Trouble For Talbott’s ‘Less Shock – More Therapy Gambit: Even the Washington Post Says ‘No-Go’
(Washington, D.C.): On 20 December,
Ambassador-at-Large for Russia and other
former Soviet states Strobe Talbott ran
up the proverbial flag-pole a new
strategy for dealing with Moscow in the
wake of last week’s ominous election
results. In a State Department briefing,
Talbott announced a major policy shift:
From now on, the Clinton Administration
would be “refining, focusing and
intensifying our reform support
efforts” so as to encourage
“less shock and more therapy for the
Russian people.”
Translation: The United States,
and therefore presumably, the West and
its multilateral lending institutions
will no longer insist upon rapid
structural reform — pejoratively known
as “shock therapy” — as a
condition for large-scale assistance to
Moscow.
Amb. Talbott’s statement was made
shortly after he, Vice President Al Gore
and a gaggle of other senior U.S.
officials concluded a post-election visit
to several spots in the former Soviet
empire, including Moscow. The delegation
was transparently unnerved by the strong
showing made in the vote for a new
parliament by the “red-brown”
coalition — a marriage of convenience
being forged by enemies of reform from
the communist left and the
fascist/nationalist right of Vladimir
Zhirinovsky. The American reaction
though, like that of President Yeltsin,
is sure to make matters worse,
not better.
Slowing Reform by Any Other
Name
Indeed, Talbott’s embrace of the idea
that structural reform ought to be slowed
— or, as he preferred to put it
“broadened” — so as to reduce
“a lot of disruption, a lot of
disorder and a lot of hardship for the
average Russian citizen” could have
a most ironic effect: Originally billed
as a vehicle for elevating Mr. Gore as
the Administration’s senior foreign
policy spokesman, the latest mission to
Moscow could actually prove to be just
another vice presidential visit to a
state funeral. This time, however, it
would be an occasion for burying
Russian democracy and free market reform.
After all, Talbott has with his
pronouncements repeated a grievous error
made by the Bush Administration
concerning Mikhail Gorbachev: A Kremlin
leader reputed to be committed to reform
is made the determinant of U.S. policy
toward Russia (and, for that matter, its
neighbors and former satellites). Never
mind that that leader’s agenda
increasingly departs from a coherent,
well-defined program for actually implementing
systemic democratic and free market
reforms; he’s our guy. The greater the
backsliding, seemingly the more
unconditional becomes U.S. support for
the should-be reformer.
The fact is that Boris Yeltsin has in
recent months adulterated the aggressive
pursuit of structural reforms. In the
face of opposition from the
military-industrial complex, the
apparatchiks who continue to run the
Russian government and their
constituents, the Yeltsin government has
compromised its original program in ways
that have seriously aggravated Russia’s
problems, not alleviated them. Loose
credit and attendant uncontrolled
expansion of the money supply, for
example, have kept comatose inefficient
state-owned enterprises alive and
reignited raging inflation.
Unfortunately, Talbott has invited
more of the same by encouraging the
Western democracies to abandon any
remaining pretence of tying their support
— notably their financial
support — to demonstrable progress
toward dismantling the old communist,
centrally-controlled system. His cavalier
talk about a creating a “social
safety net” for Russia and implying
the need to dilute further the IMF’s
lending standards, can only encourage
more undisciplined lending to Moscow.
This will have at least two
deleterious effects: First, as far as
Russia is concerned such new lending to
Moscow will, at best, be squandered; at
worst, it will wind up underwriting the
rehabilitation of a still-offensively
configured Russian military-industrial
complex. And second, the weakening of the
IMF’s standards — and those of the
United States — will only serve to
produce vast new demands for financial
assistance on heavily politicized terms
that the Fund and other leading lenders
have properly spurned to date.
The Post Weighs in Against
Talbottism
Remarkably, even the Washington
Post has appreciated the absurdity
of Amb. Talbott’s formula. In a lead
editorial in yesterday’s editions
the Post endorsed a position
long held by the Center for Security
Policy: Western aid must be conditioned
on real structural changes in Russia.
Particularly commendable was the
following incisive observation:
“The worst social misery [in
the former Soviet Union] is not
being caused by reform but by the
lack of it. The old Soviet
economy is collapsing,
irrevocably. What’s called reform
is the way out of the wreckage
into something more hopeful. Social
conditions are much better in
Russia than in, say, Ukraine. The
reason is that Russia has made a
substantial beginning on the
process of reform, while Ukraine
has done little and is suffering
for it. To the
extent that foreign loans are
conditioned on further reform, they
become a visible incentive to
keep going.“
(Emphasis added.)
The Bottom Line
The Center for Security Policy strongly
opposes Amb. Talbott’s trial balloon of
“less shock, more therapy” for
Russia. That approach may enable Boris
Yeltsin to cobble together a working
majority in Parliament but we should be
under no illusion: The organizing
principle for such a coalition will be to
attenuate reform, not advance it.
In so doing, as even the Washington
Post has finally figured out, the
social hardship and dislocation for the
society at large will be compounded.
This, in turn, will swell the ranks of
those prepared to follow the
“red-brown” coalition’s siren
song — and the dangerous leadership of
Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The United States
and its allies should have no part of
such a “reform” agenda.
– 30 –
1. When
challenged that he really was talking
about “slowing” reform, Talbott
sought to redefine the term:
“…We feel that correctives
and adjustments that are made in
their policy, which will bring
more of the Russian people into
that process in a democratic
fashion — so that when this
whole issue is next put to the
Russian people in two and a half
years, it will have more support
— qualifies as reform.”
Taken to its logical — if absurd —
conclusion, this definition could
transform Vladimir Zhirinovsky into a
“reformer.”
2. Amb.
Talbott specifically declined to explain
how this major new U.S. taxpayer
obligation would be financed. Many of the
items enumerated as part of the
Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission such as
“a full-up space station,”
“an oil and gas technology
center,” and “a wide variety of
U.S. gas technology and equipment”
will inevitably revitalize Russia’s
military-industrial complex.
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