			Foreign Correspondent

		      Inside Track On World News
	    By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
		 Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>

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GREAT RUSSIA EMERGES FROM THE ASHES OF DEMOCRACY
by
Eric Margolis  15 June 1996


Russia's election on Sunday is a titanic battle between the
forces of democratic light and communist darkness, warns the
western media. Unless Boris Yeltsin defeats communist Gennady
Zyuganov, the Cold War will resume.

This column has long held the lonely position that the Cold War
did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990-1991  -
but was merely  on hold, pending Russia's recovery from massive
economic and political shock.  Over the past three years, 
east-west rivalry has resumed in earnest, though most westerners
choose not to see this disturbing reality.

Whether Yeltsin or the communists win Sunday's elections - or a
runoff in July - will have no major effect on that part of
Russia's conduct which affects our lives: foreign policy. Yeltsin
and Zyuganov are both publically committed to same policies: 
reassembling the old Soviet Union; and reasserting Russian 
influence in East Europe, the Mideast, and North Pacific.   

The battle has already been lost. In an egregious failure of
strategic leadership, the Clinton Administration threw away the
unique, historic opportunity to contain an isolated Russia within
its reduced, post 1991-borders. 

While the west dithered, refuelling Russia's economy with
billions in aid, Moscow has virtually reabsorbed 9 of the 14
independent states that left the collapsing Soviet Union.  This
includes all of oil-rich Central Asia, the strategic Caucasus, 
Belarus, and Moldova. Only Ukraine and the tiny Baltic states and
Azerbaijan have retained a genuine, if precarious  independence. 

In its mistaken zeal to back supposed democrat Boris Yeltsin, the
Administration closed its eyes to his siege of parliament and
other dictatorial acts,  and actually abetted the reassembly of
the old Soviet Union.  

Washington invited Moscow to reassert its influence in the
Balkans by joining the NATO peace force in Bosnia.  The
Administration gave Moscow a green light to crush
democratic/nationalist forces in Central Asia, using the wildly
overblown spectre of Islamic fundamentalism as a justification. 
Little was done to lessen Moscow's punishing diplomatic siege and
isolation of Ukraine. 

In the Caucasus, the Administration deeply stained America's
honor by aiding Moscow's savage repression of the Chechen people.
As Russian forces laid waste to Chechnya, killing an estimated
60,000 civilians, Clinton rushed through  $10,2 billion in new
loans for Moscow,  and even compared the slaughter in Chechnya to
America's Civil War.  US-supplied electronic gear was likely used
to assassinate the Chechen president, Dzhokar Dudayev. 

As further aid to Russia's repression in the Caucasus, Washington
just rewrote the key Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty,
allowing Moscow to violate its original provisions by increasing
Russian military forces in Chechnya, as well as those facing
NATO-allies Turkey and Norway.

While Washington was abetting the reconstruction of its only real
strategic enemy, Great Russia,  it has beamed hostility at
Iran and China, neither of whom offers any real current threat to
American hegemony in the Mideast or Asia.  

Equally bad, the price of Yeltsin's questionable friendship has
been extremely high:  that NATO would stay out of east Europe. 
The failure of the US and Europe to draw a `cordon sanitaire' on
Europe's eastern border with Russia creates an extremely
dangerous, geopolitical fault zone between the two power blocs. 
Turbulence in East Europe sparked two world wars, and three
regional wars, this century.  Washington's naive, timid policy
threatens to turn the region into a major flash point early in
the 21st Century.

Ironically, in terms of `realpolitik,' it would probably be
better for the west if the communists won the election.  The
military/strategic power of modern states is based on economic
and technological strength.  With vast resources of energy,
minerals, land and brave, educated people, Russia should be the
world's leading power.  Thanks to 74 years of marxist economic
ineptitude, Russia ended up a backward, third-world nation with
nuclear weapons - a sort of snowy India.  Communist foreign
policy was aggressive, but always tempered by a deep caution that
came from the nation's inherent weaknesses.

An effective capitalist, free-market system would revitalize
Russia and harness its strengths, allowing it to militarily and
economically challenge the US, Japan and Europe.   Moreover, the
supposedly docile `democratic' government in Moscow sustained by
the Clinton  Administration is not much  less brutal or dangerous
than the old communist regime: in fact Yeltsin is using the same
scorched earth policy in Chechnya that Brezhnev employed in
Afghanistan.  At least Brezhnev never ordered his tanks to fire
on parliament.

Today's `democratic' Russia - run by shifting tribal alliances of
political potentates, army and KGB generals, industrialists,
bankers and mafia chieftains, is far more unstable, and thus
unpredictable,  than the cautious old Soviet Union.  When
Russia's internal situation finally  stabilizes, it will likely
become at least as much a threat to the west as the bygone
Soviets.

Neither presidential elections nor playing musical chairs in the
Duma will substantially alter Russia's underlying nature. Nor can
they alter Russia's strategic destiny, so presciently defined by
the great geopoliticians, Sir William Mackinder and  Baron Karl
Haushofer, at the beginning of our century, and the ardent goal
of past and present Russian nationalists: 

A mighty, world Imperium- the Third Rome- ruled by Slavic
Russians, whose borders have been ordained to expand until they 
reach the shores of the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic
Oceans.

copyright   Eric Margolis  1996

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