Free Seize the Moment by Richard Nixon Page B

strong hand.” Many wanted him not only to take decisive action but also to crack heads to make his policies stick.
    â€”Interethnic tensions that crosscut every corner of the former Soviet Union represent an explosive source of conflict. The potential battle lines are drawn not only between the Russians and the non-Russians but also among the non-Russians. Gagauzi are pitted against Moldavians; Armenians against Azerbaijanis; Abkhasians, Ossetians, Adzhars, and Meshketi Turks against Georgians; Kazakhs against Uzbeks and Turkomans; Tadzhiks against the Uzbeks; and scores of other smaller ethnic groups in each former republic against those in the majority. Over the past five years, these conflicts sometimes turned into violent clashes that killed 1,000 people, injured 8,500, and sent 700,000 fleeing their homes. More such violence—particularly if directed at ethnic Russian minorities—could easily feed the rise of extremism and provide an ideal pretext for intervention by a newly assertive imperial center.
    â€”Despite their victory in the August 1991 revolution, thereformers are not an invincible movement. They lack political unity and administrative talent. Some analysts estimate that more than three hundred new anticommunist parties and groups—such as the Democratic Union, the Popular Front, Constitutional Democrats, Social Democrats, Movement for Democratic Reforms, the Russian Democratic party, the Democratic party of Russian Communists, and the Republican party of Russia—have sprung up nationwide. Their administrative weakness undermines their ability to take over the vast bureaucratic empire of the state and leaves them vulnerable to more organized and better marshaled political forces. The fragmentation of empire has been followed by the fragmentation of parties.
    Perilous historical analogies can be drawn to the tumultuous change sweeping the former Soviet Union. We could see a replay of the Bolshevik Revolution, with a fragile democratic order crushed by a reactionary coup. We could see a reprise of the fall of the Weimar Republic, with an economically wounded democratic government gradually eclipsed by ultranationalists promising renewed glory. We could see a variation on the toppling of the Fourth Republic in France, with colonists under siege in a distant outpost conspiring in a coup with imperial hard-liners at the center. The restoration of Communist rule in the republic of Tadzhikistan through a coup is a sign of the kinds of dangers that could lie ahead.
    These are not grounds for panic, but they are powerful arguments against complacency. In fact, though the creation of the new commonwealth is a promising development, the rise of a new imperial center will remain an ominous outlying possibility in the longer term.
    Promoting the principle of democratic self-determination should be the hallmark of our policy. For a multinationalstate ruled by a dominant nation with long-standing imperial traditions, a direct contradiction exists between democracy and unity. In the wake of democratic reform, smaller nations will inevitably exploit democracy to free themselves from the unity imposed by the center. And if the center insists on political unity, it will be inexorably driven to dismantle democracy. We must recognize that the defeat of Moscow’s imperial rule was an indispensable precondition for securing the triumph of freedom and democracy.
    Democratic self-determination involves two elements. First, nations must be allowed to exercise their right to choose their own destinies through democratic means. To reject this right a priori would deny our own heritage. Second, nations that exercise that right must uphold democratic values—especially in terms of respect for the rights of minorities—in their own societies. To insist on the first but overlook the second would open the door to new tyrannies at the republic level. While it involves close case-by-case judgment calls,