turning to the totalitarian regime that existed under Communism. However, with the election of former KGB official Vladimir Putin as Russia's chief executive, and Putin's increasingly "hard line" posture vis-a-vis Russian's own external policies (and toward the United States), there are growing concerns that democracy may not prevail in Russia over the long term (Putin's plan to increase..., 2000).
What has been the effect of American foreign aid to Russia since the collapse in 1989? What are the specific efforts or programs initiated by the United States to provide assistance to Russia? And, what are the functional powers that allow for such aid? How does American foreign aid to Russia since 1989 reflect or deviate from past examples of American bilateral assistance? These are the key questions that will be explored in this report, which will offer a brief overview of the key transformations taking place in the former Soviet Union over the past 11-plus years. It will be argued herein that American foreign assistance to Russia has not succeeded in bolstering the country's emergent democratic institutions to the degree anticipated, largely as a consequence of internal Russian corruption and ineptitude and of America's failure to properly assess the Russian situation.
The General Framework for American Foreign Assistance
Any nation, including the United States, requires the ability to deal with its international environment in a flexible and effective manner. In practice, this often necessitates assuming the position of global peacekeeper or "policeman," as the U.S. has done in the cases of Grenada, Haiti, Panama, Bosnia, and Somalia (Nincic, 1988). Nincic (1988) notes that policy-making in a democracy must have three principal attributes: 1) it must be based upon the policy preferences of the public; 2) the powers of a democracy's managers must be constrained; and 3) policy must not violate rights and liberties....