A Tired Anarchy

A Tired Anarchy

Mini Teaser: Russia, for our officials and foreign policy leaders, is an increasingly scary and strange place. We don't seem to know where we are or what we are doing.

by Author(s): Charles H. Fairbanks

My third conclusion is that military and public strategy have been
bungled from start to finish, and it is an open question whether
the governme nt that did all this can manage equally complicated
and controversial processes of economic reform and democratization.
Dudayev's military forces have done rather well, given that they
are civilian militias or bandits. Where did they get their arms
and training from? The Russian army signed an agreement to turn
over half its weapons, including aircraft, tanks, and rockets,
when they evacuated Chechnya. The Chechens got more weapons, as
well as invaluable training and combat experience, in Abkhazia,
where they fought on the Russian side against the government of
Georgia. So the Russians trained and equipped a force that is now
working against them. Fighters are being recruited in Abkhazia
to fight for Dudayev, and Russian government spokesmen have been
threatening Ardzinba, Abkhazia's president, for sending them.
But it was Russia that put Ardzinba there and made Abkhazia an
independent mini-state. This is a very incoherent form of
Russian expansion.

Fourth and last, one can conclude that Russian national reassertion
is not a mass taste or instinct, but a posture or gesture. To clarify
what I mean, I would suggest that it is something rather like racism
is in the United States. You hear racist jokes, but if you were to
ask the people who make those jokes, "Well, shall we bring back
segregation? When? How?" they would be very disoriented and perhaps
frightened. Postures and prejudices are not policy. I think that
there is no public instinct for Russian national reassertion that
supports the assertive policy that seemed, even a few weeks ago, the
consensus of the Russian establishment. To make it clear: the Russian
public is not imperialist.

The concern for Russians abroad is also a posture in this sense.
Russia has done more for the Serbs, the Abkhaz and the anti-Dudayev
clans in Chechnya than for Russians abroad to date. We will see.
Maybe they will do more.

Russian nationalism does manifest itself in anger at outsiders. But
it does not result, so far, in solidarity, discipline or sacrifice
among Russians. Thus it does not have the consequences that, say,
Serb or Palestinian nationalism has.

New Reality, New Policy

The end of the sixty-year struggle against totalitarianism has
produced a new reality: the disintegration of states. Our experience
of this phenomenon, as with Chad in the 1980s or China in the 1930s
and 1940s, usually was incidental to solving more urgent problems.
Even in China, from the 1911 revolution to the Red Chinese triumph in
1949 the struggle was between strong state-building forces: the
Guomindang, the Japanese, the communists. Today, in the former Soviet
Union, there are no such forces, nor an ideology with remotely the
appeal of communism in intra-war China.

But if Russia and her neighbors seem fated for a period of anarchy,
it will be a tired anarchy; Russian nationalism is combative, not
imperial. The anarchy is unlikely to end in a traditional civil war
waged for ultimate stakes; after Afghanistan and in the wake of
Chechnya, Russians have little taste for fighting.

The United States should recognize that Russian combativeness is
easily discouraged. It reflects not a persistent desire to achieve
specific objectives but a need for recognition of Russia as a
society. When this yearning does create real dangers (for us or for
Russia itself), it should encounter obstacles, but these need not be
major to be effective. Nor is there any reason to say whether we are
responsible for them.

Thus, symbolism becomes the core of the U.S.-Russia diplomatic
relationship. On this basis, we should take great care not to ignore
or exclude Russia. We should look for opportunities to involve Russia
where we do not disagree; Somalia or Rwanda are examples. We should
avoid arguing in public or challenging Russia. In cases where we
disagree, it may be fine to agree to disagree, as Clinton and Yeltsin
did at the summit on Bosnia. Above all, we should avoid tests of will.

