[특집] 러시아의 대외 군사ㆍ안보정책 결정과정

Decision-making Process of External Military-Security Policy in Russia: Its Effects on Policy toward Korea

When Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian Federation in 1990. the former Soviet republic lacked those crucial political institutions necessary for consolidating his power and authority. These organs-which existed in other republics. which thereby enhanced the political consolidation of former Communist Party members who came into power-constituted the republican Committee on State Security (or the KGB). the Ministry of International Affairs. and even Academy of Sciences and radio/television channels. Lacking the institutional bases for effective rule, Yeltsin on the other hand, inherited Soviet power ministries with whom he had to struggle to “Russianize” it. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and the Liberal Democratic Party which inhetrited the balk of the organizational and ideological remanants of the powerful Soviet Communist Party apparatus. moreover, generated major barriers towards institutionalization of Yeltsin's presidency. Such difficult situation, on the whole. helped generate the bloody suppression of the Parliament on October of 1993, the consolidation of the anti-center oriented Siberian Agreement of 1994, and even the Chechen crisis from the same year. Andrei Kozyrev followed a policy of full and complete Westernization in 1992, agreeing on all major issues which NATO and the United States positively thought. including the joining of the military coalition against Irag--a former ally of the Soviet Union. Such policy, however, brought not full economic, political and military integration with the West, but isolation and new ideological division along the shrunken border of the Russian Federation with the Baltic countries, and the CIS. Contrary to expectations, former members of the now defunct Warsaw Pact Organization began to join NATO, while even members of the former Soviet Union begin to seek membership. Kozyrev, all in all, ignored not only Russia's strategic interests vis-a-vis the West, but also, its immediate concerns in the Near Abroad where millions of ethnic Russians resided, who were facing daily economic, social and even political threats to their security. These problems were seriously politicized; the Communists and the Liberal Democrats along with the scattered Russian armed forces began to call for a turn towards “within” and the much ignored “Near Abroad.” Between the years 1992 and the beginning of 1996, Kozyrev was forced to follow the lines of the domestic conservatives, thereby weakening the institution of the Presidency, and generating the popular image of a weak-willed administration. At the beginning of 1996 Yeltsin appointed Yevgeny Primakov--then the Director of Counter- Foreign Intelligence Agency--as Foreign Minister. A Middle Eastern expert by training and a long-time bureaucrat in the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee he began to reorient Russian foreign policy away from US/West Europe to the Near Abroad. In the national security concept developed in 1998, for example, the predominant emphasis is placed on domestic dimension, namely, stablized economic transition towards market economy, and parellel social conditions. In the field of external policy, Primakov proved instrumental in preempting a formation of second military coalition against Iraq--with the help of France and China. In fact, Primakov is reportedly supplying Iraq with nuclear technology for energy purposes. Primakov also actively opposed the expansion of NATO, pressuring the Baltic countries not to join the military bloc. Parenthetically, such show of pressure against the West meant that within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) no outside forces can interfere: moreover by exporting missiles to Northern Cyprus, an area controlled by Greece. which has a confrontation with Southern Cyprus. an area controlled by Turkey. Primakov intends to weaken KA TO internally. by accelarating tension among the two members. The contraction of the border in the Wes