Part One: U.S. strategy in the 21st century: leadership through hegemony
Chapter II: Role and Place of the USA in the Twenty-first Century in the Research of American Political Scientists and Scholars of International Affairs
The Council on Foreign Relations:
Russia Invited to Be Part of the West
Prominent among the agents that form U.S. foreign policy is the Council on Foreign Relations, whose projects involve experts from different research institutions. The product of one of these projects is the book The New Russian Foreign Policy, written in early 1998 by a group of authors that included Michael Mandelbaum, Leon Aron, Sherman Garnett, Rajan Menon, and Coit Blacker.23
Mandelbaum states from the beginning: “Russian foreign policy is difficult to define. It is difficult, even, to detect. What are the international purposes of the new Russian state? Where and how will it seek to achieve them?” These are precisely the questions the authors set out to answer.
Mandelbaum himself sees the main cause of Russia’s problems and her foreign policy in the legacy of the Soviet empire that emerged and collapsed in a completely different way from the earlier British, French, Habsburg, and Ottoman empires. Its collapse wasn’t caused by a world war but by Gorbachev’s perestroika and new political thinking, and it was incredibly quick. It was unexpected, even for the USSR’s leaders themselves, especially after they encountered the explosion of nationalist sentiment in Central Asia and in the subsequent war in Chechnya. Having fallen victim to their own domestic policy, Russia’s leaders were counting on help from the West, especially the USA, and they were taken aback by NATO’s expansion to the East at the expense of Central European countries. The populace perceived this expansion by NATO as a campaign of exclusion, isolation, and humiliation directed at the new Russia. As a result, Russia’s foreign policy lost its bearings and collapsed.
In Leon Aron’s opinion, some Russians in Moscow became convinced that Russia must become a regional superpower, an international great power, and a nuclear superpower. This Russian variant of Gaullism can psychologically satisfy a part of the political elite. In fact, the situation is this: “Russia has inherited the Soviet nuclear arsenal, which is, of course, a source of influence. In other ways, however, Russia’s presence is scarcely felt beyond its immediate neighborhood.” If we look at the ordinary folk rather than the elite, they are sincerely heartbroken by the falling away of the Ukraine, a state with which they were together for three centuries. As for Central Asia and the Caucasus, their feeling is not so much of loss as of fear.
Aron is correct about the attitudes of the greater part of the country’s population, but he is wrong about the political “elite.” They have no intention of letting go of the Caucasus, as evidenced by the second Chechen war.
One chapter is written by Coit Denis Blacker, a Stanford professor and a leading figure in Russia studies. In his opinion, for most Russians “the world” still means, first and foremost, the West. His argument is “that political and economic integration with the West, the aim of the original foreign policy of perestroika, is not only the most desirable goal for post-Soviet foreign policy, it is also the only feasible one.”
In this view, the Gaullism of the post-1993 period is to be understood not only as a politically necessary and largely rhetorical response to domestic pressures but also as a tactic designed to improve the terms under which Russia is integrated into the West. The relevant precedents for the new Russia are Germany and Japan after World War II. These states were defeated, democratized, and integrated into the Western security and economic order, of which the United States was the chief architect and most powerful member.
That is the ideal scenario. The reality makes Blacker less optimistic. In his scenarios of the future the place of Russia is as follows:
“The Western economic and political order, with Japan, North America, and Western Europe constituting its core, may be seen metaphorically as a magnetic field, pulling other countries toward it. Because this community of free-market democracies is both powerful and successful, other countries seek to join its organizations, observe its norms, and replicate its institutions.” In principle, that is.
One reason for Russia’s lack of an effective foreign policy is Russia’s inability to form an efficient national government. The current trends, should they be amplified, could result in the disintegration of Russia as a unified state. There would be hyperinflation, disintegration of the armed forces, the ascension of politically independent regional authorities; all these trends are already in evidence, although central authority is still far from total collapse. “A historical precedent for a Russia of this kind is the chaos in China in the 1920s and 1930s, when different parts of the country were dominated by military leaders known as warlords who controlled independent armed forces.”
Obviously, the realization of this scenario is undesirable because it would mean loss of control over nuclear weapons and, in general, the scattering of Russian armed forces through territories beyond the control of a centralized government. One can envisage other possibilities outside these extreme outcomes. They would manifest themselves in different foreign policies adapted to its three global neighborhoods— not only the West and the Middle East but also, by virtue of its border with China and coastline on the Pacific Ocean, the Far East. “The politics and economics of the three regions differ sharply. It would not be surprising, therefore, if Russian policies toward them should turn out to differ from one another.”
Russia’s proximity to China may play a special role, shaping a third variant of foreign policy that is anti-Western in direction. “Russian neo-Gaullism has elements of such a policy. Russia has displayed a friendlier attitude toward countries that the United States considers “rogue” states than Washington has thought appropriate, although so too have America’s Western European allies.”
Once again, this is in theory. Having identified the possibility, Blacker “blocks” it right away, pointing out an opposite trend: “Both Russia and China, however, have evinced more interest in joining the Western order than in overturning or boycotting it.” Besides, Russia and China are potential rivals for influence in the newly independent countries of Central Asia that were once Soviet republics, which are wedged between them. The tensions can be exacerbated by the issue of the illegal migration of Chinese into Russia caused by the underpopulation of the Russian Far East and the overpopulation in China’s Northeast. Therefore: “Of all the possible scenarios for Russian foreign policy, the most desirable remains integration with the West.” Russia used to belong to Europe for centuries; yet it remained the least European of nations. Now it has the opportunity to become a European country, both internally and externally. In Blacker’s opinion, this is helped by the fact that Russia has ceased to be an empire, thus facilitating her entry into the civilized world. Blacker sincerely wants Russia to become part of Europe.
I used to share these views, naively believing that Russians are closer in spirit and culture to Europe than Asia. But now, having seen all of Europe and Northeast Asia, I have personally come to the conclusion that Russia will never become either European or Asian; it will remain what it always was: Russian.
23 Michael Mandelbaum, ed., The New Russian Foreign Policy. Council on Foreign Relations (NY, 1998); Internet.
The 21st Century: The World Without Russia
(Philosophical-sociological Essay)