Next Steps for Ankara and Moscow

9. June 2010 by admin.

Next Steps for Ankara and Moscow

June 8, 2010 

 

WORLD LEADERS FROM ACROSS EURASIA and the Middle East will be gathering in Istanbul Tuesday for a Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit hosted by the Turkish leadership. Some of the high-profile attendees include Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar al Assad, Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

 

With Turkish-Israeli relations in serious jeopardy in the wake of the flotilla crisis, the war in Afghanistan in flux, Moscow contemplating a shift in foreign policy with the West and the United States trying to juggle all of the above, the geopolitical intensity surrounding the summit is all too apparent.

 

The headlining issue of the conference will of course be the Turkish-Israeli flotilla crisis. Not surprisingly, Israel decided to send a lower level diplomat from its consulate in Turkey rather than having a senior official come under fire by the Turkish hosts. Turkey will use the CICA platform — as well as a summit beginning Wednesday in Istanbul with Arab foreign ministers as part of the Turkish-Arab Cooperation Forum — to highlight what Turkey sees as the gross illegality of Israel’s actions that resulted in the death of eight Turkish citizens in international waters off the Gaza coast. Turkey does not intend to let this issue rest. The issue is not even really about Gaza, anymore. On the contrary, Turkey views its current crisis with Israel as an opportunity to accelerate its regional rise to fame.

For this plan to work, Turkey needs to go beyond the public censures and pressure Israel into making a very public concession to Ankara. The problem for Turkey is that there is no Arab consensus to build on in forging this campaign against Israel. The Arab states are happy to engage in the rhetoric alongside Turkey, but when it comes to taking action against Israel, the impetus falls flat. Though Turkey will attempt to galvanize the Arabs at the Wednesday summit, it is not clear to STRATFOR that Ankara will be able to overcome the challenge of Arab fractiousness and weakness in formulating its response to Israel.

 

Turkey will also be spending some quality time during the CICA summit with the Iranian president. Iran is happy to see the flotilla crisis deflect attention away from its own nuclear controversy with the West, but it’s also not enthused about Turkey soaking up the spotlight and hijacking Iran’s role in defending the Palestinians. Wanting their piece of the action, the Iranians have announced that they will send their own aid ships to the Gaza coast, while privately hinting that they will try to score a moral victory in attempting to recreate the Mavi Marmara incident by provoking Israeli forces into an attack. An Iranian-provoked confrontation with Israel in the Mediterranean is precisely what the Turks cannot afford. Such a move would draw the United States to Israel’s side and undercut Turkish momentum in a snap. The Turks will use the summit as an opportunity to share some of the spotlight with Ahmadinejad and thus try to keep Tehran from scuttling its own agenda, but Iranian tenacity on this issue may also be hard to beat.

 

Turkey is not the only one with its hands full at this summit. Putin has a slew of private meetings lined up with the leaders of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. His sideline meetings in Istanbul come after Russia held a week of meetings in Germany and the Baltic states and ahead of a visit to France. Rather than an attempt to rack up frequent flyer miles, the prime minister’s busy agenda stems from a major shift Russia is seriously contemplating making in its foreign policy toward the West.

 

The strategic thrust behind the shift is a Russian desire to obtain Western technology to modernize the Russian economy in everything from energy to space to telecommunications. Russia has internally acknowledged that for it to get its hands on this technology –- and ensure Russia’s competitiveness as a global power in the years to come –- it needs to appear more pragmatic to the West in making its foreign policy moves. This doesn’t mean Russia is ready to be any less nationalistic, just a little more willing to strike deals to get what it wants. The only reason Russia can even think about making such a dramatic shift is because it has spent the past several years carefully laying the groundwork in the former Soviet Union states in preparation for this very moment.

 

Russia wants to make sure that before it follows through with this plan, it gets some assurances from Europe and the United States that they will reward Russian cooperation with the technological cooperation Moscow is seeking and respect the sphere of influence Russia has recreated. At the same time, Putin -– acting as the enforcer on this issue -– is talking to the former Soviet states to make sure they understand that any Russian opening to the West is not a signal of Russia relenting in its former Soviet space, but a sign of Moscow dealing with the West on its own terms and in the time of its choosing. In other words, Putin wants to make sure Ukraine, Georgia, the Central Asians and the Baltic states don’t get any ideas about trying to flirt with the West the second they see Moscow shift.

 

While Putin delivers this stern reminder to Ukraine and the Central Asians, he will also be meeting separately with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Russians are wary of Turkey’s regional resurgence and want to ensure that the two don’t bump heads in pursuing their respective agendas. But the Russians have a plan for this, too. By regularly waving deals on energy and peace agreements in the Caucasus, Russia is keeping its relationship with Turkey on an even keel. Putin is not (yet), however, scheduled to meet with the Iranian president, something that will not go unnoticed in Tehran. The Iranians, picking up on the leaks of a coming Russian foreign policy shift, have already spent the past weeks publicizing their ire against Moscow and warning the Russians against turning on them for a grand bargain with the United States. The Russians are not at the point of throwing Iran under the bus (Iran is still a very useful lever for them in dealing with Washington), but it doesn’t hurt Moscow to keep the Iranians on edge as Russia feels out the West and contemplates a major foreign policy shift that may be on the horizon.

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Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario

29. May 2010 by admin.

Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario

By George Friedman

Discussions about Europe currently are focused on the Greek financial crisis and its potential effect on the future of the European Union. Discussions these days involving military matters and Europe appear insignificant and even anachronistic. Certainly, we would agree that the future of the European Union towers over all other considerations at the moment, but we would argue that scenarios for the future of the European Union exist in which military matters are far from archaic.

Russia and the Polish Patriots

For example, the Polish government recently announced that the United States would deploy a battery of Patriot missiles to Poland. The missiles arrived this week. When the United Statescanceled its land-based ballistic missile defense system under intense Russian pressure, the Obama administration appeared surprised at Poland’s intense displeasure with the decision. Washington responded by promising the Patriots instead, the technology the Poles had wanted all along. While the Patriot does not enhance America’s ability to protect itself against long-range ballistic missiles from, for example, Iran, it does give Poland some defense against shorter-ranged ballistic missiles and substantial defense against conventional air attack.

Russia is the only country capable of such attacks on Poland with even the most distant potential interest in doing so, and at this point, this is truly an abstract threat. In removing a system that was really not a threat to Russian interests — U.S. ballistic missile defense at most can handle only a score of missiles, meaning it would have a negligible impact on the Russian nuclear deterrent — the United States ironically has installed a system that could affect Russia. Under the current circumstances, this is not really significant. While much is being made of having a few U.S. boots on the ground east of Germany within 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) of the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, a few hundred technicians and guards are simply not an offensive threat.

Still, the Russians — with a long history of seeing improbable threats turning into very real ones— tend to take hypothetical limits on their power seriously. They also tend to take gestures seriously, knowing that gestures often germinate into strategic intent. The Russians obviously oppose this deployment, as the Patriots would allow Poland in league with NATO — and perhaps even by itself — to achieve local air superiority. There are many crosscurrents in Russian policy, however.

For the moment, the Russians are interested in encouraging better economic relations with the West, as they could use technology and investment that would make them more than a commodity exporter. Moreover, with the Europeans preoccupied with their economic crisis and the United States still bogged down in the Middle East and needing Russian support on Iran, Moscow has found little outside resistance to its efforts to increase its influence in the former Soviet Union. Moscow is not unhappy about the European crisis and wouldn’t want to do anything that might engender greater European solidarity. After all, a solid economic bloc turning into an increasingly powerful and integrated state would pose challenges to Russia in the long run that Moscow is happy to do without. The Patriot deployment is a current irritation and a hypothetical military problem, but the Russians are not inclined to create a crisis with Europe over it — though this doesn’t mean Moscow won’t make countermoves on the margins when it senses opportunities.

For its part, the Obama administration is not focused on Poland at present. It is obsessed with internal matters, South Asia and the Middle East. The Patriots were shipped based on a promise made months ago to calm Central European nerves over the Obama administration’s perceived lack of commitment to the region. In the U.S. State and Defense department sections charged with shipping Patriots to Poland, the delivery process was almost an afterthought; repeated delays in deploying the system highlighted Washington’s lack of strategic intent.

It is therefore tempting to dismiss the Patriots as of little importance, as merely the combination of a hangover from a Cold War mentality and a minor Obama administration misstep. Indeed, even a sophisticated observer of the international system might barely note it. But we would argue that it is more important than it appears precisely because of everything else going on.

Existential Crisis in the EU

The European Union is experiencing an existential crisis. This crisis is not about Greece, but rather, what it is that members of the European Union owe each other and what controls the European Union has over its members. The European Union did well during a generation of prosperity. As financial crisis struck, better-off members were called on to help worse-off members. Again, this is not just about Greece — the 2008 credit crisis in Central Europe was about the same thing. The wealthier countries, Germany in particular, are not happy at the prospect of spending taxpayer money to assist countries dealing with popped credit bubbles.

They really don’t want to do that, and if they do, they really want to have controls over the ways these other countries spend their money so this circumstance doesn’t arise again. Needless to say, Greece — and countries that might wind up like Greece — do not want foreign control over their finances.

If there are no mutual obligations among EU member nations, and the German and Greek publics don’t want to bail out or submit, respectively, then the profound question is raised of what Europe is going to be — beyond a mere free trade zone — after this crisis. This is not simply a question of the euro surviving, although that is no trivial matter.

The euro and the European Union will probably survive this crisis — although their mutual failure is not nearly as unthinkable as the Europeans would have thought even a few months ago — but this is not the only crisis Europe will experience. Something always will be going wrong, and Europe does not have institutions that could handle these problems. Events in the past few weeks indicate that European countries are not inclined to create such institutions, and that public opinion will limit European governments’ ability to create or participate in these institutions. Remember, building a super state requires one of two things: a war to determine who is in charge or political unanimity to forge a treaty. Europe is — vividly — demonstrating the limitations on the second strategy.

Whatever happens in the short run, it is difficult to envision any further integration of European institutions. And it is very easy to see how the European Union will devolve from its ambitious vision into an alliance of convenience built around economic benefits negotiated and renegotiated among the partners. It would thus devolve from a union to a treaty, with no interest beyond self-interest.

The German Question Revisited

We return to the question that has defined Europe since 1871, namely, the status of Germany in Europe. As we have seen during the current crisis, Germany is clearly the economic center of gravity in Europe, and this crisis has shown that the economic and the political issues are very much one and the same. Unless Germany agrees, nothing can be done, and if Germany so wishes, something will be done. Germany has tremendous power in Europe, even if it is confined largely to economic matters. But just as Germany is the blocker and enabler of Europe, over time that makes Germany the central problem of Europe.

If Germany is the key decision maker in Europe, then Germany defines whatever policies Europe as a whole undertakes. If Europe fragments, then Germany is the only country in Europe with the ability to create alternative coalitions that are both powerful and cohesive. That means that if the European Union weakens, Germany will have the greatest say in what Europe will become. Right now, the Germans are working assiduously to reformulate the European Union and the eurozone in a manner more to their liking. But as this requires many partners to offer sovereignty to German control — sovereignty they have jealously guarded throughout the European project — it is worth exploring alternatives to Germany in the European Union.

For that we first must understand Germany’s limits. The German problem is the same problem it has had since unification: It is enormously powerful, but it is far from omnipotent. Its very power makes it the focus of other powers, and together, these other powers can cripple Germany. Thus, Germany is indispensable for any decision within the European Union at present, and it will be the single center of power in Europe in the future — but Germany can’t just go it alone. Germany needs a coalition, meaning the long-term question is this: If the EU were to weaken or even fail, what alternative coalition would Germany seek?

The casual answer is France, as the two economies are somewhat similar and the countries are next-door neighbors. But historically, this similarity in structure and location has been a source not of collaboration and fondness but of competition and friction. Within the European Union, with its broad diversity, Germany and France have been able to put aside their frictions, finding a common interest in managing Europe to their mutual advantage. That co-management, of course, helped bring us to this current crisis. Moreover, the biggest thing that France has that Germany wants is its market; an ideal partner for Germany would offer more. By itself at least, France is not a foundation for long-term German economic strategy. The historic alternative for Germany has been Russia.

The Russian Option

A great deal of potential synergy exists between the German and Russian economies. Germany imports large amounts of energy and other resources from Russia. As mentioned, Russia needs sources of technology and capital to move it beyond its current position of mere resource exporter. Germany has a shrinking population and needs a source of labor — preferably a source that doesn’t actually want to move to Germany. Russia’s Soviet-era economy continues to de-industrialize, and while that has a plethora of negative impacts, there is one often-overlooked positive: Russia now has more labor than it can effectively metabolize in its economy given its capital structure. Germany doesn’t want more immigrants but needs access to labor. Russia wants factories in Russia to employ its surplus work force, and it wants technology. The logic of the German-Russian economic relationship is more obvious than the German-Greek or German-Spanish relationship. As for France, it can participate or not (and incidentally, the French are joining in on a number of ongoing German-Russian projects).

Therefore, if we simply focus on economics, and we assume that the European Union cannot survive as an integrated system (a logical but not yet proven outcome), and we further assume that Germany is both the leading power of Europe and incapable of operating outside of a coalition, then we would argue that a German coalition with Russia is the most logical outcome of an EU decline.

This would leave many countries extremely uneasy. The first is Poland, caught as it is between Russia and Germany. The second is the United States, since Washington would see a Russo-German economic bloc as a more significant challenger than the European Union ever was for two reasons. First, it would be a more coherent relationship — forging common policies among two states with broadly parallel interests is far simpler and faster than doing so among 27. Second, and more important, where the European Union could not develop a military dimension due to internal dissensions, the emergence of a politico-military dimension to a Russo-German economic bloc is far less difficult to imagine. It would be built around the fact that both Germans and Russians resent and fear American power and assertiveness, and that the Americans have for years been courting allies who lie between the two powers. Germany and Russia would both view themselves defending against American pressure.

And this brings us back to the Patriot missiles. Regardless of the bureaucratic backwater this transfer might have emerged out of, or the political disinterest that generated the plan, the Patriot stationing fits neatly into a slowly maturing military relationship between Poland and the United States. A few months ago, the Poles and Americans conducted military exercises in the Baltic states, an incredibly sensitive region for the Russians. The Polish air force now flies some of the most modern U.S.-built F-16s in the world; this, plus Patriots, could seriously challenge the Russians. A Polish general commands a sector in Afghanistan, something not lost upon the Russians. By a host of processes, a close U.S.-Polish relationship is emerging.

The current economic problems may lead to a fundamental weakening of the European Union. Germany is economically powerful but needs economic coalition partners that contribute to German well-being rather than merely draw on it. A Russian-German relationship could logically emerge from this. If it did, the Americans and Poles would logically have their own relationship. The former would begin as economic and edge toward military. The latter begins as military, and with the weakening of the European Union, edges toward economics. The Russian-German bloc would attempt to bring others into its coalition, as would the Polish-U.S. bloc. Both would compete in Central Europe — and for France. During this process, the politics of NATO would shift from humdrum to absolutely riveting.

