From anarchy to Zhirinovsky?

THE Russo-American "honeymoon" is over even if official Washington doesn't know it yet. Harbingers abound: Russian missile sales to India; Russian troops interfere in Georgia and Kirgizia; Russian spy caught with his hand in the CIA cookie jar; Bosnian Serbs' chestnuts pulled from NATO fire by Russian ultimatum. Curiously, all of these signs of discord are met by official denial in Washington. None of them, we are told by the White House, signals any cooling in the cozy post-Cold War romance between Russia and the United States. And, like a mindless society editor, the media continue to report how ecstatic the couple is.

The increasing strains on the Moscow-Washington relationship are aggravated by the erosion of Boris Yeltsin's political supremacy. This seems to be accelerating. First the elections produced a Duma in which the reformers, expected to win easily, were more or less level-pegging with a red-black coalition of nomenklatura bureaucrats and managers and authoritarian nationalists. Secondly, in forming a new government, the president had to throw overboard reformers such as Yegor Gaidar and to accept the appointment of ministers dedicated to "stagnation therapy." Most recently, the Duma passed an amnesty for Yeltsin's bitterest enemies, the coup plotters of 1991 and last October, by a four-to-one vote that suggested his parliamentarian support had fallen even further since the election. Given that the economy continues to decline, the outlook for charismatic demagogues like Vladimir Zhirinovsky must be considered promising. That is why the most dangerous bit of dizinformatsia coming our way is that Zhirinovsky is a clown, a buffoon, and a nut who needn't be taken seriously. Wrong! In fact, he was the only politician running in last December's election campaign who showed any understanding of the typical Russian voter's mindset. He's a master of the television medium, and he's the front-runner in the 1996 presidential campaign-already well under way.

Former KGB General Oleg Kalugin, the counterintelligence chief turned critic of Soviet spookery and a shrewd observer of the Russian scene, told me last December that "... both you Americans and we Russians had better prepare ourselves to deal with Zhirinovsky as President of Russia." What would that mean?

First, it would mean dealing with a racist. No other word in the English language adequately describes Zhirinovsky's attitude toward blacks and, most particularly, toward the TurkoMongol and other non-whites of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and beyond Russia's southern borders. Even by Russian standards, deplorable as they are in these matters, he is a racist when it comes to such people. Zhirinovsky first displayed his racism to me during a conversation we had in August 1990. The venue was the cavernous restaurant of Moscow's Ukraine Hotel. Elbows on the table, hunched over our plates, we were deep into a discussion about how privatization should eventually proceed in Russia. Suddenly, he sat upright in his chair, face flushed with fury, and flung his arm in an angry arc around the room. Pointing to swarthy fellow diners, he said: "Look at all the 'black asses' in here"--using the offensive Russian derogatory term for persons of color--"they're all fattening  themselves off what they've cheated out of us. If we let them, they'll buy up everything of value in Russia. That's why we can't simply sell our state-owned properties for cash."

As I have come to know him better over the years, I have concluded that Zhirinovsky's racial prejudices are deeply rooted. Emotionally, he still writhes from the hurts and humiliations he felt as a child growing up in Alma-Ata, the capital of Kazakhstan and the city of his birth. At that time, during Khrushchev's reign, a policy akin to "affirmative action" was in effect in Central Asia. It was a policy that gave certain advantages to indigenous peoples in matters of housing, education, and employment. To this day, Zhirinovsky rages at the reverse discrimination that he felt was visited upon him and other Russians by the native Kazakhs.

On top of this boyhood resentment, Zhirinovsky's studies at Moscow University's Institute of Asia and Africa piled intellectual contempt for all Turko-Mongol peoples. He came to see them as primitive descendants of the Mongols who subjugated Russia until, four hundred years ago, Russian armies under Csar Ivan the Terrible managed to "lift the Mongol Yoke." Since then, as Zhirinovsky sees it, these people have been nothing more than nomadic tribesmen. "It was Russians in the nineteenth century who finally brought civilization to Central Asia," he lectured me recently. "It was Russians who brought modern agriculture and built cities; Alma-Ata was rounded as a Russian fortress named Vernyi. If it hadn't been for Russians, the Kazakhs and their ilk would still be living in yurts and raising goats. Let them go back to that!" He also came to see resurgent Islam as a dagger aimed straight at Russia and indeed the rest of Europe.

The Clinton Administration and the American media paint Zhirinovsky as a geopolitical joker. He, on the other hand, considers himself a profound student of history and a geopolitical genius. Reality lies somewhere in between: he is a very intelligent, creative, highly unorthodox politician with a wacky, outdated, but internally consistent Weltanschauung. From atop that, he views both a Greater Russia and a world parceled neatly among the "great powers."

