Stratfor Article on Russia in 2014: Moscow Eyes the Periphery

BZM · #1 (**permalink**) 03-11-2008, 07:25 AM

As I read the Stratfor article on Beijing and security in preparation for the Olympics, I felt like I was reading a 2014 article about the Sochi Olympics in Russia. To see how the article might read in 2014, I replaced Bejing with Moscow (or Sochi where appropriate), China with Russia, and Xinjiang’s Uighur militants with Chechnyan militants. I had to change a few more words than I hoped to making sense, but if Stratfor publishes something like this in 2014, you will know that you read it here first...

Quote:

Russian media reported on Sunday that air marshals foiled a March 7 attempt to crash a Volga-Elbrus Airlines plane flying to Moscow from Stavropol in the Stavropol Krai. The governor of the Stavropol Krai regional government, Alexander Chernikov, said on the sidelines of the ongoing duma session in Moscow that some people on the flight had attempted to “create an air disaster.” A spokesperson for Volga-Elbrus Airlines told the news channel NTV that “it’s up to the police” to determine whether it was a terrorist attack. Russian media have hinted that the attempted attack was carried out by Muslim separatists from Chechnya.

Russia has been warning for several years that the biggest threat to the upcoming Olympics — to be held in Sochi later this year — comes from Chechnya’s militants. On Sunday, the governor emphasized this threat when he said on the sidelines of the duma session that in January security forces had smashed a Chechnya militant cell in the Krasnodar Krai that was plotting an attack against the Olympics. Chernikov added that the government would strike first against the “three evil forces”: terrorists, saboteurs and secessionists.

The coincidental timing of the airline incident and the announcement of the new details from the January raid raises some suspicions. Both come just after Australian tour guides traveling by bus were briefly taken captive by a bomb-wielding local from Ossetia — an incident that ended when Russian security forces shot the hijacker. That incident showcased some of the broader security threats present in Russia — ones Moscow would rather people not focus on ahead of the surge of tourists coming for the Olympics. Rather, Moscow has kept up a steady drumbeat of warnings about militant Islamists from Chechnya. And Moscow has exploited the Western fear of any Islamist militant threat to avoid criticism for the aggressive security measures being put in place for the Olympics.

The frequency with which Moscow has cried “Chechnya” in recent months might have more to do with politics than with a genuine security threat, but it emphasizes the central government’s long-standing concerns with Russia’s ethnic minorities. Russia’s core — Moscow — serves as the center of both political and economic power — and served as the seat of power of the Tzars starting in the 1400s. Power was shortly transferred to Saint Petersburg and was moved back to Moscow by the Bolsheviks. This fertile area has long provided the food and industry for the various Russian states that have emerged over the centuries. But this same area, which nurtures a sedentary society, has always been vulnerable to invasion by the various peoples around it. Thus, over time, Russia (and the Soviet Union) has expanded its borders to absorb a de facto buffer zone — including Eastern Europe, the northern caucuses, Central Asia, and the Baltics.

These buffer states provided security for Russia and the Soviet Union, but also introduced a new security problem for the country: control of the ethnic minorities. Incorporating the buffer zones into the Soviet Union, the central government found itself constantly struggling to maintain control over minority groups that were the majority in their own lands, distant from the core. The central leadership sent military units made up of different ethnicities out to the buffer territories to provide control and security, or carried out transmigration policies, seeking to thin out the percentages of the minority populations.

Despite all of this, the central government never really has integrated the minority populations into the Russian populace, and lingering prejudices and inequalities have been matched by long-lasting resentments and occasional uprisings by the various ethnic groups and still within Russian borders after the breakup of the Soviet Union. In Russia, additional ethnicities were added to the country, not primarily by immigration, but rather by conquest of surrounding territories — and these ethnicities were never assimilated into a greater Russian culture. (This is in stark contrast to the United States, where immigration brought in new minority populations which were steadily blended into an American identity.)

This lack of integration has left the core of Russia with a constant sense of insecurity that continues to be reflected today in its national policies. It also leaves Russia less concerned overall about security threats from abroad than about domestic ones — whether they are real or imagined.

Note: I made up the name of the governor and the name of the airlines so that no real entity would be listed.