And thus, the Greek crisis and the Patriots might intersect, or in our view, will certainly in due course intersect. Though neither is of lasting importance in and of themselves, the two together point to a new logic in Europe. What appears impossible now in Europe might not be unthinkable in a few years. With Greece symbolizing the weakening of the European Union and the Patriots representing the remilitarization of at least part of Europe, ostensibly unconnected tendencies might well intersect.

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Russia: V-E Day and a Declaration of Intent

8. May 2010 by admin.

Russia: V-E Day and a Declaration of Intent

May 7, 2010 

 

Russian soldiers march through Red Square during 

a Victory Day parade rehearsal in Moscow on May 6

During the Soviet era, V-E Day was one of the Soviet Union’s most important holidays, celebrated with foreign dignitaries from around the world and the full spectrum of Soviet military hardware passing across Red Square. But V-E Day became bittersweet after the fall of the Soviet Union, since it served as a reminder of how far Russia had fallen since its post-war heyday. Now the national holiday is resuming its former meaning.

On May 9, Russia will celebrate the 65th anniversary of V-E Day, commemorating the allied victory in Europe during World War II. For Russians, the celebration marks the time when the Soviet Union “liberated” Central and Eastern Europe from Nazi rule and was thereby legitimized as a global leader and powerful force with which the rest of the world would have to reckon.

During the Soviet era, the holiday was one of the Soviet Union’s largest, celebrated with foreign dignitaries from around the world and the full spectrum of Soviet military hardware passing across Red Square. But V-E Day became bittersweet after the fall of the Soviet Union, since it served as a reminder of how far Russia had fallen since its post-war heyday, its sphere of influence leaking satellite states like a sieve throughout the early 1990s. The holiday continued to be celebrated in Russia but without the enormous pomp and circumstance.

But the glorious past behind the holiday started to return in 2005. Then-Russian President Vladimir Putin was in power, and his overall objective was to return Russia to its status as a “great power.” Putin’s goals were to first consolidate Russia internally and then push the country back out to its more comfortable Soviet-era borders — whether formally or informally. From 2000 to 2005, Putin meticulously worked on the first part of this plan, consolidating government control over energy, restructuring the government, purging powerful classes like the oligarchs, beginning to rebuild the military and engaging in the second Chechen War.

In 2005, on the 60th anniversary of V-E Day, Russia celebrated its re-stabilization by rolling out the full military panoply and inviting heads of state from around the world, from countries like Germany, France, Poland and China. The world did take notice that Russia was stronger and more internally stable, but it was not clear then that it could pull off its grander designs of resurging past its borders.

Russian Topol-M ballistic missiles drive

through Red Square as jets fly above

during Victory Day parade rehearsals

This year the V-E celebration fully takes back its former meaning, celebrating Russia as a real power once again. Over the past few years — and especially in the past few months — Russia has pushed its influence back into most of its former Soviet states through military intervention, revolution, customs unionsand pro-Russian governments. Moscow is not looking to re-create the Soviet Union, but it does want to create an umbrella of states under its control that buffer Russia from the West and other regional powers.

Russia also is looking to show other powers and former client states in the region that it cannot be ignored. This is why it is important that the list of guests coming to Moscow for V-E Day includes German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Polish interim President Bronislaw Komorowski, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Serbian President Boris Tadic, Greek President Karolos Papoulias and most of the leaders from the former Soviet states. These are the states that Russia is hoping to prove itself to, ally with or control at some point in the future. More than anything, this V-E Day celebration in Russia is its declaration of these intentions.

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Indira’s India and the KGB

4. May 2010 by admin.

Indira’s India and the KGB

A “charm offensive” against Mrs Gandhi, agents in the media and the government, attempts to buy influence in Congress — in the second volume of the astonishing Mitrokhin archive Christopher Andrew reveals how the KGB targeted India

by Christopher Andrew 

INDIRA GANDHI NEVER realised that the KGB’s first prolonged contact with her occurred during her first visit to the Soviet Union, a few months after Stalin’s death in 1953. As well as keeping her under continuous surveillance, the Centre (KGB headquarters) also surrounded her with handsome, attentive male admirers. Two years later Indira accompanied her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the inaugural Prime Minister of independent India, on his first official visit to the Soviet Union. Like Nehru, she was visibly impressed by the apparent successes of Soviet planning and economic modernisation exhibited to them in stage-managed visits to Russian factories. During her trip Khrushchev presented her with a mink coat which became one of the favourite items in her wardrobe — even though a few years earlier she had criticised the female Indian ambassador in Moscow for accepting a similar gift.

Soviet attempts to cultivate Indira Gandhi during the 1950s were motivated far more by the desire to influence her father than by any awareness of her own political potential. Moscow still underestimated her when she became Prime Minister. In her early parliamentary appearances she seemed tongue-tied and unable to think on her feet. The insulting nickname coined by a socialist MP, Dumb Doll, began to stick.

But her political genes were soon to show their worth. Following a split in the Congress Party in 1969, the Communist Party of India (CPI), encouraged by Moscow, swung its support behind her. At the elections of February 1971, Mrs Gandhi’s wing of Congress won a landslide victory.

In August she signed a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation with the Soviet Union. Both countries immediately issued a joint communique calling for the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. India was able to rely on Soviet arms supplies and diplomatic support in the conflict against Pakistan which was already in the offing.

Despite diplomatic support from both the United States and China, Pakistan suffered a crushing defeat in the 14-day war with India.

For most Indians it was Mrs Gandhi’s finest hour. A Soviet diplomat at the United Nations exulted: “This is the first time in history that the United States and China have been defeated together!” In the Centre, the Indo-Soviet special relationship was also celebrated as a triumph for the KGB. The residency in Delhi was rewarded by being upgraded to the status of “main residency”. Its head from 1970 to 1975, Yakov Prokofyevich Medyanik, was accorded the title of “main resident”. In the early 1970s the KGB presence in India became one of the largest outside the Soviet bloc. Indira Gandhi placed no limit on the number of Soviet diplomats and trade officials, thus allowing the KGB and Soviet intelligence as many cover positions as they wished.

Oleg Kalugin, who became head of Foreign Counter-Intelligence in 1973, remembers India as “a model of KGB infiltration of a Third World government”. He recalls one occasion when the KGB turned down an offer from an Indian minister to provide information in return for $50,000 on the grounds that it was already well supplied with material from the Indian foreign and defence ministries: “It seemed like the entire country was for sale; the KGB — and the CIA — had penetrated the Indian government. Neither side entrusted sensitive information to the Indians, realising their enemy would know all about it the next day.” The KGB, in Kalugin’s view, was more successful than the CIA, partly because of its skill in exploiting the corruption that became endemic under Indira Gandhi’s regime. Suitcases full of banknotes were said to be routinely taken to her house and one of her opponents claimed that Mrs Gandhi did not even return the cases.

The Prime Minister is unlikely to have paid close attention to the dubious origins of some of the funds that went into Congress’s coffers. That was a matter she left largely to her principal fund-raiser, Lalit Narayan Mishra, who, though Mrs Gandhi doubtless did not realise it, also accepted Soviet money. Short and obese, Mishra looked the part of the corrupt politician. Indira Gandhi, despite her own frugal lifestyle, depended on the cash he collected from various sources to finance her party. Money also went to her son and anointed heir, Sanjay, whose misguided ambition to build an Indian popular car and become India’s Henry Ford depended on government favours.

When Mishra was assassinated in 1975, Mrs Gandhi blamed a plot involving “foreign elements” — doubtless intended as a euphemism for the CIA. The Delhi KGB residency gave his widow 70,000 rupees, though she doubtless did not realise the source. Though there were some complaints from the Communist leadership at the use of Soviet funds to support Mrs Gandhi, covert funding for the Congress Party of India seems to have been unaffected. By 1972 the import-export business founded by the CPI to trade with the Soviet Union had contributed more than 10 million rupees to party funds. Other secret subsidies, totalling at least 1.5 million rupees, had gone to state Communist parties, individuals and media associated with the CPI. The funds that were sent from Moscow to party headquarters via the KGB were larger still. In the first half of 1975 they amounted to over 2.5 million rupees.

India under Mrs Gandhi was probably the arena for more KGB active measures than anywhere else, though their significance appears to have been considerably exaggerated by the Centre, which overestimated its ability to manipulate Indian opinion.

According to KGB files, by 1973 it had on its payroll ten Indian newspapers (which cannot be identified for legal reasons) as well as a press agency. During 1972 the KGB claimed to have planted 3,789 articles in Indian papers. 

 

India was also one of the most favourable environments for Soviet front organisations. From 1966 to 1986 the head of the most important of them, the World Peace Council, was the Indian Communist Romesh Chandra, who denounced “the US-dominated Nato” as “the greatest threat to peace” across the world.

By the summer of 1975 Mrs Gandhi’s suspicions of a vast conspiracy by her political opponents, aided and abetted by the CIA, had, in the opinion of her biographer Katherine Frank, grown to “something close to paranoia”. In June 1975 she persuaded the President and the Cabinet to agree to the declaration of a state of emergency. Opposition leaders were jailed or put under house arrest and media censorship introduced. Thousands of people were arrested.

Reports from the Delhi main residency claimed exaggerated credit for using its agents of influence to persuade Mrs Gandhi to declare the emergency. But, according to Leonid Shebarshin, head of the Delhi main residency from 1975, both the Centre and the Soviet leadership found it difficult to grasp that the emergency had not turned Indira Gandhi into a dictator and that she still responded to public opinion and had to deal with opposition: “On the spot, from close up, the embassy and our (intelligence) service saw all this, but for Moscow Indira became India, and India — Indira.” Reports from the Delhi residency which were critical of any aspect of her policies received a cool reception in the Centre. Shebarshin thought it unlikely that any were forwarded to Soviet leaders or the Central Committee.

Though Mrs Gandhi was fond of saying in private that states have no constant friends and enemies, only constant interests: “At times Moscow behaved as though India had given a pledge of love and loyalty to her Soviet friends.” Even the slightest hiccup in relations caused consternation. During 1975 a total of 10.6 million roubles was spent on measures in India designed to strengthen support for Mrs Gandhi and undermine her political opponents. Soviet backing was public as well as covert. In June 1976, at a time when Mrs Gandhi suffered from semi-pariah status in most of the West, she was given a hero’s welcome on a trip to the Soviet Union.

The Kremlin, however, was worried by reports of the dismissive attitude to the Soviet Union of Indira’s son, Sanjay. It was reported that one of Sanjay’s cronies was holding regular meetings with a US embassy official “in a very suspicious manner”. Soon after his mother’s return from her triumphal tour of the Soviet Union, Sanjay gave an interview in which he praised big business, denounced nationalisation and poured scorn on the Communists. By her own admission, Indira became “quite frantic ” when his comments were made public. Sanjay was persuaded to issue a “clarification” which fell well short of a retraction.

The emergency ended as suddenly as it had begun. On January 18, 1977, Mrs Gandhi announced that elections would be held in March.

Press censorship was suspended and opposition leaders released from house arrest. To ensure success, the KGB mounted a major operation involving more than 120 meetings with agents during the election campaign. Nine candidates at the elections were KGB agents. Files also identify by name 21 of the non-Communist politicians (four of them ministers) whose election campaigns were subsidised by the KGB.

Agent reports reinforced the Delhi main residency’s misplaced confidence that Indira Gandhi would secure another election victory. Reports that she faced the possibility of defeat in her constituency were largely disregarded. In the event Mrs Gandhi suffered a crushing defeat. Janata, the newly united non-Communist opposition, won 40 per cent of the vote to Mrs Gandhi’s 35 per cent. One of the KGB’s bêtes noires, Morarji Desai, became Prime Minister. In Delhi, Mrs Gandhi’s downfall was celebrated with dancing in the streets.

Her relations with Moscow after she returned to power in 1980 never quite recaptured the warmth shown during her previous term in office.

(The above is extracted from The Mitrokhin Archive, Volume II: the KGB and the World by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin)

The scruffy visitor with dynamite secrets

On April 9, 1992, a scruffy 70-year-old Russian arrived in the capital of a newly-independent Baltic state by the overnight train from Moscow for a pre-arranged meeting at the British Embassy with officers of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6). He began by producing a passport that identified him as Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin, former senior archivist in the First Chief (Foreign Intelligence) Directorate of the KGB. SIS then took the unprepossessing secret photograph of him that The Times publishes today for the first time.

Mitrokhin had made his first visit to the embassy a month earlier, when he arrived pulling a battered case on wheels and wearing the same shabby clothes. Used to the male-dominated world of Soviet diplomacy, he was surprised that the Russian-speaking British diplomat who met him was a young woman. He rummaged beneath the sausages, bread, drink and clothes he had packed for his journey, pulled out a large wodge of paper and told her it was top-secret material he had copied from the KGB archives.

And there the story could easily have ended. The diplomat might well have dismissed Mitrokhin as a down-at-heel asylum-seeker trying to sell bogus secrets. Instead, she asked him a question that changed his life (and mine): “Would you like a cup of tea?” While Mitrokhin drank his first cup of English tea, she read some of his notes, quickly grasped their potential importance, and arranged for him to return a month later to meet SIS officers from its London headquarters.

At his meeting with SIS Mitrokhin produced another 2,000 pages from his private archive and told the extraordinary story of how, while supervising the ten-year-long transfer of the foreign intelligence (FCD) archive from its overcrowded offices in central Moscow to new headquarters just beyond the outer ringroad, he had daily smuggled out handwritten notes and extracts from the files and hidden them beneath his family dacha. The material showed that he had access to even the holy of holies in the FCD archives: files that revealed both the real identities and the bogus “legends” of the elite corps of deep-cover KGB “illegals” stationed around the world disguised as foreign nationals.

On November 7, 1992, the SIS spirited Mitrokhin, his family and his entire archive, packed in six large containers, out of Russia to Britain in a remarkable operation whose details still remain secret.

The FBI has called the Mitrokhin archive “the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source”. In the view of the CIA it is “the biggest counter-intelligence bonanza of the postwar period”. The all-party British Intelligence and Security Committee has revealed that other Western (and some non-Western) intelligence agencies have also been “extremely grateful” for numerous leads from the Mitrokhin archive.

As well as containing extraordinary detail on KGB operations in the West and the Soviet bloc (the subject of the first volume which I wrote in collaboration with Vasili Mitrokhin, who died last year), his archive contains much new material on KGB operations in the rest of the world.

Though no historian of the Cold War would nowadays dream of ignoring the role of the CIA in the Third World, most still make little, if any, mention of the even more important role of the KGB. The result has been a curiously lopsided history of the secret Cold War in the developing world — the intelligence equivalent of the sound of one hand clapping.

As The Mitrokhin Archive II seeks to show, for a quarter of a century the KGB, unlike the CIA, believed that the Third World was the arena in which it could win the Cold War. From the establishment of the alliance with Castro’s Cuba (optimistically codenamed Bridgehead by the KGB) to the disastrous decision to invade Afghanistan 20 years later (which began with the KGB assassination of President Hafizullah Amin), it was usually the KGB rather than the Foreign Ministry that took the lead in the Third World.

