Odom's Russia: A Forum
Mini Teaser: Seven seasoned observers react to William Odom's interpretation of post-Soviet Russian reality, and Odom replies.
WILLIAM Odom's essay, "Realism About Russia ", in the Fall 2001 issue of The National Interest put forth a stark and controversial view of Russia prospects and of how US. policy should adapt to those prospects. In the interest of generating a conversation over what remains an important and multifaceted relationship between former Cold War antagonists, we asked a group of distinguished scholars and analysts--among them Americans, Russians, and Europeans--to respond to General Odom's presentation. Little did we know at the time that the events of September 11 would alter the context of that relationship and generate what may turn out to be significant changes in it. Not surprisingly, several of the critiques presented here refer to the impact of the terror attacks and their aftermath on the course of U S.-Russian relations. That, in turn, has provided Gen. Odom with an opportunity to respond to his critics and to comment on the post-September 11 environment at the same time. --The Editors
Martin Malia, University of California, Berkeley:
IN THE bogged-down debate about post-Communist Russia 's tribulations, William Odom has the merit of clearly identifying the chief villain of the story: "seven decades of Soviet rule are mostly to blame.. not the West." Among works written as if Yeltsin's "young reformers" had inherited a thriving society from communism, he appropriately calls Stephen F. Cohen's Failed Crusade "egregious." The same must be said of Peter Reedaway's Tragedy of Russia Reforms, which places the blame on "Thatcherite market bolshevism" (sic!).
Odom is again right to claim that it is not enough to decree neo-liberal economic measures to create a true market economy, or to hold a few elections to produce a genuine democracy. For a successful market democracy, a strong institutional foundation is necessary: "rules for deciding who rules", guaranteed individual freedoms, an independent judiciary, stable property rights, and so on--all "deficit" items in postSoviet Russia. Thus Putin has inherited "a mix of old and new institutions" a scaffolding of market democracy around a society still half-Soviet and with a holdover nomenklatura elite. Indeed, a decade after communism's collapse, Russian reform is clearly stuck in the mud, and the facile optimism of the days of "Boris and Bill" now appears juvenile and naive.
At this point, however, Odom's analysis bogs down in a pessimistic version of the "Washington consensus" equation of free markets with democratic politics that he otherwise rejects. For the main burden of his article is that Russia will remain arrested in a neither-fish-nor-fowl state for decades to come, a position he argues with such plausible state-of-the-art social science models as "path dependence lock-in" (meaning set ways are hard to break) and "weak state" syndrome (meaning reformist initiatives from above cannot make any difference). On this basis, Odom concludes that it is pointless for the Bush Administration to continue the Clinton Administration's efforts to move Russia forward. In particular, he says, we should not treat Russia as a great power, or even take it seriously as an international actor beyond its ability to cause trouble for weak neighbors. Nor should Russia's stock of decaying nuclear weapons move us to give undue importance to such joint security efforts as the Nunn-Lugar program (though the program's first purpose is to protect us against nuclear proliferation).
It should hardly be necessary to say that the globequake of September 11 rendered these conclusions nugatory overnight. Russia is back in the game, and our ally to boot. Yet even without that spectacular reversal, Odom's argument fails for the more fundamental reason that his social science lacks proper historical grounding. His gold standard for measuring progress is the usual one: that most lucky of modern European nations, insular England in 1688. Albion then "broke out of its old institutional pattern based on absolute monarchy" thereby finding its "effective economic path", one "that also took hold in Holland (my emphasis) at about the same time. Meanwhile, France [and] Spain ... Remained . . . chained to absolutist institutional arrangements . . . trailing the booming English and Dutch economies for the next three centuries." This simply will not do, even as a rudimentary summary of how Europe modernized.
The first "modern" economy was obviously 17th-century Holland (building on the antecedents of medieval Northern Italy and Flanders), for which Jan de Vries' prize-winning The First Modern Economy (1997) gives the full story. Throughout the century, moreover, the English imitated the Dutch--as in the creation of a national bank--not the other way around. And in 1688 the Stadtholder of Holland, William of Orange, mounted the English throne with the aid of Dutch and French Huguenot troops in order to contain Europe's premier power, France. Thus, with Dutch help, Britain was set on its way to becoming, by the mid-18th century, the continent's leading model for what we now call "modernity."
THESE remarks are no pedantic quibble about remote events without relevance to 21st century conditions. Rather, these developments defined the Atlantic matrix out of which modernization both institutional and economic, later came to central and eastern Europe. Indeed, among the earliest sovereigns to take the cue was Peter the Great, in 1697-98. Significantly, he went first to advanced Holland and only later to William III's more recent dominion, England. So St. Petersburg came to be laid out in imitation of Amsterdam; and Peter for a time considered making Dutch the official language of his empire (William said the Czar spoke it "like a Dutch sailor").
Similarly, and in fact somewhat earlier, the Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia had imported Dutch craftsmen and Huguenot exiles to develop his backward realm; and later the Stein-Hardenberg Reforms introduced into Prussia a watered-down version of the French Revolution's innovations. As for Russia, from Alexander II's Great Reforms of the 1860s down to Sergei Witte's industrialization of the 1890s and his Duma Constitution of 1905, it was successfully plodding its way to both the economic and the institutional foundations of a more open order, this despite a notable "path dependence" of autocracy and serfdom--progress annulled by seventy years of communist pseudo-modernization.
