Russia Ends its Flirtation with the West
In the midst of last week's chaos, a single, crucial, clear and
historically significant event took place. Russia's geopolitical
flirtation with the West finally came to an end. There will
undoubtedly be periods of reconciliation, cooperation and even
good will in the future. But a sudden and powerful consensus
emerged in Russia that held that Russia had been betrayed by the
United States over Iraq, and that the only way out of this
situation was for Russia to once again reassert itself as a great
power. What is most important in this view is that it is the
only issue on which all factions appear to agree. Apart from a
few, isolated pro-western liberals, the view from the office of
Boris Yeltsin to the most extreme nationalists and communists was
that the decision by the United States to bomb Iraq was
intolerable. It has the potential to be the foundation of a new
Russian political consensus, with critical consequences for the
international system.
The problem was not only that the United States bombed Iraq, but
that it did not even consult Russia. Indeed, that is one of the
most peculiar aspects of this attack and the one that led us not
to expect this attack. One of the operational principles of the
Clinton administration has been that it was unwilling to take
unilateral military action. Repeatedly, even at the cost of
substantial delays in initiating military operations, the Clinton
administration worked slowly and deliberately both to maintain a
broad coalition of international support and to remain within the
framework of international organizations, such as the UN and
NATO. The administration completely departed from this pattern
this time. The Russians, who normally are carefully informed and
consulted, found out about the attack from their own intelligence
services, according the Yeltsin's press spokesman. In fact, he
complained, while French President Chirac had told Yeltsin that
an attack was coming, he himself had given the wrong time,
indicating that the French weren't informed either.
The administration's position was that, after the last crisis,
the United States had warned Iraq that it would proceed without
further consultations if Baghdad violated its agreements. But
this warning had been given before in the aftermath of other
crises. Unless the United States had some intelligence warning
that the Iraqis were about to take some imminent action that had
to be prevented, there was no urgency in the timing. No one in
Washington has asserted an immediate threat from Saddam,
certainly nothing that would not have permitted 48 hours of
diplomatic consultation. Nevertheless, the United States needed
urgently to launch its strikes on Wednesday night, and therefore
violated its own avowed diplomatic norms.
The reason for the hurry-up strike is obvious. The effectiveness
of the attacks is minimal. Neither Saddam nor his weapons of
mass destruction have disappeared. The attacks achieved little
accept a 24 hour delay in the impeachment vote. But the failure
of the United States to consult with the Russians has, we think,
had a permanent effect. A process that has been underway for
several years has crystallized. Russia has been retreating from
both its liberal economic reforms and its pro-Western foreign
policy slowly for several years. The trend has accelerated since
Primakov, the former head of foreign intelligence for the KGB,
become Prime Minister. Now, the increasing anti-Americanism in
Russian foreign policy has been galvanized. It was something
that was waiting to happen. Nevertheless, it has happened now,
and we need to consider its meaning and consequence.
What must be understood is that a firestorm swept Moscow last
week. It was not only the government that was shocked by the air
strikes on Iraq. The rhetoric from across the Russian political
spectrum was startling. The lower-house of the Duma passed a
resolution that resolutely condemned "the barbaric bombing of the
Republic of Iraq," and said that it was an act of international
terrorism that posed a direct threat to international peace and
security. The resolution passed 394-2. Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor
of Moscow who is leading polls to succeed Yeltsin as President,
said, "In these conditions, we have to develop our defense
industry," and that, "Russia must be a great military and sea
power." According to Itar-Tass, he also said that "We need a
modern army, a reliable nuclear deterrence system. The
international community needs a strong Russia as a great power
that respects itself and other powers." Gen. Leonid Ivashov, the
head of the Defense Ministry's international military cooperation
department, said that Moscow "will be forced to change its
military-political course and may become the leader of a part of
the world community that disagrees with the (U.S.) dictate."
Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov summed it up: "We condemn the
United States, and nobody should doubt our negative attitude."
