U.S. Policy toward Putin's Russia: Time for a Change?

February 17, 2005

Unedited transcript prepared from a taped recording.

Proceedings:
MR. ARON:  We have a very fine panel, and people who are usually full of interesting things to say.  Therefore, I would like to start.

These are very troubling times for Russian post-Soviet transition, and therefore in the end, are troubling times also for U.S.-Russian relations, some of which we will discuss today.

This is going to be a very somber summit, perhaps the somberest summit in the past 15 years.  In musical terms, at least the background will be Condelora [ph].  I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.

[Laughter.]

MR. ARON:  Why?  Because in the past 15 years or probably all the way back to 1987 there was a perception that despite very obvious and wide missteps, first the Soviet Union and then Russia were fundamentally on the right track in their transition.  And more importantly, the keeper of the flame, the political regime and its head, whether it was Gorbachev or Yeltsin, were generally perceived as exerting guidance in some fundamental way that kept the Soviet Union or Russia on the right path.

Well, that perception has changed, and in fact it's the political regime that appears to be bent--there's no other word--on taking Russia in a direction that I think most of us would believe is not healthy either for Russia or for U.S.-Russian relations.

With the abolition of the election of governors, self-governance, which of course--local self-governance, which of course the mother of any democracy, has been severely weakened.  The badly needed structural reforms, economic structural reforms, have been abandoned, moved glacially or put on hold indefinitely.  The dismemberment of Yukos and the persecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky--and I would like to underscore this--quite apart from the legal issues involved, that is, the issue of Khodorkovsky's relations to the accusations against him, or whether or not Yukos evaded taxes, this is quite immaterial because the process itself has been blatantly subverted, and at increasing variance with not just the spirit but the letter of a very progressive and promising criminal procedural code of 2001.  Mockery has been made of judicial independence, and the institutions involved have been very blatantly to the will of the executive, thus, in effect, taking Russia at least 10, 15 years back.

Now, when the institutions of societal feedback systematically eroded, be that political parties, independent political parties, or media, particularly television, the regime's policies are increasingly a mix of incompetence, unpopularity and ineffectiveness, and a very dangerous mix of course for a transitional country.  We've seen it in the case of Ukraine, and most recently and most dramatically, and I would say most dangerously to the regime, we've seen it in the popular reaction to the monetization of social benefits.

In the end the center of political gravity in Russia has been quite deliberately raised by the regime almost to the very top, which inevitably results in a very precarious position for the regime, breeds instability, and that instability could I believe almost at any minute turn into a serious political crisis stemming from three directions:  first, politics itself, as we've seen with the apparently uninstigated, quite spontaneous mass protests by the pensioners and students; then it could be brought about by a relative deprivation that is a sudden stop or decline in the incomes that have been growing rather healthily in the past 5, 6 years; and of course by another large-scale Beslan-like terrorist attack.

So we have been right to focus on these changes because they go to the core of Russia's political regime.  Yet I think by necessity we have ignored a larger context within which these events occurred and without which we cannot give our policymakers near-term scenarios, because unlike the Soviet days the Kremlin is not, or at least not yet, the only political, economic or social player on the Russian scene.  And thinking of these scenarios must take into account this wider context.

I know that the panelists have their plates already heaping, but panel organizers in house are a notoriously greedy and ungrateful lot, so I wonder if they could address or perhaps append to their remarks their reaction to a few questions that I'm going to pose.

First of all, what do I mean by a larger context?  I think a good place to start is Mike McFaul's observation that both in scope and depth the 1991 Russian Revolution may be compared only to the French Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.  Similarly--and I will continue to exploit Mike's very fine writings--he hailed a 1996 presidential election as a historic event, which together with events that immediately preceded it or followed it were, I quote, "remarkable democratic achievements."  And indeed they were.  The 1996 election was unprecedented because it was free and informed choice by over 70 million Russian men and women, a fundamental vision out of two competitive visions of Russia's future.

And of course, the much maligned and often honored only in the breach, the 1993 constitution, nevertheless, as a symbol and an ideal, was an astonishing breakthrough in Russian political history, declaring specific liberties, the primacy of individual over state, enshrining private property, and explicitly prohibiting a national ideology.

So contrary to the grotesquely misinformed opinions that place Russia in the same category of unfree nations, as North Korea, Libya, China or Cuba, or among the tyrannies such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Uzbekistan, even after five years of this regime, the legacy of the revolution and the spirit of the constitution are not exhausted and far from extinguished.  Private groups and networks, be they cultural, charitable, political, single cause, proliferate.  Defense expenditures are still under 5 percent of the GDP, which is at least six times less in relative terms than under the Soviet regime.

Christians, Muslims and Jews pray freely, unmolested and side by side in churches, mosques and synagogues.  People can demonstrate against local and central authorities.  The candidates for office, at least until recently--and I'm again reminded of the abolition of the elections for the governors--could canvass freely and held meetings.  And every one of 23 parties that participated in 2003 elections was given three hours of free television time on three national networks, state-owned networks, and so were five opposition candidates in the presidential elections, who were given 60 hours together to air their propaganda and debate each other, and they spend most of that time attacking the sitting president.

The newspapers, particularly the ones that are vehemently opposed to the regime, either from the left or right, are there.  They're for sale and they're published:  Zavtra, Novaya Gazeta, Novaya Vremena, and Moskovskie Novosti, which incidentally is funded still by Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Open Russia Foundation.

People free to travel, to leave the country, to immigrate or to return.  Independent public opinion polls proliferate, and their results, often embarrassing to the President and the regime are published all over leading newspapers and the Internet.

With the very notable exception of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, all the key opponents of the regime who are still in Russia are free, free to speak, free to publish and free to meet the public.  [List of Russian names read.]  And I'm sure that each of these panelists could provide as many names of their favorite leaders.  In fact, one of our panelists, who sits next to me, Dr. Nikolai Zlobin, is a Russian citizen, and anybody who wants to see what can be published in Russian today ought to read his columns that have been published in the leading Russian newspaper, Izvestiya.  Those of us who know him personally know that he does not usually hold back, and I think his columns show that.

And so do Mike's colleagues, Mike's Russian colleagues at Carnegie, Nikolai Petrov, Lilia Shevtsova, and Dimitri Trenin, all of whom incidentally I've seen on television when I was in Russia in the past year, and they also do not hold back.

Now, what is interesting is that despite the relatively safe and increasingly more benign economic condition and economic well-being of the people, two-thirds of people polled in September, right after Putin's decision to abolish the governors elections, were against that measure.  Most interestingly, at the end of this January in public opinion polls, only 42 percent approved of Putin's handling of the job.  Now, this is in the condition where economy is still untouched and growing.  This is the lowest rating he received since 2000.

Finally, in the same polls at the end of January people were asked if they would vote for that same president if the elections were held today, and again, only 42 percent said they would, and that compares to 65 percent a year ago.

So something is happening, and I would like to again prevail upon the panelist to append to their prepared notes, prepared remarks, at least some cursory answers to these questions.  What is the fate of the Putin restoration?  Will it be ended by a Russian version of the Ukrainian glorious revolution?  Will it happen before 2008?  Will the regime be likely to try and move from kind of plebiscitary authoritarianism to a real dictatorship, and if it does will it succeed?  And what is the scope of the opposition?

Again, with apologies to the panelists for this ambush, I will go to them in alphabetical order, starting with Fiona Hill.

MS. HILL:  Well, that was an ambush indeed.  As you can see, I'm scribbling here feverishly trying to think.  Hang on a second.  This is a bit different from what we were expecting.  It's also the problem of having to go first because then everybody else after you can ambush you too and say, "Well, I didn't agree with anything that Fiona Hill said," and take it from there.

So what I will try to do is expand a little bit on some of the things that Leon said, and as I have a little bit of an idea about what some of my colleagues said, I'll leave plenty of space for them here.  A lot of what Leon has said, I mean I entirely agree with.  I think we've seen some really negative trends in Russia of late, a deterioration here.

This last point about the sort of plebescite democracy that's emerging, which is really actually more democracy on the streets, of the protests.  It's really very much related again to the point that you made about a lack of mechanisms for feedback that are now in place in Russia.  It was interesting of course that you talked about the contradictions that we're seeing against the commonly-received picture of a very rigidly controlled system in Russia.  There's a great deal of criticism of the government and of Putin and various aspects of the media and in Serbian intellectual circles.

The problem of course is how does the public make its criticism of Putin felt, and this is where we've really lost a lot of the steps forward that Mike McFaul has written so eloquently about in the past, dating back to the 1990s.  Russia is not the pluralist system that it was before.  The political parties don't function as mechanisms for feedback.  We've lost a lot of the civil society mechanisms that were also developing, and most interestingly, Putin himself seemed to have changed in his approach to securing feedback back from the population.

