Russia's residual neighborhood watch scheme in what was once the Soviet Union's tightly policed backyard took another knock last week when Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova joined forces in a new "union of democratic states."
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who has been a thorn in Moscow's side since Tbilisi's 2003 "rose revolution," said the grouping would "not act as a counter-balance or a reproach to anyone."
But then he offered a reproach anyway. Friendship based on independence and freedom, he said, was very different from belonging to "an alliance like the Warsaw Pact or an empire like the Soviet Union."
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
The timing was probably not coincidental.
MOSCOW MEETING
Along with a host of world leaders, US President George W. Bush will be in Moscow on May 9 to mark the 60th anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat.
Bush, who backed Ukraine's pro-democracy "orange revolution" last year, will also visit Georgia, where the US launched a US$50 million military training program on the weekend and where it has become Saakashvili's principal ally.
It is no accident, either, that the US leader will visit Latvia which, like Lithuania and Estonia, escaped Moscow's clutches in the 1990s and joined NATO and the EU. They are now viewed as role models by several post-Soviet states.
Last week's fleeting Kremlin visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meant to smooth the way for Bush's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
UNDIPLOMATIC REMARKS?
But Rice's comments on regional issues, coupled with the latest machinations of Moscow's unforgiving former satellites, exacerbated Russian geopolitical paranoia.
Denouncing the Belarus government of President Alexander Lukashenko as Europe's last dictatorship, Rice said it was "time for a change."
She hinted that forthcoming elections there could be the next target for the US "soft power" pro-democracy pressure tactics perfected in Serbia in 2000.
Unfortunately for Putin, benighted Belarus is just about the only Russian neighbor that still follows an unequivocal pro-Moscow line. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Rice to mind her own business.
Russia's once unchallenged influence in central Asia is also slipping. The US has established military bases in the area since the Sept. 11 attacks. And, as recent upheavals in Kyrgyzstan suggest, regime change can be catching.
RUSSIAN PARANOIA
In this atmosphere, the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States' summit scheduled for Moscow on May 8, which includes Ukraine and Georgia, could prove a schismatic and even terminal meeting.
In a country historically fearful of encirclement and fragmentation, these accelerating neighborhood trends are seen by many Russians as externally threatening and domestically destabilizing.
In his Cold Peace: Russia's New Imperialism, Janusz Bugajski said that Moscow's neighborhood botch stems from internal weakness as much as foreign policy bungling.
Russia "gained an empire before it became a state or a coherent nation," he wrote.
Contrary to its vital interests and despite reduced capabilities, Russia continued to brandish regional ambitions like "phantom limbs," Bugajski argued.
But while the result has been repeated humiliations, rising hardline nationalism and falling confidence in an increasingly dictatorial Putin, Russia's leader retains several trump cards.
PARTNERSHIP NEEDS
Rice admitted the US needed a "strategic partnership" on nuclear proliferation, the Balkans and the Middle East and terrorism.
And then there are Russia's vast energy resources, on which the West increasingly relies.
As at their Bratislava tete-a-tete in February, Bush can be expected to balance "freedom's cause" with pragmatic calculations when he meets Putin.
According to Anatol Lieven, an analyst, "Putin may be an uncomfortable partner but the West is unlikely to get a better one."
Washington hopes the democratic revolutions in the "post-Soviet sphere" will ultimately spread to Russia itself.
But it knows such a transformation runs the risk of a disastrous, post-Putin relapse into unrestrained authoritarianism and an anti-Western siege mentality.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS