ARTICLE CRITIQUE
Response to Stratfor "Russia's Expanding Influence (Part 1): The Necessities", March 9, 2010
by Gordon Hahn
In a recent series of
articles titled “Russia’s Expanding Influence” the ‘think tank’ Stratfor
claimed that Russia was increasing its influence in the post-Soviet space,
especially in four key bordering countries. The articles suffer from a series of shortcomings not the
least of which is that not one claim is documented by either mentioned sources
or footnotes. The lack of
documentation for the claim that Russia’s intelligence services penetrate and
“control” those of several CIS states is particularly disconcerting. Moreover, according to Stratfor,
Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan “are already under Russian control” and Georgia
will be the target of Russian machinations geared to achieving similar Russian
control over it (“Russia's Expanding Influence (Part 1): The Necessities,”
Stratfor.com, 9 March 2010, www.stratfor.com). Let’s take a look at Russia’s supposed “control over” these
countries.
Russia’s
‘control over’ Ukraine is exemplified, according to Stratfor, by Viktor
Yanukovich’s election as Ukraine’s president in February. As Stratfor itself notes, this election
was judged as free and fair by all international organizations, so Russia
engaged in no ‘takeover’. Rather,
Ukrainians willingly rejected Ukraine’s joining NATO and the previous
pro-Western regime’s Russophobia.
What is lost on most analysts is that the majority of Ukraine’s citizens
feel a great kinship with Russia and view it as its natural ally. A recent opinion poll in Ukraine found
that 61% support the view that Russia as Ukraine’s main ally, and 91% believe
Russo-Ukrainian relations need improvement. In addition, 76% see Russia as a “fraternal country”, “friendly
state” or “strategic partner,” and 19% see Russia simply as a neighbor. Only 4% view Russia as a “rival,” 2% “a
threat” and 1% as “hostile” to Ukraine (“Most Ukrainians See Russia as
Ukraine's Main Ally – Poll”,
Research and Branding Group as cited in Interfax, 23 March 2010).
That
said, even Yanukovich and no Russian leader can risk being viewed as Moscow’s
tool. Thus, Yanukovich’s first
foreign trip was not to Moscow but to Brussels. He has reiterated Kiev’s goal of EU membership, something
that would preclude any inordinate Russian predominance in Ukraine’s economy,
no less its politics. Stratfor
argues that Russia will use Russian ethnonational entrepreneurialism as a lever
to pressure Kiev. However, much of
the Russian nationalism in places like ethnic Russian-populated Crimea was
driven by the threat of Ukraine’s entry into NATO and will be neutralized by
the removal of that threat.
Regarding
Russia’s alleged ‘control over’ neighboring Belarus, we can note President
Aleksandr Lukashenka’s long-surviving policy of limiting Russian influence and
using Moscow to Minsk’s economic advantage. Like Ukraine and Kazakhstan, Belarus has refused to satisfy
Moscow’s desire that Belarus grant diplomatic recognition of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia as independent states, despite the fact that Belarus has no separatist
issues like Ukraine and Kazkakhstan.
This is hardly the policy of a state controlled by Moscow. Moreover, Lukashenko has increased ties
with the European Union, ever since the latter adopted a policy of engaging
Minsk.
Economically,
although Belarus like Kazakhstan has agreed to form a Customs Union with
Russia, it has driven a hard bargain with the trade regime set to come into
force on July 1. For years
Lukashenka has been able to maintain the supply of cheap Russian oil against
Moscow’s desire to receive the world market price for its crude. In December Lukashenka won a pledge
that Moscow would continue sending 6 million tons of oil to Belarus for
domestic use. Minsk would pay
pretax prices, amounting to a $1.3 billion subsidy, but also a 100 percent duty
on the remaining oil imports that last year reached 21.5 million tons. But Lukashenka started renegging on the
deal and snubbed Putin when he flew to Minsk to negotiate the oil trade and
Customs Union issues. As Putin
flew to Minsk, the Belarus president flew to Venezuela where President Hugo
Chavez promised to sell some 4 million tons of oil per day to Belarus. Lukashenka’s conduct bespeaks of
anything but someone under Moscow’s thumb, despite the latter’s preponderance of
power in all dimensions.