You'll remember I think every December it was, just a little bit before Putin's state of the nation address, he would have a call-in show.  Do you remember that this year that didn't happen?  Every year he would actually have a huge production of a debate, a discussion with the Russian population.  They would field calls from all the way around the country, and in fact, Putin would employ hundreds of analysts to go through all of the questions and to actually send them to the relevant bodies within the Russian Government to deal with.  This year he had a press conference.  His excuse for not having the call-in session was it's too cold in Russia in December.  Well, that's a little bit of a non-excuse really, especially given the fact that it's often cold in Russia, and it was certainly cold in the previous Decembers, in fact colder than this year because it was a bit of a mild spell.

MR.          :  She wrote a whole book about that, by the way.  Go by it as the Brookings University--

MS. HILL:  That was a hidden plug, because I thought that subliminally people might notice that.

[Laughter.]

MS. HILL:  But the point of this is that Putin himself has seemed to move away from the much more hands-on approach to managing democracy as Michael has coined that phrase before, and instead we seem to be having the government and Putin rather dangerously taking the temperature of the population based on a process of which we've seen considerable amounts of protests, and I think I can leave it to others to talk about these.

But overall, in terms of the changes and the seeming step box that Leon just mentioned, I also want to make a point that we seem to be suffering from a chronic case of amnesia here in Washington, D.C.  If Mike, Eugene, Nikolai and Leon and I were all sitting her in 1994 or 1995, before the 1996 elections, we might also have been having a little bit of concern, and not just a little bit of concern about President Yeltsin, because in spite of all of the steps forward that were made in that period, if you remember back to 1992 to 1994 in particular, we had a series of crises in the seemingly very positive Russian relationship with the west.

We had Andrei Kozyrev, the then Foreign Minister, coming out and saying the hardliners were back in the Kremlin, and he meant of course the same people we're talking about today, the Silibiki [ph], the KGB, the power ministries, the military forces, and that they were pushing for more aggressive action in the near abroad, in the neighborhood.  We're concentrating today, worrying today about whether Russia will withdraw troops from Georgia.  In that period we were worried about whether they would actually withdraw troops from the Baltic States.

We also had President Yeltsin in a huge political dispute with the Russian Parliament.  That wasn't exactly resolved democratically.  That was resolved by shelling the Russian White House.  I think we seem to have forgotten that.  And then less than a year later we had the crisis with Chechnya, the first war of, again, a resort to violence resolving what was essentially a political dispute.  We also had, in spite of all of the freedoms that were enshrined in the 1993 constitution, steps to reconcentrate power in the person of the president, under Yeltsin.

Now, the big difference in all of this was, of course, that we saw Yeltsin out in the west as engaged in this life or death struggle with communism and with the Communist Party.  We often gave Yeltsin a pass where frankly we shouldn't have done on many of his steps backwards because we thought there was a greater enterprise at stake.

And more importantly than that, we were focused on economics, and I think that is actually still the problem today.  It was all about the economy.  And while the liberal economic reformers led by  Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais and others, were very firmly fixed in the Kremlin, and when people like Andrei Illarionov were seen as the economic gurus of Yeltsin and not now the marginalized dissident figures that they're increasingly seeming to be today under Putin, we again thought that things were going okay in Russia.

We can't seem to correlate a lot of the progress and democratization, which admittedly was there, with the steps forward in the liberal economic agenda that we ourselves were trying to drive here, because if you also think back to Yeltsin, this is a big difference with Putin now, we kind of owned Yeltsin.  I don't want to put that so crudely, but financially the revolution was funded in many respects by Washington, D.C., by the IMF, by the World Bank and by the G7.  And every time Yeltsin did something that Washington didn't like, there was kind of a call saying, "Do you remember that  (?)  of the loan that you're expecting now?"

Well, we can't do that with President Putin because he's very much his own person, and we misread Putin for being a liberal economic reformer when he first came into power, because we assumed because he was from St. Petersburg and that he'd been in the  (?)  government, that in fact he was a Peter the Great.  We use this term frequently of a German in the Kremlin in the positive sense as someone who really wanted to modernize Russia.  We overlooked the fact that he was what he still is, a bureaucrat, a step(?) functionary and someone who developed a whole professional career in the KGB, which is of course focused on not opening up and pluralizing, but in fact of establishing strong central controls so you can manage the democracy and the economy even more.

So in many respects a lot of the things that we're now berating Putin about we should be berating ourselves for really kind of misreading the situation.

And as Leon noted, it was really the Yukos debacle rather than in fact the rollbacks on many of the colleagues of Mike and others who have actually been under considerable pressure, or the rollbacks on the media that really got everybody's attention because no longer do we seem to be on the path of liberal economic reform.  And this is where I think is the rollback actually for the Russian State overall and where I think we should be much more concerned looking down the line.

Leon says, well, the economy seems to be untouched and it seems to be growing.  Well, actually, that's not really the case.  The economy has been touched as a result of the Yukos debacle, and in fact, growth in Russia is tapering, and a lot of that is indeed to do with oil, and bizarrely enough the oil prices are still extremely high.  This is going to be a real problem for Russia down the line, because on the one hand because all prices are high and the Russian Government is flush with revenues and with a budget surplus that the United States I think could only dream of.  This has taken the edge off the need for reform, of the structural reforms that are needed to actually address all of the challenges that Russia is facing today from the huge regional disparities that are now rearing their heads through the protests.

The fact that a large segment of the population, a very large segment of the population on fixed incomes, be this the pensioners, the students, the military, or the Russian police or anyone who's paid by the state have not been doing very well out of the growth of recent years, and it's only been a very distinct, although quite large segment of the population, and that people in Moscow have been doing a heck of a lot better than people across the rest of the Russian Federation including in St. Petersburg.

But the reason that the economy has been grown has been at the one hand because of the incredible rise in all prices, but on the other it's been because of the huge increases in Russian oil production, and what the Yukos incident has done is dimmed that ability to grow all production.

Now, there's also long-term questions about whether that was sustainable, but right now for Russian economy to keep growing it has to not only take benefit of high oil prices but it also has to take a benefit of increasing the growth of its production rates, and those things are not happening.  Because if you look across at the economy to all the heavy industry in Russia in the commodity sectors, they're all benefiting from a combination of trickle-down from oil or from the China effect, from the huge growth of the Chinese economy and increasing demand for all kinds of commodities that Russia produces.  Russia became China's number one oil supplier at the end of this year, but China's also taking a lot of Russian timber, Russian scrap metal, Russian steel, you can keep on going like that.  Also, an exogenous shock beyond the shocks that Leon was mentioning of a major internal crisis, but like a slowdown in the Chinese economy will also have a big effect on Russia.

So there's a lot of problems hovering out there that the Russian Government has not been tackling.  They've lost touch with lots of the discontent that's showing up in the Russian population as a result of other people not sharing in the economic benefits.  And the economy itself is now in trouble as Andrei Illarionov and others who still feel free to speak out have made the case.  Although things are looking quite well now, we have an over confidence perhaps in Moscow.  Another few years it may not be the same picture.

Our problem in the short term, however, is of trying to have a dialog with Russia about how to change the situation, about how to focus on these challenges, and indeed, how to address some of the continued deterioration in the democratic steps back.  And that's where we do have a lot of problems because we don't have the leverage we used to have in terms of the financial loans.  With so much oil revenue in the system, even foreign direct investment is not so appealing to the Russians, and certainly from the point of view of the U.S. there's not a great deal of investment there either.  And just so then against the backdrop of Bush-Putin meeting inside Europe, and also President Bush's own trip to Europe, this is where we really need to have a dialog on a common message with our European partners to engage with Russia directly, and to keep engaging and to keep pushing on these issues.  I think there's a real risk right now of Russia becoming overwhelmed eventually by the extent of the problems that it faces, and moving more into a self-isolationist position which is not in our interest at all, and I know that Mike will talk a little bit more about that, so I'll turn it over to Mike.

MR. ARON:  Thanks, Fiona, for taking over.

MR. McFAUL:  Thank you I think.  Given the introduction, such sad occasions, I'd like to go to the--be invited to speak about more joyous places.

But let me just say a couple of things and let me say them short and provocatively to get on with the discussion, and I'll back away from these positions by the time we get to the end because everything's more shades of gray, not black and white, but to keep you awake after lunch let me black and white.

First of all a couple of comments about the debate about Russia in the west and then secondly, what does that mean in terms of U.S. foreign policy?