Even in the early stages of the war in Afghanistan the most able and longest-serving of all KGB chiefs, Yuri Andropov (soon to succeed Leonid Brezhnev as Soviet leader), was confident that his strategy was working.

He told his Vietnamese counterpart in 1980: “The Soviet Union is not merely talking about world revolution but actually assisting it.” Over the previous few years, he declared, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Afghanistan had all been “liberated” — in other words acquired Marxist-Leninist regimes. Though the KGB won a series of short-term Third-World victories, its operations contained a strong element of fantasy. Brezhnev’s preposterous vanity had to be fed not merely by more medals than those of all previous Soviet leaders combined but also by adulation from around the world, some of it manufactured by the KGB.

The successes of intelligence collection were undermined by the poor quality of intelligence analysis. The KGB was expected to tell Soviet leaders what they wanted to hear. It thus fed them carefully sanitised intelligence.

There is no more convincing evidence of Gorbachev’s “new thinking” in foreign policy when he became Soviet leader in 1985 than his denunciation of the traditional bias of intelligence reporting. The fact that KGB HQ had to issue stern instructions to its officers at the end of 1985 “on the impermissibility of distortions of the factual state of affairs” is a damning indictment of its previous subservience to the political correctness demanded by the Soviet one-party state.

Lure of the West

Though the KGB tended to exaggerate the success of its active measures, they appear to have been on a larger scale than those of the CIA.

By the early 1980s there were about 1,500 Indo-Soviet Friendship Societies, compared with only two Indo-American Friendship Societies. The Soviet leadership seems to have drawn the wrong conclusions from this apparently spectacular, but in reality somewhat hollow, success.

American popular culture had no need of friendship societies to secure its dominance over that of the Soviet bloc. No subsidised film evening in an Indo-Soviet Friendship Society could hope to compete with the appeal of Hollywood or Bollywood. Similarly, few Indian students, despite their widespread disapproval of US foreign policy, were more anxious to win scholarships to universities in the Soviet bloc than in the US.

The great bore

Among the most time-consuming activities of the KGB in India was the preparation for Brezhnev’s state visit in 1973. As usual it was necessary to ensure that the General Secretary was received with what appeared to be rapturous enthusiasm.

Since Brezhnev was such a dreary orator, this was no easy task. His speech in the great square in front of Delhi’s Red Fort presented a particular challenge. According to KGB estimates, two million people were present — perhaps the largest audience to whom Brezhnev had ever spoken.

The speech was extraordinarily long-winded and heavy going. As he droned on and night began to fall, some of the audience began to drift away but were turned back by the police for fear of offending the Soviet leader. Though even Brezhnev sensed that not all was well, the KGB claimed credit for “creating favourable conditions” for his Indian triumph.

Link:http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article567013.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

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Russia: Unrest as a Foreign Policy Tool

1. May 2010 by admin.

Russia: Unrest as a Foreign Policy Tool

Since the April 7 revolution in Kyrgyzstan, it has become clear that Russia was involved in stirring up the social unrest in the country. Kyrgyzstan showed that Russia is capable of creating “color revolution”-style uprisings in countries where it wants to increase its influence. This ability is creating concerns for many countries, from Central Asia to Central Europe and China.

Since Russia began pushing back against Western influence in the former Soviet Union (FSU), it has come to realize that it cannot simply re-establish an empire like the Soviet Union. Each FSU state has its own internal strengths and weaknesses, and each interacts differently with both Russia and the West. Thus, there can be no blanket response. This has forced Russia to tailor its efforts based on the specific circumstances and characteristics of each country where Moscow seeks to reassert itself.

 

Russia’s Approach

After the revolution in Kyrgyzstan in April, Russia said such a scenario could repeat in other former Soviet states — in effect threatening that Moscow could overthrow their governments as it did Kyrgyzstan’s.

 

Two tactics have proven to be the most effective. The first is using energy to exert pressure. Whether a country’s energy supplies originate in Russia, transit Russia or are imported by Russia, Russia is the major energy hub for the region. Moscow has cut off energy supplies to countries like Lithuania, cut supplies that transit Ukraine to bring pressure from the Europeans to bear on Kiev and cut energy supplies that transit Russia from the Central Asian states. This gradually led to a pro-Russian government taking power in Ukraine and a more pragmatic government taking office in Lithuania, and has kept Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan beholden to the Kremlin.

 

The other tactic is military intervention. In some cases, Russia simply has based its military in the states, like Moldova and Armenia. In other cases, Russia has gone to war; the August 2008 Russo-Georgian war ended with Russia technically occupying a third of Georgia’s territory.

But on April 7, Russia displayed another weapon in its arsenal that it had not used effectively since the Soviet era. On that day, after months of simmering unrest among the populace over poor economic conditions, a rapid outbreak of riots across Kyrgyzstan led to the government’s ouster. It has become clear since then that the momentum and organization behind the revolution came from Moscow. This was Russia using social unrest and popular revolution, in the style of the pro-Western color revolutions that swept the FSU in the 1990s and 2000s, to re-establish its hold over a former Soviet state. It was not the first time Russia has used this tactic; infiltration of foreign opposition or social groups to overthrow or pressure governments was seen throughout the Cold War.

 

There are several former Soviet states where Russia does not hold substantial energy links, where the pro-Russian sentiment is not strong enough to ensure the election of Moscow-friendly governments, or where military intervention would not be feasible or desirable. Fomenting revolutions is a tactic suitable for use in these countries. Of course, not all of these countries would have a social uprising with the magnitude or precision of Kyrgyzstan’s, but Russia has specific kinds of leverage in these countries that it could use to undermine their governments to varying degrees. 

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan has the most to be concerned about after the events in neighboring Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan is geographically twisted into Kyrgyzstan, which means any social instability could easily bleed over the border. But Tashkent is also concerned with the tactics used by Russia in its neighborhood because its relationship with Moscow has not been too friendly in recent years. Uzbekistan has an independent streak, and it has been pushing to retake its place as regional hegemon.

 

Uzbekistan’s peculiar geography — something arranged by the Soviets in order to prevent Uzbekistan from becoming a regional hegemon in the first place — makes the country incredibly difficult to control. The only way Tashkent has kept order in the country is through totalitarian rule. This has generated a massive culture of discontent among the general populace — fertile ground for a color revolution. But Uzbek President Islam Karimov has been able to control this discontent by clamping down on any hints of social uprisings. In a 2005 uprising in Andijan, the country’s security services killed hundreds of protesters demonstrating against poor economic conditions. Another such event looked to be simmering again when more protests occurred in May 2009 in Andijan. There are suspicions that Moscow may have been testing the waters in Uzbekistan with the 2009 protests, but no concrete evidence of a Russian hand has emerged.

 

Uzbekistan is also a clan-based country where many regional clans in both Uzbekistan proper and the Fergana Valley form networks of legitimate businessmen, mafia members, drug traffickers, regional political officials and some Islamists. Clan rivalry tends to break out frequently over business issues, and the majority of the clans in the country are staunchly against Karimov. But no organization or incentive has been set for these clans to rise up against the president — which could provide an opening for Moscow.

 

There is another factor Russia could exploit should it choose to target Uzbekistan next. In Kyrgyzstan, a successful revolution took place only after the Kyrgyz government had broken — something Russia also had a hand in — leaving the country more vulnerable to a social uprising. The government in Uzbekistan has been a consolidated force under Karimov since the fall of the Soviet Union. This has allowed Karimov to be able to deploy security forces decisively and crack down on dissent easily. But there are concerns growing that once the aging president — the oldest leader in the FSU — moves out of power, a succession crisis will break out. Several figures are already jockeying for position to succeed Karimov, and Moscow could take advantage of a fractured government to break Tashkent’s hold on the country as a whole.

 

But should Russia not want to wait for an Uzbek succession crisis, Moscow will have to get its hands dirty by provoking another nasty Andijan uprising or purchasing the clans in the country.

 

Tajikistan

Tajikistan is another country that shares a porous border with Kyrgyzstan. Tajikistan is not exactly a problem for Russia, which holds six bases in the country, but Dushanbe is not always the most pliant of the former Soviet states either, making it a possible target for Moscow.

Unlike Kyrgyzstan, which has an identifiable opposition movement, Tajikistan has extremely marginalized or almost nonexistent opposition parties. There are, however, other forces which could challenge the current government’s rule.

 

Tajikistan is dominated by clan-based regionalism without much connection between the regions to create an overriding national identity. The country fought a brutal civil war from 1992-1997 in which groups from the central and eastern regions rose up against the president, whose followers hailed from the north and west. Currently, Tajikistan is not so much a cohesive unit as a state trying to keep its different areas from fighting each other. It would not take much effort on Russia’s part — especially via the security services — to be able turn regional groups against Dushanbe.

 

Additionally, mixed into this regionalism is a strong Islamic militant movement — a movement that is linked to the militancy in Afghanistan. The distinction between the regional clans and the Islamic militant groups is blurred, and both could rise against Dushanbe.

But as easy as it would be to push either group into destabilizing the country, controlling those groups is just as hard — something that Russia knows from the days of Soviet rule over Tajikistan. Because of Tajikistan’s inherent complexities and the difficulty of controlling either the regional clans or the Islamists, traditionally Russia has considered it better to simply influence Tajikistan via economic and security incentives than try to own it.

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is already subservient to Russia, and has recently grown even closer to its former Soviet master by joining a customs union that formally subjugates the Kazakh economy to Russia’s. Kazakhstan also has no threatening opposition movements, because Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has clamped down on opposition parties and groups within the country. Occasionally there are small protests in Kazakhstan, but nothing that could endanger stability.

 

But Kazakhstan has reason to be worried about its stability in the future. Nazarbayev is one of the oldest leaders in the FSU, at 70 years old — an age nearly a decade past the region’s life expectancy. It is not yet clear who will succeed Nazarbayev, who has led Kazakhstan since the fall of the Soviet Union. Out of the myriad potential replacements for the president, many of the front-runners are not as pro-Moscow as Nazarbayev. Observing Russia’s ability to overthrow the government in Kyrgyzstan likely is a reminder to the less pro-Russian forces in Kazakhstan that such a tactic could be used in Astana someday.

 

Kazakhstan is similar to Kyrgyzstan in that social and geographic divisions between the country’s north and south could be used easily to disrupt stability. Russians make up more than a quarter of the population in Kazakhstan, mostly on the northern border. The center of the country is nearly empty, though this is where the capital is located. The population along Kazakhstan’s southern border — especially in the southeast — is a mixture of Russians, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Uighurs, making the area difficult to consolidate or control. It would take little effort to spin up any of these groups — especially Russian Kazakhs — to create unrest should Moscow deem it necessary.

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is attempting to balance the influence of three regional powers: Russia, Iran and China. The Turkmen government is not anti- or pro-Russian; it is pragmatic and knows that it needs to deal with Moscow. Russia, however, has been irritated over Turkmenistan’s energy deals with China, Iran and the West.

 

Turkmenistan is inherently paranoid, and for good reason. The country’s small population is divided by a desert; half its people live along the border with regional power Uzbekistan, and the other half live along the border with Iran. Also, the country’s population is bitterly divided by a clan system the government can barely control. This has made Turkmenistan uneasy anytime any country is destabilized by a major power, whether during the U.S. war in Iraq, Russia’s war in Georgia or the revolution in Kyrgyzstan. Ashgabat knows that it is a country without a real core, and from this weakness comes a paranoia that it could be next.

 

Russia holds influence over each of the clans in Turkmenistan; for example, the southern Mary clan has to use Russia for its drug trafficking, and Russia manages energy exports controlled by the Balkhan clan and provides weapons to the ruling Ahal clan. Moscow has been the key to peace among the clans in Turkmenistan in the past, such as when President Saparmurat Niyazov died in 2006. But Russia could easily use its influence instead to incite a clan war, which could steer the country in any number of directions.

Georgia

Since the 2003 Rose Revolution, Georgia has been one of the most pro-Western countries in Russia’s near abroad. Its pro-Western stance is a key problem for Russia, since Georgia is the gateway country for Russia to resurge into the Caucasus as a whole. Logically it follows that Georgia would be one of the next countries in which Moscow would want to consolidate its influence.

 

Georgian political figures — particularly Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili — are notoriously anti-Russian. However, there is a growing opposition force which, while not pro-Russian, is willing to adopt a more pragmatic stance toward Moscow.

 

Three key figures have emerged as possible leaders of the opposition movement: former Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli, former Georgian Ambassador to the United Nations Irakli Alasania and former Georgian Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze. Nogaideli has visited Moscow several times in the past few months and even formed a partnership between his Movement for Fair Georgia party and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia. Burjanadze, one of the most popular and well-known politicians in Georgia, has also visited Moscow and held talks with Putin recently. Alasania has also argued for a more pragmatic stance toward Russia, and will be a key figure to watch as he runs for mayor of Tbilisi in the country’s upcoming regional elections on May 30.

 

Although these figures have gained prominence, they have not yet proven they can attract a broad movement or consolidate the other opposition parties effectively. Georgia’s opposition remains greatly divided, with more than a dozen groups that do not agree on how to deal with Russia, among many other topics. Though unorganized, protests erupted across Georgia in 2009 and could arise again this year, especially with regional elections taking place in a month. There were rumors during the 2009 protests that Russia had funded the opposition’s activities, unbeknownst to the opposition. It is notable that during the height of the uprising in Kyrgyzstan, opposition leaders referred to the protests in Kyrgyzstan as a model for the Georgian opposition to rise up against Saakashvili.

 

Russia would be very interested in seeing the Georgian opposition coalesce and rise against Saakashvili. But this would be difficult for Moscow to orchestrate since there is no real pro-Russian movement in Georgia. The population there has not forgotten that Russia has already rolled tanks into Georgia, and any move that is seen as too strongly pro-Russian could serve to alienate those willing to talk to Russia even further.

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan is another country attempting to balance its relationship with Russia against other regional powers like Turkey, Iran and the West. Its ability to continue such a balancing act is mainly due to its energy wealth, which gives it cash and leverage within those relationships. Currently, Azerbaijan maintains a fairly amenable relationship with Russia, though should it strengthen its ties to the other powers, Moscow could target the country.

 

Azerbaijan saw a possible attempt at a color revolution-style uprising in 2005, leading many to question whether the West had the country on the same list as Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. In mid-2005, a myriad of youth movements reportedly inspired by the Orange and Rose revolutions declared themselves in opposition to the Azerbaijani government. What began as protesters taking to the streets with banners and flags escalated into riots. The police quickly clamped down on the movement before it could organize further. Russia has the ability to organize such a movement in Azerbaijan, as it has relationships with opposition parties and youth movements in the country.

 

Russia also has influence within the minority populations in Azerbaijan, especially the Dagestani groups in the northern part of the country that are linked to militant movements in the Russian Caucasus but have been since purchased by pro-Russian forces in the region. Sources have indicated that Russia has threatened to use those populations against Baku in the past.

The Baltic States

The Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — are a major piece in Russia’s resurgence plans. Located on the vulnerable North European Plain, and a stone’s throw from Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg, the Baltics are a prime property for Russia to control. The Baltics’ inherent problem is that they are so small and weak that they only have two paths to follow: hope someone protects them, or accept Russian authority.

