Proposals, Like Nixon’s, to Send Money to Save Democracy in Russia Won’t Work : Foreign Policy: Billions in aid are no substitute for a political dialogue with Commonwealth states. Who the democrats, anyway?

Less than nine months after being told that it would take a five-year program of $30 billion annually to save Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the future of democracy in the Soviet Union, we now hear that a similar program of $20 billion a year is needed to save Boris N. Yeltsin and democracy in the former Soviet Union. Having great faith in redemption by conversion, Americans are impressed by the proposition that U.S. aid is needed to sustain democracy, and that democracy, coupled with market economics, will sustain the peace.

But is it true? Russia is not ours to win or to lose. We do Russian leaders no favor and ourselves a considerable disservice by creating the impression that outside help can avoid years of the most painful austerity; at best, it can somewhat ease the pain of the transition to market economics. The future of democracy in a country that has never known it is bound to depend on factors far more complex than how to make the ruble convertible.

The key issue is not whether aid should be given. Everybody agrees that some assistance is necessary, at a minimum for humanitarian reasons. Nor is there much debate about the resources available and that even the upper range falls short of what is needed. The issue is the excessive claims made by some of the aid proponents. Nostalgia for the Marshall Plan overlooks that it was implemented in societies with long traditions of democratic government, well-established civil services and managers experienced in market economics. None of these conditions applies to the former Soviet Union.

The presidents of the successor states, including Yeltsin, are all former communist cadre--with the exception of Belarus President Stanislav Shushkevich. They are elected, and that is a great step forward; most are ostensibly anti-communist, but they represent a unique political system: without established political parties, effective parliaments or constitutions. Calling these former apparatchiks governing by decree “democratic” is a courtesy and a hope, not a description of reality.

The process of democratization in the former Soviet Union starts practically from point zero. None of the elements that produced democracy in the West has ever been significant in Russia. The Western church, even when it was run in an authoritarian manner, established the premise of limited government by insisting on a spiritual sphere beyond the state’s reach. By contrast, the Russian church was generally the voice of militant state nationalism. Russia never experienced the Reformation, with its appeal to individual conscience, the Enlightenment, with its invocation of the power of reason, or capitalism, with its encouragement of individual initiative. Isolated pockets of all these trends existed, but they never permeated Russian society.

A new political upheaval, rather than bringing about a qualitative change, would most likely deepen the various shades of gray. Yeltsinism will almost certainly not be replaced by central planning and adventurous foreign policy. The existing cadre have witnessed the failings of Stalinist central planning too closely to be tempted by it; their economic convictions are more anti-communist than their political ones. The so-called new despots, if they change the system at all, are likely to be tempted by perestroika without glasnost . They will still need help from the market economies, hence foreign policy might not change much.

Given the barren democratic soil, we must avoid the temptation of overselling--to the Western public and to the Russian people--the likelihood that such aid will produce democracy. For when it becomes clear that it won’t, the consequences could be unfortunate. The West could become the scapegoat for Russian and other nationalists who would blame their economic failures on it. The Western public, its high hopes disappointed, may turn away and, in its disillusionment, could be tempted to use sanctions and other pressures. By causing Russian and other nationalism to boil over, these could generate the aggressiveness their sponsors seek to avoid.

Paradoxically, modesty in our claims for aid programs could enhance their impact. They cannot, in any event, substitute for an open political dialogue with the successor states, especially the Russian federation. We must do what we can to diminish the greatest threat to international stability--yesterday’s revolutionaries turning into the centralizers of tomorrow, and the leaders of the anti-communist revolution becoming the destroyers of the anti-imperialist one. The convenience of dealing with a familiar center must not blind the democracies to the historic reality that Russian imperialism has too often undermined international stability.

There are many worrisome tendencies. The new Russian republic does not conduct itself as if it were the successor of the traditional Russian empire. Symbolic of its reluctance to accept the breakup of the empire is its refusal, up to now, to establish embassies in the other successor states. The leaders of these new states are, in turn, terrified of the re-emergence of Russian imperialism. If recentralization were attempted, let alone were to succeed, the historic fears of Russia’s neighbors would reappear with a vengeance. Suspicion would govern their mutual relationships; arms would multiply; Russia would resent its neighbors’ fears and the neighbors would try to protect themselves against Russian hostility; Cold War patterns would re-emerge.

Western countries are unwittingly encouraging this danger. Yeltsin is treated as the linear descendant of Gorbachev and of other rulers of the empire. Aid programs are presented in terms of Russia’s needs. Contacts with the other republics--even one so significant as Ukraine--are formalistic and infrequent.

Aid programs must be part of a political dialogue, especially with the Russian republic, and they should be made dependent on the full acceptance of political sovereignty in the relations with the successor states. Considering the membership of these countries in the United Nations, this is hardly an excessive demand. We must include the other republics in a comprehensive program and avoid any implication that Moscow is the voice or the chosen engine for the development of the remainder of the Soviet Union.

Such a political dialogue would sketch the prospects of a new set of relationships. A Russia that renounced domination would end the causes of conflict with the United States; it could become a global partner. A Russia separated from Europe by the Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states would allow a degree of cooperation with the European Community unachievable while Europe was trembling before Russian arms. A number of conclusions follow:

-- Aid must be based on a precise and realistic concept of how it serves the national interest.

-- Economic aid cannot be an end in itself. It should not focus on one successor state but be part of an overall concept encompassing them all.

-- It must be deployed to such fields as energy, where there is a prospect of rapid currency earnings, or to the improvement of transportation and agriculture.

U.S. policy must not restrict its field of vision to the former Soviet Union. The principal cause of European conflicts during the past 150 years has been the existence of a no man’s land between the German and the Russian peoples. Having proclaimed their commitment to the freedom of Eastern Europe for a generation, the industrial democracies cannot abandon these first victims of Soviet aggression. If they do, they will be creating the sources of future conflict. The eastern nations should be related to the European Community as rapidly as possible and be given high priority in any aid program.