8. The PRESENT PROBLEMS and FUTURE TRANSFORMATION of POST-SOVIET SPACE

U.S.-Russian Partnership: Meeting the New Millennium

Sherman W. Garnett

INTRODUCTION
For those spoiling for a fight between the United States and Russia, post-Soviet space appears a likely battleground. It is an area of vital Russian interests, but it is not responding to Russia’s attempts to create an integrated commonwealth. The disintegrative trends create new opportunities for outside powers. Many in Russia fear that these openings will be exploited by those seeking to compete with Russian influence or exploit Russian weakness. Many see U.S. policies in Ukraine or the Caspian Basin in this light. Foreign Minister Primakov speaks of the need “to prevent external forces from playing up the contradictions within the CIS.”² President Yeltsin warns directly of expanding U.S. interests in the Caucasus: “As our interest is fading, the United States, on the contrary, is making moves to penetrate into this zone and is openly speaking about this.”³ A host of Russian analysts see U.S. and U.S.-inspired Western policies in the former USSR as supporting Russia’s neighbors at Russia’s expense. These suspicions of U.S. intentions in the former USSR are part of a broad-based assessment of the United States as seeking to preserve a unipolar system throughout the globe. Russian official statements, supported almost unanimously by the Russian foreign policy establishment, proclaim Russia opposed to the “dictate of one state,” “a unipolar world under the lead of the United States,” or “the entire world revolving around a single power.”⁴

U.S. official statements have occasionally taken Russia to task for its behavior in the former USSR, but they reject the notion that the United States wants to supplant or even compete with Russia. Senior officials states plainly that U.S. policy supports political and economic reforms and stability for the region as a whole, beginning with Russia. The clearest example of such pronouncements is Deputy Secretary Talbott’s statement on the former Soviet south: “For the last several years, it has been fashionable to proclaim, or at least to predict, a replay of the “Great Game” in the Caucasus and Central Asia. . . . What we want . . . is just the opposite; we want to see all responsible players in the Caucasus and Central Asia be winners.”⁵

However, outside the administration, there are plenty of voices who believe Russia still has imperial ambitions, welcome Moscow’s current troubles, and see the non-Russian states of the former USSR as the best bulwark against the reconstitution of an expansionist Russia. A conservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer, expressed these thoughts clearly in September 1998: “If Russia wants to renationalize industry, default on foreign loans and return to some kind of semi-command economy, why should we stand in the way? The result will be a weak, declining Russia. In the long run and in the coldest geopolitical terms, this is not a bad outcome for us…..[Russia’s economic choices] will produce a feeble Russia less able to rebuild its military, threaten its enemies and challenge the United States. Why is that bad for us?”⁶

Thus, for some in both capitals, the ideological foundations for a serious confrontation are in place, but on the ground, such confrontation is difficult to find. There are and will remain serious disagreements about Russian behavior within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The United States has refused to grant Russia a special right to manage conflicts in this zone, but it has not supported local resistance to Russian intervention, as it did in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. Washington continues to work closely with Moscow and Paris to mediate the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Washington has conducted an active military-to-military outreach to Russia’s neighbors, both directly and through NATO. This outreach has been especially intense with Ukraine and Uzbekistan. U.S. and NATO forces have participated in military exercises in Ukraine (both western Ukraine and Crimea), the Baltic region and Kazakhstan. However, these have been small-scale operations, inclusive of all interested parties (including Russia) and based on peace keeping or other scenarios so devoid of war-fighting relevance that observers have questioned their value as anything other than a photo opportunity demonstrating post-Cold War cooperation.⁷ A serious economic competition is underway for the exploitation and transport of energy from the Caspian Sea region, but U.S. and Russian companies are active as both partners and competitors in this region. Over the horizon, of course, attempted NATO enlargement to the Baltic states could cast a deep shadow over U.S.-Russian relations, but it is unlikely that NATO would even begin to consider such a move for several years. These basic trends and Russian ambivalence about them, however, suggest a basis for both continued friction and conflict.

However, there is also an alternative tradition of cooperation. The denuclearization of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus could not have been accomplished without close U.S.-Russian cooperation. In particular, given the complex Russian-Ukrainian agenda, it is likely that without U.S. help the nuclear weapons would still be in Kiev. The crucial beginnings of the demilitarization of Russian-Baltic relations could also not have been accomplished without third parties, including the United States. U.S.-Ukrainian strategic partnership has not proved the obstacle some in Moscow feared to normalizing relations. Indeed, the United States has encouraged this process and applauded 1997 bilateral agreements establishing the basic ground rules for bilateral cooperation and the division and basing of the Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine certainly tries to use its links to the United States and to other European countries to expand its leverage in its bilateral ties with Russia, but this is a normal fact of international relations. The United States is actively supporting multiple pipelines to transport oil and gas to the Caspian basin, yet its companies cooperate and compete normally with Russian firms, and the U.S. government supports a Russian pipeline as being part of the mix of options in the region.

This is not to gainsay the complications that lie ahead for either side. The two sides could well clash on issues where both have real stakes and the rules of the game are unclear. Both countries could become embroiled in conflicts started by regional actors, clients or partners, such as Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus or Ukraine and Russia forces stationed in the Crimea. The latter conflict would force the United States to define the real nature of its commitments to Ukraine. It is unlikely, however, that the United States and Russia would be the only interested parties under such scenarios. Turkey, Poland, and other NATO allies would certainly be significant actors in their own right.

