Russia's Roaring Twenties

Bullish about the great bear's future

Martin Morse Wooster from the December 1994 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Noting that only 5 percent of Russians tell pollsters that they are interested in politics, the September 3 Economist observes that "the fire has gone out of Russian politics. While Russia will always have the capacity to deliver nasty surprises, after nearly nine months of relative political calm, it is hard now to conceive of anyone shelling parliament or seeking to overthrow the president, or of anything else that could persuade hundreds of thousands of people to demonstrate in the streets."

As Russia shows signs of slowly becoming a country as bland and stable as the advanced democracies of the West, American cries to spend billions to save the Russians from themselves have weakened. But some saber-rattlers still call for a larger NATO to combat the Russian army if it threatens to revive. Today, the jingoists contend, the Russian Army will reabsorb Belarus and Ukraine; then they will march into Riga and Warsaw; then the hungry Russian bear will restore the evil empire in its thirst for warm-water ports in Turkey and the Persian Gulf.

But this scenario, warns analyst Walter Russell Mead in the Summer World Policy Journal, is highly unlikely. While American forces should still defend its borders against potent Russian intercontinental missiles, he contends, such neocontainment fantasies will "weaken NATO, increase the prospects of war in Europe, increase American defense spending without enhancing American security, sharpen the threat to American security posed by Russia's still formidable nuclear arsenal, and create serious problems in regional diplomacy for the United States in both Europe and Asia."

Under Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko, the Soviet Union was an evil empire. The Russia of Boris Yeltsin is not imperial and not wicked; it is a struggling, somewhat democratic, somewhat capitalist society that appears to be slowly becoming more free and more civilized. The best thing America can do to aid Russia is buy their goods, disarm their nuclear bombs, and leave them alone.

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