The immediate aftermath of the heinous attacks on the French capital by the Islamic State Group has, perhaps, opened the possibility for a rapprochement between the United States and Russia. On the ‘sidelines’ of the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin had what both sides described as a productive meeting, presumably over how to best help France fashion an effective response to the atrocious acts which racked Paris on November 13th. And yet, despite the perhaps promising tete-a-tete, just below the surface, relations between the two New Cold War rivals will likely remain antagonistic.
Why so? Part of the answer lies in the question: Is democracy the answer? American efforts at democracy promotion in and around Russia since the end of the Cold War have helped to midwife the present dilemma in which we find ourselves. This is an old story, and it is worth re-telling. When the Clinton administration took over the reigns of power in early 1993, the careful efforts by the prior administration not to alienate Russia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s dissolution were summarily discarded in favor of a policy of triumphalism, which took the form of, among other things, so-called zdravstvidaniya or “hello-goodbye” trips by senior Clinton administration officials to the former republics of the Soviet Union. These trips began what became a 25 year (and counting!) effort by the U.S. to wrest the the former republics of the Soviet Union out of the Russian sphere of influence.
Within 24 months of the end of the Soviet Union, the decision was made at the 1994 NATO Summit in Brussels to begin a policy of eastward expansion. This policy of expanding what is inaccurately referred to by American policy makers as a “defensive alliance” to the borders of Russia, was coupled by a policy of EU expansion. In point of fact, EU membership de facto means NATO membership because of the specific security and foreign policy protocols embedded within the EU’s acquis communautaire.
Worse still, the policy of surrounding Russia with a potentially hostile military alliance and a political-economic confederation, which never had any intention of letting it join, took place at a time when Russia was experiencing the largest demographic and economic collapse recorded in peace time.
Russia’s economy revived in the early 2000s, and its geopolitical posture likewise transformed. And yet, the U.S. persisted in not seeing the new reality. And so the democratization project continued unabated; with USAID and the national security apparatus aiding and abetting the “color revolutions” in Georgia in 2003 and in Ukraine in late 2004. These “revolutions” brought to power anti-Russian leaders who forthwith began clamoring for NATO and EU membership. The West was all too happy to oblige them: NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia “shall” become NATO members at the Bucharest Summit in 2008. All the while, the U.S. continued to push for a peculiar form of “democratization” in the former republics of the Soviet Union, which added up to little more than support for any politician, no matter how noxious, as long as they were seen as willing (never mind able) to “stand up to Putin.”
The fruits of the policy of democratization and “NATO-ization” can be seen in the bloody civil war, which broke out in Ukraine 18 months ago. And yet, none of the manifold disasters, which the West’s expansionary posture have given rise to, have led our governing elites to question the rightness of their project.
Democracy—like other forms of national life: culture, mores, laws—is best developed organically rather than imposed from outside. We seem to have forgotten that American policymakers spent the better part of 40 years facing down a superpower that wished to impose it's own system on the West. And it was a project we fought with nearly, though thankfully not every, tool at our disposal. Now, it is we Americans, not the Russians, who are in thrall to a universalizing ideology: that of democratization. What a remarkable transformation in so little time!
And so, to answer the question: is there a role Washington could play in helping Russia move towards democracy? Flatly: No.
