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#13 - JRL 8373 - JRL Home
From: "James Schumaker" <jfs2@cox.net>
Subject: A Personal Response to Recent Events in Russia
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004

Moscow and Washington Courting Disaster By Going Their Separate Ways
By James Schumaker
Mr. Schumaker is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer with extensive experience in Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union.

Over the past four years, President Putin has been steadily pursuing a recentralization of power in Russia. For the same amount of time, the Bush White House has thought it best to gloss over this fact (as did the Clinton White House before that). Both policies are entirely predictable and understandable in terms of the short-term political calculations of Moscow and Washington. In the long term, however, such policies threaten to introduce instabilities into the US-Russia relationship -- and could ultimately lead to disaster.

In the case of the Bush Administration, the political logic behind its Russia policy is quite easy to follow: the twin events of 9/11 and the war with Iraq have left White House policymakers with entirely too many problems on their plate. They don't need any more, and they don't want to hear about them. Yesterday's so-called "rebuke" by President Bush of Putin's recentralization moves could be interpreted as a change in the White House's Russia policy. Unfortunately, however, the more likely interpretation is that it is just a one-off reaction to media criticism of the President's long silence about the activities of his "good friend Vladimir." The sad truth is that the White House has an election to fight, and an argument with President Putin over human rights and democracy will not advance that cause. In fact, it will just add one more dissonant note to a foreign policy that has already received more than its fair share of brickbats from Kerry supporters and "Inside the Beltway" pundits.

As for Senator Kerry himself, he says that if he were President he would cooperate constructively with Russia on counterterrorism while expressing "concern" about President Putin's ongoing moves to limit democratic freedoms. This is fine, as far as it goes, but as one of my good friends (and a former Ambassador to Russia) is fond of saying: "Concern is not a policy." We will have to do considerably more than that if we truly want to help Russia maintain its rightful place on the world stage as both a democracy and a great power.

In the case of Russia, President Putin's logic is also relatively easy to follow. At the beginning of his first term, Vladimir Vladimirovich inherited a situation in Russia that was politically chaotic and economically desperate. The democratic experiment in Russia was foundering and the Russian people, who had for the most part benefited little from the upheavals of the previous decade, longed for stability. Putin responded to this situation as a typical KGB officer would -- "Control is best, let the devil take the rest." In the short term, this approach has had a palliative effect on the aches and pains of the Russian political system, but in the long run it is almost certainly doomed to failure. Putin's trusted cadre of "siloviki" is increasingly in control of Russia, but there is scant evidence to indicate that the "siloviki" know what to do with that power - except use it to accumulate still more.

Russia, in fact, is a sinking ship. For the time being, its claims to great power status are based on several natural advantages: it still controls the largest territory of any nation on earth; it has a talented and well-educated population; it maintains a nuclear force that is second only to that of the United States; and it possesses the largest reserves of strategic resources on the planet, enough to fuel a considerable economic comeback, if used wisely.

Fifty years from now, however, most or all of these advantages will be gone. Russia's reserves of oil, gas and strategic minerals will be depleted. Its strategic nuclear force, which for the most part is already well beyond its service life, is being replaced at a rate that suggests that within a few decades Russia will deploy no more than a few hundred strategic nuclear weapons -- probably fewer than will be in China's nuclear arsenal by then.

The greatest disaster awaiting Russia, however, is demographic. Depending on whose projections one believes, Russia's current population of 144 million could shrink by as much as forty percent over the next few decades. With a social welfare and health system in ruins, and an educational system that is steadily disintegrating, Russia fifty years from now will not benefit from the highly-educated and talented workforce of today, or anything like it.

Even so, Russia may still be a power to reckon with on the world stage. For one thing, it will most likely continue to control the most territory of any power on the planet. But Putin's greatest nightmare, and one of the principal reasons behind his drive to recentralize, is his fear that a weak Russia could be broken up, just as the Soviet Union was, through an overwhelming combination of internal and external pressures.

Unfortunately for Putin and his supporters, the recentralization of power, all by itself, is not the answer. Concentrating all power in the Kremlin will not remedy the disastrous mistakes made during the Chechen conflict, nor will it enable Russia's leadership to recognize and counter new threats to the nation more quickly. It will only isolate the Kremlin leadership from the real situation on the ground. More broadly, a complete recentralization of power could eventually lead Russia back in time to a new period of Brezhnevian stagnation ("zastoy"), and to the very loss of control that recentralization was intended to guarantee. As long as Russia remains corrupt and dysfunctional, as long as the vast majority of Russians fail to benefit economically and socially from the policies of President Putin and his successors, and as long as Russians are denied the right to choose their leaders freely, Russia will continue its long slide into geopolitical eclipse.

In the end, President Putin could well preside over the Russian equivalent of the "Titanic." On the bridge, Putin will gaze out over a ship that is a beautiful giant. His officers will all be loyal, and will whisper nothing but good news in his ear. But all the while, the mortal injuries below the waterline will not be repaired, and the ship will continue to sink. Someday, well after Putin is gone, and the decks are awash, his successors will find out that there aren't enough lifeboats for the passengers and crew. But by then it will be too late. Russia will be in desperate shape, and its leaders will be prone to serious miscalculations -- errors that could adversely affect U.S. interests, or even bring the U.S. and Russia into conflict.

Russia faces tremendous problems, but with a little help and support from its friends it can avert this sad outcome. Other countries in much worse trouble have made remarkable turnarounds in the space of a few decades (postwar Germany and Japan come to mind). Russia too can accomplish such a transformation, but its current internal political path must be changed radically to achieve such an objective. Studious inattention or fitful expressions of "concern" by American policymakers will not help this process. More direct engagement with Russia might -- and such engagement is indisputably in our vital national interest. Russia is too important to ignore, in any century.

James F. Schumaker
421 Avenida Arlena
San Clemente, CA 92672
J2Fax: 202-478-0264 (Personal)
Tel: 949-498-5282 (Home)
Email: jfs@compuserve.com (Personal)

p.s. Here's my short bio, in case you are curious:

James F. Schumaker

Mr. Schumaker is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer with extensive experience in Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union. After joining the U.S. Foreign Service in 1973, Mr. Schumaker served as Ambassador's Aide in Belgrade, Political Officer in Moscow, Deputy Principal Officer in Leningrad, Deputy Chief of Mission in Kabul, Deputy Political Counselor in Moscow and Deputy Chief of Mission in Kiev. Mr. Schumaker also served in various capacities on the State Department's Soviet Desk and its successor organizations during his 30-year career. Following his retirement in 1999, Mr. Schumaker was called back to head the Kosovo Task Force from March 1999 until June 2000, and then served as Chargé d'Affaires at our Embassy in Minsk. He was formally recalled to the Service to assume the post of Consul General in Vladivostok from November 2000 until September 2002, following which he worked at Embassy Moscow for a year as Senior Advisor to Ambassador Vershbow, and later as Acting Consul General in Yekaterinburg. He was recalled to the Service for a second time to serve from September 2003 until July 2004 as Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. He is currently retired again, awaiting his next recall.

Mr. Schumaker served in the U.S. Army from 1969 until 1973, including one year at the Defense Language Institute (Russian) and a three-year tour of duty with the White House Communications Agency. He graduated from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut with a degree in History in 1969.

Mr. Schumaker was born in Macon, Georgia on October 12, 1947. He is single. His foreign languages are Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Dari (Afghan Persian).