On the nature of the regime, I think if we were meeting four or five years ago at the beginning of the Bush presidency, or the beginning of a Putin presidency, we would have been having a debate about to what extent Putin is a democrat, is a liberal reformer, on the political side--I'll talk about politics and get to the economics in a minute--versus not.  And there was a debate, and it was a intellectual debate, it was a healthy debate.  I think there were informed positions on both sides.  Now I think that debate is over, and I think our two speakers basically made that clear in their remarks already.  We're not debating that any more.  We're debating the nature of it and how far it is.  I tend to be probably in Leon's camp about that this is not full-blown dictatorship and that we can exaggerate that.  Others perhaps are much farther out there, that says, you know, this is Uzbekistan.  I don't believe it is.  But the nature of that debate I think, that debate is now over, and that's good because that was polarizing in ways that I think were unproductive in terms of understanding Russia.

There's another debate--and Fiona kind of flagged it in her introductory remarks--which is somewhat more for the academics and less for the policy types, but it does have implications for the way you think about Russia, and that is, is Putin's regime today the inevitable consequence of the '90s?  And others would say the inevitable consequence of the nature of political power in Russia, whether it's the Soviet Union or imperial Russia or whatever, but that's one argument that says, you know, actually, come on, folks.  And Fiona is quite right, let's not exaggerate the changes in the '90s, that there are lots of--there were lots of negative antidemocratic things that took place then.

And the argument therefore goes, you know, you guys--and now I think people point at guys like Leon and me--"You guys were naive.  You believe that there was more democracy going on than really was, and now you finally saw the light of day."  That's what they say about us, Leon, not in public sessions.

MR. ARON:  [Inaudible].

MR. McFAUL:  No, that's not all, unfortunately.

[Laughter.]

MR. McFAUL:  I think obviously that that's wrong, that this notion that somehow this is all continuity I think ignores a lot of history of the last 15 years.  Yes, Mr. Yeltsin helped to create the permissive conditions for Putin.  He did that in two fundamental ways.  One, he was a revolutionary.  Now, you cited some of my work, so let me cite some of yours.  He was a revolutionary and revolutionaries lead revolutions, and inevitably, in all revolutions, and it will happen in Ukraine and it happened in France, inevitably there is a backlash, the thermidor of revolutions, where people want stability.  Inevitably in all revolutions the state collapses.  That is a definitional--I teach a course of revolutions--and that is not a theory, that's a definition of a revolution, the state collapses.  So there is a demand for a new state.

And that would have happened no matter if, Masha Lipman had become President of Russia.  After Yeltsin there would have been a demand and a pulling back, and you would have seen some of the things that Mr. Putin has done.

Moreover, I think institutionally there was a very direct permissive condition that Mr. Yeltsin created, and that was the 1993 constitution, which under Yeltsin, both because of who he was and his style of leadership, shall we say euphemistically, did not lead to kind of autocratic things in the way that Mr. Putin has used the same institution to do what he did.  Well, that's Yeltsin's fault.  A different constitution I think might have constrained Mr. Putin more.

Having said all that, my argument on this, which is still a debate about Russia, is that really this is much more about discontinuity than continuity with the 1990s.  And we don't have time to go into it, but I think to say that what Putin is doing now in the laundry list--Leon already talked about; I've talked about it ad nauseam other places--you can make excuses about Gucinsky [ph], you know, and the argument about that.  You can make arguments about why Khodorkovsky had to go in jail, and I can kind of see that.  You can make arguments about, as some of my Russian friends do, "Well, come on, Mike, governors are appointed in France and all over the place.  It's the rare place that they're elected."  Yes.  But when you put it all together, and by my list it's like 13 or 14 points of erosion of democracy in the last four years, I think it's hard to say that there's just continuity.  I actually think it's a fundamental break.

Moreover, I think if you look at more comparatively and get out of just looking at Russia, Russia is actually the biggest rollback of democracy since the third wave of democratization began in 1974.  Pakistan's a close--Pakistan, if you think of it as a more significant country, and some people do, would be a close candidate in terms of competitor, but at least those two are the biggies, and Russia is the only country to have gone backwards according to Freedom House scores and Polity scores and World Bank scores.  It's not just Freedom House, for those of you who are going to tell me they're a politicized organization.  Everybody who does this kind of quantitative scoring of democracy and governance shows Russia moving in this way.  It's the only major country that's done it while President Bush has been in office.

Venezuela, just to report, is listed as partly free, a 3/4 score.  Russia has 6/5.  I think they're qualitatively different in the dynamic of erosion, not whether one's more democratic than the other, but the dynamic of erosion.  So that's a second point about is this dynamic or continuity?  I come out on the dynamic side.

Third, how stable?  Again, in terms of bullet points I come out on the Russia is more stable versus those that argue this is bound to fail, and it's an orange revolution just right around the corner.  I've been doing some work on Serbia and Georgia and Ukraine, and looking at what were the kind of conditions that came together in those place?  I have seven necessary conditions, and what that number means is it's a lot of things that have to come together at one time to be aligned to get this breakthrough.  Russia only has one and a half by my count.  In other words, I do not see this breaking down, most certainly not next year, as some people argue, that this is so bad that it's inevitable that it's going to collapse.  I don't see any scenario where that happens.  2008 would be the first possible moment, and even there I don't see it.  Putin is a lot less popular than he was before, but he's still way more popular than Milosevic or Shevardnadze or Kuchma ever were in the years leading up to their collapse.  There's no clear opposition.  There's no clear obvious person that could be the focal point of an opposition, and that's in part because Putin has destroyed it.

And third, the levers of power and the pockets of pluralism in Russia are much more controlled by the Kremlin on the one hand and constrained by the Kremlin than either of those three cases.

There are some positive signs, and I would mention just three.  One, splits among the elites.  This is something new.  This was not the case two years ago.  Where serious elites, both within the KGB are fighting among themselves, within the government fighting among themselves.  Mr. Kochana [ph] has left, fancies himself as the next Yuschenko.  That was not the case just two or three years ago.  That's a positive sign for regime change, democratization.

Second, policy failures.  Mr. Putin is no longer perceived as this great savior because of a series of policy failures recently:  Yukos, Beslan, Ukraine and the social reforms, welfare reforms, four pretty big policy failures that people are beginning to wonder, maybe this guy is not so great.

And third, the protests that Fiona had just talked about, and the state's reaction to those protests which were not authoritarian in crackdown, but actually backing up rather quickly.

Having said that on this point, and then I'll say two sentences on U.S. policy, I think it's important to realize that if there is instability within the regime in Russia today, one should not assume automatically that instability in the enchant(?) regime will lead to democratization.  To me there are two other outcomes.  One is another KGB guy just like Putin, made the heir apparent, takes over in 2008 and is even more nasty than Mr. Putin.  I think that is a reasonable probability.  Putin is pro-western.  Putin is looking to the west.  A lot of guys around him are not.

The second scenario is, yes, a kind of breakdown of the authority of the regime, an electoral process, but an electoral process that brings a more nationalist mixed with socialist, populist ideas--remember those two words together, nationalist, socialist--and if you look at who has been more active in these protests, the political folks, it hasn't been the liberal democrats, it's been this group.  It's not Nazis.  You know, Dimitri Rogozin is not a Nazi.  Let me just be very clear what I'm talking about.  But it is also not necessarily the case that the collapse of the enchant(?) regime in whatever way, leads automatically to democratic breakthrough.

So what should be done?  And this is my third point about debates, and I'll stop.  I find the framing of this debate on U.S. policy towards Russia not only intellectually dishonest but just tired.  Here's the way it usually is.  There's the hawks on the one hand--I'm in that camp--and the doves on the other.  There's the isolationists on the one hand--allegedly I'm in that camp and I totally disagree--there's the engagement types on the other.  There's the folks that talk about principles on the one hand--I agree I'm one of that--and those that talk about interests on the other.

I just find this dichotomy to be absolutely false.  Why does one have to--well, you don't want my lecture on why this debate is bad.  So let me just say--because it's a long and nasty one; it will be published in the Moscow Times tomorrow, how about that?  Read it there in more detail.  But the message I want to bring to you today is that it's a false difference.  To say that you either have to pursue interests or your principles, to me is just ahistorical in terms of thinking about American foreign policy, first.  And second, it assumes that there is a tradeoff between these two things, and I just categorically reject that.

