Coddling Dictators
President Nursultan Nazarbayev is a prime example of the systemic political and economic corruption

Wayne MERRY

Wayne Merry, a former State Department and Pentagon official, is now a program director at the Atlantic Council of the United States

As our own electoral process gears up, President Clinton and Vice President Gore are sending clear signals to the former Soviet countries that Washington will not be bothered with soft issues like democratic institutions, legitimate elections and the rule of law. Worse, the Administration openly accommodates regimes bent on eliminating what little democracy their countries enjoyed in the early post-Soviet years.

In December the White House played host to the newly re-elected President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, both prime examples of the systemic political and economic corruption plaguing the region. Kuchma's Soviet-style manipulation of the media and open ballot stealing made later Russian elections look pristine by comparison, while rampant corruption sanctioned from the top makes foreign investors flee Ukraine. Nazarbayev is more shameless: he prohibited his opponents from running in an electoral farce Western human rights organizations refused to monitor. The Kazakh economy has been reduced to a family-oligarchy kleptocracy similar to Suharto's in Indonesia. During the Washington visits, media in both countries proclaimed US endorsement of these leaders, their policies and their rigged elections.

Ukraine and Kazakhstan are important countries. Both inherited arsenals of nuclear weapons from the Soviet collapse. In the early nineties Washington's top concern was denuclearization, and we were willing to overlook democratic deficiencies to move these countries to nonnuclear status. However, this mission was accomplished years ago, and both regimes benefited to the tune of billions of US taxpayer dollars.

It is now time-past time- to focus on the need for political and legal reforms in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and elsewhere, but the White House prefers to rely on its personal ties with corrupt leaders (as it did with Yeltsin at the expense of broader democratic forces in Russia). Even a few years ago, the White House would have waited a decent interval after stolen elections before receiving the thieves in the Oval Office-but not now.

The story is the same elsewhere. At the Istanbul summit in November, Clinton personally aligned this country with presidents Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Niyazov of Turkmenistan and Karimov of Uzbekistan. What a crew. Aliyev rules with the full panoply of a Soviet police state-his opponents are exiled or repressed, ballot-box stuffing at elections is widespread and his wastrel casino-hopping son is the anointed heir. Niyazov (the self-proclaimed Father of the Turkmen) recently held an election in which 99 percent turnout was proclaimed an hour before the polls even closed. Not satisfied at gracing the Turkmen capital with a tower surmounted by a massive rotating statue of himself, Niyazov ended the year being proclaimed President for Life by his supine legislature. On January 9 the Uzbek leader was elected to another term with a modest 92 percent of the vote, and there are credible reports of gulag-style concentration camps for opponents. Karmic openly dreams of dynastic domination of Central Asia under the name Turkistan. All three men have been received with honors at the Clinton White House, and their political blemishes are downplayed here and by our embassies.

But aren't there important US oil and gas interests in these countries? yes, there are. Will basing our policy on a handful of aging and corrupt megalomaniacs serve those interests? Remember the Shah-of Shahs? What our policy needs is the vision to look beyond this generation of Soviet dictatorial retreads, because radical political change in these societies is inevitable in the decades ahead. Instead, Washington concentrates on Pentagon programs with the military and security forces of these countries, much as we did in Iran, Indochina and Latin America.

In the former Soviet region only the Baltic republics and Moldova can boast improving electoral democracy (sadly, Moldova has fair elections, but dysfunctional postelectoral politics). Elsewhere, the democratic process has either gone to hell or is on the road. True, some of the Central Asian states never had much democracy to speak of ( a senior State Department official jocularly refers to them as germinating democracies), but the integrity of elections in Armenia, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine was significantly higher several years ago than it is today. Only of Belarus does Washington speak the truth, because the stridently anti-American President Lukashenko is an easy and cost-free target. About the others, we get, expedient half-truths or silence.

And what of electoral democracy in Russia, arguably still the best outside the Baltic states, despite serious shortcomings? Does Washington care about the process or only about who wins? Look at our record. The December 1993 election was a legitimate and valid expression of popular will, but Russian voters overwhelmingly rejected the program of market reform and mafia capitalism sponsored by the IMF and the US Treasury. What was the US response? Vice President Gore was in Moscow the very next day advising Yeltstin & Co. to ignore the voice of the people and to sidetrack the new legislature (created at Yeltsin's direction). In 1995, the same. In the 1996 presidential election, Washington/s only goal was that Yeltsin win; even abrogating the outcome was not unthinkable.

What kind of leader Vladimir Putin will be remains to be seen, but his ascendancy is anything but democratic. Pulled from obscurity for Yeltsin's own purposes and empowered with a virtual political party, he was thrust into the presidency by a well-timed resignation that was constitutional but hardly democratic. What is Washington's reaction? It sees new opportunities to restart Treasury/IMF policies marked by failure and popular rejection. Does it really matter what the United States says or does about electoral democracy in these countries? The political masters throughout the region certainly care-note how quickly Kuchma and Nazarbayev hustled over for our seal of approval. Genuine democrats in these societies-and there are many millions of them-also care deeply, but increasingly they feel betrayed by Washington. They should.