 

On the surface, it looks as if the Baltics have protection, since they belong to the European Union and NATO. But Russia has its hands in some fairly strong social movements in these states. Past events have shown that Estonia and Latvia, where ethnic Russians make up roughly 25 and 30 percent of the population, respectively, are easy targets for Moscow. Estonia and Latvia both have pro-Russian parties in their political systems due to the large Russian minority populations. Moscow’s influence is less strong in Lithuania, since Russians only make up 9 percent of the population there.

 

Russia knows that the Baltics, like Georgia, will never have pro-Russian governments. Instead, Russia is interested in pressuring the Baltic governments into a so-called “Finlandization,” or neutrality. This does not mean the Baltics would leave their Western clubs; rather, they would implicitly give Russia veto power over any political or security decision.

Central Europe

The Central European states have seen Russian interference in their social dynamics in the past and are nervous again after the Kyrgyz uprising. Russian meddling has been a fact of life for these countries for centuries, even if they were never formally part of Russia. Russia can mobilize social movements in Central Europe in two ways: through “charm offensives” and through non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Russia can use charm offensives to divide and confuse the Central Europeans. This tactic serves to undermine anti-Russian elements and paint them as a “phobic” segment of society. Russia can isolate the anti-Russian sentiments in these countries via media and investment and by acting as a friendly neighbor. For example, in the wake of the Polish president’s death, Russia stepped in as a friendly neighbor symbolically supporting the Polish people — especially the deceased government members’ families — in their time of grief.

 

Russia has shown its ability to direct funds to NGOs, academia and human rights groups — particularly those fighting for minority rights or against certain military programs — to influence civil society in Europe. This was a tactic used during the Cold War. Any NGO that questions either the value of the region’s commitment to a U.S. military alliance (such as groups opposing the U.S. ballistic missile defense plan) or the merits of EU membership (groups citing a lack of transparency on some issues or with an anti-capitalist message) can serve Moscow’s interest of loosening the bonds between Central Europe and the rest of the West.

China

China has many reasons to be alarmed about Russia’s actions in Kyrgyzstan, with which it shares a rugged border. China has placed a large bet on Central Asia as the only secure source for resources without building the sort of naval expertise that would allow it to protect its sea lanes. China has been slowly increasing its influence in Central Asia, creating energy links to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. China has also increased its ties in the region, including Kyrgyzstan, through rail infrastructure. Russia’s demonstration that it can throw a quick and tidy revolution puts China’s development and economic security strategies at risk.

 

Furthermore, the tactics Russia used in Kyrgyzstan are troubling for Beijing because of China’s own problem controlling the myriad groups in the country — including the Uighurs, Tibetans and separatists in Hong Kong or Shanghai (who are not too fond of the leadership in Beijing). China is always unnerved when a popular uprising overturns a government anywhere in the world.

 

Russia has a long history with the Uighur populations in China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In the 1990s, Russia helped fund and organize the Uighurs in order to keep China’s focus on its own problems at a time when Russia was weak and vulnerable. This is something it could do again. China fears greater Russian influence over these communities, especially if it could translate into greater Russian influence inside China.

Russia is not looking to overturn the Chinese government; rather, Moscow could use social pressure to influence Beijing and keep its focus away from former Soviet turf.

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A Decade Of Putin

1. May 2010 by admin.

 A Decade of Putin

The August of 2010 completes 10 years of Vladimir Putin’s assumption of a leadership position at the Kremlin. Much has happened since Putin’s appointment as first vice prime minister in August 1999, but Russia’s most definitive evolution was from the unstable but semidemocratic days of the 1990s to the statist, authoritarian structure of today.

 

While it has hardly been clear that Putin would survive Russia’s transition from tentative democracy to near-police state, the transformation of Russia itself has not really been surprising to geopolitical analysts. Authoritarian government is a geographically hardwired feature of Russia.

 

Russia’s authoritarian structure has its roots in two interlinking features: its size and its lack of geographically defined borders.

 

The Matter of Size

Russia is huge. Mind-numbingly huge. Even Americans, whose country is large in its own right, have difficulty absorbing just how large Russia is. Russia spans 11 time zones. Traveling from one end to the other via rail is a seven-day, seven-night journey. Commercial jets needed to refuel when flying the country’s length until relatively recently. The country’s first transcontinental road became operational only a few years ago. In sum, Russia — to say nothing of the substantially larger Soviet Union — is roughly double the size of all 50 U.S. states combined.

 

In being so huge, Russia is condemned to being hugely poor. With the notable exception of the Volga, Russia has no useful rivers that can be used to transport goods — and the Volga, which is frozen most of the year, empties into the commercial dead end of the Caspian Sea. Whereas the Americans and Europeans always could shuttle goods and people cheaply up and down their rivers and use the money this allowed them to save to build armies, purchase goods and/or train workers — and thus become richer still — the Russians had to apply their scarce capital to build the transportation systems necessary to feed their population.

 

Most Western cities grew on natural transportation nodes, but many Russian cities are purely the result of state planning. St. Petersburg, for example, was built exclusively to serve as a forward position from which to battle Sweden and control the Baltic Sea. Basic industrialization, which swept across Europe and the United States in the 19th century, required rapid, inexpensive transit to make the process economical and dense population centers to serve as cheap pools of labor and concentrated markets.

 

Russia had neither transit nor population going for it. Large cities require abundant, cheap food. Without efficient transport options, farmers’ output will rot before reaching market, preventing them from earning much. State efforts to confiscate farmers’ production led to rebellions. Early Russian governments consistently found themselves stuck having to choose between drawing upon already-meager finances to purchase food and subsidize city growth, or spending that money on a security force to terrorize farmers so the food could be confiscated outright. It wasn’t until the development of railroads — and the rise of the Soviet Union’s iron grip — that the countryside could be both harnessed economically and crushed spiritually with enough regularity to grow and industrialize Russia’s cities. But even then, cities were built based on a strategic — not economic — rationale. Magnitogorsk, one of Russia’s vast industrial centers, was built east of the Ural Mountains to shield it from German attack.

 

Russia’s obstacles to economic development could be overcome only through state planning and institutional terror. Unsurprisingly, Russia’s first real wave of development and industrialization did not occur until Stalin rose to power. The discovery of ample energy reserves in the years since has helped somewhat. But since most of them are literally thousands of miles from any market, the need to construct mammoth infrastructure simply to reach the deposits puts pressure on the country’s bottom line.

 

The Best Defense

 

Russia’s size lends itself to an authoritarian system, but the deeper cause for this system is rooted in Russia’s lack of geographically defined borders. The best illustration of this requires a brief review of the lessons of the Mongol occupation.

 

The strength of the Mongols — who once ruled the steppes of Asia, and in time most of what is now Russia (among other vast territories) — lay in their military acumen on horseback. Where the land was open and flat, the Mongol horsemen knew no peer. Russia’s populated chunks are as flat as they are large. It possesses no physical barriers that could stop, or even particularly slow, the Mongol’s approach and inevitable victory. The forests north of Moscow served as Russia’s best defense.

 

When the Mongol horde arrived at the forests’ edge, the cavalrymen were forced to dismount if they were to offer combat. Once deprived of their mounts, the Mongol warrior’s advantage over the Russian peasant soldier shrank precipitously. And so it was only in Russia’s northern forests where some semblance of Russian independence managed to survive during the three centuries of Mongol rule.

 

The Mongols taught Russians just how horrible invasions — especially successful invasions persisting for generations — could be. The Mongol occupation became indelibly seared into the Russian collective memory, leaving Russians obsessed with national security. Echoes of that terrible memory have surfaced again and again in Russian history, with Napoleon’s and Hitler’s invasions only serving as two of the most recent. Many Russians view today’s steady NATO and EU expansions into the former Soviet territories through this prism, as simply the most recent incarnation of the Mongol terror.

 

After the Mongol period ended, Russian strategy could be summed up in a single word: expansion. The only recourse to the challenge of size and the lack of internal transportation options — and the lack whatsoever of any meaningful barriers to invasion — was establishing as large a buffer as possible. To this end, massive and poor Russia dedicated its scarce resources to building an army that could push its borders out from its core territory in the search for security.

 

The complications flowing from such an expansion — like the one achieved during Soviet times — are threefold:

 

First, the security is incomplete. While many countries have some sort of geographic barrier that grants a degree of safety — Chile has the Andes and the Atacama Desert, the United Kingdom has the English Channel, Italy has the Alps — potential barriers to invasion for Russia are far-flung and incomplete. Russia can advance westward to the Carpathian Mountains, but it remains exposed on the North European Plain and the Bessarabian gap. It can reach the Tien Shan Mountains of Central Asia and the marshes of Siberia, but between mountain and marsh lies an extension of the steppe into China and Mongolia. Short of conquering nearly all Eurasia, there is no way to secure Russia’s borders.

 

Second, the cost of trying to secure its borders is enormously expensive — more massive than any state can sustain in perpetuity. Trying to do so means Russia’s already-stressed economic system must support an even longer border, which requires an even larger military. The bigger Russia gets, the poorer it gets, and the more critical it becomes for its scarce resources to be funneled toward state needs — meaning central control becomes more essential.

 

Third, any buffers Russia conquers are not empty, they are home to non-Russians. And these non-Russians rarely take a shine to the idea of serving as Russia’s buffer regions. Keeping these conquered populations quiescent is not a task for the faint of heart. It requires a security force that isn’t just large but also able to excel at penetrating resistance groups, gathering information and policing. It thus requires an internal intelligence service with the primary purpose of keeping multiple conquered peoples in line — whether those people are Latvian or Ukrainian or Chechen or Uzbek — and this intelligence service’s size and omnipresence tends to be matched only by its brutality.

 

The Kremlin Crucible

 

Russia is a tough place to rule, and it is mildly surprising that Putin has lasted. We don’t think him incompetent, it’s just that life in Russia is dreadfully hard and the Kremlin is a crucible, and leaders often are crushed swiftly. Before Putin took Russia’s No. 2 job, former President Boris Yeltsin had gone through no fewer than 10 men — one of them twice — in the position.

 

But Putin boasted one characteristic that was identified 10 long years ago that set him apart. Putin was no bureaucrat or technocrat or politico; he was a KGB agent. And as Putin himself has famously proclaimed, there is no such thing as a former intelligence officer. This allowed him to harness the modern incarnation of the institutions that made Russia not just possible but also stable — the intelligence divisions — and to fuse them into the core of the new regime. Most of the Kremlin’s current senior staff, and nearly all Putin’s inner circle, were deeply enmeshed in the Soviet security apparatus.

 

This is hardly a unique coalition of forces in Russian history. Andropov ran the KGB before taking the reins of the Soviet empire. Stalin was (in)famous for his use of the intelligence apparatus. Lenin almost ran Russia into the ground before his deployment of the Cheka in force arrested the free fall. And the tsars before the Soviet leaders were hardly strangers to the role such services played.

 

Between economic inefficiency — which has only gotten worse since Soviet times — and wretched demographics, Russia faces a future that if anything is bleaker than its past. It sees itself as a country besieged by enemies without: the West, the Muslim world and China. It also sees itself as a country besieged by enemies within: only about three in four citizens are ethnic Russians, who are much older than the average citizen — and non-Russian birthrates are approximately double that of Russians. Only one institution in Russian history ever has proved capable of resisting such forces, and it is the institution that once again rules the country.

 

Russia may well stand on the brink of its twilight years. If there is a force that can preserve some version of Russia, it might not be identical to Putin, but it will need to look a great deal like what Putin is.

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Geopolitics of Russia: A Permanent Struggle

25. April 2010 by admin.

Geopolitics of Russia: A Permanent Struggle

 

Russia’s defining characteristic is its indefensibility. Unlike the core of most states that are relatively defensible, core Russia is limited to the region of the medieval Grand Principality of Muscovy. It counts no rivers, oceans, swamps or mountains marking its borders — it relies solely on the relatively inhospitable climate and its forests for defense. Russian history is a chronicle of the agony of surviving invasion after invasion.

Traditionally these invasions have come from two directions. The first is from the steppes — wide open grasslands that connect Russia to Central Asia and beyond — the path that the Mongols used. The second is from the North European Plain, which brought to Russia everything from the Teutonic Knights to the Nazi war machine.

 

 

To deal with these vulnerabilities, Russia expanded in three phases. In the first, Russia expanded not toward the invasion corridors to establish buffers but away from them to establish a redoubt. In the late 15th century, under Ivan III, Russia did creep westward somewhat, anchoring itself at the Pripet Marshes, which separated Russia from the Kiev region. But the bulk of Russia’s expansion during that period was north to the Arctic and northeast to the Urals. Very little of this territory can be categorized as useful — most was taiga or actual tundra and only lightly populated — but for Russia it was the only land easily up for grabs. It also marked a natural organic outgrowth of the original Muscovy — all cloaked in forest. It was as defensible a territory as Russia had access to and their only hope against the Mongols.

 

The Mongols were horsemen who dominated the grasslands with their fast-moving cavalry forces. Their power, although substantial, diminished when they entered the forests and the value of their horses, their force multipliers, declined. The Mongols had to fight infantry forces in the forests, where the advantage was on the defender’s side.

 

 

The second phase of expansion was far more aggressive — and risky. In the mid-16th century, Under Ivan IV, Russia finally moved to seal off the Mongol invasion route. Russia pushed south and east, deep into the steppes, and did not stop until it hit the Urals in the east and the Caspian Sea and Caucasus Mountains in the south. As part of this expansion, Russia captured several strategically critical locations, including Astrakhan on the Caspian, the land of the Tatars — a longtime horse-mounted foe — and Grozny, which was soon transformed into a military outpost at the foot of the Caucasus.

 

Also with this expansion, Ivan IV was transformed from Grand Prince of Moscow to Tsar of All Russia, suggesting the empire to come. Russia had finally achieved a measure of conventional security. Holding the northern slopes of the Caucasus would provide a reasonable defense from Asia Minor and Persia, while the millions of square kilometers of steppes gave birth to another defensive strategy: buffers.

Russia — modern, medieval or otherwise — cannot count on natural features to protect it. The Pripet Marshes were small and could in many cases simply be avoided. There is no one who might wish to attack from the Arctic. Forests slowed the Mongol horsemen, but as Muscovy’s predecessor — Kievan Rus — aptly demonstrated, the operative word was “slowed,” not “stopped.” The Mongols conquered and destroyed Kievan Rus in the 13th century.

 

That leaves buffers. So long as a country controls territory separating itself from its foes — even if it is territory that is easy for a hostile military to transit — it can bleed out any invasion via attrition and attacks on supply lines. Such buffers, however, contain a poison pill. They have populations not necessarily willing to serve as buffers. Maintaining control of such buffers requires not only a sizable standing military for defense but also a huge internal security and intelligence network to enforce central control. And any institution so key to the state’s survival must be very tightly controlled as well. Establishing and maintaining buffers not only makes Russia seem aggressive to its neighbors but also forces it to conduct purges and terrors against its own institutions in order to maintain the empire.

