Russia in search of a foreign policy

Abstract

Faced with growing criticism of a foreign policy that is regarded as too soft, too pro-Western, and insufficiently attentive to Russian national interests—and the opposition comes not only from the so-called reds and browns and the military, but from centrist and democratic circles as well —President Yeltsin has been obliged to cede foreign policy positions in an effort to save domestic ones. It is a measure of the Russian president's uncertain hold on power that much of the opposition program outlined by his foreign minister, in a mock speech last December, has since become the official language of Russian diplomacy. The concept of national interest has become a codeword for internal opposition to Russia's foreign and domestic policy, and the debate has ranged over such issues as Russia's Eurasian roots, the extent of Moscow's authority over the territory of the former USSR, and an appropriate nation- al security strategy for Russia. Post-communist Russia has still to determine its national identity, national char- acter, and national interests in world affairs. It is an inauspicious time for such a debate: constitutional crisis has reinforced separatist tendencies, economic decline has promoted regional autarkies, and disparate political philosophies project compet- ing images of state and nation. Nevertheless, at the same time, there is a nation-build- ing quality to the process, as it seeks to identify common values and expectations. An enlightened view of its strategic interests could form a basis for Russian foreign poli- cy that is both understandable and predictable. The danger lies in the prospect that the search for the national interest will continue to elude a national consensus. On the same day Boris Yeltsin was forced to abandon his acting prime minister to the demands of the December 1992 Congress of Peoples Deputies in Moscow, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev delivered what he might have thought was his own valedictory at a meeting in Stockholm of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Before an increasingly uneasy audience, Kozyrev announced a major change in Russian foreign policy. Kozyrev declared that Russia's Asian traditions set certain limits on its relations with the West; he warned against NATO interference in the Baltic states or other regions of the former Soviet Union; he demanded that UN sanctions against Yugoslavia be lifted; and he asserted that Russia firmly insist that the former Soviet republics immedi- ately join a new federation or confederation. Kozyrev later apologized for using such an oratorical technique to dramatize the demands of the opposition, and he assured his lis- teners that neither he nor President Yeltsin would ever agree to what I read in my previ- ous speech.1 Kozyrev's venture into shock diplomacy was an accurate rendition of the growing criticism in Russia of a foreign policy that many regard as too soft, too pro-Western, and