Russia on the Couch

"Geotherapy: Russia's Neuroses, and Ours" by Stephen Sestanovich, in The National Interest (Fall 1996), 1112 16th St. N.W., Ste. 540, Washington, D.C. 20036.

Pundits such as former secretary of state Henry Kissinger have been sounding the alarm about the dangers of a Russia torment- ed by its loss of superpower status. Seeking relief from its national pain, these observers fear, Russia will be drawn to an expansionist foreign policy, and they warn against "cod- dling" the Russian bear. But these "geotherapists" are speaking nonsense, contends Sestanovich, vice president for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In last year's election, President Boris Yelt- sin used foreign policy "as a tool to demon- strate the differences between himself and the Communists, and to remind voters of what they don't want to retrieve from their 'glorious' past," Sestanovich writes. When the Russian parliament in March passed two communist-sponsored resolutions annulling the acts under which the Soviet Union was dissolved in 199 1, Yeltsin, denouncing the action as "scandalous," instructed Russian diplomats to tell foreign governments that it would have no effect. Russian public opinion sided with Yeltsin.

A 1996 report by the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, an "establishment" orga- nization in Russia, asked: Will a Union Be Reborn? The conclusion: "However humili- ated the national consciousness of the Russians may be, today Russian society is absolutely unprepared to pay the price of a lot of blood to make up for geopolitical loss- es." The council proposed to boost Russia's international standing and influence by increasing its economic strength. Russia should aim to achieve "economic domina- tion" in the other former Soviet republics, the council said, through "the successful development of Russia itself, the continua- tion of democratic and market reforms, and the beginning of an active policy of econom- ic growth."

Another Western "geotherapist," Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as U.S. national secu- rity adviser under President Carter, frets that today's Russian leaders have "a self-deluding obsession" with their country's international status. Plenty of Russian rhetoric seems to support this view. But Sestanovich says the leadership's loud talk is no more than a "policy of bluff" to discourage other nations from taking advantage of Russia's weakness while the country proceeds with democratization. In the war in Chechnya, Sestanovich says, the Russians "called their own bluff."

After the Soviet Union collapsed five years ago, he points out, many analysts said that Russia might well seek to recover Crimea from Ukraine, to detach and absorb Russian territo- ries from northern Kazakstan or eastern Ukraine, or to acquire "some sort of protec- torate over Russian communities in Estonia."

None of these things have happened, however, and they are not likely to. Russian passions on these matters have cooled.

"Nations do have neuroses," Sestanovich admits, and Russia no doubt has its share. "But for all its pseudo-historical depth, the current psychiatric school of analyzing Russia's politics and policies tells us very lit- tle about what is going on there." In the end, Sestanovich suggests, wise policy makers need to recognize that national interests are more important than national neuroses.