Did the Clinton Team "Lose Russia"? By Charles William Maynes

Did the Clinton Team "Lose Russia"?

While Russia is more hostile to America than it was a decade ago, the U.S. has fostered positive changes in Russian society.

By Charles William Maynes

Ever since the Russian economic crisis of August 1998, some critics have charged that the Clinton administration "lost" Russia. Of course, if that were true, it would be a terrible black mark on the administration's overall foreign policy record.

At first glance, the criticism seems to have some merit. Consider the following:

Russians today as a people are more hostile toward the United States than they were even during the Cold War. Then the government was hostile, but the people were not. Now both elites and masses together view with suspicion American intentions and policy.

The Clinton administration entered office with a man in power in Russia, Boris Yeltsin, who seemed to accept virtually every foreign policy demand Washington advanced. The administration leaves office with a man in power, Vladimir Putin, who seems determined to thwart American initiatives.

The Clinton team started off with Russians admiring Western political and economic models. The team leaves office with the Russian people deeply distrustful of words like "democracy" and "free markets."

The team entered power proclaiming a new "strategic partnership." It leaves office with Russia adrift geopolitically, moving closer to China, stressing its reliance on nuclear weapons, presumably against a Western attack, and opposing U.S. policy on such issues as Iraq and Iran.

But there is another side to this story. A supporter of the Clinton administration, viewing the past eight years through another lens, might cite this evidence:

While Clinton was in office, Russia carried out the first democratic transfer of power in its 1,000 years of existence as a nation.

During the Clinton administration, Russia withdrew its troops from the Baltic states, recognized its borders with Ukraine, and cooperated in dismantling much of the Soviet military structure.

The Clinton team took the controversial decisions to expand NATO and bomb Serbia, both measures Moscow vehemently opposed, and then through skillful diplomacy persuade Moscow to put aside its initial bitterness to accept an enlarged NATO and a cooperative role in containing Belgrade.

And while it is true that the pain of the recent reforms has soured many Russians on "democracy" and "free markets" as formal goals, the majority of the Russian people are hardly lost to the West. On the contrary, the Russian people by overwhelming numbers continue to link their fate with that of the democratic West. (One must concede that this sense of affinity is now more with Western Europe than with the United States, but the commitment to the West remains.)

Looking through these two very different lenses at what has taken place over the last eight years, different analysts of course reach radically different conclusions. Some continue to argue that the opportunity to forge a true partnership with Russia has been irrevocably lost and they suggest a new policy of resumed containment or contemptuous neglect. Others urge that the democratic West just give current policies more time. The West should press ahead with those measures first undertaken in the last two years of the Bush administration and then continued throughout the Clinton administration. In fact, both approaches are mistaken. Neither renewed containment nor enhanced engagement under the current policy makes sense at this stage. The first approach would be dangerous and the second would be futile. It would be dangerous to build a wall between Russia and the rest of Europe. That has been attempted in the past and Russia has always found a way either to tear it down or get around it. Yet if the policies of the last 10 years have failed to deliver as promised, it surely does not make sense to continue them or reinforce them.

Destruction, Then Affirmation

To understand what we ought to do, it is essential to see more clearly what has really has been taking place in Russia over the last decade. During that critical period, the countries that emerged from the former Soviet Union began to address two essential challenges: creative destruction of the past and national affirmation of the new political system. Now that 10 years have been devoted to these two essential tasks, the stage is set for a different approach, which should now begin.

Creative destruction immediately after the Soviet Union collapsed was critical because lasting reform could not take place until the all-pervasive security apparatus of the Soviet past in these countries had been disabled, if not dismantled. Creative destruction was also required to disassemble the economic control apparatus, which shackled every economy in the region. No doubt, both tasks were imperfectly accomplished. No doubt, grave mistakes were made, both by the governments in the region and by outside advisers. But one cannot evade the fact that these steps of creative destruction were the first priority of the new regimes and that initial task has been by and large accomplished.

National affirmation was the second priority. Many of these states had never existed before as independent countries, or if they had, it was for only brief moments in history. Russia itself, the most secure, had only existed as an empire, not as a nation-state. The immediate priority everywhere therefore was the establishment of national identity and firm borders. For some states in the region, the national challenge seemed even more pressing than the economic and democratic challenges. Indeed, much as Americans may find it difficult to accept, immediate steps toward elections without adequate constitutional checks and balances in some countries -- Georgia is a prime example -- immediately yielded highly nationalistic and intolerant governments that threatened to outrage many national minorities and cut short the very existence of that independent state. A more authoritarian interlude then emerged to manage the transition.

Now, in many of these conflicted countries, these two fundamental priorities, destruction and affirmation, have been met. If the Bush and Clinton teams made a mistake, it was in not understanding these priorities. Both administrations misread what happened in 1991. They were haunted by the specter that the former Soviet system might return. In the U.S., the impulse toward seeing its destruction was not creative, simply destructive. The Bush and Clinton teams wanted the Communist Party gone, the Soviet nuclear arsenal dismantled, and the military-industrial complex torn down.

That is why the American embrace of Boris Yeltsin was so tight. U.S. government officials believed that he alone stood between the past and the future.

But there was never a chance that the old system would be restored once the Soviet Union broke up. Like some states in Central Europe, Russia and its neighbors may someday put the communist party or a successor back in power but they are highly unlikely to put the communist system back in place. The faith that held the old system together is dead.