These examples bring out an additional problem: though both the United States and Russia have spoken frequently about their interests and policies, neither side has a clear understanding of the intentions and commitments of the other in the event of a serious problem. Russia’s stated intentions for the former Soviet space are well known but they have rarely been followed up by clear and consistent actions. Meanwhile, the West continues to debate whether Russia has overcome its historical legacy of imperialism or is merely prevented by its financial and military weakness from acting as it would wish. The United States is everywhere in the post-Cold War world, is free with its advice and enjoys a profound advantage in economic and military power. Yet it has avoided making any legally binding security commitments to any post-Soviet state, though it has been one of the leading forces in having NATO do so for the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. In fact, despite sharp rhetoric and suspicion, Russian and the United States have frequently worked together, in tandem or at least in appreciation of the other’s interests and behavior in the former USSR.

The real problems ahead lie less in some outright strategic competition than in the escalation of problems already inherent in the region that could find the United States and Russia on opposite sides. What is urgently needed in both capitals is an understanding the trends at work in post-Soviet space and a sustained dialogue to clarify how each side sees these trends and is likely to respond to them. Assuming the innocence of one’s own interests and actions and the other side’s bad intentions is not a formula for stability, especially when so much else in U.S.-Russian relations is subject to the extraordinary pressures of Russia’s financial crisis, NATO enlargement, differences over key regional and security issues, and a dwindling interest on the part of key players in both capitals over the state of bilateral ties.

The transformation of post-Soviet space, both thoroughgoing and ongoing, greatly complicates both U.S. and Russian foreign policy. Both sides must formulate policies on a range of questions that simply did not exist a decade ago. Both sides must make still untested assumptions about the playing field itself and even the rules of the competition. The chance for accident and misunderstanding is higher in this part of the world than they are in regions where the patterns of international relations—even if these are highly competitive and conflicting—are long standing and well known. This essay will thus not be a review of potential U.S.-Russian troublespots. Rather, it concentrates on the broader question of transition in post-Soviet space, the breakdown of Russian policy there, the likely security challenges that will emerge from this space, and the long-term challenge posed by the links between this space and the rimlands of Eurasia. It is against this background that we can perhaps see the outlines for managing U.S.-Russian friction and encouraging U.S.-Russian cooperation in this changing region.

THE “REVERSAL OF POLARITY” IN CENTRAL EURASIA
The emergence of post-Soviet space as a problem in U.S.-Russian relations is a sign of an immense and still unfinished transformation of Central Eurasia. For those affected by it, this transformation is the geopolitical equivalent of the reversal of the earth’s polarity, a shift in the geological past of the earth’s magnetic field from the North Pole to the South Pole and back again. The magnetic north of Eurasia has been for decades a strong and assertive Moscow, exerting its influence over weaker and less dynamic neighbors. Power and influence flowed from the center of Eurasia outward. In just the past few years, this flow has been reversed. What is now occurring on post-Soviet space is the result of three interrelated trends:

Collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting contraction and transformation of Russian power. In historical terms, the Soviet Union disappeared overnight, leaving in its wake an economic, political, and security legacy that could not be sustained. Russia is experiencing an extended period of political, military, and economic contraction. The August 1998 financial collapse and resulting political crisis are but the latest in a series of indicators of Russian decline. The Russian GDP is roughly a third of that of the USSR in 1988. Before the current crisis, the Russian GDP had dropped to 16th place in the world, trailing behind Mexico and Brazil. Unfinished reforms have brought what Clifford Gati and Barry Ickes call a “virtual economy,” fueled by barter, tax arrears, and value-destroying industries pretending to contribute to the economy, but in fact destroying the state’s capacity to carry out its basic functions of providing for common defense and general welfare.⁸ There is no reason to believe that the latest financial crisis is permanent, but the poor fundamentals that are its foundation will take years to correct.

The Russian state is also experiencing a period of disorientation and weakness. No one should lament the dismantling of the old Soviet state’s oppressive systems of control and over regulation, yet the Russian state has yet to find the basic powers and instruments it needs to carry out normal functions. It cannot collect taxes or protect its citizens from crime and corruption; its institutions are unsettled. A strong Yeltsin masked many of these ills, but an increasingly weak and disconnected Yeltsin cannot. Power is no longer overconcentrated in the center but flows freely to regional, economic, and financial interests and other entities that have the makings of a more pluralistic and modern political system but that are now unharnessed from any mediating or regulatory mechanism. As a result, these entities grow fat and the state grows weak.

It is no surprise that the military and coercive power of such a state has declined sharply. No serious and sustained reform effort has touched the military or any of the power ministries. They remain overstaffed and underfinanced, declining from within. The incompetent performance of Russian military and internal troops in Chechnya provided a vivid display of what neglect, corruption, lack of training, and morale can accomplish in a few years to one of the world’s great armies.⁹ This military has embraced a wider role for nuclear weapons to compensate, yet decline in even these most privileged of military forces threatens to make the resulting force posture one of bluff or a dangerous gamble that decaying command and control and early warning systems can support it.