Second, there's the argument that, well, if you want to talk about democracy, then you can't be engaged with Mr. Putin on issues of nonproliferation and fighting the war on terrorism.  I'm from Montana, forgive my French, but that's a bunch of BS.  Why is it that we have to somehow make a tradeoff there?  Mr. Putin--to assume that somehow to talk about values, we can't talk about nonproliferation, I think is just really a gross statement about American foreign policy in our history, but moreover is not true today.  In other words, when Mr. Bush shows up to Bratislava, I expect him to talk about the themes of his inaugural address.  And if he doesn't, then those of us who defended the President and said, "No, all you cynics are wrong, words do matter.  No, those senior administration officials who were saying he was wrong," well, if he doesn't talk about it here, then we all have to agree with the cynics, then words don't matter.  This is where the rubber hits the road for the liberty doctrine, Mr. Bush's liberty doctrine.

It's one thing to say these nice words here on Inauguration Day before a bunch of people that gave money to the President's campaign--I did not, by the way--it's another thing to say it when it's much harder in a meeting with Mr. Putin.  But to say it doesn't mean that you have to like stop having a bilateral relationship with either Mr. Putin as an individual or Russia as a country.  To me the most successful presidents have been those that followed dual-tract diplomacy vis-a-vis regimes like the one you see in Russia today.  I think that means engagement, it means talking about interest and principles at the same time, and not assuming that there's a tradeoff.

Thanks.

MR. ARON:  Thank you very much, Michael.

Eugene?

MR. RUMER:  Thank you.  I'm delighted to be here.  I need to say up front that as an employee of the Department of Defense, I have the luxury of speaking here in strictly personal capacity, but whatever I say does not represent the official view of either National Defense University or the Department of Defense or anyone else.

This is already shaping up as a very interesting discussion, and I'm frankly lost on whose side I'm on to the degree that we have--right, there are no sides, and I'm tempted to say that I agree with Mike's points, 17 and 25, and Fiona's 14 and 5.

[Laughter.]

MR. RUMER:  I find myself largely in agreement with Leon's description of recent developments in Russia.  There is no question that things have not gone in the right direction, no two ways about it.  But the question that the organizer of this meeting has posed to us, and one that I have given some though in recent months and weeks is, is it time for a different policy toward Russia?  Is the turn of events in Russia, regardless of whose side you're on, whether you're on the side of continuity or discontinuity, is it time to think through a new set of requirements, new set of interests vis-a-vis Russia?  And to that I add another question, have U.S. interests in Russia changed?

My take is that on the interests, no, they have not changed.  Developed trends in Russia have possibly changed as was very eloquently described by Leon, Fiona and Mike, but I'm not at all sure that this turn of events really warrants a fundamental shift in U.S. policy toward Russia.  And if you, as I have in recent months, followed the debates on the pages of the Washington Post, most prominently--and if there's anyone here from the Post I think the newspaper deserves a lot of credit for devoting such amount of space to Russia, and it's very refreshing to myself, and I assume others on the panel, to actually have a debate on Russia, because for the last 10, 12 years we haven't had much of a debate about Russia.  It was sort of absent from the list of major issues on our foreign policy.

But if you'll follow the debate in the Post as well as in other publications, it is easy to conclude that the time is ripe for a new policy toward Russia, a view with which I fundamentally disagree.  Some have used the term "neocontainment."  I think Jackson Deale [ph] has in one of his columns and possibly others.  I'll turn to this point a little bit later, but I really don't see anything in the internal developments in Russia itself, or in Russia's international behavior, or in U.S. interests to warrant such a dramatic change.

Let me say a few words about how I see U.S. interests in Russia.  To my mind they have been essentially the same since the day the Soviet Union broke up and even since the day when Gorbachev, whatever that day was, announced perestroika.  We have an interest in a stable and secure Russia.  We have an interest in Russia having a preference clearly, and Russia having some form of representative government, a Russia with an open economy open to our investment and also trading freely with other nations of the world.

We want Russia as a reliable and predictable partner in the international system, and within that general framework we also have a number of specific concerns dominated since September 11, 2001 by cooperation in the war on terror, which as I understand still remains the priority.  We are at war, that's what our leaders say.

The second, and related to it, most important concern is the security of Russian nuclear stockpile and other weapons of mass destruction, and Russian cooperation in a number of related proliferation concerns, most importantly lately having to do with Iran and North Korea.

We have a stake in Russia playing a construction role in European security.  We have a stake in Russia being a constructive player around its periphery.  I was at a conference recently where one of the speakers suggested that it's time for us to move beyond the term "post Soviet space," and I agree with that, but I don't know what else to call the countries of the former Soviet Union, so maybe we should have a prize at the end for the person who comes up with the best terms.

Certainly these days we have a strong interest in Russia being a reliable exporter of its hydrocarbons as well as other resources, because in part of our own appetite for oil and--well, primarily oil, we don't get much Russian gas, any Russian gas I understand--but because of China and India's growing requirement.

In response to that I think we have pursued a fairly consistent policy over the last 15 years that hasn't really changed that much at its core.  It's been the policy of the first Bush to Clinton and now first and second Bush administrations to stick to the long view, I think, be historical in our appreciation of policy and conditions in Russia; engaging Russia wherever possible and keep probing in areas that perhaps are not very promising but nonetheless where we have an interest; focus on Russian deeds and not Russian rhetoric and keeping in mind that Russian deeds to not always match up to Russian rhetoric and the rhetoric can be far more inflammatory and damaging than the deeds themselves.  Engage Russia in a number of international institutional arrangements such as NATO, such as G8, and keep the door open to a more full-fledged Russian participation for Russia to walk in and take its legitimate seat at the table when it's ready to carry a full burden of those relationships and those institutional responsibilities.

And all along I think we have assumed and spoken quite clearly--and I can even cite more recent remarks by Secretary Rice--that the choice of particular domestic political arrangements is Russia's to make despite our own strong preferences.  Of course, we have also caveated that statement by the following statement:  that our ability to engage with Russia, our ability to forge the partnership with Russia that our leaders have spoken about, will be contingent on Russia's ability to change internally, which would in turn we hope would affect Russia's international behavior and prospects for specific collaborative projects.

And I should say that that policy has paid off over the last 15 years.  We've had two rounds of NATO enlargement and we're talking about Ukraine joining NATO in the foreseeable future.  We've had one round of EU enlargement.  We have a very robust security relationship with a number of countries around Russia's periphery, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan.  We have military presence in Central Asia, and by all indicators it's not permanent but certainly long term.  We have a relationship, which admittedly has not been very productive, but it exists with Russia in NATO.

And recently there have been signs that Russia is more possibly forthcoming, collaborative on such burning issues of the day as Iran's WMD, and Russia clearly has been an important part, not always fully consistent with our set of preferences, but then also an important  (?)  in the talks in the Korean Peninsula.

What in Russia's internal changes warrants a fundamental shift in this set of priorities and this long-term policy that has been embraced by several administrations?  Not, near as I can tell, the media consolidation, not the marginalization of domestic political parties, not--albeit this is probably the most troubling development--sort of the rise of the irredentist ideological consensus in Russian marginalization of liberal ideologies, certainly not to my mind the cancellation of gubernatorial elections, Yukos-gate -- [Tape change] -- that I view as a fundamental trigger for a very different relationship.  There has been a lot of troubling rhetoric about Russia's policy vis-a-vis the neighbors, but there too, I dare say, its bark has been much worse than its bite.

And a series of examples:  in Georgia the Rose Revolution; in Ukraine the Orange Revolution, in Moldova, have led to Russia's humiliation rather than a concrete set of deliverables to Russia to put in the bank till the consolidation of the post Soviet space, as Putin intends to do.

Now, on democracy promotion, this is the biggest problem I think for us because much as we would like to see Russia have a representative form of government, I firmly believe that this is going to be a choice for the people of Russia, and nearest I can tell, our assistance in Russia's democratic development is not welcome.  I don't believe that the United States really has a lot of room in terms of pursuing democracy in Russia.  We need not be silent about our disagreements with Russia, but the cause of democracy promotion in Russia I think is one that will have to wait until a very different set of circumstances in Russia internally.

So I don't really see an alternative to the present course that we're on.  I don't think that a policy of neocontainment is one that is likely to be either very productive, or even gratifying to us.  Just think of what it might entail.  We'll have to end the partnership for peace and turn it into essentially a policy of encirclement and containment of Russia, focused on Russia's neighbors.  I don't think it's something that we're prepared to do.  I think it would call for a very robust series of security relationships around Russia's periphery, again resources for which near as I can tell are not there, would put an end to our cooperative threat reduction programs.

