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Originally Posted by Argos
This tells us two important facts:
1. Whatever Russia plans, they are in a hurry, they want to make their corrections to the world order before the USA can react accordingly. The opportunity is perfect. America is in presidental elections, their arms are bound in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the financial capabilities due to the budget problems are limited.
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Sounds like a nice imperialist plan indeed. Unfortunately that kind of "correction" will be very hard to achieve with the economy who's sole reasons for moderate success was ridiculous energy prices. Not to mention their army is not nearly as impressive as it used to be during the hayday of the Soviet Union. They have a bunch or old submarines and a quarter of their navy rusting at abandoned sea-ports, not to mention a large chunk of what was once Soviet Union has deflected to the other side in these two decades since the totalitarian madness ended. They can still be a pretty annoying globally, no doubt about that. But they'd only achieve former glory if they form some kind of a loose coalition with China. Which they won't given the natural resentment between the two (infact only thing the two countries share, besides their communist pasts is a centralized totalitarian rule.)
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Originally Posted by Argos
2. Whoever thought that Medvedev would be just Putin's puppet has now the opportunity to rethink. Putin's foreign politics in his early years was quite 'lenient' and full of concessions. This changed when he made Medvedev and Ivanov his vice presidents in 2005. Russia began more and more to put pressure on it's neighbours. Now, since Medvedev became president, they began to actively exercise their power outside the boundaries of the country. We don't need to be prophets, the next step will be to revise the situation in Ukraine.
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Time will tell. I still consider Medvedev a man of reason and sound legal mind. For now he goes the Putin way, but maybe he just needs time to adjust himself in the new role and reaffirm his reign, before oppossing his master. The change in foreign policy in mid 00s has a lot to do with other reasons (more on that bellow) than Medvedov's vice presidency.
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Originally Posted by Argos
A little correction here. It was the USA and the International Monetary Fund who pressed Yeltsin and Gajdar into an economic 'shock therapy', which ruined completely Russian economy, moved the wealth of this country into the hands of just a few persons (and to foreign investors, not to forget!!!) and left the population to hunger in less than 10 years. Gratefulness?  |
They pressed them into modern economic reforms. Something all former communist countries had to go through, yet none of them (at least the ones that weren't war-torn) needed humanitarian aid. What exactly was the alternative here? Planned economy? Fixed prices? An average Russian working at the People's Combine Harvester company #3 until they run out of steam? God forbid five decades of a heavy-duty totalitarian communist regime that controled all the economy, ridden with corruption, spending an obscene amount of money on the military had anything to do with that "surprising" decline in the 90. Economic reform is a necessary step of any post-communist country if it wants to be competitive in the broader market. It's not like the USA or EU came up with the rules. Smith's invisible hand was operational long before the rise of the Soviet empire and it'll last well past Russia's descent into economic oblivion in five decades or so, as the world finds a decent alternative energy source.
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Originally Posted by Argos
By the way, here is an in-depth analysis of the global background of the Georgia conflict, quite helpful for thinking about what we have to expect the next few months, by Stratfor: The Real World Order: |
Interesting article, but I don't see it quite as dramatic as they put it. Georgia was indeed a significant event but it was more a sign of Russian desperation than them "inviting us into a new world order". These non national entities and coalitions were everpresent and I don't see the significance of overaccentuating the issue.
I see this war as a consequence of two major factors:
1) Russia's desperation in NATO coming to it's doorstep, amids their struggles to regain a significant global player status
2) Pure economy: Europe has been struggling with it's heavy dependance on Russian oil and natural gas resources. The building of the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline was a significant event for both Europe as well as the countries in the Caucasus in trying to distance themselves at least somewhat from heavy dependance on Russian energants. It was a significant blow for the Russian monopol of energy supply. It comes as no surprise British Petroleum (UK) and TotalFinaElf (France) were major investor in the BTC, accompanied by US petroleum companies. Russia tried it's hardest to pressure Azerbajdzan into not signing the accord that started this biggest private-investor project in the world. But they failed. After that the rose revolution took away unofficial yet significantly influential Shevardnadzej links which stem back to Gorbachov days, while a true pro-western democrat with no ties to Moscow came to power. That was when all hope of stopping BTC (or at least limiting it's influence) were finally squashed. It's estimated the BTC pipeline countries will make a 150 billion USD profit till 2024 (and no one even knows how much the western investors are planning to earn in that time). Russians see this as money out of their pocket. Every global cent gained from oil that doesn't get filtered through Moscow is a cent lost.
Putting that in perspective these two seperatist regions in Georgia are just as convenient for Russians as gay pride parades are for religious extremists.