These economic, institutional, and military weaknesses feed off one another, producing an uneven and largely unsuccessful foreign policy. Russia has had its successes, of course, but it has largely been pushed to the periphery everywhere but on the territory of the former USSR. In a May 1998 speech to Russian diplomats, Yeltsin cited only “the success of the Russian policy in the peace settlement of the crisis in Iraq, as well as Russia’s firm and fruitful stance concerning the defense of the rights of Russian compatriots in Latvia.”¹⁰ Yet for every high profile Primakov intervention in Iraq, there are literally dozens of cases where Russia’s stated interests and policies are ignored—and not only by the United States.

For at least the next two decades, the problem will not be the restoration of an expansionist Russia, but rather Russian weakness and unpredictability. Russia will enjoy real advantages over its weaker neighbors, but these advantages will not be so overwhelming as to permit Russia to regather these lands into an integrated whole. It is difficult to imagine an isolationist Russia, but it is not difficult to imagine a Russia that has become less of a presence in the world, even in its own backyard, as a result of the internal political and economic burdens it faces.

Rise of a belt of independent but still weak states on the territory of the Former Soviet Union. These states have had an easier time obtaining and sustaining their sovereignty than many predicted. In the first place, these states have grown up in a breathing space created by the fall of the USSR and a constrained Russia. They have, of course, experienced external pressure on their political and economic decisions. The August 1998 devaluation of the Russian ruble, for example, has reverberated through the whole of the CIS, but that external pressure has not been so intense as to prevent the consolidation of sovereignty. Many commentators, inside and outside the former USSR, assumed far too much continuity in Russia’s ability to manage events in its neighborhood, even as Russia struggled with its own enormous political and economic challenges. They assumed a Russian-led CIS or some other action by Moscow would be crucial to shaping the contours of the post-Soviet space.¹¹ Time has shown that the CIS is an empty hat and that even where the partner is willing, as in Belarus, integration is no easy feat.

This analysis also focused on the obvious shortcomings of many of the new states. They lacked strong state traditions. They reminded many of Bosnia, with their mix of great ethnic diversity and the growing power of what President Bush called “suicidal nationalism.” The added problem that, in some cases, independence brought potential nuclear status created an additional incentive to fear the future of weak, nationalist-dominated states emerging from the rubble of the Soviet Union. Yet, with few exceptions, these states have managed to consolidate themselves. In most, state-building has not been in the hands of nationalists and populists but with representatives of the old Soviet regional nomenclature.

This group has a profound interest in maintaining the levers of control over the power and property that is now theirs. They are a powerful support for maintaining their new states. They have not created identical political systems. Some have embraced an authoritarian or semiauthoritarian model. Some function as full-fledged democracies, rotating presidents, and other officials through popular elections. However, nowhere—except in the Baltics—has the political and economic differentiation reached the point at which it has overcome endemic features of post-Soviet life, such as corruption, the decline of basic state services and the rule of the few outside the view and reach of the many.

The key problem posed by these states for post-Soviet space is not whether they survive but what they become. At present, they face enormous challenges to their prosperity and stability. State institutions are weak. Regimes are overpersonalized and, in many places, overcriminalized. Yet even in this weakened condition, they do not represent a transitional phenomenon that Russia must work to overcome but a permanent part of the geopolitical landscape. Some of these new states will be stable and ambitious in their own right. Others will be sources of instability. They will all go through regime transitions that will test the strength of their political institutions, especially the states that have chosen an authoritarian or semiauthoritarian model of executive power. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and perhaps others could be important energy suppliers to both markets in the West and, increasingly, to Asia. These new states will be active participants in new regional systems and sub-systems that will include Russia, the other new states, and outside powers.

Increased influence of the outside world on what was formerly a closed space. The rise of China, the enlargement of NATO and the European Union, and the expanding involvement of rimland states in the former USSR are powerful examples of this trend. There is, of course, nothing predestined about a particular policy or action by these states. NATO could choose not to enlarge further; China could continue to give Russian and local concerns a high priority as it becomes more active in Central Asia. What is impossible to reverse is the growing activity of these states on the territory of the former USSR, including Russia.

In addition, the collapse of the bipolar world has lifted constraints on the actions of the rimland states themselves. They are now freer to conduct their own affairs and pursue their own ambitions unconnected from the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. The expanding military capabilities of states such as India, Pakistan, China, Iran, and, most certainly, post-sanctions Iraq—especially their acquisition of WMD, advanced ballistic and cruise missiles and even increasing access to information technology and space assets—and growing regional ambitions cast lengthening shadows onto the adjacent sea lanes and deep into central Eurasia.

The outside world is also a source of larger forces known collectively as globalization. These forces include the spread of markets, the free flow of capital, and the exponential expansion of new technologies, especially information technologies. The market forces in particular can be cruel and come at a time when Russia and the rest of the former USSR are distracted and unready to sustain them.

The combination of these trends, especially the desires in Russia, the new states and the outside world for expanded interaction, is slowly creating a more interconnected political geography in Eurasia. New transportation, communication, and energy links are likely to develop in the next decades, linking formerly remote areas of the former USSR more directly to Europe, the Middle East, and South and East Asia. This interconnectedness will also change the strategic calculus that now shapes the assessments of Russia, the United States, China, and other key actors. The prospect of a new interconnectedness also suggests that, in some respects, the current preoccupation with a single post-Soviet space is a stage on the way to new political, economic, and security divisions in Eurasia.

