Let us go back to the Chechen situation again. I doubt very much whether the Russians would have started hitting us with their nukes if President Clinton had simply come out with a statement deploring the slaughter, rather than basically endorsing it. I can't prove it, but it seems to me that the failure of the Europeans and especially the Americans to go on record emboldened the Russian establishment to pursue their operation with even more vigor ("The West doesn't care").
I think the calculus in the White House, State Department, and the National Security Counsel went something like this at the time.
It's an internal Russian matter. A very ugly one which we don't like, but it doesn't amount to genocide or something of that magnitude. The Russians believe they have a right to quell internal rebellions within their own territory. No matter what we say, or do, the Russians are not going to be seen to be cowed out of their internal policy by American pressure. Indeed pressure from us might make them that much more stubborn, and determined to show that they haven't lost their super power status.
Our relationship with the Russians has improved enormously, and may improve still more in the future. We may need to call upon that improved relationship in a time of some international crisis or another, when it will really matter, and the Russians can be persuaded to help, or at least not hinder, our efforts. Let us not cut off the good will we have built up, for no tangible results.
Yes, there will be those who criticize our relative silence, and call it hypocritical, and the like. Those concerns will pass. The price of effective international statesmanship is sometimes to bear criticism from democratic and human rights idealists that one's position is not pure.
I think that real politic position was essentially right.
Doug
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