Russia's Dilemma
Now finally I finished reading “The Grand Chessboard” from Zbigniew Brzezinski (former national security advisor in the Carter administration) written in 1997 some years after the end of the cold war. A real interesting book on geopolitics focussing on Eurasia that allows to get more understanding of nations rethorics on the political stage. In German the book was given the title “The only Superpower” (the english subtitle is: “American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives”. So it is also about how the US can sustain it's current role as the Superpower in the world which is closely connected to keeping it's influence in Eurasia.
Brzezinski describes the geopolitical interests and situation of the most dominant nations in Europe (Germany and France), and Asia (China, Japan and to some extent India) and of Russia. Building on my blogs about Russia and Putin's speech it is quite interesting to see Brzezinski's thoughts about Russia. Which geostrategical options does Russia have?
After the end of the cold war Russia had the expectation as the former second superpower to establish a global condominium with the US in which it was deceived. Then it focussed on it's former sphere of influence and tried to reestablish power in the countries of the former Soviet Union (CIS = Commonwealth of Independent States). But most countries are in fear of Russia and want to keep political and economical distance to Russia not to risk their independence. Russia was politically not strong enough to force these countries to join a closer federation nor economically attractive enough to have them cooperate voluntarily. The next option was an antihegemonial coalition with Iran and China against the US. But there are complicated relationships involved in this model (e.g. Russia and China) and it would only work if the US had bad relationships with both China and Iran.
This leads Brzezinski to talk about a dilemma for Russia only having one beneficial alternative that would help Russia speed up the countries' development process and give it a realistic role as one of the big, important nations in the world. And that is aligning itself with a transatlantic Europe, the EU and NATO. Brzezinski advocates for driving Russia into that direction, reinforcing the dilemma by stabilizing and securing the independence mainly of Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine, the latter being the most important. According to him Russia needs to give up it's historical ambitions of rebuilding the old Russian empire and clearly decide itself for this European option. With such a different attitude Russia could gain the position as the leading economical partner in the region. I would welcome Russia being more close to Europe!
Posted at
09:22PM Jul 27, 2007
by Volker Seubert in Europe & Beyond |
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