In brief, Russia, until recently the forger of a great territorial empire and the leader of an ideological bloc of satellite states extending into the very heart of Europe and at one point to the South China Sea, had become a troubled national state, without easy geographic access to the outside world and potentially vulnerable to debilitating conflicts with its neighbors on its western, southern, and eastern flanks. Only the uninhabitable and inaccessible northern spaces, almost permanently frozen, seemed geopolitically secure.

GEOSTRATEGIC PHANTASMAGORIA

A period of historic and strategic confusion in postimperial Russia was hence unavoidable. The shocking collapse of the Soviet Union and especially the stunning and generally unexpected disintegration of the Great Russian Empire have given rise in Russia to enormous soul-searching, to a wide-ranging debate over what ought to be Russia’s current historical self-definition, to intense public and private arguments over questions that in most major nations are not even raised: What is Russia? Where is Russia? What does it mean to be a Russian?

These questions are not merely theoretical: any reply contains significant geopolitical content. Is Russia a national state, based on purely Russian ethnicity, or is Russia by definition something more (as Britain is more than England) and hence destined to be an imperial state? What are—historically, strategically, and ethnically—the proper frontiers of Russia? Should the independent Ukraine be viewed as a temporary aberration when assessed in such historic, strategic, and ethnic terms? (Many Russians are inclined to feel that way.) To be a Russian, does one have to be ethnically a Russian (“Russkyi”), or can one be a Russian politically but not ethnically (that is, be a “Rossyanin”—the equivalent to “British” but not to “English”)? For example, Yeltsin and some Russians have argued (with tragic consequences) that the Chechens could—indeed, should—be considered Russians.

A year before the Soviet Union’s demise, a Russian nationalist, one of the few who saw the end approaching, cried out in a desperate affirmation:

If the terrible disaster, which is unthinkable to the Russian people, does occur and the state is torn apart, and the people, robbed and deceived by their 1,000-year history, suddenly end up alone, and their recent “brothers” have taken their belongings and disappeared into their “national lifeboats” and sail away from the listing ship—well, we have nowhere to go....

Russian statehood, which embodies the “Russian idea” politically, economically, and spiritually, will be built anew. It will gather up all the best from its long 1,000-year kingdom and the 70 years of Soviet history that have flown by in a moment.¹²

But how? The difficulty of defining an answer that would be acceptable to the Russian people and yet realistic has been compounded by the historic crisis of the Russian state itself. Throughout almost its entire history, that state was simultaneously an instrument of territorial expansion and economic development. It was also a state that deliberately did not conceive itself to be a purely national instrument, in the West European tradition, but defined itself as the executor of a special supranational mission, with the “Russian idea” variously defined in religious, geopolitical, or ideological terms. Now, suddenly, that mission was repudiated as the state shrank territorially to a largely ethnic dimension.

Moreover, the post-Soviet crisis of the Russian state (of its “essence,” so to speak) was compounded by the fact that Russia was not only faced with the challenge of having been suddenly deprived of its imperial missionary vocation but, in order to close the yawning gap between Russia’s social backwardness and the more advanced parts of Eurasia, was now being pressed by domestic modernizers (and their Western consultants) to withdraw from its traditional economic role as the mentor, owner, and disposer of social wealth. This called for nothing short of a politically revolutionary limitation of the international and domestic role of the Russian state. This was profoundly disruptive to the most established patterns of Russian domestic life and contributed to a divisive sense of geopolitical disorientation within the Russian political elite.

In that perplexing setting, as one might have expected, “Whither Russia and what is Russia?” prompted a variety of responses. Russia’s extensive Eurasian location has long predisposed that elite to think in geopolitical terms. The first foreign minister of the postimperial and post-Communist Russia, Andrei Kozyrev, reaffirmed that mode of thought in one of his early attempts to define how the new Russia should conduct itself on the international scene. Barely a month after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he noted: “In abandoning messianism we set course for pragmatism.... we rapidly came to understand that geopolitics . . . is replacing ideology.”¹³

Generally speaking, three broad and partially overlapping geostrategic options, each ultimately related to Russia’s preoccupation with its status vis-à-vis America and each also containing some internal variants, can be said to have emerged in reaction to the Soviet Union’s collapse. These several schools of thought can be classified as follows:

1. priority for “the mature strategic partnership” with America, which for some of its adherents was actually a code term for a global condominium;

2. emphasis on the “near abroad” as Russia’s central concern, with some advocating a form of Moscow-dominated economic integration but with others also expecting an eventual restoration of some measure of imperial control, thereby creating a power more capable of balancing America and Europe; and

3. a counteralliance, involving some sort of a Eurasian anti-U. S. coalition designed to reduce the American preponderance in Eurasia.

Although the first of the foregoing was initially dominant among President Yeltsin’s new ruling team, the second option surfaced into political prominence shortly thereafter, in part as a critique of Yeltsin’s geopolitical priorities; the third made itself heard somewhat later, around the mid-1990s, in reaction to the spreading sense that Russia’s post-Soviet geostrategy was both unclear and failing. As it happens, all three proved to be historically maladroit and derived from rather phantasmagoric views of Russia’s current power, international potential, and foreign interests.

In the immediate wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Yeltsin’s initial posture represented the cresting of the old but never entirely successful “westernizer” conception in Russian political thought: that Russia belonged in the West, should be part of the West, and should as much as possible imitate the West in its own domestic development. That view was espoused by Yeltsin himself and by his foreign minister, with Yeltsin being quite explicit in denouncing the Russian imperial legacy. Speaking in Kiev on November 19, 1990, in words that the Ukrainians or Chechens could subsequently turn against him, Yeltsin eloquently declared:

Russia does not aspire to become the center of some sort of new empire . . . Russia understands better than others the perniciousness of that role, inasmuch as it was Russia that performed that role for a long time. What did it gain from this? Did Russians become freer as a result? Wealthier? Happier? . . . history has taught us that a people that rules over others cannot be fortunate.

