Russia is facing disintegration. Although President Vladimir Putin is promoting an anti-US line to hold off this crisis, at a deeper level, Russia is not competing with the US, but with China.
Disintegration has taken forms such as Georgia's Rose Revolution in 2003, Ukraine's Orange Revolution last year and Kyrgyzstan's Tulip Revolution this year. This wave of revolutions has even hit areas within Russia, including Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Sakha (Yakutia), Tuva (Tyva), Karelia and Kalmykija. Some of these areas are strategically important to Russia, and if they become independent, the country will break up.
For example, if Sakha becomes independent, northeastern regions like Chukotka and Kamchatka will be exposed to US influence, separated as they are from Alaska only by the Bering Strait.
The US, and to some extent Europe, is exploiting and even encouraging this situation. In fact, by permitting and encouraging certain ethnic minority regions in Russia to initiate revolutions, the administration of US President George W. Bush is doing much the same thing as the UK, Nazi Germany, the administration of former US president Ronald Reagan and other superpowers have done in the past -- namely, to weaken and divide Russia.
Russians are also aware of the imminent danger to their country. Last month, Presidential Administration Director Dmitri Medvedev, for the first time publicly admitted the danger. But this is not the whole story. The Putin administration has launched a national life-saving strategy: accelerating the concentration of power and sniping at the US by selling weapons to Syria and China, cooperating with Iran on nuclear technology and conducting joint military exercises with China this summer.
As long as Moscow pursues these tactics with sufficient determination, it can cause serious trouble for the US. But Putin is unlikely to stop the drift toward disintegration, because the current crisis is only a consequence of the disintegration of the USSR. And this disintegration was simply a case of a 20th-century party-state aberration failing to keep up with the times.
The breakup of the USSR was an expression of a party-state in crisis. It was not a solution to the crisis. Almost 10 years of a chaotic Boris Yeltsin administration could not completely uproot the party-state system. The Putin administration not only does not seek to eradicate the system, but has utilized its vestiges -- such as the Communist Information Bureau -- to establish its power while economically returning to the well-trodden path of strong state control. As a result, Russia has regained a superficial prosperity, such as its inclusion in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), which are seen as leading emergent regional economies. But the agglomeration of problems that Russia continues to experience are sufficient to bring about its disintegration.
The Putin administration has made clear that unless there is a major realignment of powers -- such as that caused by World War I -- Russia's disintegration will be inevitable.
Looking at Eurasia as a whole, clearly only the disintegration of China would be sufficient to cause such a realignment and redistribution.
Russia hopes to save itself by supporting those who resist the US, and is therefore cooperating more closely with China, among other nations. But, practically speaking, Russia is not the US' equal. So while Russia may oppose the US, this will not be sufficient to hold off its disintegration. The dialectics of history mean that China is Russia's only hope; Russia can only hope that China will collapse before it does.
Chang Hsi-mo is an associate professor of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at National Sun Yat-Sen University.
TRANSLATED BY LIN YA-TI
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