The great social science model for this West-East dynamic of development is, of course, given by Alexander Gerschenkron in his Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (1962). Its central thesis is that backward societies modernize not by retracing their predecessors' exact steps, but by compressing and telescoping them through state action from above: ergo Peter, Alexander II and Witte; and, in his perverse and ultimately disastrous way, Stalin.
Could it be, then, that the new Petersburg boy, Vladimir Putin, is contemplating a Petrine-like leap to lift Russia out of its present humiliation? This is surely suggested by the way he was energized by September 11 to face down his stuck-in-the-mud military and gamble his Kremlin tenancy on the West. Witness the ardor of his embrace of Bush, his Lorelei song to the German Bundestag, and his economic wooing of the European Union in Brussels--all this at a time the Russian economy is at last picking up. It is most unlikely that such radical defiance of his earlier domestic base is merely a Potemkin ploy to lull us again into naivete. So perhaps Russia's "path dependence lock-in" is not as tight as Odom thinks. And perhaps the organic coupling of the market and democracy may yet turn out to have merit, even in darkest Muscovy.
Martin Malia's principal works are The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 and Russia Under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum.
Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Princeton University:
GENERAL Odom tells us that Russia is not a great power, probably cannot be one for a very long time, and therefore should not be treated as one. He does not, however, explain what a "great power" is in today's world, or how U.S. behavior should be influenced by the power hierarchy he imputes to the international scene. He implies that since Russia is no longer a great power it should be sharply demoted in significance, since its willingness and ability to support American interests are limited and its ability to harm those interests is not much greater.
Odom's perception of the world, of Russia, and of American interests differs from mine. The world I see is one in which states are no longer the sole players (if they ever were). It is a world in which non-state actors have seized part of the stage, acting sometimes as tools, sometimes as partners, but sometimes also as scourges of governments and the states they rule. It is a world in which success and failure do not depend entirely or even primarily on the size of a country, or its military strength, or the affluence of its population, or any other single factor-or; for that matter, on any simple combination of factors. States can be comparatively powerful in some respects and weak in others. In today's world, it is impossible to conjure up some litmus test that will usefully distinguish a "great power" from other states. One must first ask, "Power for what?"
Presumably, the power that is relevant to U.S. foreign policy is that which can affect American interests. Defining these interests and assigning priorities among them is a tricky exercise on which reasonable people can disagree. Nevertheless, one interest normally trumps all others: the defense of a country's territory against attack from abroad. On that score Russia is more likely to help than harm the United States, and these days we need all the help we can get.
Don't forget: The Cold War ended with Russia's help. (The Soviet Union was not Russia writ large but a Communist empire that Russia's leaders helped demolish.) When the Soviet Union disappeared from the geopolitical map, the United States became the unchallenged military power in the world, so much so that other states could no longer pose a plausible threat to American territory. Only non-state actors--terrorist networks, to be precise--can do that, by employing forms of asymmetrical warfare that operate below America's deterrence capabilities. The sort of defenses and alliances that were necessary during the Cold War have become of limited utility in dealing with the new threat. Russia, however, irrespective of its success or lack thereof in creating a stable, democratic society; was and remains relevant. It has been a target of these same malign forces and its geographic location provides indispensable assets for combating the most direct threat to American security.
That is why, ultimately, debating whether Russia is a "great power" is a pointless exercise. We need cooperation with Russia to secure our most fundamental security interests. If such cooperation were not in Russia's interest it would be futile (or too costly to other interests) to try to enlist it, but it is in Russia's interest. It would be irresponsible to reject security cooperation with Russia just because it has not yet and may never mirror image our own political and economic institutions.
I DO AGREE with General Odom that past U.S. policy toward Russia has been mistaken, but the mistake was not the one he cites. The very limited economic support the United States offered Russia could not have been decisive in creating a transformation that at best will take more than a generation and, for better or for worse, it was not the most important element of Clinton Administration policy.1 Far more important, mostly for worse, were other decisions: NATO enlargement; bombing Serbia without Security Council approval; and the erratic use of military force to solve problems for which force was ill suited.
The fundamental flaw in Clinton Administration policy was the absence of a strategy to meet the challenges of the post-Cold War world. Too many obsolescent Cold War practices were continued. American economic and military strength fed the illusion that the United States was invulnerable and could use its military forces to whatever purpose it chose so long as it limited American casualties. The administration failed to build the sort of alliances needed to meet the terrorist threat and dissipated American power by intervening in disputes with little relevance to its security, but that created or nurtured pockets of determined and dangerous enemies.
Finally, General Odom exaggerates Russia's current defects. His is the attitude of a hanging judge prepared to accept any allegation of wrongdoing as valid, while ignoring contradictory or qualifying facts. Indeed, the caricature General Odom draws of current conditions in Russia forms a precarious platform for his confident predictions. That caricature is reminiscent of others based on partial evidence and the "straight-lining" of temporary trends out into the distant future. Examples abound: the predictions in the 1970s that Japan would outstrip the United States in GDP by the 1990s; the "new paradigm" theorists' overblown projections of stock market valuation during the price bubble in technology stocks just a few years back; and the estimates, right through the 1980s, that Communist Party rule in the Soviet Union was so entrenched that it could not be seriously undermined from within. The prediction that Russia is "trapped" into some "weak state" syndrome has no more logical validity than one positing th at Russia will gradually adapt its institutions to support a capitalist economy and an open society.
Neither outcome is inevitable, but several things should be clear. One is that only the Russians themselves can build the institutions and develop the attitudes they will need to fulfill their potential in a globalizing world. The second is that it is in the interest of the United States, its allies in Europe and the entire world that Russia become a full and responsible member of the civilized world community. The third is that U.S. policy can influence developments in Russia at least at the margins. Russia is much more likely to become a modern, productive and friendly state if its leaders see the country's future served by close association with western Europe and the United States. But they are likely to sustain that view only if the United States and its allies take Russian interests into account and cooperate in dealing with common problems.