 

The third expansion phase dealt with the final invasion route: from the west. In the 18th century, under Peter and Catherine the Great, Russian power pushed westward, conquering Ukraine to the southwest and pushing on to the Carpathian Mountains. It also moved the Russian border to the west, incorporating the Baltic territories and securing a Russian flank on the Baltic Sea. Muscovy and the Tsardom of Russia were now known as the Russian Empire.

 

Yet aside from the anchor in the Carpathians, Russia did not achieve any truly defensible borders. Expansions to the Baltic and Black Seas did end the external threat from the Cossacks and Balts of ages past, but at the price of turning those external threats into internal ones. Russia also expanded so far and fast that holding the empire together socially and militarily became a monumental and ongoing challenge (today Russia is dealing with the fact that Russians are barely a majority in their own country). All this to achieve some semblance of security by establishing buffer regions.

 

But that is an issue of empire management. Ultimately the multi-directional threat defined Muscovy’s geopolitical problem. There was a constant threat from the steppes, but there was also a constant threat from the west, where the North European Plain allowed for few natural defenses and larger populations could deploy substantial infantry (and could, as the Swedes did, use naval power to land forces against the Muscovites). The forests provided a degree of protection, as did the sheer size of Russia’s holdings and its climate, but in the end the Russians faced threats from at least two directions. In managing these threats by establishing buffers, they were caught in a perpetual juggling act: east vs. west, internal vs. external.

 

The geography of the Russian Empire bequeathed it certain characteristics. Most important, the empire was (and remains) lightly settled. Even today, vast areas of Russia are unpopulated while in the rest of the country the population is widely distributed in small towns and cities and far less concentrated in large urban areas. Russia’s European part is the most densely populated, but in its expansion Russia both resettled Russian ethnics and assimilated large minorities along the way. So while Moscow and its surroundings are certainly critical, the predominance of the old Muscovy is not decisively ironclad.

 

 

The result is a constant, ingrained clash within the Russian Empire no matter the time frame, driven primarily by its size and the challenges of transport. The Russian empire, even excluding Siberia, is an enormous landmass located far to the north. Moscow is at the same latitude as Newfoundland while the Russian and Ukrainian breadbaskets are at the latitude of Maine, resulting in an extremely short growing season. Apart from limiting the size of the crop, the climate limits the efficiency of transport — getting the crop from farm to distant markets is a difficult matter and so is supporting large urban populations far from the farms. This is the root problem of the Russian economy. Russia can grow enough to feed itself, but it cannot efficiently transport what it grows from the farms to the cities and to the barren reaches of the empire before the food spoils. And even when it can transport it, the costs of transport make the foodstuffs unaffordable.

 

Population distribution also creates a political problem. One natural result of the transport problem is that the population tends to distribute itself nearer growing areas and in smaller towns so as not to tax the transport system. Yet these populations in Russia’s west and south tend to be conquered peoples. So the conquered peoples tend to distribute themselves to reflect economic rationalities, while need for food to be transported to the Russian core goes against such rationalities.

 

Faced with a choice of accepting urban starvation or the forcing of economic destitution upon the food-producing regions (by ordering the sale of food in urban centers at prices well below market prices), Russian leaders tend to select the latter option. Joseph Stalin certainly did in his efforts to forge and support an urban, industrialized population. Force-feeding such economic hardship to conquered minorities only doubled the need for a tightly controlled security apparatus.

 

The Russian geography meant that Russia either would have a centralized government — and economic system — or it would fly apart, torn by nationalist movements, peasant uprisings and urban starvation. Urbanization, much less industrialization, would have been impossible without a strong center. Indeed, the Russian Empire or Soviet Union would have been impossible. The natural tendency of the empire and Russia itself is to disintegrate. Therefore, to remain united it had to have a centralized bureaucracy responsive to autocratic rule in the capital and a vast security apparatus that compelled the country and empire to remain united. Russia’s history is one of controlling the inherently powerful centrifugal forces tearing at the country’s fabric.

 

Russia, then, has two core geopolitical problems. The first is holding the empire together. But the creation of that empire poses the second problem, maintaining internal security. It must hold together the empire and defend it at the same time, and the achievement of one goal tends to undermine efforts to achieve the other.

Geopolitical Imperatives

To secure the Russian core of Muscovy, Russia must:

• Expand north and east to secure a redoubt in climatically hostile territory that is protected in part by the Urals. This way, even in the worst-case scenario (i.e., Moscow falls), there is still a “Russia” from which to potentially resurge.
• Expand south to the Caucasus and southeast into the steppes in order to hamper invasions of Asian origin. As circumstances allow, push as deeply into Central Asia and Siberia as possible to deepen this bulwark.
• Expand as far west as possible. Do not stop in the southwest until the Carpathians are reached. On the North European Plain do not stop ever. Deeper penetration increases security not just in terms of buffers; the North European Plain narrows the further west one travels making its defense easier.
• Manage the empire with terror. Since the vast majority of Russian territory is not actually Russian, a very firm hand is required to prevent myriad minorities from asserting regional control or aligning with hostile forces.
• Expand to warm water ports that have open-ocean access so that the empire can begin to counter the economic problems that a purely land empire suffers.

Given the geography of the Russian heartland, we can see why the Russians would attempt to expand as they did. Vulnerable to attack on the North European Plain and from the Central Asian and European steppes simultaneously, Russia could not withstand an attack from one direction — much less two. Apart from the military problem, the ability of the state to retain control of the country under such pressure was dubious, as was the ability to feed the country under normal circumstances — much less during war. Securing the Caucasus, Central Asia and Siberia was the first — and easiest — part of dealing with this geographic imbroglio.

 

The western expansion was not nearly so “simple.” No matter how far west the Russians moved on the European plain, there was no point at which they could effectively anchor themselves. Ultimately, the last effective line of defense is the 400 mile gap (aka Poland) between the Baltic Sea and Carpathian Mountains. Beyond that the plains widen to such a degree that a conventional defense is impossible as there is simply too much open territory to defend. So the Soviet Union pressed on all the way to the Elbe.

 

At its height, the Soviet Union achieved all but its final imperative of securing ocean access. The USSR was anchored on the Carpathians, the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Urals, all of which protected its southern and southwestern flanks. Siberia protected its eastern frontier with vast emptiness. Further to the south, Russia was anchored deeply in Central Asia. The Russians had defensible frontiers everywhere except the North European Plain, ergo the need to occupy Germany and Poland.

Strategy of the Russian Empire

The modern Russian empire faces three separate border regions: Asian Siberia, Central Asia and the Caucasus (now mostly independent states), and Western Europe.

 

First, Siberia. There is only one rail line connecting Siberia to the rest of the empire, and positioning a military force there is difficult if not impossible. In fact, risk in Russia’s far east is illusory. The Trans-Siberian Railroad (TSR) runs east-west, with the Baikal Amur Mainline forming a loop. The TSR is Russia’s main lifeline to Siberia and is, to some extent, vulnerable. But an attack against Siberia is difficult — there is not much to attack but the weather, while the terrain and sheer size of the region make holding it not only difficult but of questionable relevance. Besides, an attack beyond it is impossible because of the Urals.

 

East of Kazakhstan, the Russian frontier is mountainous to hilly, and there are almost no north-south roads running deep into Russia; those that do exist can be easily defended, and even then they dead-end in lightly populated regions. The period without mud or snow lasts less than three months out of the year. After that time, overland resupply of an army is impossible. It is impossible for an Asian power to attack Siberia. That is the prime reason the Japanese chose to attack the United States rather than the Soviet Union in 1941. The only way to attack Russia in this region is by sea, as the Japanese did in 1905. It might then be possible to achieve a lodgment in the maritime provinces (such as Primorsky Krai or Vladivostok). But exploiting the resources of deep Siberia, given the requisite infrastructure costs, is prohibitive to the point of being virtually impossible.

 

 

We begin with Siberia in order to dispose of it as a major strategic concern. The defense of the Russian Empire involves a different set of issues.

Second, Central Asia. The mature Russian Empire and the Soviet Union were anchored on a series of linked mountain ranges, deserts and bodies of water in this region that gave it a superb defensive position. Beginning on the northwestern Mongolian border and moving southwest on a line through Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the empire was guarded by a north extension of the Himalayas, the Tien Shan Mountains. Swinging west along the Afghan and Iranian borders to the Caspian Sea, the empire occupied the lowlands along a mountainous border. But the lowlands, except for a small region on the frontier with Afghanistan, were harsh desert, impassable for large military forces. A section along the Afghan border was more permeable, leading to a long-term Russian unease with the threat in Afghanistan — foreign or indigenous. The Caspian Sea protected the border with Iran, and on its western shore the Caucasus Mountains began, which the empire shared with Iran and Turkey but which were hard to pass through in either direction. The Caucasus terminated on the Black Sea, totally protecting the empire’s southern border. These regions were of far greater utility to Russia than Siberia and so may have been worth taking, but for once geography actually helped Russia instead of working against it.

 

Finally, there is the western frontier that ran from west of Odessa north to the Baltic. This European frontier was the vulnerable point. Geographically, the southern portion of the border varied from time to time, and where the border was drawn was critical. The Carpathians form an arc from Romania through western Ukraine into Slovakia. Russia controlled the center of the arc in Ukraine. However, its frontier did not extend as far as the Carpathians in Romania, where a plain separated Russia from the mountains. This region is called Moldova or Bessarabia, and when the region belongs to Romania, it represents a threat to Russian national security. When it is in Russian hands, it allows the Russians to anchor on the Carpathians. And when it is independent, as it is today in the form of the state of Moldova, then it can serve either as a buffer or a flash point. During the alliance with the Germans in 1939-1941, the Russians seized this region as they did again after World War II. But there is always a danger of an attack out of Romania.

 

This is not Russia’s greatest danger point. That occurs further north, between the northern edge of the Carpathians and the Baltic Sea. This gap, at its narrowest point, is just under 300 miles, running west of Warsaw from the city of Elblag in northern Poland to Cracow in the south. This is the narrowest point in the North European Plain and roughly the location of the Russian imperial border prior to World War I. Behind this point, the Russians controlled eastern Poland and the three Baltic countries.

 

The danger to Russia is that the north German plain expands like a triangle east of this point. As the triangle widens, Russian forces get stretched thinner and thinner. So a force attacking from the west through the plain faces an expanding geography that thins out Russian forces. If invaders concentrate their forces, the attackers can break through to Moscow. That is the traditional Russian fear: Lacking natural barriers, the farther east the Russians move the broader the front and the greater the advantage for the attacker. The Russians faced three attackers along this axis following the formation of empire — Napoleon, Wilhelm II and Hitler. Wilhelm was focused on France so he did not drive hard into Russia, but Napoleon and Hitler did, both almost toppling Moscow in the process.

 

Along the North European Plain, Russia has three strategic options:

1. Use Russia’s geographical depth and climate to suck in an enemy force and then defeat it, as it did with Napoleon and Hitler. After the fact this appears the solution, except it is always a close run and the attackers devastate the countryside. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened in 1942 if Hitler had resumed his drive on the North European Plain toward Moscow, rather than shift to a southern attack toward Stalingrad.

2. Face an attacking force with large, immobile infantry forces at the frontier and bleed them to death, as they tried to do in 1914. On the surface this appears to be an attractive choice because of Russia’s greater manpower reserves than those of its European enemies. In practice, however, it is a dangerous choice because of the volatile social conditions of the empire, where the weakening of the security apparatus could cause the collapse of the regime in a soldiers’ revolt as happened in 1917.

3. Push the Russian/Soviet border as far west as possible to create yet another buffer against attack, as the Soviets did during the Cold War. This is obviously an attractive choice, since it creates strategic depth and increases economic opportunities. But it also diffuses Russian resources by extending security states into Central Europe and massively increasing defense costs, which ultimately broke the Soviet Union in 1992.

Contemporary Russia

The greatest extension of the Russian Empire occurred under the Soviets from 1945 to 1989. Paradoxically, this expansion preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union and the contraction of Russia to its current borders. When we look at the Russian Federation today, it is important to understand that it has essentially retreated to the borders the Russian Empire had in the 17th century. It holds old Muscovy plus the Tatar lands to the southeast as well as Siberia. It has lost its western buffers in Ukraine and the Baltics and its strong foothold in the Caucasus and in Central Asia.

 

To understand this spectacular expansion and contraction, we need to focus on Soviet strategy. The Soviet Union was a landlocked entity dominating the Eurasian heartland but without free access to the sea. Neither the Baltic nor Black seas allow Russia free oceangoing transport because they are blocked by the Skagerrak and the Turkish straits, respectively. So long as Denmark and Turkey remain in NATO, Russia’s positions in St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Sevastopol and Novorossiysk are militarily dubious.

 

There were many causes of the Soviet collapse. Some were:

• Overextending forces into Central Europe, which taxed the ability of the Soviet Union to control the region while economically exploiting it. It became a net loss. This overextension created costly logistical problems on top of the cost of the military establishment. Extension of the traditional Russian administrative structure both diffused Russia’s own administrative structure and turned a profitable empire into a massive economic burden.
• Creating an apparent threat to the rest of Europe that compelled the United States to deploy major forces and arm Germany. This in turn forced the Russians into a massive military buildup that undermined its economy, which was less productive than the American economy because of its inherent agricultural problem and because the cost of internal transport combined with the lack of ocean access made Soviet (and Russian) maritime trade impossible. Since maritime trade both is cheaper than land trade and allows access to global markets, the Soviet Union always operated at an extreme economic disadvantage to its Western and Asian competitors.
• Entering an arms race with much richer countries it could compete against only by diverting resources from the civilian economy — material and intellectual. The best minds went into the military-industrial complex, causing the administrative and economic structure of Russia to crumble.

In 1989 the Soviet Union lost control of Eastern Europe and in 1992 the Soviet Union itself collapsed. Russia then retreated essentially to its 17th century borders — except that it retained control of Siberia, which is either geopolitically irrelevant or a liability. Russia has lost all of Central Asia, and its position in the Caucasus has become tenuous. Had Russia lost Chechnya, its eastern flank would have been driven out of the Caucasus completely, leaving it without a geopolitical anchor.

 

 

The gap between Kazakhstan in the east and Ukraine in the west, like the narrowest point in the North European Plain, is only 300 miles wide. It also contains Russia’s industrial heartland. Russia has lost Ukraine, of course, and Moldova. But Russia’s most grievous geopolitical contraction has been on the North European Plain, where it has retreated from the Elbe in Germany to a point less than 100 miles from St. Petersburg. The distance from the border of an independent Belarus to Moscow is about 250 miles.

 

To understand the Russian situation, it is essential to understand that Russia has in many ways returned to the strategic position of late Muscovy. Its flank to the southeast is relatively secure, since China shows no inclination for adventures into the steppes, and no other power is in a position to challenge Russia from that direction. But in the west, in Ukraine and in the Caucasus, the Russian retreat has been stunning.

 

We need to remember why Muscovy expanded in the first place. Having dealt with the Mongols, the Russians had two strategic interests. Their most immediate was to secure their western borders by absorbing Lithuania and anchoring Russia as far west on the North European Plain as possible. Their second strategic interest was to secure Russia’s southeastern frontier against potential threats from the steppes by absorbing Central Asia as well as Ukraine. Without that, Muscovy could not withstand a thrust from either direction, let alone from both directions at once.

