(Via Avedon with a bankshot to Sean Paul) Czarist Russia, and the Soviet empire that succeeded it were called The Prisonhouse of Nations. With the breakup of the USSR, the prisoners were freed. Now Ian Welsh at FDL proposes that Medvedev’s Russia plans to round them up again. Speaking of Ukraine, he writes:
So, let’s run through this.
- Majority Russian population? Check.
- Ignored referenda in which they population indicated they’d rather be independent and prefer Russia to their current government? Check.
- Deadly important strategic resource? Check.
- Russian area which was under Russian rule for 2 centuries? Check. (We’ll ignore the Crimean Tartars, though they don’t deserve it, as they were reduced to a fraction of the population)
All of the conditions that existed in Ossetia exist, with the addition of the fact that Ossetia really isn’t that important, while Sevastopol is one of the most important military ports in the world.
So, the next question is balance of power. Georgia’s militarily is rather small. The Ukrainian military, on the other hand, clocks in at about 300,000 troops, putting it at about 1/3 of the Russian army’s size. Russia’s army is better equipped overall, the Ukraine having mostly cold war vintage equipment. The Ukraine’s not part of NATO, but it has been getting a lot of training from the West.
A war with the Ukraine, therefore, is not a walkover, the way which one with Georgia, I’m afraid, is.
On the other hand, assuming no Western intervention, the smart money is still on Russia to win such a war. Again, the question is this: are you willing to die for the Ukraine’s right to keep a bunch of people under its control who don’t want to be under its control?
Right now the US is completely overextended. Europe is dependent on Russian oil and natural gas. China is certainly not going to interfere. On the other hand, with Obama’s election, or even possibly with McCain’s, there is a real chance that the US will end the Iraq war and move its military back into a posture where it can actually be useful and a credible deterrent. Plus Ukraine has been pushing hard for NATO membership and will probably get it sometime in the next few years.
If Russia wants the Crimea and Sevastopol back, or even just Sevastopol, its window of opportunity is closing. It has a year or two at most to do something.
This is truly depressing. The breakup of the Soviet empire was one of the top ten best things that happened in the last century, right after penicillin, FDR, and defeating the Axis. Trust George Bush to create the conditions to bring it back together.