The disappearance of the Cold War standoff between two ideological superpowers has developed into a conflict between civilizations as the new source of global competition. While the global competition of the past was a confrontation between state military organizations, the competition of the present implies a clash of networking structures oriented at one or another civilization. (The scope of these networking structures embraces financial, public, religious, and criminal organizations, as well as secret services which are acting more and more independently under the pretext of fighting terrorism.) The specificity of the networks blurs the contours of global competition, manifesting itself in scattered and limited – that is to say, regional – conflicts that are protracted, smoldering, and unrelated to one another at the same time. The powerful surge of these conflicts, together with the attention that the world community gives to them, delimitates new zones on the world’s great chessboard.

In the past, the competition between the two superpower systems was ideological rather than economic. The struggle was aimed at winning over peoples’ souls in order to get as many supporters as possible. Presently, however, global events are being driven by the realization that the scanty natural resources make development based on past technologies and past growth rates impossible. The competition between civilizations thus turns into a struggle for resources.

This resource deficit, albeit only hypothetical for many countries at the present time, whips up a policy of expansionism and spearheads it at regions where control over resources is loose and where countries do not have enough strength to develop their mineral wealth. These comprise primarily African nations and the former Soviet republics, including Russia.

CREEPING PEACEKEEPING

The open formalization and simplification of the mechanisms of managed democracy, created in Russia over the past few years, demonstrate to the West that the newly emerging Russian state cannot integrate itself into the Western system of values in general and the Euro-Atlantic community in particular. Western decision-makers have comprehended this fact and will unlikely try to revive any patterns of interaction that they had with the former Soviet Union or today’s China; the Russian Federation is too weak for that. It seems probable that what we will witness are attempts to bring Russia back into a universal condition of formal democracy.
Expanding civilizations are exploring Russian territory differently. In the first place, this is being accomplished economically by engaging Russian partners in multinational corporations which implement projects like the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, or work under production-sharing agreements. Another such method is to exert pressure on Russian projects, such as the export oil pipeline from East Siberia. Furthermore, some civilizations also use networks (drug rings, political lobbies, and religious organizations, primarily Islamic and Roman Catholic), as well as ethnic factors.

Not infrequently, international peacekeeping missions that are activated to help settle conflicts and confront accompanying terrorist activity also become an instrument which serves this purpose. The use of regional conflicts as tools for affecting the system of government was a problematic type of pressure for the Soviet Union and remains such for Russia. Primarily, these include regional standoffs on the former Soviet territory outside the borders of the Russian Federation, popularly referred to as the former Soviet Central Asia (this region is becoming part of the Broader Middle East), and in the Islamic regions of Russia proper.

A good example is the country of Georgia, where a nationalist euphoria is being generated by its President Mikhail Saakashvili who is pushing for the reintegration of rebellious South Ossetia through the use of force. The numerically small South Ossetian forces will be unable to rebuff Georgia’s U.S.-trained crack units which make up its advance guard. This will create an extremely unsavory dilemma for Russian President Vladimir Putin: any efforts to defend Russian citizens living in South Ossetia (56 percent of its residents by official count) would inevitably mean a quarrel with the West, which would throw their support behind Saakashvili.

A choice between the interests of Russian citizens and those of the Western countries will simultaneously be a choice between two groupings within the Russian elite: Western-style liberals versus the proponents of the military and security machinery. The latter may add fuel to the conflict in the hope that Putin will eventually opt for defending Russia’s compatriots living in South Ossetia and reject the liberals. However, it cannot be ruled out that Putin, whose foreign policy line copies that of Mikhail Gorbachev, will opt for friendship with the West at the decisive moment.

There can be little doubt that the use of force to settle the South Ossetian conflict would be accompanied by the inaction of the Russian peacekeepers; they will be told to stay away. Thus, the result will be a bloody guerilla war, where the republic will slide into chaos, and there will be endless suffering for both Georgians and Ossetians. If this happens, the introduction of an international peacekeeping force will be the only way out of the situation, and those peacekeepers will most probably wave the NATO flag. South Ossetia is a small region and a large contingent will not be needed there, while the local population, ridden by terror and brainwashed by propaganda, will eagerly undersign the demand for international forces in spite of its patriotism.

Following such an event, any terrorist act in the North Caucasus will arouse waves of demands by the “progressive world public opinion” that multinational peacekeepers be introduced into the region as the only instrument for maintaining peace.