This is not a prescription for treating Russia as an exception, or for excusing those shortcomings still apparent in its governance and some of its actions, but only for continuing policies that have proven successful in the past in other cases. We did not exclude Portugal, Spain or Turkey from NATO membership on grounds that they were no longer "great powers or that they were insufficiently democratic. The fact that Portugal was a member of the Western alliance played an important role in the evolution of a stable democracy when Antonio Salazar passed from the scene. Spain's basing agreements with the United States while General Franco was still running a fascist dictatorship helped rather than hindered the subsequent inclusion of Spain in NATO and the establishment of democratic institutions there. Would we or Turkey be better off today if we had refused to ally ourselves with that country because its armed forces razed Kurdish villages and intervened in Cyprus? In fact, the U.S.-Turkish alliance has helped preserve a secular government in Ankara and has encouraged political solutions in Kurdistan and Cyprus. Are there not useful lessons here when we consider relations with a Russia that, like the United States, faces the threat of terrorist attack?
General Odom wrote "Realism About Russia" before September 11 and, to be fair to him, I have written my critique as I would have on September 10, 2001, not going beyond views I have expressed publicly for nearly a decade. Let the reader judge whether the world today better fits his concept of realism or my perception of reality.
Jack F. Matlock, Jr. was formerly U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union.
1 Odom also exaggerates its extent. It was hardly "massive": the grant aid could have come out of Bill Gates' after-tax income without significantly affecting his lifestyle. The IMF infusions (at no cost to the U.S. taxpayer) were loans, half of which have already been repaid.
Jerry F. Hough, Duke University:
FOR THOSE OF us who were engaged in debate with General Odom twenty years ago, his recent article in The National Interest brings a smile to the lips. Then, too, he was convinced that the Soviet present and future were determined by its past. Then, of course, he saw the Soviet Union as a strong state, dominated by its military and driven by that military to world domination. The dovish argument that the Soviet elite "only" wanted defense and equality with the West he denounced as naivete; the possibility that social forces within the Soviet Union would produce evolution he dismissed out of hand.
As General Odom sees it, Russia is still incapable of any improvement or evolution, but now it is eternally a weak state, and its military officers are absorbed only with personal gain. None has any sense of national pride, professionalism or desire either for defense or national expansion. Defense against a rising China no longer occupies the thinking of any Russian, although in the past the historic fear of Tatars was said to make all Russians paranoid about China.
There is no question about the policy of Russia's current rulers. Anatoly Chubais, along with other Leningraders like Putin working with him, simply use the state to steal. These men do not seek economic growth because domestic stagnation gives them more oil, fertilizer, and natural resources to export, and they can easily receive a percentage of the proceedings for their personal gain. They do not invest their money at home, but keep it safely abroad.
In the short run, at least, this development is much more advantageous to American foreign policy than General Odom acknowledges. The United States can and does bribe Russian leaders to accept virtually anything--the expansion of NATO, an American sphere of influence in Serbia or Uzbekistan, assistance in Afghanistan, modification of the ABM Treaty, and so forth. The United States should not be criticized for sugarcoating what it is doing by treating Russia as a great power; that is, after all, a small price to pay for the privilege of suborning Russia's national interest.
THE MOST fundamental problem with General Odom's analysis, however, is that it lacks perspective on the very long and difficult process of the development of markets and constitutional democracy. What we call corruption is a key part of this process, for it builds a network of people in different elite groups who have an interest in property rights, and in a government that both promotes economic growth and restrains the ruler. If a businessman brings a politician and a military officer into his project, then the government will protect and promote growth for personal reasons, and the military will support it. Members of the elite will support property rights so they can retain their wealth after they leave office, and so that their children can inherit it.1
But such investment-oriented corruption must be broadly based to be a positive factor in development. In Russia, major corruption has been too narrowly concentrated. Broad corruption has been limited to forms such as bribes that are dependent on a person remaining in office. The military let the Soviet system fall because its leaders had received none of the economic benefits of an American junior officer. Yeltsin's allowing the top generals to "privatize" the Ministry of Defense dachas in 1991 was crucial. The failure of Putin to bring Russian officials and military officers into the kind of development-centered corruption found in other Third World countries makes the Putin regime very susceptible to a military coup unless it changes its economic policy.
The notion that well-educated Russians cannot have China's rate of economic growth is silly. Douglass North, whom General Odom misinterprets, and Joseph Stiglitz, who just received a Nobel Prize, were directing their fire at the policy of Larry Summers at the Treasury Department, at his faith in neo-liberal economics and at the Russian leadership's willingness to adopt this policy in order to receive Western money. North and Stiglitz rightly said that this policy was totally inappropriate for market building. The policy will go down with pre-1941 Comintern support for Hitler as a classic case of the ability of dogmatic ideology to cause human suffering on a massive scale.
But just as the failure of Russian reform was the product of policy, so a change of policy can produce a different outcome. If the Russians adopt the advice of Alexander Gerschenkron and Joseph Stiglitz, if they re-adopt the policies of Nicholas II and Count Sergei Witte, they too can and will have rapid and stable growth. There are too many in the civilian and military elite with a vital personal interest in that development for it to be postponed for much longer.
