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International Affairs:
A Russian Journal
June 1999
External Challenges to Russia’s National Interests
By A. Gousher *
The last decade of the twentieth century brought Russia and her people the trials not every state and nation were destined to live through. The profound and extensive systems crisis that has been unfolding in the last seven years did a lot of damage to the country. It brought the state and society in front of a dramatic choice; nearly all indices that determine the state/society system’s viability reached critical value; in some respects they dropped even lower.
The individual remains unprotected in face of numerous threats to his freedoms, property, and private life. This is another dramatic feature of the time. Society is rapidly polarizing. The state is growing weaker, its power functions transferred to the regions on an ever wider scale. There they are distorted by corrupted officials and criminal structures. The process has been accelerating since August 1998 when the country experienced the harshest financial and economic crisis brought about by all the governments that had been working before Yevgenii Primakov became Premier. The problem of choosing the ways and means to stem the negative processes and strengthen national security came to the fore.
As a result of seven years Russia’s national security was put to test and experienced pressure from all sides.
In the political sphere this menace is created by the growing omnipotence of the ruling regional and federal elites that has nothing to do with the principles of a democratic state; lowering cultural and intellectual potential of society and the powers; hypertrophied changes in the system of values-material and personal gain determine world outlook and the mode of action while spiritual and social considerations are used to screen unlimited arbitrariness; growing danger to the state’s territorial integrity caused by the challenges of aggressive separatism and the fertile soil for regional and national separatism plowed by the state; continued destructive impact of crime and corruption in the state apparatus; loss by the federal powers of instruments of control over the developments; continued external pressure on Russia aimed at channeling domestic and foreign political course in the desired direction.
In the economic sphere the menace is created by continued economic crisis; lack of a consistent economic policy based on the national material, intellectual, and spiritual resources; the country’s deindustrialization; gradual loss of the intellectual, scientific-technological, and industrial potential; increasing fuel and raw-material specialization in the system of world economic relations; continued unjust and criminal redistribution of national wealth created by many generations; increasing dependence on foreign loans, credits, and investments, and also on negative phenomena and processes on foreign financial and securities markets.
In the military sphere the menace is created by continued military threat from the West and NATO that are out to oust Russia from the regions of its traditional presence and influence; lowering defense potential caused by the continued crisis in the armed forces and decreased combat worthiness of the Russian army, widening gap in the correlation of forces between the Russian army and the armies of potential adversaries, moral and physical depletion of weapons and materiel, and crisis in the country’s military-industrial complex; seats of military-political tension and armed conflicts directly at Russia’s borders; expansion of NATO’s responsibility zone towards Russia’s western frontiers which places the country with a weakened and disorganized army face to face with this powerful military-political alliance that was set up, from the very beginning, to back up with force the Western countries’ strategic interests.
At the official level, key documents such as the national security conception, the basic propositions of the military doctrine, and others, state that there is no immediate threat of a global nuclear war and less, or even no, danger of a large-scale aggression against the Russian Federation.
Today, there is a tendency to associate external threats to Russia’s national security with the regional processes and developments in the military-technical sphere. There can be various attitudes to such statements.
On the one hand, there is a natural desire to leave behind the state of permanent mobilization readiness for a war at all fronts and concentrate on peaceful creative efforts. It is all the more natural since the country’s defense potential is weakened and there are no means to promptly recover it.
On the other hand, supreme political and military leaders should be well aware of external threats, their scale, scope, and the degree of danger. It is signally important for the country’s leadership to realistically assess the sum-total of external threats, take account of them in its policy and quietly, without ado, purposefully and consistently take adequate measures to maintain the country’s defense capability at the required level to ensure its security.
This is what is open to doubts. They intensify every time when ideas are spawned on the top level and made public which disorientate the country: either time has come to discard weapons and fraternize with the strategic adversaries or hold weapons tighter lest zealous perpetrators take them away and liquidate before it is announced that the idea was “misunderstood” or was an error.
Just as 1998 was drawing to its end the United States and Great Britain, outside the UN Security Council sanctions, deal missile and bomb blow at Iraq. Any impartial expert would agree that the eight years of continuous monitoring of Iraqi territory and objects by a UN special commission to identify facts or even signs of efforts to create mass destruction weapon are enough to turn the country inside out. One should recall that back in 1983 Washington in principle decided that military force could be used to protect the US strategic interests in the Middle East and Africa. Iran fell first victim to it; later similar scenarios were tested in Iraq, the Balkans and, lately, in Sudan, Afghanistan, and, once more, in Iraq. One cannot but see that the ideas and mechanisms of protection of the so-called vital interests of the United States have acquired wider scopes. It seems that time has come to recognize that in the temporary context of the unipolar world each case of the US and their closest allies use of military force to settle their political problems is a blow at Russia’s security.
