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Why Russian Policy is Failing in Asia

Authored by Dr. Stephen J. Blank.

April 2, 1997

44 Pages

Brief Synopsis

Since its inception as a state, Russia has been both a European and an Asian power. Although Russia today, as was true during much of its history, is torn by an identity crisis over where it belongs, its elites have never renounced Russia's vital interests in Asia and the belief that it should be recognized as a great power there. However, that belief and Moscow's ability to sustain it are now under threat, due, as Dr. Stephen Blank's thorough analysis informs us, to the ongoing failures of Russian policymakers to come to grips with changed Russian and Asian realities.

At the same time, this aspect of Russian policy has been neglected in American assessments of Russia. This is a serious shortcoming, because, in Dr. Blank's view, Russia's Asian policies, viewed in their full breadth, are important signs of present and future trends concerning its behavior at home and in the wider world. Those policies are also significant as Asia's importance in world affairs rises. We ignore the threatening situation facing Russia, and Moscow's failure to adjust to those threats, only at our own peril. The growing concern over Russian arms transfers to China, a subject addressed in the study, is only one sign of unexpected negative trends that might work against U.S. interests if we continue to neglect Asian aspects of Russia's global behavior and policy.

SUMMARY

Russia historically has been a major power in Asia. Yet increasingly it is being marginalized in Asian security issues, especially by the United States. For example, the new U.S. peace program for Korea omits any Russian participation. Thus Russia faces the threat of a steady erosion of its Asiatic position. The reasons for this process have much to do with the Russian state's structural incapacity for conducting a coherent Asian strategy, and the manifestations of this incapacity threaten to continue the decline of Russia's position in Asia.

The Yeltsin administration has not succeeded in creating a coherent policy process that is coordinated by regular and legalized policymaking institutions. Nor does it speak with one voice. President Boris Yeltsin has consistently championed a system of government that has disorganized institutions, prevented coherence in policymaking, deliberately fostered institutional discord among his officials, and undermined prospects for effective democratic control of the armed forces. He has also allowed a process whereby private sectors, interest groups, and factions have been able to take over state assets or policy processes and make policy on their own and exclusively for their own interests, without any consideration of Russian interests.

Due to these processes of "deinstitutionalization" and privatization of the state, Russia's Asian policies are essentially the subject of a free-for-all where rival factions contend among each other for preference and access. It is not surprising that in such an environment it proved impossible to arrive at normalization with Japan in 1992, since the armed forces and conservative forces could and did successfully coalesce and publicly oppose the government's policy with impunity. Thus the inability of the state to overcome the devolution of power to regional interest groups who can unite with the armed forces perpetuates an anti-Western orientation in Russian politics, preserves the economic poverty of the Far East, and leads to a joint anti-Western strategy with China. This anti- Western strategy also perpetuates the state's structural weaknesses.

These weaknesses not only undermine the center's ability to govern, formulate, and implement policy, they also erode the foundations of control over regional governments. While central governmental policy is adamantly pro-Chinese, in the Russian Far East the government has fallen into the hands of a regional gang- -not too strong a word--that successfully conducts a loud and xenophobic anti-China policy against Moscow's express wishes. The erosion of control over obstreperous provinces is a sign both of weak central authority and of a failure to secure the economic revival of these areas. Central policy discriminates against Russia's Asian provinces, but no less telling is the failure to maximize these provinces' potential for joining the booming Asia Pacific economy. As Asian economies grow, these regions could be pushed into their sphere of economic influence because Moscow has shown it cannot aid or govern them. This process could, in turn, trigger a wholesale retrenchment of effective (as opposed to nominal) Russian power in Asia where large swathes of Russian territory come under the effective economic, if not political, control of states like China.

At the same time, Russia's arms producers are carrying out their own policy of selling arms and technology to China and presumably elsewhere. Arms sellers are desperate to sell because Russia's armed forces cannot buy their production and would go under without arms sales. They constitute a formidable lobby, enjoying broad governmental support and access to foreign currency. Thus they and other individuals with access either to technology or weapons have been able to sell either weapons or technologies abroad on their own and force the state to make peace with these faits accomplis. They are selling weapons to China, South Korea, India, Malaysia, and anyone else who would buy them. Arms sellers are also pushing these sales regardless of the fact that large sectors of the military view China as Russia's main military rival, or that the other recipients of these weapons could easily become China's enemies, forcing Russia into a choice between them.

The ability of arms sellers to get their way also has allowed China to get its way in the military aspects of the relationship with Russia, turning Russia into the demandeur who needs China more than China needs it, and must therefore pay China for its support. Thus the danger in Russia's growing friendship with China, which is approaching the nature of an alliance and where that word has already figured in public and military discussions of the relationship, is that the entente with China becomes a way for China to exploit Russia for its benefit. Russia would then be the ultimate loser in this relationship, not the beneficiary of an enhanced strategic potential. Russia and China are following an openly anti-American course of action and policy; they agree on all main issues in Asia (as Russian diplomats tell us); and Moscow supports Beijing in Southeast Asia. Accordingly, the failure to devise a coherent policy process and state control threatens Russia with being reduced to following China's strategic interests to the detriment of its own national interests. But since Russia is alienating Japan and South Korea by its wayward economic policies and strange security policies, like trying to cozy up to both Pyongyang and Seoul, it lacks any alternative source of political support or capital in Asia.

In this connection, it is obvious that the Russian Federation lacks any clear concept of international economic policy to develop its own Asian provinces, or the means to implement one. Thus those regions are falling into crisis and are kept in a state of colonial dependence on Moscow while external possibilities for support are minimized. This policy can only breed more local political disaffection and further undermine Moscow's ability to bring those areas into a modern economy integrated with the heartland of Russia.

Finally, Russia's military strategy for the area has also failed to come to terms with reality. Military planners are demanding forces far in excess of Russia's capabilities and are still wedded to anti-American and anti-Japanese scenarios that fall too quickly into either oceanic or global conventional and nuclear war scenarios. Yet at the same time as they advocate such postures and look warily at China, they cannot modernize their forces, both for financial reasons and because China would look askance. The failure to harmonize interests or goals with means leads to the continuing degradation of all of Russia's Asian military forces. Russia cannot afford either to maintain or withdraw its current Asian based forces. And in the absence of a coherent economic policy, the weakening of military power means that Russia is losing its ability to influence regional economic, political, and military trends in Asia.

It may not be wise on our part to marginalize Russia as an Asian state, but it must be admitted that Russia is doing it to herself and that the causes are largely internal. Only Moscow can overcome this debilitating process, but there are few signs that this is happening or will happen, and few signs that we are sensitive to the tremendous implications of collapsing Russian power in Asia.

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