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456 CHAPTER 4 Russia and the Former Soviet Republics

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On 20 February 2007 the US State Department marked 200 years of diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia.

Offi cials chose to highlight an aspect of that relationship that John Quincy Adams could never have imagined as the fi rst US minister to Russia: cooperation in outer space.

At the celebration, Yuri Ushakov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, said, “In exploring outer space, we are not only partners but rivals as well. That rivalry, that competition, however, produced brilliant results. . . . A half a century ago, in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the fi rst man-made satellite, and America [responded] by establishing NASA and the launch of their own space vessels.”

Now the United States and Russia cooperate in space on a daily basis in support of the International Space Station.

Do you think Ambassador Ushakov was right in what he said about competition in space between the United States and Russia? Does that space rivalry have anything to do with other issues between the two countries? How so?

• the impact of the restructured Russian economic system on worldwide democracy

• the Russia-US challenges of nuclear threats, nonproliferation, and missile defense

• the effects on the United States caused by Russian oil production and distribution

• the importance of the cooperation in space between Russia and the United States

75162_C4L5_p456-473_AFJROTC_FINAL.indd 456 11/10/09 11:26 AM

VocabularyVocabulary

LESSON 5 ■ US Interests and Regional Issues in Russia and the Former Soviet Republics 457

• normalization• geopolitical

The Impact of the Restructured Russian Economic System on Worldwide Democracy

Even in the twenty-fi rst century, Russia has an authoritarian streak. Russians still play hardball on the international political stage. But they are no longer promoting communism or Marxism in Europe or the Third World. Nor are they pushing the idea of a global “class struggle.”

That is a big change. These activities were a constant of the Cold War years, even during the golden age of US-Soviet détente in the mid-1970s. At that point, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev insisted that better relations with the United States did not mean that the Soviets would stop supporting Cuban troops in Africa.

Proxy wars—involving Soviet allies fi ghting allies of the West—are now a thing of the past. More states have given up socialism in favor of capitalism. Even China, once a leader of the Communist bloc, has turned to free-market economics.



Russia’s Shift Away From Pushing the Socialist Model

The move away from proxy wars was a long time in coming, though. The Soviet Union and the West had many differences to overcome to get where they are today. For instance, the Soviet Union installed Communist governments in the many Eastern European countries it occupied at the end of World War II. People in the West often called these Eastern European states “puppet regimes.” That is, they knew the Soviets were still pulling the strings. Likewise, in Asia, the Soviets set up a communist government in the part of Korea they controlled. By 1950 they were willing to support North Korea’s invasion of the South.

The Soviet Union backed Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution in Cuba in 1959. That put a communist country within 100 miles of Florida’s coast. It also gave the Soviets a useful ally to do its revolutionary dirty work in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere.

In long civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, for instance, Cubans helped factions fi ghting US-aided forces. In the decade-and-a-half after the Portuguese withdrew from Angola in 1975, some 300,000 Cubans fought there. Their opponents included guerrilla armies backed by the United States and, in some cases, by South Africa’s white-minority regime.

It’s true that during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union rarely exchanged fi re. There was never a “hot war” between the two big powers. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1973 Arab-Israeli War were as close as they ever came to one. But there were many hot wars carried out by the two superpowers’ proxies. That era has now ended, and its signifi cance for world peace is immense.

The Worldwide Shift Away From Socialism

Just as the Soviet Union and the United States fought a tug-of-war in the last century over communism and capitalism, so other countries around the globe were working out their relationships with these economic systems. In the late 1970s some 60 percent of the world’s population, by one estimate, lived under some form of communism or socialism.

But that didn’t last long. Many countries soon made changes that can be broadly described as shifts away from socialism. In China, for instance, the reformer Deng Xiaoping introduced new economic ideas that harnessed the power of each individual’s drive to succeed. Change came to India, too. It is and always has been a democracy. But its economic system had long included socialist elements. Then in 1991 it introduced signifi cant free-market reforms.



Russia and the Form

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These changes amounted to new answers to the question, how much of the economy should remain in the hands of the state? As the Indian example shows, this swing in thought wasn’t happening just in Communist-bloc countries. Britain is another example. It is unquestionably a Western democracy. Its economic system is broadly capitalist. But after World War II, under Labour Party governments, Britain had nationalized some important sectors of the economy. After Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives came to power in 1979, they privatized much state-owned enterprise. For instance, public housing residents in Britain got to buy their homes from local authorities. And the privatization of British Telecom, the national phone company, gave millions of ordinary Britons the chance to become stockholders by buying shares. It was one of the largest share offerings in history.