Creating a Greater Russia, according to Zhirinovsky's design, begins with restoring the Russian Empire. In his view, Russia's legitimate claims embrace all territories that were ever a part of Csarist Russia or the USSR. That includes not only the Soviet Union within its postwar borders, but also Finland, Poland, and even Alaska! But these claims carry very different priorities for Zhirinovsky. He knows that Alaska will never again be Russian and his rhetorical staking of that claim is done for its shock value and resultant appeal to Russia's ultranationalists. Neither has he real illusions about regaining Finland or Poland. He told me recently that his claims to them, as also to the three Baltic states, make good politics today, but tomorrow they will become chips in a grand poker game with the West wherein he will bid for territories far more vital to Russia.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was, to Zhirinovsky, a criminal and completely avoidable tragedy. Gorbachev and Yeltsin get the blame for betraying Mother Russia. Pulling all of the newly independent states back is a top priority, and Zhirinovsky believes it can be done "mostly peacefully" since none of them is politically or economically viable. "They will all come crawling back begging for Russian oil and raw materials, maybe helped a little by military and economic pressure," he assured me recently, "but we won't take them back in the same form that they left." Mother Russia's prodigal children must return to a unitary state and become purely administrative regions within it. They must be shorn of all trappings of sovereignty and phony ethnicity.

"When Kazakhstan returns to Russia," lie says, "it will re-enter not as the 'Kazakh Republic' but as several gubernii situated in southern Siberia." The very idea of a Kazakhstan, a Kirgizia, a Bashkiria, a Tartarstan or other ethnically designated territory sends him into paroxysms. "l?he worst of the Bolshevik's many crimes against Russia," he once raged to me as we walked in Sokolniki Park near his apartment, "was its imbecilic nationalities policy. Russia must return to the principle of territorial administration created by Peter the Great and which lasted until that idiot Lenin destroyed it."

But Zhirinovsky's ideas for Greater Russia don't stop at the old imperial borders. Russia's true historic role and destiny are to "protect Christianity from the Muslim threat." In his view, the Muslim lands south of Russia all the way to the Indian Ocean constitute a region of great instability. Resurgent Islam threatens Russia directly and all of Europe indirectly. Zhirinovsky has repeatedly told me that the vast region from "Karachi to Constantinople" must become Russia's to have, hold, and dispose of as it alone sees fit.

A quick look at the map indicates that this area explicitly includes not only formerly Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus, but also Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey east of the Bosporus, and Pakistan west of the Indus River. Zhirinovsky's coveted "free hand" in this region means the license not only to dominate but actually to incorporate it into Greater Russia. The area is vital, he says, for its resources, its warm water ports, its agreeable places for Russians to relax, and because only this will give Russia a secure, maritime border on the south.

He knows that subduing the region "from Karachi to Constantinopole" will require military action. But that will give the Russian Army a purpose which it now so conspicuously lacks. The end of the Cold War and the Soviet Empire left the Army without what is most essential to it--an enemy and a reason for existence. Without those essentials, any army grows flaccid and weak. It can even become a danger to its own civilian society. Therefore, thinks Zhirinovsky, the task of subduing Moslem Asia and Asia Minor and maintaining Russia's dominance there will be a constructive employment for Russia's presently drifting and demoralized armed forces.

In our discussions, I made the obvious point that such a Russian imperial land grab is sure to mean war not only with Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, but also with the United States and its allies. Turkey is a NATO member, after all, and Pakistan remains a military ally of the United States. Such a war would mean the destruction of Russia. All of this he invariably dismisses with an impatient waving of hands and a torrent of words. Everyone eventually will come around to his view, he says. To understand why he is so sure of this, one must understand how he sees the world and Russia's place in it.

The New Great Game

ZHIRINOVSKY sees the world as one of great powers destined to exercise hegemony over specific spheres of influence. It is a globe drawn and quartered by several "Monroe doctrines" that protect each hegemon  from interference by its peers within its specified "sphere." The world's great powers and their domains, as Zhirinovsky recognizes them, are as follows:

Germany, whose domain includes the rest of Western and Central Europe. Germany is the one European nation that Zhirinovsky takes seriously and the one with which Russia must seek a condominium to partition the rest of the continent peacefully. In his view, the European Union is either an instrument of German hegemony or nothing at all. Hungary and the Czech Republic have chosen to be in Germany's sphere of influence, so let it be that way. Western Europe's broader sphere of influence includes Western and Southern Africa.

The United States, whose sphere of influence is the Western Hemisphere. Since the U.S. has its hands full in that area, it should withdraw from Europe (including NATO), Asia, the Mideast, and elsewhere where it attempts to play a global role.

Japan and China, whose domain is Oceania and the rest of Asia, except the parts controlled by Russia and India.

