Russia’s Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev is talking tough again.
European diplomats at a 1992 Stockholm conference were stunned when the usually mild-mannered Kozyrev spouted a Cold War-style diatribe attacking the West and threatening to reassert Russian dominance over former Soviet republics.
Russia’s top diplomat later apologized for what he termed a “wakeup call” to what the West faced if hard-line nationalists took over in Moscow,
But Kozyrev has no apologies now that President Boris Yeltsin’s struggling government has discovered the political appeal of nationalism. Echoing hard-line opponents, he has bluntly told former Soviet republics not to mistreat their ethnic Russian citizens and has demanded greater Western respect for Russia.
The same growing assertiveness was evident in an angry outburst from Yeltsin last Wednesday, triggered by former President Richard Nixon’s meeting with his Communist and nationalist foes, including Alexander Rutskoi, the leader of the bloody anti-Yeltsin uprising in October.
“Russia is a great country, and one cannot just play with it like this,” Yeltsin fumed as he canceled plans to meet with Nixon and withdrew the former president’s Russian bodyguards and limousine.
All of this further complicates U.S.-Russian relations already troubled by a recent spy scandal, the departure of key reformers from Yeltsin’s Cabinet and the unexpected strength of nationalists in Russia’s new parliament.
“This winter has brought renewed fears about Russia’s future,” acknowledged Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
After a year of too much hope and too much hype, the Clinton administration is coming around to more modest expectations for Russia. Aides say Clinton still regards Russia as one of his top foreign policy priorities, but they’re adjusting to bumpy times ahead.
Along with the uncertain prospects for its economic and political reform, the administration is concerned about Russia’s behavior beyond its borders-particularly toward the 14 former Soviet republics that Moscow possessively regards as the “near abroad.”
Russia has an estimated 200,000 troops still stationed in neighboring countries, including those remaining in Latvia, Estonia and Moldova despite those nation’s objections.
Yeltsin asserted earlier this month that Russia remains the “guarantor of stability” throughout the former USSR, and he declared that the treatment of some 25 million Russians living in those former republics is “our national affair.”
This may seem a bit presumptuous for an all-but-bankrupt country facing a possible breakup along ethnic and geographic fault lines. But Russian experts say Yeltsin is appealing to a powerful force in the Russian psyche: the imperial aspirations that in the past guided czars and Communist regimes.
“Yeltsin and Kozyrev are consciously playing the nationalist card,” said Alexander Motyl, a Russia expert at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. “Keep in mind that their political and economic strategies have been failures, and so nationalism is a very convenient way to go.”
If it were only political rhetoric, Russia’s neighbors-and the West-could rest easy. But Moscow is asserting its influence with “peacekeeping” troops in places like Georgia, Moldova and Tajikistan, and by other means, such as curtailing vital natural gas supplies to Ukraine and Belarus.
The Clinton administration understands that Russia is concerned about turmoil on its borders, just as the U.S. would be. But it doesn’t accept Moscow’s right to intervene in the affairs of its neighbors.
“The United States has worked with and supported President Yeltsin because we believe he followed policies supporting democracy, supporting reform and supporting respect for the territorial integrity of Russia’s neighbors-all three,” Clinton said pointedly last week.
Some U.S. officials contend it’s misguided at this point to regard Russia as imperialist. After all, Moscow has withdrawn close to a million troops from Eastern Europe, cut spending on military equipment by 80 percent and declared that troops will continue to come home from neighboring countries.
Still, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the administration must set out more clearly what it considers the limits of acceptable Russian behavior. He is the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that must approve foreign aid for Russia.
“The administration has not drawn a line between Russia’s legitimate national interests involving political and economic reform, which certainly deserves strong U.S. support, and Russian neo-imperial ambitions, which clearly do not warrant our support,” McConnell said.
In a significant shift, the administration is stepping up efforts to reach out to Russia’s newly independent neighbors. In the last three weeks, Clinton has met with leaders from Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Georgia, who were promised a total of $1 billion in financial aid to help their economic reforms and nuclear disarmament.
“Thank God that they (the Clinton administration) finally realized that there are other places,” Motyl said, “but my fear is that it may be a little too late.”
The countries bordering Russia form an arc of simmering conflict created by age-old ethnic rivalries and competing geographic claims that offer Russia ample opportunity for meddling.
In Georgia, for instance, Russia supported the rebels in Abkhazia until they had so weakened the central government led by Eduard Shevardnadze that he was forced to appeal to Moscow for help-despite fears of renewed Russian domination.
Yeltsin agreed to send in “peacekeeping” troops only when Georgia agreed to join the Russia-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States, the loose alliance among some of the former Soviet republics.
After meeting here with Shevardnadze last week, Clinton endorsed the idea of replacing the Russian troops with a UN peacekeeping force. The idea is to help dilute Moscow’s influence in Georgia.
And Clinton expressed his worries about Russia’s imperial temptations.
“Is it possible that we will recreate the Cold War?” he asked, responding to a reporter’s question last week. “In one respect, it is unlikely for sure, and that is the nuclear respect.”
But he added the troubling thought that it is “somewhat more likely” beleagured Russians may turn to leaders “who will say the best way . . . is to find greatness the way we found it in the past, by the reimposition of some sort of empire.”
