Re: Then the US should support the idea of Chechen independence in the same way that it supported the Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia.
Well, I'd rather say the US welcomes the idea of Chechen independence --it needn't support Chechen secession... Don't forget that the dynamics of Russia is quite the opposite of Europe's: Russia must fight a relentless disintegration of its imperial fabric --and the key word here is "imperial". If Chechnya is coerced to remain a Russian bailiwick it won't translate into a "cultural miscegenation" between Muslim and Orthodox elites. The relationship between the Russian leadership and its Chechen, Khazak, Tajik,... satellites consists in subservience of the latter to the former --it's a colonial relationship.
Contrariwise, Europe has embarked on a process of ever deeper and larger integration. Geographically speaking, the EU is set to encompass eventually all countries of Europe except Russia proper. However, politically speaking, it's not a colonial/imperial integration: thousands of bureaucrats from Poland, Hungary, Estonia, etc. are now flocking to Brussels and each new EU member got its own European Commissioner... Hence the challenge with Yugoslavia was different from that with Chechnya. The US administration --and its Christian conservative allies in Europe-- were deeply wary about integrating Yugoslavia in bulk, that is, together with her Muslim minorities. They were only interested in the Christian pieces of Yugoslavia and deemed it necessary to separate the Christian wheat from the Muslim chaff before granting the country membership of the EU. That's why both the CIA and Germany's secret service actively supported the KLA and Yugoslavia's Bosnian secessionists: they paved the way for Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia to join the EU and for Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania to remain on the sidelines...
Gus |