The deliberately friendly posture adopted by the West, especially by the United States, toward the new Russian leadership was a source of encouragement to the post-Soviet “westernizers” in the Russian foreign policy establishment. It both reinforced its pro-American inclinations and seduced its membership personally. The new leaders were flattered to be on a first-name basis with the top policy makers of the world’s only superpower, and they found it easy to deceive themselves into thinking that they, too, were the leaders of a superpower. When the Americans launched the slogan of “the mature strategic partnership” between Washington and Moscow, to the Russians it seemed as if a new democratic American-Russian condominium—replacing the former contest—had thus been sanctified.

That condominium would be global in scope. Russia thereby would not only be the legal successor to the former Soviet Union but the de facto partner in a global accommodation, based on genuine equality. As the new Russian leaders never tired of asserting, that meant not only that the rest of the world should recognize Russia as America’s equal but that no global problem could be tackled or resolved without Russia’s participation and/or permission. Although it was not openly stated, implicit in this illusion was also the notion that Central Europe would somehow remain, or might even choose to remain, a region of special political proximity to Russia. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and Comecon would not be followed by the gravitation of their former members either toward NATO or even only toward the EU.

Western aid, in the meantime, would enable the Russian government to undertake domestic reforms, withdrawing the state from economic life and permitting the consolidation of democratic institutions. Russia’s economic recovery, its special status as America’s coequal partner, and its sheer attractiveness would then encourage the recently independent states of the new CIS—grateful that the new Russia was not threatening them and increasingly aware of the benefits of some form of union with Russia—to engage in ever-closer economic and then political integration with Russia, thereby also enhancing Russia’s scope and power.

The problem with this approach was that it was devoid of either international or domestic realism. While the concept of “mature strategic partnership” was flattering, it was also deceptive. America was neither inclined to share global power with Russia nor could it, even if it had wanted to do so. The new Russia was simply too weak, too devastated by three-quarters of a century of Communist rule, and too socially backward to be a real global partner. In Washington’s view, Germany, Japan, and China were at least as important and influential. Moreover, on some of the central geostrategic issues of national interest to America—in Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East—it was far from the case that American and Russian aspirations were the same. Once differences inevitably started to surface, the disproportion in political power, financial clout, technological innovation, and cultural appeal made the “mature strategic partnership” seem hollow—and it struck an increasing number of Russians as deliberately designed to deceive Russia.

Perhaps that disappointment might have been averted if earlier on—during the American-Russian honeymoon—America had embraced the concept of NATO expansion and had at the same time offered Russia “a deal it could not refuse,” namely, a special cooperative relationship between Russia and NATO. Had America clearly and decisively embraced the idea of widening the alliance, with the stipulation that Russia should somehow be included in the process, perhaps Moscow’s subsequent sense of disappointment with “the mature partnership” as well as the progressive weakening of the political position of the westernizers in the Kremlin might have been averted.

The moment to have done so was during the second half of 1993, right after Yeltsin’s public endorsement in August of Poland’s interest in joining the transatlantic alliance as being consistent with “the interests of Russia.” Instead, the Clinton administration, then still pursuing its “Russia first” policy, agonized for two more years, while the Kremlin changed its tune and became increasingly hostile to the emerging but indecisive signals of the American intention to widen NATO. By the time Washington decided, in 1996, to make NATO enlargement a central goal in America’s policy of shaping a larger and more secure Euro-Atlantic community, the Russians had locked themselves into rigid opposition. Hence, the year 1993 might be viewed as the year of a missed historic opportunity.

Admittedly, not all of the Russian concerns regarding NATO expansion lacked legitimacy or were motivated by malevolent motives. Some opponents, to be sure, especially among the Russian military, partook of a Cold War mentality, viewing NATO expansion not as an integral part of Europe’s own growth but rather as the advance toward Russia of an American-led and still hostile alliance. Some of the Russian foreign policy elite—most of whom were actually former Soviet officials—persisted in the long-standing geostrategic view that America had no place in Eurasia and that NATO expansion was largely driven by the American desire to increase its sphere of influence. Some of their opposition also derived from the hope that an unattached Central Europe would some day again revert to Moscow’s sphere of geopolitical influence, once Russia had regained its health.

But many Russian democrats also feared that the expansion of NATO would mean that Russia would be left outside of Europe, ostracized politically, and considered unworthy of membership in the institutional framework of European civilization. Cultural insecurity compounded the political fears, making NATO expansion seem like the culmination of the long-standing Western policy designed to isolate Russia, leaving it alone in the world and vulnerable to its various enemies. Moreover, the Russian democrats simply could not grasp the depth either of the Central Europeans’ resentment over half a century of Moscow’s domination or of their desire to be part of a larger Euro-Atlantic system.

On balance, it is probable that neither the disappointment nor the weakening of the Russian westernizers could have been avoided. For one thing, the new Russian elite, quite divided within itself and with neither its president nor its foreign minister capable of providing consistent geostrategic leadership, was not able to define clearly what the new Russia wanted in Europe, nor could it realistically assess the actual limitations of Russia’s weakened condition. Moscow’s politically embattled democrats could not bring themselves to state boldly that a democratic Russia does not oppose the enlargement of the transatlantic democratic community and that it wishes to be associated with it. The delusion of a shared global status with America made it difficult for the Moscow political elite to abandon the idea of a privileged geopolitical position for Russia, not only in the area of the former Soviet Union itself but even in regard to the former Central European satellite states.

These developments played into the hands of the nationalists, who by 1994 were beginning to recover their voices, and the militarists, who by then had become Yeltsin’s critically important domestic supporters. Their increasingly shrill and occasionally threatening reactions to the aspirations of the Central Europeans merely intensified the determination of the former satellite states—mindful of their only recently achieved liberation from Russian rule—to gain the safe haven of NATO.

The gulf between Washington and Moscow was widened further by the Kremlin’s unwillingness to disavow all of Stalin’s conquests. Western public opinion, especially in Scandinavia but also in the United States, was especially troubled by the ambiguity of the Russian attitude toward the Baltic republics. While recognizing their independence and not pressing for their membership in the CIS, even the democratic Russian leaders periodically resorted to threats in order to obtain preferential treatment for the large communities of Russian colonists who had deliberately been settled in these countries during the Stalinist years. The atmosphere was further clouded by the pointed unwillingness of the Kremlin to denounce the secret Nazi-Soviet agreement of 1939 that had paved the way for the forcible incorporation of these republics into the Soviet Union. Even five years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, spokesmen for the Kremlin insisted (in the official statement of September 10, 1996) that in 1940 the Baltic states had voluntarily “joined” the Soviet Union.

The post-Soviet Russian elite had apparently also expected that the West would aid in, or at least not impede, the restoration of a central Russian role in the post-Soviet space. They thus resented the West’s willingness to help the newly independent post-Soviet states consolidate their separate political existence. Even while warning that a “confrontation with the United States . . . is an option that should be avoided,” senior Russian analysts of American foreign policy argued (not altogether incorrectly) that the United States was seeking “the reorganization of interstate relations in the whole of Eurasia . . . whereby there was not one sole leading power on the continent but many medium, relatively stable, and moderately strong ones . . . but necessarily inferior to the United States in their individual or even collective capabilities.”¹⁴

In this regard, Ukraine was critical. The growing American inclination, especially by 1994, to assign a high priority to American-Ukrainian relations and to help Ukraine sustain its new national freedom was viewed by many in Moscow—even by its “westernizers”—as a policy directed at the vital Russian interest in eventually bringing Ukraine back into the common fold. That Ukraine will eventually somehow be “reintegrated” remains an article of faith among many members of the Russian political elite.¹⁵ As a result, Russia’s geopolitical and historical questioning of Ukraine’s separate status collided head-on with the American view that an imperial Russia could not be a democratic Russia.

Additionally, there were purely domestic reasons that a “mature strategic partnership” between two “democracies” proved to be illusory. Russia was just too backward and too devastated by Communist rule to be a viable democratic partner of the United States. That central reality could not be obscured by high-sounding rhetoric about partnership. Post-Soviet Russia, moreover, had made only a partial break with the past. Almost all of its “democratic” leaders—even if genuinely disillusioned with the Soviet past—were not only the products of the Soviet system but former senior members of its ruling elite. They were not former dissidents, as in Poland or the Czech Republic. The key institutions of Soviet power—though weakened, demoralized, and corrupted—were still there. Symbolic of that reality and of the lingering hold of the Communist past was the historic centerpiece of Moscow: the continued presence of the Lenin mausoleum. It was as if post-Nazi Germany were governed by former middle-level Nazi “Gauleiters” spouting democratic slogans, with a Hitler mausoleum still standing in the center of Berlin.

The political weakness of the new democratic elite was compounded by the very scale of the Russian economic crisis. The need for massive reforms—for the withdrawal of the Russian state from the economy—generated excessive expectations of Western, especially American, aid. Although that aid, especially from Germany and America, gradually did assume large proportions, even under the best of circumstances it still could not prompt a quick economic recovery. The resulting social dissatisfaction provided additional underpinning for a mounting chorus of disappointed critics who alleged that the partnership with the United States was a sham, beneficial to America but damaging to Russia.

In brief, neither the objective nor the subjective preconditions for an effective global partnership existed in the immediate years following the Soviet Union’s collapse. The democratic “westernizers” simply wanted too much and could deliver too little. They desired an equal partnership—or, rather, a condominium—with America, a relatively free hand within the CIS, and a geopolitical no-man’s-land in Central Europe. Yet their ambivalence about Soviet history, their lack of realism regarding global power, the depth of the economic crisis, and the absence of widespread social support meant that they could not deliver the stable and truly democratic Russia that the concept of equal partnership implied. Russia first had to go through a prolonged process of political reform, an equally long process of democratic stabilization, and an even longer process of socioeconomic modernization and then manage a deeper shift from an imperial to a national mindset regarding the new geopolitical realities not only in Central Europe but especially within the former Russian Empire before a real partnership with America could become a viable geopolitical option.

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the “near abroad” priority became both the major critique of the pro-West option as well as an early foreign policy alternative. It was based on the argument that the “partnership” concept slighted what ought to be most important to Russia: namely, its relations with the former Soviet republics. The “near abroad” came to be the shorthand formulation for advocacy of a policy that would place primary emphasis on the need to reconstruct some sort of a viable framework, with Moscow as the decision-making center, in the geopolitical space once occupied by the Soviet Union. On this premise, there was widespread agreement that a policy of concentration on the West, especially on America, was yielding little and costing too much. It simply made it easier for the West to exploit the opportunities created by the Soviet Union’s collapse.

However, the “near abroad” school of thought was a broad umbrella under which several varying geopolitical conceptions could cluster. It embraced not only the economic functionalists and determinists (including some “westernizers”) who believed that the CIS could evolve into a Moscow-led version of the EU but also others who saw in economic integration merely one of several tools of imperial restoration that could operate either under the CIS umbrella or through special arrangements (formulated in 1996) between Russia and Belarus or among Russia, Belarus, Kazakstan, and Kyrgyzstan; it also included Slavophile romantics who advocated a Slavic Union of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and, finally, proponents of the somewhat mystical notion of Eurasianism as the substantive definition of Russia’s enduring historical mission.

