The Impact of Russian Governing Institutions On
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Fragmented Diplomacy: The Impact Of Russian Governing Institutions on Foreign Policy, 1991-1996 Suzanne Marie Crow Thesis Submitted for the PhD Degree in International Relations The London School of Economics and Political Science The University of London 1998 UMI Number: U615575 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615575 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ! |4£S £ S h 76sy 71^97 A b s t r a c t This is a study of foreign policy formulation in the Soviet Union and Russia starting in the Soviet era and continuing through the end of Boris Yeltsin's first term as president. Whereas during the period of rule under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko the bureaucratic politics model could be applied with some success (albeit differently than in the United States), the institutional breakdown of the Gorbachev era saw a deterioration of the model's explanatory power which continued in independent Russia. For the Gorbachev period and policy formulation in the Russian Federation, an alternative model provides a more illuminating explanation of the process. The transition model emphasizes the particular characteristics of democratizing states. By taking into account the excessive accumulation of power by the executive, the prevalence of winner-take-all solutions, the contested and relative nature of laws, the instability or absence of procedures, and the influence of the military on the political process, the transition model offers a better explanation than the bureaucratic politics model for the way in which policy was formulated in Russia in the period 1991-1996. Given the hurdles Russia still faces in its democratic development, and the frequency with which institutions, individuals, and procedures change in the upper echelons of the political elite, it appears that the transition model will retain significant explanatory power for many years to come. 2 For Klaus This study was supported in part by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 3 C o n t e n t s List of Abbreviations 5 1 The Framework of Theory 7 2 Soviet Foreign Policy 45 Decisionmaking under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko 3 Soviet Foreign Policy 100 Decisionmaking under Gorbachev 4 Russian Foreign Policy 146 Decisionmaking in the First Republic 5 Russian Foreign Policy 224 Decisionmaking in the Second Republic 6 Case Study One: Sanctions Against 287 Rump Yugoslavia 7 Case Study Two: The CFE Treaty's 320 Flank Limits 8 Russia in the Comparative 3 54 Perspective 9 The Outlook for Russian Foreign 3 63 Policy Formulation Bibl i ograpy 369 Appendix 1: List of Interviews 388 Appendix 2: Members of Presidential 3 90 Council 4 A bbreviations U sed in t hi s S t u d y AFP Agence France Press CC Central Committee CFE Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty CIS Commonwealth of Independent States CPD Congress of People's Deputies CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union CSCE Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe EXOP Executive Office of the President FAPSI Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information (Federalnoe Agentsvo Pravitelstvennoi Svyazi i Informatsii) FBIS Foreign Broadcast Information Service FIS Foreign Intelligence Service FPA Foreign Policy Analysis GRU Main Intelligence Administration (Glavnoye Razveyvatelnoye Upravlenie) ID International Department I ID International Information Department INF Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces IR International Relations KGB Committee of State Security (Komitet Gosudardstvenii Bezopastnosti) KPSS Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza) LDP Liberal Democratic Party of Russia MFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs MGIMO Moscow State Institute of International Relations (Moskovskii Gosudarstvennii Institut Mezhdunarodykh Otnoshenii) NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NSC National Security Council 5 NTV (Berlin) News Television (Germany) NTV Independent Russian Television Network PDD Presidential Decision Directive RF Russian Federation RFE/RL Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RSFSR Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic SC Russian Federation Security Council SS-23 The name of a Soviet/Russian missile TASS Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (Telegrafnoye Agenstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza) UN United Nations UNPROFOR United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia and Croatia UNSC United Nations Security Council US United States USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 6 C h a p t e r 1 The Framework of Theory An observer of Russian foreign policy in the early 1990s would be struck by two phenomena: the openness with which Russian policymakers debated foreign policy and the disarray in Russian diplomacy. In contrast to the expression of strict unity in Soviet foreign policy, Russian foreign policy seemed disorganized and fragmented. How could Russia's foreign policy best be explained and understood? And what did Russia's foreign policy behavior between 1991 and 1996 (the period between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Yeltsin's first term as president) presage for the long term? This study, which focuses on the period 1991-1996, attempts to answer these questions by analyzing how Russian governing institutions participated in the foreign policymaking process and affected (or failed to affect) policy outcomes. Two lines of inquiry are pursued. First, can the bureaucratic politics model help explain Russian foreign policy? Second, to what extent do the patterns of foreign policy formulation established during the Soviet period affect post-Soviet Russia and how does an understanding of the process of transition from communism to democracy help to explain Russian foreign policy behavior? Foreign Policy Analysis Foreign policy analysis (FPA) attempts to understand foreign policy output through the analysis 7 Chapter 1 The Framework of Theory of domestic input into foreign policy behavior. FPA focuses on the activity occurring below the level of the state or international system. It assumes that "in the social universe, events often have more than one cause, and causes can be found in more than one type of location."1 More specifically, it is the recognition that within-state processes can sometimes offer complementary, if not better, explanations for foreign policy behavior than explanations of processes at the international level. As Light and Hill put it: "While not the focal point of International Relations (IR), it is an indispensable level of analysis."2 As a field of inquiry within IR, foreign policy analysis can be traced back to the 1954 study by Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin: Decision-Making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics.3 What was new about their approach was their emphasis on the domestic aspects of foreign policy behavior. In a 1962 article refining their work, Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin emphasized the importance of. understanding the makers of foreign policy as "participants in a system of actions" taken in a specific context which must be considered to understand a country's foreign policy.4 ^■Barry Buzan, "The Level of Analysis Problem in International Relations," in Ken Booth and Steve Smith, eds. International Relations Theory Today. (Cambridge: Policy Press, 1995), p. 189. 2Christopher Hill and Margot Light, "Foreign Policy Analysis," in Margot Light and A.J.R. Groom, eds. International Relations: A Handbook of Current Theory. (London: Pinter Publishers, 1985), p. 156. 3Steve Smith, "Theories of foreign policy: an historical overview," Review of International Studies. January 1986, p. 14. 4Richard Snyder, H.W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin, "The Decision- Making Approach," in Ernst-Otto Czempiel, ed. Die Lehre von den Internationalen Beziehungen. (Darmstadt, FRG: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), p. 238. 8 Chapter 1 The Framework of Theory Thus the emphasis was not on outcome alone but on the process that led to that particular outcome. FPA became more prominent as a subfield of International Relations as a result of inquiry into the level of analysis problem -- the effort to differentiate between policies taken at the level of individual, state, and international system. The level of analysis problem became prominent in the 1960s, having been popularized through the work of Singer.5 It reflected the desire to apply scientific rigor, as utilized in the study of the natural sciences, to social science research.6 By looking at the components of the foreign policymaking process in a disaggregated form, it was believed that analysis of foreign policy outcomes could be made more precise and foreign policy behavior more understandable. Foreign policy analysis seemed particularly useful in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, a time which saw much questioning of authority and searching for reasons to explain what many considered home-made fiascoes in US behavior, both at home and abroad. "What went wrong?" and "how could this have happened?" were questions underpinning the popular debate as well as inquiry into US foreign policy undertaken by scholars of International