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Beware Russia's pocket empire

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  • Beware Russia's pocket empire

    Christian Science Monitor
    July 1 2004

    Beware Russia's pocket empire

    By Daniel C. Twining

    WASHINGTON - Last weekend, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
    visited Moldova, a country where the cold war never ended. His trip
    highlighted the threat to Western values and interests posed by
    Russia's ambition to retain control over strategic European enclaves
    it once ruled as part of the Soviet empire.
    It is a reminder that despite the success of NATO's Istanbul summit,
    the West has not completed its grand geopolitical project of building
    a Europe of secure democracies extending to the borders of Russia.


    Russia's nostalgia for its imperial past is evident in the pocket
    empire it maintains among neighboring nations. These imperial
    aspirations stifle democratic development on Europe's borders and
    repudiate the values necessary for lasting partnership between Moscow
    and the West.

    Moldova, where a slice of the Soviet Union survives in the
    secessionist Transdniestria region, is just such a case. When the
    USSR collapsed 13 years ago, Moldova became an independent nation.
    But the 14th Soviet Army stayed on in the region, along the border
    with Ukraine, to support Transdniestria's secession from Moldova.
    Former apparatchik Igor Smirnov turned his autocratic fiefdom into a
    client state of Moscow. Today, Russian forces guard Transdniestria's
    borders, Russian officers command its Army, Russian troops guard an
    enormous Soviet arms depot, and Russia provides free energy supplies.
    President Smirnov answers to leaders in Moscow, many of whom
    allegedly profit from the international criminal network that
    operates in the area.

    According to Western officials in the region, Transdniestria is a
    leading exporter of kidnapped women to Europe, a lucrative transit
    territory for illicit drugs, and a key link in the arms-smuggling
    network that peddles the Soviet Union's former military hardware on
    the international market. If Al Qaeda has not gone shopping there
    yet, it is only a matter of time.

    Why does Russia support this illegitimate regime? In negotiations
    last fall that nearly resulted in a settlement recognizing the
    criminal regime's claim to federal status within Moldova, Moscow
    showed its hand by demanding that Moldova commit to a treaty
    legalizing the presence of Russian military forces on its soil until
    2020. Thanks to Western pressure and the resistance of Moldovans who
    took to the streets in protest, the deal collapsed. Nonetheless,
    political reform in Moldova has been frozen by the Transdniestria
    crisis, which focuses the West's attention on conflict resolution
    rather than on democratic change.

    Russia's Transdniestria strategy mirrors its approach to the other
    "frozen conflicts" sustained by Russian military forces and political
    support - two secessionist provinces in Georgia and the disputed
    enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

    Moscow's ambition is to make it seem normal for Russian troops to
    guard European borders and serve as outposts of imperial control in
    independent nations, without their consent.

    In the absence of treaties legitimizing Russia's illegal military
    presence on its neighbors' territory, Russia will keep these
    conflicts "frozen" - ensuring that secessionist leaders who answer to
    Moscow remain in control.

    As Mr. Rumsfeld said clearly last weekend, Russia's troop presence
    violates the revised Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe and
    post-Soviet guarantees Russia made to withdraw military forces from
    the territories of its neighbors.

    A Western campaign to resolve the frozen conflicts and democratize
    Europe's borderlands could be a new pillar of transatlantic
    cooperation. NATO should deepen its Partnership for Peace programs in
    this region and put the frozen conflicts on the agenda of the
    NATO-Russia Council. The European Union should put meat on the bones
    of its "New Neighborhood Policy" by tackling the conflicts and
    committing substantial assistance for democratic change in its
    backyard.

    Together, the United States and Europe should condition deeper
    Russian access to Western markets on Moscow's willingness to
    negotiate democratic political solutions to Europe's frozen
    conflicts. The transatlantic democracies should also condition
    Russia's privileged political relationship with Western institutions
    like NATO, the EU, and the Group of Seven (the world's richest
    nations) on Moscow's demonstrated willingness to act responsibly in
    its near abroad - including the expeditious and verifiable withdrawal
    of Russian military forces from the conflict zones.

    As part of any political solution in these countries, the West should
    insist on nationwide democratic elections, both because it is right
    and to reassure Russia that populations in the secessionist regions
    it claims to "protect" have a full voice in their reunified nation's
    future.

    Russia must understand that its cold war rules of statecraft do not
    apply in an age when it seeks partnership with the West - and when
    states on the old Soviet borders aspire to membership in an imperium
    centered on Brussels, not Moscow.

    Despite Russian opposition to enlargement of NATO and the EU, the
    progress of democracy, reform, and security across Central and
    Eastern Europe during the past decade has made Russia more secure,
    not less. Resolving Europe's frozen conflicts and building stable
    democracies throughout the geostrategic gray zone on Russia's borders
    would have a similar effect. Conversely, acceding to Russia's desire
    for a new sphere of influence in its old imperial stomping grounds
    would not make Russia more secure. It would not make an increasingly
    authoritarian Russia more susceptible to Western values. It would, in
    fact, make the West complicit in their subversion.

    - Daniel C. Twining, a former foreign policy adviser to Republican
    Sen. John McCain, is a director at the German Marshall Fund of the
    US. The views expressed here are his own and are informed by a
    fact-finding trip he took to Moldova in May.
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