The major geopolitical threat to Russia’s security and national sovereignty is rooted in the stereotype widespread in the West, the United States in the first place: Russia as the legal heir to the Soviet Union defeated in the Cold War should not be regarded as a serious subject of world politics and international law on her own right.
In his notorious book Great Chessboard Mr. Brzezinski described Russia as small change for American strategy in the world. He suggested to divide the still developing Russian state into at least three parts relatively independent of each other. This is probably the next strategic task (not yet formulated in practical terms) is being nurtured by the ideologists and strategists of American geopolitics.
When talking about the geopolitical threats to Russia one cannot ignore the American geopolitical conception of a new world order. These ideas served the foundation for the Strategy of US National Security. The document outlined the spheres of responsibility of the US national security bodies, namely, global control over the elements of key importance for the transnational capital: unhampered access to resources of other countries, including their natural and human resources, to their markets, and elimination of barriers for movement and reproduction of national capital. Obviously, Russia and the near abroad are the primary goals. An increasing number of American politicians is making no secret of it.
From the official point of view, external threats prepared and cooked inside the country when the Soviet Union fell apart carry much more danger. The practicism of the official stand is understandable and acceptable: the more scaring global threats are far away, beyond the horizon while the regional problems are too close for comfort. The Taliban was prepared to cross the CIS border; military tension in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone is mounting claiming the lives of Russian peacekeepers; instability in the Northern Caucasus is reaching the boiling point.
In what way do the military conflicts outside Russia, on CIS territory threaten Russia’s security and interests?
In fact, each and every such conflict demands a government decision: Either to take an active part in various forms, including the use of force, to stem military actions, stabilize the situation, and create a basis for a political settlement. More often than not Russia is facing the danger of being involved into the armed quarrels of the conflicting sides despite the fact that the Russian contingents stationed in the conflict areas (Tajikistan, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, the Dniester region) are peacekeeping forces. Russia alone is shouldering the related financial burden and loss of life. At the same time she is accused of being continent and unwilling to “punish” the other side, etc.
The experience of the armed conflicts on the post-Soviet territory has shown that their negative repercussions (refugees, arms traffic, terror, etc.) engulf Russia piling up problems for the powers at all levels and society as a whole. As a result of hasty sanctions in the CIS, economic and human ties are disrupted, the Russians in the conflict zones have to bear the brunt of this. In her attempt to separate the conflicting sides showing preference to none Russia finds herself in difficult situations: she has to bear displeasure, pressure, blackmail, etc. Obviously, this narrows down her possibilities to maneuver in the political and other spheres of her relations with the CIS, and not only with it. Quite often her national interests depend on the conflicting sides or personal ambitions of regional leaders.
More often than not the military conflicts in the CIS close to the Russian borders suck in other countries in an open or latent form, thus turning into potential seats of international military-political problems. The conflict zones attract all sorts of extremist organizations and groups, and professional hirelings. As they continue smoldering such conflicts hatch professional mercenaries in increasing numbers. With time they shed an ability to do anything except fighting: in this way they become a source of danger and are present in Russia sometimes in Chechnya, sometimes in Daghestan.
All domestic armed conflicts in the CIS countries were triggered by ethnic contradictions. With time they acquired other conflict factors: economic interests of the warring sides and third countries, struggle around the problem of sovereignty for self-styled states and their relations with the outside world. Today, all self-proclaimed republics (South Ossetia being the only exception) have armed forces of their own, law-enforcement structures, and other attributes of statehood. The main thing is: their populations have imbibed the idea of sovereignty and are prepared to fight for it. This, and long duration of the conflicts makes it an extremely hard political task to settle them within the principle of territorial integrity of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova. Russia cannot stick to her peacekeeping role infinitely long, tie down her contingents of troops in the crisis zones or maintaining relative peace there by different means. Neither can she withdraw from the zones and renounce her mediatory role before the conflicting sides settle their relationships and there are guarantees that bloodshed will not be resumed.
