WHAT IS RUSSIA UP TO? TROUBLE LOOMS OVER CENTRAL ASIAN REPUBLICS (off topic- one of my old articles for Zamir)
Iqbal Latif-
(This was one of the articles posted I don't know if they are lost in cyber space-please post on our thread)
In the background of Russian citizens' understandable cynicism about corruption, crime, and economic hardships, the scandalous and overwhelming vote by the communist-dominated lower house, Duma, on 15 March, denounced and declared invalid the 1991 law ratifying an agreement that created the Commonwealth of independent states. A law which had led to the fragmentation and demise of the Soviet Union and replaced it with loose Commonwealth of independent states that now groups 12 of the 15 former Soviet republics. The measure which passed by a vote of 250 to 98 also recognized the validity of a referendum held exactly five years ago which showed that a majority of people preferred the preservation of the Soviet Union.
The consequence of this resolution does not have much legal significance because the Parliament was granted so little clout in the 1993 constitution, crafted after Boris Yeltsin's tanks routed the last Soviet Parliament. The President has termed the legislation as "scandalous" and has the authority to prevent it from becoming a law, but the possible domestic and international consequences of this decision can be destabilizing for `the Stans,' a collective reference to the former Soviet Central Asian Republics. If the current polls are true and the formidable lead of the communist presidential contender, Gennadi A. Zyuganof, translates into a victory, will such a resolution by Duma, which has so far been effective only to the extent of making noise and engaging in showy fist-fights, be passed into a law? Is this the first step towards reconstitution of the Soviet Union and ultimate amalgamation of a vulnerable giant like Kazakhstan, gas-rich Turkmenistan, Tazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan where Islam Karimov implements his policy of authoritarianism with human face under watchful Russian eyes?
The questions above become serious when analyzed in the background of the 15th March vote because it goes far beyond political theatrics and nationalist frustrations. It is the first time that the political spectrum within the Parliament emerged above the factional in-fighting and reached a consensus that the decision to dissolve the Soviet Union may not have been in Russia's best interests. The strong support of the resolution in the Parliament depicts the widespread unholy alliance of ultra-nationalist leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the liberal allies of Boris Yeltsin.
The identifiable issue with which the communists and ultra-nationalists commonly reconcile is the urge to restore Russia to its rightful status of "greatness" and "super-power." They believe that the destruction of Soviet Union was a Western conspiracy and the Soviet collapse stage-managed so as to relegate the Russians to a status of "fringe power" and a pawn in the context of international power politics. The `restoration-to-greatness' is a vote-winner, and the communist lead in the current polls can be attributed to the appeal of this nostalgic slogan, which is the chief mechanism driving their popularity.
The collapse of Soviet Union was in part due to the serious economic and social dislocations that resulted from its obsession of being great. The country never really had the resources to indulge in the kind of militarization which it engaged in for 70 years of communist rule. The possibilities of restoration of Soviet Union greatly diminish because the resources to remilitarize the nascent Russian states simply do not exist. Most informed analysts on Soviet Union generally agree that the Soviet Union spent about 15-25% of GDP for military purposes; this cycle of rearming was the cause of the quick demise of the Soviet empire. In the context of power politics, there are no free lunches; a nation that engages into a kind of high spending spree on defence gadgetry is bound to collapse economically. The devolution and decline in Russia's military power and enormous economic and political problems within the country are two important factors which are ignored by the Russian Parliament and the communists when they raise the nostalgic cry of restoring Russia to its former might and glory.
The Soviet communist hierarchy, since 1917, decidedly moved along the route of trading butter with guns. They turned the Soviet Union into a huge military industrial complex where the economic production was biased in favour of militarization of the State. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the contraction of military spending has been amazingly quick. A contrast of 1988 and 1995 military budget of the Soviet Union and Russia is a good indicator, where in 1988 military budget consumed 25% of Soviet GDP, Russian economy, which is half of that of the Soviet Union, allocated only 6.5% of the GDP to defence but actually consumed only 4.5% of the total GDP of 630 trillion Rubles. With such a huge reduction of resources, as shown by the comparison, real purchasing power for buying military capability has declined substantially across all categories of defence-spending, research and development, personal equipment, and operations and maintenance.
