This is a mighty strange situation for the West to be in. Ever since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, there has been the feeling in the Western Countries that Russia could be a strategic partner, one that shares the democratic values of the West and will be an effective partner. Initially, things seemed to be going in a different way. Under Boris Yeltsin, Russia started going through political and social turmoil, and it seemed to be a decaying country (with high inflation, potential leakage of arms and nuclear material, negative to zero growth, corruption, mafia, and so on). And then came in this former KGB man, Vladimir Putin, a person who saw the death of the Soviet Union as a disaster, and who bemoaned the loss of status of Russia. By himself, he could not have invented a new powerful Russia, but he got the benefit of Russia’s growth as an oil and gas producer, coupled with increasing prices.
This growth of Russia was not in the way that the US and other countries thought. Russia would go the way that Vladimir Putin wanted it to, and he managed to sell his vision of a resurgent Russia to the population as well, thus diminishing the possibility of any successful internal opposition. The same support also allowed him to stamp away any perceived opposition, including independent media, and other opponents (an example was the trial and imprisonment of the oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was starting to stand upto Mr. Putin). The net result was a system where only support to Valdimir Putin was allowed.

continue reading "The West’s dilemna over relations with Russia"

The fight over Georgia has been seen as having 2 bigger objectives;
1. Russia wants to ensure that it is seen as the Big Brother of the neighborhood, and is willing to put force to ensure that this happens
2. Georgia has been seen as a region that was being projected as an alternative route for an oil pipeline that would bypass Russian territory
Both of these are issues that impact Russian interests pretty strongly. For a country that used to consider wide swaths of territory in Europe and Asia Minor as its area of influence, the movement by many of these areas towards greater integration with NATO and the United States must be galling. Already, US based in Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan ward off Russian influence in the strategic oil-rich regions of Asia. Combine this with the movements by states such as Poland, Ukraine, etc to move to greater integration with NATO must be real painful to the strategic community in Moscow. And then the movement in a region that is actually under Russian control (granted to it by the Commonwealth of Independent States – CIS); South Ossetia, a region in Georgia that is over-whelming tilted towards Russia. Georgia invaded South Ossetia, and launched a bombing campaign that started killing people in the capital of South Ossetia. This would have just been the motive for Russian interests to start a reverse action – they marched in troops, tanks, and even fighter jets and pushed the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia.

continue reading "Russia signs cease-fire accord in Georgia"

The Soviet Union was once a mighty empire, controlling large chunks of land in Europe and Asia, and giving the West a might enemy. And then it all fell apart; the individual states (many of them incorporated by force) wanted their freedom, and Boris Yeltsin wanted his own Russia to rule, and so the Soviet empire ended. And then it fell into decline. And then rose a strongman out of all this, one who had the blood of the all-powerful intelligence agency KGB running through him. On his own he could not do anything; however, he was lucky. Russia had large tracts of oil and gas, and had turned into a large exporter of these, bringing in revenue, and helping regrow the power.
However, in the midst of all this, the world did not stay still. Many of the former Soviet republics did not stay still, moving towards the West (and seemingly away from the clutches of their former all-powerful dictatorial landlord), striking closer relationships with them. At the same time, like any major power (and one that remembers all too well how powerful it is), Russia grew increasingly resentful of this emergence of the West in an area that it treats as its backyard (a close equivalent would be if Mexico suddenly became more hostile to the US and very very friendly towards Russia or China). This may well seem normal for a powerful country to treat its immediate neighbors as its areas of influence, but not so for the country so dominated. Ask Finland, that has fought wars with Russia in the past over this dominance, and ask Afghanistan that does not like being called as an area of Pakistani influence, as if it has no entity of its own.

continue reading "Russia and Georgia – the conflict"