Mr. Chairman: As my contribution to this hearing, I would like to examine and analyze this "Second Chechen War" in the context of the first war of 1994-1996. This is a very different conflict from the first on both the domestic and international fronts and these differences are instructive as we attempt to discern Russian motives for the most recent actions.

Domestic Front:

The War of 1994-1996 was the largest military campaign on Russian soil since the Second World War, and the military casualties in just two years of fighting were almost as high as the Soviet casualties incurred in a decade of war in Afghanistan. The stakes in the war were high for both sides. For Chechnya, the war was a fight for independence and the latest round in a long struggle against assimilation into Russia that dates back to the 19th century. For Russia, the war was an effort to retain control of the country's post-Soviet borders and of a strategic territory with a crucial oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea and an important oil refining industry.

This was, however, a very unpopular war. In 1996, Russian opinion polls consistently showed that approximately 60% of the population were in favor of an immediate termination of the war. In Moscow, the Russian media broadcast and related harrowing tales from the battlefield of senseless carnage and a humanitarian and military disaster--including graphic pictures of burned out Russian tanks in the center of Grozny holding the charred distorted bodies of teenage Russian conscripts. The Soldiers Mothers' Committee launched an active campaign both to bring their sons home from the front and to shame politicians into ending the conflict. The "First Chechen War" was, in essence, Russia's Vietnam.

On the battlefront, the Russian military began to lose the campaign from the very start. In Moscow, the Russian government pursued a dual and ultimately self-defeating policy of negotiation and military assault--promoting peace plans and safe zones while raining shells down on Chechen villages. The end of the war in August 1996 came only in the wake of a crushing defeat at the hands of Chechen forces and the rout of Russian military units from Grozny after a final assault on the city, and after the virtual collapse of the Russian military.

Moscow was essentially forced to sue for peace and the resulting peace treaty-the Khasavyurt Accord--was a deep humiliation. The Accord was repeatedly referred to in the Russian press and parliament in terms of "Great Russia's humiliation by small Chechnya." The Russian military felt that the peace had been foisted upon them--that military victory had been denied by the vacillation and prevarication of politicians in Moscow, and the perfidy of the Russian press which had whipped up popular sympathy for the Chechens. Many in the Russian political elite shared their sentiments. In a presentation at Harvard University not long after the conclusion of the war, Russian democrat Alexei Arbatov noted testily that the result would have been far different and Russia would not have a "Chechen problem" if Stalin were still in power. On the one hand, this comment was testament to the huge leaps that Russia has made in terms of democratization and the emergence of public opinion as an independent force, and on the other it revealed the depth of animosity and resentment left by the Khasavyurt Accord.

Ultimately, the peace the Khasavyurt Accord brought proved to be as unpopular as the war it ended, and the Accord is now nothing more than a glorified cease-fire document.

In the intervening period from 1996-1999, the attempts at reconciliation between Russia and Chechnya and the reconstruction of Chechnya were feeble at best. Sympathy for the Chechens rapidly dissipated both in Moscow and in the surrounding region of the North Caucasus in the face of widespread and blatant kidnappings, assassinations, murders, and attacks on economic targets in neighboring areas. International aid workers and Western and Russian reporters were driven from the republic. The Chechen forces that pulled together in the fight against the Russians in 1994-1996 fell at each other's throats after the Russian withdrawal. Islamic forces and gunmen stepped into the political vacuum in the republic undermining the authority of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. Finally, the Chechen incursions into Dagestan this Summer, and the bomb attacks in Moscow, reinforced the image of Chechnya as an exporter of violence and terror.

This has brought us to the second war in an international context that is also very different from the first:

International Front:

In 1994-1996, the Chechen War was launched by Moscow in part as a response to the United States quick and successful intervention in Haiti--a number of Russian military commentators made references to emulating the US' success and cleaning up in Russia's backyard. In 1999, the stakes for Russia are even higher. We are now in a post-Kosovo world. For Russia, the US and NATO's military intervention in the Balkans has drastically changed the post-Cold War strategic environment, and has legitimized the use of forceful interventions to resolve political disputes.

