U.S. Meddling in Russian Politics Must End : Foreign policy: Reforms must be gradual and directed from Moscow, not Washington.

The worst and most predictable American foreign-policy failure of the late 20th Century has been unfolding in post-communist Russia ever since the Soviet breakup in 1991. All the outcomes we want in a country that remains so essential to our security--democracy, a prospering economy, a political Establishment friendly to the West, major reductions and safeguarding of nuclear weapons and other devices of mass destruction--have been undermined by U.S. government policy.

At fault is the basic premise that has guided American policy since 1991: that the United States can and should intervene deeply in Russia’s internal affairs in order to transform that nation into an American-style system at home and a compliant junior partner abroad. A preposterously missionary idea, it is in almost total conflict with Russia’s historical traditions, present-day realities and actual possibilities, and thus dangerously counterproductive.

Essentially, the United States said to the new Russian leadership: If you follow our “free market” prescriptions for economic reform, a leap-to-capitalism “shock therapy” and our lead on international issues, we will give you ample financial aid, on-site adviser-therapists and a place by our side (or in our shadow) in world affairs. For his own complex reasons, Russian President Boris Yeltsin accepted--or pretended to accept--the offer, immediately anointed as a “strategic partnership and friendship.” And on that romantic assumption, the Clinton Administration, with even more ideological gusto and less restraint than its predecessor, has stuck to Yeltsin like Krazy Glue, at least until very recently.

Consider how badly this missionary American policy has failed:

Prospects for peaceful development toward stable markets and democracy in Russia are worse today than they were two years ago and much worse than they were when President Clinton took office. The economy is in free fall, ravaged by a multiple collapse of production, capital investment, consumption, legal transaction and the ruble. Moreover, Russia has had no real political system at all since Yeltsin destroyed the constitutional order by force last fall, only his current efforts to create a personal regime of power. As a result, anti-democratic, military and other security forces now play a much larger role in domestic and foreign politics than they did a year ago.

Nor has Russia’s foreign policy conformed to U.S. prescriptions, as evidenced most recently by its opposition to moving NATO eastward and to Western action against Serbia. Still worse, nothing much has been done to reduce the various nuclear threats on former Soviet territory, which are greater today than they were under the Soviet regime.

As for the U.S. wager on Boris Yeltsin as the popular instrument of the American crusade, 85% of voters in December voted against his policies and party. A significant part of that anti-Yeltsin vote was an anti-American backlash.

It is said that the United States must support Yeltsin because he is Russia’s elected president. But Clinton and his aides have gone far beyond that norm of international relations, becoming Yeltsin’s cheerleader, accomplice and spin doctor, thus implicating America in some of his most ill-advised and wicked deeds.

To understand our complicity, look at Yeltsin’s leadership through the eyes of a great many Russian citizens. For them, he has been an extremist leader imposing from above exceedingly radical policies for which they never voted.

Yeltsin’s most extreme measures came as three still-traumatic shocks to society. In 1991, he suddenly abolished the Soviet Union, the only country most Russians had ever known. In 1992, his economic “shock therapy” took away the life savings and living standards of most Russian families. And in 1993, his tanks overthrew the elected Parliament and constitutional system that had been presented to citizens as the legitimate post-communist order.

Not surprisingly, Yeltsin’s shock leadership utterly polarized Russian society, devastating all varieties of moderation and centrism in political life. Extremism always begets extremism. Yeltsin’s extremist policies led to the victory of the extreme nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky in the December elections and to the sea changes under way in Russian politics today.

Recall now the American role in those events, even leaving aside any covert involvement. The U.S. government applauded Yeltsin’s precipitous abolition of the Soviet Union without real concern for its impact on ordinary citizens. When his “shock therapy” then impoverished tens of millions of Russians (including prospective middle-class investors in economic privatization), our government urged him to do more of the same, scorning other pro-market but anti-Yeltsin economists for not being “real” reformers. When parliamentary opposition to Yeltsin grew in 1992 and ‘93, the U.S. government echoed his charge that it was a “citadel of Red-Brown reaction,” helping to undermine what Russian democratization needs most--an established parliament and accepted opposition. The Clinton Administration supported Yeltsin’s first attempt to shut down the elected Parliament last March, shunned Russian moderates who tried to prevent a more fateful confrontation and cheered even more loudly when Yeltsin finally resorted to a tank-backed coup, thereby endorsing Russia’s long anti-democratic tradition of unfettered executive power. And now that Yeltsin has contrived a new “constitution” without an authentic separation of powers, the Administration heralds it as a “democratic breakthrough,” evidently unaware that Russia has had many constitutions but never any sustained constitutionalism.

Clearly, the United States’ crusade to macromanage Russia’s present and future must end, but what kind of policy should be adopted? The answer must be found this time in Russia, not in Washington, world banks or American universities.

Deeply wounded, polarized and angry, Russia desperately needs moderate, consensual, gradual reforms. More shocks will almost certainly send some rough beast slouching toward the Kremlin. A coalition of Russian moderates--”centrists” who see themselves trapped between Yeltsin and Zhirinovsky--is struggling to emerge as a political force capable of reshaping the reform process, with or without Yeltsin. Some such moderate bloc is Russia’s best hope, and possibly last chance, for democratic and market reform. If so, it is also our only hope for a Russia engaged in progressive change at home rather than a pursuit of lost power abroad.

The Clinton Administration, until now an opponent of moderation in Russian politics, must adopt a new and moderate principle of its own: that the United States does not have the wisdom, right or power to intervene so deeply in Russia’s internal affairs; all attempts to do so will backfire perilously. On that principle, the United States will withdraw its excessive presence in Russia, cease its dogmatic sermons and dollar-laden ultimatums and encourage Russia to find its destiny, as it must, within its own circumstances and possibilities.

And when--or for pessimists, if--Russia finds its own way toward political and economic reform, even if it is not ours, the Clinton Administration will be able to give generous financial assistance, as it must, that is both productive and honorable.