I think we'd have to embark on a war of ideas with Russia, something that I'm not really comfortable doing, and to my mind again, a policy on neocontainment aimed at containing in close, whatever that means really, the Putin regime, to my mind would violate rule No. 1 of foreign policy, of doing no harm, because I, unlike Mike perhaps, view the situation in Russia as quite precarious.  I think the statements by Russian political consultants about the danger of the Orange Revolution to Russia are not exaggerated in the light of mass protest.  We can discuss that later.  And I think that although we have much to disagree with Putin in his handling of Russian affairs, but I fear that alternatives to Putin could be even worse.

Thank you.

MR. ARON:  Thank you very much, Eugene.

Nikolai?

MR. ZLOBIN:  Thank you.

Let me start with saying, if you read latest article, three, four days ago, in Izvestiya, written by Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, where he's saying that people who criticize Russia, they hate Russia.  I do not hate Russia, I love Russia.  Second I'm not part of entire Russian campaign, organized, according to Lavrov, some inter-Russian centers(?) in the west, and he has paid for that, so I'm not paid for that.

And I think it's very clear if you read the latest Russian political statements, what do they think about western reaction on Russian development, how they take it?  And I think Mike is very right, it's very important what President Bush will say in Bratislava, and I think he must say it publicly, not face to face to Putin, which doesn't do any good.  But it's not just that important.  It's very important how President Putin will react to that, and will he react on that?  Will he take any criticism?  Will he agree with any criticism?  Will he accept any criticism?  And that for me, for instance, will be a very important criteria, answering your questions you asked in the beginning.

Fiona and me had an opportunity, met with Putin three months ago in  (?)  his dacha, and spent several hours there.  I have to tell you the man is very impressive, very impressive, and when I came out of this meeting I felt actually very strong about his ability to run the country, but what I felt as well after four hours speaking with them, and he presented his views, I realize that he has very clear picture what's going on, clear for him.  Everything is in the right place with his head.  It's a dogma.  And that's a dogma which he imparts to the country, where everything is there related to each other, Khodorkovsky, Yukos, United States, democracy, freedom of media, everything wrapped up in one big thing which he thinks everything is related to each other.

And that's my biggest problem with anything we can do with Russia, it's our inability to come up with something solid as well as Putin can, something not criticizing him on media, not criticizing him on Yukos, not criticizing him on issues of his policy, but to offer alternative, and there is no alternative anywhere in Russia and there is no alternative anywhere in the west, answering your question about opposition.  It's pointless to argue with him about details I believe.  So that's worries me.

And second thing which worries me very much is when you talk to Kremlin official and you talk to people who give them advice, when you talk to Kremlin insiders, everybody absolutely assures that everything is fine, they're doing just great.  They don't have any concerns that something might be wrong.  No.  I mean it's astonishing, but when you talk to them you're surprised how calm and sure they are that they're doing right and Russia is developing in the right direction.  By the way, all polls, Russian polls are showing that average Russians don't think so.  But Russian political elite and Kremlin particularly believes that Russia is on the right track.

I will talk a little--by talking, make some statements about how this regime expose itself in foreign policy and what I think American foreign policy reaction should be.  I should start with I disagree with you on American success in foreign policy, American policy toward Russia, have two very clear different policies toward Russia.  During Clinton administration when we got involved in Russian domestic affairs very heavily, building constitutions, helping democracy and giving lots of advantages to Russia like G8 and inviting Russia to speak up in every international organization, everything.  It's failed.

Now we have different approach.  We're ignoring domestic situation in Russia.  We inviting Russia as a partner on global war against terrorism and ignoring what's going on inside Russia.  It's failing too.  Now Russia is less reliable partner than it used to be, it could be, and Russia is as far from democracy as it used to be and it could be.  So both policies failed and first challenge for American foreign policy establishment, as I see it, to find a policy which will not fail.  I'm not sure we have the concept yet, but I think that's the biggest problem.

Maybe I'm simplifying, and I think why Russian domestic development turn in the direction which we're talking about.  I think we have to recognize that when Putin came to power he talked about reforms, he talked about economy, he talked about political reforms.  But the most important thing in several political speeches, and that became very much his general direction, it's his concern about the place, Russian place in the world, Russian place in the world.  Everything which can be done, should be done, could be done, domestically, economic wise, politically wise, freedom wise, liberal ideas wise, everything related to this point, if it doesn't fit the goal he will stop the reform.  He will rollback.  He will step back.  So I will judge his domestic behavior not on democratic, not democratic liberal, not liberal, but does it help to build up strong Russia or it doesn't help to build up strong Russia?  That will be criteria.  And if you will look from this point over here you'll understand what I'm talking about.  And it's very different from Yeltsin's regime, so I agree with Mike completely, that's absolutely different approach.

Second different approach in his foreign policy is emphasizing, quote "Russian exclusiveness."  There is no country in the world which can help Russia to build the Russian way of democracy or explain what Russian national interests are.  Again, it's very different from what Yeltsin's idea was.  Yeltsin's idea was involvement, tell us what to do, help us to understand our ways.  Putin is saying very clearly, you can't help because you just don't know us.

So a difference, a kind of difference--that continuation might be partly from Yeltsin's regime--that when you talk about Putin's ideas, when you read carefully his statement, you understand that he's really concerned about territorial integrity of the country.  We can argue is territorial integrity, is it a danger or not, but that's one of the biggest maturation of Russian policy now.  In Chechnya, toward republics, toward commonwealth of independent states, toward the west, et cetera, et cetera, territorial integrity is they do believe in Kremlin that Russia can collapse and break in pieces like Soviet Union did.

Two more things about general foreign policy of Russia and I'll make some point about challenges to American foreign policy.

Next is Russian political  (?)  who believe that there is no defense union system organization in the world which can feed Russian defense and security interests currently.  Russia is unsatisfied with any international security organization, and would like of course to be on its own.  It's very much national political traditions.  Russia doesn't see itself as a country which can be integrated in something.  Russia always seen, if you know history of Russia, if you know Russian political mentality, Russia always sees itself as a country which integrates other, so it's integrator, it cannot be integrated.  And this is what Putin is fighting against, integration Russia in something else,  (?)  Russia something else, where Russia, as they see it, will lose political independence.

They will try to decide its own fate.  You can accept it.  You can criticize it, but this is how Russian political elite traditionally see Russian role in the world.

Last thing about generally statements of Russian foreign policy is Russia would like to keep, and heavily benefit from that, to keep Russian-western relations in very great area, not to fight, not to kiss, not to build a very close partnership, so kind of to keep it very flexible, which will give Russia space to behave in different mode every time, approaching different problems.

The same comes through Russian-American relations.  I'm stuck with belief they in the lowest point in the last 15 years.  They're empty, they're pointless.  There's no fundamentals.  We should not be deceived by good relations between two presidents, because behind these two presidents there is nothing, nothing, nothing to Russian-American relations, and I think it's very dangerous point.

Now what I think biggest challenges or problems to western, American in this case, foreign policy toward all these Russian programs.  I completely agree with you.  This time I agree with you, that we have to think--you know, during the Cold War they were talking about communism versus democracy, how it will be liberated, containment, whatever.  Nobody ever talked about alternative to the Soviet Union.  What will happen, not to communism, what will happen to the Soviet Union?

When it happened in 1991 we didn't know what to do.  There was no concept behind what should go in the space post-Soviet space, what's the western concept, what's the western ideas about the future of post-Soviet space, both is and will be.  We don't know.  If you remember, commonwealth of independent states was kind of supported by the west and I think it was supported just because everybody thought here in Washington and Europe that all these countries will kind of unite around Russia and Russia will be a democratizator and, you know, will keep it in charge and kind of commonwealth is a good thing.  It's failed now.  There's no commonwealth of independent states.  And even Russia recognizes, you know, now they talk in Kremlin about abolishing idea of joint defense space.  There's no region any more.  Countries moving in different directions.  We don't have strategy.  American foreign policy towards this region does not exist.  So I think it's a first challenge.

Second challenge is Russian political monopoly in the territory of former Soviet Union.  After 1991 it was accepted by the west that Russia will be the only great power there, and political permission to get there from outside you have to get from Moscow; otherwise you can't go there.  So Russia still would like to keep this position as a monopoly there, and everything foreign policy, international wise is going there, should be coordinated to Russian national interests and to the best way to get permission from Kremlin.

There was an exception after 2001 when Russians accepted American military presence in Central Asia, but don't forget it was different Russian political foreign policy mode, and Taliban wasn't really a friend of Russia.  And by the way, Russia did believe that Americans will leave in two years.

So I think the biggest problem in this challenge, that Washington, as well as other countries, western countries, always prefer to keep good relations to Russia over relations with other countries around Russia.  I'm not sure that this position can be held any longer.  So maybe we have to think about how we can approach this region and how we can try to challenge Russian policy in this region, policy of monopoly.