Of particular interest here is the universality of the
condemnation and the nature of the rhetoric. Russia has been
deeply fragmented, a polity in search of a center. For the first
time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has found a
center around which virtually every major faction has been able
to rally: opposition to American hegemony. There is also a
growing consensus that Russia must somehow recover the
international greatness it lost. Izvestia ran an article
asserting that the past days simply prove that Russia is no
longer a superpower. The liberal newspaper Sevodnya asserted
that, "Russia has the same influence on world affairs as any
third-world country." The business daily Kommersant, lamented
that Russia had poor real-time intelligence from the region
because it has only one electronic intelligence satellite that
provides coverage only once every 24 hours. In addition, it
complained that the missile tracking station in Azerbaijan does
not track cruise missiles of the type used by the United States.
Now, Kommersant is normally much more interested in an IMF
tranche or in trade issues than in doing careful analysis of
Russian operational military capabilities. Everyone is upset.
There is a general sense that the international strategic decline
of Russia has gone too far and must be reversed. This
sensibility has become so strong now that it will, we think,
become not only a rallying point in Russia, but more important,
something from which no Russian aspirant for political power will
be willing to stray. Except for a minor handful of Russian
politicians, a dual commitment is emerging. First, there is a
commitment to reverse the decline in Russian power. Second,
there is a commitment to improve Russia's military posture.
Anyone not committed to this is not going to be a political
contender.
This evolution has, as we have long argued, been inevitable.
On
December 29, 1996, in our 1997 Forecast, we wrote that: "The
Russians have given away their empire in return for very
little... Yeltsin, unfortunately, has delivered little order and
less greatness -- and Russia is sick of it." Liberalism in
Russia has been a disaster without any silver lining. The
average Russian is poorer today than he was under the Soviets,
and much less secure. Perhaps worst of all, Russia does indeed
have the influence of a third world country. The United States
would never have ignored the Soviet Union in deciding to attack
Iraq, as it has ignored Russia. It is absolutely essential for
non-Russians to understand just how intolerable this indifference
is to the Russian psyche.
There is a real parallel here between Russia today and Weimar
Germany. The collapse of Imperial Germany ushered in a period of
economic decline, desperate poverty, massive inequality and a
sense of the impotence of the liberal regime not only in economic
life but also in international affairs. The combination of
poverty and the sense of being treated with contempt by the
international community created uncontrollable social forces
committed not only to the abandonment of political and economic
liberalism, but also to a massive readjustment in the
international system. National Socialism was the outcome.
Russia is in precisely the same position today. Liberalization
had created economic disarray: poverty, inequality, and
hopelessness. But what is going to galvanize the Russians
psychologically is their loss of international standing. Bill
Clinton rubbed their faces in the fact that it really doesn't
much matter what Russia thinks. Focused on his own problems, he
failed to calculate the impact of his actions on Russia. It is
not that this evolution wouldn't have taken place anyway.
Clinton's action produced a galvanic revelation. It drove home
American contempt for Russia's views and brought together the
entire Russian polity around a single issue: the return of
Russian greatness.
The reconstruction of Russia's military is inevitable. Economic
dislocation does not block this. Remember that Germany
revitalized its economy with a rearmament program. In only five
years Germany went from essentially disarmed to being able to
overawe its enemies. Russia's armed forces are in far better
shape today than Germany's were in 1933. Although in disarray,
its research and development has continued and it has substantial
technologies in the pipeline as well as a massive standing force.
Revitalizing those forces and increasing defense production could
be precisely what is needed to kick-start the Russian economy.
It worked for Germany. At various points, it worked for the
United States and other countries as well. Since nothing else is
working for Russia, they may as well give it a try. We think
they will.
Even today's Russian armed forces, if merely paid and fed, pose a
real challenge to its neighbors. We believe that one of the
things that will flow out of this consensus is an increased
determination to recreate the old Soviet Union, in the sense of
reintegrating the fragments into a whole. There is already a
great deal of economic integration and dependency. It is
inevitable that the new Russian nationalists will want to create
an integrated political framework over that. It will use
economic power to achieve its ends. It will also use existing
military forces to force coordination and reintegration. There
is not much talk of reintegration yet. There will be.