We lose perspective about time when we live through torturous periods. We forget that 13 years passed between the Declaration of Independence and General Washington's inauguration. We don't discuss the fact that the Constitutional Convention was the result of Washington's threatened military coup against the Continental Congress and that threats to his property rights in western Virginia were one of the factors driving him. It will be December 2004 before a similar period passes in Russia. It would be surprising if Russia were not following something like America's time framework. The determination of Russia's current rulers to keep their money abroad shows that they have a similar expectation. Let us hope that the result will be a George Washington and not the Napoleon Bonaparte produced by the nearly simultaneous French Revolution.
Jerry F. Hough is James B. Duke Professor of Political Science at Duke University and the author, most recently, of The Logic of Economic Reform in Russia (Brookings Institution).
1 See Hough, The Logic of Economic Reform in Russia (Washington: Brookings, 2001).
Geoffrey Hosking, University College, London:
ACCORDING to Odom, the transition" in Russia is well and truly over. The country has become trapped in "path dependency": a vicious and ineluctable circle of corrupt authoritarian rule, economic stagnation and irresponsible behavior abroad. Its government cannot collect taxes, its oligarchs drain resources out of the economy instead of investing in it, and the army tries to dominate Chechnya by violence and intimidation.
One cannot deny the verisimilitude of Odom's picture. But the inferences he draws from it smack of American arrogance and exclusivity that increasingly alarm and repel the outside world including some of America's closest allies. According to his model, only a few virtuous counties in the world are able to combine liberal democracy with a properly functioning market economy. These depend on having institutions of the kind created in England following the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688--89 or in America after it declared independence. All other countries have "weak states" and an "ineffective economy", and are unlikely to escape from this condition since once a country has put in place a set of institutions--formal and informal--they are difficult to change." Among their number is Russia, which differs from the others only in claiming a great power role. We should reveal that claim to be hollow and abandon our attempts to integrate Russia into major international institutions. Thus Odom.
Odom derives his notion of "path dependency" from Douglass North, who has indeed made a major contribution to economics by demonstrating that political and social institutions play decisive roles in generating sustained growth. But it is caricaturing North's work for Odom to draw such heavily determinist conclusions from it, and doing so suggests an exclusivist Anglo-American version of mod emization and globalization that threatens the stability of societies when thoughtlessly applied--as it often is nowadays. Countries can modernize in different ways, and with different institutions. France, as Odom notes, did not in the 18th century adopt the same institutions as did England in the Glorious Revolution; nevertheless, despite the destructive wars fought on its territory over two centuries, it did not get mired in "path dependency." The French economy today is at least as prosperous and productive as that of Britain, and its democracy is no less stable. The same could be said of several other European countries as diverse as Italy, Germany and Sweden.
Russia's economic performance during the first post-Soviet decade has unquestionably been very disappointing. However, it could be argued that it was precisely adherence to an Americanized model of development, imposed through the IMF, that best explains the failure. I would not take that argument too far, since the Soviet legacy would have been difficult to overcome in any event. But it is worthy of note that Russia's economic performance has improved markedly since the crash of 1998 and its disengagement from some IMF-sponsored programs. Russia's potential was and is considerable. Its resources are abundant and still insufficiently mobilized. Furthermore, despite the degradation of the last decade, it still has a relatively low-paid and highly skilled workforce, well- qualified professional staffs, and a science and technology base capable of being restored to its previous high international level. This is a combination of resources not commonly found in foundering Third World economies.
ODOM'S accusation that Russia plays an irresponsible and unconstructive role in world affairs is also overdone. Its record is far from irreproachable: the brutality of Russia's attempt to subdue Chechnya has created massive devastation and has probably reinforced terrorism. Russia has not always behaved constructively elsewhere, either--for example, in Abkhazia (but that was at least in part because international institutions did not respond to its request for help with peacekeeping there) and in the Balkans during the lead-up to the Kosovo crisis (but that was because NATO did not genuinely consult with it about a region in which Russia has traditionally taken a close interest). But all the same, during the last 15 years the Soviet Union and then Russia dismantled huge quantities of weapons, dissolved a military alliance, and withdrew from Afghanistan and most of central and eastern Europe, including the Baltic states and Ukraine which were once parts of its sovereign territory. I should have thought this a record to praise.
It is true, as Odom asserts, that Russia is no longer a great world power with claims to rival the United States. It remains, however, a very significant regional power, without whose active involvement none of the major security problems of Europe or central, north and east Asia can be solved--not to mention international terrorism. It borders on more countries that any other state in the world. Its aging and degrading nuclear arsenal is in some ways more dangerous in that condition than if it were being properly maintained and controlled. All these factors suggest that we should integrate Russia into international decision-making institutions, not dismiss it with a condescending wave of the hand.
Odom is right that there is much to be gloomy about in Russia today. But there are also countervailing factors. No one can be certain about the country's future, but writing off such a major power as one to be shunned because it is condemned to decades of the "weak state" syndrome and economic stagnation is to help generate the unfortunate situation it describes. Russians are very Sensitive to insults to their honor, and they are at their most formidable when their backs are against a wall. It is much better to regard Russia as a power capable of standing up for itself; willing and able to play a responsible role in world affairs when it is treated as a potential partner. This approach may turn out to be unrewarding, but it is preferable to err in that direction than in Odom's.
Geoffrey Hosking is Leverhulme Research Professor in Russian History, School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College, London, and author of Russia and the Russians: A History (Harvard University Press, 2001).
