-Caveat Lector- <<Note: After reading the first article, one wonders what importance the second has. A<>E<>R >> >From Int'l Herald Tribune Paris, Saturday, February 27, 1999 Russia Is Sinking Into the Void of a 'Failed State' Faltering Central Authority Imperils Nation ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By David Hoffman Washington Post Service ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MOSCOW - When President Boris Yeltsin arrives at the Kremlin, a Russian tricolor is hoisted over the citadel of government authority to show that he is there - at work. But the flag has not flown much lately. Mr. Yeltsin, suffering from a bleeding ulcer, has come to the Kremlin only sporadically. Although he was back in the office Friday, his prolonged absences are contributing to what some prominent analysts maintain is a long slide toward the collapse of central authority in Russia and, perhaps, the crumbling of Russia as a federation. Russians have long feared that the country would shatter in a violent crack-up, ignited by secessionist movements in its diverse regions. But a different model is now gaining currency among political and economic analysts, who say Russia is in imminent danger of becoming a ''failed state,'' not breaking into pieces as the Soviet Union did in December 1991, but simply ceasing to function as a cohesive federal government. Many Russian politicians and political analysts say the debasement of Moscow's authority - possibly leading to a long stagnation and drift in which no one rules - threatens to bring its own special dangers, opening the doors to even more corruption and lawlessness, weapons proliferation, health hazards and environmental pollution. If Russia becomes a failed state, the risks are that individual regions and parts of Russian society will go their own way - making it difficult, for example, for Russia to control factories making missile parts or to cope with such problems as a spread of disease or massive piracy of intellectual property. Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov has become so concerned about the ebbing power of the central government that he suggested recently that Russia should scrap the election of regional governors, seen by many as one of the major gains of the country as it seeks to democratize. Instead, Mr. Primakov proposed that regional chieftains answer directly to the Kremlin, as they did in Soviet days - which would require rewriting the constitution. Mr. Primakov lamented that the Kremlin's chain of command over the country was ''not a solid line'' but rather ''a vertical broken line - broken.'' Moscow's once all-powerful authority had been eroding for years, even before the disintegration of the Soviet Union. But in recent months, several factors seemed to add to the disarray. Hobbled by economic decline, the government has become dysfunctional in some of its core responsibilities, including such pillars of central authority as the military, the courts and tax collection. Also, a political vacuum at the top - the president ill, his prime minister struggling to hold together an unwieldy coalition cabinet - has left Russia rudderless and thrust problems on the often-unprepared regional bosses. The deterioration of Kremlin power could be difficult if not impossible to reverse. Russia has become an anything-goes, chaotically libertarian society. Meanwhile, the central government has crumbled from within. In everything from law enforcement to the military, from public health to scientific research, Russia's national institutions and agencies are a bare shadow of earlier years. Some of Mr. Yeltsin's lieutenants have tried in vain to reassert the might of the center, such as an attempt two years ago by Deputy Prime Minister Anatoli Chubais to use police tactics to force major companies to pay taxes. It flopped. As a result of government weakness, many analysts say they expect that Mr. Yeltsin will be succeeded by a leader more inclined to resort to authoritarian methods. The Kremlin's troubles have set off fresh alarms. Sergei Karaganov, deputy director of the Institute of Europe and chairman of the Council on Defense and Foreign Policy, a group of Russian business and political leaders, said the ebb of central authority was becoming so acute that the Kremlin might as well not worry about setting economic policy. Mr. Karaganov said that Mr. Yeltsin no longer projected any meaningful authority from above and that Russians no longer trusted their government from below, following the devaluation of the ruble last year that brought on the country's most serious economic crisis since Soviet rule fell apart seven years earlier. ''I don't think there can be any economic policy,'' he said in an interview. ''It's useless to have any economic policy in a situation where there is political paralysis spreading through the whole body. There are two sicknesses. One is the president, which paralyzes greatly the whole body, and the second is the fact that the population mistrusts the government greatly. ''We are experiencing a rapid deterioration of the government,'' he added. ''You see it in hundreds of small episodes. The military is unable to pay at all, so the local governments pay the soldiers. Until recently, there was a complete stoppage of payment of funds to the courts. Imagine what that means.'' Thomas Graham, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former U.S. diplomat here, suggested recently that Russia might turn into a failed state because of the weakness in Moscow. ''For the first extended period in modern Russian history,'' he said, ''the center is neither feared nor respected.'' Moscow ''no longer controls the political and economic situation,'' he added. ''It no longer reliably wields power and authority, as it has traditionally, through the control of the institutions of coercion, the regulation of economic activity and the ability to command the loyalty of, or instill fear in, the people.'' Sergei Alexashenko, former