Russia's No Democracy. So What?

There will always be so-called realists who argue that democracy is a secondary priority for American foreign policy in dealing with major powers such as Russia. Forget about the internal politics, they say, and just engage these countries on major strategic interests, such as nonproliferation or energy security. But how a country defines "strategic interest" depends on its regime; democracies have one set of definitions, autocracies another.

The democratization begun under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and continued by Russian President Boris Yeltsin ended the Cold War and established new possibilities for cooperation on everything from German unification to joint peacekeeping in the Balkans. A return to a more democratic path in Russia would serve U.S. interests by reducing dangers to democracy throughout Eurasia, enhancing property rights for American investors, providing a more reliable energy supply to the West, and producing a more cooperative partner in addressing threats from terrorist groups or rogue regimes.

But during the same week that the Kremlin backed Lukashenko, denied Browder his visa and was accused of sharing intelligence with Iraq, the Putin government also froze the bank accounts of Open Russia, the first major Russian foundation to support the development of genuine civil society. At the same time, Kremlin loyalists in the parliament introduced legislation to give appointed governors broad powers over popularly elected mayors. And Marina Litvinovich -- a spokeswoman for democratic activist Garry Kasparov -- was brutally beaten, in what Russian human rights groups consider a grim warning to those who would challenge the Russian government.

Let's stop pretending that Russia's deteriorating domestic politics are unrelated to Russia's increasingly antagonistic and anti-American foreign policies. The same autocratic regime is responsible for both.

jimg@gwu.edu mcfaul@hoover.stanford.edu

James Goldgeier is a professor of political science at George Washington University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Michael McFaul is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and associate professor of political science at Stanford University.