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Notes -
I actually went through this. Well, skimming parts, but reading at least most of it.
This is not really a neutral appraisal of "Russia's road to corruption", it's a partisan Republican attack on the Clinton administration. This is its obvious function from the name on – and the fact that all the Reps indicated as writers are Republicans. It just takes negative developments in Russia in the 90s and then blames everything it can on Clinton admin on very loose grounds, utilizing an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach. The things that happened before Clinton admin took power, ie. before January 1993, can be blamed on the Russians, since doing otherwise would of course be putting a blame on a blameless Republican president. Everything after that, though? It's Clinton and Gore.
One chapter of the assessment consists of Clinton assigning the Russia portfolio to Gore (it’s not really explained why this would be so bad, since Gore, through his congressional career, would be expected to genuinely have more natsec experience, and of course it might be noted since Clinton powerful vice presidencies with serious duties have been pretty normative anyway). Gore is then blamed for dealing with Russian Prime Ministers – who would probably be pretty much who you’d expect him to deal with.
There’s little substantive criticism and a lot of reaching – one chapter seemingly blames the entirety of the rise of Russian organized crime in the 90s on the fact of Gore-Chernomyrdin commission existing! - and it’s obvious the point here is that it’s 2000, the election year, Gore was the Dem candidate, and moreover the GOP candidate was the son of George Bush sr., who of course is only praised here.
Probably the most substantial criticism is that IMF kept extending loans to Russia despite its problems, but even here far too much conjuncture is made on first straightforwardly blaming Clinton for this, then blaming basically all of Russia’s economic woes on IMF credit being too easy (at most one could say that this bolstered somewhat decisions that the Russians would have most likely made anyway), and then the claim is that this so discredited Americans in Russian eyes (the same Russians who made these decisions) that Russia just had no choice but to sell weapons to countries it would have probably sold weapons to anyway. Again, the main point is bashing Clinton moreso than be some sort of a real analysis of America-Russia relations in the 90s.
Since the criticism is so loose and unfocused I don’t generally really get what the Republicans even think the Clinton administration should have done. The Republicans claim that Clinton admin basically pushed the Russians towards “state interference” and “centralization” instead of “building a free market economy”, expect the Russian privatizations were bad, because they were done before the Russians had built a market economy. But to do what they want would have almost certainly required a more centralized and structured effort, requiring state interference. Disastrous crash privatizations are what happens when one doesn’t have that.
On the other hand Clinton-Gore gets blamed for ruining US relationship with Russia (wasn’t this one of Bush campaign themes?), on the other hand the report constantly indicates that Clinton-Gore should have meddled much more in the Russian policies, condemned Russian weapons trade with Iran and the Chechnya War, enlarged NATO even faster than it did, dealt with figures other than official Russian state figures like Gaidar and Chernomyrdin (apparently Yavlinsky – that eternal Western hope of a sensible Russian liberal, with 30 years of failure running currently to make a mark in the Russian society) etc. – ie. done stuff that would have ruined the US-Russia relations far more and would have probably led to a good chance of a figure more radically anti-Western than Putin getting in power, possibly sooner than Putin’s anti-Western turn really happened.
Of course, there are actual points here, I am ready to accept that US should have been more forceful about condemning Russian policy in Chechnya, or critical of the way the 1993 Duma standoff was handled, or about Russian corruption, or a host of other things, but even there it’s not really about US interfering too much, is it? The most substantial charges are basically not that Americans interfered with Russia to bring it disaster but that they didn’t interfere enough. It’s an opposite point to what you are arguing!
Once one removes all the Clinton-bashing, what remains is mostly evidence that the fundamental power was Russian post-Soviet corruption. Reading all this actually increases my confidence that 90s were just another case of Russia getting ruined by Russians, and the latter-day assessments that it was the Yanks wut done it are a powerful form of cope.
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