first deputy head of the central bank, said Russian institutions under democracy were ''obviously weak'' and had ''never managed to function properly.'' ''This applies to the institutions of power, the Parliament and the government, to the 'power ministries' - the army and law enforcement bodies, to economic structures,'' he said. The economic crisis, he said, is largely rooted in the ''inability of the state to perform one of its prime functions: tax collection.'' The deterioration of Kremlin power was a chief topic at the meeting last week of Mr. Karaganov's defense and foreign policy council. A report prepared by a panel he headed warned that Russia was falling apart - a familiar theme, but the report struck an urgent tone, calling on the ailing Mr. Yeltsin to step down to make way for Mr. Primakov as successor. ''The president demonstrates such an obvious inability to control things that it raises doubt about the expediency of the institution of the presidency in its present form,'' the report said. ''Mere bursts of activity do not count.'' But the council was divided on whether Mr. Yeltsin should quit. Some questioned whether his premature resignation would help or hurt, and Mr. Primakov has pointedly insisted that Mr. Yeltsin must complete his term. Within the council, few disagreed with the report's diagnosis that Russian power was rotting from within. ''Actually, the process of slow disintegration is already under way,'' the report said, adding that such decay might not wreck Russia as a sovereign state - just corrode central authority. + + + + Paris, Saturday, February 27, 1999 Clinton Calls Help For Russia a Priority He Pledges Support to Confront Moscow's 'Enormous' Problems ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SAN FRANCISCO - President Bill Clinton said Friday that one of the main priorities of American foreign policy should be to help Russia overcome its enormous problems. ''We must confront the risk of Russia weakened by the legacy of communism and also by its inability at the moment to maintain prosperity at home or control the flow of its money, weapons and technology across its borders,'' Mr. Clinton said in an address to a group of foreign policy and public affairs organizations in which he outlined his foreign-policy goals for the final two years of his administration. ''The dimensions of this problem are truly enormous,'' he said. ''If Russia does what it must to make its economy work, I am ready to do everything I can to mobilize adequate international support for them.'' In the speech, Mr. Clinton also pleaded for active U.S. involvement overseas - from China to Kosovo - saying Americans ''must embrace the inexorable logic of globalization.'' He offered a defense of China on the same day that the State Department reported a sharp erosion of human rights there. ''Everything from the strength of our economy, to the safety of our cities, to the health of our people depends on events not only within our border but half a world away,'' Mr. Clinton said. The conflict in Kosovo, where his administration has yet to cement a peace deal despite Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's intercession and an offer of U.S. peacekeepers, was a centerpiece of Mr. Clinton's outline. ''Kosovo is not an easy problem,'' he said. ''But if we don't stop the conflict now, it clearly will spread. And then, we will not be able to stop it except at far greater cost and risk.'' The president issued a warning to President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia that NATO was ''prepared to act'' if his forces engaged in repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo before peace talks resume on March 15. ''President Milosevic should understand that this is a time for restraint, not repression,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''And if he does not, NATO is prepared to act.'' Mr. Clinton spoke as the State Department released in Washington its annual human rights report to Congress. The timing put Mr. Clinton in the awkward position of defending China - and his policy of engagement with the communist giant - at the same time that his administration reported a sharp deterioration in that's country's human rights record. (Page 2.) A crackdown on political dissent late last year reversed recent signs of improvement, the State Department found. Mr. Clinton tried to find an explanation in China's economic problems. ''China's rate of economic growth is declining just as it is needed to create jobs for a growing and increasingly more mobile population,'' he said. ''We can see in China the kinds of problems a society faces when it is moving away from the rule of fear but is not yet rooted in the rule of law.'' Continuing to defend his engagement, Mr. Clinton said: ''Sooner or later China will have to come to understand that society and the world we're living in simply cannot purchase stability at the expense of freedom.'' ''On the other hand,'' he said, ''we have to ask ourselves: What is the best thing to do to try to maximize the chance that China will take the right course?'' Addressing the world economy, Mr. Clinton said a way must be found to dampen what he called ''boom and bust'' cycles in international capital markets. ''We have got to find a way to facilitate the movement of money, without which trade and investment cannot occur in a way that avoids these dramatic cycles of boom and then bust which have led to the collapse of economic activity in so many countries around the world,'' Mr. Clinton said, adding that the world's financial rules needed to be overhauled to stop big capital swings. ''When the tides of capital first flood emerging markets and then abruptly recede, when millions who have worked their way into the middle class are plunged suddenly into poverty, the need for reform of the international financial system is clear,'' he said. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. 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