Alexey K. Pushkov, Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policies, Moscow:
A STRONG trend in Western thinking about Russia rejects Winston Churchill's definition of it as "an enigma wrapped in a puzzle" in favor of a clear-cut verdict that Russia is just a failed county incapable of contributing to international order and constantly engaging in trouble-making diplomacy. This is the position taken by William Odom. If ten years ago pro-Russian enthusiasts were painting its future in blue and gold, nowadays the opposite school of thinking paints it mainly black.
General Odom praises Germany after World War II for "facing facts"; this, he asserts, helped Germany to be more easily integrated into the international order. Let us face some facts, too. Germany was made to face facts because it was defeated in a hot war and occupied by foreign powers. Russia, however, was not defeated in a war; rather, it rejected communism through its own internal evolution--to the evident amazement of the United States and others. The fact that the Soviet Union lost a cold war but not a hot one is crucial: Russia simply could not have been expected to behave or evolve as did occupied Germany or Japan.
Odom is certainly right to say that Russia is still far from being a Westerntype liberal democracy. But if one compares today's Russia not with an abstract ideal, but with the reality of only ten years ago, one finds tremendous positive changes. The scope and depth of such changes are surprising for a county weighed down by ten centuries of authoritarian history and seventy years of communist rule, a county that--to repeat--has not undergone a foreign occupation to force upon it a market economy and democratic political institutions. Hence Odom's conclusion, using a phrase borrowed from Jeffrey Tayler, that Russia is fated to be "Zaire with permafrost", is neither fair nor instrumental for a realistic understanding of Russia's future. Not only does Odom ignore the slow but important progress Russia is making, but his approach to realism is limited to an exercise in building worst-case scenarios. The main burden of Odom's pessimism lies in his reading of Russia's international behavior. By focusing on Russia' s ties with China, India and Iran, Odom overlooks the most significant dimension of Russian foreign policy, its Western dimension: Russia's ever-growing ties with the European Union and its persistent movement into the world economy. President Putin's decision to support the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism is clearly based on the desire of a leading part of the Russian political class, and a growing part of the Russian public, to see Russia as part of Europe and-politically--as one with the Western world. Without a serious basis for such a pro-Western choice, President Putin would not have risked such a stand.
In real strategic terms, too, Russian assistance to the United States has been, so far (as of mid-November 2001), more important than that given by the majority of its NATO allies. Russia is the largest and one of the two most powerful nations in Eurasia, as the crisis surrounding Afghanistan made clear, even for all those who failed to notice it before. One may well compare the Russian GDP with that of the Netherlands, but when one comes to geostrategic terms the comparison stops. Can the Netherlands talk to Central Asian countries about accepting U.S. military forces on their soil, or send troops to Tajikistan to counter Taliban incursions?
Russia's role in Asia is bound to grow further in coming years as China emerges as a leading international actor. In this light, Russia's special ties with India should not be criticized but applauded, especially in the light of a possible Indian-Pakistan confrontation in which Russia as a nuclear power can exercise a sobering effect on both sides of the conflict, perhaps together with America. Finally, as the events of September-October 2001 demonstrate, Russia does not use its ties with former Soviet republics to coerce them into an anti-American policy. Russia does exercise influence on those countries, but in the same way that the United States exercises influence on its Arab allies and partners. Why should Russia be condemned for pursuing a policy similar to one adopted by the United States?
One of the reasons Russia is seen as a trouble-maker in the West is that America's present strength has created a propensity--among some Americans, at least--to equate "responsible" international behavior with that which corresponds to American interests. But Russia cannot automatically espouse U.S. foreign policy interests, for two very good reasons. First, Russia's geopolitical setting requires it to deal pragmatically with a number of regimes that the United States dislikes, such as China and Iran. Second, since Russia is not a member of a U.S.-led Western alliance, and does not enjoy the shared security of NATO members or the protection of the American nuclear umbrella, it must guide itself according to a different set of security and political interests. Whether those interests will conflict or comport with those of the United States depends on U.S. foreign policy as well as on Russia's. After all, the events of September 11 have made clear that even the United States, with all its might, cannot success fully conduct a policy in Eurasia that is not based on a shared-interests approach with key countries of the continent, Russia being one of them.
While General Odom has chosen to remove Russia from the ranks of the great powers, President Bush has chosen otherwise. V/hen President Putin offered to assist the United States in the war against terrorism, he did so not as a supplicant, but as the leader of the great power he believes Russia to be. So it was that, on October 7, President Bush called President Putin to inform him in advance about the impending U.S. strike against the Taliban. Putin took the call and offered support. Could they both have been wrong?
Alexey K. Pushkov is a member of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policies and the anchor of Postscript, a news and analysis program aired on Russian Television Channel 3. He also serves as a member of the editorial board of The National Interest.
Robert Legvold, Columbia University:
ALTHOUGH the point may not come through clearly, the essential issue raised by Bill Odom's essay is whether--for good or ill--Russia matters to the United States. He says, for the most part, no; but where it does matter it does so largely for ill. If Odom has reached the wrong conclusion, it is because either the argument is wrong or it is the wrong argument (or perhaps both). Let us begin with the argument.
Few observers, either in Russia or on the outside, would disagree with Odom's judgment that Russia's problems flow from its sad transformation into a "weak state." Nor would there be disagreement over the hurdles obstructing its escape. Disagreement would begin over how hopeless the prospects are. Odom settles for a rather wooden and simple dictum for why Russia will not shake free. His theory notwithstanding, if Russia does progress, it is likely to do so in small steps that begin to salvage the state, cleanse and strengthen key institutions such as the judiciary, put in place supports and practices that facilitate sustainable growth, and work around retrograde special interests.
