#2
From: "Mike Mcfaul" <mmcfaul@ceip.org>
Subject: re 5446-Beehner/McFaul
Date: Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001
I thank Lionel Beehner for his response to my article (in Vremya-N, not Vek)
and I agree with him one hundred percent. It was not clear in my article,
but I meant to say that we Americans will now appreciate what it is like to
be under attack. In the past, I have sometimes felt like Americans have
taken a 'holier than thou' attitude in our denunciation of Russia and
Russians that has been unproductive. I did not mean to imply that we as
Americans should support Putin's methods in Chechnya. On the contrary, I
have written in many places that Putin's indifference to human rights in
Chechnya has been horrendous. Russia had the right to defend its territorial
integrity in the summer of 1999 when Chechen soldiers invaded Dagestan to
liberate this Muslim republic from the Russian Federation. If the initial
use of force may have been justified, the conduct of the Russian campaign
since then is not. Wars are always brutal, but Russian actions in Chechnya
have routinely been inhumane, violating the Geneva Convention and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Putin has done little to redress
these atrocities or search for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. We
should learn from his mistakes as his method for "fighting terrorism"
has
fueled more support for fundamentalists and has not made Russia more secure.
As to analysis (rather than opinion) of what the Bush Administration will
do, I fear that Chechnya, already very low on the list of priorities, will
now disappear from the radar screen. It all the more important, therefore,
that non-governmental organizations continue to engage Russia and Russians
on these issues.
On Russian values, I was referring to the very strong support in Russia for
democratic values and practices. This statement is based on public opinion
data that Tim Colton and I collected in 1999-2000. Some of our result shave
been published in a working paper called "Are Russian Undemocratic?"
which
can be downloaded from our Website at www.ceip.org. I also would be happy to
send anyone a hard copy. Most people, including many experts in our field,
continue to assert that Russians are anti-democratic. I see no hard evidence
for this argument.
