Daily Times

Russian President Vladimir Putin once described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. It seemed rather sudden because the US intelligence had no clue that the rot in the Soviet Union had reached such an advanced stage. Therefore, when in the 1990s the last rites were read, so to say, it alternated between disbelief and euphoria among the United States and its allies. The resultant euphoria was apparent when the collapse of the Soviet Union was not only declared as a victory of the US-led ‘free world’ but was also proclaimed as the end of history.

There was no need now to go looking for a perfect system. The entire world now would be cast in image of the US. It was now the ultimate and only superpower. As we know that it didn’t happen quite like that. Not long after, the US was grappling with all sorts of problems at home and abroad. China, for instance, is now emerging as a competing and contending superpower, which is another story.

As for Russia, it is a diminished power, and under former president Boris Yeltsin it looked like struggling to get a grip on the domestic situation. Yeltsin brought in Putin as his successor. Since then, in his brief role as premier first and later president from 2000, Putin has presided over Russia with an interruption of four years when Dmitry Medvedev became president as the constitution didn’t allow for more than two successive terms. Medvedev now is the prime minister under President Putin. Putin was relatively more successful. He brutally crushed the Chechen rebellion and, in the process, established his image as a strong leader. At about the same time, the rising price of oil helped to stabilise Russia’s economic situation from oil exports and investments in that sector.

As time passed, Putin started to be assertive about Russia’s national interests, independent of the US as the new and the only centre of global power. Among points of disagreement, two particularly stand out as continuing to poison their relations. First is the US moves to establish missile and radar stations in the neighbouring states of Poland and Romania. This was a matter of contention from the time of the Bush administration when it was seriously mooted, as Moscow considered it a security threat. For a while, it seemed to have gone off the radar actively under the Obama administration, possibly as a placatory gesture, but now it is becoming a reality. And not surprisingly, it has created a strong reaction from Russia indicating counter measures, possibly targeting the host countries of Poland and Romania. Moscow doesn’t buy the ludicrous US argument that such missile defence is designed against threat from Iran, even more so after the nuclear deal with Iran virtually freezing its nuclear programme.

In the meantime, all this has got inextricably tangled with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) expansion to Russia’s borders, Russia’s occupation of Crimea, crisis in Ukraine where Moscow has fostered rebellion/separatism, resultant fear in Baltic states and Russia’s other neighbours about its designs in the wake of developments in Ukraine, the stationing of US forces in Baltic states to reassure its NATO allies and so on. After the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was hoped that the resultant peace dividend would stabilise Europe, thus benefitting the world. But it was a forlorn hope. The US and its allies regarded the Soviet collapse as tantamount to Russia’s defeat, and expected Moscow to behave like a vanquished enemy and follow the US lead. Under Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, it was a chaotic period leading to financial bankruptcy, making Russia look like a third world country. But as earlier pointed out, things started to look up under Putin and Russia refused to fit into any kind of a US-designed role.

Tensions mounted as NATO expanded to take in members of the now defunct Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, once a counterweight to the US-led NATO. At the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was an understanding that the rival military pacts, NATO and Warsaw Pact would cease to have any rationale in the post-Cold War period and that, by and large, the world would become a peaceful place. This was not to be and the old foes, now the much-diminished Russia and a newly energised and pumped up US-led western world, were unable to overcome their deep-rooted distrust of the long Cold War period. The basic problem is that, even with its diminished political boundaries of the old Soviet Union, Russia is still too big to fit into a managed role. And this has been a historical problem with its separate Orthodox Church and its “Eurasian” boundaries. This has been an important constraint even when there was a desire, at times, to be more like Europe.

Under communist rule, it took more the character of ideological and power imperatives. And after the end of the Cold War, after a tentative exploration of mutual reconciliation and accommodation, the old distrust has resurfaced, with the west expanding the boundaries of NATO to encircle Russia and Moscow hitting back seeking to push back the western advance. The ongoing civil war in Ukraine, arising out of Russian fears of Ukrainian inclusion in European Union and eventually in NATO, is an example. Which has led the US to station military assets in Russia’s neighbouring Baltic states. And the worse still is the US missile and radar stations in Poland and Romania. Not surprisingly, Russia fears its encirclement and sees it as a security threat.

The problem with Russia, as it was with the Soviet Union before it, is that even though it has a powerful military machine commensurate with the US, its economy is not able to sustain an ongoing confrontation especially after wide-ranging economic sanctions from the west coupled with a plunge in oil prices. The danger, though, is that either side might make a serious miscalculation leading to a deadly war, which somehow escaped during the long Cold War period. And the involvement of both Russia and the US in the ongoing Syrian conflict is only adding to the complexity.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au