Always there is Russia’s past that arises and smites our swollen hopes. That authoritarian strain, that almost medieval concept of economy, emerges with uncomfortable rawness in times of intense internal stress.
Can Boris Yeltsin suppress it and lead his people into a new century where democracy and competitive markets now dominate? This is the real issue of the current constitutional crisis, where contradiction daily battles contradiction in a gothic interplay of intrigue.
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The main worry is not so much security as economics. The warheads aimed at the West may still pose a threat, but only as potential devices of terror and blackmail rather than geopolitical domination. The hardliners may return, but they cannot restart a Cold War they know they have lost.
America can safely reduce its defense budget substantially no matter what happens, though the Pentagon is bound to argue differently. The nation should not exaggerate this situation to justify keeping outdated bases open and resisting military cuts.
Europe no longer fears Russian troops invading its territory. Europeans fear Russian refugees. Capitalists around the world see the collapse of the Russian economy not as the birth of a new military threat but as the loss of potential new markets they have carefully been eyeing these last five years.
Why does Russia continue to defy our hopes of modernization? The roots of capitalism have not penetrated deeply enough in a land that went from feudalism to communism without experiencing the pains and rewards of an individualistic, free-market economic system.
Instead of trying to develop new entrepreneurial enterprises alongside the old, Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev before him gambled on reforming the anachronistic system of state-run factories. Perestroika, a word that one does not hear too much these days, has proven to be a colossal failure.
But this is a choice that Russia made. Shall we sit back and say that we here in the West, we here in the United States, have the formula for economic prosperity for a country that has only a rudimentary appreciation of capitalism?
It took us a couple of centuries to get to this point and, we might remind, not without the massive shedding of blood, widespread economic suffering and deprivation, civil wars, revolutions, labor conflicts, occasional suspensions of civil liberties and global wars.
To think that a few billion dollars here or there, or a strong public pat on the back to Yeltsin, will enable the Russians to skip 200 years of economic development and become world-class competitors in a few years strikes me as boundless conceit and as naive as the idea that we could eliminate poverty in the United States with a few government programs.
It is not the politically correct thing to say, but perhaps it is time to whisper: Let Russia be Russia. Help Russia to the extent that we can, yes, but don’t overdo it. Let the Russian people learn on their own how to build an economy from within and how to prosper in the modern world. If the free-market forces which Yeltsin represents are strong, they will re-emerge and prevail even if Yeltsin loses the current battle.
And isn’t this what we believe, that capitalism is a superior system? Russia certainly has the option of retreating back into a communist past, but if the last 75 years have taught us anything, and taught the Russians anything, it is that communism as an economic system simply cannot compete in today’s world. But let the Russians work this out in their own way.
If this means the end of Yeltsin, so be it. He’s no Thomas Jefferson, that’s for sure.
If we are going to harbor a few geopolitical fears in the future, let us worry more about China, a country headed for economic superstar status, as well as the rest of Asia, which is no longer dependent on the old Cold War security umbrella. Even Western Europe is showing disturbing signs of political deterioration. The crumbling of old alliances should concern us much more than the trouble in Russia.
Call me a narrow nationalist if you will, but for now I am more concerned about unemployment and economic prosperity in this country than I am in Russia. My bias is to build up the U.S. civilian economy; it is the true source of national security, and, actually, even international cooperation.
There are some who hope that Yeltsin loses for purely domestic economic reasons. This, they believe, would slow the shutdown of the old Cold War machinery and continue to nourish those states that had lived off the military budget for so many years.
Talk about living in the past.