Third challenge is local conflicts.  Russia is playing not very good, I believe, role in solving local conflicts.  In our meeting with President Putin he even said, you know, in our territory we have 2,000 frozen conflicts so it's a very dangerous place.  And I don't see any progress in Russian policy how to solve this conflict, and I think there is two very bad developments later.  Russia started to separate, to make differences between good separatists and bad separatists.  Bad separatists like in Chechnya or Russia will fight good separatists like in  (?)  or  (?)  Russia support.  And for some reason good separatists appear in the country which trying to develop like sort of independence from Russia.  Like I was not surprised when, you know, Russia found a good separatist in Ukraine recently, and it's  (?)  behavior.

And another thing which I don't like which Russia started to treat the separatists equal to central government in this country, which doesn't do.

But the challenges here is that we have a lot of situations like that and particularly which every Russian diplomat will tell you is Kosovo.  Why wouldn't we use the Kosovo example to accept independence of  (?)?  Why would we use the Kosovo example to accept independence of thousands here, of Moldova, et cetera, et cetera?  So west has a dilemma what to do.  And this is a big change for American foreign policy.

Very, very briefly, in one minute, three more.

[Laughter.]

MR. ZLOBIN:  No, I just mention it.  First, very high level of mistrust which is much higher than now, which prevents to do a lot of things.  And I would blame in many ways American foreign policy establishment for not building mechanism to increase trust between these two countries and not breaking monopoly of relations,  (?)  relations between two countries, between two elites, but not between two societies.

Second, with all these approaches to Russia I agree completely with Mike the main goal is to make Russia democratic country.  How we can do it by challenging all Russia in every possible front, still to keep Russia on democratic track I think is a very big challenge to American foreign policy.

And last one, very practical one, is that after 15 years of break up of the Soviet Union, we still don't have valuable and reliable mechanism to coordinate our national interests.  We never discussed it.  We never announced interests.  You mentioned nonproliferation, I will give you just one example and finish it.  Yes, Russia does support nonproliferation, absolutely, like Soviet Union did, but not as Soviet Union because Soviet Union supported nonproliferation issue, because it was parity with America.  Today there is no parity with America.  Strategic parity doesn't exist.  So Russia support nonproliferation to defend itself, but it doesn't support nonproliferation if it will diminish American superiority, for instance.  Look around.  Look at Russian position toward possible technological proliferation.  So if it works against American superiority, why you expect Russia to support it?

You still believe that Russia, like Soviet Union, will try to sign every agreement with American nonproliferation.  No.  No.  Russia is working against you guys ruling the world.  And this  (?)  never was kind of coordinated and we don't have political mechanism to talk about this.  And all this, you know, afford opportunities like will be in Bratislava doesn't help because mechanism is not there.  It wasn't there when Putin came to power.  It is not there today.

Thank you.

MR. ARON:  Thank you very much.  We have stayed on time, very admirably, and now we have time for questions and answers.  And if we had an additional two hours, the hosts would ask each other questions, but we cannot unfortunately.

QUESTIONER:  Stanley Kober with the Cato Institute for Mike McFaul.  I would agree with the objective of spreading democracy.  I wrote about that in foreign policy.  But at the present time when we say we're promoting freedom, the example we have set comes back to us.

I just recently saw a statement, the Russian Government condemning the British for the conduct in Northern Ireland.  And whenever we say this, I just see Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and you're nodding.  And how do you get past that at this stage?

MR. McFAUL:  You don't get past it.  You talk about it.  I disagree.  When I'm called an enemy, when LaRoth [ph] is writing his thing and I'm criticizing democracy in Russia, I'm called an enemy of Russia, right?  I know that.  I've been called that many times.  To me that's the equivalent of a Democrat criticizing Bush for the PATRIOT Act, and then you call him, "Oh, well, he's an enemy of the United States."  He's not an enemy of the United States, or she.  That is somebody involved in a democratic process to try to make the state more effective.  So I would welcome a panel at Bratislava where we talk about American flaws in democracy and Russian flaws.

I don't in any way think they're equivalent, I want to make that clear.  They're not equivalent.  But I no way want to infer that we have somehow made it up to Nirvana, you know, a one-one Freedom House score, and now we get to sit and play God and tell everybody--on the contrary, no.  When Bush was talking about this just the other day, he kept talking about western values and Russia has to accept western values.  That to me is the wrong way to phrase it.  This is a universal value.  So that's the first thing I would say.

The second thing I would say is this is not just a question about values or not, it's about making Russia a stronger, more effective state.  I actually happen to believe--think about--I was listening to Gene's list of where they've been helpful to us.  I have a different reading on that list, by the way.  I don't think they have been as helpful to us.  But I can--think of the counter-facts on your list.  If you had had a robust strong democratic state, would they be a better partner or not?  So war on terror, I look at the Russian State today and I say, well, okay, they have a problem with terrorism.  How effective is the state then?  I think it's been rather ineffective.  I don't think Russians today are any more secure than they were four or five years ago, and I think it could get a whole lot worse.  On that I think we do agree.  It's a precarious situation.  And so I look at that and I say the state has failed.

And I wonder now, what would happen that state to be better?  How about elections?  How about an independent media that talks about some of the inefficiencies?  How about elected governors in place that took action.  You know, I compare like what Guiliani did on September 11th, and I think about the total ineffective reaction in Beslan.  I think that has to do something, not just with the power of the state, but that democracy makes states strong.  And that's where I somewhat disagree with this notion that people like me are the ones that want to make Russia weaker.

Finally, on this, Gene, the same policy versus neocontainment, if those are the only two choices I agree with you, the policy we have today versus neocontainment, I agree.  But I don't think that we should always think that those are our only two choices.  I think there's lots that we can do to build, strengthen democracy.  By the way, when you said "they don't it," my question was who in Russia doesn't want it?  I know of 10,000 organizations that are dying for American grants.  I know the Kremlin does not want it.  And if we're about democracy, well, who gets to decide?

When Condie says we want Russia to choose its institutions, that's exactly right, I do too.  It's not--shouldn't be American, but it has to be a democratic process.  I mean Putin just abolished the elections to governors.  Two-thirds didn't support it.  Not a very democratic process by coming to that.  If it was a democratic process I could support it and laud it.  That to me, I think we need to get out of the notion that neocontainment is the only alternative policy to the one we have today.

MR. ARON:  Eugene, one minute to [inaudible].

MR. RUMER:  Yes.  I fully agree with Mike that having a democratic Russia as our partner in the war on terror would have been wonderful, but this is the Russia we have to deal with.  And the democratic project in Russia is a long-term proposition not for us to pursue.  On the 10,000 organizations, maybe.  I'm not aware of them.

MR. McFAUL:  Come to my Eurasia board meeting, because we reject 80 percent of the applications.

MR. RUMER:  Okay.

MR. McFAUL:  I kid you not.  It's a fact.

MR. RUMER:  Okay, but, you know, I too go to Moscow and I too go to Russia, talk to Russians, and I get a different impression from the one that you get at your Eurasia board meetings.

MR. McFAUL:  Hold on.  This is empirical fact.  Come on, let's be clear that there is a demand--whether they should get the money or not is a normative or a policy question.  But every foundation that works in Russia, every single one, rejects 80 to 75 percent of the requests.  So the demand is there.  Whether it's legitimate or not, we can debate, but it's not a--this is an empirical question, not a "who do you talk to."  I mean would you agree with me on that, Gene?

MR. RUMER:  No, because I don't know about those request and I don't know how legitimate they are.

MR. McFAUL:  Come one.

MR. RUMER:  No, no.  I wouldn't necessarily agree with that.  I don't want to  (?)  this discussion, but I, you know, I--

MR. McFAUL:  What's your evidence?  Gene, come on.

MR. RUMER:  Look, I read Russian press.  I talk to a lot of Russian friends.  I look at the political processes and their outcomes, which I think were rather accurately described by Leon in his introductory remarks, that on the whole they I think do reflect sort of the overall mood of the Russian people.  I look at some public opinion polls.  And I draw the conclusion that somewhere in Russia our help is welcome, but on the whole it's a Russian project and for them to pursue.  And for as long as Russian democracy is a USAID or Eurasia Foundation or Ford Foundation funded project, I doubt it will take root in Russia.  That's my view.

MR. ARON:  How about over there?  Thanks for being so patient.  [Inaudible].

QUESTIONER:  Ira Straus, Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia and NATO.  To me this was a refreshing panel because it was different from the mainstream discussion that's been going on.  I didn't hear anyone here calling for a downgrade in relations.  And Mike McFaul I think is quite right in saying that's not his position, but it certainly is the position of the Washington Post editorial writers.