NATO expansion to the east is destined to be particularly divisive.
Pushing the alliance to the border of the old Soviet Union would be a
po werful symbol of Russian otherness, of its rejection by the West.
It is not that the inclusion of Poland, the Czech Republic, and
Hungary is a bad idea; in itself it is very useful. The problem is the
lack of a parallel "security structure" that links the West to Russia.
We have not had the imagination to devise something entirely new for
an entirely new epoch of history.

Not that we should rush to sign treaties with a disintegrating
Russian government, because it cannot commit the country and the
future. Only such agreements as can be fulfilled immediately and
verified by our own resources should be considered. An agreement to
destroy all of a certain category of nuclear weapons, for example,
might be such an agreement; if all are destroyed, none can reappear
easily. But treaties and agreements that require a disintegrating
Russian government to carry out a complex policy course involving
many bureaucracies over a long period of time are an invitation to
trouble. The major salt and start treaties of the past, and the
already-violated CFE treaty, are examples of what to avoid in the
future. If Russian generals do not obey a direct wartime order, why
should we expect them to obey the complex details of an international
treaty for years at a time?

More importantly, we should recognize that diplomacy is only a part
of the total relationship between the United States and Russia. The
Moscow government is so weak that major advances cannot be made by
diplomacy. The Russian position should be thought of as not only the
position of the Moscow government, but as that of the parliament, the
various ministries, the provinces and the larger Russian society. In
Chechnya, for example, it is the policy of the Moscow government that
is brutal and stupid; the position of Russian society is prudent and
humane. We are allowing politics to stand for the whole of our
relationship with Russia, in the totalitarian manner.

Since it eased the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the reunification
of Germany, which were valuable accomplishments, diplomacy has
achieved little in the post-communist world. We tried to save
Gorbachev and keep the Soviet Union together. We tried to save
"reform" by keeping Yeltsin in power. We have tried to resolve crises
in Bosnia and Nagorno-Karabakh by negotiations. So far we have failed
in every case. The disintegration of the post-communist state
machinery is a great impediment to diplomacy. While diplomacy skims
along the surface, the true shape of Russian reality is being forged
in the society and the economy.

Engagement and Its Limits

Despite the limited opportunities for diplomacy, the relationship
between the United States and Russia is still of vital importance. It
is hard to remain detached from great upheavals and the attendant
human suffering, as our long misery in Bosnia shows. But an
understanding of the situation and a consistent policy can shape and
limit our commitments. A proper response requires both a recognition
of the need for continued engagement and a sense for its limits.

The case for engagement is compelling. The former Soviet Union is an
enormous reservoir of power; American interests will be hurt if this
power is exercised by the wrong hands. At the moment, the crux of the
problem is the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and the
facilities and human skills that attend them. We cannot predict from
one year to the next who will control these weapons and, in the
current situation, the precedents and prospects are not happy ones.
The Soviet Union has a long tradition of employing nuclear threats,
and in the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis this almost led to war.
Brandishing nuclear weapons may prove a tempting and easy response to
the mood of resentment and discontent now rising in Russia.

Beyond nuclear anxieties, there is a long-term danger that Russia
will again become an aggressive state dominated by an extremist world
view. A combination of sustained disorder, suffering, and humiliation
tends to produce this outcome. There is little movement in that
direction now, but the seeds are visible; common sense suggests a
need to maintain what influence we have over the anarchy in which
they may grow or wither. By doing so we are buying an insurance
policy; we develop the understanding, connections and capabilities to
act more energetically should a major threat develop. (Not allowing
our armed forces to atrophy is another part of this insurance policy
and an essential part of a strategy for dealing with post-Soviet
disorder.)

However, engagement with the Russians should not be merely a matter
of containing current or future threats. The debate over post-Cold
War foreign policy has been strangely fixed on threats while ignoring
opportunities. And there are enormous opportunities in any vast area
that is opening up and undergoing fundamental change. Young Americans
are moving to Prague, Budapest, and Moscow in droves because they,
unlike the old foreign policy elite, sense that is the last frontier.

Essay Types: Essay