From Russia With Insecurity

When the Soviet Union collapsed, i was still in high school. I had just learnt about World War II in history class, and it seemed there was a disturbing parallel: we learnt about how the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI, had set punitive terms on Germany, and that sense of victimhood had fueled the nationalism the Nazis drew on.

The Russians hadn't lost a war, nor was there a one-sided treaty. But they were plunged into hardship and weakness just months after being a world power. It seemed there was fertile ground for extremist politics there. I was quite disappointed that there wasn't more concern over this in the west. I wasn't expecting a new Marshall Plan or something, but it seemed to me that offering the Russians a little help making the transition to capitalism would have been a wise investment in world stability.

When hard-right Vladimir Zhirinovsky appeared on the scene in the mid 90's, I thought my worst fears were playing out. Fortunately, only a few Russians took the bait.

But now, it occurs to me that I was right, it's just that Russia's lashing out wasn't nearly as dramatic as I had assumed. Instead of a transition to radical politics, it has played out as a angry streak in their dealings with others.  Putin seems to understand this, and is good at exploiting it.  If the results never get worse than the Crimean invasion, we'll be pretty lucky overall.

Back To The Brink

I mentioned earlier that several countries seemed to be tearing themselves apart because large blocks of voters can't agree. Since then, we've seen Ukraine get even more polarized, eventually leading to a new government and Russian military intervention.

I thought it was interesting that during the Ukraine crisis, there seemed to be a real case for splitting the country, since the Ukrainian west and Russian east seemed to differ on culture, politics and economics. But all politicians shrank away from the idea, saying that such a young country (~23 years) didn't want to open that can of worms.

Well, Putin's troops seem to have imposed the separation idea. And at the risk of sounding Chamberlain-y, I'm optimistic that it won't escalate.  Some sort of autonomy for the country's two sides was probably the only way out of the impasse, but too scary to choose voluntarily. Of course, that's assuming Putin isn't crazy enough to grab more or all of the country than the Russian-dominated areas just to spite/embarrass the west. And I don't know too much about make-up of the country; if there are large Russian/Ukrainian minorities on the other sides, it could lead to Balkan-style retribution, which is the country argument to my give-separation-a-chance philosophy.