RUSSIA’S POLICY SHIPWRECK
From the very beginning, Russia has responded to this radical transformation of its neighborhood with a simple idea: the former USSR had to be integrated economically, politically and militarily.¹² In December 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus created the CIS. In recent years, as the CIS has proven to be far less an institution than even skeptics imagined, the emphasis has shifted to special bilateral and multilateral arrangements with the most willing and important of these new states. However, there are several reasons why this strategy was doomed to failure.

The basic geopolitical shifts taking place were greater than most assumed in 1991. Those who expected the handful of leaders who had abolished the USSR to put a commonwealth together had misread the signs. The political equivalent of tectonic plates had moved. The rise of popular fronts in so many Union Republics showed that the desire for the devolution of power and even sovereignty had not been overcome. The center’s moral and physical power over the periphery was crucial to the old system. As both degenerated, the system came apart.

There were enormous differences of perspective between Moscow and the Non-Russian Capitals. Russian analysts and political leaders exaggerated what Yeltsin once called “the tremendous blood relationship” among the states of the former USSR.¹³ They assumed the long, common history and cultural interchange would serve as glue for political and economic ties. There is in fact a long, common history uniting these states, but it is simply not seen in the non-Russian states with the positive intensity with which it is viewed in Russia.

There are literally thousands of Russian decrees, leadership statements, interviews, and articles in the Russian press about the necessity of this approach and its deep accord with Russian interests, not only in the former USSR but in the wider world as well. A 1995 presidential decree, “On Affirming the Strategic Course of the Russian Federation with the Member States of the Commonwealth of Independent States,” states that Russia’s relations with the states of the CIS are “an important factor for including Russia in world political and economic structures.” It affirms the priority of Russia’s relationship with the states of the CIS precisely because “on the territory of the CIS all our main vital interests are concentrated.”¹⁴ In 1997, a leading Russian analyst, sketching out the elements of foreign policy consensus, described the the territory of the former USSR as “the main priority of Russian foreign and security policy, a zone of ‘special vital interests’ of Moscow.”¹⁵ The 1997 National Security Blueprint identifies “the formation on a voluntary basis of an integration-oriented association of CIS member states” as one of the main compnents of consolidating Russia’s position as “a great power.”¹⁶

Other states, especially Ukraine, saw the CIS as a tool of managing the transition from a single state to fifteen. Russia saw it as a way of reunifying what was fragmenting. For most of its advocates, the rules of this new community would be quite different from imperial or Soviet times, but Russia would still be the preeminent and driving force behind this new community. And this community, in turn, would be the base Russia needed to restore its lost status as a great power. However, this policy has been a dismal failure.

The non-Russian states did not reject integration. They recognized the importance of continuing a broad range of political, economic, and security ties. President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan in fact proposed his own version of an “Eurasian union” in 1994 and has been a leading proponent of closer ties with Russia.¹⁷ Yet, as Kazakh Foreign Minister Tokayev’s memoirs make plain, even the supporters of integration were stymied by what they wanted from integration and what they thought the Russians wanted. Tokayev records a February 1996 conversation with Primakov, who complains that the Western opposition to CIS integration is as mistaken as Soviet opposition to the European Community decades earlier. Both these process, Primakov argues, were not imposed by one country but grew out “objective processes.” Tokayev responded by noting that the United States had a clear basis for its suspicion, given Russia’s September 1995 decree on Russia’s policy toward the CIS. “If the Russian side presents integration first of all as a method of defending Russian interests in the “near abroad,” it is not difficult to predict negative reaction in the West and in the East.”¹⁸

The new leaders of the Non-Russian states, though often not nationalists, quickly understood what they had to gain by maintaining local sovereignty. They moved from a tertiary position or worse on the old Soviet food chain to the very top of what was admittedly a much smaller one.

Only Russia sees this space as an integrated whole. No other former Soviet republic is large enough, economically or geographically, to share this view. Russia’s closest partners in Central Asia want specific benefits for their region. They want Russia to stabilize Tajikistan and halt the spill-over from Afghanistan. They want Russia to provide economic benefits or help build military units and infrastructure. They want help balancing China’s growing influence. Armenia wants Russian support against Azerbaijan and Turkey. Belarus sees Russia as a key market for a declining economy. Each wants particular and regionally specific benefits from Russia as a part of each new agreement. None sees the need to focus outside their particular region. Belarusian President Lukashenka, outwardly the most outspoken advocate of integration, has made it plain, most recently in August 1998, that he would not send Belarusian troops to defend CIS borders in Central Asia in the event of a Taliban attack. Lukashenka stressed that Belarus will defend CIS interests “in the western direction, from Kiev to Riga.” ¹⁹

Most importantly, the states concerned, including Russia, are too weak, distracted and impoverished for there to be real integration of the model of the European Union. As a result, for many, integration could not be a truly common undertaking but a way to try to find additional resources from neighbors. Those outside Russia want Moscow to pay. Those leading the charge from Russia itself want access to key infrastructure and assets of the non-Russian CIS. The common undertakings agreed by the CIS—from border guards and air defense to customs regulations—have been unimplemented or shoddily carried through, for neither Russia nor the non-Russian CIS states have the money to pay for them. In the past several years, strong opposition has arisen within Russia to various integrationist schemes on “burden sharing” grounds. The opponents of the Russian-Belarusian union in early 1997 made a strong case that Russia could simply not afford subsidizing its economically weaker neighbor. ²⁰

As a result of these factors, the CIS has become a paper tiger, agreeing to literally thousands of forward-looking agreements on trade, monetary policy, borders and security, but implementing only very few. Ukraine, Turkmenistan, and others have consistently opted out of CIS decisions, but most of Russia’s partners have not bothered to dissent. They have simply agreed to decisions that they knew would never be implemented. What has emerged instead is a patchwork of relationships, with some states leaning toward Russia by choice (Armenia, Belarus, Tajikistan, Kazkahstan and Kyrgyzstan), some by necessity (Georgia) and still others trying to keep their distance (Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Moldova). Depending on the issue, these categories may change, but there are few issues in which these categories cannot be drawn.