Over the last two years, significant progress along these lines--albeit partial and incremental--has occurred. Nothing guarantees that this advance will reach critical mass, propelling Russia on to a swift and secure path to democracy and a revitalized economy. Odom could yet be right (and not only about Russia, but about a majority of the post-Soviet states), but the fragmentary trends of the moment remind us that path dependency works two ways. It may also lead Russia out of its hole. A prudent judge would pause and await more evidence before deciding.
The other half of Odom's argument raises sharper objections. Again, few analysts in the United States would disagree that Russian behavior at times, in places, and on certain problems has been "unconstructive", perhaps intentionally so. This is true of the way it has dealt with its immediate neighbors, sold nuclear technologies, pursued cooperation with states from China to Cuba, and reacted to NATO enlargement, national missile defense and other pet American ideas.
To treat this as the whole story, however, does considerable violence to the truth. Russia has also been capable of constructive behavior, even, at times, when in a larger context we have seen it as unconstructive, such as the ultimate role that it played in the 1999 Kosovo crisis. Long before September 11, and in many respects--from its dealings with North Korea on the nuclear issue to the dialogue with the European Union; from its longstanding collaboration with the United States on Afghanistan to its handling of Ukrainian debt--Russian actions, by any fair-minded judgment, have been constructive. Russia's behavior has been neither uniformly disruptive nor impervious to the influence of other states, including positive U.S. incentives when, on occasion, they have been offered. Odom's claim that Russia's waywardness stems from inherent political and psychological factors unsusceptible to U.S. influence is, at best, debatable
WHATEVER one thinks of the accuracy of Odom's argument, however, the more serious drawback derives from its questionable utility or aptness. Russia matters to the United States not because it is a great power now but because it remains a significant factor on the world stage. To wind ourselves around our own axle over whether Russia should or should not be treated as a "great power" misses the point. Russia is not a distant tenth planet. It is located at the heart of the crucial landmass between Europe and Asia. Not only is this part of the world blessed with more natural wealth than any other it also contains the potential for some of its gravest instability. Russia's fate and its actions remain the single most decisive factor determining the impact that the post-Soviet space will have on us all.
Not that Russia's 45 percent share of the world's nuclear weapons does not also matter, and is hardly to be written off as Odom suggests, while the United States unilaterally attempts to design a new strategic nuclear regime. Not that the role that we have discovered for Russia in the new overriding struggle against global terrorism ought not also to be in the picture. But the kind of relationship that we, the Europeans, Chinese and Japanese work out with Russia for coping with the challenges (or benefiting from the opportunities) in the netherworlds between NATO-Europe and Russia, and in the Caucasus and Central Asia, will shape the peace of mind and welfare of the two arenas that do indisputably matter to the United States--Europe and East Asia. It seems unlikely to me that we will get far in building the right kind of U.S.-Russian relationship for these purposes--let alone prosper in dealing with nuclear weapons and global terrorism--if we frame the issue in terms of Russia's twisted ego or write Russia off on narrow semi-deterministic grounds, not to mention making it our goal to keep "Russia's international role to a level commensurate with its power."
Robert Legvold is professor of political science at Columbia University.
Henry Trofimenko, Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada, Moscow:
GENERAL Odom's analysis of the "Russian question" (which is of perennial interest to the United States) is undoubtedly very important for the new administration in Washington. With great sadness, I confess that many Russians would agree with his dissection of the problem.
The key to his analysis lies in the concepts of "path dependence" and the "weak state" syndrome. As he himself points out, the theory is not new; as applied to the USSR, in particular, it was developed by such American Sovietologists as Richard Pipes and Seweryn Bialer, both of whom argued that the Soviet regime was in most respects a continuation of the imperial Russian regime--indeed, one that saved the Russian empire. Similarly, there is much evidence to suggest that the post-Soviet Russian regime has not changed as much as many suppose, neither as a result of so-called perestroika or even as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The ruling class of the "new country" remains the same--the old Soviet nomen-klatura now bedecked with new titles and new fashions. During the Soviet period this class managed the resources of the state that belonged to it collectively. Now it (mis)manages the same resources that, through the mechanisms of privatization, were distributed to members of the same ruling e lite. It is too much to expect that the members of this class, who continue milking former state property for personal gain (in amounts thousands of times greater than under the ancien regime), would actively hamper the continual process of their personal enrichment. Thus too, sad to say, Odom is correct to suggest that nearly all the assistance that was provided to Russia from the outside world has been appropriated largely by the ruling thieves for personal gain. Regretfully, many foreign consultants, especially the Americans, used their influential positions in Moscow for similar purposes.
One may hope that a new generation of leaders soon to replace the present aging elite will change Russia's path, but it is unlikely. The simple reason is that in Russia today the same old method of co-opting persons to high government positions is at work: only those reliably devoted to personal enrichment have a chance to ascend the ladder. Meanwhile, the rotting education system makes it very difficult for those not of the traditional establishment to move up.
Every state in the world is a living organism of sorts--the longer it exists, the more its old values (habits, culture, institutions, attitudes) are consolidated. Americans were extremely lucky to start with a relatively clean slate, but even so, it took 75 years to ban slavery and another century to rectify its legacy. Indeed, the continuing popularity of Louis Farrakhan suggests that the full integration of blacks into American society lies still in America's future rather than in the present. The point is that cultural patterns hang heavily over new generations of citizens--if not over their leaders--and the older the state culture, the heavier the burden. To change existing ways and attitudes requires great courage and boldness from truly outstanding leaders. And even with the best of intentions and a supportive international environment, significant changes take a long time.
