O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.

Mostrando postagens com marcador Moldova. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Moldova. Mostrar todas as postagens

sexta-feira, 31 de janeiro de 2025

The Domino Theory Is Coming for Putin - Casey Michel (Foreign Policy)

Argument
An expert's point of view on a current event.

The Domino Theory Is Coming for Putin

A series of setbacks for Russia is only gaining momentum.

By , head of the Human Rights Foundation's Combating Kleptocracy Program and author of American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History. 

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/29/domino-theory-putin-russia-georgia-transnistria-belarus/?tpcc=world_brief&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=World%20Brief%2001302025&utm_term=world_brief

For many, the daily news out of Ukraine paints a dour picture of Kyiv’s future. Russian troops continue to grind forward, sacrificing themselves by the tens of thousands for the sake of seizing more and more Ukrainian land. Dreams of a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive are long gone, with calls in the West for everything from Ukrainian neutrality to recognizing Russian sovereignty on stolen Ukrainian lands picking up steam.

These views aren’t without some merit. But they risk missing the forest of the daily news cycle for the trees of where we are—and just how battered and bloodied Russia truly is. On the economic front, Russia has seen both soaring interest rates and galloping inflation, providing a toxic brew of stagflation, from which there’s little likelihood of escape. On the manpower front, Russian President Vladimir Putin is so skittish of a potential new round of mobilization that he’s forced to rely on North Korean conscripts. And on the tactical front, Putin is no closer to Ukrainian collapse than he was in early 2022. He has created for himself, as scholar Michael Kimmage described, a “nightmare,” with only disastrous choices remaining, both for Putin’s rule and for Russian strategic interests writ large.

Indeed, it is the latter point that presents the greatest evidence of Putin’s disastrous turn and perhaps the greatest, or at least the most overlooked, suite of opportunities for Western policymakers. Few have made the connection, but a clear trend line has emerged over the past few years. Thanks to Putin’s monomaniacal fixation on Ukraine, he has been willing to sacrifice other geostrategic projects elsewhere, unwilling to step into the breach to help what had previously been key Russian interests. We’ve started to see a Russian variant of a domino theory emerge—one that has begun gutting Russian interests elsewhere, and illustrating, as few other things can, just how atrophied Russian power projection has become.

The first domino to fall came in 2023, when troops from Azerbaijan stormed into the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing ethnic Armenians to flee en masse. Rather than being the supposed guarantor of stability—and a key security partner of Armenia, which backed Nagorno-Karabakh for decades—Russia wilted in the face of Azerbaijan’s push. Tucking tail, Russian troops left the region entirely, scuttling a military base where nearly 2,000 Russian troops had once been deployed.

A year later, the next domino toppled. With the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Russia not only lost its key regional ally, but watched as its primary claim as a security guarantor for autocratic regimes disintegrated. Rather than act as a swaggering great power that could shore up illiberal leaders, Moscow was suddenly outed as a government that could do neither.

Both developments—the disappearance of Nagorno-Karabakh and the dissolution of Assad’s regime—are downstream from Putin’s overwhelming focus on subjugating Ukraine, regardless of the cost. All of which begs a pair of questions: Given that he’s been completely consumed by this messianic obsession with Ukraine, which pro-Russian domino will be the next to fall? And how can Western policymakers be ready to take full advantage?

Start with the oldest Russian-backed enclave there is: Transnistria. A sliver of eastern Moldova, Transnistria has been occupied by Russian troops since the earliest days of the post-Soviet era. If anything, the recalcitrance to find a solution to Transnistria was something of an “original sin” for Western policymakers, unwilling as they were to face the realities and reverberations of Russian imperialism, long before Putin set his sights on Ukraine. By the late 1990s, it was clear that Russian promises to remove Moscow’s troop presence from Moldova—and to finally end the Kremlin’s willingness to carve up a separate, sovereign country in the middle of Europe—were hardly credible. By and large, the West looked the other way, letting this blindingly, breathtakingly obvious example of Russian revanchism fester.

Now, though, it is Moscow’s relations with Transnistria that are suddenly in question. Earlier this year, Moscow cutting off its gas line to Europe left the entire region in, quite literally, the dark. While there has been some progress in restoring energy capacity, sudden chatter has emerged about the potential “collapse” of Transnistria wholesale and what that means for Moldova and the rest of the region more broadly. The West has been almost entirely absent from the conversations about potential solutions, let alone what this may mean strategically—a bizarre absence, given Transnistria’s border with Ukraine and the clear designs that Moscow has on eventually linking its Ukrainian gains with its Moldovan holdings.

Elsewhere, Georgia remains mired in a domestic political contretemps worse than anything the country has seen in years. After recent parliamentary elections—broadly viewed as fraudulent—the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party claimed victory, and with it, the right to thwart Tbilisi’s pro-Western direction. The stolen vote was the culmination of a longer trajectory, with the party’s leadership dismantling the underpinnings of Georgian democracy. Similar to the descent of Ukrainian democracy seen under former leader Viktor Yanukovych, whose pro-Kremlin sympathies resulted in Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution, Georgian Dream’s lurch toward authoritarianism has resulted in the kinds of protests that increasingly resemble those that toppled Yanukovych.