There are strong signs, however, that Russia is recognizing its own economic limitations, the strongly entrenched trends throughout the CIS that limit the chances for creating a unified commonwealth and the failure of its past policies. In a March 1998 appearance before the Council on Defense and Foreign Policy, Primakov continued to defend integration and blame “negative outside influences” for helping to constrain CIS integration; however, he recognized that disintegrative processes in the former USSR “are already irreversible.”²¹ The council’s subsequent report, “A Strategy for Russia in the 21st Century,” bluntly outlined the basic continuation of disintegrative processes in the CIS and the failures of Russian policy. The report rejected “integration on Russia’s tab” as a viable option and urged focusing more intensely on “bilateral relations.”²²

It is in fact bilaterally or in groups of the willing where Russia has had the greatest successes. In particular, the bilateral approach has transformed Russian-Ukrainian relations, yielding in 1997 fundamental agreements on the Black Sea Fleet and the basic outlines of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Bilateral agreements have regulated the deployments of Russian forces abroad in Armenia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine. A detailed agreement covers the use of Belarusian radar and low- frequency communication facilities by Russia. Agreements covering Russian deployments and withdrawals in Georgia and Moldova, respectively, are less successful. Russia has expanded its approach to the regulation of conflicts on the territory of the former USSR beyond the CIS, welcoming Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and U.N. involvement, working with France and the United States to mediate in Nagorno-Karabakh and agreeing to Ukraine’s participation as a co-guarantor of the May 1997 Memorandum of Understanding between the Moldovan government and the Transdniestr. Ukraine’s participation came at the price of downgrading the role of the CIS.

There remains strong opposition in some Russian quarters to this approach, and nearly the whole of the Russian foreign policy establishment is deeply suspicious of the motives and interests of outside powers. Many still believe the former USSR to be a single, Russian sphere of influence. However, the last eighteen months have perhaps witnessed the beginning of a greater Russian tolerance of what has de facto become “geopolitical pluralism” on the territory of the former USSR. This tolerance is not unlimited, but Russia appears content to forge closer relations where it can and to adopt a more realistic assessment of the CIS and its constricted future.

WHENCE THE THREAT TO PEACE?
Ironically, the multipolar world so admired by some Russian analysts and statesmen already exists, on the territory of the former USSR. This region has all the characteristics of multipolarity. It lacks a single great power or two bipolar rivals. There are multiple centers of power, with Russia by far the most powerful state but unable to dominate its neighbors. Ukraine and Uzbekistan are vying to become regional centers in their own right. Outside actors, from the European Union to China, exert increasing political, economic, and security influence over portions of this region. But this multipolar world lacks the basic conditions for stability: it is one made up almost entirely of weak states. Even the so-called “poles” of this system face enormous internal challenges to their stability.

Though this set of circumstances could prove over time to be the breeding ground for great power rivalry, such a rivalry is not among the most pressing security problems of the post-Soviet space today. There is no “Great Game” in progress, even in the Caspian basin, where the competition to develop energy resources is most fierce. Instead, the most important challenges come from five basic sources:

Traditional frictions, regional ambitions and disparities in power. Post-Soviet space, like other regions of the globe, contains states with different and sometimes incompatible ambitions. Armenia and Azerbaijan are locked in a long-term stalemate, with future Caspian energy resources perhaps tipping the balance in Baku’s favor. These regional rivals have solid links to different outside powers: Armenia to Russia and—to a lesser extent—Iran; Azerbaijan to Turkey; and Georgia is in fact a state divided against itself, though it is only the post-Soviet convention of bestowing statehood on Union Republics that prevents the Abkhazian-Georgian war from being an interstate conflict.

Russia dwarfs all its post-Soviet neighbors. As Raj Menon has argued, despite serious problems, Russia is not “a strategic paper tiger” in its own backyard. Power is “dynamic and relational,” meaning that Russia is still far ahead of its neighbors in any conceivable measure of power and is in a position to recover from its problems far faster than other post-Soviet states.²³ Russia in fact has and will continue to cast a long shadow of many of these neighbors. If it desires, Russia can certainly bring larger reserves of political, financial, or military power to bear on an issue than even the largest of the other post-Soviet states. However, Russia’s relative advantages must be measured not only against a rival’s assets but against the wide-ranging demands made on that power. These demands frequently have little to do with the resistance of an organized military. Instead, they are problems in which little wars, ethnic conflicts, and regime stability are intertwined. Moreover, Russia’s wide-ranging interests make it more difficult for Russia to concentrate resources on a given problem and thus to take advantage of its superior assets.