It can be said that no one intends to invade Russia. From the Russian point of view, history is filled with dramatic changes of intention, particularly in the West. The unthinkable occurs to Russia once or twice a century. In its current configuration, Russia cannot hope to survive whatever surprises are coming in the 21st century. Muscovy was offensive because it did not have a good defensive option. The same is true of Russia. Given the fact that a Western alliance, NATO, is speaking seriously of establishing a dominant presence in Ukraine and in the Caucasus — and has already established a presence in the Baltics, forcing Russia far back into the widening triangle, with its southern flank potentially exposed to Ukraine as a NATO member — the Russians must view their position as dire. As with Napoleon, Wilhelm and Hitler, the initiative is in the hands of others. For the Russians, the strategic imperative is to eliminate that initiative or, if that is impossible, anchor Russia as firmly as possible on geographical barriers, concentrating all available force on the North European Plain without overextension.

 

Unlike countries such as China, Iran and the United States, Russia has not achieved its strategic geopolitical imperatives. On the contrary, it has retreated from them:

• Russia does hold the northern Caucasus, but it no longer boasts a deep penetration of the mountains, including Georgia and Armenia. Without those territories Russia cannot consider this flank secure.
• Russia has lost its anchor in the mountains and deserts of Central Asia and so cannot actively block or disrupt — or even well monitor — any developments to its deep south that could threaten its security.
• Russia retains Siberia, but because of the climatic and geographic hostility of the region it is almost a wash in terms of security (it certainly is economically).
• Russia’s loss of Ukraine and Moldova allows both the intrusion of other powers and the potential rise of a Ukrainian rival on its very doorstep. Powers behind the Carpathians are especially positioned to take advantage of this political geography.
• The Baltic states have re-established their independence, and all three are east and north of the Baltic-Carpathian line (the final defensive line on the North European Plain). Their presence in a hostile alliance is unacceptable. Neither is an independent or even neutral Belarus (also on the wrong side of that line).

Broader goals, such as having a port not blocked by straits controlled by other countries, could have been pursued by the Soviets. Today such goals are far out of Russian reach. From the Russian point of view, creating a sphere of influence that would return Russia to its relatively defensible imperial boundaries is imperative.

 

Obviously, forces in the peripheral countries as well as great powers outside the region will resist. For them, a weak and vulnerable Russia is preferable, since a strong and secure one develops other appetites that could see Russia pushing along vectors such as through the Skagerrak toward the North Sea, through the Turkish Straits toward the Mediterranean and through La Perouse Strait toward Japan and beyond.

 

Russia’s essential strategic problem is this: It is geopolitically unstable. The Russian Empire and Soviet Union were never genuinely secure. One problem was theNorth European Plain. But another problem, very real and hard to solve, was access to the global trading system via oceans. And behind this was Russia’s essential economic weakness due to its size and lack of ability to transport agricultural produce throughout the country. No matter how much national will it has, Russia’s inherently insufficient infrastructure constantly weakens its internal cohesion.

 

Russia must dominate the Eurasian heartland. When it does, it must want more. The more it wants the more it must face its internal economic weakness and social instability, which cannot support its ambitions. Then the Russian Federation must contract. This cycle has nothing to do with Russian ideology or character. It has everything to do with geography, which in turn generates ideologies and shapes character. Russia is Russia and must face its permanent struggle.

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Geopolitics of Russia: A Permanent Struggle

24. April 2010 by admin.

Geopolitics of Russia: A Permanent Struggle

 

Russia’s defining characteristic is its indefensibility. Unlike the core of most states that are relatively defensible, core Russia is limited to the region of the medieval Grand Principality of Muscovy. It counts no rivers, oceans, swamps or mountains marking its borders — it relies solely on the relatively inhospitable climate and its forests for defense. Russian history is a chronicle of the agony of surviving invasion after invasion.

Traditionally these invasions have come from two directions. The first is from the steppes — wide open grasslands that connect Russia to Central Asia and beyond — the path that the Mongols used. The second is from the North European Plain, which brought to Russia everything from the Teutonic Knights to the Nazi war machine.

 

 

 

 

 

To deal with these vulnerabilities, Russia expanded in three phases. In the first, Russia expanded not toward the invasion corridors to establish buffers but away from them to establish a redoubt. In the late 15th century, under Ivan III, Russia did creep westward somewhat, anchoring itself at the Pripet Marshes, which separated Russia from the Kiev region. But the bulk of Russia’s expansion during that period was north to the Arctic and northeast to the Urals. Very little of this territory can be categorized as useful — most was taiga or actual tundra and only lightly populated — but for Russia it was the only land easily up for grabs. It also marked a natural organic outgrowth of the original Muscovy — all cloaked in forest. It was as defensible a territory as Russia had access to and their only hope against the Mongols.

 

The Mongols were horsemen who dominated the grasslands with their fast-moving cavalry forces. Their power, although substantial, diminished when they entered the forests and the value of their horses, their force multipliers, declined. The Mongols had to fight infantry forces in the forests, where the advantage was on the defender’s side.

 

 

 

 

 

The second phase of expansion was far more aggressive — and risky. In the mid-16th century, Under Ivan IV, Russia finally moved to seal off the Mongol invasion route. Russia pushed south and east, deep into the steppes, and did not stop until it hit the Urals in the east and the Caspian Sea and Caucasus Mountains in the south. As part of this expansion, Russia captured several strategically critical locations, including Astrakhan on the Caspian, the land of the Tatars — a longtime horse-mounted foe — and Grozny, which was soon transformed into a military outpost at the foot of the Caucasus.

 

Also with this expansion, Ivan IV was transformed from Grand Prince of Moscow to Tsar of All Russia, suggesting the empire to come. Russia had finally achieved a measure of conventional security. Holding the northern slopes of the Caucasus would provide a reasonable defense from Asia Minor and Persia, while the millions of square kilometers of steppes gave birth to another defensive strategy: buffers.

Russia — modern, medieval or otherwise — cannot count on natural features to protect it. The Pripet Marshes were small and could in many cases simply be avoided. There is no one who might wish to attack from the Arctic. Forests slowed the Mongol horsemen, but as Muscovy’s predecessor — Kievan Rus — aptly demonstrated, the operative word was “slowed,” not “stopped.” The Mongols conquered and destroyed Kievan Rus in the 13th century.

 

That leaves buffers. So long as a country controls territory separating itself from its foes — even if it is territory that is easy for a hostile military to transit — it can bleed out any invasion via attrition and attacks on supply lines. Such buffers, however, contain a poison pill. They have populations not necessarily willing to serve as buffers. Maintaining control of such buffers requires not only a sizable standing military for defense but also a huge internal security and intelligence network to enforce central control. And any institution so key to the state’s survival must be very tightly controlled as well. Establishing and maintaining buffers not only makes Russia seem aggressive to its neighbors but also forces it to conduct purges and terrors against its own institutions in order to maintain the empire.

 

The third expansion phase dealt with the final invasion route: from the west. In the 18th century, under Peter and Catherine the Great, Russian power pushed westward, conquering Ukraine to the southwest and pushing on to the Carpathian Mountains. It also moved the Russian border to the west, incorporating the Baltic territories and securing a Russian flank on the Baltic Sea. Muscovy and the Tsardom of Russia were now known as the Russian Empire.

 

Yet aside from the anchor in the Carpathians, Russia did not achieve any truly defensible borders. Expansions to the Baltic and Black Seas did end the external threat from the Cossacks and Balts of ages past, but at the price of turning those external threats into internal ones. Russia also expanded so far and fast that holding the empire together socially and militarily became a monumental and ongoing challenge (today Russia is dealing with the fact that Russians are barely a majority in their own country). All this to achieve some semblance of security by establishing buffer regions.

 

But that is an issue of empire management. Ultimately the multi-directional threat defined Muscovy’s geopolitical problem. There was a constant threat from the steppes, but there was also a constant threat from the west, where the North European Plain allowed for few natural defenses and larger populations could deploy substantial infantry (and could, as the Swedes did, use naval power to land forces against the Muscovites). The forests provided a degree of protection, as did the sheer size of Russia’s holdings and its climate, but in the end the Russians faced threats from at least two directions. In managing these threats by establishing buffers, they were caught in a perpetual juggling act: east vs. west, internal vs. external.

 

The geography of the Russian Empire bequeathed it certain characteristics. Most important, the empire was (and remains) lightly settled. Even today, vast areas of Russia are unpopulated while in the rest of the country the population is widely distributed in small towns and cities and far less concentrated in large urban areas. Russia’s European part is the most densely populated, but in its expansion Russia both resettled Russian ethnics and assimilated large minorities along the way. So while Moscow and its surroundings are certainly critical, the predominance of the old Muscovy is not decisively ironclad.

 

 

 

 

 

The result is a constant, ingrained clash within the Russian Empire no matter the time frame, driven primarily by its size and the challenges of transport. The Russian empire, even excluding Siberia, is an enormous landmass located far to the north. Moscow is at the same latitude as Newfoundland while the Russian and Ukrainian breadbaskets are at the latitude of Maine, resulting in an extremely short growing season. Apart from limiting the size of the crop, the climate limits the efficiency of transport — getting the crop from farm to distant markets is a difficult matter and so is supporting large urban populations far from the farms. This is the root problem of the Russian economy. Russia can grow enough to feed itself, but it cannot efficiently transport what it grows from the farms to the cities and to the barren reaches of the empire before the food spoils. And even when it can transport it, the costs of transport make the foodstuffs unaffordable.

 

Population distribution also creates a political problem. One natural result of the transport problem is that the population tends to distribute itself nearer growing areas and in smaller towns so as not to tax the transport system. Yet these populations in Russia’s west and south tend to be conquered peoples. So the conquered peoples tend to distribute themselves to reflect economic rationalities, while need for food to be transported to the Russian core goes against such rationalities.

 

Faced with a choice of accepting urban starvation or the forcing of economic destitution upon the food-producing regions (by ordering the sale of food in urban centers at prices well below market prices), Russian leaders tend to select the latter option. Joseph Stalin certainly did in his efforts to forge and support an urban, industrialized population. Force-feeding such economic hardship to conquered minorities only doubled the need for a tightly controlled security apparatus.

 

The Russian geography meant that Russia either would have a centralized government — and economic system — or it would fly apart, torn by nationalist movements, peasant uprisings and urban starvation. Urbanization, much less industrialization, would have been impossible without a strong center. Indeed, the Russian Empire or Soviet Union would have been impossible. The natural tendency of the empire and Russia itself is to disintegrate. Therefore, to remain united it had to have a centralized bureaucracy responsive to autocratic rule in the capital and a vast security apparatus that compelled the country and empire to remain united. Russia’s history is one of controlling the inherently powerful centrifugal forces tearing at the country’s fabric.

 

Russia, then, has two core geopolitical problems. The first is holding the empire together. But the creation of that empire poses the second problem, maintaining internal security. It must hold together the empire and defend it at the same time, and the achievement of one goal tends to undermine efforts to achieve the other.

Geopolitical Imperatives

To secure the Russian core of Muscovy, Russia must:

• Expand north and east to secure a redoubt in climatically hostile territory that is protected in part by the Urals. This way, even in the worst-case scenario (i.e., Moscow falls), there is still a “Russia” from which to potentially resurge.
• Expand south to the Caucasus and southeast into the steppes in order to hamper invasions of Asian origin. As circumstances allow, push as deeply into Central Asia and Siberia as possible to deepen this bulwark.
• Expand as far west as possible. Do not stop in the southwest until the Carpathians are reached. On the North European Plain do not stop ever. Deeper penetration increases security not just in terms of buffers; the North European Plain narrows the further west one travels making its defense easier.
• Manage the empire with terror. Since the vast majority of Russian territory is not actually Russian, a very firm hand is required to prevent myriad minorities from asserting regional control or aligning with hostile forces.
• Expand to warm water ports that have open-ocean access so that the empire can begin to counter the economic problems that a purely land empire suffers.

Given the geography of the Russian heartland, we can see why the Russians would attempt to expand as they did. Vulnerable to attack on the North European Plain and from the Central Asian and European steppes simultaneously, Russia could not withstand an attack from one direction — much less two. Apart from the military problem, the ability of the state to retain control of the country under such pressure was dubious, as was the ability to feed the country under normal circumstances — much less during war. Securing the Caucasus, Central Asia and Siberia was the first — and easiest — part of dealing with this geographic imbroglio.

 

The western expansion was not nearly so “simple.” No matter how far west the Russians moved on the European plain, there was no point at which they could effectively anchor themselves. Ultimately, the last effective line of defense is the 400 mile gap (aka Poland) between the Baltic Sea and Carpathian Mountains. Beyond that the plains widen to such a degree that a conventional defense is impossible as there is simply too much open territory to defend. So the Soviet Union pressed on all the way to the Elbe.

 

At its height, the Soviet Union achieved all but its final imperative of securing ocean access. The USSR was anchored on the Carpathians, the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Urals, all of which protected its southern and southwestern flanks. Siberia protected its eastern frontier with vast emptiness. Further to the south, Russia was anchored deeply in Central Asia. The Russians had defensible frontiers everywhere except the North European Plain, ergo the need to occupy Germany and Poland.

Strategy of the Russian Empire

The modern Russian empire faces three separate border regions: Asian Siberia, Central Asia and the Caucasus (now mostly independent states), and Western Europe.

 

First, Siberia. There is only one rail line connecting Siberia to the rest of the empire, and positioning a military force there is difficult if not impossible. In fact, risk in Russia’s far east is illusory. The Trans-Siberian Railroad (TSR) runs east-west, with the Baikal Amur Mainline forming a loop. The TSR is Russia’s main lifeline to Siberia and is, to some extent, vulnerable. But an attack against Siberia is difficult — there is not much to attack but the weather, while the terrain and sheer size of the region make holding it not only difficult but of questionable relevance. Besides, an attack beyond it is impossible because of the Urals.

 

East of Kazakhstan, the Russian frontier is mountainous to hilly, and there are almost no north-south roads running deep into Russia; those that do exist can be easily defended, and even then they dead-end in lightly populated regions. The period without mud or snow lasts less than three months out of the year. After that time, overland resupply of an army is impossible. It is impossible for an Asian power to attack Siberia. That is the prime reason the Japanese chose to attack the United States rather than the Soviet Union in 1941. The only way to attack Russia in this region is by sea, as the Japanese did in 1905. It might then be possible to achieve a lodgment in the maritime provinces (such as Primorsky Krai or Vladivostok). But exploiting the resources of deep Siberia, given the requisite infrastructure costs, is prohibitive to the point of being virtually impossible.

 

 

 

 

 

We begin with Siberia in order to dispose of it as a major strategic concern. The defense of the Russian Empire involves a different set of issues.