In its narrowest form, the “near abroad” priority involved the perfectly reasonable proposition that Russia must first concentrate on relations with the newly independent states, especially as all of them remained tied to Russia by the realities of the deliberately fostered Soviet policy of promoting economic interdependence among them. That made both economic and geopolitical sense. The “common economic space,” of which the new Russian leaders spoke often, was a reality that could not be ignored by the leaders of the newly independent states. Cooperation, and even some integration, was an economic necessity. Thus, it was not only normal but desirable to promote joint CIS institutions in order to reverse the economic disruptions and fragmentation produced by the political breakup of the Soviet Union.

For some Russians, the promotion of economic integration was thus a functionally effective and politically responsible reaction to what had transpired. The analogy with the EU was often cited as pertinent to the post-Soviet situation. A restoration of the empire was explicitly rejected by the more moderate advocates of economic integration. For example, an influential report entitled “A Strategy for Russia,” which was issued as early as August 1992 by the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, a group of prominent personalities and government officials, very pointedly advocated “post-imperial enlightened integration” as the proper program for the post-Soviet “common economic space.”

However, emphasis on the “near abroad” was not merely a politically benign doctrine of regional economic cooperation. Its geopolitical content had imperial overtones. Even the relatively moderate 1992 report spoke of a recovered Russia that would eventually establish a strategic partnership with the West, in which Russia would have the role of “regulating the situation in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Far East.” Other advocates of this priority were more unabashed, speaking explicitly of Russia’s “exclusive role” in the post-Soviet space and accusing the West of engaging in an anti-Russian policy by providing aid to Ukraine and the other newly independent states.

A typical but by no means extreme example was the argument made by Y. Ambartsumov, the chairman in 1993 of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee and a former advocate of the “partnership” priority, who openly asserted that the former Soviet space was an exclusive Russian sphere of geopolitical influence. In January 1994, he was echoed by the heretofore energetic advocate of the pro-Western priority, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, who stated that Russia “must preserve its military presence in regions that have been in its sphere of interest for centuries.” In fact, Izvestiia reported on April 8, 1994, that Russia had succeeded in retaining no fewer than twenty-eight military bases on the soil of the newly independent states—and a line drawn on a map linking the Russian military deployments in Kaliningrad, Moldova, Crimea, Armenia, Tajikistan, and the Kuril Islands would roughly approximate the outer limits of the former Soviet Union, as in the map on page 108.

In September 1995, President Yeltsin issued an official document on Russian policy toward the CIS that codified Russian goals as follows:

The main objective of Russia’s policy toward the CIS is to create an economically and politically integrated association of states capable of claiming its proper place in the world community . . . to consolidate Russia as the leading force in the formation of a new system of interstate political and economic relations on the territory of the post-Union space.

One should note the emphasis placed on the political dimension of the effort, on the reference to a single entity claiming “its” place in the world system, and on Russia’s dominant role within that new entity. In keeping with this emphasis, Moscow insisted that political and military ties between Russia and the newly constituted CIS also be reinforced: that a common military command be created; that the armed forces of the CIS states be linked by a formal treaty; that the “external” borders of the CIS be subject to centralized (meaning Moscow’s) control; that Russian forces play the decisive role in any peacekeeping actions within the CIS; and that a common foreign policy be shaped within the CIS, whose main institutions have come to be located in Moscow (and not in Minsk, as originally agreed in l991), with the Russian president presiding at the CIS summit meetings.

And that was not all. The September 1995 document also declared that

Russian television and radio broadcasting in the near abroad should be guaranteed, the dissemination of Russian press in the region should be supported, and Russia should train national cadres for CIS states.

Special attention should be given to restoring Russia’s position as the main educational center on the territory of the post-Soviet space, bearing in mind the need to educate the young generation in CIS states in a spirit of friendly relations with Russia.

Reflecting this mood, in early 1996 the Russian Duma went so far as to declare the dissolution of the Soviet Union to be invalid. Moreover, during spring of the same year, Russia signed two agreements providing for closer economic and political integration between Russia and the more accommodating members of the CIS. One agreement, signed with great pomp and circumstance, in effect provided for a union between Russia and Belarus within a new “Community of Sovereign Republics” (the Russian abbreviation “SSR” was pointedly reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s “SSSR”), and the other—signed by Russia, Kazakstan, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan—postulated the creation in the long term of a “Community of Integrated States.” Both initiatives indicated impatience over the slow progress of integration within the CIS and Russia’s determination to persist in promoting it.

The “near abroad” emphasis on enhancing the central mechanisms of the CIS thus combined some elements of reliance on objective economic determinism with a strong dose of subjective imperial determination. But neither provided a more philosophical and also a geopolitical answer to the still gnawing question “What is Russia, what is its true mission and rightful scope?”

It was this void that the increasingly appealing doctrine of Eurasianism—with its focus also on the “near abroad”—attempted to fill. The point of departure for this orientation—defined in rather cultural and even mystical terminology—was the premise that geopolitically and culturally, Russia is neither quite European nor quite Asian and that, therefore, it has a distinctive Eurasian identity of its own. That identity is the legacy of Russia’s unique spatial control over the enormous landmass between Central Europe and the shores of the Pacific Ocean, the legacy of the imperial statehood that Moscow forged through four centuries of eastward expansion. That expansion assimilated into Russia a large non-Russian and non-European population, creating thereby also a singular Eurasian political and cultural personality.

Eurasianism as a doctrine was not a post-Soviet emanation. It first surfaced in the nineteenth century but became more pervasive in the twentieth, as an articulate alternative to Soviet communism and as a reaction to the alleged decadence of the West. Russian émigrés were especially active in propagating the doctrine as an alternative to Sovietism, realizing that the national awakening of the non-Russians within the Soviet Union required an overarching supranational doctrine, lest the eventual fall of communism lead also to the disintegration of the old Great Russian Empire.

