Four U.S. experts on Russian policy converged on the Rockefeller Center last night for a panel discussion on "Rethinking U.S.-Russian Relations: Past, Present and Putin." A main topic of debate was the nation's newly appointed president, Vladimir Putin.
The discussion -- attended by about 50 people, including faculty, community members and a few students -- was presented by Dartmouth's John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding in conjunction with the Voice of America, a governmental organization that broadcasts U.S. programming worldwide via a multilingual radio network.
Director of the Voice of America Sanford J. Ungar moderated the discussion. The panelists included Ann Cooper, former National Public Radio Moscow bureau chief and Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists; John Donvan '77, ABC News Nightline correspondent and former Moscow Chief Correspondent; Tony Jones, Director of the Gorbachev Foundation of North America; and David Satter, Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation.
Introducing the discussion, Ungar said he hoped it would "cross the boundaries between academia and journalism."
Ungar began by quoting President Clinton's opinion of the new Russian leader: "Putin is someone we can do business with." Ungar asked for the panelists' reactions to Clinton's remark.
Opinion among the panelists was divided.
While Jones called the inauguration of Putin "a turning point" in U.S.-Russian relations, saying he has the "ruthlessness" needed to stop the deterioration of Russian society, Cooper said Putin's ruthlessness worried her.
She cited the case of a Russian journalist who was recently detained by the Putin-led government for over a month because of his attempts to cover the war in Chechnya without a military-issued permit.
"I have nothing good to say about [Putin] so far," she said.
Putin's reaction in the case of the journalist was "to be expected," Donvan responded, citing similar practices by the United States during the Gulf War.
Donvan then introduced a new topic that was to recur often throughout the discussion. In the early '90s, people in the United States and around the world were nave to believe that Russia would soon become a democracy, he said.
"These people were not seeking democracy; they were seeking VCRs," Donvan said, referring to the allure of material goods that possessed Russia after the fall of communism.
In fact, Donvan argued, Russia may not need democracy, in which case the authoritarian rule of Putin is not dangerous, he said.
Ungar next asked the panelists to explain the success of communist candidate Gennadiy Zyuganov, who garnered nearly 30 percent of the vote in the recent Russian presidential election.
Satter said it was natural for Russians, especially older citizens, to take a "second look" at communism, and commented that some of Zyuganov's support represented a "protest vote" against Yeltsin and Putin's actions in Chechnya. Satter also noted that Russia's poorest people were in fact better off under communism than now.
Jones explained Zyuganov's success by citing Russians' current political apathy and tying that to the fact that the Communist Party is the only existing "real" political party in the country, meaning that it is the most obvious choice for some voters.
Were the panelists surprised at Putin's rapid rise to power? Ungar asked next. "Five years in Russia have taught me not to predict anything," Cooper responded.
Ungar asked Donvan -- the only active journalist on the panel -- whether he was satisfied with the current U.S. media coverage of Russia.
"No, there's no coverage," Donvan said. If it weren't for Russia's continued nuclear capabilities, he said, Russia would disappear from our view altogether.
It's hard to justify broadcasting about Russia because there is "no great urgency now that the Cold War is over," he said.
Ungar's last question to the panelists was direct: if the current U.S. policy toward Russia is inadequate, what should the right approach be?
Satter said our policies should be based on "principles, not personalities." The United States must encourage Russia to combat its problems with crime and corruption by requiring action in these areas before lending Russia money that now too often ends up in officials' private offshore accounts, he said.
Jones' solution consisted of three parts: decrease the importance of U.S.-Russian relations while increasing Russian-European relations, stop "using NATO as a stick" to threaten Russia and be more sensitive to Russian concerns about our missile program and its intents.
On this last issue he cited Russian concerns that missiles the United States claims are aimed at North Korea are in fact aimed at China. He advocated the creation of a global missile defense system backed by an alliance of nations.
Donvan, an English major while at Dartmouth, compared current U.S.-Russia policy to a scene in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" in which a British ship is aimlessly and purposelessly firing cannonballs into the African jungle.
Donovan commented on Russians' resilience, contending that no catastrophe is looming on Russia's horizon even without American aid. American policy needs to recognize that, he said.
Ungar then opened the discussion to questions from the audience. The panelists fielded questions on a variety of topics -- whether Russia has improved over the past 50 years, the U.S. missile system, the Chechen war's impact on Russian society and the country's decreasing birthrate.
