The Seam-State Curtain

The term iron curtain was coined by Joseph Goebbels and made famous by Winston Churchill. It described the physical and ideological barrier between Eastern and Western Europe. Today, Russia is pursuing a similar policy, primarily through classic divide-and-conquer tactics, to create a curtain of failing and/or autocratic states along its borders. In Europe, the new battleground is Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. In the Caucasus, it’s Georgia.

With the expansion of the EU into Romania and Bulgaria in the middle of 2007, Russia is aggresively undermining the Ukraine, supporting Belarus and sowing chaos in Moldova. In addition, it’s the only country save Serbia which continues to oppose Kosovar independence. As the map shows, these actions serve two purposes. First it aims to create a power vaccum which Moscow hopes to fill and secondly to indirectly attack the European Union beating back their progress. The Ukraine’s Orange Revolution broke through these lines thus forcing Russia to quickly reinforce the area which means destabilizing and undermining the country.

Russia is consolidating its position in Belarus, attacking the Ukraine directly as well as indirectly attacking both the Ukraine and Moldova through Transdniester and both the EU and Kosovo through Serbia. In the Caucasus, it’s attacking Georgia directly and indirectly (through Abkhazia & S. Ossetia) as well as Azerbaijan by supporting Armenia and thus Karbagh.

As global rule-sets spread, Russia is still opting for a type of Sonderweg, or special way. Having recently paid off a large portion of its debt and counting on high oil and gas prices in the near future, Russia is trying to take full advantage of its current opportunities as they surely won’t last forever. Prolonged internal conflicts, a shrinking population, organized crime and general chaos has Moscow in a choke hold. This combination of factors has led Russia to rightly view proxy war as its most viable option. While the USSR, and indeed every country, did the same, it had the fallback option of a hot war, Russia does it because it has no fallback.

Global integration and regional and national fragmentation go hand in hand but the proliferation of microstates, secessionist conflicts and devolution poses enormous challenges to the world. However, when they occur within the right framework (e.g. the EU) damage is not only minimized, but in fact new opportunities can be created. Russia’s current policies towards Eastern Europe and the Caucasus (Chechnya included) do neither and are almost intentionally aimed at creating failed states.

Africa provides a good example of the long term effects of such divide, loot and leave policies. And as the saying goes, if you break it you buy it. Russia needs to ask itself whether it’s shrinking or expanding the Gap.