Yeltsin now gets invited to the best parties, but is he really wanted? Some of the whispering in Washington is reminiscent of country-club backbiting. “Yeltsin drinks.” “He’s a first-class boor.” Bush clearly preferred dealing with the polished, abstemious Mikhail Gorbachev and considered Yeltsin’s post-coup humiliation of the former Soviet leader unseemly. Yeltsin’s stock in Europe isn’t much higher; as an opposition figure, he repeatedly felt snubbed there. But Russia is too big to ignore. Once the Soviet Union commanded respect because of its intimidating military machine. Now Russia is seen as a teetering behemoth with the potential to destabilize two continents. In Central Asia alone, the collapse of central Soviet control has thrown a vast swath of territory open to competition among states like Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia (page 28).
Those concerns led Washington last week to convene a hasty 47-nation conference on aid to the former Soviet republics. (Yeltsin wasn’t invited.) Bush pledged an additional $645 million in U.S. aid over two budget years, and Secretary of State James Baker announced that the Air Force would fly in medicine and 38.4 million tons of food left over from the gulf war. But European officials, resentful over what they saw as U.S. grandstanding on aid, described that pledge as symbolic at best. Privately, one senior European delegate said the conference’s main result was a staggering new assessment of how much additional humanitarian and economic aid is needed-$30 billion. Yeltsin likely will fall, he added, leading to “something close to chaos” and a possible military takeover.
Yeltsin sees his own tour as pivotal. “He wants to confirm his new position … as the person in charge of the former Soviet Union,” says one of his foreign-policy advisers. He will thank the nations sending relief aid. But the core of his argument will be that he has already undertaken far more radical reforms than Gorbachev ever dared, and that the West should fully accept him. He will argue that his nation is behind him. He will assert that Russia is no longer a military threat, as U.S. intelligence chiefs acknowledged to Congress last week. “Camp David will be the first meeting when our two presidents share the same values almost 100 percent, among them commitments to the rule of law, the market economy and human rights,” says a Russian Foreign Ministry official.
Wish list: Yeltsin plans to set this tonebut offer few specifics-in a brief U.N. address. Then he will carry a wish list of specific proposals to Camp David. One of the most important is an international ,‘stabilization fund" to back the ruble so it can be freely converted. But the top item on the agenda will be establishing rapport with Bush, a president who conducts much of his foreign policy through chatty relationships with fellow leaders.
Yeltsin made an abysmal impression when he first visited the White House in 1989. He complained when Bush didn’t greet him at the door. During a meeting with national-security adviser Brent Scowcroft, he filibustered, barely pausing when Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle dropped in. Bush and Scowcroft decided he was a self-promoting egotist. Stories depicting Yeltsin as a heavy drinker added to their disgust. “The folklore became part of history,” says a senior administration official. “That has been a problem.”
Bush and Scowcroft remained wary even after Yeltsin’s courageous stand against last summer’s failed coup. Afterward, a senior administration official accused the Russian leader of “an instinct for the demagogic.” And although Yeltsin courted Bush with phone calls, letters and cables throughout the rest of last year, Bush stuck with Gorbachev. Said one administration source: “His feelings about Yeltsin drove him to support the central government well past the time that others in the administration thought it was doomed.”
Now Bush supports Yeltsin mostly because he fears what might happen if his program of sweeping reforms fails. Administration officials are impressed with Yeltsin’s debut but want to see him deliver on promises of large-scale privatization, major cuts in the military budget and an end to the wild printing of rubles. “We will be sending a clear signal-that this is a man we can do business with,” said a senior State Department official, echoing Margaret Thatcher’s famous phrase about Gorbachev. The Russian leader will try to confirm that conclusion. “Yeltsin is not Gorbachev,” says a Soviet official. “He is a very different type. But Yeltsin has one big plus: he is very sincere. If he says something, he means it, he will deliver, and that will be appreciated.” And Yeltsin will be on his best behavior. Although his well-known ability to drink without visible effect is a political plus in Russia, he almost certainly will limit his consumption in the United States.
If Bush wants to talk business, Yeltsin will be ready. In his State of the Union Message this week, Bush is expected to propose cutbacks in multiple-warhead missiles; the Russians are also prepared to scrap some of their newest, most sophisticated nuclear weapons. Yeltsin will suggest that the West supervise and pay Russian nuclear researchers-to calm fears budding nuclear powers. He will push for that they might be tempted to work for the removal of economic restrictions that still prevent Russia from buying Western technology or participating in commercial-satellite launches. And he will request more investment and long-term help in the transition to a market economy.
But the kind of massive investment Russia needs will come only if it truly joins the capitalist mainstream. That’s why one of Yeltsin’s chief goals is to get into the Group of Seven, the world’s leading industrial nations. Bush’s support gave Gorbachev limited access to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; he also was given an observer role in last year’s G-7 summit in London. Since Yeltsin succeeded Gorbachev, making the G-7 role permanent has been one of his top priorities. By the end of February he will have met privately with all of the G-7 leaders. While his rhetoric is sure to make a splash in New York, it will be harder to impress the board members of the world’s most exclusive club.