Russia, whose sphere of influence includes not only Greater Russia as defined above but the remainder of the Middle East not already included within Russia proper, plus East Africa and its Horn. Tomorrow's India, which is regarded by Zhirinovsky as a friendly nation, will become a Russian protectorate encouraged to assert control of that portion of dismembered Pakistan east of the Indus River. Iraq, also a friend of Russia, will exercise suzerainty over the Arabian peninsula (except for Israel, which quixotically will be permitted to exist).

Zhirinovsky believes that his concept of a globe divided among the great powers can be sold to all the other great powers. In particular, he believes that they will come to accept Russian hegemony over the Muslim Middle East and even incorporation of much of it into Greater Russia.

He sees this world resting upon three foundations. First, the West will welcome Russia's return to its role as Europe's bulwark against the "Muslim threat." Germany and the rest of Western Europe see themselves increasingly besieged by unwanted immigration and other threats emanating from the Near East. Western worry about "Islamic fundamentalism" grows constantly. As perception of this reality grows, Germany and its neighbors will perceive it in their interests to let Russia play its "historic role." Under Russian hegemony, the Muslims would be pacified and those threats eliminated.

Second, there would be a quid pro quo. In exchange for a "free hand from Karachi to Constantinople," Zhirinovsky would be prepared to give up Russia's historically justified claims in Europe to Finland, Poland, and the Baltics. Russia would also guarantee (or co-guarantee) the security of the State of Israel. In the East, Russia would abandon her claim for the return of Alaska and finally cede ownership of the Kuril Islands to Japan.

Third, however, Zhirovsky carries a big stick. If the European, Asian, and American great powers refuse to acquiesce in Russia's "Last Thrust to the South," he will be prepared "to make life very unpleasant." He has never said explicitly just what those "unpleasant" measures might be, but his public remarks clearly imply that he means nuclear blackmail, abrogation of arms-control agreements, and other militarily hostile measures.

Western Approaches

HOW SHOULD we respond to the Zhirinovsky phenomenon? The U.S. and its allies must develop a realistic and consistent policy with respect to Russia and her relations with the newly independent states of the former USSR. That means, among other things, hammering out an acceptable definition of Russia's legitimate national interests in the "near abroad" and determining what latitude Russia should have to pursue those interests unilaterally. We must decide what differentiation, if any, should exist between Western commitment to the independence of the Central Asian and Caucasian republics, on the one hand, and to that of states farther to the West--Ukraine and the Baltic states--on the other.

Only when the U.S. Government has ended its own fuzzy thinking will it, together with our European friends including the Russians, be capable of articulating a set of ground rules to enforce the rights of national minorities (e.g., Russians residing in the "near abroad"), and to govern what a mother country (e.g., Russia) may do unilaterally to protect members of its diaspora. All the mixed signals recently sent from Washington to Moscow about American policy positions are a source of uncertainty and confusion to Russians and others. They constitute an open invitation to test American policy positions simply to learn where they are.

In particular, the present Administration's proto-policy of pre-emptive capitulation before the forces of Russian neo-imperialism does serious disservice to civilized and democratic forces within the Russian polity. Western attempts to appease those forces by yielding before one set of Zhirinovsky-inspired demands (e.g., "NATO, Russia forbids you te. admit Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to membership!") simply feed the appetite for more. A difficult period of re-establishing American and, in general, Western credibility lies before us if we are to head off the likes of Zhirinovsky before they become really dangerous.

Next, we must see what needs to be done to prevent the remilitarization of imperialistic Russia and to cope with it if it comes anyway. For example, we must intensify our efforts to assist Russia in downsizing its still-bloated military establishment--particularly its weapons of mass destruction--and reduce its military burden in accordance with its treaty obligations and its own genuine national interests. The initiatives of Senators Richard Lugar and Sam Nunn to pull the bear's most dangerous teeth deserve much stronger support than they have received so far.

Secondly, if Russian neo-imperialism picks up momentum, our intelligence-especially human intelligence-needs to be better able to gauge the nature and magnitude of that threat far better than it did in the recently concluded Cold War. For the same reason, the dismantling of our information services, particularly Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe and their associated research capacities, now under way, is folly in the extreme. Freedom of the press and glasnost are threatened or already extinguished throughout the former USSR. Both we and the people of the region need the Radios and their ability to broadcast truth.

Nor must our military, and especially our defense-technology research and development, be allowed to atrophy. Great power rivalries with their military dimensions remain with us and may well intensify.

Finally, and more generally, we need to understand what we are actually up against. Pollyannish pronouncements by Bill Clinton and Strobe Talbott--such as those made after last December's elections or surrounding the January summit meeting in Moscow--simply perpetuate a false complacency. The media's recent coverage of Russian events has, for the most part, been superficial and misleading. By caricaturing Zhirinovsky as a clown, a Chaplinesque fuhrer figure, the media lead us to underestimate him grievously and blind us to the rising tide of extremism in Russia.

Mr. Judy, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Central European and Eurasian Studies at the Hudson Institute, is well acquainted personally with Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and visited with him most recently in January.