What Eugene Rumer was criticizing is exactly what the Washington Post people have been saying, sometimes in very fanatical terms, in which they'll make the craziest comments about what Russia is doing with very little connection to the reality.  And they just build one piece of nonsense on top of another.

What we've heard here is status quo, status quo plus in terms of also talking about democracy, or status quo plus in terms of talking more about reconciliation of real interest with Russia.  Those seem to me to be the three positions, status quo, status quo ideal please, status quo real plus.  They're all good positions.  I applaud them all.

I do have a couple questions to them.  On the status quo, Mr. Rumer, I think Nik Zlobin is right in saying you exaggerate in saying that everything was going fine.  You might want to include some more criticism of some things that could be improved, some things that have gone wrong in our policies.  And on the other side, even though you criticized the myth or Russian imperialism in that it's not taking any effect, you accept, it seems to me, the myth that there is a Russian neo-imperialism, even if ineffective.  And to me this is a very strange view.  The fact that there was talk about empire in Russia for the last several years or the last 20 years is mostly metaphorical, just as in the United States for the last five years there has been talk about American empire.  It's been almost overwhelmingly metaphorical.  It simply means exercising influence.  And it seems to me we need to become a bit more critical of the myths that we have about Russian foreign policy if we want to correct the conclusions people draw.

On Mr. Zlobin's part, you criticized perhaps too neolistically previous policy.  If you want to argue for an upgrade you can't say that all engagement has been a failure.  It doesn't seem to me the conclusion will follow from that kind of premise.

If you really believe we were massively engaged in the 1990s I think you are misled.  We had massive rhetoric about Russian development in the 1990s, but the only major intervention I saw in that entire period was helping Yeltsin get reelected against Zyuganov in 1996.  Then we did give massive loans, and we shot up the  (?)  to expansion for a full year, and he got reelected.  But that was the only real intervention I saw in that entire period.

And it would seem to me the case for an upgrade, which Carnegie has also made, is based on the assumption that we have never sufficiently engaged with Russia, never since 1987, not in any single period.  And even if Russia is on a downturn now where things are getting worse, still there is a huge gap to be made up in terms of an upgrade still needed.  That would seem to me to be the logic.  Thanks.

MR. ARON:  Thank you very much.  In the interest of brevity when you ask your questions, just stick to the question.  Unfortunately, we're running out of time.

How about one minute each  (?)  and Nikolai.

MS. HILL:  Can I [inaudible].

MR. ARON:  Oh, yeah.  I forgot.

MS. HILL:  I'm sorry.  I just want to actually add something to this debate.  Actually I'm going to use Ira Straus's question too.  I've got kind of ladies' prerogative here.

Because look, I have to say that the situation in Russia is infinitely complex.  And one of the problems is that when you read the op-eds, the newspapers, you don't even have 1,500 words or 1,000 words.  You often have 650 words to basically condense down one tiny little aspect of a huge problem.  So I would just say stop reading so many of the op-eds and come to more of these debates because you will see something much--

MR. McFAUL:  No, read our books.  Come on.

MS. HILL:  Okay, okay, okay.

[Simultaneous discussion.]

MS. HILL:  Because the one thing that I notice from this whole thing, sitting here listening to everybody is that there's not all that much of a difference between what all of us are saying.  There's actually a little bit of nuance here.

And actually, folks, I want to actually back Mike up on this, Gene, on the whole thing because I worked for the Eurasia Foundation for two full years.

[Laughter.]

MS. HILL:  And I also used to be the  (?)  of something called the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project.  For 10 years I was actually on the ground in Russia doing a whole host of different things, and there's a huge upswell of interest on the part of Russians at the grass roots level for doing their own thing.  And the question is one of resources, and it isn't right, of course, that it should be just USAID or the Eurasian Foundation or the group supporting me, but there's difficulties that people have on the ground for generating their own resources.  But there's an awful lot of interest happening there.

And the problem is that we tend to see things from the top down, but if we go out to the regions, there's an amazing amount of things that people are doing on a shoestring themselves related to their own local governments, and that's what the Eurasia Foundation and other groups are helping.  But eventually--Gene is right--it has to start to get some support from the ground, but we're just not there yet.  But let's just not think that none of these things are happening because they are.

In that regard I just want to say about the engagement in the '90s, there was a lot of engagement.  There was a lot of engagement again on the ground, but there's limits to engagement.  We don't have the time and the resources to do what is needed to be done in somewhere as vast as Russia.  Russia is the biggest country in the world geographically.  It's something over 11 time zones.  And though the population is declining there are huge differences and distances among the constituted parts of Russia.  It's just incredibly--it's a fragmented country in many respects geographically, so how we can possibly hope to do something except on a very small scale in certain areas, I mean is beyond me, and we just have to be honest about that.

I mean I, like everybody else here, has spent 20 years now in trying to engage with Russia on these issues, and I don't know.  Have I got 20 more years left?  I don't know how long it's going to take to see some results, and this also again reminds me of the country that I originated from, Great Britain.  I see Russia now as being like Britain in the 1950s.  You know, we don't have a state department in Russia or foreign ministry.  We have a Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and we still have it.  We still haven't quite gotten over our imperial hangover, and if you think back to the 1950s in Britain, Britain was a surly, not too happy country.  We had a big spat with United States over Suez in 1956.  We never quite got used to the idea that our empire on which the sun famously never sets.  It actually disappeared in the  (?)  and it took an awful lot of time to get rid of that imperial hangover, and I would only argue we started to do it now.

In 1983 we went to war against Argentina over the Falkland Islands.  I thought the Falkland Islands were in Scotland.

[Laughter.]

MS. HILL:  I mean I remember this was a joke in Britain that we actually went to war in the South Atlantic and it took us weeks to get there.

So I'm just going to say here that actually what Nikolai is saying is right, that it takes countries a long time to get used to the fact that they're not what they used to be.  And I think eventually, as Nikolai had said, Russia will get over that integrationist desire and will actually realize that to actually get along with the world, just like Great Britain and some of the other great empires have done before, you actually have to start getting along and integrating with others.  It just might take a while.

MR. ARON:  One minute.

[Simultaneous discussion.]

MR. ZLOBIN:  The problem is with talking about actual democracy, and I am Russian.  Believe me, I know it, and we had the discussion with Mike years ago.  We have to come up with a precise definition what we're talking about.  You know, what Americans saying democracy, what Russians say democracy is two different things.

I got today the latest annual  (?)  poll.  So the biggest thing which concerns Russians, 45 percent, is the state of economy.  Only 3 percent thinks that democracy has problems in Russia.  So between 45 and 3, it's a huge difference.  But when you look on other criteria, what they consider to be trouble full areas of their life you see that's what democracy is.  Oligarchs, corruption, no media, no  (?)  and so, so, so, but when you ask directly, "Are you concerned about democracy?"  No, because they don't really consider their things necessarily part of normal civilized democratic life.  So you have to be very careful when you define  (?)  Russian democrats.

Second, I agree with you, Gene, on one point, and we have to realize that Putin could be much more difficult partner rather than he is now.  He could be much more difficult on Iraq.  He could be much more difficult on Afghanistan.  He could be much more difficult on Georgia, on Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera.  The reason why he wasn't so difficult is for another discussion, but reality is he could be.  He could spoil much more in international affairs, so he didn't.

Mike said, I think, we have to take very seriously.  We're not talking about necessarily building Russian democracy.  We're talking about Russian ability of state to control things state must control.  It's increasing incompetence of the state.  This is what worries me.  Whatever they're trying to do, they failed.  Even intentions are good, you can argue, was it a good idea or not to put Khodorkovsky in prison or to divide Yukos, but the way how they did it was incompetent.  Ukraine incompetent.   (?)  is incompetent.  Reforms incompetent.  And that's what very serious concern.  Forget about democracy.  Democracy  (?)  doesn't really matter.  Look how they operate, and is there any way to fix this problem?  And if there is no democracy so people from  (?)  see the problems, there's no actions.  There's no changes.  Who's going to fix the problem?  And Americans think it's your business.  How are you going to fix it?

So 2008 for me is not a problem of democracy.  Will the next president chosen be democratic?  Will there be more conservative KGB or a  (?).   Main thing for me, what will be the mechanism transferring power to next guy, and how legitimate he will be.  And that, it's not a democracy.  It's very basic building of state in Russia, and no way America can avoid helping Russia in that.

MR. ARON:  [Inaudible].

MR. RUMER:  Yeah, sure.  Look, I want to come back to something that Mike said and Fiona too.  If I inadvertently created the impression that I'm against the good works of the Ford Foundation, MacArthur, Eurasia and various others in Russia, I'm not.  I think they're doing wonderful work, spanning a whole range of interesting academic and civic projects, and I'm all for their continued presence and hopefully expanded presence.  That's fine.