The “terrorists’ swords” will clear the way for NATO forces being activated in the North Caucasus, and its separation from Russia along the lines of the Kosovo scenario will become just a matter of time. The logic of global competition makes Tatarstan and Bashkortostan – both key technological areas that are crossed by energy supply routes from Siberia to the West – the next two vulnerable regions, control over which has vital importance. The Islamic element of those constituent republics of Russia makes them suitable for staging destabilization scenarios as well. Tatarstan’s and Bashkortostan’s dependence on Russia’s strategic rivals will turn Moscow’s jurisdiction over West Siberia into a pure formality then, and a challenge to the Russian identity of Siberia and the Far East may get on the agenda soon thereafter.

To sum up, a refusal (under whatever pretext) to defend the rights of Russian nationals living outside Russia in favor of relations with the West may produce a domino effect. The resultant domestic political crisis may undermine the legitimacy of the president as the key figure of Russian statehood. To thwart such a scenario, Russia must prevent Georgian aggression in South Ossetia by any means.

At this stage, a strategic goal for Moscow would be to bring the process of the Soviet Union’s disintegration to a logical end. This would entail international recognition of the right to self-determination for those peoples living in the post-Soviet area, including those willing to be incorporated into Russia. South Ossetia, as well as Abkhazia and the breakaway region of Transdniestria in Moldova, may also integrate into the Russian Federation on condition that their peoples express the will to do so. In the case of Transdniestria, its integration is possible if Moldova decides to merge with Romania and if the European Union, NATO, and the U.S. provide written guarantees of the region’s immunity as a Russian territory.

Meanwhile, Russia is unable to defend its national interests, nor is it able to respond to the menace of a NATO-led (mostly U.S.-led) “peacekeeping aggression,” which may jeopardize the territorial integrity and the very existence of Russia.

The tragic inadequacy of Russia’s foreign-policy mechanisms (from the academic curricula for students of diplomacy to the structure of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Security Council) to pressing domestic and international problems is becoming increasingly apparent. Like generals who are preparing for military conflicts of the past, Russian strategic planning of foreign policy fails to react to the new realities.

The fundamental rejection of a uniform system of elaborating foreign policy priorities lies at the root of a highly fragmentary foreign policy line. This leads Russia to commit remarkable mistakes wherever there is a direct clash of interests; this is the case even in its own backyard.

The situation in Abkhazia provides a graphic example. Russian leaders, who totally lack the ability to analyze alternative positions, or to even adequately train reserve cadres, automatically put stakes on the ruling clan in that region. This clan represents the toughest anti-Georgian position and is the least likely to cooperate with other groups. But even the use of what is known in the former Soviet Union as the “administrative resource,” and the relentless support from Moscow, did not earn the candidate of the “power party” the presidency. Tensions in Abkhazia reached the boiling point, while Russia found itself discredited. As a result, developments may proceed according to the following scenario: the oppositionist and hitherto pro-Russian clans will eventually begin building bridges to the West. There, they will naturally receive a hearty welcome, while Russia will lose Abkhazia the same way it lost Adzharia, to say nothing of the Soviet Union before that. The recent events in Ukrain have graphically demonstrated that the situation across the entire post-Soviet space will be developing for Russia according to this scenario.

AN ANTIDRUG COALITION

The disintegration of the Soviet Union, together with the emergence of newly independent states in Central Asia (each having different legal systems), created the perfect environment for the drug trade. Drug barons have played, or continue to play, a crucial role in the present history of Tajikistan and some other Central Asian states. The Taliban’s arrival to power in Afghanistan (with backing from the Pakistani Armed Forces and the financing from heroin revenues) became the last building block in Afghan drug transits to Europe via Central Asia, Russia and, eventually, Kosovo after the latter had been torn away from Serbia’s jurisdiction. Like any transit country – especially in this case a country where the social structure is degrading and offering little resistance to drug abuse – Russia is suffering heavy losses. The spread of addiction is threatening the very existence of Russian society. The Russian Interior Ministry has stated the admissible risk level of the addicted population stands at one percent, yet the actual number is at least double that figure. Furthermore, the growing political influence of the drug rings can, in the foreseeable future, trigger a number of bitter conflicts in Central Asia and on Russia’s territory proper.

However, no sensible measures have been implemented to combat this real evil (an exception is that direct trains between Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe and Moscow have been cancelled). On the other hand, an “opium train” is still cruising between Dushanbe and the southern Russian city of Astrakhan, while the number of bus routes has increased, as well. The removal of Russian border patrols from the Tajik-Afghan border facilitates the shipment of drugs right at the moment when the liberalization of drug production in the post-Taliban Afghanistan may heavily slash the price of heroin and make it far more widely accessible. In the background of all this, the expansionism of drug networks, so dangerous for Russia and so painful for the European Union, furnishes Moscow with a unique opportunity to take real leadership in pooling efforts for a solution to this problem. More than that, Russia can relatively easily get a mandate from the global community for it to exert some kind of supervision over Central Asia if it so desires. It may even aspire to a political domination in the region in order to defend Europe from an inflow of drugs.
But this will not be a “liberal empire” busy implanting an alien ideology in Central Asia (which is even more alien to that region than it is to Russia) which, under the pretext of defending human rights, would defend the interests of variegated minorities to the detriment of society as a whole. It will be a universally realized categorical imperative that will unite Russia and Europe under the motto of fighting drug networks and international terrorism. One can plainly see the political correctness of such an initiative, and the U.S., our strategic contender, would have no legitimate arguments against it.

