For months, we have been following U.S. efforts in the former Soviet
Union to shrink Russia's sphere of influence -- down to a size
Washington feels more comfortable with as it turns its attention away
from al Qaeda and back to non-Islamist geopolitical issues. Since the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. view has been that a weak
Russia, one over which Washington wields influence, is preferable to a
strong one with the potential to project power globally...
[Stratfor is mistaken in saying the global jihadist threat is dying...]
Whether searching for ways to resolve existing internal conflicts or
unwittingly setting off others in the region by removing post-Soviet
strongmen, the United States ultimately must accept the risks of its
involvement in the region. For the ghost of Stalin -- the first Soviet
leader to identify the United States as Moscow's greatest external
enemy -- hovers. As Washington seeks to unmake what he made, he may yet
have his revenge.
And Bin Laden and Shamil Basayev will HAVE THEIR PARTY!!!!!!
Thank you Bush/Rice! :)
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Geopolitical Diary: Tuesday, April 12, 2005
April 13, 2005 04 00 GMT
For months, we have been following U.S. efforts in the former Soviet
Union to shrink Russia's sphere of influence -- down to a size
Washington feels more comfortable with as it turns its attention away
from al Qaeda and back to non-Islamist geopolitical issues. Since the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. view has been that a weak
Russia, one over which Washington wields influence, is preferable to a
strong one with the potential to project power globally.
During the 1990s, U.S. policy toward Russia -- and much of the rest of
the world -- was largely reactive. Aid and advice flowed in as
Washington sought to guide Moscow in building a market economy and
democracy. But it didn't go as the Americans hoped.
When Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin came to power, Bush
declared the experiment over. While famously claiming to be "looking
into Putin's soul," Bush simultaneously has been eviscerating Putin's
country. Despite cooperation against militant Islamists, there has been
evidence that Russia has been coming off Washington's policy back
burner since late in 2003. That's when the United States leapt into the
fray of political events in Georgia and played a key role in helping
the opposition to oust President Eduard Shevardnadze.
Since then, Ukraine, Moldova and now Kyrgyzstan have witnessed dramatic
changes -- either with long-standing leaders and their allies being
ousted by U.S.-backed opposition movements, or experiencing dramatic
(U.S.-inspired) epiphanies and deciding the time to throw their lot in
with the West had arrived. Every victory for the United States in this
campaign is a defeat for Russia, and Washington is not finished yet.
After all, there are still seven republics that remain politically tied
to their Soviet past through their current regimes.
In this push against Russian influence, the United States is once again
turning its focus to Georgia. On April 11, a senior-level delegation of
U.S. diplomats traveled to Abkhazia, one of Georgia's two separatist
regions, to suggest that it was time for Abkhaz leaders to sit down
with President Mikhail Saakashvili and negotiate an end to the
conflict. A similar visit to the leaders of Georgia's other breakaway
region, South Ossetia, is due in coming days.
Washington wants Georgia's separatist conflicts settled so it can
pursue its own broader interests in the South Caucasus -- setting up a
secure energy transport corridor to bring Caspian and Central Asian
energy supplies to the West, pushing the Russians out of the region and
establishing a military presence that can be used to project force into
Central Asia, Iran and the Middle East. Though the United States
secured a military basing deal with Azerbaijan late April 12, its
interests in the region dictate that Georgia also must be politically
stable and secure from Russian influence.
What is different in this case is that for the first time in this
offensive, Washington is involving itself in the strictly domestic
affairs of a former Soviet state, rather than focusing its efforts on
effecting national-level political changes. In short, it is a tacit
admission that Washington's work in Georgia following the Rose
Revolution is incomplete.
But if U.S. leaders are seeking to recast Russia's near abroad in the
American image, they might be ignoring Soviet history at their peril.
The Soviet Union fell apart for many reasons, nearly all of them
internal, and scholars will argue endlessly over which factors were the
most important in bringing about the collapse. Nationalism, however, is
a factor that is difficult to ignore. Joseph Stalin deliberately carved
up Soviet territories into a jigsaw pattern of divided ethnicities and
national identities to ensure Moscow's dominance. And as the United
States pushes its agenda forward in this region, Washington runs the
risk of colliding with Stalin's legacy, though at the regional rather
than national level.
The three states into which Washington has recently pushed -- Ukraine,
Moldova and Kyrgyzstan -- are all highly divided and riddled with
regional tensions, as are many of the former republics. A direct
analogy to the Soviet collapse can be drawn: When Mikhail Gorbachev's
reforms allowed nationalist sentiments in the republics to be expressed
openly and politically -- thus weakening the central Soviet government
-- individual states asserted their identity and declared independence,
bringing about a broader political collapse. Now, as the United States
involves itself in undermining post-Soviet regimes and weakening the
center's hold on power in individual countries, tensions between
competing regions and elites that were kept under wraps by the previous
governments are beginning to surface.
This already is evident in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Moldova, where the
Romanian-Russian divide simmers below the surface, remains relatively
calm in this respect. It is interesting to note that internal strains
in Moldova -- the only one of the three countries in which the
government opted to recast its political orientation rather than face
displacement -- are the least severe.
When Stalin set about drawing the domestic borders of the Soviet Union,
he displayed the expert precision of a surgeon: The divisions he
fostered, in efforts to amputate potential nationalist threats and
preserve Moscow's dominance, are those the United States finds itself
facing today. Apart from the Baltics, none of the former Soviet
republics in existence today had significant history as independent
states. Washington would be remiss in overlooking this history, or the
fact that the current borders of the post-Soviet states hide important
threats at the regional level.
To see how this regionalism might play out, one need look no further
than Georgia, where contemporary and post-Soviet regional wars have
left it domestically paralyzed. The United States now finds itself in a
position where it must deal with the leaders of the separatist regions
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia before it can consider moving on to
grander plans for the South Caucasus region. Washington will likely run
into similar trouble elsewhere in the region in due course.
Whether searching for ways to resolve existing internal conflicts or
unwittingly setting off others in the region by removing post-Soviet
strongmen, the United States ultimately must accept the risks of its
involvement in the region. For the ghost of Stalin -- the first Soviet
leader to identify the United States as Moscow's greatest external
enemy -- hovers. As Washington seeks to unmake what he made, he may yet
have his revenge.
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