At the same time that many states were moving away from socialism, many states were also moving toward greater democracy. Throughout the former Communist bloc, newly independent countries voted in free elections for the fi rst time since the early twentieth century. In some cases, it was for the fi rst time ever. But this trend didn’t affect just the Communist bloc. In 1998 in Indonesia, for instance, the people overthrew authoritarian President Suharto after he had ruled for more than 30 years. And in 1994 South Africa held the fi rst election in which all adults, including black people, were eligible to vote.



These many swings represented a historic shift toward greater liberties in the world. They prompted Freedom House, a human rights organization, to report in 2002, “The highest-ever proportion of the world’s population is living in freedom today.”

In 1972 Freedom House started tracking the numbers of “free,” “partly free,” and “not free” countries around the world. In 2002 it found that “free” countries had risen to 89, up from 43 in 1972. The number of “partly free” countries had risen from 38 to 55. The number of “not free” countries had fallen from 69 to 48.

However, in 2009, Freedom House reported what it saw as a troubling shift in the wrong direction. Five “infl uential authoritarian states,” it said, are “actively undermining democracy within their borders and abroad.” It identifi ed them as China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Pakistan.

The Rise in Free Trade Around the World

The breakup of the Soviet Union took place against a backdrop of broader changes in the world and the global economy. These transformations included a rise in free trade around the world.



Russia and the Form




Theorists and writers have been thinking about free trade since the beginning of the modern science of economics. As you read in the Introduction, David Ricardo argued that all countries benefi t when each focuses on what it does best and all countries trade freely. Since the mid-1930s US government policy has broadly favored free trade. And since World War II, most countries have signed on to the effort to lower trade barriers, such as taxes, globally. They have done this by joining the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and later, its successor, the World Trade Organization.

Meanwhile, many countries have also joined regional economic and trade blocs. The European Union (EU), for instance, began as a “common market” for a small group of countries to trade freely in coal and steel across national borders. Today’s EU has 27 members. It governs trade in much more than just coal and steel. North America has its North American Free Trade Agreement, and South America has its Mercosur. This trading bloc goes back to 1991. It’s known as the “Common Market of the South.”

The Soviet Union had its trade bloc, too: the Comecon, also known as the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. Just as the Warsaw Pact gave the Soviet Union military partners, the Comecon provided the Russians with economic alliances. Comecon, set up in 1949, was meant to be a counterweight to Western European efforts at aid and cooperation.



The Soviet Union provided its Comecon partners with cheap oil and a market for their generally poor-quality manufactured goods. This led Gorbachev to complain that his government was subsidizing a system that let partners trade their better goods to the West and dump the rest in Moscow.

Once Comecon fell apart in 1991, many of its former member countries found themselves facing enormous increases in energy costs, as you read in Lesson 3. On the other hand, those who were energy producers, such as Russia, were suddenly able to sell their oil and gas at much higher world-market prices.

The Russia-US Challenges of Nuclear Threats, Nonproliferation, and Missile Defense

Like economic issues, defense issues changed when the Soviet Union dissolved and the Cold War ended. Today’s nuclear threat is far different from what it used to be. No longer is it a standoff between two superpowers. Russia is now working with the United States on several different aspects of the nuclear threat. These include proliferation—the spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear terrorism, and the threats falling under the heading of “loose nukes.”

But the two nations disagree strongly on missile defense. This dates back to the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan introduced what he called the Strategic Defense Initiative. Most people remember it as “Star Wars.” The idea was to develop weapons that could block incoming nuclear missiles on their way to the United States.

Reagan and his team presented this as peaceful technology, not aimed at anyone. They promised to share it with others, in fact. The technology itself was still very much in development. It drew criticism, and even ridicule, from some quarters.

But aside from that, many critics saw missile defense as destabilizing. Here’s why: US relations with the Soviet Union were based on a concept of “mutual assured destruction.” That theory held that each side had enough weapons to wipe the other out so completely that neither would ever use them. The Star Wars idea shifted the balance, however. Some people believed that if the United States could protect against incoming Soviet missiles, it might be tempted to launch its own missiles against the Soviets. If you have a shield to protect yourself, you may be tempted to use your sword, in other words. If you have no shield, you’re more likely to keep your sword in its sheath.