As early as the mid-1920s, this case was articulated persuasively by Prince N. S. Trubetzkoy, a leading exponent of Eurasianism, who wrote that

[c]ommunism was in fact a disguised version of Europeanism in destroying the spiritual foundations and national uniqueness of Russian life, in propagating there the materialist frame of reference that actually governs both Europe and America . . .

Our task is to create a completely new culture, our own culture, which will not resemble European civilization . . . when Russia ceases to be a distorted reflection of European civilization . . . when she becomes once again herself: Russia-Eurasia, the conscious heir to and bearer of the great legacy of Genghis Khan.¹⁶

That view found an eager audience in the confused post-Soviet setting. On the one hand, communism was condemned as a betrayal of Russian orthodoxy and of the special, mystical “Russian idea”; and on the other, westernism was repudiated because the West, especially America, was seen as corrupt, anti-Russian culturally, and inclined to deny to Russia its historically and geographically rooted claim to exclusive control over the Eurasian landmass.

Eurasianism was given an academic gloss in the much-quoted writings of Lev Gumilev, a historian, geographer, and ethnographer , whose books Medieval Russia and the Great Steppe, The Rhythms of Eurasia, and The Geography of Ethnos in Historical Time make a powerful case for the proposition that Eurasia is the natural geographic setting for the Russian people’s distinctive “ethnos,” the consequence of a historic symbiosis between them and the non-Russian inhabitants of the open steppes, creating thereby a unique Eurasian cultural and spiritual identity. Gumilev warned that adaptation to the West would mean nothing less for the Russian people than the loss of their own “ethnos and soul.”

These views were echoed, though more primitively, by a variety of Russian nationalist politicians. Yeltsin’s former vice president, Aleksandr Rutskoi, for example, asserted that “it is apparent from looking at our country’s geopolitical situation that Russia represents the only bridge between Asia and Europe. Whoever becomes the master of this space will become the master of the world.”¹⁷ Yeltsin’s 1996 Communist challenger, Gennadii Zyuganov, despite his Marxist-Leninist vocation, embraced Eurasianism’s mystical emphasis on the special spiritual and missionary role of the Russian people in the vast spaces of Eurasia, arguing that Russia was thereby endowed both with a unique cultural vocation and with a specially advantageous geographic basis for the exercise of global leadership.

A more sober and pragmatic version of Eurasianism was also advanced by the leader of Kazakstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Faced at home with an almost even demographic split between native Kazaks and Russian settlers and seeking a formula that would somewhat dilute Moscow’s pressures for political integration, Nazarbayev propagated the concept of the “Eurasian Union” as an alternative to the faceless and ineffective CIS. Although his version lacked the mystical content of the more traditional Eurasianist thinking and certainly did not posit a special missionary role for the Russians as leaders of Eurasia, it was derived from the notion that Eurasia—defined geographically in terms analogous to that of the Soviet Union—constituted an organic whole, which must also have a political dimension.

To a degree, the attempt to assign to the “near abroad” the highest priority in Russian geopolitical thinking was justified in the sense that some measure of order and accommodation between postimperial Russia and the newly independent states was an absolute necessity, in terms of security and economics. However, what gave much of the discussion a surrealistic touch was the lingering notion that in some fashion, whether it came about either voluntarily (because of economics) or as a consequence of Russia’s eventual recovery of its lost power—not to speak of Russia’s special Eurasian or Slavic mission—the political “integration” of the former empire was both desirable and feasible.

In this regard, the frequently invoked comparison with the EU neglects a crucial distinction: the EU, even allowing for Germany’s special influence, is not dominated by a single power that alone overshadows all the other members combined, in relative GNP, population, or territory. Nor is the EU the successor to a national empire, with the liberated members deeply suspicious that “integration” is a code word for renewed subordination. Even so, one can easily imagine what the reaction of the European states would have been if Germany had declared formally that its goal was to consolidate and expand its leading role in the EU along the lines of Russia’s pronouncement of September 1995 cited earlier.

The analogy with the EU suffers from yet another deficiency. The open and relatively developed Western European economies were ready for democratic integration, and the majority of Western Europeans perceived tangible economic and political benefits in such integration. The poorer West European countries were also able to benefit from substantial subsidies. In contrast, the newly independent states viewed Russia as politically unstable, as still entertaining domineering ambitions, and, economically, as an obstacle to their participation in the global economy and to their access to much-needed foreign investment.

Opposition to Moscow’s notions of “integration” was particularly strong in Ukraine. Its leaders quickly recognized that such “integration,” especially in light of Russian reservations regarding the legitimacy of Ukrainian independence, would eventually lead to the loss of national sovereignty. Moreover, the heavy-handed Russian treatment of the new Ukrainian state—its unwillingness to grant recognition of Ukraine’s borders, its questioning of Ukraine’s right to Crimea, its insistence on exclusive extraterritorial control over the port of Sevastopol—gave the aroused Ukrainian nationalism a distinctively anti-Russian edge. The self-definition of Ukrainian nationhood, during the critical formative stage in the history of the new state, was thus diverted from its traditional anti-Polish or anti-Romanian orientation and became focused instead on opposition to any Russian proposals for a more integrated CIS, for a special Slavic community (with Russia and Belarus), or for a Eurasian Union, deciphering them as Russian imperial tactics.

Ukraine’s determination to preserve its independence was encouraged by external support. Although initially the West, especially the United States, had been tardy in recognizing the geopolitical importance of a separate Ukrainian state, by the mid-l990s both America and Germany had become strong backers of Kiev’s separate identity. In July 1996, the U.S. secretary of defense declared, “I cannot overestimate the importance of Ukraine as an independent country to the security and stability of all of Europe,” while in September, the German chancellor—notwithstanding his strong support for President Yeltsin—went even further in declaring that “Ukraine’s firm place in Europe can no longer be challenged by anyone . . . No one will be able any more to dispute Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity.” American policy makers also came to describe the American-Ukrainian relationship as “a strategic partnership,” deliberately invoking the same phrase used to describe the American-Russian relationship.