Second, Central Asia. The mature Russian Empire and the Soviet Union were anchored on a series of linked mountain ranges, deserts and bodies of water in this region that gave it a superb defensive position. Beginning on the northwestern Mongolian border and moving southwest on a line through Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the empire was guarded by a north extension of the Himalayas, the Tien Shan Mountains. Swinging west along the Afghan and Iranian borders to the Caspian Sea, the empire occupied the lowlands along a mountainous border. But the lowlands, except for a small region on the frontier with Afghanistan, were harsh desert, impassable for large military forces. A section along the Afghan border was more permeable, leading to a long-term Russian unease with the threat in Afghanistan — foreign or indigenous. The Caspian Sea protected the border with Iran, and on its western shore the Caucasus Mountains began, which the empire shared with Iran and Turkey but which were hard to pass through in either direction. The Caucasus terminated on the Black Sea, totally protecting the empire’s southern border. These regions were of far greater utility to Russia than Siberia and so may have been worth taking, but for once geography actually helped Russia instead of working against it.

 

Finally, there is the western frontier that ran from west of Odessa north to the Baltic. This European frontier was the vulnerable point. Geographically, the southern portion of the border varied from time to time, and where the border was drawn was critical. The Carpathians form an arc from Romania through western Ukraine into Slovakia. Russia controlled the center of the arc in Ukraine. However, its frontier did not extend as far as the Carpathians in Romania, where a plain separated Russia from the mountains. This region is called Moldova or Bessarabia, and when the region belongs to Romania, it represents a threat to Russian national security. When it is in Russian hands, it allows the Russians to anchor on the Carpathians. And when it is independent, as it is today in the form of the state of Moldova, then it can serve either as a buffer or a flash point. During the alliance with the Germans in 1939-1941, the Russians seized this region as they did again after World War II. But there is always a danger of an attack out of Romania.

 

This is not Russia’s greatest danger point. That occurs further north, between the northern edge of the Carpathians and the Baltic Sea. This gap, at its narrowest point, is just under 300 miles, running west of Warsaw from the city of Elblag in northern Poland to Cracow in the south. This is the narrowest point in the North European Plain and roughly the location of the Russian imperial border prior to World War I. Behind this point, the Russians controlled eastern Poland and the three Baltic countries.

 

The danger to Russia is that the north German plain expands like a triangle east of this point. As the triangle widens, Russian forces get stretched thinner and thinner. So a force attacking from the west through the plain faces an expanding geography that thins out Russian forces. If invaders concentrate their forces, the attackers can break through to Moscow. That is the traditional Russian fear: Lacking natural barriers, the farther east the Russians move the broader the front and the greater the advantage for the attacker. The Russians faced three attackers along this axis following the formation of empire — Napoleon, Wilhelm II and Hitler. Wilhelm was focused on France so he did not drive hard into Russia, but Napoleon and Hitler did, both almost toppling Moscow in the process.

 

Along the North European Plain, Russia has three strategic options:

1. Use Russia’s geographical depth and climate to suck in an enemy force and then defeat it, as it did with Napoleon and Hitler. After the fact this appears the solution, except it is always a close run and the attackers devastate the countryside. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened in 1942 if Hitler had resumed his drive on the North European Plain toward Moscow, rather than shift to a southern attack toward Stalingrad.

2. Face an attacking force with large, immobile infantry forces at the frontier and bleed them to death, as they tried to do in 1914. On the surface this appears to be an attractive choice because of Russia’s greater manpower reserves than those of its European enemies. In practice, however, it is a dangerous choice because of the volatile social conditions of the empire, where the weakening of the security apparatus could cause the collapse of the regime in a soldiers’ revolt as happened in 1917.

3. Push the Russian/Soviet border as far west as possible to create yet another buffer against attack, as the Soviets did during the Cold War. This is obviously an attractive choice, since it creates strategic depth and increases economic opportunities. But it also diffuses Russian resources by extending security states into Central Europe and massively increasing defense costs, which ultimately broke the Soviet Union in 1992.

Contemporary Russia

The greatest extension of the Russian Empire occurred under the Soviets from 1945 to 1989. Paradoxically, this expansion preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union and the contraction of Russia to its current borders. When we look at the Russian Federation today, it is important to understand that it has essentially retreated to the borders the Russian Empire had in the 17th century. It holds old Muscovy plus the Tatar lands to the southeast as well as Siberia. It has lost its western buffers in Ukraine and the Baltics and its strong foothold in the Caucasus and in Central Asia.

 

To understand this spectacular expansion and contraction, we need to focus on Soviet strategy. The Soviet Union was a landlocked entity dominating the Eurasian heartland but without free access to the sea. Neither the Baltic nor Black seas allow Russia free oceangoing transport because they are blocked by the Skagerrak and the Turkish straits, respectively. So long as Denmark and Turkey remain in NATO, Russia’s positions in St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Sevastopol and Novorossiysk are militarily dubious.

 

There were many causes of the Soviet collapse. Some were:

• Overextending forces into Central Europe, which taxed the ability of the Soviet Union to control the region while economically exploiting it. It became a net loss. This overextension created costly logistical problems on top of the cost of the military establishment. Extension of the traditional Russian administrative structure both diffused Russia’s own administrative structure and turned a profitable empire into a massive economic burden.
• Creating an apparent threat to the rest of Europe that compelled the United States to deploy major forces and arm Germany. This in turn forced the Russians into a massive military buildup that undermined its economy, which was less productive than the American economy because of its inherent agricultural problem and because the cost of internal transport combined with the lack of ocean access made Soviet (and Russian) maritime trade impossible. Since maritime trade both is cheaper than land trade and allows access to global markets, the Soviet Union always operated at an extreme economic disadvantage to its Western and Asian competitors.
• Entering an arms race with much richer countries it could compete against only by diverting resources from the civilian economy — material and intellectual. The best minds went into the military-industrial complex, causing the administrative and economic structure of Russia to crumble.

 

In 1989 the Soviet Union lost control of Eastern Europe and in 1992 the Soviet Union itself collapsed. Russia then retreated essentially to its 17th century borders — except that it retained control of Siberia, which is either geopolitically irrelevant or a liability. Russia has lost all of Central Asia, and its position in the Caucasus has become tenuous. Had Russia lost Chechnya, its eastern flank would have been driven out of the Caucasus completely, leaving it without a geopolitical anchor.

 

 

 

 

 

The gap between Kazakhstan in the east and Ukraine in the west, like the narrowest point in the North European Plain, is only 300 miles wide. It also contains Russia’s industrial heartland. Russia has lost Ukraine, of course, and Moldova. But Russia’s most grievous geopolitical contraction has been on the North European Plain, where it has retreated from the Elbe in Germany to a point less than 100 miles from St. Petersburg. The distance from the border of an independent Belarus to Moscow is about 250 miles.

 

To understand the Russian situation, it is essential to understand that Russia has in many ways returned to the strategic position of late Muscovy. Its flank to the southeast is relatively secure, since China shows no inclination for adventures into the steppes, and no other power is in a position to challenge Russia from that direction. But in the west, in Ukraine and in the Caucasus, the Russian retreat has been stunning.

 

We need to remember why Muscovy expanded in the first place. Having dealt with the Mongols, the Russians had two strategic interests. Their most immediate was to secure their western borders by absorbing Lithuania and anchoring Russia as far west on the North European Plain as possible. Their second strategic interest was to secure Russia’s southeastern frontier against potential threats from the steppes by absorbing Central Asia as well as Ukraine. Without that, Muscovy could not withstand a thrust from either direction, let alone from both directions at once.

It can be said that no one intends to invade Russia. From the Russian point of view, history is filled with dramatic changes of intention, particularly in the West. The unthinkable occurs to Russia once or twice a century. In its current configuration, Russia cannot hope to survive whatever surprises are coming in the 21st century. Muscovy was offensive because it did not have a good defensive option. The same is true of Russia. Given the fact that a Western alliance, NATO, is speaking seriously of establishing a dominant presence in Ukraine and in the Caucasus — and has already established a presence in the Baltics, forcing Russia far back into the widening triangle, with its southern flank potentially exposed to Ukraine as a NATO member — the Russians must view their position as dire. As with Napoleon, Wilhelm and Hitler, the initiative is in the hands of others. For the Russians, the strategic imperative is to eliminate that initiative or, if that is impossible, anchor Russia as firmly as possible on geographical barriers, concentrating all available force on the North European Plain without overextension.

 

Unlike countries such as China, Iran and the United States, Russia has not achieved its strategic geopolitical imperatives. On the contrary, it has retreated from them:

• Russia does hold the northern Caucasus, but it no longer boasts a deep penetration of the mountains, including Georgia and Armenia. Without those territories Russia cannot consider this flank secure.
• Russia has lost its anchor in the mountains and deserts of Central Asia and so cannot actively block or disrupt — or even well monitor — any developments to its deep south that could threaten its security.
• Russia retains Siberia, but because of the climatic and geographic hostility of the region it is almost a wash in terms of security (it certainly is economically).
• Russia’s loss of Ukraine and Moldova allows both the intrusion of other powers and the potential rise of a Ukrainian rival on its very doorstep. Powers behind the Carpathians are especially positioned to take advantage of this political geography.
• The Baltic states have re-established their independence, and all three are east and north of the Baltic-Carpathian line (the final defensive line on the North European Plain). Their presence in a hostile alliance is unacceptable. Neither is an independent or even neutral Belarus (also on the wrong side of that line).

Broader goals, such as having a port not blocked by straits controlled by other countries, could have been pursued by the Soviets. Today such goals are far out of Russian reach. From the Russian point of view, creating a sphere of influence that would return Russia to its relatively defensible imperial boundaries is imperative.

 

Obviously, forces in the peripheral countries as well as great powers outside the region will resist. For them, a weak and vulnerable Russia is preferable, since a strong and secure one develops other appetites that could see Russia pushing along vectors such as through the Skagerrak toward the North Sea, through the Turkish Straits toward the Mediterranean and through La Perouse Strait toward Japan and beyond.

 

Russia’s essential strategic problem is this: It is geopolitically unstable. The Russian Empire and Soviet Union were never genuinely secure. One problem was theNorth European Plain. But another problem, very real and hard to solve, was access to the global trading system via oceans. And behind this was Russia’s essential economic weakness due to its size and lack of ability to transport agricultural produce throughout the country. No matter how much national will it has, Russia’s inherently insufficient infrastructure constantly weakens its internal cohesion.

 

Russia must dominate the Eurasian heartland. When it does, it must want more. The more it wants the more it must face its internal economic weakness and social instability, which cannot support its ambitions. Then the Russian Federation must contract. This cycle has nothing to do with Russian ideology or character. It has everything to do with geography, which in turn generates ideologies and shapes character. Russia is Russia and must face its permanent struggle.

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The Caucasus Emirate

18. April 2010 by admin.

The Caucasus Emirate

April 15, 2010

 

 

By Scott Stewart and Ben West

On April 9, a woman armed with a pistol and with explosives strapped to her body approached a group of police officers in the northern Caucasus village of Ekazhevo, in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia. The police officers were preparing to launch an operation to kill or capture militants in the area. The woman shot and wounded one of the officers, at which point other officers drew their weapons and shot the woman. As she fell to the ground, the suicide vest she was wearing detonated. The woman was killed and the man she wounded, the head of the of the Russian Interior Ministry’s local office, was rushed to the hospital where he died from his wounds.

Such incidents are regular occurrences in Russia’s southernmost republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia. These five republics are home to fundamentalist separatist insurgencies that carry out regular attacks against security forces and government officials through the use of suicide bombers, vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), armed assaults and targeted assassinations. However, we have noted a change in the operational tempo of militants in the region. So far in 2010, militants have carried out 23 attacks in the Caucasus, killing at least 34 people — a notable increase over the eight attacks that killed 17 people in the region during the same period last year. These militants have also returned to attacking the far enemy in Moscow and not just the near enemy in the Caucasus.History of Activity

 

Over the past year, in addition to the weekly attacks we expect to see in the region (such as the one described above), a group calling itself the Caucasus Emirate has claimed five significant attacks against larger targets and, notably, ventured outside of the northern Caucasus region. The first of these attacks was a suicide VBIED bombing that seriously wounded Ingushetia’s president, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, and killed several members of his protective detail in June 2009 as Yekurov was traveling along a predictable route in a motorcade from his residence to his office. Then in August of that year, CE militants claimed responsibility for an explosion at the Siberian Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric dam that flooded the engine room, disabled turbines, wrecked equipment and killed 74 people (the structure of the dam was not affected). In November 2009, the group claimed responsibility for assassinating an Orthodox priest in Moscow and for detonating a bomb that targeted a high-speed train called the Nevsky Express that runs between Moscow and St. Petersburg and killing 30 people. Its most recent attack outside of the Caucasus occurred on March 29, 2010, when two female suicide bombers detonated IEDs in Moscow’s underground rail system during morning rush hour, killing 40 people.

The group’s claim of responsibility for the hydroelectric dam was, by all accounts, a phony one. At the time, geo politics experts were not convinced at all that the high level of damage they saw in images of the site could be brought about by a very large IED, much less a single anti-tank mine, which is what the Caucasus Emirate claimed it used in the attack. Media sources in Russia later confirmed that the explosion was caused by age, neglect and failing systems and not a militant attack, confirming our original assessment. While the Caucasus Emirate had emerged on our radar as early as summer 2009, we were dubious of its capabilities given this apparent false claim. However, while the claim of responsibility for the dam attack was bogus, sources in Russia reports that the group was indeed responsible for the other attacks described above.

 So, although we were initially skeptical about the Caucasus Emirate, the fact that the group has claimed several attacks that our Russian sources tell us it indeed carried out indicates that it is time to seriously examine the group and its leadership.

Russian security forces, with the assistance of pro-Moscow regional leaders such as Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov and Ingush President Yunus-bek Yevkurov, are constantly putting pressure on militant networks in the region. Raids on militant hideouts occur weekly, and after major attacks (such as the assassination attempt against Yevkurov or the Moscow metro bombings), security forces typically respond with fierce raids on militant positions that result in the arrests or deaths of militant leaders, among others. Chechen militant leaders such as Shamil Basayev (who claimed responsibility for the attack that killed pro-Russian Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov and the Beslan school siege, both in 2004) was killed by Russian forces in 2006. Before Basayev, Ibn Al-Khattab (who was widely suspected of being responsible for the 1999 apartment bombings in Russia) was killed by the Russian Federal Security Service in a 2002. The deaths of Basayev, Khattab and many others like them have fractured the militant movement in the Caucasus, but may also have prompted its remnants to join up under the Caucasus Emirate umbrella.

It is impressive that in the face of heavy Russian pressure, the Caucasus Emirate not only has continued operations but also has increased its operational tempo, all the while capitalizing on the attacks with public announcements claiming responsibility and criticizing the Russian counterterrorism response. Between March 29 and April 9, the group coordinated three different attacks involving five suicide operatives (three of which were female) in Moscow, Dagestan and Ingushetia. This is a substantial feat indicating that the Caucasus Emirate can manage several different teams of attackers and influence when they strike their targets.

