We Are Losing Hearts and Minds in the Former Soviet Empire

We Are Losing Hearts and Minds in the Former Soviet Empire

We Are Losing Hearts and Minds in the Former Soviet Empire

By Theodore P. Gerber and Jane Zavisca 8/2/15 at 2:20 PM

The United States has a major public relations problem in former Soviet countries.

Not only in Russia, but in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and even Ukraine, ordinary people see the U.S. as an arrogant, hegemonic superpower that meddles in the affairs of other countries in a cynical pursuit of its own interests—perceptions that dovetail with the Russian government’s official critiques of the United States, which may explain the success of these particular memes.

At the same time, citizens of these countries respect and admire American economic power, technology, culture and, to some extent, its political institutions. This dual-sided picture—often obscured by crude survey-based measures of views of America in post-Soviet nations—emerged from 18 focus groups we conducted in Russia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine between April and August 2014.

To restore American soft power in the region, the United States should reduce direct support for civil society organizations in former Soviet countries and others that lack intrinsic demand for civic engagement.

American financing of these organizations has played into the hands of authoritarian leaders who portray such backing as evidence of American interference, hurting the reputations of both the U.S. and the local NGOs that receive American funds.

Instead, American policies should emphasize programs which spread and deepen knowledge and appreciation of American institutions—more exchanges of people, ideas, and cultural products.

Since the late 1980s, the United States has sought to promote democracy in semi-authoritarian and transition countries by providing financial and technical support to NGOs that pursue civic and political causes, election monitoring efforts and oppositional political parties. These policies appeared to bear fruit when popular democratic movements helped overthrow dictators in Chile, Nicaragua and Serbia, and with the successful “color revolutions” in Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Ukraine.

The approach has been less successful in Russia, and has contributed to a general curdling of U.S.-Russian relations. In 2009, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that from 2006-2008, federal agencies spent nearly $100 million on democracy promotion in Russia—much of it in the form of funding for “civil society programs”—making Russia the sixth-largest recipient of U.S. spending for that purpose.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s October 26, 2014, speech at the “Valdai” discussion club received worldwide attention for its condemnation of American foreign policy. Putin claimed the United States actively interferes in the affairs of other countries, cynically foments “color revolutions” and even supports Islamic terrorists under the guise of promoting “peace, prosperity, progress, growth, and democracy,” all in order to preserve its dominant, hegemonic position in a “unipolar” world. The level of vitriol in Putin’s Valdai speech may be unprecedented, but its content is not.

As Thomas Carothers observed in a 2006 Foreign Affairs article, Putin has been leading a “backlash” campaign against American democracy assistance since 2005, when Russian officials began labeling domestic human rights NGOs with foreign funding as a traitorous “fifth column,” a now-standard moniker in official speeches and pro-Kremlin Russian media.

In a February 2007 speech in Munich, Putin sounded the themes of unipolarity, U.S. hypocrisy in preaching democracy and human rights and its interference in Russia’s sovereign affairs. After spontaneous protests arose in Russia following allegations of widespread fraud in the country’s December 2011 parliamentary elections, Putin blamed the revolts on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, charging that she sent “a signal” to certain “actors” in Russia—a threatening specter of American menace which became a prominent theme throughout Putin’s 2012 presidential campaign.

In his March 18, 2014, address on the “reunification” of Russia and Crimea, Putin again labeled those who oppose his policies as a “fifth column, [a] disparate bunch of national traitors” supported by foreign interests.

Although its main audience has been domestic, the Russian government has actively sought to export this message, investing massive resources in its international “RT” (formerly Russia Today) media network, which now can reach 600 million people worldwide with broadcasts in multiple languages.

Domestic Russian media broadcasts are ubiquitous in other former Soviet republics, offering a steady diet of reports dramatizing United States interference in other countries’ internal affairs, highlighting problems in America and portraying developments such as the collapse of the Yanukovych government in Ukraine, the downing of flight MH-17 and combat in southeastern Ukraine as direct results of U.S. actions.

Rhetoric aside, the Russian government has passed a series of laws tightening the screws on foreign-funded political NGOs; requirements that they register as “foreign agents,” with connotations that they are spying for foreign governments, are just one recent example.

The influence of Russia’s campaign is evident in copycat legislation enacted in Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Yanukovych’s Ukraine and elsewhere, which has cracked down on foreign-funded NGOs, domestic protesters and oppositional groups.

In sum, Putin and his associates have put forward a concerted, sustained critique of American democracy assistance for nearly a decade, threatening not only to undermine efforts at democracy promotion, but also to tarnish the broader image of the United States. If the Russian critique holds sway, it poses a significant threat to American “soft power” in former Soviet republics, much to the long-term detriment of United States foreign policy.

There has been virtually no empirical research into whether the populations in these countries actually buy the Russian critique. Survey researchers regularly investigate how Russians feel toward the United States, and similar studies have been done in Ukraine.

Predictably, Russian public opinion on the United States has fluctuated; negative views surged following the Iraq invasion and, even more so, in the last year, after the Crimea takeover and hostilities with Ukraine.

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Conclusion

Focus groups may not be representative of the populations from which participants are drawn, and the generalizability of these results remains to be confirmed with survey data. However, the recurrence of the main themes across groups within and between countries implies that these views are not idiosyncratic.

The core arguments made by Russian officials regarding America’s ambition, arrogance, self-interestedness and penchant for using democracy promotion to meddle in the affairs of others resonate with publics across Eurasia—even in countries like Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, which have received significant amounts of American aid, and Azerbaijan, which has sought to maintain some diplomatic distance from Russia. The appeal of the Russian critique poses a formidable challenge to American soft power.

To restore a positive image of America, U.S. officials should scale back the type of democracy promotion that looks like meddling in favor of strategies that leverage America’s advantages—namely, positive perceptions of American institutions, economic and technological achievements and high living standards.

The American way of life could be made a positive institutional model that ultimately encourages organic movements for change untarnished by the stain of foreign interference.

Ways to do so include bolstering student, scientific and other exchanges, encouraging more frequent travel, immigration and trade between the United States and former Soviet countries and quietly but assiduously promoting programs that expose citizens in Eurasia to concrete examples of American institutions.

It is telling that many of positive views of America expressed in the focus groups originated from acquaintances of participants who have spent time in the United States.

While no strategy is guaranteed to work, this approach has a better chance than continuing efforts to promote democratization by directly supporting local political NGOs and oppositional movements.

Theodore P. Gerber is a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jane Zavisca is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona.

This material is based upon work supported in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the U.S. Army Research Office via the Minerva Research Initiative program under grant number W911NF1310303.