RESTORATION WATCH #1: THE KREMLIN REVERTS TO FORM

(Washington, D.C.): With the possible
exception of the Clinton Administration’s
ideologists, like Strobe Talbott, and
their equally out-of-touch counterparts
on the editorial board of the New
York Times, the reality about Russia
is now generally acknowledged: The
Russian Federation is unlikely to be
transformed into a reliable, pro-Western
nation governed by democratic and free
market principles within the next decade
— if ever. Such a conclusion
has appeared warranted for some time; it
has seemed incontestible since the
departure from government last January of
virtually all reform-minded officials
from President Yeltsin’s cabinet.⁽¹⁾

Lest U.S. policy-makers nonetheless
persist in misconstruing the true nature
and purposes of the present Russian
regime — and, for that matter, those of
any that might succeed it in the
foreseeable future — the Center for
Security Policy is with this Decision
Brief launching a new series of
papers: Restoration Watch.
This series, like its predecessors Crackdown
Watch (documenting the
Gorbachev efforts to resist democratic
change) and Transformation
Watch (monitoring
post-Gorbachev Russia’s spasmodic and
ultimately unsuccessful progress toward a
genuine democratic and free market
society), will track instructive
developments in the former Soviet empire
that might otherwise be given inadequate
attention.

Restoration Watch
will focus on evidence of the restoration
of authoritarian, and probably quite
dangerous, central control in Moscow.
Among such recent developments are the
following:

• Russia and the West:
  On 8 April, Yeltsin’s chief
  spokesman Vyacheslav Kostikov
  explicitly told reporters that
  Russia’s “romantic
  embrace” with the West was
  over. Instead, “Russia
  increasingly sees itself as a
  great power which has its own
  strategic, military and political
  interests, different from those
  of the United States and
  Europe….It has started saying
  this loudly.” ⁽²⁾

Such notions (together with
Russia’s fabled ability to pry
political, strategic and economic
advantage from Western
governments at its moments of
greatest weakness) are clearly in
evidence in the latest Russian
decision not to join the
Partnership for Peace. This
is an eminently desirable outcome
but it is unlikely to be allowed
to stand. Instead, it is
predictable that Talbott and
other Clinton Administration
officials — who have wildly
overinvested in this half-baked
alternative to expanded NATO
membership for East European
democracies — will seek to find,
as Foreign Minister Andrei
Kozyrev put it yesterday,
“the right solutions.”
By this, Kozyrev means that
Moscow must be accorded a
“special status” that
permits it to prevent
“surprises and unilateral
action.”

• Russia’s Unhelpfulness in
  Bosnia: Despite the New
  York Times‘ contention that
  “Russia continues to play a
  constructive role in the
  world…trying to coax the Serbs
  away from confrontation,” it
  is increasingly clear that Moscow
  is playing a much more complex
  and insidious game in Bosnia. As
  with the uncoordinated
  introduction of Russian troops
  into Sarajevo in February, the
  present diplomatic maneuvering of
  Vice Foreign Minister Vitaly
  Churkin seems designed to shore
  up the Serbs’ position and
  insulate the perpetrators of
  heinous aggression from effective
  and long-overdue countervailing
  Western pressure.

These purposes seem
particularly apparent in
President Yeltsin’s posturing
following NATO’s recent air
strikes against Serb positions in
Gorazde. Describing his
conversation with President
Clinton to reporters, President
Yeltsin said that he had
“insisted to Clinton time
and again that such decisions cannot
be taken without prior
consultation between the United
States and Russia. They
cannot be. And
we shall insist on this.”

Lest there be any doubt about
Russia’s determination to stand
with — and protect — the Serbs,
the Duma voted 262 to 2 on 13
April to condemn the air strikes.
Russia’s Prime Minister Victor
Chernomyrdin also called for the
lifting of economic sanctions
against the rump Yugoslavia as
soon as there is a
“ceasefire from all the
conflicting sides” —
something Churkin continues to
claim he has accomplished.

• Russia Abets North Korea.
  According to the 30
  March edition of RFE/RL Report,
  Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister
  Aleksander Panov warned on 29
  March that Russia would assist
  North Korea in the event of
  “unprovoked
  aggression.” It would be
  required to do so, according to
  Panov, by dint of the Soviet
  Union’s 1961 Friendship
  Treaty with Pyongyang, a document
  which Russia has professed an
  interest in bolstering — despite
  its odious associations with the ancien
  communist regime.

