Many in the west were quite unnerved by the sight of Russian President Boris Yeltsin blustering about the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia. “”I’ve told the NATO people, the Americans, the Germans: “Don’t push us into military action. Otherwise there would certainly be a European, and perhaps a world war.”
But Mr Yeltsin’s statement must be put into context. He is facing impeachment by the Russian Parliament. And just a US foreign policy was influenced by an impeachment against the US President, so is Russian foreign policy. It is a fairly standard ploy for a politician in trouble at home to invent or exaggerate some external threat. In the case of Mr Yeltsin, though, it will not work. The man who stepped on to a tank unarmed in 1991 to announce the end of the Soviet Union and communism to almost universal acclaim is eight years later almost universally detested. Faced with his obvious unpopularity, the critical members of Parliament responsible for the impeachment process will not be swayed by Mr Yeltsin’s empty threats, to the contrary.
One critical count of the five-count impeachment hearing which begins this week is that he launched the 1994-96 war in Chechnya. This is the count that the democratic opposition Yabloko faction supports. Mr Yeltsin can hardly expect to change their minds with talk of engaging in another war, this time over Serbia.
His sabre rattling is directed at appeasing the communists and their allies who like the other four counts invovling Yeltsin’s role in the collapse of communism. But they will vote for impeachment anyway. Mr Yeltsin’s sabre rattling is the empty gesture. In any event the country is run by Prime Minister Primakov. Mr Yeltsin has the power to dismiss Mr Primakov, but that would only make Mr Yeltsin’s removal more swift and certain. Otherwise the impeachment process might draw out and Mr Yeltsin would just toddle off the scene when his term runs out in mid-2000.