NEW YORK — Communism, wrote the young Marx and Engels in their famous manifesto, is the specter haunting the chancelleries of Europe.

Not anymore. The new specter keeping both U.S. and European diplomats up late at night is named for Napoleon. When diplomats worry about the future of Europe today, they worry about "Bonapartism"--about the possibility that a Russian military leader will take power and unite the country behind an aggressively hard-line foreign policy.

It's not hard to see why people worry. True, the Russian military's misadventures in Grozny don't inspire much fear, but then France's army wasn't doing particularly well before Napoleon came on the scene. Meanwhile, Russia's civilian politicians seem both weak and divided, and its generals are muttering in the background.

Clearly, the Russian military isn't happy. Many officers still resent the loss of Eastern Europe, much less the collapse of the Soviet Union. Others remain bitter and proud in their hatred of the West--a West that, they believe, first brought down the Soviet Union and now seeks to keep Russia weak, poor and friendless in a hostile world.

Shocks to their pride are only part of the problem. The Russian military is currently undergoing a huge downsizing that dwarfs anything planned for the Pentagon. The collapse of Russian military spending has been astounding by any standard. Reliably estimated at around 16% of gross domestic product during the Soviet period, military spending in Russia's fledgling democracy is headed toward about 4% of GDP. Worse still, Russia's GDP has fallen more than 50% since 1989. The Russian military is getting an ever smaller slice out of an ever shrinking pie, and you don't have to be an Einstein to know that a hungry bear is a cranky bear.

Soldiers who might try to take power would have plenty of support in much of the country. The Russian military-industrial complex was, after agriculture, the biggest employer in the country. Whole cities, even regions, are utterly dependent on military factories and orders for their incomes and jobs. Presumably, these employees and managers would tolerate a takeover, even if they didn't exactly welcome it. Meanwhile, Russia's civilian politicians are divided, corrupt, incompetent and unpopular.