Subject: US Russia policy reviewed at AFPC conference
From: W. George Krasnow <president92@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009
U.S. Policy toward Russia reviewed at the AFPC
conference in Washington
A Summary Report by W. George Krasnow
As President Obama was preparing for his stimulus package TV push on Monday February 9, a remarkable event took place in Hart Senate Office Building. "U.S. Policy toward Russia: Charting a Way Forward" was discussed by a panel assembled by The American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), non-profit organization aspiring to influence U.S. foreign policy makers. The audience of about a hundred included congressional staffers, other non-profits, academics, domestic and foreign media people, and even a rep from the Russian Embassy.
There was a good mix of speakers. Besides the AFPC's president Herman Pitchner Jr. and senior associate E. Wayne Merry, there were three invited speakers: Steven Pifer, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine; Stephen G. Rademaker, formerly head of the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation of U.S. Department of State, and Stephen Blank, Professor, US Army War College. Ilan Berman, the AFPC's vice president and a neocon specialist on Middle East, was the chair.
Pirchner's talk "Are Russian and Americans Incompatible?" was based on his 2005 booklet "Reviving Greater Russia?" He did not seem to be unsympathetic to the idea of "Greater Russia." Nor did he think that the revival of "Greater Russia" aspirations need be contrary to U.S. national interest. Having visited Russia sixty times, Pitchner stressed the distinctiveness of Russian culture, its passion, and the ability to endure suffering and retain vitality. Comparing the collapse of the USSR with that of other imperial powers, he concluded that post-Soviet Russia has not easily resorted to violence. The disintegration of the French colonial empire, he said, was followed by 37 armed conflicts.
Pirchner cited Alexander Solzhenitsyn's March 1994 statement: "The trouble is not that the USSR broke upthat was inevitable. The real trouble, and a tangle for a long time to come, is that the breakup occurred mechanically along false Leninist borders." As a result, the Russian Federation was deprived of 25 million ethnic Russians at a time of demographic decline. In his 1995 speech before the Duma, Solzhenitsyn repeated his call for the unity of the three East Slavic peoples, the Belorussians, Ukrainians, and Russians.
Currently some Russian politicians, most notably, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's ambassador at NATO, continue to champion the cause of Tri-Slavic unity. Pitchner cited a 2001 poll indicating that 69 percent of Belarusians, 61 percent of Russians, and 53 percent Ukrainians earn for unification. However, while decrying Russia's "imperial ambitions," Americans fail to see that there might be a real concern with, and democratic constituency for, what President Medvedev has called "sphere of privileged interests."
The war in Georgia caused U.S.-Russian relations fall to 'their lowest level since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991,'stated Pifer of the Brookings Institution. Not only Georgia and Russia, but also the U.S. needlessly brought the world to the brink of disaster. Citing 'a bitter perception in Russia that the U.S. took advantage of Russian weakness in the 1990s,' he berated Saakashvili's 'profoundly unwise decision' to attack South Ossetia not expecting Russia to respond in a forceful way. As to Ukraine, Pifer felt that most of its problems 'are self-inflicted.' We must engage Russia in 'robust cooperation' to reverse the present decline in bilateral relations, Pifer concluded.
Rademaker, former U.S. representative on the U.N. Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament, described several areas where the old nuclear arms control treaties either lapsed or were about to lapse, all of them requiring a lot more negotiations with Russia than it has been the case.
The only bellicose speaker was Blank, though he was emphatic that he did not speak for US Army War College. He described Russia's energy policy as a multi-purpose 'Swiss knife,' used both at home and abroad in a number of nefarious ways, including blackmail and corruption of European politicians. Russian leaders realize that their economy is not competitive and that the current level of Russian energy production is falling, said Blank. This makes them all the more aggressive in trying to control Central Asia's gas reserves and drive a wedge between the United States and its European allies.
The most revelatory presentation was made by Merry, a career diplomat and political analyst who for 26 years had served in Moscow, East Berlin, Athens, and Tunis. As Chief Political Analyst at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during the crucial years of 1990 to1994, he witnessed the split at the embassy between the old school diplomats who favored a more comprehensive, cautious and gradual approach to Russian reforms and the 'economists of the neo liberal [neo conservative?] Chicago school' who virtually hijacked U.S. policy and imposed on Russia their scheme of 'shock therapy.'
