President Bush and the Five Halloween Monsters - Russia

President Bush and the Five Halloween Monsters. Part I

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Reelected and reinvested, President Bush will have to deal with five key realms, and the American bilateral relations with them will be determinant in shaping the entire world in the years ahead. These realms are not important on account of their size but because their role in the global policy making is instrumental. We may be at the end of January, but for President Bush it may rather look like a long October 31st day lasting four years. Appropriate method, adequate dealing, and pertinent management of the Five Halloween monsters will ensure a less scary and more promising world at the threshold of an era of natural upheavals.

President Bush seems to have an understanding of the high stakes, and this is the reason he felt obliged to look to the sky and further beyond before inaugurating his second term. It is obvious that the horizon is worrisome, and the environment somewhat dejected. Yet, people allover the world, be they free or tyrannized, find it quite comforting to hear the American president saying "we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom, and America will always be faithful to that cause".

The Five Halloween Monsters
The five realms that will be instrumental for global progress and freedom expansion are not necessarily all Leviathan-typed; there may be some lethargic Behemoths among them! What is sure is that it will be unavoidable for America to find a free and peaceful horizon for the entire world without focalizing on the Five Halloween Monsters. Who are these realms?

France, Russia, China, Turkey and Islam are the five realms that will have to take the maximum of attention, perception, vision, conception, decision and execution of the American administration throughout the second Bush presidency. If it is necessary for the US to deal with issues oscillating from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Syria to Iran, from Ethiopia to Algeria, and from Sudan to North Korea, it is even more compelling for the American administration to shape a long term strategy in respect of the aforementioned realms. Without this axis of policy, any success here or there will be provisory.

Russia

Russia is in disarray; the recent rebuffing of President Putin’s unacceptable interference in the Ukrainian presidential elections has been felt throughout the country. The country is still vast, and faces serious problems in various parts of its territory; as if these problems are not enough, the impertinent, inadequate, and corrupt ruling elite keeps on creating more problems with various neighboring countries, mostly those that were part of the defunct Soviet Union, namely Georgia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, etc. With the collapse of Communism, traditional Russian nationalism found its proper position in the Kremlin because there was not enough time for Gorbachev to perform before Yeltsin took over. Lack of democratic culture does not characterize the largest part of the population that yearns for another Orange ‘revolution’ this time in Moscow; but unfortunately this will not come very soon.

It is an augur coincidence that Condoleezza Rice has been an expert in Sovietology, and she already referred to Belarus as one of the focal points of the American foreign policy. It is true that America has to exercise the maximum pressure in order to help the various states emanated from the collapse of the USSR attain real – not nominal – independence. The interference of Russia in Georgia and Abkhazia must end. However, all this is foreign policy tactics, and certainly the State Department can deal with these issues.

An American strategy for Russia is something else; it may start with Chechnya (1.5 million people) but it has to encompass also the Tatars (8 million people), the Daghestanis (2 million people), the Avaris (half a million people), the Erzyans (half a million people), the Kabardians (half a million people), the Maris (half a million people), the Ossetians (half a million people), the Baskiris (approx. 1.5 million people), the Chuvashis (2 million people), the Yakutians (400000 people), the Buriatis (400000 people), the Tuvanis (200000 people), and various other peoples living on the immense parts of the impressively large Russian territory. In this regard, it is essential to bear in mind that out of a total population of 143 million people, Russians account for approximately 115 million people. Certainly, if one takes into consideration the Russian native speakers throughout the countries of the former USSR (where Russian populations form at times significant minorities), the total number rises to 153 million people, but the bottom line is that in today’s Russia there are not only Russians.

One must never forget that a Russian in Uzbekistan, a Russian in Lithuania, a Russian in Azerbaijan, and a Russian in Kazakhstan are not indigenous but pure colons. They are like a French in Polynesia, like a Dutch in Surinam, like a British in Malta, like a Belgian in Congo! This may already be common knowledge to many people so far. The rejection of, and the hatred against, the Russians shapes national decision-making in most of these countries, and this was clearly seen in the recent case of Ukraine.

What most of the people in the West do not know is that the same applies to the aforementioned, numerous, subjugated peoples, who are left without a national homeland, having not yet accessed to Self-determination, freedom, democracy, and genuine nation building. Russians were and are still foreign colons in Yakutia, in Daghestan, in Tuva, in Chuvashia, and in Tataria. All these indigenous peoples want the Russian colons out of their circumference, they want to become independent, they want to secede. And most of them are the majority in their territories. Under terms of democratic principles, it is difficult to understand why there can be an independent Estonia, there can be an independent Kazakhstan, but there cannot be an independent Yakutia.

