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1. Launching USAID Programs in the New Independent States

Author:
Desaix Myers
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
We were in the dark. Launching an aid program as the Soviet Union collapsed, covering 12 countries across 11 time zones from Kiev to Vladivostok, took the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) into totally new territory. Most of us had spent careers in the tropics. Almost no one in USAID knew anything about Russia or the former Soviet Union. No one spoke Russian. In June 1992, I joined USAID’s recently formed New Independent States (NIS) Taskforce as Russia Desk Officer. My knowledge of Russia consisted of what I had learned from “Russian Lit in Translation” sophomore year and a one-week trip with the University of California to see about a possible partnership with the university in Puschino, a small town dedicated to microbiology 90 kilometers south of Moscow. Concerned that Puschino, formerly a closed city, might be a center for research on biological warfare, we went to the CIA for reassurance—they said it wasn’t.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Memoir, USAID, and Post-Soviet Space
Political Geography:
Europe and Post-Soviet Europe

2. Playing the Kinship Card in Communist Bulgaria

Author:
Jonathan B. Rickert
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
In 1986, Secretary of State George Shultz tasked Deputy Secretary John Whitehead with responsibility for overseeing U.S. relations with Eastern Europe. Following the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, there were some hints of a possible adjustment of Soviet policies toward the so-called “satellite” countries of Eastern Europe. The naming of Whitehead to oversee U.S. relations with the region demonstrated the importance the administration placed on it and the hope that we could promote, encourage, or induce some positive changes there. As Whitehead described it in his autobiography, A Life in Leadership, his initial plan for fulfilling his mandate was “to visit those countries, tell the governmental leaders our concerns about their undemocratic conduct and their human rights violations, listen to their concerns, and, of course, dutifully show them that we regarded them as ‘differentiated’ countries in accordance with official policy.” It was in this context that he arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria, where I was serving as Deputy Chief of Mission, at the end of an initial swing through the area that had taken him to Hungary, Poland, and Romania in November 1986.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Memoir, and Civil Services
Political Geography:
Bulgaria and Post-Soviet Europe

3. Three decades of Russian Policy in the European Part of the Post-Soviet Space: Swimming Against the Current

Author:
Arkady Moshes and Ryhor Nizhnikau
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)
Abstract:
The successful pursuit of Russia’s great-power status and its recognition by the West imply the preservation of pre-eminent positions, above all in the European part of the post-Soviet space. Since Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, the Kremlin has been making a consistent effort to reverse the earlier trend towards the weakening of Russia’s regional stance. One of the implications of this policy was the shift of the Russian-Western competition in the “common neighbourhood” towards an open stand-off after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russian regional policy has run counter to structural changes that could not be counter-balanced through activism, whether enticing or coercive. As a result, 30 years since the dissolution of the USSR, Russia’s regional influence as well as its attraction as a societal role model and a security provider are continuing to erode. Russia has regional clout, which is nonetheless hardly growing over time. More and more often, Moscow is encountering difficulties in achieving its goals. While post-Soviet states resist Russia’s assertiveness, non-Western players pose new challenges to its posture.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, Conflict, Peace, and Post-Soviet Space
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Post-Soviet Europe