This warning comes on the
heels of Russia’s 24 March call
for an international conference
on North Korea’s nuclear weapons
program. That proposal was
universally regarded as an
unhelpful Russian gambit aimed at
slackening U.S. and Western
pressure on Pyongyang’s nuclear
weapons program. Secretary of
State Warren Christopher
nonetheless has insisted, as
recently as last Sunday, that
Russia’s actions on North Korea
are “very supportive”
and “[the Russians have
been] very cooperative with us at
the United Nations and elsewhere
in trying to put pressure on the
North Koreans.”

• Renewed Russian
  Imperialism in the “Near
  Abroad” (The Baltics):
  On 5 April, President Boris
  Yeltsin issued a directive
  endorsing a Defense Ministry
  proposal to allow Moscow to
  establish military bases “on
  the territory of CIS and Latvia
  to ensure the security of the
  Russian Federation and the above
  named nations, as well as to test
  new weapons and military
  machinery.” Last February,
  Russia’s Chief of the General
  Staff, Col. Gen. Mikhail
  Kolesnikov, had outlined Moscow’s
  intention to establish 30
  military bases in the
  so-called “near
  abroad.”

At the very least, such
intentions clearly violate an
agreement reached with Latvia on
15 March. Interestingly, on 7
April, senior Russian officials
from the Foreign and Defense
ministries denied that Russia had
any intention of establishing a
military base in Latvia, stating
that the President wrongly signed
an earlier draft of the
directive.

On 8 April, however, Latvian
President Guntis Ulmanis
postponed indefinitely a 20 April
trip to Moscow planned for the
signing of agreements on Russian
troop withdrawals. In doing so,
he said that the terms were
“incomplete and unfavorable
for the Latvian side.”

Meanwhile, during his recent
trip to Helsinki, the front-man
for much of the nationalist
restoration effort, Vladimir
Zhirinovsky, pronounced that the
Baltics would be reincorporated
into Russia by economic means and
predicted that Estonia would
remain independent for two years
at the most: “You must
forget about Baltic
States…[there is only a] Baltic
region of Russia.” ⁽³⁾

• Renewed Russian
  Imperialism in the “Near
  Abroad” (Beyond The
  Baltics): The Kremlin is
  exhibiting a similar sentiment
  toward other parts of the former
  Soviet empire, as well. For
  example, a prominent foreign
  policy adviser to President
  Yeltsin, Sergei Karaganov, wrote
  in an op.ed. article in the 21
  March edition of the London Financial
  Times that: “Russia
  will also have to continue to be
  a local peace-keeper or peace-enforcer.”
  Interestingly, U.N. Secretary
  General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
  told the Russian television
  program Itogi on 4 April: “I
  don’t see any obstacles for
  Russian troops to participate in
  peacekeeping operations on the
  territory of the former [Soviet
  Union] under the Russian
  flag.”

Meanwhile, on 29 March,
ITAR/TASS reported that a
presidential commission studying
the questions of citizenship for
Russian minority populations in
the Baltics and elsewhere has
concluded that such Russians
should be protected in the former
Soviet Union through a system of
bilateral treaties. A
“special economic
policy” is proposed to
assist in implementing such
arrangements. In the Soviet
lexicon, terms like
“treaties” and
“special economic
policies” typically were
euphemisms for inequitable,
coercive arrangements dictated by
Moscow to the objects of its
imperial desires.

• Russia vs. Ukraine:
  The proverbial push seems to be
  coming to shove between Moscow
  and Kiev as a result of incidents
  involving military forces in
  Crimea and the electoral
  successes of pro-Russian factions
  there. The former were
  precipitated by Russia’s
  commandeering of a naval research
  vessel based in Odessa. After
  Ukrainian air and sea forces
  failed to prevent the removal of
  this ship to Sevastopol, 120
  Ukrainian special forces
  commandos reportedly stormed
  facilities of the 318th Russian
  Division in Odessa, wounding some
  Russians military and civilian
  personnel and taking three senior
  naval officers into custody.
  Ukraine has substantially
  increased the number of its
  deployed troops in Crimea and the
  chances for bloodshed appear
  high.

