OUR OUTDATED RUSSIA POLICY

By MICHAEL MANDELBAUM

SINCE 1993, AMERICAN POLICY TOWARD RUSSIA HAS rested on two pillars: enthusiastic support for a series of economic measures designed to create a market economy in Russia--a revolutionary transformation often misleadingly called "reform"; and public identification with the political fortunes of President Boris Yeltsin. Those policies were right for '93. They are wrong for '96. It is time for a change.

A recent expression of the policy came earlier this month when U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, commenting on Yeltsin's dismissal of Deputy Prime Minister Anatoli Chubais--the sole surviving pro-market official in the Cabinet--asserted that it was "absolutely essential" for Yeltsin to "reaffirm the reform basis of the Russian government."

By firing Chubais, Yeltsin was looking to his own political future, in particular the Russian presidential election scheduled for June. He was responding to the results of December's vote for the Russian parliament, the Duma, in which most successful candidates had campaigned as opponents of the measures with which Chubais was associated. The American government was thus, in effect, urging Yeltsin to commit political suicide.

Washington's message, moreover, reinforced growing resentment among Russians at what they regard as demeaning and condescending American treatment. Historically, the State Department has not made a habit of commenting on Cabinet changes or giving directions on economic policy in other countries. Making an exception in the case of Russia reinforces the specious but widely believed claims of nationalist politicians that the aim of American policy is to humiliate and weaken Russia.

This does not mean that the policies with which Chubais was linked were wrong. To the contrary, controlling the supply of money, withholding subsidies from inefficient enterprises and continuing the transfer of government-owned property to private hands are essential for Russia's economic well-being. If the Russian government abandons these policies, the result will not be the Western-style prosperity of which Russians dream or the Soviet-style security that their memories have exaggerated. It will, instead, be rampant inflation and perhaps economic collapse.

But that message is most appropriately and effectively conveyed not by the American State Department but by the International Monetary Fund, which is lending Russia billions of dollars and is therefore in a position to tell the Russians that if they do not follow sensible economic policies, Michael Mandelbaum is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. they will not receive Western loans. Moreover, it is better that Russian anger at that message be directed at an international financial institution than at the U.S.

The second pillar of America's Russia policy, the embrace of President Yeltsin, reflects the understandable preference for the familiar. The June election may well produce a worse Russian President from the American point of view. But singling Yeltsin out for U.S. support will not improve his electoral chances, and, like gratuitous economic advice, gives offense to the Russian public, which has, after all, the right to choose its own leaders.

As Yeltsin's Prime Minister, Victor Chernomyrdin, visits Washington this week, it is appropriate, indeed essential, for the American government to make its views known on an area of Russian policy in which the U.S. and other countries have a legitimate interest as well as some influence: foreign policy. It is essential to insist on Russian compliance with treaties limiting nuclear and non-nuclear armaments and also vital to insist on Russian respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors that were once republics of the Soviet Union and are now independent countries--especially the Baltic states and Ukraine.

If Russians choose to violate the rules of economic good sense, they will harm themselves; but that is their business. If they violate the rules of international good conduct, they will harm others, and that is the concern of all countries.

The proper goal of American policy toward its former cold-war rival remains in 1996 what it was in '93: a peaceful, democratic, prosperous Russia fully integrated into the international community. The appropriate tactics, however, are different. In '93, with Yeltsin politically strong and communist economic institutions and practices still intact, it was right for the U.S. to give active support to the creation of a market economy in Russia. Now, with Yeltsin politically weak, much of the work of destroying the communist economic system accomplished and a backlash against its inevitable costs cresting, the American activism of three years ago is out of place. In October 1993, when Yeltsin's opponents challenged his presidency by force, it was an act of principle as well as prudence for the U.S. to stand beside him. In '96, when they are challenging him at the ballot box, it is neither principled nor prudent to enter the fray.

In foreign policy, as elsewhere, consistency is generally a virtue, but, as Emerson noted, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. The consistency of America's Russia policy has become foolish and even harmful to the national interests of the U.S.