Meanwhile, it is in Belarus that we can find the West’s greatest blind spot—and, arguably, the greatest pressure point for testing just how weak Moscow’s reach and influence is now. In 2020, pro-democratic protests erupted across the country, presenting the greatest threat to the decades-long rule of Belarusian despot Aleksandr Lukashenko. However, in one of the greatest (and most overlooked) foreign-policy failures of U.S. President Donald Trump’s first administration, Washington did little to back the democratic protesters and instead ceded all influence to Moscow. As such, when it appeared that Lukashenko was on his last legs, Putin interceded, reinforcing the regime and restoring the rule of one of Moscow’s longtime clients. Years later, Lukashenko remains in power, and Belarus remains a key staging ground for Moscow’s ongoing assaults on Ukraine.

Now, Belarus faces yet another inflection point. On Jan. 26, another election in Belarus assured Lukashenko’s regime of another term in office—or so the dictator hopes. After all, it was the immediate aftermath of Belarus’s previous election, without even the pretense of fairness or freedom, that unexpectedly jump-started the country’s 2020 protests. While the regime has arrested tens of thousands since, that’s hardly a guarantee of post-election stability this time around. If anything, with Belarus’s opposition far more organized and far more committed than even five years ago, Lukashenko can hardly be sure that this won’t be his last thieved election—especially with his primary patron completely distracted and increasingly drained.

All these developments—Transnistria going dark, Georgia turning turbulent, and Belarus once again facing the same ingredients that sparked its largest pro-democracy protests just a few years ago—would be newsworthy on their own. But it’s the fact that the primary backer of Transnistria separatists, Georgian illiberals, and Lukashenko’s regime are suddenly watching their external influence erode that presents new opportunities for the West, if only Brussels, London, and Washington take advantage.

Indeed, it is somewhat shocking that the West hasn’t sketched out a better strategy for the broader region in recent months. The European Union has continued encouraging Moldova’s pro-EU direction, but the West remains effectively a nonactor when it comes to things like Transnistria. In Georgia, the United States recently sanctioned Bidzina Ivanishvili, the architect of the country’s democratic decline, but it’s clear that there’s little strategy beyond these kinds of individual responses. And Belarus, meanwhile, is effectively a black hole of policy analysis, even for the new administration in Washington. Reams of paper have been produced on new U.S. strategy regarding Ukraine, Russia, and Europe, but there’s been precisely nothing written on Belarus, which appears to be a complete vacuum of strategic thinking.

And that’s all a shame and an opportunity foregone. After all, it’s not just people like Assad suddenly learning that Putin’s support apparently comes with an expiration date. Transnistria separatists, Georgia’s budding autocrats, Belarus’s thug-in-chief—all of them have suddenly realized that Putin’s backing, even for them, isn’t bottomless. As they’ve seen, the Russian president will always, always prioritize Ukraine over Russian interests elsewhere, including client regimes and kleptocratic allies along Russia’s other borders.

This is, of course, a trend that has been years in the making. For over a decade, Putin has prioritized subjugating Ukraine over Moscow’s other key strategic goals, dating all the way back to the creation—and immediate implosion—of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. In the years since, Putin has prioritized the gelding of Ukraine over everything from a viable economy to stable relations with the West, even to the point of risking regime stability itself. Indeed, at this point, it’s fair to say that Putin may well choose domination of Ukraine over even places like Sakha or Chechnya, both of which remain part of the Russian Federation for the time being but have clear histories as separate, sovereign states—one of the primary reasons that Russia’s territorial stability is hardly guaranteed, or why, as the Economist said, Putin is “turning Russia into a failed state.”

Questions and crises of Russia’s internal stability are still a ways off. But that is, ultimately, where this accelerating collapse of dominoes is heading. That is all the more reason the West must begin formulating policy not just on the next dominoes to fall—places like Transnistria, Georgia, and even Belarus—but also on what a post-Putin Russia may well, and should, look like. After all, once they start tumbling, dominoes have a way of continuing to fall. The West should be ready.

Casey Michel is head of the Human Rights Foundation's Combating Kleptocracy Program and author of American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History. X: @cjcmichel


quinta-feira, 7 de março de 2024

Como lidar com o imperialismo expansionista russo-putinesco na Europa? - Sven Biscop (Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations_

 The phrase above applies to the European (and Belgian) elections, but also to the EU and its candidate countries. If the EU is not ready to do for Georgia and Moldova what it is doing for Ukraine, if necessary, it should not have invited them in. This is the argument of my new Egmont Commentary, which I hope will be of interest.