We are now also in an Osama bin Laden world, where US missile attacks in Sudan and Afghanistan have paved the way for other unilateral punitive actions by other states against purported centers of international terrorism, and have provided new terms of demonization. In 1994-1996, the Chechens were "rebels" and "bandits." In 1999, they are "terrorists." In the First Chechen War, the image of rebels and bandits did not carry much saliency either at home or abroad. In this Second Chechen War, hard on the heels of bomb attacks in Moscow and repeated rumors that Osama bin Laden is either planning to move his base of operations from Afghanistan to Chechnya or is funding Chechen forces, the image is a potent one.

The Second Chechen War:

So where are we now with the Second Chechen War? What is it about? Where will it end?

I would suggest that this Second War is all about politics in Moscow in the run up to the December 1999 Russian parliamentary and the June 2000 presidential elections, and all about defeat in the first war. In October 1995, in the face of persistent Russian military reversals and an increasing public backlash against the war, Boris Yeltsin described Chechnya as the biggest mistake of his Presidency. This is now a chance for the Yeltsin regime and the Russian military to fight the war again--and this time to do it right and correct that mistake. It is also an opportunity for a victorious little war to propel the regime's designated successor to Yeltsin--Prime Minister Vladimir Putin--up the popularity polls and into the presidency in June 2000.

Both the Yeltsin government and the military learned a number of key lessons from the first war. On the home front, the government has "kept on message"--this is now a battle with international terrorism, not the repression of a secessionist movement. A media-blackout has prevented morale-destroying stories from filtering back to the Russian heartland. The general public outrage against the Moscow bombings and revulsion over carefully released video footage of Chechen atrocities has kept opposing views muted and forged a remarkable political unity. The Chechens have been successfully demonized and are accused of staging civilian casualties to discredit the Russian government.

In sharp contrast to the First Chechen War, the Russian military has been pushed to the fore in decision-making. There is no attempt to pursue a dual policy of negotiation and force. Chechen overtures to initiate talks have been rebuffed and the logic of a military campaign has thus far been allowed to prevail. On the battle front, the Russian military has moved in slowly and kept its options open for a minimalist approach of securing the northern part of Chechnya, while pursuing the maximalist goal of taking Grozny and the heartland of the republic. The military has also addressed the Chechens' tactical superiority on the ground in hand-to-hand combat with an aerial bombing campaign. In this context, civilian casualties are regarded as collateral damage. The unfolding humanitarian tragedy in the North Caucasus as tens of thousands of Chechen refugees flee into impoverished and unstable neighboring republics is irrelevant to military strategists.

Domestic Implications:

As far as the potential impact on democratization and civil liberties in Russia is concerned--the demonization of the Chechens as a group and the extension of this demonization to other peoples from the broader Caucasus region, resulting in harassment by local authorities, and the media blackout on the war are major causes of concern. However, the rise and influence of Russian public opinion and of civil society in the form of the Soldiers Mothers Committee was the major success story of the last war and should not be discounted as a factor in this one. The current war may be popular for now but the Russian press is beginning to publish stories that run counter to the state's depiction of events on the ground, and there are already stirrings of political fallout from the civilian casualties in Grozny.

Opposition politicians such as former Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov, Yabloko Party Leader Grigory Yavlinsky, and Samara Governor Konstantin Titov have spoken out against an all-out ground war and attacks on civilian targets. For Putin and the military strategists, timing and circumstances are key. They may not be able to control the flow of information from the ground for long and the window for a decisive victory may be a small one. The Chechens have not yet launched a major counter-offensive, and if the aerial assaults are replaced by a full-scale ground-war, higher Russian casualties seem inevitable along with the public backlash that will bring. As Putin has risen in the polls as a result of the war, so can he fall. He can also, even if he wins the war and rides high in the polls, earn the wrath of Yeltsin as other seemingly popular Prime Ministers have before him. War and its conduct are an art and not a science.

