The Next Decade: Where We've Been--And Where We're Going by George Friedman

Author:George Friedman [Friedman, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Intelligence & Espionage, Social Science, Future Studies
ISBN: 9780385532945
Google: D-rg1WshbCkC
Amazon: 0307476391
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2011-01-15T09:10:51+00:00

CHAPTER 8

THE RETURN OF RUSSIA

The collapse of the Soviet Union appeared to signal Russia’s demise as an international player, but news of that death was premature. A nation so large, so filled with resources, and so strategically located doesn’t simply dissolve into the air. In the 1990s, the USSR’s fall nonetheless shattered the vast empire assembled by the czars and held together by the Communists, leaving Moscow in control of a fraction of what it held in 1989. Muscovy alone (and Siberia), the region that had been the kernel of the empire, remained in Russian hands. As long as that core remained, however, the game wasn’t over. The Russian Federation, sorely weakened, still survived, and it will play an increasingly significant role in the next decade.

While Russia suffered breakaway regions and an economy in shambles, the United States emerged as the sole remaining global power, able to dominate the planet in a casual, almost indolent fashion. But the Soviet collapse gave the United States only a limited time frame in which to drive a stake into the heart of its old rival, ensuring that it stayed down. The United States could have applied stress to the Russian system by supporting secessionist movements or by increasing economic pressure. Such moves might very well have caused the entire Russian Federation to crumble, enabling its former junior partners to absorb what was left and form a new balance of power in Eurasia.

At the time, however, the effort did not seem worth the risk, mostly because Russia appeared unlikely to emerge from its chaos for generations. Destroying what was left of Russian power did not even appear to be necessary, because the United States could create the regional balance of power it wanted simply by expanding NATO and the alliance system eastward.

But the United States was also deeply concerned about the future of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, which was even more massive than the American one. Further chaos in the region would have made the weapons vulnerable to terrorists and black marketers, among other risks. The United States wanted nuclear weapons within the former Soviet Union to be under the control of one state that could be watched and shaped, and that state was Russia, not Ukraine or Belarus or all the rest. Thus while the Russian nuclear arsenal had not preserved the Soviet Union, it did save the Russian Federation—at least from U.S. intervention.

During the 1990s the non-Russian members of the former Soviet Union, countries such as Kazakhstan and Ukraine, were desperate to be organized. By rapidly and aggressively integrating them into NATO, the United States could have increased the strength and cohesiveness of these encircling nations to bottle up Russia and the former Soviet republics as well, and Russia would have been helpless to stop the process.

Yet while the United States had plans to do exactly this, it did not move quickly enough. Only eastern Europe and the Baltic states were absorbed into NATO, a significant strategic shift that becomes more significant

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