The past several years have shown that Russia is indeed capable of intervening in conflicts and keeping them within certain limits, but it no longer has the power to extinguish them entirely and impose a settlement. It can certainly force its CIS partners to adopt a decision, multilaterally or bilaterally, but it cannot make them implement it. This is because Russian power is spread thin across the entire post-Soviet space. Its 1993 wish list for military bases or subsequent plans for border guard deployment showed no sensible limits but those adopted under Soviet times. This situation could well develop into a rather serious case of overstretch, as Russia makes commitments in Central Asia or the Caucasus that it will be unable to keep should any one of a number of now quiescent situations turn unstable. Moreover, this power differential—overshadowing neighbors but not overawing them—increases incentives among CIS states to look over time for supplements or even alternatives to Russian security commitments.

The full dynamics of relations among the post-Soviet space have yet to emerge. The long-term potential for Kazakh-Uzbek tensions or for Uzbekistan asserting itself more fully in its own subregion has yet to emerge. Moreover, should Chechnya and Abkhazia sustain their de facto sovereignty, the regional interaction between north and south Caucasus, with or without Russia, could be highly unstable.

The weakness of the post-Soviet states, including Russia. Perhaps the most dangerous element of instability in post-Soviet space is the concentration of weak states. These weak states, singly or in combination, could become failing states, and thus the source of serious economic and humanitarian pressures, regional conflict, or large-scale violence. Their failure would spark interventions from outside powers and could even rekindle major power rivalries that are now absent. Leading Western authorities recognize the role weak and failing states play in shaping the contemporary security environment. “Wars today,” wrote Phillipe Delmas, “are caused not by the strength of States but by their weakness. The primary problem of security today is not the desire for power or expansion, but rather the breakdown of states.”²⁴ Lawrence Freedman also sees regional conflicts, especially those caused by weak states, as an important driver of the future of warfare itself. These conflicts will sometimes reflect “deliberate power-plays by local revisionists,” but more often they will arise “from within weak states—countries caught on the margins of the global economy, released from colonial rule but suffering from compound social fractures that cannot be healed when resources are scarce and political institutions feeble.”²⁵

Weak states provide a number of potential triggers for future violence. In the first place, they fail to provide the basic building blocks of social stability—economic prosperity, healthcare, and education. These internal conditions exacerbate existing ethnic or regional differences. In some post-Soviet states, they have become the breeding ground for factional violence. Georgia and Azerbaijan have gone through periods when political factions had active paramilitary wings and political killings were common.

Those regimes that have so far kept a lid on such chaos by embracing authoritarian or paternalistic executives—Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan—will be especially vulnerable during regime transitions. These men must someday pass from the scene, providing a swift and unwelcome test of their political handiwork. At least some of these regimes will likely experience severe upheavals as current “institutions,” absent the guiding hand of the great leader, are shown to be nothing more than personal extensions of his power, disappearing soon after he does.

If Russia cannot right itself and becomes part of this general trend, it would define post-Soviet space for much of the outside world as a vast reserve of chaos and instability located on the very edge of an expanding European Union, a rising China, a troubled Japan, and a still unstable Persian Gulf. Even without Russia, individual states of significance, especially Ukraine, Belarus, and Azerbaijan, could exert a powerful negative influence on their neighborhoods by their own internal failings. Whatever the outside world thinks, for Russia, any weak neighbors are a problem. Proponents of the “democratic peace” theory have underscored the importance of Russia joining that set of regimes in the world that do not appear to go to war with each other. Yet even a fully democratic and stable Russia would live on the edge of a very difficult neighborhood. Even a relatively successful Russian security environment would be shaped for years to come by its being part of two different geopolitical environments, one characterized by the highly developed mechanisms of cooperation in Europe and another by instabilities and old-fashioned notions of international competition and the use of force. This location cannot but exert a debilitating influence on the security and financial stability of Russia for decades to come.

Nontraditional threats. Terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and organized crime pose a new set of dangers in contemporary international relations. These dangers go far beyond the age-old romance of brigands or smugglers, as drug traffickers or terrorists acquire modern conventional weapons or even chemical and biological agents. Much has been written about post-Soviet space as a new center of organized crime and drug smuggling. Weak states make fine hideouts or headquarters. Corrupt ruling elites often partake in illegal trafficking or take a cut from it. The weakness of local law enforcement and the limited reach of central institutions create weak links in international efforts to cooperate. An enormous range of environmental challenges exist throughout the former USSR; some may well reach the level of posing genuine security challenges to state in and outside the region. Candidates for such issues include the competition for water in Central Asia, the degradation of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons storage sites, and the unchecked spread of infectious diseases.

Changing patterns of military power in Eurasia. One of the obvious consequences of the transformation of the post-Soviet space is the creation of incentives for the flow of arms, military technology and know-how from the old center of power to those arising on the rim. Russia is not the only country selling arms and high technology to the rimlands of Eurasia. U.S., European and Israeli firms are deeply involved in this lucrative trade. However, Russia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet states are special near- and medium-term problems because of their internal economic troubles, the weakness of state regulatory institutions and the built-in incentives in these states that favor sales for cash. Russia’s sales to both China and Iran are broad-based, including a wide range of advanced ground, air and sea systems, air defense and missile systems and—it is rumored—key components of cruise and ballistic missile guidance systems. The trend toward increased military capabilities on the rim of Eurasia is well established, accelerated by the collapse of the bipolar world. However, it is likely to become an issue of particular concern to both the United States and Russia as the full import of military improvements makes itself felt on armies from China through India, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq. These states will be more capable of projecting power and influence out into the surrounding oceans and much deeper into the Eurasian landmass. Both the United States and Russia will be confronted by more capable—and perhaps more ambitious—Eurasian power in the decades to come.

