#8 - JRL 6597
From: "James Henderson" <james.henderson@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: New Stanley Foundation Report on US-Russia
Relations
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002
Dear David,
The Euro-Atlantic Initiatives program of the Stanley Foundation and the Century Foundation have just released a new report on US-Russia relations. I was hoping you could place the attached press release in an edition of JRL.
Best regards and happy holidays,
James
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Keith Porter
563-264-1500 (office)
563-263-6167 (home)
kporter@stanleyfoundation.org
Domestic Politics and America's Russia Policy
How has US domestic politics influenced America's relationship with Russia since the early 1990s?
This was the question put to a distinguished group of US policy and Russia experts for the project Domestic Politics and America's Russia Policy, chaired by Morton Abramowitz and coordinated by the Century Foundation and the Stanley Foundation.
In the recently released report, Abramowitz concludes that, "while Russia does not have the cogency for policy of the Soviet Union or draw the domestic political attention that it once did, it has remained a main preoccupation of policymakers after the Cold War to integrate Russia into the Western community of nations and help make it a more democratic, market-oriented state."
Domestic politics has routinely been an important factor in America's foreign policy relationships-none more so than our relationship with Russia. But how domestic political factors influence a relationship and the peculiarity of those factors has rarely been examined. For this inquiry, a task force of senior experts was formed to examine four cases that have been and are still crucial to US-Russia relations: Chechnya, reducing the threat of proliferation from Russia's vast stock of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Russia's policy toward Iran and Iraq, and US efforts to promote democracy in Russia.
The analysis and findings of the project have been published in a report authored by Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow with the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of the task force.
The full report is available on the Web at www.euro-atlanticinitiatives.org. Among its main findings:
· On the whole, US policy toward Russia has not been a major focus of the American public. In the post-Soviet era it has been a superficial focus of Congress. Major American media outlets have closed their bureaus in Moscow and, aside from a few issues, there has been relatively little policy debate among even those experts who follow events in Russia on a full-time basis. To a great extent the US government has had an extremely free hand in setting the basic contours and details of policy toward Russia.
· The role of outsiders has been mixed. Experts with a mission can make a difference, particularly if they can find like-minded supporters in the executive branch and among key legislators.
· Some powerful lobbies can change policy, again by forming a strategic alliance with members of Congress or the executive branch. But these cases are probably rare. Notably there is no strong Russian-American lobby in the United States.
· The nongovernmental community that works on human rights and democracy has had little impact on Russia policy. They have mostly struck out on Chechnya and on democracy assistance.
· Inconsistency is an important theme that emerges from these cases. For example, US policy confronts difficult trade-offs in emphasizing "hard" security issues, such as the proliferation of WMD, over "soft" security issues, such as compliance with international human rights and humanitarian law. The cases examined here suggest that hard security issues decisively trump soft ones and that concerned outside parties largely accept that trade-off.
· These cases demonstrate that a policy with numerous facets provides innumerable opportunities to bargain and help shape that policy. The US engagement with Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, has been managed and directed by a multitude of forces, people, and competing issues.
· No single issue in the US-Russia relationship has emerged as a "show stopper." US foreign policy toward Russia evolves on a case-by-case basis and has tended not to link issues or make any one problem central to the entire relationship, even given the overarching and widely accepted theme of integration into the West.
· While the post-Soviet US-Russia relationship has evolved, there are still themes and issues, such as proliferation of WMD and Chechnya, that are deeply intrinsic to the relationship, cut against deeper cooperation and, depending on events and media coverage, could generate a series of questions about policy toward Russia.
The Century Foundation sponsors and supervises timely analyses of economic policy, foreign affairs, and domestic political issues. Not-for-profit and nonpartisan, it was founded in 1919 and endowed by Edward A. Filene.
The Stanley Foundation was created in 1956 by C. Maxwell and Elizabeth Stanley to pursue their long-time commitment to the effective management of global problems. From its headquarters in Muscatine, Iowa, this private operating foundation seeks to improve international understanding through media and educational programs and through forums encouraging dialogue among policy professionals, educators, students, and citizens interested in world affairs.
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