[aaus-list] Will the Near Abroad Go Nuclear?

[ajmotyl at andromeda.rutgers.edu]

>From the Atlantic Council website, www.acus.org

http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/will-non-russians-go-nuclear


Will the Near Abroad Go Nuclear?
Alexander Motyl | September 10, 2008
As Europe redefines its security interests vis-à-vis Russia in the
aftermath of Vladimir Putin’s war against Georgia, both sides have
reverted to the kind of geopolitical thinking that, while reasonably
accurate during the Cold War, is devoid of reality today. Both European
and Russian analysts and policymakers make the strategic mistake of
thinking that all that matters is the relationship between the West and
Russia. They forget that the collapse of the Soviet Union brought into
existence a plethora of non-Russian states as committed to defending their
security and sovereignty as, say, Germany and Russia are committed to
defending theirs.

Putin’s Russia sees many of the non-Russian states in its “near abroad” as
former or future vassals. Western Europe in general and France and Germany
in particular see these states as obstacles to Europe’s ability to acquire
cheap Russian gas and balance against the United States. Both sides act as
if the non-Russian states did not exist or were, at most, pawns on some
“grand chessboard.”

Of course, these states do exist, and they do have interests that cannot
be easily ignored or reduced to a footnote in Western-Russian relations. 
Stable relations between Europe and Russia depend on stable relations
between them and Russia’s neighbors. Europe and Russia cannot be secure,
and their relations cannot be stable and mutually beneficial, if the
security of Russia’s neighbors is neglected. Indeed, relations between
Europe and Russia can be secure only if Russia’s neighbors are secure.

Unfortunately, the predictably anemic European response to the war in
Georgia and the growing Western tendency to rethink grand strategy as if
the non-Russians did not matter has taught the non-Russians that the West
in general and “old Europe” in particular will more than happily sacrifice
the security, and perhaps even the sovereignty, of the "near abroad" on
the altar of Russian gas

How do states that face existential threats invariably respond to such
threats? Contrary to the implicit expectations of European policymakers
and analysts, the non-Russians—in particular Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova,
Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan—will not just roll over and accept a
fait accompli crafted in Berlin, Paris, or Brussels. Instead, they will
seek existential solutions to existential threats.

At a minimum, this means beefing up substantially their defense
expenditures, crafting anti-Russian alliances, and subordinating economic
reform to the exigencies of security. More likely than not, the
non-Russian states that feel most threatened by Russia will follow in
Israel’s footsteps and seek security guarantees from the United States and
shelter under the American nuclear umbrella. At a maximum, this means
doing exactly what the Israelis have done: secretly acquiring nuclear
weapons. All the ex-Soviet states have the know-how to build nuclear
reactors and weapons; Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan even inherited
hundreds of warheads after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And some of
their leaders have openly expressed regret at having transferred them to
Russia in the early 1990s.

If Europe remains indifferent to the fate of the non-Russian states and
continues to demonstrate its willingness to subordinate them to Russia’s
great-power aspirations, the non-Russians will, unsurprisingly and
predictably, become increasingly indifferent to Berlin’s obsession with
cheap gas and Paris’s obsession with balancing the Americans. At some
later point, integration into Europe will be abandoned as a policy goal
and democracy will be junked for the same kind of Russian-style
authoritarianism and hyper-nationalism that provokes so little criticism
in the Europe of Gerhard Schroeder and Sylvio Berlusconi. Soon thereafter,
the entire former Soviet space—including some of the east European states
already part of the European Union—could easily come to consist of angry,
suspicious, and aggressive authoritarian states that threaten the
stability of all of Europe.

Ironically, the first casualty of such growing interstate tensions may be
Russia. Despite Putin’s bluster and quick victory over tiny Georgia,
Russia remains weak, corrupt, and unstable. And, with its propensity to
“talk loudly while carrying a small stick,” Russia will be prone to
militarist adventurism, overreach, crisis, and even collapse. Whether
Russia’s eventual destabilization involves a regional war or massive
popular unrest, it will affect many non-Russian states as well—and, not
incidentally, lead to disruptions in energy deliveries to Europe.

Once a new time of troubles sets on Russia and its neighbors, Europe just
might realize that the non-Russians did matter after all—and that a
serious effort to integrate Russia’s key neighbors into NATO and the EU in
the immediate aftermath of the Russo-Georgian war could have sufficiently
reassured nervous non-Russians to allay their fears of isolation and
prevent a desperate search for security.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers
University-Newark.  AP Photo by Sergei Chuzavkov via Daylife.