A Russian Victory in the Second Chechen War?

It is highly possible that the Russians could win a military victory this time around. The Chechen fighters may be battle-hardened and better equipped and trained than in the first war, but the last three years of chaos and the destruction of Chechnya's infrastructure have taken their toll on the health and morale of the population. The republic has seen the complete collapse of sanitation, basic health care, and food and other essential life supplies. In sum, Chechnya has been a permanent humanitarian disaster. In the first war, the Chechen population rallied round the cause to fight back against the Russian incursion, this time the remaining population is exhausted and beaten down and is fleeing.

If Russia does achieve a military victory, however, what kind of victory will this be? The Chechens won the First Chechen War but lost the peace-Russia could win the Second Chechen War but will surely also lose the peace. The Yeltsin regime and the Russian military may have absorbed the military lessons of the First Chechen War but they have not assimilated the economic, social, and political lessons of either its prelude or its aftermath.

The major question is--what will Moscow do with Chechnya once it is defeated? A victory on the battlefield and the absolute rejection of Chechen independence will not resolve the serious problems that persist in Chechnya-including severe economic dislocation, high unemployment, the destruction of infrastructure and industry, and the collapse of social and political structures. Where will the funds be found to reconstruct the republic and reintegrate it with the rest of the Russian Federation? We have seen the scale of the reconstruction effort underway in Bosnia and the difficulties of restoring order in Kosovo. Can the Russians really conduct such an effort? If the last three years of purported efforts to reconstruct Chechnya are anything to go by then the answer is a resounding no.

What will happen to the Chechen fighters who will be pushed out of the republic by a Russian victory? Will they hold up in the mountains in the south of the republic and launch intermittent raids against the Russian-held heartland? Or will they take their guns to neighboring hotspots such as Nagorno-Karabakh or Abkhazia, further destabilizing the weak states of the South Caucasus? What will also happen to all of the refugees from both the first and the second wars? Are they likely to return to a devastated Chechnya or are they more likely to stay in their places of refuge, putting even more strain on the fragile economies and polities of the rest of the North Caucasus? And while Moscow is preoccupied with mopping up in Chechnya, will it have the energy and wherewithal to deal with the explosive political situations already evident in other North Caucasus republics such as Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Dagestan?

In the event of a victory, Russia seems likely to exhaust itself in attempting to police and rebuild its own internal Bosnia and Kosovo, and unlikely to be able to formulate the kind of sophisticated long-term policies it requires to stabilize the North Caucasus.

Broader impact of war in the South Caucasus:

In the South Caucasus, there is considerable and understandable concern--especially in Georgia and Azerbaijan--about the long-term consequences of the Second Chechen War and the possibility of the resurgence of an aggressive Russian policy in the region. Russia's defeat in the first war certainly tempered its interference in Georgian and Azeri affairs and led to Russian retrenchment in the region and a more pragmatic approach to bilateral and multilateral relations in 1996-1999.

This concern is not misplaced, but it is too early to tell whether or not it is fully justified. The Second Chechen War is very much driven by politics in Moscow and by the desire to redress the humiliation of the first defeat. It does not in itself denote a desire to return to the heavy-handed approach of 1992-1994 in the Caucasus. And, as noted above, even in the advent of a victory, Moscow will be preoccupied with restoring its control in Chechnya and it will be difficult to capitalize on this for a new thrust south.

The current war also raises broader questions about the future of the Russian armed forces. Military reform is long over due. Although the Russian military seems to be benefiting from increased budgetary appropriations for weapons procurement and supplies to fight the war in Chechnya, this does not address the deep structural and doctrinal problems the military has faced since the collapse of the Soviet armed forces in 1991. The Russian military seems likely to exhaust itself in securing a victory. Chechnya could in the end prove to be its "last fling" rather than the first steps in a new dance.

