A Sudden Nostalgia for Authoritarianism? : No new world order without a sensible Moscow

Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Arab-Israeli peace talks . . . these are the most immediate foreign policy issues confronting the Clinton Administration as it begins to wrestle with the seemingly never-ending global demands on the nation’s diplomatic, military and economic resources. But looming bigger than all these regional problems, and threatening in the years ahead once again to dominate America’s international agenda, is Russia.

Will it be able to hold to its course of economic and political reform? Can its nascent democratic forces contain the ever-more assertive proponents of retrograde nationalism and authoritarianism? Can it be counted on to continue taking a responsible and measured role in world affairs? Right now there is no certain answer to any of these questions.

But there is at least a keen appreciation in the new Administration of Russia’s crucial importance to hopes for a stable world order, and of the primary place it must command in the thinking and planning of American policy-makers. President Clinton has made two key foreign policy appointments that reflect this assessment. He has named his old friend Strobe Talbott, a former Time magazine editor and author who is a well-informed student of Washington-Moscow relations, to a newly created post as special ambassador to coordinate aid to Russia and the states of the late Soviet Union. And he has nominated the experienced and respected career diplomat Thomas R. Pickering as ambassador to Moscow. The clear signal is that Washington will continue to assign the highest priority to relations with Russia, and that the President intends to remain closely involved in Russian affairs.

That welcome indication comes as more ominous signs cloud the Russian political horizon. A poll taken in Russia by the Times Mirror Center for People and the Press finds an alarming slippage in popular support for democracy--down from 51% two years ago to just 31%--and a commensurate rise in support for a “strong leader,” evidencing an impatience or worse with the country’s experiment in pluralistic government and perhaps even a nostalgia for the order imposed by previous authoritarian regimes. The poll is a worrisome reminder that in times of social and economic upheaval people who have little experience with democratic institutions are often tempted to opt for freedom-limiting expedients.

Russia’s economic distress is in fact deepening. Useful reforms have taken place, but basic changes continue to be deferred. Inflation is spinning out of control as the government prints more and more money to prop up inefficient industries and subsidize prices. The ruble’s precipitous slide has destroyed savings and pauperized millions. Each setback is cited by the enemies of reform as proof that reform is a snare and a delusion. In this unsettled climate a poisonous and reactionary xenophobia finds the nutrients on which it can feed.

It’s hard to imagine a greater threat to world order in coming years than a Russia demoralized and embittered by ineffective or sabotaged reforms, and once more in the grip of forces hostile to the outside world. One week into the Clinton Administration it’s clear that its biggest foreign policy challenge will be to do all it can--by diplomacy and by judicious aid--to keep that from happening.