PUTIN WANTS A NEW RUSSIAN EMPIRE
By Con Coughlin
Daily Telegraph
12:01am BST 05/09/2008
UK
Just how far is Russia prepared to go in its attempts to build a
new Russian empire? As the West struggles to digest the aftermath of
Moscow’s audacious land grab in Georgia, all the signals emanating from
the Kremlin suggest that, far from being cowed by the international
condemnation it has received for its dramatic intervention in South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, this is just the start of Russia’s quest to
establish a new era of imperial glory.
That is certainly how senior officials across Whitehall are
interpreting the new mood of territorial expansionism that seems to
be sweeping through the Kremlin. "The Russians may be able to come
to terms with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but they will never
get used to the idea that they are no longer an empire," one senior
Whitehall official told me this week. "The desire to build a new empire
is far stronger than any desire to rebuild the Soviet Union, and that
is what is currently driving Moscow’s behaviour in the Caucasus."
There was a time when the mere sight of the American vice-president,
Dick Cheney Рthe ̩minence grise of the Bush administration Рmaking
his considerable presence felt in the Caucasus would be sufficient
to bring the Kremlin to its senses. Unlike some of the younger and
less-experienced members of President George W=2 0Bush’s foreign
policy team, Mr Cheney is a veteran Cold War warrior who, even after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, warned that the threat of resurgent
Russian nationalism could never be discounted.
When Mr Bush said he had looked the former Russian president Vladimir
Putin in the eye and got "a sense of his soul" after their first
encounter in Slovenia in the summer of 2001, Mr Cheney remained deeply
sceptical about Mr Putin’s ultimate intentions. This might have been
the high point in the thaw in relations between the Kremlin and the
White House, but that did not stop Mr Cheney forging ahead with his
Nato enlargement agenda, signing up as many of the former Soviet
republics for membership as possible, and building a network of oil
and gas pipelines linking the West to the vast new energy resources
coming on stream in central Asia. For all Moscow’s talk of becoming a
trusted ally of the West, the hawkish Mr Cheney simply did not trust
it to deliver.
advertisementAnd so it has proved. Whether the Kremlin ordered last
month’s invasion of Georgia to prevent it from joining Nato, or
because it was concerned that the new oil pipeline might jeopardise
Russia’s stranglehold over the West’s energy supplies, what is clear
is that Moscow simply could not tolerate the notion that any country
occupying what Mr Putin defines as "post-Soviet space" has the right
to think and act for itself.
Yesterday Mr Cheney, during his stopover in Georgia, said America
remained "fully committed" to Georgia’s efforts to join Nato, but
it is highly unlikely that it president, Mikheil Saakashvili, can
continue with Tbilisi’s pursuit of Nato membership while a third of
his country remains under occupation by Russian troops.
Indeed, as Mr Cheney will have discovered during his hastily arranged
tour of the Caucasus this week, the Kremlin’s success in undermining
the Georgian government has served only to strengthen Moscow’s
determination to prevent the West from making any further advances
into territory it considers part of its historic sphere of interest.
Mr Putin’s lament that the collapse of the Soviet Union was "the
greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century has often
been taken to suggest that Russia, buoyed by its vast oil wealth,
is intent on re-establishing the old Cold War boundaries in central
Europe. But a more accurate insight to the Kremlin’s current thinking
is contained in Mr Putin’s book First Person, published in 2000,
in which he talks about establishing a new Russian empire, rather
than resurrecting the Soviet Union.
This would certainly explain Moscow’s current preoccupation with
the Caucasus, which, under the tsars, was always regarded as a prime
target for Russia’s expansionist aims and parts of which are now the
subject of a sustained campaign of destabilisation by the Kremlin.
Having dealt the Saakashvili=2 0government what could still prove
to be a lethal blow, Moscow hardly missed a beat before turning its
attention towards Ukraine, another post-Soviet state that nurtures
aspirations to join both the European Union and Nato.
Russia has made no secret of its disdain for the pro-Western government
of President Viktor Yushchenko that took office after the 2004 Orange
Revolution, at one point turning off the oil and gas supply taps just
to demonstrate the extent of Kiev’s dependence on Russian goodwill.
Now Moscow can take comfort from the fact that the presence of Russian
military hardware in neighbouring Georgia has provoked deep political
divisions in Kiev, where Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s strong-willed
prime minister, has been accused by Mr Yushchenko of siding with the
main pro-Russian opposition leader, Viktor Yanukovich.
Moscow will not always need to rely on military hardware to redraw
geographical boundaries in its favour – sometimes all that will be
required is clever manipulation of local politics, as is currently
happening in Ukraine.
Nor are Russia’s imperial ambitions confined to the Caucasus. It
has already been active in Central Asia – another favourite imperial
hunting ground – where Moscow has established close relations with
the deeply unpleasant despots who currently hold power in Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
It has taken a keen interest in the separatist movements that are
currently active in Moldova and the disputed Azerbaijan enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow has also made clear its determination to
protect the Russian minorities who remain in the plucky little Baltic
states liberated at the end of the Cold War, but which continue to
be on the receiving end of Moscow’s intimidatory tactics.
Nobody knows whether, lying somewhere in the dark recesses of the
Kremlin, there is a map containing a definitive outline of the new
Russian empire Mr Putin and his acolytes would like to create. But
that is what they are undoubtedly seeking to achieve and there’s very
little – or so it seems – the West can do to stop them.
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