Odom is also correct to argue that, whatever changes might be eventually executed in Russia and in the other newly-independent states (most of which are still ruled by "popularly re-elected" oriental despots), the result will not be liberal democracy as it exists in the West. The present Russian embodiment of one of the main institutions of liberal democracy--the popularly elected parliament--came into being after the previous one, also duly elected, was crushed by the "democrat Yeltsin" tank gunfire, with the connivance of President Clinton. The new one, however, is a mockery of common sense: the members of its upper chamber are now appointed by the Russian president, and democratically-elected members of the lower house--the Duma--outdo each other in their collective frenzy to demonstrate absolute loyalty to the "higher authority", the un-elected Kremlin clique. This is the continuing heritage of ages of Russian history.
ALL THAT said, General Odom has trouble finding his ballast when discussing the particularities of contemporary Russian politics.
First, freedom of the media really does exist in Russia for the first time in hundreds of years, the insinuations of media magnates like Messrs. Berezovsky and Gusinsky notwithstanding. The regular, unhampered publication of such rabidly anti-government weeklies as Zavtra and Duel, as well as the daily rebroadcasts of the U.S. Radio Liberty on domestic Russian FM frequencies, confirms this fact. Media freedom is curtailed to a certain extent, but not because of official censorship or other restrictions. Rather, in contrast to the U.S. experience, the private ownership of most newspapers and TV stations mitigates against objectivity because the media is used in turf struggles among elite factions.
Second, the dyed-in-the-wool democrats like Sergei Kovalev and Elena Bonner now have zero influence in Russian politics. Grigorii Yavlinskii, who exists on foreign donations, is just a political chatterbox who surpasses even the superdemagogue, Mikhail Gorbachev, in his irrelevance to current events.
Third, Russia, despite its predicament, remains a great power by the fact of its still tremendous (if mismanaged) economic potential, its political influence in Eurasia and its place on the UN Security Council. Moreover, if Russia's leaders abandon their rhetorical flourishes in favor of real talks on the future of the ALBM Treaty (as Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has recently suggested), Russia's international image will certainly improve--as it has already by dint of Russia's response to the events of September 11.
Fourth, the Russian military does not shun constructive reform. But its leaders do oppose idiotic non-stop reorganizations of the kind that has almost liquidated the only really battle-ready Russian force--the airborne troops. However, it is true that the immense quantity of newlycreated generals and admirals (through protection and patronage) continues to wreak havoc in the command structure.
Fifth and most important, while weakened, Moscow has no real desire to unleash mischief in the international arena. The tragic events of September 11, which evoked a great deal of sympathy for the United States among Russians, demonstrate that there are still convincing reasons for the United States to pursue close and constructive cooperation with Russia to achieve shared and common goals. Russia's national interests are not identical to those of the United States, but that hardly makes Russia different from, say, France, as far as U.S. foreign policy is concerned. Or have some of us still not gotten over the bad habits of the Cold War?
Henry Trofimenko is a senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada, Moscow.
Odom Replies:
LET ME thank all the respondents for their commentaries. To generalize about them, they agree with most of what I say about Russia's institutional development and economic performance, but they either do not like the way I reach my conclusions or do not like the conclusions themselves--occasionally both.
Because Professor Malia's reaction is the most interesting and complex, a proper reaction to it requires "more than a pedantic quibble" about his reading of Russian history. By his account, Russia has always been about fifty years behind Europe. By 1785, its nobility achieved institutions like France's ancien regime. The Great Reforms in the 1 860s brought Russia up to Prussia's reforms of 1807-12. And the October Manifesto of 1905 was virtually a constitutional breakthrough.2 This interpretation is not universally accepted. The late Michael Florinsky would reject Malia's assertion that the Charter of the Nobility of 1785 instituted property rights in Russia similar to those in France at that time.3 Stefan Hedlund would probably deny that such rights were observed in Russia a century later.4 The Prussian reformers built on longstanding legal institutions deriving from Justinian's Code. Russia first introduced European code law in 1864. Ignoring key institutional realities, Malia can feel much cheeri er about Russia's prospects.5
That is one reason he is so upset that I put the 17th century English experience before the Dutch. Indeed, the Dutch economic take-off was somewhat earlier than England's, but that does not damage my argument. Political power in the Dutch provinces rested on the wealth of their towns, which were never fully subordinated by an absolute monarch, as was the case in England and France.6 The wealthy cities of southern Germany might have put that region on the Dutch path if they had not been weakened by princely wars against Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and later devastated by the Thirty Years War.7 The English case is more instructive for Russia because it involved changing absolute monarchy to limited monarchy. In Russia today, the problem is still limiting the state and making it assume the "third party enforcer" role.8 Can "the Petersburg boy" accomplish this in less than five decades?
I agree with Malia that Russia must turn West because it is welcome nowhere else. Our difference is over Russian institutional realities, a matter on which there is still much to be discovered.
Turning to Ambassador Matlock, although he does not really challenge my analytical scheme, he does reject its implications, leaving me little to say. Since he once again complains about NATO enlargement, however, I must recall his oft-made prediction that it would bring the worst people to power in Russia. Presumably, then, Putin is an awful fellow who should not now be cooperating with the United States.