No system can be held together by force alone. The Soviet Union existed as long as it did because millions of people believed in the system and were willing to do heroic and horrible things to sustain it. Now that faith has totally collapsed.

Though the path to the future itself regrettably remains uncertain, there is no road back to the past. When Gennady Zyuganov, the head of the Russian Communist Party, decided that he needed greater domestic acceptance and international legitimacy for his presidential race against Boris Yeltsin in 1996, he chose not go to Beijing or Pyongyang to re-forge proletarian solidarity. Instead, he went to the meeting of the world's leading capitalists in Davos, Switzerland. There, I watched with my own eyes as he attempted to reassure the bankers and financiers attending -- the people who in a globalized world really count -- that he did not have horns.

It may be that the West's approach to macro-reform could never have worked in Russia or elsewhere. The West was not prepared to put up the necessary funds, nor was it willing to offer sufficient market access to make it work. And even if it had been willing to do so, the scope of what was needed may have been beyond the ability of outside powers to influence to any significant degree. Reform in Russia had to come from within.

Grassroots Transformations

But the Clinton administration, like the Bush administration before it, did devote a portion of the funds that were available to one sector where outside help has worked -- at the grassroots.

For all the turmoil and negative news that the outside world sees at the top, Russia at the bottom has been in the process of significant change that is promising if it is sustained. Consider that on the economic front, in 1991, a small fraction of the Russian economy was in private hands and there were almost no small independent businesses. Today, approximately 70 percent of economic activity is in the private sector and there are around 900,000 small businesses. (Of course, were Russia doing as well as Poland, that number would be three to four times higher. Lending greater hope to the future is the fact that 75 percent of the population between 18 and 29 now agree with the statement that "it is important to achieve success with a business of your own.")

In the late 1980s, not a single Russian child was schooled in modern business methods. This year, Junior Achievement International celebrated the fact that the one-millionth Russian had passed through its programs. Junior Achievement's program in Russia is now its second largest worldwide, after the United States.

In 1989, there were no free newspapers and television stations. Today there are more than 600 entirely independent media outlets across the Russian Federation alone -- admittedly most of them are small in scope, but they are alive nonetheless.

Only a few years ago, there were virtually no non-governmental organizations unless they were under the control of the Communist Party. Today, close to 65,000 NGOs are up and running. Surveys suggest that as many as 80 percent of them are Russian-supported.

In the field of human rights, the Russian Helsinki Committee has seen its database of human rights organizations swell from 50 regional organizations in 1996 to more than 1,200 today.

Meanwhile, the outside world and this previously isolated people are learning about one another to an unprecedented degree. The Western press focuses on the oligarchs, the wealthy "new Russians" and the activities of the "mafiyas." We read little about the fact that Russia today is the ninth-largest tourist attraction in the world. (America is first, Mexico is eighth and Poland is tenth.) Russia, in other words, is slowly, steadily becoming a normal state. Borders are opening, students are learning, citizens are travelling.

Against this backdrop, the next administration must find ways to spread further the creative ferment that is now evident at the grassroots, since from this ferment will emerge the forces in society that will determine whether democratic practices and free markets develop deep roots in Russia or remain constantly under siege.

It is unfortunate that, in pursuing the more grandiose project of Russian macro-economic reform, the U.S. over the last decade focused so much of its assistance at the top rather than at the grassroots, where these successes were both possible and actually occurring. In emphasizing funding at the top, and dispersing huge sums through impersonal international and bilateral agencies like the IMF and the World Bank, the U.S. and other international donors lost the ability to monitor the use and impact of their assistance. As a result, corrupt government officials and elites were able to control access to these resources and divert them for their own purposes.

A primary focus from the start at the grassroots and on microlending might have instead enabled closer monitoring, reduced opportunities for corruption, and given new social groups beyond the established elites both a stake in reform and a means of generating wealth. In turn, this would have enhanced the ability of new elites to demand a say in political decision-making, increasing the prospects for democratization.

This being said, the U.S. government still must be given credit for some pioneering efforts. It has encouraged a number of instruments, including the Eurasia Foundation whose work I direct, that are designed to increase the chances that democratic norms will take root. When our foundation began to establish offices in the former USSR in the early 1990s, one of the first questions our new field directors encountered was: "What will the foundation do to protect us if the political winds shift?" It is a mark of positive change that we do not hear questions like that any more.

For more than 80 years, Russia was in political darkness. Citizens were taught that change, like sunlight, could only come from one source, the Communist Party.

What Western engagement at the grassroots means is that the power to illuminate is being placed in the hands of ordinary citizens. Though this level of activity seldom makes headlines, these kinds of work at the grassroots will almost certainly make a difference in Russia's future.

I would argue, therefore, that not only is Russia not "lost," but also that U.S. programs during the last 10 years have been valuable in furthering a constructive, benign subversion of the archaic Soviet-style system.

If the Clinton administration can be said to have been at least partially successful in its policies toward Russia, it has been largely because of its ongoing support for these grassroots initiatives. Focussing efforts at this level is the way forward for a new administration in formulating its policy toward Russia. Charles William Maynes is president of the Eurasia Foundation and is the former editor of Foreign Policy magazine. A Foreign Service officer from 1962 to 1971, he served in Vientiane and Moscow. From 1977 to 1980 he was the assistant secretary of State for international organization affairs.

This file last updated on January 26, 2001