But I think let us not also fall into a trap of thinking that just because they're operating there, because they're expanding sometimes their activities, this signals the onset of democracy in Russia and a fundamental change in internal conditions.  That's going to be--

MR. McFAUL:  Nobody said that, come on.

MR. RUMER:  Well, Mike, well, there is a tendency--

MR. McFAUL:  We said that there's demand for grants for civil society support.  That's all the debate is about, Gene.  I mean you were the one that said they don't want it, and I look at these numbers--and I learn a lot of things by the way.  There's exchange programs, ten to one they have to reject them.  So I actually think the societal demand for engagement--let's leave the word democracy out, I agree with Nikolai--is much greater than the elites that you and I see on a daily basis.

MR. RUMER:  This is not on my minute, Leon, right?

MR. ARON:  No, correct.  It was a sort of a football time.

MR. RUMER:  Okay.  Fine, I think--no, Mike, you didn't say that, but oftentimes in our own discussions we juxtapose the experience of the 1990s when the foundations went in there and expanded their presence if only because there was none prior to that, and got a lot of projects going.  We sort of mistook that era for a period of hopeful democratic prospects in Russia, which it was, but let's not fool ourselves as others on this panel said, that was not the onset of democracy in Russia.  You're entitled your view for sure.

I also didn't mean to say, Mr. Straus, that everything is fine in Russia.  Certainly not everything is fine, and sort of endorse our Chair's introductory remarks in toto.

On the myth of neo-imperialism, I think it's not a myth.  I think if you'll look at the Russian debates about Russian foreign policy, I think if you look at Russian behavior in a series of crises in Georgia, in Ukraine most recently, they're not terribly consequential in terms of expanding Russia's empire, but the notion that Russia has a certain [French phrase] and the right to interfere in the internal affairs of these nations and dictate political outcomes I think is there, and it's hard to argue with that.  I mean we can go over particular writings of specific writers, chapter and verse, but--and that's my take on it.  Thank you.

MR. ARON:  Thanks very much.  One question there, yes.  Then there was one here for a long time.  And then we'll have to see.  I do make note of questions.

QUESTIONER:  Yes.  Stephen Morris, Johns Hopkins SAIS.  I'd like to ask whoever in the panel wants to answer this.

MR. ARON:  That's very dangerous.

QUESTIONER:  It would appear that Russia has lost control of the Ukraine.  Do you believe that the Kremlin elites understand that they have lost control of the Ukraine or believe that they have lost control of the Ukraine, or do you think that they may still think of some method to subvert the independence of the Ukraine in the coming years?  That's my first question.

The second question I'd like to ask Mr. Zlobin.  Do you believe that the Kremlin elites are as primitive as they sound intellectually?  Would this explain why they're so incompetent, because they're intellectually primitive people?  Or the third question, related to his, what is the future of the liberal political forces in Russia, not only Yabloka [ph] but, you know, Nimsov [ph], who played a role in the Ukrainian events, Gaidar and so on?  Do you see a future from them if Putin's policy fails?

MR. ARON:  Thanks very much.  I just learned that this ought to be the last question because we have a next event at 2:30, and the kitchen needs a half an hour to clean up.

Go ahead.

MS. HILL:  That was a rather provocateur question there, Mr. Morris, from what I remember from the old Russian Research Center at Harvard.

Look, Russia never had control of Ukraine in the way that perhaps the question is phrased.  Russia and Ukraine have been extremely closely tied together economically since the collapse of the Soviet Union for a whole load of obvious reasons.  But at the same time there was obviously a major sense of development in Ukraine where Ukraine was going along its own trajectory.  I think all of us in here can list off--and actually Mike said a little bit of it already, about why Ukraine was not Russia.  And the mistaken part of some people within the Kremlin or around the Kremlin--people who are advising in the Kremlin--was to think that Ukraine was like, say, Pakistan or like some other part of the Russian Federation, and to actually kind of approach it in that way of thinking that you could have the same sort of approach to electoral politics.

Now why was that the case?  Partly because of the perceptions that Nikolai has mentioned that we've already discussed and Ira Straus discussed, is the fact that Russia was being rolled back.  Let's just say the western media did an awful lot to help that perception by talking about the pro-western Yuschenko.  Well, why was Yuschenko supposedly pro-western?  He was Ukrainian, and I think Yuschenko, who, you know, I at least know a little bit about, was a very pragmatic politician.  He had been Prime Minister of Ukraine.  It isn't like he suddenly appeared from some kind of pro-western sludge lurking around somewhere near Lavief [ph] or something.  Quite the contrary.  I mean he was a man who actually knew Ukraine extremely well, speaks Russian and Ukrainian, had been the Central Bank of  (?).  So he had a pretty pragmatic relationship with the Russians while he was in the Prime Minister's position and the Central Bank.  So lots of people have been whipping this whole thing up, but actually making it much worse for Ukrainians.

Now, at the same time it was absolutely true that the fact that a bunch of--well, we have this expression in English--clodhoppers, so people who are rather heavy-footed came in and decided to try to help the Kuchma group run an election campaign  (?).  And then we had, obviously, some of this with some very different minds.

Now, what's happening now is you're having a huge debate among elites about who got it wrong.  Some people of course arguing that they should have been even more heavy-handed, but there's an awful lot of people in the Russian press, across the border, saying, "We really screwed up here."

And there were always people all the way along, not just Nimsov, but many others, including people in oligarchical KGB, FSB, FBR circles who were saying, "We could do this a lot differently.  Yuschenko is not western.  He's related to us.  People have lots of business ties, and in fact, there was also a strong feeling that Yanukovich himself was anti-Russian because he was linked in with the  (?)  Business Leagues, who didn't have any interest in having closer business relations with Russia itself.

So again, this was a very complex situation.  There was a lot of debate.  The heavy-handed approach won out at the time, and I think there's also soul searching now.  The question I think really comes back to the thing that maybe Nikolai can answer about, you know, the mentality right now, about whether it will be continued sense of reversal that will make the people who were pushing for a harder line prevail, or whether there will be a sensible reassessment, and a lot of that will depend on how Yuschenko now and his team approach the management of their Ukraine, and how Europe, the U.S. and others also behave in the future.

MR. ARON:  One minute to Nikolai [inaudible] the Russian elites.  There was one questioner that I want to ask a question within a minute.

MR. ZLOBIN:  Since I have a microphone I will start with Ukraine, but 10 seconds.  I would remind two things.  First of all, Russia didn't really have any intentions to control Ukraine several years ago, and couldn't.  I think in Russian political establishment was a clear idea that Ukraine is a relatively independent state.  Until troubles after their  (?)  journalist  (?)  Tony Rappines(?) or from Ukraine.  And basically, Kuchma, who didn't--wasn't accepted by Moscow like a pro-Moscow Ukrainian President.  (?)  Moscow started to build bridges with Kremlin and Kremlin just accepted that, so I think in many ways Western Ukraine toward Moscow and we'll see if they'll make this mistake again.

Talking to people who worked on Ukraine on this Russian project in Ukraine--and this is your question about Russian political leaders.  Yes, I would say they very much permit, if I would say, a lot of them very vulgar, but the most important things, as I see it--and as a lot of my friends and Mike's friends and Fiona's friends, and we know them all--they very cynical.  You know, you talk to them about Ukraine, they say, "Well, we failed.  We'll try next time."  You fail this time, not big deal.  I will make a better campaign for whatever  (?)  whatever pay me next time and we'll win.  So this cynicism and what I see in them is manualism(?) and this is very trouble full for me.

Even they sometimes very professional, to lock off values, which they base their policies on, that's very cynical, very simple, very primitive attitude toward policy and lack of values including liberals, so-called liberals -- [tape change] -- and I don't see their place in Russian political establishment for them now as a place for their system of values there.  And a lot of them in the early '90s joined the state, and I think working for state kills you as a liberal thinker, and this is what happened in at least first generation Russian liberal thinkers, kills them and they became statesmen.  When you don't think about liberalism you think about how to go with your state business.

So I think it's for time being prospective of liberal forces are not very good.  Thank you.

MR. ARON:  Thank you very much.

A very quick question, very quick answer.

QUESTIONER:  [Inaudible].

MR. ARON:  Sir, just ask your question.

QUESTIONER:  [Inaudible].

MR. ARON:  Thank you very much.

Well, thank you very much for coming.  And if anybody does go on the website to buy Mike McFaul's books or Fiona's books, mention that you were at this event, you'll get a 10 percent discount.