This kind of a rollback of military might reduces greatly the power projection capability of Russia into Asia, the Middle East, or Europe. Even the conservative Duma and Zhirinovsky followers who claim to support higher defence spending, end up voting for the budgets that do just the opposite. The bellicosity and hype for restoration of the Soviet Union carries no weight in face of undeniable economic and social stresses. The potential of the Russians to project power outside their borders through extraterritorial deployments have diminished to a great extent, although Russian forces remain strategically deployed in a number of former Soviet republics in Central Asia and Caucasus, but at the same time, the Russian military has effectively abandoned regions like Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, and Ukraine.
The Russians like to maintain influence in the former Soviet Central Asian republics and they do have an overall strategic plan or perspective, although one does not find synergistic force packages. Most of the current forward basing structure involves deployments to quell trouble and safeguard Russia's vital economic interests and ethnic population in former Soviet Central Asian Republics, termed by the Russians as the "near-abroad." Most of the cost of these strategic deployments is borne by the host nation, and Russia has been using these deployments to cover some of its defence costs. The substantially reduced military capability prevents Russia from reconstituting the former Soviet Union; for the foreseeable future, other than dropping nuclear bombs on its adversaries, Russian military doctrine has limited means to remilitarize.
Russian interest in the Central Asian Republics is pivoted around the great game in oil and gas. The powerplays in the Trans-Caucasus and Central Asia, before the First World War, used to be called the "great game." What mattered then were the approaches to British colonial subcontinent through Persia and Afghanistan. Russia is involved in a new "great game," it is about power over large oil reserves in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan. Russia believes that the deposits fall within their sphere of influence and want this oil to go by pipeline northwest to Black Sea port of Novorossiysk and then to customers in the West through Bosporus. The Iranians and Turks would like to divert oil and gas exports southwards, and Turkey is busy angling for pipelines to pass across its territory. The Russians are concerned with the influence of Turkey and Iran on future of this great game. The Turks want the oil to reach the Mediterranean through a lucrative trans-Turkey pipeline; Iran also is interested in providing a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Tabriz through Turkey. These possible routes bypass Russia, but Russians are not prepared to give the freedom to the Central Asian Republics to agree to any of these arrangements. Russia has told western governments and oil companies that they should sign nothing as there is no such thing as agreed sector in the Caspian. Oil and gas which is the key for independence of Central Asian Republics, although owned by `the Stans,' have vulnerable Russian upperhand. The Kremlin plays a tough hand in the `near-abroad' and want to control any oil and gas activity on the southern border of `the Stans' with Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan.
The above suggests that there is a possibility of Kremlin playing tough in the `near-abroad' and the economic circumstances and oil wealth in the south may evolve powerful logic to remilitarize under a nationalist leader, or a "man on horseback" - a characteristic military figure taking control of the country either by force or election, but historical and institutional evidence of the Russian military with strong threads of professionalism points towards lack of political intervention.
In case of a revival of expansionist communist and neo-nationalist leadership in the Kremlin, Russia's attempt to reconstitute its glorified past would be limited to enaction of its secret plans and counter-measures if NATO moves eastwards. In terms of priorities, the control of oil and gas in the Central Asian republics is the first objective and no effort would be spared to maintain the upper hand, but other counter actions include deployment of missiles in Kaliningrad, intensify the deployment of Russian forces in Belarus and reoccupation of Baltic states to stop them from joining NATO. Such a move could be internationally justified as Russia could claim that the admission of Baltic States to NATO would be as threatening to it as Soviet missiles in Cuba were to America. However, such a scenario would envelop Russia into an absolute political, economic and social chaos and all the more difficult to maintain the Russian federation as a semblance of nationhood. |