Professor Hough's wide-ranging comments can only be treated eclectically. His recipe of widespread corruption for creating a liberal regime is a sure formula for keeping Russia locked into its present path dependency. As for his charge that I have never acknowledged change in Russia, given his own record of predictions, one should not be surprised that he failed to read mine carefully. I confine two examples to a footnote.9 And for Russia's sake, let us hope its leaders do not heed his suggestion that they adopt the policies of Witte and Nicholas II. Nicholas died believing that the entire empire was his "patrimony", and Witte shared Nicholas' suspicion of "limited liability corporations", neither view being very helpful for economic performance.10
Professor Legvold correctly notes that my arguments are equally applicable to most other post-Soviet states, not just Russia, but his belief that countries can incrementally creep out of predicaments like Russia's needs a few examples to be convincing. Wars and domestic upheavals more often bring such change. On the importance of Russia to the United States today, Pakistan and Uzbekistan are more important, but that does not make them great powers or permanently important to us. By his own standard these are "arguments that are wrong, not wrong arguments." I concede a point to him, however, and other respondents. I did not believe that my points about Russia's international role ruled out all cooperation with Moscow. If they did, then Legvold is right to emphasize that we do need Russian cooperation today. Will it last? Has it suddenly become the same as the cooperation among all G-7 members? I remain skeptical, September 11 notwithstanding.
Professor Hosking dislikes my style, not my arguments, accusing me of "American arrogance and exclusivity." He has a point. Perhaps I should have put them more softly, but the tone was meant more for Westerners than Russians. On the "exclusivity" charge I feel less vulnerable, having suggested the Meiji restoration and Kemal Ataturk's handling of Turkey as ways that Russia might escape its present path. The American "free framer" route to liberal democracy (Robert Dahl's term) is difficult to imagine for Russia.
Neither Henry Trofimenko nor Alexey Pushkov rejects my case outright. They even approve much of it. Beyond that, Trofimenko's defensive remarks about freedom of the press and certain Russian liberals reveal an understandable sensitivity. So do Pushkov's comments about Germany. Pushkov does, however, evoke my humility by reminding us how far Russia has come in such a short time, throwing off the Soviet regime by itself and making unprecedented attempts at reform. I have acknowledged as much in the Russian press, asserting that the Soviet peoples, not the United States, won the Cold War.11
MY ARTICLE is intentionally provocative, and had I been a critic of it, I would have asked me if I really believed it. My answer? I would bet on Russia remaining in its present institutional path for at least several decades. After all, look at the expectations held in 1950 or 1960 for Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, Peru, and other richly endowed states that have received Western tutelage and assistance. Have any of them really "made it"? Something extraordinary would have to happen to make Russia different.
One change, of course, has eased Russia's traditional predicament: most of the minority nationalities have been offloaded. They were an obstacle that no liberal reformer could overcome, certainly not Nicholas II and Count Witte. Without the nationalities, Russia's military requirements drop drastically, another positive sign. Still, Russia's institutional legacies in property, law, and state power present monumental barriers to change. Malia can justly claim that by his fifty-year lag thesis, Russia will break them by mid-century. Because its only real alternative is to join the West, it might do so, but it could take much longer than fifty years.
2 See Malia's Russia Under Western Eyes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). The cornerstone of his case may be found on page 146: "The pressure generated by Europe's advance, combined with the drag of native backwardness, would continue to complicate Russia's way to modernity. It is the action of these two forces, not the hoary memory of the Sacred Palace of Byzantium or the Mongols' Golden Horde that constitutes the true anomaly of Russia's modern history." Grant his "two forces", but by brushing off the Mongol period, Malia ignores the persistence of key Mongol institutional legacies, particularly the deeply ingrained practice of no limits on state power and no system of private property rights. A few other Mongol legacies endured in Muscovy's secular institutions; Byzantium provided its lasting cultural institutions. See Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-cultural influences on the steppe frontier, 1304-I 589 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 47, for this evidence.
3 Michael T. Florinsky, Russia: A History and an Interpretation (New York: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 570-1.
4 Stefan Hedlund, "Can Property Rights Be Protected by Law?" East European Constitutional Review 10 (No. 1, 2001).
5 Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols, 1304-1589. Unless Malia can dispose of Ostrowski's evidence and interpretations, his dismissal of Mongol and Byzantine institutional legacies in modern Russia is difficult to accept.
6 Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Repuhlic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Jan de Vries' excellent book, mentioned by Malia, is not as comprehensive on the political history as is Israel's.
7 See Thomas A. Brady, Jr., The Protestant Politics of Jacob Sturm (14 89-1553) and the German Reformation (Atlantic Heights, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1995), for details of the politics of these cities and their struggle to keep their institutions from being destroyed by either Charles V on the one hand or the local princes on the other.
8 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), also offers historical grounding for this point.
9 In 1987, I wrote that "the paradox remains that great central control is required to achieve major decentralization of economic control and power. If Gorbachev succeeds, he will lose his centralized power to forces that could undercut the political authority of the regime to a degree that could lead to the breakup of the empire." See my "How Far Can Soviet Reform Go?" Problems of Communism 36 (No. 6, 1987). Hough also might want to look at my "Choice and Change in Soviet Politics", Problems of Communism 32 (No. 3, 1983), where I pointed out that the only problem Andropov could not put off indefinitely without systemic implications was "the declining vitality and responsiveness of the party cadres." Failing to address it was "to risk eventually greater dangers for the system--dangers of the kind that developed for the Polish party." I saw change in the USSR as political decay. Hough saw it as transformation to a pluralist system.
10 Thomas C. Owen, The Corporation Under Russian Law: 1800-1917 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). As this account shows, economic development in the last decades of the Russian Empire encountered huge institutional difficulties, but these were obscured by the impressive growth rates of that period.
11 Interview in Argumenty i fakty (July 1998).
Essay Types: Essay