Kazakhstan
has never flown far from the Russian coupe since the Soviat collapse, as
President Nursultan Nazarbaev was a staunch supporter of the Soviet Union’s
survival. However, it is an
exaggeration to say that Moscow controls Astana. Kazakhstan has conducted an independent national security
and energy export policy. Although
Kazkhastan is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, this can
hardly be viewed as a sign of Kazakhstan’s subservience or Russian influence per
se, since China is also a member of this defense organization. Regarding energy export policy,
Kazakhstan and partners commissioned a natural gas pipeline linking
Turkmenistan to China via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan with a throughput capacity
of 13 bn cubic meters, which complicated Moscow’s long negotiations with China
over possible Russian gas exports from Sakhalin.
Interestingly
enough, much of Startfor’s analysis can be used to turn its thrust against
Western, especially, U.S. policies towards Russia and its neighbors. Influence in Ukraine truly is a Russian
vital interest. Quoting Stratfor:
“Ukraine is the cornerstone to Russia's defense and survival as any sort of
power. … To put it simply, without Ukraine, Russia would have fewer ways to
become a regional power and would have trouble maintaining stability within
itself.” In this context, the
policy of NATO expansion to Ukraine is highly provocative one and a direct
attack on Russia’s national security, leaving Moscow with little choice but to
oppose it almost by any means, unless Moscow is invited in simultaneously.
The
same is true for Georgia. We will
put aside the moral aspect of the issue that would require detailing Georgia’s
oppression, violence and calls for genocide perpetrated by the the late
perestroika era and early post-Soviet Georgian regime under ultra-nationalist
president Zviad Gamsakhurdia against the Ossetians, Abkhazians, and
Ajarians. Russia’s national
security, its influence in the CIS and on its very borders would have been
nullified if it did not respond to Georgia’s drive to enter NATO, no less its
attack on South Ossetia. In the
latter event, Ossetians from Russia’s North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia
would have guaranteed a partisan war against Georgia and sparked a rise in
ossetian nationalism. With Moscow
standing aloof and unable or unwilling to support its long-standing Ossetian
allies in the North Caucasus, Russia would have risked a separatist movement in
its North Ossetia.
Moreover,
the war would likely have spread to Abkhazia. The ethnic Abkhaz are one of several Circassian ethnic
groups, the remainder of which populates much of the Russia’s North Caucasus
republics of Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, and Adygeya. All of these regions have small albeit
separatist movements of one sort or another, including nests of jihadi
terrorists tied to the North Caucasus mujahedin network’s umbrella
organization, the Caucasus Emirate (CE), spearheaded by Chechens, Ingush, and
various Dagestani mujahedin. These
republics’ Circassian as well as its Alan (Balkars and Karachais) jihadists are
led by one of the CE’s leading terrorists and the head of its Shariah Court,
Anzor Astemirov or Seifullah. The
CE is allied with Al Qa`ida and other organizations that comprise the global
jihadist social movement and in the last three years has killed more than a
thousand and wounded several thousand more Russian citizens, most of them
Russian and North Caucasus security, police and military personnel and civilian
officials. The CE has also sent
operatives to Azerbaijan, which also confronts a still less potent jihadi
threat and officially remains at war with Armenia.
In
short, Georgia’s attack on, along with Russia’s inaction in South Ossetia would
have detonated the entire Caucasus, north and south. The insertion of NATO into this equation against Russia’s
will and under the cover of a less than responsible Georgian leadership was an
inherently and highly destabilizing move.
Its simultaneous insertion into Ukraine constituted an unwitting
geopolitical pincer movement against Russia’s national security. Perhaps, an at least equally
valid research questions for Stratfor would be: To what extent does the West “control” countries in the
former USSR and by what “levers” does it do so? To what extent does a U.S. policy of promoting NATO
expansion and colored revolutions in the region risk U.S. national security and
that of Russia’s neighbors by ‘provoking the bear” needlessly? Stratfor acknowledges, for example, that
new NATO members, the Baltic states, “are virtually indefensible.” Then why bring them into a mutual
defense alliance and thereby provoke Russia towards paranoia and aggressiveness
– the only potential threat to the Baltic states?
Article in question Download Stratfor_Russian_Pressure_4_10
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