Asia Times: Non-aligned Russia a vital buffer in Asia


	August 29, 2001	atimes.com

China

Non-aligned Russia a vital buffer in Asia
By Francesco Sisci

BEIJING - With the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) being expanded to include the Baltic states, and subsequently Russia, a number of important questions are raised, notably, what effect will this have on Japan and China, and whether they, too, should be admitted.

However, first one needs to look at the more fundamental issue, which is a philosophical one: How does one look at the world? The theory behind NATO's enlargement to include Russia takes into account global issues, starting with a historical and geographical standpoint based on the centrality of Europe and of European history.

This world view believes that the main challenges to the West and the United States have started because of European geopolitical clashes and that a non-NATO Kaliningrad would be surrounded by NATO's Poland and the Baltic states. Kaliningrad would become like Danzig in the 1930s, and Russia would be like Germany in the 1920s. While this would solve some European issues, as we have seen in the previous article, it could create new problems, which, however, could appear small if viewed only from the perspective of a relatively isolated Europe.

But if Asia's economy, and military muscle, keeps growing in the next decade at the pace of the past decade, then there will be big problems if the push for Russian inclusion in NATO continues, unless we believe that the forces of globalization that have been unleashed can be stopped at will, making Europe plus Russia plus Japan a safe Fort Alamo.

The move to include Russia in NATO could then be some kind of a bluff, given to Russian President Vladimir Putin to keep Moscow calm while the West checks what is going on with Russia, whether it can be held together or whether it will further splinter into dozens of parts.

On the converse side, stopping the drive for Russia to join NATO would anger some 200 million people who are already very volatile and who still have the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world after the United States. At first sight this appears to be a lose-lose situation, bad if implemented, worse if not.

There is an alternative, though. The European bias should be dropped, and one needs to start looking at geography, and thus history, not from the perspective of events revolving around the centrality of Europe in the world over the past few centuries, but from a much longer history.

With this view, Europe appears as the Western tip of the much larger Eurasian continent, and the balance across this whole region should be sought on a broader scale and not by isolating one end of a continent or another.

Thus we can see that beside Eurasia there are no other major global threats. The Americas are safely under the clout of the US. Africa is split by the Sahara Desert, with the north, which is in fact an integral part of Eurasia with its Mediterranean shores, and the south, which is still not getting its act together and thus does not pose any geopolitical problems of a global scale.

We should then concentrate on Eurasia, keeping in mind its close links with its two borders, the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, and the powerful East and West coasts of the US.

For the first time in a thousand years, the western tip of Europe is falling together under a united economic order which is now believed to be stronger than political agreements and should or could lead to a political union. On the other end of the continent some vibrant economies, with China certainly the most interesting, are taking center stage in world trade. The middle is not so rosy. In the south from Pakistan to Lebanon we have economically weak or/and politically weak states that are the cause of instability for all their neighbors.

The picture doesn't change much moving north around the Caspian Sea, and it possibly gets worse as waves of instability pulse from the black hole of Afghanistan, an entity that doesn't want to trade with most of the world and with which most of the world doesn't feel like trading.

Then, up in the north, there is Russia. Now, despite all its present economic and political woes, Russia is an anchor of stability in the Central Asian context. And so it is rightly perceived by NATO, which is also concerned about Central Asian stability, and by China, which belongs to the Shanghai 5 (in fact, now six members) with Russia. Furthermore, Moscow cultivates good relations with India, another important actor on the continent.

In other words, as things stand, Russia is an important channel of communication and mediation between east and west Eurasia, a dam against instability stemming from Central Asia. Bringing Russia under the umbrella of west or east Eurasia, therefore, could break this important link.

In cruder terms, we could say that Russia is a huge buffer in the middle of Eurasia, and the absence of this buffer could exacerbate frictions on the continent (which, as pointed out, is central to the world) and thus create problems of global proportions.

Moreover, if Russia were to fall in with either east, west, south to southeast Eurasia, then it would immediately lose all of its value in the sense that it is now a mediator, and doesn't take clear sides. But because it can tip the balance any way, once it commits in the long term to a side, its value as a balance becomes nil because the overall value would be that of the chosen bloc, say NATO, if it were admitted to this body.

On a larger scale, it is in Russia's interests to keep, and actually nurture, this status of being a huge buffer in Eurasia, and in not taking sides. NATO's enlargement to the east (the Baltic states) does not change this position. In the narrower sense, it would be a blow to Russia's pride in terms of its aspirations in the Mediterranean Sea and Central Europe, but not in the context of the whole of Eurasian Russia.

Russia would need to appreciate that Europe is no longer the center of the world, rather Eurasia is. Understanding this, Russia should be content, regardless of any NATO enlargement.

And unlike the question of Russia becoming a part of NATO, this Russian buffer is not something that will have to be achieved or negotiated, it is something that already exists and it must simply be recognized as such - people should try to live with the situation and thrive from it, not try to change it.

NEXT: Containment by encirclement

* Part 1: Expanded Atlantic alliance raises Asia dilemma

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