Anne Williamson Congressional Testimony (1999)
"It shows how the historic opportunity given the U.S. to help transform Russia into a free, peaceful, pro-Western country was squandered in the form of a bruising economic rape carried out by corrupt Russian politicians and businessmen, assisted by Bush and (especially) Clinton administrations engaged in political payoffs to Wall Street bankers and others, and by ineptitude and greed on the part of the U.S. Treasury and the Harvard Institute for International Development, assisted by fellow travelers and manipulators at Nordex, the IMF, the World Bank, and the Federal Reserve.
The losers were the Russian people and (mainly) U.S. tax-payers."
I remember thinking that Clinton could have done a lot to open up the doors of commerce with Russia, getting business in there, helping to set up economic sectors with education, etc.
Instead the mob filled the void.
I knew a guy that did oil exploration and leasing in Russia. He never offered or took a bribe. He befriended some American at the hotel in Moscow that was a land developer. Real gung-ho, loud, brash, wheeling and dealing, etc. My friend told him that he needed to quiet down and go slow. The land developer didn’t.
They found him dead from a gunshot inside of his fancy hotel room.