As you know, I can't stand Felgenhauer, and enjoyed ripping him below. I was rather glad Robert Ware liked it by the way. It's not often I get quoted to myself.
"Independent defense analyst." Ha.
Russia = Bad, West = Good In our latest installment of our "what not to read" mailing, we bring you a Moscow Times piece by Pavel Felgenhauer.
CIS > Moldova
Putin Dreaming of Empire Pavel Felgenhauer - Moscow Times
Russia Report Comments: It's not so much that this piece is _bad_ per se, or anyway not overwhelmingly bad, as that it is formulaic. Felgenhauer has a routine: If Russia does X, Felgenhauer immediately denounces it as bad, whereas if the West, especially the United States, does Y, Y is automatically good. For instance, for Russia to engage in combat in Chechnya in response to incursions by mujaheedin is Bad, while a U.S. invasion of Iraq, on the other side of the world, is Good. And, us! ually, the Russia-bashing is histrionic: This really went over the top when Felgenhauer, writing in a U.S. newspaper, accused the Russian government of moving toward Nazism. Yes, that's right, Nazism. Putin is going to build death camps in Kamchatka. In this, Felgenhauer is typical of a certain genre of Russian commentators who seem to target a Western audience and routinely get quoted in the Western press as mouthpieces for the "Good Russian" who, unlike his benighted compatriots, has seen the light and understands the world the way we do. Moreover, it fits in well with the mildly "dissident," pro-Western editorial pose the Moscow Times likes to adopt. The event that prompted Felgenhauer's piece is the anti-Putin protests in Moldova over possibly giving Transdniestra semi-independence in a confederate state with Moldova. This, according to Felgenhauer, was the result of Putin's sinister imperialist moves to dominate the region. This is a bit odd. If Transdniestra wants to have its own nominal independence and closer relations with Russia, why shouldn't it have them? For that matter, when Felgenhauer accuses Russia of trying to undermine Georgia's sovereignty by appealing to separatist regions that want to be part of Russia, the shoe could easily be put on the other foot and Tbilisi accused of "imperialism" for not letting them join Russia (where, incidentally, standards of living are much higher). There is no right to secede to Russia, apparently, just away from it. Also, though never explicitly stated, this piece seems to assume that the protests in Moldova were part of some populist anti-Russian groundswell of anger. Well, Moldova is not Georgia, and Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin is not Eduard Shevardnadze. Voronin is a pro-Moscow president who became leader of his country with about 70 percent of the vote in elections that were acknowledged as free and fair. Moreover, as everybody with any experience of such things in the former Soviet Union knows, such crowds can easily be stirred up, and usually are, through the simple expedient of paying them. Reportedly, when Voronin committed the heinous crime (in the eyes of Moldovan nationalists) of trying to institute Russian as a required subject of study in Moldovan schools, the nationalist "opposition" had to pay people from the country and bus them in to get them to take part in their protests. Putin may or may not have imperial ambitions - Chubais certainly does. And Russia does attempt to influence events in its neighbors, just as any big country does. But this piece is not analysis; it is posturing.
Extract: Moscow Times December 2, 2003 Putin Dreaming of Empire By Pavel Felgenhauer
Last week, the attempt by Russia to broker a reunification between Moldova and the breakaway Transdnestr republic ended in embarrassing failure. A visit by President Vladimir Putin to the Moldovan capital, Chisinau, was canceled at the last moment. Pressure from the West as well as protest demonstrations in Chisinau, where Russian flags and Putin portraits were burned, forced the pro-Russian Communist president of Moldova, Vladimir Voronin, to postpone the signing ceremony indefinitely.
The Transdnestr region, inhabited by Russian-speakers, broke away from mostly Romanian-speaking Moldova after a brief but bloody armed conflict in 1991-92. Russia has since supported the Transdnestr regime, considered by many to be one of the most corrupt and shady on post-Soviet territory. Russian troops have been stationed in the former conflict zone since 1992 to ensure peace.
The visit by Putin and the agreement were prepared by a close presidential aide, Dmitry Kozak. The plan envisaged the creation of a confederate state in which both Transdnestr and Moldova proper would be semi-independent. The Russian and Romanian languages would have had equal status, and Russian troops were to have been stationed in the region indefinitely. After the Russian-sponsored agreement suddenly collapsed, a frustrated Kozak publicly expressed his anger and said that Moldovans would regret their decision.
Moldova owes Russia some $130 million. It's possible that the Kremlin will put economic and political pressure on Moldova to punish it for publicly humiliating Putin. But will it succeed? A settlement of the Transdnestr problem involving the permanent stationing of Russian troops in the region was rejected by opposition parties in Moldova, by the OSCE, Washington and the EU -- a coalition that Putin and Kozak will not find easy to overcome.
For over half a year, the view that it is time to actively reintegrate most of the post-Soviet landmass has been dominant in the Kremlin and the ruling elite. Moscow has good working relations with Washington as an ally in the war on terrorism and, at the same time, has a tacit alliance with European nations in opposing U.S. unilateralism and the invasion of Iraq.
It has been argued in Moscow that Russia has better relations with the United States and Europe than the two have with one other. NATO, it is said, has become an empty shell because of disagreements between the allies.
The West needs Russian cooperation in the fight on terrorism, it badly needs Russian oil and natural gas because the Middle East is unstable, and is in no position to actively resist a major move by Moscow to dominate and reintegrate the former Soviet republics. Sources close to the Kremlin have expressed the view that the Bush administration has already signaled its readiness to accept the territory of the former Soviet Union (minus the Baltic states) as being Russia's "sphere of influence," giving Moscow a free hand to dominate the region.
Indefinitely maintaining troops at a high cost in Moldova -- a landlocked country that has no common border with Russia -- does not seem to serve any obvious Russian national interest. It only makes strategic sense if the Kremlin has plans to link up with that outpost by retaking all or a large part of Ukraine.
Such plans are in fact much discussed today in Moscow. One version doing the rounds is that after 2008 when Putin's second term as president expires, he may continue as supreme leader by becoming president of a revitalized union (all the more painful, therefore, the rebuff Moscow received last week in Moldova).
Reunification plans are being pursued not only in Moldova. In Georgia, after the ousting of President Eduard Shevardnadze, Moscow has been increasingly openly supporting separatist regional governments. The new government in Tbilisi has clearly been given a choice: Bow to Moscow or Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Adzharia may by "reunited" with Russia.
This increasingly aggressive neo-imperial policy of undermining neighbors and supporting corrupt, self-styled separatist fiefdoms is detrimental to true Russian national interests. All attempts to recreate the Soviet Union in any form will be adamantly opposed by the West, as well as by most of the former Soviet countries themselves.
Russia could become completely isolated. The post-Soviet landmass could turn into a bloody mess just as the former Yugoslavia did under Slobodan Milosevic -- a fate we fortunately avoided in the 1990s.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.
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