LETTER TO THE EDITOR — Western policies failing Russia

Your editorial on the heist of Russian assets that has followed privatization is right on the money (T.N.M., Aug. 9-15/99). If Russia’s current circumstances do not amount to the abject failure of Western policy, what would? Mass starvation? A world war?

But International Monetary Fund suits making six figures cannot admit that privatization has failed in Russia, because privatization is good and right by definition. Accordingly, if it doesn’t work, the real world, not the policy, is to blame.

Of course, sensible people know that privatization can work wonders, can make little difference, or can be a disaster, depending on the circumstances.

I note that it is your paper, not the polite, circumspect “journals of record” like The Globe and Mail or The National Post, that has called a spade a spade. Perhaps no one on your editorial board dreams of a comfortable post in Ottawa or an agreeable sinecure in the international bureaucracy. Keep up the honest journalism.

Duncan MacKenzie

Val d’Or, Que.