Merry repeated what he had said earlier in his PBS Frontline interview that the U.S. policy during the 1990s had greatly contributed to the creation of oligarchy in Russia. Contrary to some IMF and US Treasury spokesmen who claim "Russia did it to itself," says Merry, the United States certainly helped create 'a virtual open shop for thievery at a national level and for capital flight in terms of hundreds of billions of dollars, and the raping of natural resources and industries on a scale which I doubt has ever taken place in human history.' 'What we then lost in our relations with Russia were our own national interests. We made Russia's new leaders reluctant to cooperate with us on the world stage.'
As to Russia today, whatever its faults or external ambitions might be, it is not at all like the USSR, says Merry, it is not going back to Communism, nor does it aspire to recreate the Soviet empire. The worst thing that could happen for U.S. national interests would be, if Russia were to disintegrate, creating a vacuum of effective political authority over 11 time zones. The danger is not yet over. The ongoing financial and economic turmoil here, with an even greater negative impact on the rest of the world, Merry alluded, was caused by the same group of free-market fundamentalists that had inflicted 'shock therapy' on Russia.
Merry reproached the Americans for not knowing history. Few Americans would recall, much less feel grateful for, Russia's support of the Union against the confederate insurgency, a favor we never returned to Russia, said Merry. [Or, for Catherine the Great's steadfast rejection of King George's requests for Russian troops to quell George Washington's rebellion. WGK]
As the conference was about to end, the author of this report asked the chair for a comment.
"As a former dissident and defector, I used to be a 'persona non grata' for many years. However, since 1991 I have been travelling to Russia a lot, for extended trips not just to Moscow, but several provinces, meeting all sorts of people. I fully concur with the previous speaker, Mr. Merry, that a new Russia does not want to go back to Communism or Soviet empire. To be sure, there are some serious problems associated with authoritarian impulses of Russian leaders. But I also concur with those Americans who are willing to take part of the blame for creating a monster of tycoon capitalism in Russia.
"Now I speak in the name of Russia & America Goodwill Associates, a non-profit organization of Americans for friendship with Russia which I founded in 1992. We are also non-partisan, and we have the right to criticize both the democrat and republican administrations. Indeed, since 1991, U.S. policy toward Russia has been as inept and counter-productive as to deserve the name of bi-partisan disaster. In trying to impose on Russia both democracy and free-market economy, we have ignored the most legitimate national aspirations of the Russian people.
"Pirchner quoted Solzhenitsyn's statement of 1994. In fact, twenty years earlier, in 1974, just before being kicked out of the USSR, Solzhenitsyn wrote a letter to Soviet leaders spelling out a peaceful way out of Communism and out of the Soviet empire, providing, for instance, for a secession of border republics, if they so wished. While Soviet leaders never responded to this letter, the elite establishment of this country, the best and the brightest, all the sovietologists and political wonks, thought he was a madman dreaming of the end of Communism. All they hoped for was a détente, granting the Soviets half-the-world as their sphere of influence.
"We have ignored not only Solzhenitsyn, but our own American visionary, George Kennan, a diplomat who devised a strategy that helped the Free World prevail in the Cold War. He deplored as unwise the expansion of NATO. And he also envisioned Russia as a strong and proud nation, not a satellite of the United States. 'Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime,' Kennan said. 'And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.'
"Since 1991, the United States has suffered from excessive pride, the hubris of triumphalism. All we really have to do to improve our relations with Russia, and the rest of the world, is to become, as a nation, more introspective, more self-critical, less arrogant and less self-righteous. All we have to do is re-invent malice toward none, good will to all."
Now when President Obama is expected to hit the Reset button to improve US-Russia relations, we must make sure that, at first, he hits the Rewind button to review the history of Russo-American relations, at least, since the time of perestroika. He needs to do it lest the Reset button he is advised to hit is not a Replay button in disguise. Meanwhile President Medvedev may well want to learn something from America. He could emulate Obama's authoritarian way of capping the salaries of CEOs of the failing American banks when he deals with his own oligarchs.
W. George Krasnow,
President, RAGA
www.raga.org
.