- (apr 2010)
Not the same terrorism.
Russians (not only the president and the prime minister) are greatly annoyed
by the double standard of the Western countries. Westerners get hysterical
when Islamic terrorists blow up skyscrapers or trains, but then ignore or
even condone the acts of Islamic terrorists in Russia, despite the fact
that Russia has been a victim way before the USA or Western Europe.
They are in part justified. The West is almost racist in the way it does
not feel the same kind of empathy for a Russian child that it feels for a
Spanish child. And the West is still blinded by its firm belief that Islam
is a peaceful ideology and the terrorists are gangsters who "hijacked a
religion" (as George W Bush famously said).
Many Russians think that children are the same everywhere, and that Islamic
terrorists are the same everywhere. They have a point.
Russian media and politicians go out of their way to equate the
terrorist attacks in Moscow with the terrorist attacks of
Madrid 2004 and London 2005.
However, that's where the logic fails.
The terrorists who attacked Madrid were mostly from Morocco. The terrorists
who attacked London were mostly from Pakistan. The terrorists who attacked
Washington and New York were mostly from Saudi Arabia.
Russian media and politicians are now emphasizing the fact that one of the
female suicide bombers was the wife of an Islamic terrorist trained in Pakistan.
But that's far fetched. The difference, in reality, is that the terrorist
attacks carried out in the USA and Western Europe are about the interference
(right or wrong)
of the USA and Western Europe in distant (Muslim) lands, whereas the terrorist
attacks carried out in Russia are about a region of Russia that wants to secede.They were neither Arabs nor Pakistani: they were Russian citizens.
It is not clear which kind of war the USA is fighting in Afghanistan. It's a
strange case of nation building. The war in Iraq turned from a preemptive strike
against an Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction into an exercise to introduce
democracy in the middle of the Islamic world. Whatever they are, they are not
civil wars within the USA. Russia, instead, is fighting a civil war. The USA
killed Afghans and Iraqis in its wars. Russia killed Russians in Chechnya
(Russians who did not want to be Russian anymore).
Russia is the typical multi-ethnic empire that is trying to delay
the inevitable: its disintegration.
Russians take it as an outrageous act of verbal aggression if Westerners
point out the atrocities committed by Putin's government in Chechnya. Those
atrocities do not justify the female bombers who blew up commuters in a Moscow
metro station, but those atrocities did take place, and they took place
because those Muslims don't want to be part of Russia.
Those Muslims have all reasons to hate Russia proper, both because of the two
wars in Chechnya that killed thousands of civilians and because of the corrupt
and brutal dictatorship of their current "president", mafia boss
Ramzan Kadyrov, who is implicated in countless murders.
In 2009 Russian human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was assassinated in Chechnya, following the murders of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov (january, Moscow), former Kadyrov bodyguard Umar Israilov (january, Vienna), former Chechen commander Sulim Yamadayev (march, Dubai), Yamadayev's brother Ruslan (september, Moscow). They all had made the mistake of denouncing Kadyrov's mafia.
It is not even clear how many Russians (of Russia proper) really want to keep
Chechnya into the Russian Federation. After all, a blonde blue-eyed Russian
cannot travel through Chechnya or Dagestan without risking his life. What is
the usefulness of those remote pieces of the empire? Putin, on the other hand,
must feel that the strategic value is very high if he risked his army,
his job and his legacy to keep the empire intact.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2010 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (feb 2010)
Russia towards the abyss.
Few countries are as fascinating as Russia from a historical viewpoint.
It is the largest country in the world, the remnant of what used to be
the largest empire in the world (the Mongol empire). It is the only
Western country that has been successful at conquering and annexing large
portions of the Islamic world. It is the only Western colonial power that
still owns the non-European colonies it conquered in the past, and in fact
most of its territory is still located in Asia. However, its main enemies
have always been Europeans: the British fought a costly "Great Game" against
Russia in Central Asia, Napoleon's France invaded it, Hitler's Germany invaded
it, the USA fought a costly Cold War against it. And now Russia feels threatened
by NATO and the European Union, two Western institutions that seem open to
just about any country except Russia. Last but not least, Russia is the only
non-Western country that has contributed so many writers, musicians,
artists and scientists to Western civilization.
Therefore the question "What is Russia?" is one of the most complicated
question one can ask.
Starting from the end, one of Russia's chronic problems is that nobody loves it.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, people all around its periphery
celebrated what they perceived as "freedom" from Russian occupiers.
Not only did they declare independence, but they rushed to form alliances with
the very enemies of Russia. A few of their satellites and even three of the
former regions of the Soviet Union have joined the European Union and/or NATO.