Despite the criticism, Reagan’s successors continued to develop missile defense. These efforts were aimed, not at Russia, but at possible nuclear threats from countries like Iran and North Korea. The new leaders in Moscow continued to oppose missile defense, however. They saw it and still see it as anti-Russian. They have warned that sustained US pursuit of missile defense could lead to a new cold war. Fortunately, though, other aspects of the US-Russian dialogue on nuclear matters have been more positive.



Russia and the Form




The Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program

One of these areas concerns the security of nuclear materials. As the Soviet Union was breaking up, nuclear scientists and arms control experts began to worry: “Are Russian nukes secure?” It was bad enough that during the decades-long Cold War, Americans and Russians had to lose sleep over the prospect of nuclear war. Once the Soviet Union began to break up, though, the concern shifted. You can think of the new concerns broadly as the problem of “loose nukes.”

This situation has several aspects. For one, experts began to worry about the threat of an accidental nuclear launch at a time when it wasn’t always clear who was in charge of the Russian government. They were also bothered by the thought that gangsters or terrorists might be able to steal warheads. Experts also feared that poorly paid Soviet nuclear scientists would give in to the temptation to steal nuclear materials to sell them on the black market—along with the scientists’ nuclear expertise.



Fortunately, the transition from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation was relatively smooth. It did not lead to civil war. And as you read in Lesson 3, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine all decided to give up the nuclear weapons they had in their possession when the Soviet Union dissolved.

But there was still work to do. Two US senators, Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat, and Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, recognized this. They worked to establish the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program to address the “loose nukes” problem. Some people refer to it simply as the Nunn-Lugar program.

The plan was launched in 1992; it was renewed in 2006 to run until 2013. The CTR program helps Russia and the former Soviet republics control and protect their nuclear weapons, materials that could be made into weapons, and weapons-delivery systems, such as missiles. CTR also has helped dismantle and destroy weapons and delivery systems, as in Kazakhstan.

Several departments of the US government have a role in the CTR program: Defense, Energy, Commerce, and State. The program’s budget is about $1 billion annually. The Nunn-Lugar program focuses primarily on the nuclear threat. But it has also addressed the threats posed by chemical and biological weapons.

US and Russian Efforts Toward the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism

Russia and the United States announced the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism in St. Petersburg in July 2006. Its goal is to keep terrorists from getting nuclear materials. Within two years, 75 nations had signed on, including all EU members.

The initiative addresses some of the same problems as the Nunn-Lugar program. But it is a global effort, with Russian partnership. Countries taking part commit voluntarily to support its principles.

They agree to do such things as improve their systems for keeping track of how much nuclear material they have, and where it is. They commit to better guard their nuclear power plants. They promise not to let terrorists use their countries as bases. And they promise not to provide fi nancial support to those trying to obtain nuclear materials for terrorist purposes.

Joint Efforts to Restrain Nuclear Weapons in Iran and North Korea

As you have read in earlier chapters, Iran and North Korea have a special place on the global worry list. Both are pressing ahead with development of nuclear technology. Russia is part of efforts to contain both.



Russia and the Form




Russia is cooperating with the United States and the rest of the UN Security Council to bring Iran’s nuclear programs into compliance with the rules of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The council has passed a number of resolutions demanding Iran follow those guidelines.

Russia also has a role in the Six-Party Talks seeking to keep the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons. In 1994 the United States and North Korea reached an “Agreed Framework.” It called, in effect, for North Korea to give up nuclear ambitions in exchange for aid from the United States and normalization—a return to normal relations without tensions between the two. The accord was troubled from the start. It effectively broke down in 2003. As diplomatic efforts continued, North Korea demanded bilateral talks with the United States. It wanted to bargain one on one. The United States, on the other hand, has insisted on involving others in the negotiations. Russia has stepped forward to take part.

The Soviet Union had a role in North Korea from the beginning. It was present as an occupying power when Korea was fi rst divided after World War II. The Soviets backed the North Korean invasion of the South in 1950. But now Russia is working with the United States, plus China, Japan, and South Korea, to bring Pyongyang into the family of nations.



The Effects on the United States Caused by Russian Oil Production and Distribution

Russia may be skilled when it comes to dealing with big issues like nukes, national defense, and politics. But it’s had less success over the years when managing its natural resources. As you read in Lesson 2, Russia has immense wealth in natural materials, such as oil. Over time, however, its manufacturing economy and service

economy have simply limped along. Russia hasn’t done well at adding value to what’s simply there in the ground, in other words.

