Susan Eisenhower

Why Bait the Bear?

Susan Eisenhower

On the question of NATO expansion, the Clinton administration has repeatedly asserted that the "train has left the station," alluding to the inevitability of the incorporation of key Central European countries into the Western defense establishment. This position clearly has the endorsement of Adrian Karatnycky, who maintains that this "firm stance" has had "a salutary effect on internal Russian politics and on Russia's external conduct; Russia has joined the Partnership for Peace, has begun negotiations in earnest with Chechen rebels, and Kremlin hawks--including Defense Minister Pavel Grachev--are under pressure of being forced out." ["Open Up the Club," The Washington Post, op-ed, July 6, 1995.]

But Karatnycky has missed an important change in Russian politics. It has been public opinion and the Duma--not the West or the threat of NATO expansion--that have forced the regime to enter into serious peace negotiations and consider the firing of Grachev. Popular support for NATO's Partnership for Peace also enabled the regime to sign it. (It should be noted that unflagging Clinton administration pressure and the possibility of NATO expansion had zero effect on the Russian sale of nuclear reactors to Iran.)

Recent developments actually suggest that Russia's neighbors to the west have less to fear from Russia than they did two years ago when Boris Yeltsin ruled supreme, capable of blowing away his parliament and acting with impunity on almost every issue. While advocates say the Chechen War has enhanced the case for the expansion of NATO, the reverse is true. The war has demonstrated that pluralist forces are at work in Russia today and that the Russian people are not closet imperialists. If Yeltsin, whose approval rating is now around 6 percent, could not get public support for rolling tanks into Chechnya--an area recognized as part of the Russian Federation, whose people are generally disliked by the average Russian--it is hard to imagine that there could be public or even military support for using force against the Baltic republics, let alone Poland or any other Central European country.

Expansion advocates counter that Russia has not had a peace movement, but that too isn't correct. When Yeltsin mobilized the military last December, a significant number of officers refused to take orders. Many mothers went to the front to bring their sons home in protest. Many in the media also defied intimidation by the regime and continued their explicit and largely anti-war coverage of events. Even our own democracy civil disobedience during Vietnam did not extend to active duty officers and caravans of mothers headed for Saigon.

The political impact of the Russian anti-war sentiment has been underestimated because it has not been expressed in the streets. Nevertheless, it is now enmeshed in parliamentary and presidential politics. The leading contender today for the presidential election next year is retired general Alexsandr Lebed, a defiant critic of the war. Another dove, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, has gained points for his peace-promoting efforts to avert further bloodshed during the recent Chechen hostage crisis. Even Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Liberal Democratic leader who initially supported the war, has lost popularity and withdrawn his support for the regime. The reality of this political competition has done more than any Western pressure ever could to moderate Russian policy.

Democracy has also been strengthened recently with the resolution of the showdown between Yeltsin and the parliament. Unlike the political clash that cost hundreds of lives in 1993, a compromise was found that included the sacking of some of Yeltsin's cronies. To credit the prospects of expanding NATO for these developments is to hark back to the fallacious Cold War notion that it was Reagan's threat to build an SDI system, and not the Soviet people themselves, that brought about the collapse of communism. Glasnost gave the Russian people a voice, and they are no longer pawns in the political life of their country.

That's why even those Russian officials who don't see NATO enlargement as a threat worry that in the coming elections Russian hard-liners will exploit the convergence of NATO air strikes in the Balkans and relentless Western talk about moving NATO lines to the former Soviet border. The West can always offer a military umbrella for Central Europe without their formal entry into NATO. Russian aggression in the West is currently unimaginable, and Russia's nascent democracy is at last showing some signs of success. So why now bait the bear? It's not too late to stop the train quietly at the next station.

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