Without Ukraine, as already noted, an imperial restoration based either on the CIS or on Eurasianism was not a viable option. An empire without Ukraine would eventually mean a Russia that would become more “Asianized” and more remote from Europe. Moreover, Eurasianism was also not especially appealing to the newly independent Central Asians, few of whom were eager for a new union with Moscow. Uzbekistan became particularly assertive in supporting Ukraine’s objections to any elevation of the CIS into a supranational entity and in opposing the Russian initiatives designed to enhance the CIS.

Other CIS states, also wary of Moscow’s intentions, tended to cluster around Ukraine and Uzbekistan in opposing or evading Moscow’s pressures for closer political and military integration. Moreover, a sense of national consciousness was deepening in almost all of the new states, a consciousness increasingly focused on repudiating past submission to Moscow as colonialism and on eradicating its various legacies. Thus, even the ethnically vulnerable Kazakstan joined the other Central Asian states in abandoning the Cyrillic alphabet and replacing it with the Latin script as adapted earlier by Turkey. In effect, by the mid-l990s a bloc, quietly led by Ukraine and comprising Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and sometimes also Kazakstan, Georgia, and Moldova, had informally emerged to obstruct Russian efforts to use the CIS as the tool for political integration.

Ukrainian insistence on only limited and largely economic integration had the further effect of depriving the notion of a “Slavic Union” of any practical meaning. Propagated by some Slavophiles and given prominence by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s support, this idea automatically became geopolitically meaningless once it was repudiated by Ukraine. It left Belarus alone with Russia; and it also implied a possible partition of Kazakstan, with its Russian-populated northern regions potentially part of such a union. Such an option was understandably not reassuring to the new rulers of Kazakstan and merely intensified the anti-Russian thrust of their nationalism. In Belarus, a Slavic Union without Ukraine meant nothing less than incorporation into Russia, thereby also igniting more volatile feelings of nationalist resentment.

These external obstacles to a “near abroad” policy were powerfully reinforced by an important internal restraint: the mood of the Russian people. Despite the rhetoric and the political agitation among the political elite regarding Russia’s special mission in the space of the former empire, the Russian people—partially out of sheer fatigue but also out of pure common sense—showed little enthusiasm for any ambitious program of imperial restoration. They favored open borders, open trade, freedom of movement, and special status for the Russian language, but political integration, especially if it was to involve economic costs or require bloodshed, evoked little enthusiasm. The disintegration of the “union” was regretted, its restoration favored; but public reaction to the war in Chechnya indicated that any policy that went beyond the application of economic leverage and/or political pressure would lack popular support.

In brief, the ultimate geopolitical inadequacy of the “near abroad” priority was that Russia was not strong enough politically to impose its will and not attractive enough economically to be able to seduce the new states. Russian pressure merely made them seek more external ties, first and foremost with the West but in some cases also with China and the key Islamic countries to the south. When Russia threatened to form its own military bloc in response to NATO’s expansion, it begged the question “With whom?” And it begged the even more painful answer: at the most, maybe with Belarus and Tajikistan.

The new states, if anything, were increasingly inclined to distrust even perfectly legitimate and needed forms of economic integration with Russia, fearing their potential political consequences. At the same time, the notions of Russia’s alleged Eurasian mission and of the Slavic mystique served only to isolate Russia further from Europe and, more generally, from the West, thereby perpetuating the post-Soviet crisis and delaying the needed modernization and westernization of Russian society along the lines of what Kemal Ataturk did in Turkey in the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse. The “near abroad” option thus offered Russia not a geopolitical solution but a geopolitical illusion.

If not a condominium with America and if not the “near abroad,” then what other geostrategic option was open to Russia? The failure of the Western orientation to produce the desired global co-equality with America for a “democratic Russia,” which was more a slogan than reality, caused a letdown among the democrats, whereas the reluctant recognition that “reintegration” of the old empire was at best a remote possibility tempted some Russian geopoliticians to toy with the idea of some sort of counteralliance aimed at America’s hegemonic position in Eurasia.

In early 1996, President Yeltsin replaced his Western-oriented foreign minister, Kozyrev, with the more experienced but also orthodox former Communist international specialist Evgenniy Primakov, whose long-standing interest has been Iran and China. Some Russian commentators speculated that Primakov’s orientation might precipitate an effort to forge a new “antihegemonic” coalition, formed around the three powers with the greatest geopolitical stake in reducing America’s primacy in Eurasia. Some of Primakov’s initial travel and comments reinforced that impression. Moreover, the existing Sino-Iranian connection in weapons trade as well as the Russian inclination to cooperate in Iran’s efforts to increase its access to nuclear energy seemed to provide a perfect fit for closer political dialogue and eventual alliance. The result could, at least theoretically, bring together the world’s leading Slavic power, the world’s most militant Islamic power, and the world’s most populated and powerful Asian power, thereby creating a potent coalition.

The necessary point of departure for any such counteralliance option involved a renewal of the bilateral Sino-Russian connection, capitalizing on the resentment among the political elites of both states over the emergence of America as the only global superpower. In early 1996, Yeltsin traveled to Beijing and signed a declaration that explicitly denounced global “hegemonic” tendencies, thereby implying that the two states would align themselves against the United States. In December, the Chinese prime minister, Li Peng, returned the visit, and both sides not only reiterated their opposition to an international system “dominated by one power” but also endorsed the reinforcement of existing alliances. Russian commentators welcomed this development, viewing it as a positive shift in the global correlation of power and as an appropriate response to America’s sponsorship of NATO’s expansion. Some even sounded gleeful that the Sino-Russian alliance would give America its deserved comeuppance.