Russian resource industries, especially energy, helped keep the country afl oat during its transition from communism. But to really fl ower in the long term, Russia needs to use income from natural resources to develop a manufacturing or services economy.

The World’s No. 2 Producer and Exporter of Crude Oil

When people think about oil supplies, they tend to think of the Middle East—specifi cally Saudi Arabia. The Saudis’ reserves are immense. They often have played the role of guiding oil prices by increasing or decreasing their own oil production. But Russia is the world’s second largest crude oil producer and exporter. Russia exports almost as much oil as the next three top exporters—Norway, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates—combined.



Russia and the Form




So when a Russian newspaper reported in early 2009 that Russian oil production fell for the fi rst time in 10 years, oil analysts took note. The production decrease was slight—less than 1 percent. But it could be a major turning point in the world’s crude oil production. It might mean that only a few countries can still increase production: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq.

Russia’s Geopolitical Advantages and Disadvantages as a Major Oil Producer

Russia’s immense energy resources have the potential to earn it billions and billions of dollars. This could help fund government operations. It could also help further develop the Russian economy.

Russia’s oil and gas reserves give it a certain amount of geopolitical leverage. Anything that’s geopolitical revolves around how a country’s geography—in this case its natural resources, too—affects its relations with other nations. Russia has already shown a willingness to take advantage of its pricing power. It has withheld supplies to get vastly higher prices from former Soviet republics and countries in Europe. Down the line, Russia could manipulate energy supplies or prices to force its partners into actions they would not otherwise take.



But these energy resources also represent a vulnerability for Russia. Yes, the world needs energy, and the earth’s oil resources are fi nite. Ultimately, the price of oil and gas will rise. But in the near term, energy prices rise and fall in fairly wide swings. At this writing in 2009, relatively high prices are helping Russia weather the world economic downturn. But when prices are low, Russia, like other resource economies, risks running short on revenue. It could end up without enough money to fund its government and to expand its economy.

The US Consumption of Oil and the Threat of a Loss of Oil Supplies

The United States is another leading energy producer. It was the world’s leading producer of crude oil until 1973, in fact. Even in recent years, the United States has been as high as the No. 3 producer of crude.

But the US economy is so thirsty for oil that even though it produces a great deal, it must import even more. Over the years, the US government has identifi ed keeping oil supplies fl owing as a vital national interest. This has led to trade and diplomatic relationships with Saudi Arabia and other oil powers.

But other relationships make the United States potentially vulnerable to a loss of oil supplies. So do the unresolved confl icts in the Middle East. In 1973 US support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War led to an Arab oil embargo against the United States. Something similar could happen again.

Iran could also move to tighten the oil spigot as it did during the 1970s. And many observers worry that Israel might mount a military attack to try to halt Iran’s nuclear program. If this happened, it would likely disrupt world oil supplies, including those of the United States.

Oil can be loaded onto tankers and shipped around the world. If one supplier withdraws, the United States can turn to other sources. But the options aren’t unlimited. Disruption of supply leads to higher prices.

Gas usually travels by pipeline. Pipelines run across Russian territory, giving Russia control over gas prices it charges regional markets. Oil, on the other hand, is easier to transport by ship to markets all around the world. That offers world markets greater control in setting prices (although producers can decrease or increase the amount of oil they pump to manipulate prices).

Think of it this way: You can buy a major-brand soft drink from any of a hundred different places in your town. But if you want a drink of municipal water, your only choice is to turn on the tap in your kitchen. And that means you don’t get a whole lot of say in how much you’re going to pay for water coming out of your kitchen tap. But you can shop around town for the best deal on major brand soft drinks.

Gas Versus Oil



Russia and the Form




Russia is already known as a “price hawk” among oil producing countries. In other words, it works to raise prices. It’s ready to use its pricing power to geopolitical advantage. And it needs the money it gets from higher prices.

The bottom line: The United States could at some point need to turn to Russia for oil. At the very least, it will have to cope with an oil market in which Russia has considerable say.

The Importance of the Cooperation in Space Between Russia and the United States

The Soviet-US rivalry didn’t end with oil drawn from the earth’s depths or with their vast economies. It long ago reached into space. From the beginning, human efforts to explore space were seen as a race between the United States and the Soviet Union. And it was a contest between two ideologies, Western capitalism and Soviet communism. The Soviets made it into space fi rst, with their launch of the Sputnik satellite in October 1957. That was a tremendous blow to American prestige. It prompted China’s Communist ruler Mao Zedong to comment, “The east wind prevails over the west wind.”



