Ex-Soviets’ Commonwealth Not Functioning, U.S. Says

Bush Administration officials said Thursday it is increasingly clear that the 2-month-old Commonwealth of Independent States is failing to function, completing the transformation of the old Soviet Union into 15 independent nations with little in common beyond a consensus on control of nuclear weapons.

The widening divisions among the new nations have come as a disappointment for the Administration, which had hoped the Commonwealth--a treaty among 11 of the republics, forged hastily in December--could become a vehicle for economic, political and military cooperation.

Instead, most of the 15 former Soviet republics are talking about creating their own national armies, and several are resisting cooperation with Russia’s economic reforms.

Administration officials said they are still urging officials in Ukraine, Uzbekistan and other fractious republics to cooperate with each other. But they no longer expect much beyond preservation of the agreement that places the old Soviet nuclear forces under joint control.

“There’s no real Commonwealth in any functioning sense in terms of economic policy,” one senior official said. “It isn’t really there.”

CIA Director Robert M. Gates told the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week that “we see the potential for conflict (among the republics) as rising. . . Although republic leaders recognize the need to cooperate, they continue to have fundamental differences over the sharing of power and resources.”

As a result, the Administration has begun adjusting its policies to deal separately with 15 republics moving in different economic and political directions--and to try to defuse conflicts among them.

The latest sign of the new realities came in a telephone call from President Bush to Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk on Thursday morning. Bush, an official said, indicated for the first time he is willing to let Ukraine repay its share of Soviet foreign debt separately from the rest of the Commonwealth, a key step toward economic secession.

Previously, the United States had urged Ukraine to join with Russia and other republics to handle the debt--partly because the Administration wanted to promote the use of a single currency and central Commonwealth bank. But Ukraine insisted on replacing the Soviet ruble with its own currency.

Bush’s agreement to consider the Ukrainian proposal reflected a gradual acceptance by the Administration of Kravchuk’s position, one official said, noting, “The crack (among the republics) has started, and it can only get wider.”

On military issues, the Administration is adjusting to a future in which most of the former Soviet republics have their own distinct armies--another process launched by Ukraine.

As a result, U.S. strategic planners are now focusing on building a new, friendly relationship with Russia, which controls most of the conventional and nuclear forces. In a formal statement at a congressional hearing this week, Secretary of State James A. Baker III pointed proudly to “a new security partnership between Russia and America.” He did not mention the Commonwealth.

U.S. officials have urged Russia and Ukraine to peaceably settle their dispute over ownership of the Black Sea Fleet and other military units in Ukraine.

But the outlook for the next few years is complicated because hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russian troops are still stationed in non-Russian republics, including the Baltics, which, along with Georgia, have not joined the Commonwealth. As republics establish their own armies and end the Commonwealth’s conventional military role, they must agree on who inherits troops and equipment--a process that concerns U.S. officials.

The Commonwealth’s failure also complicates Western efforts to help rebuild the 15 republics’ economies because dealing with so many of them is more complicated than dealing with one and because they are natural trading partners. “We had hoped that they would see the virtues of a single economic space . . . but this is not turning out to be the great economic integration of 1992,” a senior official noted.

In particular, Ukraine has moved toward erecting trade barriers with neighboring Russia and has been implacable on the issue of a separate currency and debt settlement.

The Soviet Union owed between $60 billion and $80 billion to the United States when it ceased to exist last December. Ukraine initially proposed to assume 16.4% of that debt as its separate share. But Kravchuk told Bush he was willing to increase that figure to almost 21%, a U.S. official said. Bush did not object to the proposal but said he would discuss it with other major industrial nations holding the Soviet official debt.

“Basically, you’ve got a free country here and you’ve got to start writing these other guys off because they may not be able to pay up, anyway,” a U.S. official said, apparently referring to the smallest, poorest republics.

In the long run, U.S. officials still hope that most of the 15 republics will decide to link their economies together--”something perhaps like the European Economic Community,” said Thomas M. T. Niles, assistant secretary of state for European affairs.

But the process may take some time.

“What you have now is like a bunch of guys disassembling a car,” a senior official said. “Once they’ve got it disassembled, they’re going to discover that the pieces don’t function very well by themselves. But it looks like they have to go through the process of taking it apart to find that out.”

McManus reported from Washington, Jehl from San Antonio.