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US Foreign Policy and Chechnya

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US Foreign Policy and Chechnya 2 US Foreign Policy and Chechnya Table of Contents Forward by Morton Abramowitz 3 Introduction 4 I. The First Chechen War 6 II. The Second Chechen War 11 III. The Bush Response(s) to Chechnya 22 IV. Conclusion 29 Epilogue 31 Endnotes 32 About the Author 41 Euro-Atlantic Initiatives 42 The Century Foundation 43 The Stanley Foundation 44 US Foreign Policy and Chechnya 3 Forward h e ch nya has been and remains one of the greatest stains in Ru s s i a’s efforts to move t ow a rd a more open and democratic sys t e m . The Chechen wars, as Pro fessor Mich ae l CM c Faul of St a n f o rd Unive r s i ty reminds us in this important essay, “rank as the most s e rious scars of Ru s s i a’s troubled tra n s i t i on . ” Since 1994 these wars, with their vast destru c t i on and terrible human ri g h ts abuses, h a ve also posed an enormous policy (and moral) pro bl e m f o r Am e ri can administra t i ons intent on trying to better integrate Russia into the We s t e rn c om mu n i ty of nation s . Dealing with Chech nya has aroused mu ch debate in and out of the US gove rnment—a debate that over the years has sadly decl i n e d. In 2001 the Stanley Foundation and the Century Foundation established a task force to look at the broad question of the impact of American domestic political forces on US-Russia relations. (A report was issued in October 2002.) The first subject the task force discussed was Chechnya, which we labeled “the dog that did not bark.” Professor McFaul made an impressive oral pres- entation on US policy on Chechnya, which we asked him to expand and bring up to date. This essay is the result, a detailed analysis of US policy from the Clinton to Bush administrations and the impact on that policy from forces within Con g ress and from the NGO com mu n i ty who tried to generate greater public debate and secure a tougher Am e ri can re s p onse tow a rd Ru s s i a’s actions in Chech ny a . McFaul’s tale is a sad one. Its bottom line is that US policy has had little impact on Russia’s behavior in Chechnya. Similarly, while many like Senator Jesse Helms fought very hard to toughen policy, domestic political forces had little impact on changing it. Successive administrations were willing to offer up on ly rh e t o ri c . As McFaul succinctly puts it “ C l i n t on I was not ve ry cri t i ca l . C l i n t on II was ve ry cri t i ca l . Candidate Bush was ve ry cri t i ca l as well. President Bush has dropped the issue.” In the end no administra t i on was willing to take tougher measures against a huge country where we had so many other interests at stake and where policymakers felt they could not affect the conduct of the war. The war on terro ri s m s t ru ck the final nail into any serious Am e ri can action on Chech ny a , although I am told that senior administra t i on officials at least bring it up re g u l a rly but quietly. D omestic politics pro- duced some partisan debate over Chech ny a , but it never went mu ch beyond the Beltw ay. An d , u n f o rt u n a t e ly for the Chech e n s , t h e re are too few of them in the United States to effe c t i ve ly lobby the gove rnment to affect ch a n g e . Over time dissenting voices have died dow n . “The ter- rible tragedy that is Chech ny a , ” M c Faul con cludes from his study, “is a sobering reminder of the limits of Am e ri can powe r. ” Morton Abramowitz Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation December 27, 2002 4 US Foreign Policy and Chechnya Introduction US Foreign Policy and Chechnya1 ince the end of the Cold Wa r,Am e ri can foreign policymakers have made integra t i on of Russia into the West a principal objective . M o s t , though not all , h a ve assumed that SRussian integra t i on can take place on ly after Russia has successfully consolidated demo- c ratic and market institutions at hom e . Promoting the deve l o pment of these institutions in Ru s s i a , t h e re f o re, has remained a central com p onent of US policy tow a rd Russia since the c o llapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Presidents and their staffs have defined the stra t e gy of pursuing these objective s . President George H. W. Bush wanted to see Russia move closer to the We s t , but did not believe that the United States should get intimately inv o lved with the t ra n s f o rm a t i on process in Ru s s i a . So on after becoming pre s i d e n t , Wi lliam J. C l i n t on adopted a more activist stra t e gy for guiding and influencing Russian re f o rm . In his term of office, President George W. Bush has re t u rned to a more hands-off appro a ch to promoting intern a l Russian re f o rm but has adopted a more aggre s s i ve policy of integrating Russia into We s t e rn i n s t i t u t i on s , i n cluding the No rth Atlantic Tre a ty Organiza t i on (NATO) and the Wo rld Tra d e O r g a n i za t i on (WTO ) . Although the accents of policy have varied among administra t i on s , t h e basic goals have remained the same: p romote democra cy and capitalism in Russia and inte- g rate Russia into the We s t e rn com mu n i ty of democratic states. More than a decade after the Soviet collapse, the progress toward these goals is more striking than the setbacks. Ten years ago, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his newly minted govern- ment launched a set of changes on a revolutionary scale. Like earlier social revolutions, Yeltsin and his allies sought to transform the fundamental organization of the polity and economy in Ru s s i a . T h ey aimed to destroy the Soviet command econ omy and replace it with a mark e t e c onomy. They also wanted to crush the Soviet dictatorship and replace it with a democratic polity. Unlike their counterparts in France in 1789 or Russia in 1917, Russia’s anticommunist revolutionaries added an additional task: the dissolution of the Soviet empire. Yeltsin’s agenda was also fundamentally different from that of the Jacobins or Bolsheviks in its approach to the other leading powers in the international system. Whereas these earlier revolutionaries sought to challenge the existing Western community of states, Yeltsin aspired to join this club. A decade ago few predicted that “the reformers” would be successful in implementing their enormous agenda. At the time,Russia’s elite and society were deeply divided on every issue of this agenda. As demonstrated by the overwhelming majority who voted in favor of preserving the Union in a March 1991 referendum, Soviet dissolution was very unpopular. The resistance to acting Prime Minister Ye gor Gaidar and his re f o rms in the Russian con g ress underscore d the weak support for market re f o rm s . If many post-Com munist countries debated what mark e t re f o rms to pursue after the fall of com mu n i s m , Russia debated whether to pursue mark e t re f o rms at all . In 1992 it seemed that the democratic re f o rms had been successful. Yeltsin and his allies believed that the political struggle was over and that the democratic side had won . I n J a n u a ry 1992, t h e re f o re, the focus had to be on the other two agenda items—con f i rm i n g Ru s s i a’s new borders and creating new market institution s . US Foreign Policy and Chechnya 5 A decade later, one has to be impressed with the scale of change. Well into the 1990s, it remained unclear (1) if boundaries between new states would become permanent and peaceful, (2) if capitalism would ever take hold, (3) if Russia could integrate into the West, and (4) if democracy would ever consolidate. Russia has made some amazing progress. The Soviet empire is gone and will never be reconstituted. Belarus may join Russia again, but the coercive subjugation of states and people adjacent to Russia’s borders appears very unlikely. Though thousands of lives have been lost as a result of this empire’s dissolution, Russian decol- onization has been relatively peaceful when compared to the collapse of other empires.
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