| WHEN HE VISITS St. Petersburg this weekend, President Bush will see gleaming
spires, fresh paint and the faces of hundreds of officials and diplomats,
all
there to celebrate the city's 300th anniversary. He will not see any
homeless
people or meet many of the locals: The homeless have been cleared from the
streets in anticipation of the event, and the locals have been told that
they
would be better off leaving town. Some of the unrestored buildings will be
masked by large billboards. A fence will line the road from the airport so
that the
dignitaries cannot see the poverty.
In other words, the tradition of the Potemkin village lives on -- and not
only in St. Petersburg. In recent weeks the Bush administration has
recommended a large cut in funding of aid to Russia -- more than a third
from the past
fiscal year -- which will probably kill off some of the programs Russia
needs
most: those that promote human rights and democratization. The Office of
Management and Budget has told both the State Department and the U.S.
Agency for International Development that it is time for Russia to
"graduate" from
democracy assistance, presumably on the grounds that Russia is now a
democracy. But
while Russia is a far more open society than it used to be, many of the
media are
still controlled, the judicial system is still corrupt and opponents of the
president find it ever harder to maneuver. If the administration believes
this is full democracy, then it has been fooled by a barely plausible
facade.
Some suspect the real justification for the cuts is financial. If so, that
is
extremely shortsighted. Relatively speaking, the amount of money involved is
small and the impact of these programs is potentially large. If, as others
suspect, they are being cut because President Vladimir Putin no longer
approves of them, then the shortsightedness is even more pronounced.
Congress rightly
spends billions of dollars every year to ensure that Russia's weapons of
mass
destruction are dismantled -- but if Russia were a more open society, with a
fully free media and more robust opposition, control over these weapons
would be easier to establish. Congress should fully fund the aid programs,
as well as
the grants it has authorized -- but not appropriated -- to organizations in
this country, such as the Andrei Sakharov Archives, that promote human
rights in Russia.
Many in Washington long to build a "strategic partnership" with Russia in
the
war on terrorism; but until Russia shares more of America's values, that
relationship will always be fragile, as Russia's behavior in the weeks
before the war in Iraq proved. The democratization of Russia is something
the United
States should care about, not merely because it is right but because it
makes
strategic sense.
See also:
Russia-US Relations
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