The return of great power rivalry. Post-Soviet space is increasingly open to the outside world. Instability and violence can easily spill into Tajikistan from Afghanistan. Chinese troubles in Sinjiang would sooner or later affect Central Asia. Similarly, troubles within the former USSR will likely attract outside attention. If a “Great Game” appears unlikely in the near term, a number of lesser games cannot be ruled out. Russia’s competitors in these games are unlikely to be the United States or its NATO allies. Russia’s weakened political and economic position in portions of the former USSR has already led to the rise of more able competitors—Turkey in the southern Caucasus and China in portions of Central Asia and even in areas of Russia itself. There is no reason to think that these states, as well as Iran or Pakistan, will not seek additional advantages through their ties to post-Soviet space in the future.

FROM POST-SOVIET SPACE TO A MORE INTERCONNECTED EURASIA
As Zbigniew Brzezinski has argued, “Eurasia is home to most of the world’s politically assertive and dynamic states. All the historic pretenders to global power originated in Eurasia. The world’s most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are all in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or economic challengers to American primacy.”²⁶ For nearly five decades, the Eurasian state seeking regional hegemony and competing with the United States was centered in Moscow. Brzezinski’s two examples are from Eurasia’s rimlands.

The dynamism of these rimlands is an important element in the “reversal of polarity” in Eurasia as a whole. This dynamism is a reason why it is unlikely that post-Soviet space will remain a single region for long. The great disparities of geography, natural resources and interests have already broken down post-Soviet space into discrete subregions, which have more in common with their immediate neighbors inside and outside the former USSR than with more distant former Union Republics. Only Russia, because of its size, history, and interests, continues to see these distinct regions as an interconnected whole. No other state of the former Soviet Union, even Russia’s closest partners, sees things in this way. In fact, Russia’s CIS partners are actively reaching outside the former USSR to stimulate trade, rediscover lost culutral connections and help balance their ties with a much larger Russia. They are willingly becoming a ground on which new patterns of relations between Russia and the outside world will be established.

The Eurasian rimlands are also home to states with ambitious political and military programs. Many of the world’s most troubling cases of nuclear, chemical, and biological proliferation are found there. These states are acquiring other advanced military capabilities, including cruise and ballistic missiles and important pieces of sensor, space, and information technologies crucial to the transformation of war fighting.²⁷ None of these states, singly or together, has the capacity to challenge the United States in the next two decades. In the longer term, and if favorable economic trends continue, both India and China will, have in the future an economic base much larger than that of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany was in relation to their strategic rivals. However, the military capabilities of these states are not intended to challenge the United States globally, but merely to create regional stand-off capabilities that deny or complicate U.S. access. These states have substantial rivalries among them that could well fuel serious conflicts or outright wars. Some of these states—China, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey—have and will acquire substantial interests and capabilities to intervene in Central Eurasia.

For Russia and other states interested in the stability of central Eurasia, the problem of the continuing fragmentation and transformation of post-Soviet space cannot be reduced to U.S.-Russian frictions. The United States has played—and will continue to play—a key role in the Euro-Atlantic space of the former USSR, namely in its ties to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. It has an interest in the development of Caspian energy and its free flow to the world market. But these policies do not add up to a comprehensive challenge to Russian interests in the former USSR.

If such a challenge is occurring, it grows out of a combination of Russian weakness, the ambitions of the new states themselves, and the increasing involvement of the outside world, including the United States, on the territory of the former USSR. A quick survey of the lands adjacent to Russia reveals a pattern of interaction that has little to do with U.S. sponsorship or support. The European Union is advancing, not only to the edge of the former USSR, but on to this territory. Poland and Estonia are both in the first tier for accession. EU rules regarding trade, border security and travel will quickly become the norm in member and near-member states, influencing the economic options of Russia and other IS states. Russia frequently complains about Turkish involvement and long-term ambitions in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Central Asia. Yet Iran is just as busy, though as yet in ways that parallel Russian interests. Iran is active in the Caucasus, sharing with Russia a tilt toward Armenia and a suspicion of Azerbaijan. Tehran shares with Moscow a desire to contain the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet Iran is also a competitor with Russia for the transportation of Caspian oil and gas. It has agreed to energy swaps with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and opened new, if still modest, transportation links with the region.

Pakistan sees Central Asia as adding strategic depth to its struggle with India. Pakistan is also in the hunt for a pipeline project that would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan. China has supplanted Russia economically in Kazakhstan. Still further to the east, Russia’s weakened Siberian and Coastal regions worry about an economically, politically and demographically more powerful China. The point of this survey is not to suggest that there are no U.S.-Russian tensions in the former USSR, but simply to underscore that what Russia faces is a comprehensive adjustment to a wide range of actors and forces that are remaking the former Soviet space. This space cannot and will not stand still.

A FRAMEWORK FOR RESPONSE
This essay has deliberately played down issues that currently preoccupy the minds of both Russian and American analysts but instead concentrated on underlying strategic trends shaping today’s and tomorrow’s post-Soviet space. These trends in fact will eventually remove the concept of post-Soviet space from our thinking altogether, as extended portions of Central Asia, the Caucasus, the western borderlands and the Russian Far East are pulled into new regional configurations of more political, economic and security significance than the territory defined by the old borders of the Soviet Union. Neither Russia nor the United States fully understands the implications of these changes or the potential advantages and disadvantages of cooperation to address them.

