Asia Times: ANALYSIS: Is Russia another Somalia?



	January 29, 1999	atimes.com

Central Asia / Siberia

ANALYSIS: Is Russia another Somalia?
By Donald N. Jensen

''Upper Volta with missiles'' is how some foreigners described the USSR shortly before its demise, an allusion to the great disparity between the former Soviet Union's vast nuclear arsenal and its lagging economy. While Russia's economic miseries have hardly eased since then, the inability of the Russian state to carry out its core functions - the preservation of public order, the maintenance of a monetary system, tax collection, and income redistribution, and the provision of minimal social welfare - invites comparison with developing countries such as Somalia, Haiti, and Liberia, where the nation-state has failed. Moreover, it is the collapse of the Russian state, not the breakup of the federation or economic depression, that may in the long run prove the greatest threat to Russian democratic development and international stability.

In a recent paper, Thomas Graham, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, argues that a key trend in Russia over the past decade has been the fragmentation, decentralization, and erosion of political and economic power. To some extent, this is a result of the policies pursued by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin as well as of global trends. But it has also been both an effect and a cause of the economic decline those policies precipitated. While in Africa the collapse is primarily the result of inter-tribal factionalism, in Russia it is the by-product of bitter inter-elite rivalries, greed, and administrative chaos in Moscow, all of which have eroded the center's capacity to govern effectively. To a large extent, however, Russia's degeneration reflects a society atomized to the point where the concept of national interest has been lost.

The diffusion of power, contrary to widespread opinion in both Russia and the West, has not created strong regions. Rather, the striking feature of the Russian political and economic system, Graham argues, can be summed up as ''weak Center--weak regions,'' that is, there is no concentration of power anywhere in the country capable by itself of managing the situation or creating coalitions for that purpose. As a result, neither the Center nor the regions fully control the political and economic situation. Thus, Russia's failure to police its borders, eradicate pollution, pay overdue wages, and prudently use loans from the IMF is not merely the result of corruption, obstructionist economic lobbies, or the lack of political will (the latter an explanation frequently used in the West to explain the economic collapse last August). They are due to the ''gangrene,'' which is how one prominent newspaper recently referred to the weakening state.

There are nevertheless some things the federal government can still do reasonably well. Its nuclear force would deter any potential aggressor from invading, while its ability to subsidize debtor regions is an important lever of control. Even in these areas, however, there are signs of disintegration. The government is increasingly unable to bear the costs of nuclear force modernization. The state is sometimes unable even to meet Weber's criterion that central to most viable nation-states is the legitimate monopoly on the use of force. The August economic collapse, moreover, has weakened the economies of the 13 regions (out of 89) that are net contributors to the federal budget.

Collapsing states are, of course, nothing new. But today they are no longer isolated and can threaten their neighbors. Such states harbor international criminal organizations, serve as highways for narcotics trafficking, and can have a major effect on the world financial community. In Russia's case, the weak state may be unable to prevent the transfer abroad of nuclear weapons technology, while the natural gas firm Gazprom is so politically powerful that it conducts its own foreign policy, sometimes against the wishes of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

For Russia the central question is where power will finally be concentrated, both geographically and within the state bureaucracy. It is also a crucial question as to what consequences such concentration will have. Russia is likely far from having answers to those questions.

For the United States, the challenge is how best to take into account the state's deterioration, while trying to make progress on the many issues of bilateral concern. At a minimum, Washington should take greater account of non-governmental actors such as Gazprom and LUKoil as well as the few regional leaders, including Moscow Mayor Yurii Luzhkov, who have political clout. The U.S. should also take care to create clearer and stronger incentives for the successful implementation of policies that it supports. In this context, the tight controls on Washington's food aid package and the recent ban on contacts with three scientific centers suspected of selling missile technology to Iran may prove small but nonetheless constructive steps.

(The author is associate director of RFE/RL broadcasting. (c)1998 RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.)