The Soviet Union suffered a catastrophic defeat in the cold war, to be compared to Germany’s or Japan’s disastrous situation after World War II. Russians turned a blind eye to this fact out of wounded national pride. Americans preferred not to talk about it too openly, in order not to push Russians into a corner. It was a bad mistake on both sides. After 1945 the United States played a key role in bringing its defeated enemies back into the postwar world. Germany and Japan, with American assistance, did their part of the job to establish new political and economic systems domestically. The victory in the cold war, by contrast, caught the United States off guard.
Washington has not had any clear plan on how to integrate Russia into the international system. Some undeserved favors have been counterproductive. By any criteria of economic development, Russia does not belong to the club of G7 nations. Significant amounts of cash have been spent by the United States and the West to support reforms in Russia. But the reforms themselves were grossly oversold. We witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet planned economy rather than the orderly transition to a market-based one. Overoptimistic Russian reformers and U.S. experts put too much stress on macroeconomics, and underestimated the significance of such factors as unfriendly political and economic cultures, cynical attitudes toward law and legality and many other social “intangibles.” The well-publicized extent of corruption in Russia is just another side of ill-conceived Russian reform.
The heavily loaded question “Who lost Russia?” is profoundly misleading. Russia has never been “gained” as a partner by the West. Russia was and still is the largest fragment of the former Soviet Union, semi-isolated internationally and poorly reformed domestically. Responsibility for that rests primarily, though not always exclusively, with the Russian government, Russian elite and Russian people–to the extent any people is responsible for its elite and its government.
Today’s Russia is almost lost for Russians themselves. During the last decade the Russian economy has shrunk to the proportions of a mummy. There has been an extraordinary rise in poverty, and the health-care system has badly deteriorated; many almost forgotten diseases, such as tuberculosis, are back on a massive scale. The recent decline of life expectancy in Russia is unprecedented for any industrial society. A war is raging in the northern Caucasus, and it is far from clear whether Moscow will be able to maintain its control over the region. Militant Islam is on the rise in Russia’s southern underbelly, and Moscow itself has suffered terrorist attacks. In the far east massive numbers of illegal immigrants from China are pouring into depopulated regions of neighboring Russia. The future territorial integrity of Russia cannot be taken for granted. The greatest threat to Russia, however, is the growing paralysis of its central authority. The federal government is less and less capable of performing its vital functions, such as maintaining the armed forces and collecting taxes.
Unfortunately, the Russian government too often pays only lip service to these problems. For a few years, the new Russian elite has been preoccupied with a fight against communist comeback; but today the communists are roundly defeated. There is no longer any excuse for failing to devise a realistic strategy for the enormous problems facing Russia. The United States cannot much help to draft such a strategy; today’s American experts do not understand the situation any better than the Sovietologists of the past. Only Russians can manage Russia’s problems.
Russia still has an opportunity to mobilize national will and resources to fight terrorism, corruption and other political and social ills. The United States, for its part, cannot significantly influence Russian domestic processes. Washington should hence disengage from Russia’s transformation and prepare for the success or failure of Russia’s own efforts.
Disengagement does not mean that the United States should merely “wait and see.” Any responsible strategy should be preoccupied primarily with the balance of power in Eurasia. Even if Russia reforms itself, it will remain too weak to play a key role in maintaining that balance. But if Russia emerges as a viable nation, there should be a long-term plan to integrate it into NATO and the European Union–on a step-by-step schedule, with modest incentives along the way.
The success of Russian reform should not be taken for granted. If Russia fails, an enormous vacuum of power and nationalistic chaos will emerge in the middle of Eurasia. There is hardly any strategist with a plan for meeting such a challenge. Yet nobody, least of all the Russian people, can afford to be unprepared for such a contingency. According to a grim joke heard in Moscow, “Russia” refers more to a territory than a nation. There is still time to disprove this joke–or take it seriously.
