[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 21 (Wednesday, March 2, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          ENOUGH BEAR STROKING

                                 ______


                           HON. NEWT GINGRICH

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 2, 1994

  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, I would like to encourage all of my 
colleagues in Congress to read the following essay by Charles 
Krauthammer on the new reality in Russia.
  As Mr. Krauthammer points out, the Clinton administration has gone to 
great lengths to support President Yeltsin and his efforts to bring 
about economic and political reform. However, despite these measures, 
there has been a resurgence of nationalism and imperialism, and the 
United States must prepare to take some resolute steps to ensure that 
Russia does not once again become a threat to her neighbors or anyone 
else.

                       [From Time, Jan. 31, 1994]

                          Enough Bear Stroking

                        (By Charles Krauthammer)

       Just over a year ago in Stockholm, Russia's Foreign 
     Minister delivered a shocking speech announcing a return to 
     empire and cold war. No more Mr. Nice Guy for ``Greater 
     Russia,'' declared Andrei Kozyrev. ``The space of the former 
     Soviet Union . . . is essentially a post-imperial space, 
     where Russia has to defend its interests by all available 
     means, including military and economic ones.''
       The speech created a sensation. Western delegates were 
     stunned--until Kozyrev explained an hour later that he was 
     playacting. The speech, he said, was one Moscow hard-liners 
     would deliver were they to seize power. He was warning of the 
     dark future awaiting the world should Yeltsin fall.
       Well, Yeltsin did not fall. The Soviet-era hard-liners 
     Kozyrev warned against fell. Some are in jail. But now it is 
     Kozyrev himself declaring last week that Russia should keep 
     its troops in neighboring republics: ``We should not withdraw 
     from those regions that have been in the sphere of Russian 
     interest for centuries.''
       This time he is not kidding. And because he is not, 
     Kozyrev, a man who truly represents Russian moderation, has 
     given the world a measure of how far Russian moderation has 
     traveled in the past year. For months Russia has been 
     interfering in neighboring republics, notably Georgia and 
     Azerbaijan, to bring them under Russian domination. 
     Withdrawal from the Baltics is stalled. And Belarus, which 
     agreed to scrap its currency and restore the ruble, is in 
     effect being economically annexed.
       Market reform is in retreat as well. The day after 
     President Clinton finished his Moscow summit, Yegor Gaidar, 
     chief architect of economic reform, resigned. Four days 
     later, Boris Fyodorov, the other major reformer, was purged 
     from the government. The ruble is collapsing. The Prime 
     Minister talks of a return to wage and price controls.
       All this is acutely embarrassing for Clinton, who had 
     trumpeted Yeltsin's commitment to reform during his Moscow 
     visit. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, in particular, waxed 
     enthusiastic about the assurances he had received that reform 
     would continue. Assurances from whom? From the doomed Gaidar 
     and Fyodorov, with whom Bentsen had excellent meetings.
       Within a week of the trip to Moscow, the President's Russia 
     policy had collapsed. Russia's slide is not, mind you, a 
     failure of Clinton's personal diplomacy. There are limits to 
     personal diplomacy. (Something politicians often have 
     difficulty recognizing: ``Lord,'' said Senator William Borah 
     after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, ``if only I 
     could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been 
     avoided.'') Personal diplomacy cannot reverse the trajectory 
     of a great power. Russia's retreat is an aftershock of the 
     December elections in which the totalitarian parties 
     campaigning against reform and for empire won about half the 
     vote.
       The people have spoken, and Yeltsin has listened. Clinton 
     has not. He keeps campaigning for Russian democracy, but he 
     refuses to acknowledge what the people voted for in a 
     democratic election. Why did Clinton spend so much of his 
     Moscow trip cheerleading for economic reform? That is 
     Yeltsin's job. Why should an American President expose 
     himself and his country to blame for the suffering such 
     reform inevitably brings?
       By the same token, now that the Russian people have spoken, 
     it is time to change our attitude to Russia's foreign policy 
     too. During the fight to the finish between the Soviet-era 
     Congress and Yeltsin, it made sense for the U.S. to back him 
     to the hilt. That meant bending over backward not to offend 
     Russian nationalism: leaning hard on Ukraine to disarm; 
     raising no fuss when Russian troops intervened in Georgia, 
     Tajikistan and Moldova; keeping the East Europeans out of 
     nato.
       We gave bear stroking a try. It did not work. Despite our 
     extraordinary deference to Russian national feelings, the 
     antireform and anti-Western parties did exceptionally well in 
     free elections. Yeltsin is accommodating to reality. Time for 
     us to follow suit.
       Yeltsin still represents as moderate a government as Russia 
     is going to produce. But that highlights all the more clearly 
     the limits of Russian moderation. It would be foolish, 
     therefore, to continue a purely Russocentric policy that bets 
     the house on the hope that with enough Western coaxing and 
     acquiescence, Russia will turn into a Western democracy, a 
     Cyrillic England. It is far more prudent for the West to 
     demonstrate some firmness, to show we will respect Russia's 
     national interests but not its imperial impulses.
       If Russia tires of reform, that is her business. But if 
     Russia hungers for empire, that unfortunately is our 
     business. As leader of the West, we must be the one to say 
     no. Instead, for fear of offending Russia, we say no to the 
     pro-Western Poles, Czechs and Hungarians seeking admittance 
     to nato.
       Russia needs to be told that it does not have a veto over 
     nato membership. That only an imperial Russia would take 
     offense at East Europeans finding shelter in nato--the Polish 
     army, after all, is no threat to Moscow. And that if Russia 
     insists on military pressure on its neighbors, it will pay a 
     high price, economic and diplomatic, in relations with 
     America.
       The current unpleasantness is neither Yeltsin's fault nor 
     Clinton's. But it is a fact. The free ride given Russia, 
     based on hopes for a kind of Russia that is not, has got to 
     end.

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