Little by little the armed conflicts in the former Soviet Union came into the focus of international policy. International organizations (UN, OSCE, Islamic Conference, and others) are being drawn into their settlement on a wider scale. For the reasons described above Russia is limited in the ways and means of settling the conflicts. This is gradually increases the role of international efforts and third countries. There is a negative side to this process from the Russian point of view: third countries are invited on the initiative of the leaders of the CIS countries on the territories of which these conflicts are raging: Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and partly Tajikistan.
Obviously, there is a desire to squeeze Russia out from the conflict zones (Tajikistan is the only exception) because she failed to justify their hopes, and to “come down hard on the rebels” by alien forces—Turkish in Nagornyi Karabakh, American, NATO or even Ukrainian (in Abkhazia and the Dniester region). From time to time the shade of the Bosnia variant covers the CIS crisis zones. Obviously, if realized this variant will endanger Russia’s long-term national interests and security. This will deal the final blow at the CIS collective security system even if it existed mainly on paper, some of the Commonwealth countries will demonstratively move under the Western nuclear umbrella of security and try to join NATO. This will tip the geopolitical and geostrategic balance of forces around Russia not in her favor.
This is an open secret that Azerbaijanian territory and some of its political movements were used, within the general effort, to support Chechen separatism before the war, during the war, and after the war in Chechnya. Part of the Ukrainian and Baltic political elites have been and are in two minds about the Chechen problem. In any case, they are known to ignore the facts about their citizens fighting in Chechnya on the Chechen side. Georgia maintains regular contacts with Chechen separatist leaders to address geopolitical and technical tasks behind Moscow’s back. There are attempts to put pressure on Moscow in the Abkhazian problem and the questions related to Caspian oil transportation to the domestic markets.
Latent political and economic lobbying of the interests of the countries of near abroad in Russia’s legislative and executive powers spells serious interference in her domestic affairs. Certain signs indicate that the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan are most actively involved. It seems that nobody in Russia pays particular attention to these activities and this is wrong. It happens quite often that the interests of the Meskheti Turks, Turkish Kurds, Azerbaijanian patrons of criminalized retail trade in fruits and vegetables in Russia or Georgian alcohol mafia and heads of criminal groups are lobbied in Russia with great success. The interests of the Russian citizens are often neglected.
Across the CIS political and economic reforms have reached different levels: this interferes with integration. The longer the Commonwealth exists the wider the gap will be. What is needed is serious and prolonged efforts to coordinate the sides’ aims, possibilities, and interests in promoting integration processes.
In some of the newly independent states the system of political power and hence the reforms is president-oriented. It is the president who exerts the decisive influence on the country’s foreign and domestic policy. In such cases the parliament’s role is limited to an approval of the president’s decisions. Up to certain limits authoritarian biases may promote the country’s interests. At the same time they may become a stumbling block on the road towards integration within an interstate alliance.
Integration plans within the CIS are threatened by efforts of the third countries (Western and transnational corporations in the first place) to establish control over the key industrial branches and infrastructure. With this aim in view they infiltrate extraction of natural resources, power production, metallurgy, communications, etc. through loans, credits and portfolio investments. They are striving for close commercial ties with national political elites and business communities. What is more, the West is pursuing a policy in relation to Russia and other CIS members of interfering with any means in the development and strengthening of integration and preventing the Commonwealth from turning into a Soviet Union of sorts.
The majority of the CIS members are actively cooperating with NATO, especially within the Partnership for Peace program; some of them are developing bilateral military cooperation with the West; the increasing number of their military are trained in the West. All this hampers integration advances in the CIS.
The above does not exhaust all menaces and threats on the road towards integration. Yet the above is enough to realize that Russia, which is shouldering the burden of the generator of integration initiatives, will have to overcome numerous barriers blocking the way towards the CIS becoming an efficient and closely knit interstate alliance. This will also require considerable material resources and money.
It is expected that in the twenty-first century the world will be shattered by large-scale geopolitical changes. The Soviet Union’s disintegration was just a beginning. Today, there are 190 states in the world, twice as much as in the beginning of the twentieth century; there are 21 new states that were not on the map when the USSR fell apart in 1991. Experts believe that intensive differentiation will continue: in the foreseeable future 400 “micronationalisms” will form their own states across the world. Russia will be part of the process unless society erects moral and physical barriers to contain the current destructive processes in policy, economy, and culture.
Endnotes
*: Anatolii Gousher is the Director General of the Center of Strategic Development. Back.