However, a coalition allying Russia with both China and Iran can develop only if the United States is shortsighted enough to antagonize China and Iran simultaneously. To be sure, that eventuality cannot be excluded, and American conduct in 1995–1996 almost seemed consistent with the notion that the United States was seeking an antagonistic relationship with both Teheran and Beijing. However, neither Iran nor China was prepared to cast its lot strategically with a Russia that was both unstable and weak. Both realized that any such coalition, once it went beyond some occasional tactical orchestration, would risk their respective access to the more advanced world, with its exclusive capacity for investment and with its needed cutting-edge technology. Russia had too little to offer to make it a truly worthy partner in an antihegemonic coalition.

In fact, lacking any shared ideology and united merely by an “antihegemonic” emotion, any such coalition would be essentially an alliance of a part of the Third World against the most advanced portions of the First World. None of its members would gain much, and China especially would risk losing its enormous investment inflows. For Russia, too, “the phantom of a Russia-China alliance . . . would sharply increase the chances that Russia would once again become restricted from Western technology and capital,” as a critical Russian geopolitician noted.¹⁸ The alignment would eventually condemn all of its participants, whether two or three in number, to prolonged isolation and shared backwardness.

Moreover, China would be the senior partner in any serious Russian effort to jell such an “antihegemonic” coalition. Being more populous, more industrious, more innovative, more dynamic, and harboring some potential territorial designs on Russia, China would inevitably consign Russia to the status of a junior partner, while at the same time lacking the means (and probably any real desire) to help Russia overcome its backwardness. Russia would thus become a buffer between an expanding Europe and an expansionist China.

Finally, some Russian foreign affairs experts continued to entertain the hope that a stalemate in European integration, including perhaps internal Western disagreements over the future shape of NATO, might eventually create at least tactical opportunities for a Russo-German or a Russo-French flirtation, in either case to the detriment of Europe’s transatlantic connection with America. This perspective was hardly new, for throughout the Cold War, Moscow periodically tried to play either the German or the French card. Nonetheless, it was not unreasonable for some of Moscow’s geopoliticians to calculate that a stalemate in European affairs could create tactical openings that might be exploited to America’s disadvantage.

But that is about all that could thereby be attained: purely tactical options. Neither France nor Germany is likely to forsake the American connection. An occasional flirtation, especially with the French, focused on some narrow issue, cannot be excluded—but a geopolitical reversal of alliances would have to be preceded by a massive upheaval in European affairs, a breakdown in European unification and in transatlantic ties. And even then, it is unlikely that the European states would be inclined to pursue a truly comprehensive geopolitical alignment with a disoriented Russia.

Thus, none of the counteralliance options, in the final analysis, offer a viable alternative. The solution to Russia’s new geopolitical dilemmas will not be found in counteralliance, nor will it come about through the illusion of a coequal strategic partnership with America or in the effort to create some new politically and economically “integrated” structure in the space of the former Soviet Union. All evade the only choice that is in fact open to Russia.

THE DILEMMA OF THE ONE ALTERNATIVE

Russia’s only real geostrategic option—the option that could give Russia a realistic international role and also maximize the opportunity of transforming and socially modernizing itself—is Europe. And not just any Europe, but the transatlantic Europe of the enlarging EU and NATO. Such a Europe is taking shape, as we have seen in chapter 3, and it is also likely to remain linked closely to America. That is the Europe to which Russia will have to relate, if it is to avoid dangerous geopolitical isolation.

For America, Russia is much too weak to be a partner but still too strong to be simply its patient. It is more likely to become a problem, unless America fosters a setting that helps to convince the Russians that the best choice for their country is an increasingly organic connection with a transatlantic Europe. Although a long-term Russo-Chinese and Russo-Iranian strategic alliance is not likely, it is obviously important for America to avoid policies that could distract Russia from making the needed geopolitical choice. To the extent possible, American relations with China and Iran should, therefore, be formulated with their impact on Russian geopolitical calculations also kept in mind. Perpetuating illusions regarding grand geostrategic options can only delay the historic choice that Russia must make in order to bring to an end its deep malaise.

Only a Russia that is willing to accept the new realities of Europe, both economic and geopolitical, will be able to benefit internally from the enlarging scope of transcontinental European cooperation in commerce, communications, investment, and education. Russia’s participation in the Council of Europe is thus a step very much in the right direction. It is a foretaste of further institutional links between the new Russia and the growing Europe. It also implies that if Russia pursues this path, it will have no choice other than eventually to emulate the course chosen by post-Ottoman Turkey, when it decided to shed its imperial ambitions and embarked very deliberately on the road of modernization, Europeanization, and democratization.

No other option can offer Russia the benefits that a modern, rich, and democratic Europe linked to America can. Europe and America are not a threat to a Russia that is a nonexpansive national and democratic state. They have no territorial designs on Russia, which China someday might have, nor do they share an insecure and potentially violent frontier, which is certainly the case with Russia’s ethnically and territorially unclear border with the Muslim nations to the south. On the contrary, for Europe as well as for America, a national and democratic Russia is a geopolitically desirable entity, a source of stability in the volatile Eurasian complex.

Russia consequently faces the dilemma that the choice in favor of Europe and America, in order for it to yield tangible benefits, requires, first of all, a clear-cut abjuration of the imperial past and, second, no tergiversation regarding the enlarging Europe’s political and security links with America. The first requirement means accommodation to the geopolitical pluralism that has come to prevail in the space of the former Soviet Union. Such accommodation does not exclude economic cooperation, rather on the model of the old European Free Trade Area, but it cannot include limits on the political sovereignty of the new states—for the simple reason that they do not wish it. Most important in that respect is the need for clear and unambiguous acceptance by Russia of Ukraine’s separate existence, of its borders, and of its distinctive national identity.