Both the European Union and NATO are bound to further expand in the Russian
sphere of influence.
Serbia (supposed to be a staunch ally of Russia after the Western powers of NATO
bombed the hell out of its capital) is applying for membership in the EU,
and its politicians openly discuss the possibility of becoming members of NATO;
and even the Russian-supported candidate of eastern (Russian-speaking)
Ukraine is in favor of signing a trade deal with Western Europe that would
basically represent the first step to become a EU member.
Even the countries and politicians who have been supported and protected
by Russia want stronger ties with the West than with Russia.
It's like your best friends telling you that they don't like your company
and they prefer to hang out with your very enemies.
Despite the economic boom of the Putin era,
virtually all of its former satellites are enjoying higher standards of living
than the average Russian citizen. One of its former allies, China, is rapidly
becoming the world's second economic power.
While the population of Russia is decreasing at an alarming rate (it has now
only 140 million people, fewer than Germany and France combined, and less than
half the much smaller USA, even fewer than Nigeria), too many of the bright
Russians are leaving the country for warmer weather, better wages and more
freedom. In 2003 the Russian government estimated that
more than half a million scientists had left the country since the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1991 (a UNESCO World Science Report was even more pessimistic).
According to the official data,
more than seven million Russians emigrated from Russia between 1991 and 2002:
almost none returned home.
During the same period, about 15 million people immigrated into Russia from the
Caucasus, the Baltic countries and Central Asia, mostly ethnic Russians but
also people in search of jobs at a time of turmoil in their newly independent
countries. That flow has ended, but the flow of Russians leaving the country
continues, and the birthrate remains insufficient to compensate for it. Russia
is likely to keep losing one million people a year.
Siberia and the Far East, which constitute the bulk of Russian territory,
are virtually uninhabited. They border with one of the most overcrowded
countries in the world, China: it does not bode well for the future.
At the same time, peripheral regions demand more autonomy or outright
independence. The two wars in Chechnya have not changed the minds (nor the
hearts) of the people of Chechnya. They just intimidated them. The problem
extends to regions that don't exhibit the same ethnic and religious issues:
central control from Moscow is just too far to be accepted candidly by remote
regions.
The year of 2010 opened with mass protests in the streets of many Russian
cities (all of them far from Moscow). The most relevant ones might be the
ones in Kaliningrad, a strategic Russian outpost in the middle of Europe
that borders on NATO and EU members Poland and Lithuania.
Kaliningrad is the only port on the Baltic Sea that is ice-free in winter,
and is therefore vital to Russian economic and military interests.
The Russians of Kaliningrad do not demand independence, but they are clearly
aware of the booming economy of Poland and they are close enough to Germany
that they know how life is in Western Europe.
The Russian leaders are aware of the problems, but retain the traditional
suspicious attitude towards the West. These are justified, especially after
the mini-war in Georgia in which Russia was clearly on higher moral ground
than the West
(See What Europe got out of Russia and
The mess the West got into).
However, there is no escaping destiny: Russia is sinking while its former
enemies are ruling the world, and its own friends are rapidly leaving the
sinking ship.
Putin is the man who saved Russia from sinking all of a sudden, but doesn't
seem like the man who can stop the sinking. He is too belligerent and
anti-Western: Putin believes that the cure consists in keeping Russia separate
from the west, and is probably the only leader on the planet who thinks so.
The vast majority of countries in the world have moved rapidly towards closer
economic (if not military) ties with the West. Russia is the proud exception,
still experimenting with its own theory of a self-sufficient economic model.
It relies massively on exports of its natural resources but, to their credit,
Russia does have technological know-how that most developing countries wouldn't
have without strong ties with the West. This privileged position, though, may
turn out to be a curse, because it has so far reduced the motivation to become
more "Westernized", therefore letting other countries progress faster, which
inevitably results in Russia losing not only ground but also charisma.
Dmitry Medvedev or, even better, a new generation of leaders could still
stop the "sinking", though. Recently, a research group that he heads has
come out with a report urging closer ties with the West, and even NATO
membership
(See this article).
This borders on anathema from the viewpoint of Putin.
Meanwhile Russia has quietly cooperated with the USA in Afghanistan, formally
allowing the USA to use Russian bases to ship military equipment to Afghan
bases (although in practice the agreement is rarely used), and it has signed
a pact to fight the Afghan druglords (that represent an increasing problem in
Russia itself).
Last but not least, the government has come out with a plan to
promote Western-style technological innovation
(See this article).
It is probably up to the West now to pursue a friendlier strategy towards
Russia, starting with a recognition that Russia was right and the West was
wrong on Georgia.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2010 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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Articles on Russia before 2010
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