The Iraq issue is a good place to start. Primakov, who knows the
Arab world from his KGB days, can use his pro-Iraqi stance to
increase Russian influence among Islamic factions in the
breakaway fragments of the former Soviet Union. By aligning
Russia with Iraq, Moscow becomes a friend of Moslems rather than
an enemy. This not only increases Russian influence with
opposition groups in countries like Kazakhstan, it increases the
probability that Moslem countries will use their influence to
move these groups into a pro-Moscow stance.
But the real test will come in the West. The situation in the
Baltic countries is intolerable to Russia. Kaliningrad, part of
Russia, is cut off because of Baltic independence. Aligned with
the West, these countries jeopardize Russian presence in the
Baltic. More important, with Poland entering NATO, these
countries become the only buffers between St. Petersburg and
NATO. Russia cannot allow this to happen. The Baltics, like the
Ukraine, are part of the Russian sphere of influence. However,
since 1989, the Baltics have had the luxury of neglecting power
politics. This should not be mistaken for a permanent condition.
While western investment flowed, Russia was motivated to forego
its national security interests. Now that investment has
stopped, Russia will resume its natural search for national
security, especially as this will also make for good domestic
politics.
This will have serious repercussions for Europe in general and
Germany in particular. German officials were, to put it
tolerantly, babbling incoherently in the face of the Washington-
Moscow crisis. As if trying to convince himself, Defense
Minister Rudolf Scharping said, "Everyone, even the United States
and Great Britain, felt that what was happening in Iraq had
nothing to do with NATO." When asked whether Germany would
participate in attacks on Iraq, he said that, "We haven't been
asked, but we gave clear political support, and that's where
things will stay." Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said that he
"expressed solidarity with the United Nations," as well as with
the United States and Britain. Taken together, the German
position seems to be that Germany supports everyone and is
confident that nothing means anything and that they sincerely
hope that all this will go away.
Germany's anxiety is completely justified. Not only is Germany
massively exposed on Russian loans that are not going to get paid
any time soon, if at all, but the reemergence of the Red Army
along the Baltic countries' frontiers or worse, along the Polish
border, is a dreadful German problem. Russian nationalism is
Germany's worst nightmare. The only thing worse would be a
Franco-Russian alliance, which certainly seems to be taking
shape. According to United Press International, a French
diplomat in Amman stated that France "is in constant consultation
with Russian leaders." He also went on to say that France could
never support any demands to change the Iraqi regime by force and
from outside in harmony with its constitution and international
laws, saying "this was why Paris did not take part in the latest
military operations against Iraq."
Now obviously, a Franco-Russian arrangement in 1999 is very
different from one in 1938 or 1914. Many things have changed.
Nevertheless, France's growing anti-Americanism and links to an
anti-American Russia will pose a serious challenge not only for
Germany, but also for the European Union. It will pose questions
for the SDP-Green coalition that it would be best not to have to
answer. It will force open the question of the relationship
between a unified economic apparatus and Europe's foreign policy,
a question that the EU is not at all ready to confront. Finally,
the inclusion of China in this alignment affects both the global
balance of power and the structure of Asian regional politics. On
a question of fundamental importance to the United States, Iraq,
a coalition consisting of France, China and Russia has emerged
very publicly, with Russia playing the leading, active role.
This is a matter of great significance. It is far more important
than the future of Iraq.
In this sense, the U.S. attack on Iraq has had a thoroughly
unintended consequence. It has triggered a response inside of
Russia that will have lasting effect. This response will change
Russian defense policy and, in turn, will provide Russia with
opportunities to assert itself along its current frontiers,
increasing tensions in Europe and Central Asia dramatically. But
the global effect will be the most significant. Since 1989, the
world has lived in an unnatural condition of imbalance, with only
one major power. This could not long endure. As in 1972, when
the U.S. and China aligned themselves to contain the Soviet
Union, a new alignment designed to contain the United States is
emerging. Including France and China, its center of gravity is a
re-energized Russia. This has been developing for a long time.
What is most interesting is that it was an act of carelessness on
the part of the United States that provided the trigger for a sea
change in Russian politics, a sea change that will reshape the
international system.