If Andrey Kozyrev in 1994 sounds increasingly like Aleksandr Rutskoy one year earlier, it is not only because Russia’s foreign minister is tacking with the political wind.
Kozyrev reflects the exhaustion and disappointment of many of Russia’s youthful Westernizers with the meager fruits of their efforts to achieve acceptance by the West for Russia as a responsible emerging democracy. Failing this acceptance and the embrace of Western institutions it would entail, Russians (including the Westernizers) will fall back on their country’s inherent power and on its ability to exert influence beyond its borders. Keenly aware of Russia’s manifold deficiencies, even democrats may come to share Pushkin’s bitter judgment of Russia’s status, “if we did not stretch across half the earth, who would notice us?”
1994 is a dangerous year. The recent amnesty of Yeltsin’s opponents by the Duma should remind us that the struggle for democracy in Russia is still far from irrevocably won. If the West, with the United States in the front rank, prefers the role of economic missionary to that of true partner, we will assist Russian extremists to undermine the country’s nascent democracy and will encourage a renewal of Russia’s adversarial stance toward the outside world. Incidentally, we will also fail on the economic front.
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