Yet satisfactory management of the current set of problems facing Russia, both external and internal, is crucial. There can be no prospect of future U.S.-Russian strategic cooperation if Russian fails to stabilize its economy, build a coherent state and reform its military. This fundamental internal success is also the key to the continued transformation of Russia’s approach to the former USSR. Russia has to deepen its appreciation of its stake in the success of its neighbors as independent states. Last year’s breakthrough in Russian-Ukrainian relations ought to be appreciated, not as Ukraine once more slipping away from full-scale integration but as a building block for mature, normalized relations. Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and other IS skeptics still want strong political, economic and security ties with Russia. They do not want integration as it has been defined by Russian policy to date.

A post-integration Russian policy is needed. Such a policy cannot be isolationist. It need not even abandon integration with selected partners on certain issues. However, it must certainly give up on the notion that the former USSR will be a unified space. It must also acknowledge that the emerging “geopolitical pluralism” of the region is not a foreign import but the preferences of Russia’s neighbors. Thus the question must be how to make this pluralism stable and to prevent it from rekindling strategic competition.

For its part, the United States has to develop a more subtle measurement of Russian actions in the former USSR. Early fears that Russian interventions and policies would lead “back to the USSR” have proven groundless. Russia is constrained from that option by its current troubles, and more importantly, it also has started to see the drawbacks of a Russian-led—and Russian-financed—IS. Moreover, a wholesale turnabout of Russian policy, as some think could come about should a more nationalist-minded successor to President Yeltsin take charge, will require a series of highly public actions that will be both easy to observe and interpret. Moreover, Russia cannot be expected to refrain from involvement in its own backyard. Our yardstick cannot be an isolationist Russia or a simple marker, such as the end of Russian military deployments outside Russian territory. It must be a more mature assessment of whether Russian intervention brings an end to a conflict and strengthens regional stability and the chance that the state or states involved will be more successful. It is also likely that some way will have to be found to give such interventions more of a chance by making them truly multilateral operations, in which Russia’s special interests and contribution are joined to the contributions and interests of others both inside and outside the region. The careful supervision of international organizations, such as the OSCE, United Nations, and Council of Europe, has made a significant difference in the conduct of such operations, but cannot be by itself a substitute for a truly integrated multilateral security structure in the regions of the former USSR.

U.S.-Russian rivalry in the former USSR has been greatly exaggerated as a future security problem. Non-Russian IS states have an interest in highlighting Russian ambitions when in Washington. It is certainly easier to talk about this threat than to admit being on the edge of political and economic chaos. Moreover, there are Russian ambitions to manage. Some Russians at least want to control this space. Russia will always be a large and important force in regions where medium and small states prevail. The problem of balancing Russian and regional interests will never go away completely. However, for the United States, the threat of Russian hegemony has to be placed in the proper context. It certainly pales before the more likely prospect of widespread instability. While within the United States there is legitimate room to debate how strong Russia should be, for the next decade this debate is at best academic. Moreover, few of those focused on measures to keep Russia from being too strong acknowledge that Russia can be too weak, yet today’s Russia is too weak for a stable Eurasia, and so are Russia’s new neighbors.

The United States must continue to support Russia’s efforts to right itself, though the bulk of these efforts must be made by the Russians themselves. Beyond Russia’s own troubles, both the United States and Russia should focus on the problem of the stability of Russia’s neighbors. The consolidation of sovereignty must now be followed by the creation of stability. Neither Russian hopes for an integrated space or U.S. encouragement of democracy and free markets throughout the former USSR can do more than establish signposts. The immediate future will be one where a number of states fall far short of even modest progress toward either democracy or markets as we know them.

If a core security problem for both Russia and the United States in the near term is the stability of still weak states in the former USSR, a substantial basis for security cooperation exists, a cooperation that could and should include the affected states themselves, as well as Europe and Japan. The mechanisms created to address Ukrainian denuclearization and Baltic troop withdrawals are models that ought to be applied to these new problems. The increasing interconnection between post-Soviet space and the outside world makes such efforts imperative and in the long run far cheaper than the interventions that will be required in times of greater turmoil.

Both the United States and Russia also have to consider potential challenges from the rimlands, not simply the former USSR. The post-Cold War period gives all of these regimes on the edge of Eurasia new opportunities to maneuver, settle old scores, and pursue suppressed ambitions, free of U.S. and Soviet pressures. One could well imagine scenarios in which the rimland states expand their influence in ways that affect both the United States and Russia. Indian and Pakistani nuclear developments suggest that both countries have to prepare—even as they work to stave off—an expansion of the nuclear club. Iran’s long-term ambitions clearly trouble U.S. planners, but these ambitions are not restricted to the Persian Gulf and the open sea. They also look north to the former USSR. Such “revenge of the rimland” scenarios are a potential source of future US-Russian strategic cooperation, if the current period of suspicion and internal distraction affecting both capitals can be overcome. The Eurasia of the next century will almost certainly pose challenges that will require U.S. and Western cooperation with Russia or impose serious costs in its absence. Both sides need look to look at the post-Soviet space within this larger context. It provides a perspective from which U.S.-Russian cooperation could once again be possible. As difficult as it might be to imagine it today, it is worth some thought, for a world that will make such cooperation desirable is already on its way.

Last Update: January 24, 2003