Cooperation and Competition in Space

And yet if competition was present from the start, cooperation came along soon after. Already in 1962 President John F. Kennedy opened talks with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev about teaming up in space. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975 was the two countries’ fi rst major effort at working together in this way.

Apollo-Soyuz was the fi rst international manned spacefl ight. Its mission was to test how well American and Soviet spacecraft would be able to meet and dock—to “hook up” in space. The fl ight opened the way for international space rescue and future joint manned fl ights. When the two spacecraft docked on 19 July 1975, astronaut Thomas Stafford and cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov greeted each other and shook hands. It was the fi rst international handshake in space.

Experiments by NASA and Russian Scientists in the Shuttle-Mir Program

The US-Soviet détente that made that handshake in space possible ended when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. But cooperation in space between Russians and Americans resumed after the Soviet Union broke up. The United States, now in partnership with the Russian Federation, renewed an earlier space agreement from 1987. The two countries also issued a “Joint Statement on Cooperation in Space.” These agreements led to the NASA-Mir program.



Russia and the Form




In February 1994 cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev became the fi rst Russian to fl y aboard an American space shuttle. The following year, astronaut Norman Thagard became the fi rst American to fl y aboard the Mir Space Station. He spent 115 days from March to July 1995. Later in 1995 shuttle Atlantis, on mission STS-71, became the fi rst US space shuttle to dock with Mir.

NASA scientists conducted a number of important experiments with their Russian colleagues during this time. They addressed such vital questions as:

• How plants and animals, including humans, function in space

• How the solar system originated and developed

• How to build better technology in space

• How to build future space stations.

The Joint Efforts of the US and Russia in Developing the International Space Station

Even before Krikalev made history as the fi rst Russian aboard an American space shuttle, plans for US-Russian cooperation in space had moved well beyond the Shuttle-Mir program. Space scientists were already thinking about the International Space Station (ISS).

The ISS is the largest international science project in space. It involves not only the United States and Russia, but also Canada, Japan, and Brazil, as well as 11 other countries represented by the European Space Agency.

The purpose of the space station is primarily research. It serves as a lab for zero-gravity experiments of all kinds. The station has had a continuous human presence aboard since the fi rst crew arrived on 2 November 2000. That crew, by the way, included Sergei Krikalev, the space shuttle pioneer.

The International Space Station is the largest space station ever. It’s also the largest artifi cial satellite orbiting the earth. Its only competition is the moon. It’s being assembled in space in stages, like an out-of-town vacation home. And as often happens with such a project, it’s taking awhile. Construction began in 1998. It is expected to be complete by about 2011.

The space station makes nearly 16 orbits around the earth every 24 hours. It’s only about 220 miles up, and if you know where to look, you can see it with the naked eye.

The International Space Station



The ISS may be the fl agship of international scientifi c cooperation at this point. But the tone of the US-Russian relationship has darkened over the past few years. Some experts worry that Moscow could try to use the ISS as a bargaining chip. It might seek to limit US access to the ISS, for instance. During the Cold War, US-Soviet cooperation in space tightened or slacked off in response to changes in the larger relationship between the two countries.

The Communist Party has fallen away. But the natural rivalry between two great nations with different ways of looking at the world has not. That’s true about space exploration. And it’s true in other realms as well. It’s fair to conclude that managing the ups and downs of US-Russian relations will test both governments long into the future.



Russia and the Form




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Lesson 5 Review Using complete sentences, answer the following questions on a sheet of paper.

1. Did the number of countries classifi ed as “free” rise or fall between 1972 and 2002?

2. What was Gorbachev’s complaint about Comecon?

3. What problems does the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism address?

4. Russia is working with the United States and other countries to contain the nuclear ambitions of which two countries on the global worry list?

5. What risks does Russia run when oil prices are low?

6. The United States was the world’s leading producer of oil until what year?

7. When Thomas Stafford and Aleksei Leonov greeted each other on 19 July 1975, what did they do? What was the signifi cance of this action?

8. What is the purpose of the International Space Station?

Applying Your Learning 9. Do you think Russia and the United States will continue to cooperate

on issues of common interest or not? What have you read that makes you feel that way?


lessonlesson 5 us interests and regional issues...

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