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72 Opinion
bne December 2020
talking about a sphere of Russia’s privileged interests in the former USSR, this seemed counter-intuitive. Hillary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, was sternly warning against attempts to restore the Soviet Union under a different name.
However, the historic trend was not reversed. At the turn
of the 2010s, the empire was still very much at the back of many people’s minds, but certainly even then it was more of
a memory of the past than a realistic vision of the future. A decade on, with the experience of Ukraine and also Belarus under its belt, Russia, I would argue, has turned post-post- imperial: one step farther removed from the historical pattern. It is getting used to being just Russia. Moreover, Russia is embracing its loneliness as a chance to start looking after its own interests and needs, something it neglected in the past
in the name of an ideological mission, geopolitical concerns, or one-sided commitments built on kinship or religious links. This is a new model of behaviour.
Alliances Ltd.
Russia has discovered that it doesn’t have allies who would stand by it in its hour of need, but it has also found out that it doesn’t really need allies to defend itself against adversaries. In Eastern Europe, of course, Belarusian territory separates the heart of Russia from NATO territory, but the scenario of a massive overland invasion along the lines of Napoleon’s
or Hitler’s incursions is very far-fetched today. The United States is a formidable adversary, but the basic stability of
the US-Russia relationship is assured by deterrence, which requires above all that Moscow maintain credible nuclear capabilities that deny the Pentagon any chance of winning
a war against Russia. Stability in Europe may be potentially challenged in the future by US INF deployments, but these will undoubtedly be parried by asymmetrical countermoves that create a similar level of threat for the United States.
In the South Caucasus, Russia’s military presence is limited to land-locked Armenia, but its solitary base there has served the only purpose of protecting Armenia from a Turkish invasion. Moscow never committed itself to defending Armenian positions in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Russia has always legally recognised as part of Azerbaijan and where it has sought to mediate between the two sides. For its part, the Armenian leadership under Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had since 2018 been distancing itself from Russia and reaching out to the West.
The Azeri victory in the second Karabakh war with the Armenians in November 2020 has ushered in a new regional order. Russia was able to negotiate a truce between the warring parties. It has also expanded its military presence
in the Caucasus by becoming the sole peacekeeper between Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, the war has not only highlighted Turkey’s role in the region as a very close ally of victorious Azerbaijan; Moscow has had to legitimise that role by accepting Ankara’s participation, alongside Russia, in the monitoring mechanism for Karabakh.
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With US influence in a commanding position in Tbilisi, and Turkish influence and prestige standing very high in Baku, Russia faces an uncertain political future in Armenia, its defeated nominal ally. Moscow is learning to see the region, which used to be part of the Soviet state, and before that of the Russian empire, not from a position of regional dominance, now gone, but through the prism of its vital interest of maintaining stability in its own Northern Caucasus borderland. Vis-à-vis Georgia, the border is protected by Russian military outposts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Vis-à-vis Azerbaijan, a degree of co-operation with Baku is required.
This doesn’t mean that all alliances are useless; in Central Asia, Russia keeps air and army bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan which provide for a forward presence with an eye
to Afghanistan. With the impending final withdrawal of US forces, Russia needs to be ready for an upsurge of radicalism and extremism in Afghanistan, which might again become a haven for transnational jihadis. With the enormous territory of Kazakhstan separating – and shielding – Russia from the areas of turbulence down south, Moscow needs both outposts of its own and logistical support from its allies. The stability of Kazakhstan itself, which is going through a political transition, is of the utmost importance to Russia, but Nur-Sultan, while generally friendly and co-operative toward Moscow, pursues an independent course in domestic and foreign affairs.
Moscow also came to realise long ago that in Central Asia, it would have to accommodate the growing Chinese presence and influence and learn to collaborate with Beijing on keeping things stable, security-wise. Beijing has already selected Tajikistan as its point of entry for a security presence, but
has been advancing incrementally. Moscow doesn’t feel threatened. The clash between Russia and China that so many Western scholars have been expecting and predicting for decades is not in the cards for the foreseeable future.
Economic partnerships without integration
The Eurasian Union was first designed by Putin as a Moscow-led, 200mn people-strong geopolitical, economic and military power bloc in Eurasia. Today, it is essentially an economic arrangement which plays a generally useful but limited role facilitating relations among several former Soviet republics. Crucially, Russia has proved unwilling to become the donor of the
union, and its partners equally unwilling to cede parts of their sovereignty to supranational bodies that would be dominated by Russia. This dual refusal has put an end to the outsize ambitions of some, and unrealistic expectations of others.
With Belarus, Russia set out to build a union state back in 1999. Since the start, that union has been little more than a cover for special deals that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was able to get from Moscow in exchange mostly for pledges of unity, solidarity, and loyalty – while carefully but clearly distancing the country from Russia. When, in 2019, the Kremlin indicated that it would stop subsidising Belarus unless it agreed to real economic integration, Lukashenko’s bluff