Best wishes,

 

Sven 

 

image001.jpg

 

     Universiteit Gent - Ghent University

 

 

Prof. Dr. Sven Biscop

 

Director – Europe in the World Programme, Egmont

Professor – Ghent University 

Associate Member – Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences 

 

Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations

Rue des Petits Carmes 15, B-1000 Brussels

+ 32 473 31 68 23

 

s.biscop@egmontinstitute.be




 

If Russia “Protects” Transnistria, Will the EU Defend Moldova? And Georgia?


https://www.egmontinstitute.be/if-russia-protects-transnistria-will-the-eu-defend-moldova-and-georgia/


If Russia “Protects” Transnistria, Will the EU Defend Moldova? And Georgia?

  

In

 

 

On 28 February 2024, the day before Putin’s annual speech in parliament, Transnistria asked Russia for protection against Moldova, the state from which the region has broken away. Fabricating a threat against a kindred people as a pretext for invasion: the playbook is well known. That is how Russia has justified its wars against Georgia and Ukraine, and how it threatens the Baltic States. But the playbook is much older: in 1938-9, the purported plight of the Sudeten Germans was Hitler’s pretext for dismembering Czechoslovakia. There are parallels – but they do not run in Russia’s favour.

 

Minsk Is Not Munich

There are differences too. Russia already is in Transnistria, with some 1500 troops that have been there since 1992. And the EU already is in Moldova, with an EU Partnership Mission (EUPM) of up to 40 security officials, launched in April 2023 to assist with building resilience against hybrid actions. The West is not abandoning anybody, therefore. Indeed, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands have only just opened an embassy in Chisinau, and Greece and Spain will follow shortly.

Perhaps Putin had understood the Minsk Agreements that France and Germany mediated between Ukraine and Russia in 2014-5 as a Munich moment: the first step towards the West letting Ukraine go. But then he overlooked another accord: the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, also signed in 2014, by which (wittingly or unwittingly) Europe committed itself to the survival of Ukraine, whatever the future might bring. Putin should have remembered that when Nazi Germany violated the Munich Agreement, Britain and France could indeed not prevent the destruction of Czechoslovakia – but they did then offer a security guarantee to Poland and went to War when Hitler invaded it. In a similar vein, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine provoked the EU and the US into non-belligerent yet massive and indeed vital support for Kyiv. In June 2022, the EU accepted both Ukraine and Moldova as candidates for membership, cementing its commitment.

 

But the War Might Yet Expand

Putin did not actually mention Moldova in his speech. Perhaps the Transnistrian call for help is a sign of desperation more than anything else, as things have been going bad for the leadership ever since Ukraine closed the border when war started. Transnistria being where it is, Russia can difficultly reinforce or supply its troops there, and Russia has of course failed to link it up with the territory that it occupies in Ukraine. Nevertheless, if Putin felt it necessary to create a diversion, the troops currently in Transnistria could cause havoc. And already today Russia is engaged in a massive subversion campaign in Moldova. The call for protection is itself an example of that. Is the EUPM sufficient to bolster the country?

The EU also has to worry about Georgia, which in December 2023 became a candidate for membership as well. There too, Russian troops shore up breakaway regions: Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Those border on Russia, however; it is Georgia that is isolated, in a military sense. The Montreux Convention limits access via the Black Sea, and while the country does border on fellow EU candidate Turkey, the latter (though a NATO Ally) has its own special relationship with Russia. In case of renewed hostilities, how would the EU (and the US) get military support to Georgia? And in Georgia too, massive Russian influence operations are underway.

Even Armenia now appears to be hoping for some sort of security support from Europe. Armenia was gravely disappointed with Russia’s lack of support when in September 2023 Azerbaijan in a swift war took control of Nagorno-Karabakh. in February 2024, Armenia suspended its membership of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), its military alliance with Russia. Azerbaijan, at the same time, is a key partner of the EU’s Global Gateway. The EU need not choose sides between them; it needs a strategy for regional stability.

 

Defend Your Candidate!

Accepting a country as a candidate creates obligations towards it, and it alters the geopolitical position of the EU, almost as much as actual enlargement.

Enlargement always was a geopolitical project, but never before has it been actively contested by another great power. In the past, the EU has accepted as candidates countries that came out of war, on the Balkans, but never a country currently at war, like Ukraine, or facing a great risk of war, like Georgia and Moldova. In geopolitical terms, these were three buffer states in between the EU and Russia. Ukraine and Moldova have now become border states – they are the frontier of the West; Georgia, however, is a geopolitical outpost. The security guarantee contained in Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union does not yet apply, of course. But the EU can also not just stand idly by when a candidate is threatened or aggressed, in a military or a hybrid way – not without greatly damaging its credibility. And if the EU is not seen to stand up for its candidates, other powers might begin to doubt even the strength of solidarity between current Member States, to the detriment of deterrence.

By accepting new candidates, the EU has de facto altered its geopolitical situation. That must now be reflected in an updated strategy. At the very least, the EU should prepare contingency plans for non-belligerent support to Georgia and Moldova, up to the same massive scale as for Ukraine if necessary. That will require courage and resources. But if the EU is not willing to defend them, it should not have accorded candidate status to countries facing such a high risk of conflict. Geopolitics and strategy is not a game for the meek or the miserly.

 

Sven Biscop cannot help seeing historical analogies – he has just read too many books.