The second requirement may be even more difficult to swallow. A truly cooperative relationship with the transatlantic community cannot be based on the notion that those democratic states of Europe that wish to be part of it can be excluded because of a Russian say-so. The expansion of that community need not be rushed, and it certainly should not be promoted on an anti-Russian theme. But neither can it, nor should it, be halted by a political fiat that itself reflects an antiquated notion of European security relations. An expanding and democratic Europe has to be an open-ended historical process, not subject to politically arbitrary geographic limits.

For many Russians, the dilemma of the one alternative may at first, and for some time to come, be too difficult to resolve. It will require an enormous act of political will and perhaps also an outstanding leader, capable of making the choice and articulating the vision of a democratic, national, truly modern and European Russia. That may not happen for some time. Overcoming the post-Communist and postimperial crises will require not only more time than is the case with the post-Communist transformation of Central Europe but also the emergence of a farsighted and stable political leadership. No Russian Ataturk is now in sight. Nonetheless, Russians will eventually have to come to recognize that Russia’s national redefinition is not an act of capitulation but one of liberation.¹⁹ They will have to accept that what Yeltsin said in Kiev in 1990 about a nonimperial future for Russia was absolutely on the mark. And a genuinely nonimperial Russia will still be a great power, spanning Eurasia, the world’s largest territorial unit by far.

In any case, a redefinition of “What is Russia and where is Russia” will probably occur only by stages, and it will require a wise and firm Western posture. America and Europe will have to help. They should offer Russia not only a special treaty or charter with NATO, but they should also begin the process of exploring with Russia the shaping of an eventual transcontinental system of security and cooperation that goes considerably beyond the loose structure of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). And if Russia consolidates its internal democratic institutions and makes tangible progress in free-market-based economic development, its ever-closer association with NATO and the EU should not be ruled out.

At the same time, it is equally important for the West, especially for America, to pursue policies that perpetuate the dilemma of the one alternative for Russia. The political and economic stabilization of the new post-Soviet states is a major factor in necessitating Russia’s historical self-redefinition. Hence, support for the new post-Soviet states—for geopolitical pluralism in the space of the former Soviet empire—has to be an integral part of a policy designed to induce Russia to exercise unambiguously its European option. Among these states, three are geopolitically especially important: Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine.

An independent Azerbaijan can serve as a corridor for Western access to the energy-rich Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia. Conversely, a subdued Azerbaijan would mean that Central Asia can be sealed off from the outside world and thus rendered politically vulnerable to Russian pressures for reintegration. Uzbekistan, nationally the most vital and the most populous of the Central Asian states, represents a major obstacle to any renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, and it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures.

Most important, however, is Ukraine. As the EU and NATO expand, Ukraine will eventually be in the position to choose whether it wishes to be part of either organization. It is likely that, in order to reinforce its separate status, Ukraine will wish to join both, once they border upon it and once its own internal transformation begins to qualify it for membership. Although that will take time, it is not too early for the West—while further enhancing its economic and security ties with Kiev—to begin pointing to the decade 2005–2015 as a reasonable time frame for the initiation of Ukraine’s progressive inclusion, thereby reducing the risk that the Ukrainians may fear that Europe’s expansion will halt on the Polish-Ukrainian border.

Russia, despite its protestations, is likely to acquiesce in the expansion of NATO in 1999 to include several Central European countries, because the cultural and social gap between Russia and Central Europe has widened so much since the fall of communism. By contrast, Russia will find it incomparably harder to acquiesce in Ukraine’s accession to NATO, for to do so would be to acknowledge that Ukraine’s destiny is no longer organically linked to Russia’s. Yet if Ukraine is to survive as an independent state, it will have to become part of Central Europe rather than Eurasia, and if it is to be part of Central Europe, then it will have to partake fully of Central Europe’s links to NATO and the European Union. Russia’s acceptance of these links would then define Russia’s own decision to be also truly a part of Europe. Russia’s refusal would be tantamount to the rejection of Europe in favor of a solitary “Eurasian” identity and existence.

The key point to bear in mind is that Russia cannot be in Europe without Ukraine also being in Europe, whereas Ukraine can be in Europe without Russia being in Europe. Assuming that Russia decides to cast its lot with Europe, it follows that ultimately it is in Russia’s own interest that Ukraine be included in the expanding European structures. Indeed, Ukraine’s relationship to Europe could be the turning point for Russia itself. But that also means that the defining moment for Russia’s relationship to Europe is still some time off—“defining” in the sense that Ukraine’s choice in favor of Europe will bring to a head Russia’s decision regarding the next phase of its history: either to be a part of Europe as well or to become a Eurasian outcast, neither truly of Europe nor Asia and mired in its “near abroad” conflicts.

It is to be hoped that a cooperative relationship between an enlarging Europe and Russia can move from formal bilateral links to more organic and binding economic, political, and security ties. In that manner, in the course of the first two decades of the next century, Russia could increasingly become an integral part of a Europe that embraces not only Ukraine but reaches to the Urals and even beyond. An association or even some form of membership for Russia in the European and transatlantic structures would in turn open the doors to the inclusion of the three Caucasian countries—Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—that so desperately aspire to a European connection.

One cannot predict how fast that process can move, but one thing is certain: it will move faster if a geopolitical context is shaped that propels Russia in that direction, while foreclosing other temptations. And the faster Russia moves toward Europe, the sooner the black hole of Eurasia will be filled by a society that is increasingly modern and democratic. Indeed, for Russia the dilemma of the one alternative is no longer a matter of making a geopolitical choice but of facing up to the imperatives of survival.