Clinton Already Facing Pressure to Help Russia

Five weeks before the presidential election, one of Bill Clinton’s top foreign policy advisers made a quiet visit to Moscow. The adviser was formally attending a conference on the future of Russia, but he also carried an informal message: Clinton is serious about increasing U.S. help for Russia’s reforms.

The most striking message for Johns Hopkins University professor Michael Mandelbaum, however, came from the Russian side of the table.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s reforms are in deep political trouble, Kremlin officials said. The West has promised plenty of aid but delivered little, they complained. Yeltsin is under pressure to take a tougher line defending Russia’s interests, they said, and that could mean a more prickly relationship with the United States.

“Michael was shaken,” another participant said of Mandelbaum. “He had not expected that kind of onslaught.”

Clinton is still two months away from his inauguration, but he is already hearing warnings about a coming crisis in Russia and his responsibility to avert it.

Clinton has made it clear that he wants to focus on U.S. economic difficulties for the time being, an agenda that would not be helped by large new commitments of aid to Russia. Yet the warnings about Yeltsin’s prospects are growing more dire.

If Yeltsin fails, Clinton is being told, the likely alternative is far worse: a nationalistic, authoritarian regime that would be deeply unfriendly toward the West.

“The Yeltsin government is in mortal danger,” former President Richard M. Nixon said last week.

“We should be doing much more than we are doing now,” said Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), an occasional Clinton adviser who has been mentioned as a potential secretary of state.

“The whole concept of reform . . . is under grave threat,” agreed Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), another possible Cabinet nominee. “And I think, frankly, the West is sleepwalking through history here.”

“This is an explosive, dangerous, fragile situation,” said Robert S. Strauss, who retired last week from his post as U.S. ambassador to Moscow. “It is a survivable situation . . . but only, only if the West gives a hand.”

Is Clinton getting the message? “I’m sure he is,” Strauss said. “I think he’ll do right.”

Indeed, Clinton made a point during his presidential campaign of backing Western help for Russia. Last spring, he proposed an aid package for Moscow even before President Bush did.

“For ourselves and for millions of people who seek to live in freedom and prosperity, this revolution must not fail,” candidate Clinton said in a speech April 1. “I know it is unpopular today to call for foreign assistance of any kind. It’s harder when Americans are hurting, as so many millions are. But I believe it is deeply irresponsible to forgo this short-term investment in our long-term security.”

Since his election, Clinton has not returned to that pledge except for a general reaffirmation of his support for Russian reform after Yeltsin telephoned with congratulations Nov. 5.

The Russian president invited Clinton to make an early visit to Moscow, but the President-elect put off any decision. “I think we have to focus on the economy in the first 100 days,” spokesman George Stephanopoulos said.

But the growing alarm about Yeltsin’s prospects among U.S. officials and experts--including some of Clinton’s own advisers--guarantees that the new President will face pressure to lend some serious attention to Russia’s plight.

And when he does, he will find himself caught in the same dilemma that bedeviled Bush: how to mount a program of assistance with real impact on Russia’s shellshocked economy without costing too much real U.S. money.

“It doesn’t mean just money,” Strauss said, but it does mean some. “We’ve been pretty small and petty in terms of our financial support,” he said.

The basic problem facing Yeltsin is that his attempt to launch a new free-market economy has failed to work in the short run, even though it may yet succeed in the long run. Russia’s industrial production has dropped by 20% or more, inflation has soared and another hard winter lies ahead.

Not surprisingly, rival politicians have accused Yeltsin of trying to institute reforms too fast and have demanded the ouster of his economic czar, acting Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar.

The conflict is expected to peak beginning Dec. 1, when Yeltsin must defend his program in the Congress of People’s Deputies, where his conservative critics have a majority.

The last time Yeltsin faced a troublesome session with the Congress, Bush and other Western leaders came to his rescue by unveiling a $24-billion package of loans. But now, eight months later, only about $2 billion has been released by the International Monetary Fund.

To receive the largest chunk of the money, Russia has to produce a stringent economic reform plan to convince the IMF that the aid won’t be wasted. But Yeltsin, in the face of mounting political opposition, has not tightened credit and the money supply as much as the IMF would like.

At some point, both Russian and Western officials expect that the United States and other IMF members will simply direct the fund to disperse its loans anyway. But for Yeltsin, much of the political advantage has already evaporated.

“At the last Congress, Gaidar was able to use the announcement of Western aid very effectively to win support for his reforms,” a Bush Administration official noted. “But he can’t do that this time. . . . The aid has made little or no mark. We’ve lost our leverage.”

As a result, U.S. officials fear, Yeltsin may feel compelled to compromise with critics and agree to slow his economic reforms further.

At the same time, they say, the failure of the West to deliver on its promises has left a bitter taste in the mouths of some Russian officials and allowed nationalists, including Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi, to argue that Russia has little interest in a close relationship with the United States.

At stake, they add, is more than Russia’s economic health; at stake is whether the next generation of Russian leaders views the United States as a country that came to its aid when needed or as a country that turned its back.

“The most important thing is to put ourselves squarely on the side of the democratic forces,” Bradley said. “This is a window in time, and we cannot let it close.”

Among the steps Bradley and others are urging Clinton to take are:

* Measures to relieve Russia’s $70-billion foreign debt. “That can have an immediate effect,” Bradley noted. “Every dollar that doesn’t come to the West in interest payments is a dollar that can be used for domestic investment.”

* More direct aid from the West. “There must be a substantial bridge loan from Western governments to help the Russian people through a cruel, cold winter and assist the transition . . . to a free-market economy,” Nixon wrote in a newspaper column last week.

* New housing for Russian officers to help the Red Army withdraw from the Baltic republics. “Let’s send some money and some skills and try to get 50,000 apartments built,” Strauss said. “Germany put up a ton of money” to get the Red Army out of the former East Germany, “and we haven’t put up any.”

* Bigger programs to send U.S. experts to Russia and bring Russians here. “We need a massive effort to expand exchanges,” said Bradley, who authored legislation that will bring 10,000 former Soviet citizens to the United States beginning next year. “We have to give them some skills to put democratic ideas into place.”

* A “Russian Aid Czar” to coordinate the effort better. “We need one coordinator that would be in charge and be responsible and accountable for what happens over there,” Nunn said in a television interview.

Most of those measures cost money--meaning President Clinton would have to put his popularity on the line to persuade Congress and the public that the aid is worthwhile.

But there are some things Clinton, as President, can do for Yeltsin that won’t cost money. One would be to take a strong stance in defense of the rights of the 25 million ethnic Russians who live in Ukraine, the Baltic states and other former Soviet republics, Bradley said.

Another would be to show understanding if Yeltsin slows his reforms because of domestic political pressure and even replaces the Gaidar government with one that includes some of his old-line critics. But that may be a difficult, and divisive, judgment call.