Accepting as ‘normal’ the fact that Latvia was a Soviet Socialist Republic that then became a member state of the post-Communist Commonwealth of Independent States, and later seceded in order to become a member state of the European Union, and ….
…. admitting as also ‘normal’ that Yakutia, Chuvashia, Tataria, Daghestan and many other parts of today’s Russia did not achieve all that …..because they were not accepted by Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and their successors as ‘republics’ but as ‘administrative regions’, signifies that you take into account the choices of a totalitarian regime – that has collapsed. This approach and attitude is absolutely antidemocratic, and anachronistic altogether.

Consequently, the map of the world will change dramatically, if the aforementioned peoples are helped to achieve freedom and self-determination, since Russia would be territorially reduced to 5 to 7 million km sq, and new countries would emerge in Siberia, possessing vast territories, scarce population, and fantastic opportunities of development. Great markets would open in various sectors, and the tremendously rich soil of Siberia would be ultimately exploited to the benefit of the indigenous peoples, and the entire world.

Within this context, the issue of helping the still oppressed and subjugated peoples of Russia achieve independence may be of minor importance for the impenetrable Caucasus mountains, but it is of vital significance for the immense, quasi-uninhabited plains of Eastern Siberia. It is even more so, when it is approached (not through a political activist’s and/or liberal ideologist’s viewpoint but) in terms of global geopolitics.

The Chinese demographic boom has long been expected to create frictions in the Sino-Russian relations. If in the forthcoming years we are going to attest a continuous galloping growth of the Chinese economy or a breakdown and crisis, overpopulated China will need more resources to exploit, and the Uralo-Altaic populations of Northeastern Siberia will be the basic target of Beijing.

The present Russian – Japanese rapprochement (precisely 100 years after the lost war of the tsar!) and the American insistence on the enduring arms embargo to China (following the 1991 Tien An Men events) place the Chinese leadership in a rather uncomfortable position. The Chinese reaction is already attested as uneasiness, hindrance and at times direct opposition in various cases allover the world from Taipei to Iran, and from Iraq to Sudan. The intensifying Sino-European relations, the contracts awarded to the French, the Germans and the Italians in the recent European presidential visits to China, the military and spatial plans of Beijing, everything heralds a forthcoming Chinese nationalist explosion that Russia is unable to anticipate and incapable to contain. At a first stage, Northeastern Siberia should become a matter of greater concern for America.

Failing in Ukraine, facing disaster in Georgia, proving himself unable to end up the Chechnya genocide, Putin has no intention to consolidate democracy in Russia. The nuclear cooperation with Iran, the anti-American stand in Iraq, the recent efforts to pull Turkey into a mysterious alliance, the gradual isolation from Europe do not portend anything positive in Moscow. Israel will have to rely on American pressure in order to prevent another arms sales package to bankrupt Syria these days. It is clear that the lesson of Iraq, where Russia lost a lot of money by striking deals with an impossible partner, has not be taken seriously.

While anticipating Chinese interests in Northeastern Siberia and arriving there first, America must not have illusions about an eventual cooperation with the baseless and corrupt Putin administration against the Islamic terrorism. For the Russian president this is only a blank check for further bloodshed in Chechnya.

Cooperation with the US against the Islamic Terrorism can also be viciously viewed by Putin. Getting first some insight into the American administration’s plans, Putin is able to sell later these secrets to Islamic terrorist groups, asking their cooperation in ending up the Chechnya mayhem, which they will accept.

Russia cannot understand the subtleties of Islamic networks; by cooperating with Iran and Syria, Moscow jeopardizes its own future. Islamic terrorist groups are highly linked with the elite of the Saudi murderous theo-clepto-cracy, and their agenda comprises long term perspectives. Through an early stage of cooperation, the Islamic terrorist groups’ heads will become acquainted with people, whom they will attempt later to bribe in order to get nuclear items – not just secrets, since they are urged in their fight against America. Putin will say sorry, if some items are reported ‘stolen’….

Russia should therefore be kept constantly busy at home with numerous nationalistic uprisings of its various peoples throughout its territory, so that Chechnya stops appearing as the only Russian ‘internal’ problem. In this way, Putin will never be in a position to strike a particular deal with Islamic terrorists. Strong support to Russian democrats is another way of America to show Putin that the time does not work for him anymore.