The increased instability resulting from the war and the likelihood of spill-over from the fighting, either in the form of stray missiles, refugees, and fighters is, however, very real indeed. The war is also a further endorsement of the use of force in settling political disputes in the region at a time when other conflicts, such as Nagorno-Karabakh, are at a turning point.

The Prospects for External Intervention and Mediation:

At this specific juncture, the prospects for an intervention from the international community to bring the two sides to the negotiating table are slim. The Yeltsin regime does not want to negotiate with the Chechens until a military victory is secured. Vladimir Putin has deliberately painted himself into a rhetorical corner by rejecting Aslan Maskhadov as the legitimate President of Chechnya and demanding that he turn over key Chechen commanders. In the first war, the same approach was taken with then Chechen President Dzokhar Dudayev.

The turning points for mediation and negotiation only came with major Russian military reversals and there is no indication that the situation will be any different this time around. Serious talks between the Russians and Chechens were initiated only after Shamil Basayev's audacious assault on the Russian town of Budennovsk in Summer 1995, and as I mentioned at the outset, peace was only vigorously pursued after the Russians were routed from Grozny in Summer 1996--and four months after Dudayev had been killed in a missile attack.

There is very little at this juncture that the US and other outside powers can do to turn back the Russian military's advance. The advance will have to be halted and the attitude toward negotiations changed by the Chechens on the battlefield and by public opinion and sober-minded politicians in Moscow.

The United States needs to approach the crisis cautiously and have a keen sense of timing. The first rule of US policy should be "do no harm." We are in a very dangerous period in US-Russian relations. The level of anti-Americanism among the Russian elite is real and should not be underestimated. We must be careful not to provoke an even greater backlash against the Chechens.

In the minds of the Russian political elite, in the post-Kosovo world, the US no longer commands the moral high ground. The Russian political elite do not believe that the US intervention in Kosovo was a humanitarian one and see it purely in terms of the balance of power--resolving a political conflict with Milosevic, carving out a new role for NATO to ensure its preservation, and staking a claim in the Balkans. They see the US as adopting a heavy-handed approach in dealing with threats to US interests while criticizing others for protecting their own interests. For the Russian political elite, the US is an unchecked power that is operating across the globe in all of Russia's former spheres of influence, and seeking to belittle and humiliate Russia at every turn.

This makes our options and leverage limited. What can we do?

• This is a complex situation and must be treated as such. We must "stay on message" and keep a close watch on Russian public opinion and the reactions of the Russian political elite.
• We must not condone Russian action but we must also not offer false promise to the Chechens in making rhetorical statements that are unlikely to be followed through in practice.
• We must continue to condemn attacks on the civilian population of Chechnya, and highlight the humanitarian tragedy and the threats to democracy in Russia posed by the press blackout.
• We must engage those Russian politicians who are beginning to speak out against the civilian casualties and the conduct of the War and stress the importance of negotiations. In the First Chechen War, Russian opponents of the war felt let down by the lack of a resolute and consistent response from the West and by statements from the US that seemed to condone the Yeltsin regime's policy by making parallels with the US Civil War.
• We should encourage the renewed engagement of the OSCE in the region given the positive role that this organization played in the first war, and should offer humanitarian assistance for the refugees and the neighboring republics that are hosting them.
• We should offer, in the event of a negotiated settlement, to help broker and structure an international reconstruction effort for Chechnya that would address the republic's and the broader North Caucasus region's deep-rooted economic, social and political problems. This might in fact be an opportunity to encourage the formation of an international task force that would examine the political, economic, and security challenges in the Caucasus as a whole and offer recommendations for future action. This could be created under the auspices of the OSCE and adopt the format of the Carnegie Endowment's task forces on the Balkans at both the beginning and end of this century.
• Finally, we must stress that while the Second Chechen War can be won in the rubble of Grozny the real test of victory will come in what happens next. Winning and securing peace will be difficult in the extreme.