Prize in the Great Game

The Great Game of the nineteenth century was the struggle between Russia and Great Britain for control of Central Asia. Now, it seems from a survey of Russian experts published in Nezavisimaya gazeta on December 26, the virtually unanimous view from Moscow is that the Great Game of the twenty-first century will be for hegemony over the newly independent states. “Above all Ukraine will become the field where the most embittered struggle will be played out between the Russian Federation and the United States in the post-Soviet space. Taking into account the fact that it is the strongest economic component in the post-Soviet space after the Russian Federation, the future destiny of Russian-Ukrainian relations will depend on who is elected president and with what powers.” This is from Vyacheslav Igrunov, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs, a man of some authority in such questions. Other commentaries, while less focused were no less clear in their view that Russia has lost something that must be restored.

When it comes to Washington, of course, this has nothing to do with reality. In fact, people who work on Ukrainian issues in what used to be known as the capital of the Free World are most worried about how to get any attention at all to Ukraine from the Bush administration or to convince it that perhaps making Russia, a country with no love for Americans or their values, the third largest recipient of US foreign aid (after Israel and Egypt) is not perhaps in the best long-term interests of the American taxpayer. The writer of these words knows this for a fact. Many of us are old friends and we stay in touch thanks to the wonders of e-mail. However, it is far from unusual for self-consecrated former Soviet experts brought up in the spirit of scientific communism to say silly things about the West, when they know precious little about it. They simply project their own ideas of how they would think if they were there, failing to understand that those who are actually there see things in a somewhat different light.

The point of the discussion in the Russian press is that Russia, despite the American largess it receives, continues to see the United States as a rival and that it seeks hegemony, at least within the CIS. All the better if it be aided in doing so with US aid dollars. Then, of course, it will go on from there to areas like the Middle East. One of the experts cited in this material suggests that suggest this might happen as soon at Russian President Putin’s second term. But for the moment, in Moscow’s eyes, everything depends on Ukraine: dragging it into the Single Economic Space, neutralizing any geopolitical significance of the Odesa- Brody pipeline by using it to pump more Russian oil into the Black Sea, getting control of Ukraine’s power grids and taking over the commanding heights of its industry, and even having Ukraine’s border guards remove from trains entering Ukrainian territory any Chechens that might be found. No one is talking about actual annexation, of course: that would cost more than Russia, in essence a Third World country with rich natural resources and an aging fleet of nuclear weapons, can afford. One step at a time.

If Washington can afford to ignore this — for the time being at least — Kyiv cannot. There is no place for any European choice in the way the experts (and many others) in Moscow see Ukraine’s future. The point is who will determine Ukraine’s future. America really does not want to do so and really would rather leave that choice up to Ukraine itself. Russia, it seems, feels it is in a somewhat better position to do so. Of course, every responsible person wants Ukraine and Russia to be good neighbors, but in light of such openly enunciated intentions, it would seem only proper caution that every decision on every issue in the bilateral relationship be examined first through the prism of its implications for Ukraine’s European choice or, to phrase it slightly differently, for Ukraine’s very survival as a truly independent state. For Moscow seems to be pursuing a strategy aimed at leaving Ukraine juridically independent but making it a de facto province of an empire, liberal or otherwise, something like Bulgaria was in the days of the Warsaw Pact.