The election in January of a
Russian puppet, Yuri Meshkov, as
“President of Crimea”
and the strong showing of
communists in this month’s
polling in eastern Ukraine have,
moreover, only served to
intensify that prospect. Since
coming to power, Meshkov has:
restricted local conscripts from
serving elsewhere in Ukraine —
effectively creating a separate
Crimean military; refused to
accept the installation in Crimea
of a presidential representative
from Kiev; and substituted his
own personnel for Kiev’s in the
Crimean offices of two key
national ministries. Such
provocative steps are clearly
being taken in the expectation
that Moscow will intervene to
protect its proxies in Ukraine —
if not at the Kremlin’s
direction.

The Center has learned that some
members of the U.S. intelligence
community believe that bilateral
conflict between Ukraine and
Russia could occur at any point.

• Russian Arms Control
  Violations: It is
  particularly ironic that the New
  York Times would
  editorialize that “Russia
  is…fulfilling its arms control
  commitments” at the very
  moment that it is blatantly
  violating several solemn
  international treaty obligations.
  For example, Moscow has
  redeployed its troops withdrawn
  from Central Europe to the St.
  Petersburg and Caucasus regions
  exceeding the 1995 troop levels
  set by the CFE Treaty, according
  to NATO and U.S. officials. These
  violations take on particular
  significance in light of the
  concomitant pressure the Kremlin
  is bringing to bear on its Baltic
  and southern neighbors.

According to the 8 April
edition of the Washington
Post, U.S. officials have
also concluded that “there
is still an offensive biological
weapons program underway” in
Russia in violation of the 1975
Biological Weapons Convention.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed
on 28 March that it is neither
developing nor producing
biological weapons. Instead — in
a crude throw-back to the
Kremlin’s Cold War disinformation
activities, Moscow has suggested
that an American pharmaceutical
company, Pfizer, is involved in a
program to maintain a U.S.
capability to manufacture
biological warfare agents.

• Amazing Shrinking
  Commitments to Democracy and Free
  Enterprise: Aleksei
  Kazannik, who was appointed as
  Russia’s Prosecutor General last
  fall, resigned on 8 April stating
  that “the president has no
  intention of observing the
  constitution and laws.” He
  warned of an imminent “open
  dictatorship.”

Foreign investors in Russia
are now being subjected to a 23
percent tax on investment
capital, according to the 12
April edition of the Journal of
Commerce. A January decree issued
by President Yeltsin, which is
now being implemented, will
effectively tax almost one-fourth
of all investment capital
entering the country, including
loans by overseas parent
companies to their Russian units.

Russia has announced plans to
impose currency controls for all
imports as of 1 July effectively
requiring all foreign currency
transactions to be channeled
through a designated Russian
bank. While the move is aimed at
guaranteeing repatriation of
Russia’s hard currency earnings
and to stem capital flight,
estimated at some $1 billion per
month, this gambit will further
hinder the growth of a free
market and open up a new area for
government abuse of power.

Finally, the mayor of Moscow,
Yuri Luzhkov, has suspended any
further privatization of property
in Russia’s capital, according to
a 6 April report by Interfax and
ITAR-TASS. Luzhkov has been a
prominent opponent of
Privatization Minister Anatoly
Chubais’ nationwide privatization
campaign.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy agrees
with former President Richard Nixon,
former National Security Advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski and other thoughtful observers
who are issuing strong warnings about
Russia and its activities. For example,
in the current issue of Foreign
Affairs, Dr. Brzezinski writes:
“Regrettably, the imperialist
impulse remains strong and even appears
to be strengthening.”

These judgments simply serve to
reinforce the Center’s longstanding view
that undisciplined Western aid to Russia,
Russia’s inclusion in NATO or ersatz
NATOs, the elimination of controls on the
exports of strategic technologies, the
denuclearization of Ukraine and an
uncritical devotion to Boris Yeltsin and
“see-no-evil” acquiescence to
his demands — come what may —
are profoundly ill-advised and
potentially quite dangerous policies.
They must be swiftly replaced with more
sensible strategies if U.S. and Western
security interests are to be safeguarded
as the Soviet restoration proceeds.

– 30 –

1. In this
connection, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled, Who Lost
Russia? The Same People Who Are Taking It
Back — The Soviets and Their Friends,
(No. 94-D 06, 24
January 1994).

2. This statement
— and the policies that appear to be
giving it force and effect — make a
mockery of the central claim in a lead
editorial in yesterday’s New York
Times entitled “No Time for
Bear-Baiting”: “Authority is
still in the hands of people like
President Yeltsin and Foreign Minister
Andrei Kozyrev, whose strategy remains
cooperation with the West.”

3. RFE/RL Daily
Report, 6 April 1994.