In reality, however, the implementation of such a policy is contingent on the requirements that President Putin’s vertically integrated state power a priori falls short of. The administrative reform has paralyzed the entire system of state government for the immediate future and rendered its machinery ineffective. This factor does not allow Moscow to use this historic chance at the present time.

CHINESE MYSTERY BOX

Regional problems are also looming over the Russian Far East. Presently, uncertainty surrounds the prospects for the Angarsk-Daqing pipeline that China pinned great hopes on. This casts a shadow over future Russian-Chinese relations in general, especially if viewed in the light of the recent scandal involving the expulsion of the Chinese from the privatization of the Slavneft oil company. Until recently, the Chinese leaders tended to regard Russia as a partner who has enough reliability and who can honor contractual obligations despite certain internal discords and a sometimes puzzling conduct. President Putin’s statement about possible participation of the China National Petroleum Corporation in the management of Yuganskneftegaz, a former YUKOS asset now returned to the state, comes as an attempt to smooth over the negative impression Moscow’s former decisions made on Beijing.

And yet China’s disposition toward Russia may change soon enough. That change will be propelled by the Russian leaders’ inconsistency and connivance at the appetites of some regional governors and at the pressure that Beijing is subjected to by Tokyo. Washington, too, may be pulling at strings behind Japan’s back because of its fears of China’s further rise. The true impact of a compromise on the one-and-a-half islands that Russia has ceded to China is also unclear. The Celestial Empire may start perceiving Russia as a weak, passive, and half-dependent owner of great mineral riches. Let us recall that the Chinese have historically treated the alien and weak very pragmatically and without any sentiments.

Beijing adjusts its foreign policy to the considerations of a global positioning of forces and global competition to a much greater degree than Russia does. China seriously treats the forecasts which show that the global consumption of crude oil will exceed its production from easily recoverable reserves in the not-so-distant future. China proceeds from the assumption that its strategic competitors are interested in restricting its access to energy resources and that this kind of interest will increase as the amount of easily accessible deposits of fuel decrease. Analysts in China say in private conversations that the failure of the Angarsk-Daqing project might be the first instance of such restrictive tendencies.

If the Chinese leadership develops confidence in Russia as a reliable strategic supplier of energy resources over a period of four to six years, relations between the two countries will remain at the current level. Simultaneously, the Russian government will have to consider the gradual closure of the Chinese market for Russian manufactured goods as China increases its domestic production of import-substitution goods; furthermore, Russia can expect the eventual exhaustion of defense technology exports to China. But if Beijing realizes that it cannot rely on fuel supplies from Russia, it will begin looking for alternatives – from Kazakhstan to West Africa – as well as for its own instruments of impact on its northern neighbor. The story of the oil corporation YUKOS, a major supplier of crude to China, does not help Russia raise a high profile in the eyes of its clients.

China still holds out hope in the new assessments of crude resources in Siberia. The case in point are the reserves undeclared by oil companies and the so-called “sideline pipes” – old abandoned local pipelines that hold many millions of tons of crude; these were regularly concealed and delivered to refineries illegally. But for Russia, the disillusionment of such hopes would mean that a new source of regional tension has appeared.

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The curtailment of Russia’s external influence, which first began in the name of “general human values” (which apparently meant the interests of our strategic rivals), was later dedicated to slashing the budget deficit.  In more recent years, this curtailment continued due to the sluggishness and incompetence of the ruling bureaucracy and the selfish interests of the oligarchy dominating the law enforcement agencies. Finally, this policy has ultimately borne fruit: Russia has lost meaningful influence outside the territory of the former Soviet Union. Even those countries where the officials are most benevolent toward Moscow are showing a tendency to deny Russia the right to defend its nationals.

Russia’s weakness in the international arena has sharply narrowed its agenda for talks with the U.S. and European countries. This in turn boosts the significance of regional conflicts. The pressure of global competition is a “great constant” of modern history, and insufficiently strong countries, unable to take part in global processes, have to tackle that competition at a lower, regional level. Those who are reluctant to defend their interests at distant outposts will eventually have to perform the task at close frontlines.