6327
#3
From: JBERNSTEIN91@aol.com (Jonas
Bernstein)
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002
Subject: re: Lilia Shevtsova's comments, JRL #6325,
June 27, 2002
Lilia Shevtsova's defense of the Clinton Administration's Russia policy is perhaps the most persuasive one made thus far. Still, I have problems with some of the implications of her argument.
She seems to be saying, for example, that the Clinton administration was on balance more right than wrong in remaining silent, at least publicly, about the Mobutu-like looting Yeltsin and his cronies were engaged in. But would public criticism of, say, the National Sports Fund or the loans-for-shares scheme, have offended Yeltsin and Co. so much that they would have reacted by refusing to withdraw Russian troops from the Baltic states (or reinvading them, since by the time loans-for-shares took place Russia had already pulled its troops out of the Baltics) or by taking active measures (like what?) to thwart NATO expansion? I doubt it.
Secondly, is it true, as Ms. Shevtsova writes, that "[o]f course, both Talbott and Clinton knew about the true nature of Yeltsin's regime"? While Talbott now assures us this was the case, the on-the-record comments made by Clinton Administration officials during that period suggest otherwise. A case in point is the valedictory speech made by Thomas Pickering, the outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Russia, before the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow in October 1996. In it, Mr. Pickering predicted that within three years, doing business in Russia would become "more structured, more predictable and less risky," that the "fabulous Russian Far East" would catch up economically with the rest of the Pacific Rim, that Russian tax laws and accounting standards would "approach Western norms," that Russia would become one of America's top trading partners, and that Americans would "be able to travel to Sochi and Samara as easily and as regularly as they now travel to Chicago and Cleveland." As far as I remember, the speech was not meant to be ironic.
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