Back in the USSR

Résumé du livre

Harvard University's Ethnic Conflict Project analyses ethnic conflict in the former USSR in order to determine its implications for Western assistance and US foreign policy. This report focuses on Russia's role in relation to recent ethnic conflicts in the ex-USSR. Given the West's impotence to resolve civil conflict in places like Cambodia, Somalia and ex-Yugoslavia, Russia has made an "interesting proposition" regarding instability in the multi-ethnic mosaic of the fourteen newly-independent republics of the former Soviet Union. In 1993 it requested that the international community sanction and finance its "peacekeeping" activities in these republics. The report suggests that in each recent conflict Russia has, in fact, intervened to aggravate rather than defuse the unrest for its own strategic objectives. These objectives include guaranteeing access to warm water ports, raw materials and markets and maintaining a buffer zone against traditional rivals - Turkey, Iran, China and Europe. In attempting to protect its aims, the report continues, Russian policy has compromised the sovereignty of each of the former republics of the USSR and forced them into increasing dependence on Moscow. In Belarus, Central Asia and Ukraine, the aims have been pursued via economic and diplomatic means. In Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Tajikistan, Russiahas been more aggressive. A series of policy recommendations for the US is offered in the final section of the report. The US is advised to oppose the unilateral installation of Russian peacekeepers in the former Soviet republics, to support moderate forces and to counteract nationalist extremists in these republics, to commission fact-finding missions to examine alleged human rights abuses against Russians in Central Asia and to encourage the newly independent states to submit laws pertaining to ethnic minorities to the CSCE or Council of Europe for review. Such measures should help prevent Russia from exploiting minority grievances, the report concludes.