Crimea: A Dangerous Game

So, after a long time I decided that it's time for me to get back on the geo-political horse. In all honesty this is the first time I have attempted to analyse an event in international politics since university, at least in the sense that I'm not drunk and shouting my mouth off to an audience of people who I think of as inferior to myself in their knowledge of the subject (OMG arrogance!).

"I'm not a Russian soldier, honest!"

Now of course I am not going to try and analyse the situation in general, or about every single aspect and consequence; such a post would be ten-a-penny in an internet already oversaturated by war-nerds, armchair generals and anybody who can read the increasingly grammatically shitty BBC. Instead I want to try and talk about one of the aspects of this conflict (and Russia's past conflicts) that has seemingly gone forgotten both in the Kremlin and in the West, and will have a huge impact on the Russian state should they continue down this path.

The truest picture the internet ever made.

Now, ask anyone that knows me and they will tell you I am a huge fan of Russia, and the Presidency of Vladimir Putin (or maybe that should have been was?). I have always wanted to see an enlarged Europe that includes Russia that basically sticks its collective finger up at the US. At first I thought that Putin's general masculinity and ability to heal tigers meant that he was the right man for the job, but his petty-minded "ONLY THE FUCKING RUSSIANS MATTER" mentality has really seen me fall out with him. In a rather symbolic gesture I tore down his picture from shelf at work this week (an act that went almost unnoticed, because "we don't do politics" in Kazakhstan) and as such Nazarbayev sits up there alone, waiting for either Bad Vlad to return or a suitable replacement to join him. Maybe Klitschko? LOL!

At this stage, you are probably all wondering what the fuck this blog post is actually about. Trust me, I am getting to that. Let me take you back in time, back to a time when the shit was hitting fan, big time.

Most "westerners" (how I loathe this term) have no idea about what happened in the 90s. Many remember it as the time of bad music and bad haircuts, but in the former-Soviet states it is remembered as a terrible time. A time when corruption was rife, a time where a very small handful of people got incredibly rich while everybody else either starved or shot each other for scraps. Not only this, but a series of conflicts that led to the current state in Crimea unfolded, although most would still not be aware of their relevance for a long time.

"Bring your shit wine in here and we'll blow your fucking face off"

The first crisis came in 1992, in newly formed Moldova. Before 1992 Moldova was a centre of wine within the Soviet Union, producing cheaper and lower quality wine than Georgia. Moldovans made up the largest amount of the population, but there was a sizable Russian population in the east of the country. To be honest, the causes of the war are not very clear to me (apart from what appear to be some kind of discrimination against the Russian language, I think) but I am aware of the result: the Russian army, pretending to be armed groups of the local population, basically shot up the place and carved off a chunk of the east of Moldova to make the state of Transnistria, a haven for Russians and Russian-speakers to frolic and play. This breakaway state still exists today.

Naturally, the Russian Federation didn't stop its active role in the "near-abroad". The early nineties saw two ethnically-linked conflicts in the caucasus that Russia sought to deal with in two different ways: the Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the Georgian Civil-War, when the ugliness in South Ossetia and Abkhazia first reared its head. During the former Russia urged peaceful reconciliation between both sides (while simultaneously supplying and training the armed forces of both sides, LOL) and during the latter supporting the predominantly Russian-speaking populations in their armed struggles with the Georgian government. Things got nasty, as they often do in the caucasus, and an uneasy cease-fire was agreed upon. South Ossetia and Abkhazia were nominally independent, and Russia started supplying everyone with Russian passports. When in Rome, I guess.

Best friends forever. If forever means until 2008.

Flash-forward about 15 years. In 2008 Georgia, tired of being trolled by Russia about everything, launched an operation to re-assert its control over its breakaway republics. Why exactly Saakashvili thought that Russia wouldn't come to the aid of its allies I have absolutely no idea, but still the war was short-lived and made for a rather amusing summer (I was in Sweden at the time with my course-friend, and we discussed it well into the early hours). So, Georgia went in, possibly thinking NATO would support them, Russia came through a big tunnel, shot everything remotely Georgian looking, looted everything that wasn't nailed down, went a bit further and then decided that they had enough old TVs and toasters and signed another cease-fire. The result of the conflict obviously was that Russia supported the indepedence of two Russian speaking exclaves much like in Transnistria, and that once more there was peace in the caucasus. For now.

So, that brings us more or less up to the present time. Of course the two wars in Chechnya have some relevance to the overall picture but, as we will see later, it's still within a much bigger framework. And it's not exactly necessary to look at these, but instead it is necessary to now look at the bigger picture.

Russians in red, naturally.

The following map illustrates the result of years of unofficial and official settlement policies of Soviet governments, as well as the geographical mobility that was allowed within the Union itself. As you can see, there are huge Russian populations in Crimea and Northern Kazakhstan, and smaller ones in Eastern Ukraine, the Baltic States and others. In the current crisis Russia has supported the "self-determination" of Crimea rather than the national sovereignty of Ukraine, and this of course where I find fault with the current Russian policy. Many might consider to Crimea to belong to Russia given its population, culture and current political situation but the fact is that the Treaty of Westphalia established the principle that a state has no right to infringe the national sovereignty of another. Self-determination should be secondary, according to this.

Now, I hear you cry, why should this be? You support Russia and the Russians Tom, so why do you think this way? The reason is simple. If you were to follow this link, you would see why (tl;dr? Russia is facing a demographic crisis). Once more, lets look at yet another map.

Russia is a multi-ethnic and multi-national country; it has been this way for a long time, even since the Tsars of Muscovy decided to lay claim to the lands of the Golden Horde. Russians have for the longest time made up the majority of the country, and that shows no signs of changing. Yet the collapse of the Soviet Union left the country with a problem: Russians were (and still are) having less children, and the children that they did have were leaving their provincial cities in search of work, mainly towards the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. At the same time the native populations of most of the Autonomous Republics and a number of the other provinces have been actually increasing. In a number of these republics Russians no longer make up the dominant ethnic group, and in some Russians are only in a small minority. Most of the peoples in these republics are law-abiding and loyal peoples, especially the Turkic populations in Tatarstan and the other republics; there is still a great sense of multiculturalism that has been carried over from Soviet times.

But if Russia is so concerned with the Russians abroad, putting it in such nationalistic terms, not respecting the sovereignty of the land rather than the people who live in it, then how exactly can it hope to hold on to the lands where it will soon not hold a majority? There are sizable populations of Ukrainians and Tatars in Crimea, are they not to be respected either? Russia for Russians is sounding increasingly hollow.

The lands that will be most susceptible.

Please, do not misinterpret my arguments or my reasoning. I do not want Russia to dissolve into a hundred different Chechnyas; I want Russia to stay united as one country, friendly to all. I want to see a land of peace and prosperity. I supported the Putin administration during most of its history, but today I do not. The country I have dreamt about for so long does not deserve to be ripped apart.

It is not for Ukraine or Europe that I worry about the consequences of the Crimean crisis; it is Russia that I fear for most.

I hope that we can find a peaceful, respectful solution to these problems, and as always I await your comments about how shit my writing is or how my facts are wrong.