 Doku Umarov: A Charismatic (and Resilient) Leader

 

The Caucasus Emirate was created and is led by Doku Umarov, a seasoned veteran of both the first and second Chechen wars in which he was in charge of his own battalion. By 2006, Umarov had become the self-proclaimed president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, an unrecognized secessionist government of Chechnya. He has been declared dead at least six times by fellow militants as well as Chechen and Russian authorities, most recently in June 2009. Yet he continues to appear in videos claiming attacks against Russian targets, including a video dated March 29, 2010, in which he claimed responsibility for the Moscow metro attacks.

In October 2007, Umarov expanded his following by declaring the formation of the Caucasus Emirate as the successor to the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and appointing himself emir, or leader. In his statement marking the formation of the Caucasus Emirate, Umarov rejected the laws and borders of the Russian state and called for the Caucasus region to recognize the new emirate as the rightful power and adopt Shariah. The new emirate expanded far beyond his original mandate of Chechnya into Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia and other predominantly Muslim areas farther to the north. He called for the creation of an Islamic power that would not acknowledge the current boundaries of nation-states. Umarov also clearly indicated that the formation of this emirate could not be done peacefully. He called for the “Islamic” entity to be created by forcefully driving out Russian troops. The policy of physically removing one political entity in order to establish an Islamic emirate makes the Caucasus Emirate a jihadist group.

Later, in April 2009, Umarov released another statement in which he justified attacks against Russian civilians (civilians in the Caucasus were largely deemed off-limits by virtually all organized militant groups) and called for more attacks in Russian territory outside of the Caucasus. We saw this policy start to take shape with the November 2009 assassination of Daniil Sysoev, the Orthodox priest murdered at his home in Moscow for allegedly “defaming Islam,” and continue with the train bombing later that month and the Moscow metro bombing in March 2010.

Umarov has made it clear that he is the leader of the Caucasus Emirate and, given the effectiveness of its attacks on Russian soil outside of the Caucasus, Russian authorities are rightfully concerned about the group. Clearly, however, there is more there than just Umarov.

 

A Confederacy of Militant Groups

 

The Caucasus Emirate appears to be an umbrella group for many regional militant groups spawned during the second Chechen war (1999-2009). Myriad groups formed under militant commanders, waged attacks (sometimes coordinated with others, sometimes not) against Russian troops and saw their leaders die and get replaced time and again. Some groups disappeared altogether, some opted for political reconciliation and gave up their militant tactics and some produced leaders like the Kadyrovs who formed the current Chechen government. All in all, the larger and more organized Islamist groups seen in the first and second Chechen wars are now broken and weak, their remnants possibly consolidated within Umarov’s Caucasus Emirate.

For example, the militant group Riyadus Salihin, founded by Basayev, seems to have been folded into the Caucasus Emirate. Umarov himself issued a statement confirming the union in April 2009. When Basayev was killed in 2006, he was serving as vice president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria under Umarov. Significantly, Riyadus Salihin brought Basayev together with Pavel Kosolapov, an ethnic Russian soldier who switched sides during the second Chechen war and converted to Islam. Kosolapov is suspected of being an expert bombmaker and is thought to have made the explosive device used in the November 2009 Moscow-St. Petersburg train attack (which was similar to an August 2007 attack in the same location that used the same amount and type of explosive material) as well as devices employed in the March 2010 Moscow metro attack.

The advantage of having an operative such as Kosolapov working for the Caucasus Emirate cannot be understated. Not only does he apparently have excellent bombmaking tradecraft, but he also served in the Russian military, which means he has deep insight into how the forces working against the Caucasus Emirate operate. The fact that Kosolapov is an ethnic Russian also means that the Caucasus Emirate has an operator who is able to more aptly navigate centers such as Moscow or St. Petersburg, unlike some of his Caucasian colleagues. While Kosolapov is being sought by virtually every law enforcement agency in Russia, altering his appearance may help him evade the dragnet.

 In addition to inheriting Kosolapov and Riyadus Salihin, the Caucasus Emirate also appears to have acquired the Dagestani militant group, Shariat Jamaat, one of the oldest Islamist militant groups fighting in Dagestan. In 2007, a spokesman for the group told a Radio Free Europe interviewer that its fighters had pledged allegiance to Doku Umarov and the Caucasus Emirate. Violent attacks have continued apace, with the last attack in Dagestan conducted as recently as March 31, a complex operation that used a follow-on suicide attacker to ensure the death of authorities responding to an initial blast. In all, nine police officers were killed in the attack, including a senior police commander, which occurred just two days after the Moscow metro attacks. The March 31 attack was only the second instance of a suicide VBIED being used in Dagestan, the first occurring in January 2010. This tactic of using a secondary IED to attack first responders is fairly common in many parts of the world, but it is not normally seen in Dagestan. The timing of the attack so close to the Moscow metro bombing and the emergence of VBIEDs in Dagestan opens the possibility that the proliferation of this tactic may be linked to the expansion of the Caucasus Emirate.

In the Crosshairs

 

The Caucasus Emirate appears to have managed to centralize (or at least take credit for) the efforts of previously disparate militant groups throughout the Caucasus. Russia announced that it would start withdrawing troops from Chechnya in April 2009, but some 20,000 Russian troops remain in the region, and the start of withdrawal has likely led to a resurgence in local militant activity. Ultimately, Moscow will have to live with the threat, but it will work hard to ensure that militant groups stay as fragmented and weak as possible. While the Caucasus Emirate seems to demonstrate a relatively high level of organization, as well as an ability to strike at Russia’s heartland, STRATFOR sources say Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was outraged by the Moscow attacks. This suggests that people will be held accountable for the lapse in security in Moscow and that retribution will be sought in the Caucasus.

Umarov’s founding statement for the Caucasus Emirate, in which he called for the region to recognize the emirate as the rightful regional power and adopt Shariah, marked a shift from the motives of many previous militant leaders and groups, which were more nationalistic than jihadist. This trend of regional militants becoming more jihadist in their outlook increases the likelihood that they will forge substantial links with transnational jihadists such as al Qaeda — indeed, our Russian sources report that there are connections between the group and high-profile jihadists like Ilyas Kashmiri.

However, this alignment with transnational jihadists comes with a price. It could serve to distance the Caucasus Emirate from the general population, which practices a more moderate form of Islam (Sufi). This could help Moscow isolate and neutralize members of the Caucasus Emirate. Indeed, key individuals in the group such as Umarov and Kosolapov are operating in a very hostile environment and can name many of their predecessors who met their ends fighting the Russians. Both of these men have survived so far, but having prodded Moscow so provocatively, they are likely living on borrowed time.

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Kyrgyzstan and the Russian Resurgence

18. April 2010 by admin.

Kyrgyzstan and the Russian Resurgence

April 13, 2010

By Lauren GoodrichThis past week saw another key success in Russia’s resurgence in former Soviet territory when pro-Russian forces took control of Kyrgyzstan.The Kyrgyz revolution was quick and intense. Within 24 hours, protests that had been simmering for months spun into countrywide riots as the president fled and a replacement government took control. The manner in which every piece necessary to exchange one government for another fell into place in such a short period discredits arguments that this was a spontaneous uprising of the people in response to unsatisfactory economic conditions. Instead, this revolution appears prearranged.A Prearranged RevolutionOpposition forces in Kyrgyzstan have long held protests, especially since the Tulip Revolution in 2005 that brought recently ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to power. But various opposition groupings never were capable of pulling off such a full revolution — until Russia became involved.In the weeks before the revolution, select Kyrgyz opposition members visited Moscow to meet with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. International observers have noticed the pervasive, noticeable presence of Russia’s Federal Security Service on the ground during the crisis, and Moscow readied 150 elite Russian paratroopers the day after the revolution to fly into Russian bases in Kyrgyzstan. As the dust began to settle, Russia endorsed the still-coalescing government.There are quite a few reasons why Russia would target a country nearly 600 miles from its borders (and nearly 1,900 miles from capital to capital), though Kyrgyzstan itself is not much of a prize. The country has no economy or strategic resources to speak of and is highly dependent on all its neighbors for foodstuffs and energy. But it does have a valuable geographic location.Central Asia largely comprises a massive steppe of more than a million square miles, making the region easy to invade. The one major geographic feature other than the steppe are the Tien Shan mountains, a range that divides Central Asia from South Asia and China. Nestled within these mountains is the Fergana Valley, home to most of Central Asia’s population due to its arable land and the protection afforded by the mountains. The Fergana Valley is the core of Central Asia.

To prevent this core from consolidating into the power center of the region, the Soviets sliced up the Fergana Valley between three countries. Uzbekistan holds the valley floor, Tajikistan the entrance to the valley and Kyrgyzstan the highlands surrounding the valley. Kyrgyzstan lacks the economically valuable parts of the valley, but it does benefit from encircling it. Control of Kyrgyzstan equals control of the valley, and hence of Central Asia’s core.Moreover, the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek is only 120 miles from Kazakhstan’s largest city (and historic and economic capital), Almaty. The Kyrgyz location in the Tien Shan also gives Kyrgyzstan the ability to monitor Chinese moves in the region. And its highlands also overlook China’s Tarim Basin, part of the contentious Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.Given its strategic location, control of Kyrgyzstan offers the ability to pressure Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China. Kyrgyzstan is thus a critical piece in Russia’s overall plan to resurge into its former Soviet sphere.

The Russian Resurgence

Russia’s resurgence is a function of its extreme geographic vulnerability. Russia lacks definable geographic barriers between it and other regional powers. The Russian core is the swath of land from Moscow down into the breadbasket of the Volga region. In medieval days, this area was known as Muscovy. It has no rivers, oceans or mountains demarcating its borders. Its only real domestic defenses are its inhospitable weather and dense forests. This led to a history of endless invasions, including depredations by everyone from Mongol hordes to Teutonic knights to the Nazis.To counter this inherent indefensibility, Russia historically has adopted the principle of expansion. Russia thus has continually sought to expand far enough to anchor its power in a definable geographic barrier — like a mountain chain — or to expand far enough to create a buffer between itself and other regional powers. This objective of expansion has been the key to Russia’s national security and its ability to survive. Each Russian leader has understood this. Ivan the Terrible expanded southwest into the Ukrainian marshlands, Catherine the Great into the Central Asian steppe and the Tien Shan and the Soviet Union into much of Eastern and Central Europe.Russia’s expansion has been in four strategic directions. The first is to the north and northeast to hold the protection offered by the Ural Mountains. This strategy is more of a “just-in-case” expansion. Thus, in the event Moscow should ever fall, Russia can take refuge in the Urals and prepare for a future resurgence. Stalin used this strategy in World War II when he relocated many of Russia’s industrial towns to Ural territory to protect them from the Nazi invasion.The second is to the west toward the Carpathians and across the North European Plain. Holding the land up to the Carpathians — traditionally including Ukraine, Moldova and parts of Romania — creates an anchor in Europe with which to protect Russia from the southwest. Meanwhile, the North European Plain is the one of the most indefensible routes into Russia, offering Russia no buffer. Russia’s objective has been to penetrate as deep into the plain as possible, making the sheer distance needed to travel across it toward Russia a challenge for potential invaders.The third direction is south to the Caucasus. This involves holding both the Greater and Lesser Caucasus mountain ranges, creating a tough geographic barrier between Russia and regional powers Turkey and Iran. It also means controlling Russia’s Muslim regions (like Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan), as well as Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.The fourth is to the east and southeast into Siberia and Central Asia. The Tien Shan mountains are the only geographic barrier between the Russian core and Asia; the Central Asian steppe is, as its name implies, flat until it hits Kyrgyzstan’s mountains.With the exception of the North European Plain, Russia’s expansion strategy focuses on the importance of mountains — the Carpathians, the Caucasus and Tien Shan — as geographic barriers. Holding the land up to these definable barriers is part of Russia’s greater strategy, without which Russia is vulnerable and weak.The Russia of the Soviet era attained these goals. It held the lands up to these mountain barriers and controlled the North European Plain all the way to the West German border. But its hold on these anchors faltered with the fall of the Soviet Union. This collapse began when Moscow lost control over the fourteen other states of the Soviet Union. The Soviet disintegration did not guarantee, of course, that Russia would not re-emerge in another form. The West — and the United States in particular — thus saw the end of the Cold War as an opportunity to ensure that Russia would never re-emerge as the great Eurasian hegemon.To do this, the United States began poaching among the states between Russia and its geographic barriers, taking them out of the Russian sphere in a process that ultimately would see Russian influence contained inside the borders of Russia proper. To this end, Washington sought to expand its influence in the countries surrounding Russia. This began with the expansion of the U.S. military club, NATO, into the Baltic states in 2004. This literally put the West on Russia’s doorstep (at their nearest point, the Baltics are less than 100 miles from St. Petersburg) on one of Russia’s weakest points on the North European Plain.Washington next encouraged pro-American and pro-Western democratic movements in the former Soviet republics. These were the so-called “color revolutions,” which began in Georgia in 2003 and moved on to Ukraine in 2004 and Kyrgyzstan in 2005. This amputated Russia’s three mountain anchors.The Orange Revolution in Ukraine proved a breaking point in U.S.-Russian relations, however. At that point, Moscow recognized that the United States was seeking to cripple Russia permanently. After Ukraine turned orange, Russia began to organize a response.

The Window of Opportunity

Russia received a golden opportunity to push back on U.S. influence in the former Soviet republics and redefine the region thanks to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the crisis with Iran. Its focus on the Islamic world has left Washington with a limited ability to continue picking away at the former Soviet space or to counter any Russian responses to Western influence. Moscow knows Washington won’t stay fixated on the Islamic world for much longer, which is why Russia has accelerated its efforts to reverse Western influence in the former Soviet sphere and guarantee Russian national security.In the past few years, Russia has worked to roll back Western influence in the former Soviet sphere country by country. Moscow has scored a number of major successes in 2010. In January, Moscow signed a customs union agreement to economically reintegrate Russia with Kazakhstan and Belarus. Also in January, a pro-Russian government was elected in Ukraine. And now, a pro-Russian government has taken power in Kyrgyzstan.The last of these countries is an important milestone for Moscow, given that Russia does not even border Kyrgyzstan. This indicates Moscow must be secure in its control of territory from the Russian core across the Central Asian Steppe.As it seeks to roll back Western influence, Russia has tested a handful of tools in each of the former Soviet republics. These have included political pressure, social instability, economic weight, energy connections, security services and direct military intervention. Thus far, the pressure brought on by its energy connections — as seen in Ukraine and Lithuania — has proved most useful. Russia has used the cutoffs of supplies to hurt the countries and garner a reaction from Europe against these states. The use of direct military intervention — as seen in Georgia — also has proved successful, with Russia now holding a third of that country’s land. Political pressure in Belarus and Kazakhstan has pushed the countries into signing the aforementioned customs union. And now with Kyrgyzstan, Russia has proved willing to take a page from the U.S. playbook and spark a revolution along the lines of the pro-Western color revolutions. Russian strategy has been tailor-made for each country, taking into account their differences to put them into Moscow’s pocket — or at least make them more pragmatic toward Russia.Thus far, Russia has nearly returned to its mountain anchors on each side, though it has yet to sew up the North European Plain. And this leaves a much stronger Russia for the United States to contend with when Washington does return its gaze to Eurasia.

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